Page 22 of A Tale of Two Dukes

His Lordship was Edward’s oldest friend, in every possible sense of the word. He was, in fact, only a year or two senior to the Duke, and therefore barely fifty, but, as Richard said, he was the sort of man who must have been born pompous, and bored his nursemaids witless in the cradle.

The noble pair had undertaken the Grand Tour together, round about the time of the American Revolution, and remained as thick as inkle-weavers ever since.

The Earl had even written a book on the unique experience, a weighty tome, and had it privately published in lavish, gold-tooled binding.

There were several presentation copies in the Winterflood library, many of them with the pages still uncut.

In anticipation of the gentleman’s arrival, Viola had attempted out of curiosity to read one of them, but had lost her will to live among the stately, relentlessly self-regarding paragraphs within a few moments of picking it up.

It didn’t signify much; she’d met the Earl briefly before, and knew that he had never in his life cared to know a woman’s opinion about anything, or even admitted that she might have one.

He’d be as likely to ask a table or a chair what it thought about the current political upheavals and the chances of peace.

He was married, and had a great number of children and grandchildren, and they all had her heartiest sympathy, especially his long-suffering wife.

One evening, the two old friends had been left together over their port, while Viola withdrew to sit alone by the drawing-room fire, bored, but less so than she would have been in their company.

Richard had also tactfully left the older men to enjoy each other’s conversation and reminisce about their shared past and unimaginable youthful adventures.

He had some urgent work to do, he said – papers to look over.

He’d kissed the Duchess passionately but all too briefly in a dark corner and then really had gone off to his dull task.

He’d said, and she reluctantly agreed, that they dared not risk being caught together in a compromising situation, all the more because unlike Edward, who noticed nothing, Lord Marchett seemed sharp, and had already worried them both by the pronounced coldness of his manner towards them, and his penetrating gaze that seemed to follow them about and judge them harshly.

She’d been reading a novel by Miss Burney earlier in the day, and most provokingly put it down somewhere; now, she wanted it to help while away the long evening, and could not find it anywhere.

She’d already looked in the library – not on the crowded shelves, that would have taken days, but on all the tables.

It wasn’t in the hall or any of the rooms she used most often, and she was sure she hadn’t taken it upstairs.

Irritated with her own absent-mindedness, she thought she might as well search the one place in this part of the house where she hadn’t looked – the little antechamber to the dining room – before she admitted defeat.

Positive it was a waste of time but reluctant to give up, she slipped quietly in there from the salon that adjoined it.

This antechamber was a curious little space, hardly more than a closet – it had two doors, and no furniture apart from a cushioned window seat that spanned the meagre width of the room.

It would have been wonderfully cosy to sit with Richard there one cold afternoon, except that the chances of being observed when one emerged, dishevelled and guilty from kissing, into one of the adjoining rooms, or from outside through the tall sash window, were too great.

And her book was there on the seat. Someone – perhaps one of the servants – must have picked it up elsewhere and left it there by accident; she certainly hadn’t done it herself, however distracted she was by her current state of euphoria.

She took it with a low sound of mingled exasperation and triumph, just about to leave and go back to the warmer drawing room, when she froze at the sound of voices.

The door to the dining room wasn’t fully closed, she saw now, and it was possible to overhear Edward and Lord Marchett in conversation as they sat together at the table.

She was no eavesdropper, and besides, nothing could be more tedious, since she’d have more than enough of their platitudes later – except that the subject of their discussion had her rooted to the spot with horror, then creeping closer to the crack to make sure she missed nothing.

‘I wonder that you have that tricksy young cub Armstrong to stay with you, Winterflood,’ the Earl grumbled in his habitually ponderous tones.

‘He’s just the kind of creature silly chits find handsome and lose their empty heads over, and I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, myself.

Especially not if I had a flighty young wife, which, I am happy to say, I do not. ’

‘He is my cousin,’ Edward said mildly, ‘and I have always been fond of him, unlike his complete scoundrel of a brother. And he of me, I like to think.’

