Page 19 of A Tale of Two Dukes

It was hard for Mr Armstrong to face his hosts across the dinner table, and grew harder as the days passed.

The Duchess was plainly aware, since Edward’s vague manner towards her did not change in the slightest, that Richard had kept his promise of silence to her, though she said nothing of it to him.

For his own part, Richard became increasingly conscious of the effort she was making to please her husband, or at least to conform to his unspoken expectations, and how bloody oblivious he was to all of it.

To give the man credit, he did not stand at all upon his dignity as a duke and never had, so that could not be why he was so blind.

It wasn’t that he thought she should be grateful for her startling elevation and content with her lot; he just didn’t seem to be aware of his wife as a person with her own thoughts, feelings and interests, just like the dead wife he missed so much.

It was an unnatural and lonely life for any woman, cooped up here in this big, empty barn of a house with a man who didn’t seem to notice her from one day to the next, and all the more so for a girl of eighteen whose childhood had been so very different, full of life and laughter and people who cared about her.

Richard began to wonder uneasily how long it could go on without a disaster.

There was thick, chilling fog one afternoon, and – Edward having vanished into some private fastness as usual without explanation or excuse – Richard and his hostess were pacing the long picture gallery, surveying, for want of anything else to do, the portraits of previous Armstrongs, beginning in the Tudor era.

It was mid-afternoon and the long green damask curtains were still open, but it was already growing dark; they’d brought candles with them.

Spring seemed a long way off on days like this.

‘The family emerged from well-deserved obscurity about this time,’ he told her, eager to offer her what poor entertainment he could, ‘having somehow become part of Henry Tudor’s disreputable train in his exile abroad.

Look at my illustrious ancestor, Thomas Armstrong.

Did you ever see a more untrustworthy face in your life – can you not imagine him bilking a French innkeeper out of his due, or stealing coins from a church poor-box?

Thomas came to England with the Tudor when he invaded, and was later rewarded for his years of loyalty with these lands.

No doubt he could have told a tale or two about the seventh Henry’s wandering years on the Continent if he wished. ’

The Duchess smiled and seemed diverted, but was, not unnaturally, most interested in the women’s portraits.

There was nothing to be gleaned from the closed countenance of Thomas’s wife, the Lady Alys, who still kept her secrets, eyes modestly downcast and mouth pursed tight, head bundled up in a curiously unflattering headdress like a great square box.

‘She was a lady-in-waiting to Dame Margaret Beaufort, the King’s mother, which can’t have been enormously entertaining.

Lots of sermons and very few parties, I should think, don’t you, ma’am?

But the next couple of generations made up for it, as you can see. ’

Viola stared, arrested by the magnificence of the first Duke of Winterflood, Edmund.

He stood four-square and massive, much like his friend and contemporary the eighth Henry, and sported an enormous bushy black beard, and a hat that resembled nothing so much as a squashed velvet cushion.

The parts of his garments that were not slashed to show rich silken linings were heavily encrusted with jewels of many colours.

His codpiece, which neither Richard nor his companion referred to, was easily the size of a loaf of bread, and was studded with yet more jewels.

His wife was dressed with equal opulence, bore just as many jewels, and must have experienced a great deal of difficulty in sitting down, her gown was so stiff with gold embroidery.

Above them was emblazoned the Winterflood motto – then and now: Quod habeo teneo .

What I have, I hold. It wasn’t a particularly comforting sentiment, and Richard wondered for the first time how hard it might be to live up to, for his cousin.

The current Duchess mused, ‘It’s hard to see them as ordinary people underneath all their finery; they are so concerned to show us their wealth and power, they scarcely look human.

And yet aristocrats today laugh at those they are pleased to call cits, and call them vulgar.

What could be more vulgar and ostentatious than this? ’

He grinned in complete agreement. ‘We all came from nowhere once, and the Armstrongs comparatively recently; it’s just a matter of timing.’

‘I suppose those who came over with the Conqueror still look down on parvenu such as the Armstrong family, then. That’s comforting somehow to a complete nobody like me.

But I’ve seen that ruby necklace before – the Duchess, the late Duchess, is wearing it in the Gainsborough portrait, I think.

Strange that objects should endure, when the people who wore them so proudly are long dead. ’

You are the Duchess , he thought, but it is no wonder that you don’t really seem to realise it. It must be so fatiguing, feeling like an interloper all the time. ‘I can only think that it is yours now. Have you not seen it, and the other family jewels?’

She shrugged, seeming not terribly interested. ‘A few of them, but not that particular piece. I don’t really have occasion to wear such priceless treasures.’

Of course she did not, if they never went anywhere or entertained parties of guests.

‘Does Edward mean to take you to appear at Court as a married woman?’ he asked carefully.

He didn’t know if she’d been presented on her come-out; he didn’t want to assume she hadn’t, though he knew that it was an extremely costly exercise and doing it for six daughters could bankrupt a family.

‘If so, you could wear it then if you wished, or some of the other historic pieces. Court presentation is an occasion for the grandest of jewels, especially for a duchess.’ The higher a family’s status, the more customary it was for them to show themselves to the King and Queen after a marriage or some other notable event.

