Page 20 of A Tale of Two Dukes

There was a little constraint between the Duchess and her lone guest when they encountered each other the next day, after their rather too frank conversation when they’d last met, but they both dealt with the matter in the traditional English fashion: by resolutely ignoring it.

She had not felt like riding, so they strolled together about the frosty gardens, admiring the filigree patterns on the cobwebs and the seedheads of last year’s plants.

Their breath was visible in clouds, and their footsteps crunched on the gravel paths, which were frozen into solid but treacherous clumps in places and quite awkward to walk on; he was afraid that she would slip and fall, and so offered her his arm.

It was an innocent gesture – or that was how it began.

He hadn’t realised how much the lightest touch from her would affect him.

‘It will be lovely here in the summer,’ he said fatuously, aware that he was spouting rubbish, aware most of all of the forbidden thrill of feeling her gloved hand on his sleeve, and her body tantalisingly close to his. ‘So different.’

‘It was beautiful last year,’ she agreed sedately, apparently quite willing to talk nonsense too. ‘And the autumn colours, of course, were magnificent.’

It was the sort of thing a woman three times her age might say, and a defeated one at that: one who’d given up all hope and spoke only in commonplaces.

There was no eighteen-year-old alive who gave a fig for autumn colours, in his estimation.

She’d been here for seven or eight months, he realised, with no company.

No wonder she pined so much for her family.

It was a wonder she hadn’t gone crazy, and if she hadn’t, she soon would.

‘Do you ever attend the local assemblies?’ he asked, confident of knowing the answer already. ‘I am sure there must be such events, in St Neots or Bedford or even Cambridge.’

‘I daresay there are, but Edward does not care for them and will not consent to go,’ she responded in a carefully expressionless voice.

‘And when our neighbours have parties with dancing, he declines the invitations, as even such private events are not in the least agreeable to him, not even if his old friends and their wives hold them. Not that I’m eager to see any more of them myself, just so they can show me even more plainly how they disapprove of my very existence. ’

‘Nonetheless, he should be made to care for society and a little pleasure, and cease thinking only of himself! I shall tell him that he is grown prodigiously dull, and is in danger of making you dull too, and that we must attend some public celebration without loss of time. You have been here so long without any diversion that I expect you have almost forgotten how to dance.’

‘I should think I might have,’ she said wistfully, ‘and perhaps he will agree, if it is you that proposes it.’ This matter-of-fact comment stabbed at his heart.

‘I should enjoy that, I think, if it could be managed, and if you would stand up with me.’ She let go of his arm, to his regret, and stepped onto the frozen grass.

It was a safer surface, and once on it, she essayed a few tentative steps, smiling to herself, giving Richard a precious glimpse of the woman – the girl – she could be in happier circumstances.

He bowed with a flourish, and offered her his hand, and they moved through the figure of a country dance together, managing without any of the other members of their imagined set as best they could, hearing the lively music in their heads, keeping time without the least difficulty.

It was very quiet out in the frosty garden, and they were entirely alone, as though they were the only two people left in the world.

They were both laughing at their own absurdity by the end.

Her face was flushed, her eyes sparkling like stars, and she was so enchanting and so different – both from her usual self and from any other woman he had ever known – that Richard, hardly knowing what he did, possessed by an overpowering impulse, bent his head and brushed her lips with his.

It was a brief contact, but it sent a jolt of electricity through him that astonished him.

She looked up at him, startled, and he was about to leap away from her and burst into abject apologies – tell her he had no idea what he had been thinking of and promise on his honour it would never happen again – when she put her gloved hand up to his cheek and left it there for a moment.

He closed his eyes against the sudden sweetness of her touch, and when he did not pull away or speak, she kissed him back.

Perhaps what had happened before could have been glossed over as a mere nothing, an accidental contact that did not signify and could easily be forgotten if they both agreed to do so.

But not this. Their lips locked and soon, they were devouring each other hungrily, bumping noses, clinging to each other and staggering a little on the icy ground at the impact of sudden and unexpected mutual passion, fierce and overwhelming in its intensity.