Surely Edward would go to Town for that, and stay for a while and let his wife have some amusement for a change.

Throw her a ball, perhaps, to honour her.

Do something for her to vary the monotony of her life and make her feel valued.

‘I don’t know. He hasn’t mentioned it,’ she said in a low tone, as if she could not help herself, ‘He doesn’t really… talk to me more than is necessary. Or than he feels necessary.’

‘I am sorry you are so lonely and unhappy. I wish I could help you in some way.’ He didn’t feel disloyal to his cousin, saying this openly to her; he was out of all patience with Edward by now, and would have to speak to him or hate himself for his cowardice, for all the good he expected it would do.

‘But you have helped me a great deal,’ she said with false brightness.

‘You talk to me, and I am very grateful for it. Before you came, I don’t think I’d spoken to anyone my own age, or nearly so, for weeks.

Or anyone at all, really, apart from the servants, who are always so busy and discreet.

The local ladies call on me sometimes, of course, and I on them – I know it is my duty to maintain contact, and Edward has made it clear that he wishes it.

But they are all of them older than me, and very few of them have daughters my age.

I don’t know what to say to them. They all talk about the late Duchess, too, in such a pointed way.

They loved her, and tell me so at length.

Recite her virtues. Tell me what I’ve done wrong, and how she would have done it better.

You’d think I’d murdered her, the way they look at me. As if I ever wanted …’

She broke off then, and said in a stifled voice, ‘Ignore me, sir, I beg you. I am a trifle out of sorts today – a woman’s complaint.

I hope you will disregard my foolish words, and not mind if I leave you now; I don’t think I am fit company this afternoon.

Forgive me – you have been very kind as always.

’ She curtseyed to him, her face pale, and all but fled along the darkening gallery, vanishing into the shadows at the end.

Again, he watched her leave him, frowning.

Richard was not entirely without experience of women, and he could not mistake the feminine complaint to which she had referred.

Another month gone , he thought, and one can only hope that Edward does not upbraid her for it.

But probably he does not, because he does not speak to her more than is necessary.

What a hideous picture of their intimate life that conjures up.

Which does not mean that she is not acutely conscious of her ‘failure’.

The ladies of the county will no doubt remind her of it soon enough, even if nobody else does; trust them for that.

Viola avoided him for the rest of the day and took her dinner in her room, pleading the headache, and Richard took the opportunity her absence offered to speak to Edward.

When the dishes had been removed and the servants left the two cousins alone over their port, he declined another glass – he didn’t like the sticky stuff anyway – and said rather stiltedly, ‘I am sorry to see that the Duchess is unwell.’

‘The Duchess?’ Edward appeared rather startled, and glanced reflexively at Elizabeth’s portrait.

Give me strength, thought Richard. He’s forgotten his new wife even exists .

‘Oh – Viola. Yes, poor child. A trifling ailment – I am sure she will be better directly.’ His expression didn’t suggest he found it trifling at all; more like a tragedy, and a familiar one at that.

But that really wasn’t a subject Richard wanted to discuss with him.

‘It must be quite lonely for her here, especially as she is from a large family and is used to having a great number of people around her,’ he ventured.

‘It might be pleasant if you made up a party to give her some entertainment, if you mean to remain here till the Season starts. You told me you had a very quiet Christmas.’

‘Well,’ said Edward, not seeming particularly concerned, ‘the Constantines are all fixed in London, and I am obliged to be here on the estate, so there is nothing to be done about it. I assure you, I have no thoughts of entertaining anyone but you, my dear boy, or perhaps my old friend Henry Marchett. Such a lot of noise and trouble, the house full of strangers, which is not at all to my taste. And as for the Season, I am glad to be free of that nonsense, and so, I am sure, must my wife be, if she is sensible. The air of London is so unhealthy, too. How unfortunate she was, growing up mostly there; I wonder anyone can bear it for more than a month. This is her life now, and she must accustom herself to it.’ And his gaze drifted inexorably to the portrait again.

‘I am sure she will do so soon enough. Elizabeth was happy here, and never had any difficulty entertaining herself and keeping busy. She often said it was the most idyllic spot in the world.’

‘It is, of course. But you…’ Richard broke off, and Edward was so abstracted, looking down into his glass broodingly, that he did not press his young companion to finish his sentence, or even appear to notice the omission.

There was no point saying that his cousin had loved Elizabeth, and she him, and that had made all the difference.

If he couldn’t see the truth of it for himself, and he was an intelligent man, it seemed unlikely he could be brought to acknowledge it by a cousin five and twenty years his junior.

It was not Richard’s business to suggest that Edward’s first wife Julia hadn’t been happy either, and look what she had decided to do about it.

He had no reason to think that Viola was contemplating such extreme action, or that there was anybody for her to run off with even if she wanted to.

She was entirely alone, and her husband knew and didn’t give a damn, wrapped in what Mr Armstrong could only see as his self-indulgent grief and determination not to change his life one jot to accommodate the young woman he had married.

She must be the one who made the accommodation.

It distressed him and made him angry, and more out of charity with a man he’d always respected and admired than he’d ever been in his life before.

It was a recipe for disaster, of course. All of it.