His arms went out by instinct to pull her close, and hers were locked about his neck in equal need.

He did not know how long it was before she turned her face away, but he knew, because she’d done it twice before now, that her impulse when she went too far into intimacy with him was always to flee.

‘Don’t run away from me this time, please, Viola,’ he said raggedly, as she stirred restlessly in his arms. ‘We can’t possibly pretend this did not happen.’

‘It should not have done,’ she said flatly, and he let her go, but he did not move away from her, and her desire to escape him seemed to have deserted her for the moment, for she too did not put any greater distance between them.

‘My dear, I know it was wrong, and the blame is all mine. But I hate to see you so sad, and when I saw you happy for the first time – happy as you deserve to be – my desire to touch you overmastered me. I should say that I am sorry, but the truth is that I am not.’

‘Nor I,’ she said very low. ‘How can I regret something so rare and precious? Mr Armstrong, Richard, I have thought in recent months that I was going mad. I know that most of the people in the world are worse off than I am. I know what the little maid who lights my fire each morning and the girls who scrub the vegetables till their fingers are numb and work till they are fit to drop each evening would think of me, for not being grateful for everything that I have been given. So many things – it’s not even as though I was born wealthy and don’t appreciate them.

Maybe I am selfish and spoiled, and marriage to a duke has turned my head.

I want for nothing in terms of possessions, my future is secure whatever happens, and how many women in the world can say as much?

But the thought of living like this for years – forever – fills me with terror.

I feel as though I’m turning into one of the statues, all covered in icicles.

All the dead people in the pictures are more real than me.

At least when we kissed, I knew I was alive for a moment. ’

‘I tried to talk to him…’ Richard said helplessly.

‘He doesn’t mean to take you to London; he doesn’t intend to invite anyone to stay here apart from his own friends.

He thinks because Elizabeth was happy here, you must be too.

I could see that it was no use telling him that Elizabeth was happy with him only because they loved each other, and shared a life they chose together. ’

‘I have chosen this, and I must live with it. But sometimes, I’m not sure that I can.’

‘I cannot wonder at it. You didn’t know what you were choosing. You were only seventeen! And I am positive your family put you under a great deal of pressure to accept him. It is no wonder that you could not resist – few people could.’

She shook her head and said resolutely, ‘I could say that that was so, to excuse myself, but it would not be true. There was no need. It would have been my mother, not my poor father, but there was no need for anyone to say as much as a word to me. I was too conscious of what it would mean to the whole family if I accepted him, and the consequences if I refused. My papa has never been strong, and when he dies, my mother and my unmarried sisters will be close to penniless. Bianca, the youngest, is only six! We could not expect my sister Sabrina’s husband to support us all, excessively good-natured though he is.

I never expected to be able to choose a husband for myself.

’ She shivered in the frigid air. ‘I thought I had no illusions. I could see that Edward was a good man, not a cruel one, not a libertine, not… personally unpleasant in any way. He could have been so many things that scared me, and I still would have been obliged to accept him. The law gives him the right to beat me, you know, and he would never do that, never even dream of it. As I have said to you before, I am only too aware that I am… lucky.’ But her voice broke on the last word.

He reached out to hold her again, his hands on her arms. ‘It’s so unfair,’ he said inadequately.

‘It isn’t, really. And I think it would be bearable, perhaps, if I had a child to love. But I don’t think there’s going to be a child, Richard.’

‘You’ve not been married a year. Just a few months.

It’s still so soon – too soon.’ He did not like to hear himself saying these words, as if he was urging her back to Edward’s bed, which was the last thing he wanted to do, God knows.

But if he didn’t want that, what did he want? Nothing he could ever have.

‘But Edward has been married twice before, and he has always wanted an heir. Needed one, to keep the title in the family and away from your brother, whom he so dislikes. He can hardly have failed to… he does not fail to now. I don’t think he’s had the uncommon bad luck to marry three infertile women in succession.

I think it’s him. Surely, he must suspect as much himself. ’

‘It’s unendurable!’ he said passionately and confusedly, for just as she was eighteen, he was only one and twenty, and then he kissed her again, and they clung together.