‘That may be so, but he’s a damn sight fonder of your new duchess, and looking to make a damn fool of you by cuckolding you under your own roof, if you ask me.’

Viola felt a wave of horror wash over her, a rush of dizziness, but she could not move. She would have liked to flee, but realised that she must remain and hear all that was said – it was vital to know how far the man’s suspicions went, and whether her husband meant to pay any attention to them.

Edward said nothing, and Marchett ploughed on, clearly determined to shake him out of his strange apathy.

‘I’m not sure you understand me, old fellow,’ he rumbled with a touch of friendly contempt.

‘I’m telling you that your young cousin means to put a pair of horns on you, if he hasn’t already.

And although the boy should be horsewhipped, and the ungrateful doxy turned out into the street in her shift, I’m bound to say that you deserve some share of the blame for not putting a stop to it long before this.

You leave them alone for hours every day – of course they’ll be up to mischief.

It’d take a far slower lad than that Armstrong not to take advantage of the situation.

He’s probably got her skirts up around her waist in one of your best bedchambers as we sit here like a pair of blinking idiots. ’

‘Oh, I don’t think it’s come to that yet,’ Edward said without any particular appearance of concern. ‘But you’re quite right; it will, and soon enough.’

The Earl’s tone betrayed his utter astonishment as much as his words did. ‘I don’t understand you, man! You know, and yet you let it continue? Have you completely lost your mind?’

‘Henry,’ said Edward slowly, ‘I will remind you later that you have forced this conversation on me, so do not show me a shocked face when I am honest with you in response. You are a man with three sons and as many grandsons, so, despite our long friendship, I cannot expect you to understand my predicament. I am desperate. I know you disapproved when I remarried last year – you thought it damned undignified, and I suppose it was. But it was the last throw of the dice for me. And I can see already that I have lost. My marriage to a young woman from a conspicuously fertile family – and let us be clear, that’s the only reason I chose her, for if I’d felt I had a choice, I would far rather have remained single now my dear Elizabeth has been taken from me – has confirmed what I had already suspected.

The fault is mine: I am unable to sire a child.

I could have fifty wives and concubines, like the Grand Turk, and fuck three or four of them nightly in rotation, supposing I could manage anything so exhausting, and I would still die childless. ’

Lord Marchett made a curious wordless noise that combined polite but insincere disagreement with pity, and then huffed, ‘I feel for you, old man, I do. But I still don’t see…’

‘Yes, you do,’ the Duke said dispassionately.

‘You just don’t want to. My heir is the boy’s half-brother, and he truly is a reprobate.

A shameless libertine, of course, but much more than that.

He will bring the Winterflood name to disgrace and ruin within five years, once I am dead.

I cannot countenance it. I will do anything to prevent that from happening.

Do you hear me, Henry? Anything .’ After a tense little pause, he went on, ‘Years ago, I tried to persuade Elizabeth to pass off some beggar’s brat I’d found as hers – as ours – but she would not do so.

She was too good, too honest, for such a subterfuge.

It caused the only serious disagreement in all our years together, and that was a great grief to me.

In comparison with that pain, this is easy. ’

‘Good God in heaven,’ Marchett muttered.

Viola could hear the shrug in her husband’s voice.

‘You make too much of it. I daresay fellows of all ranks are cuckolded every day of the week – damn it, you know they are. Some of them don’t know, and of the ones that know, some care and some don’t.

I’m of the latter party. The boy is of my blood, and looks a little like me.

Enough like me, at any rate. If he puts her in farrow, the child will be an Armstrong.

If I have some ordinary luck for a change, a son.

And that damn vicious whelp Tarquin will be cut out forever.

Quod habeo teneo , you know, Henry. I have an obligation to my inheritance. ’

In farrow . Viola collapsed into the seat, her trembling hands at her face.

‘And if it’s not a boy?’ said Marchett, obviously shaken.

‘Do you mean to keep on pimping the girl out till you get the result you want? I presume she knows nothing of this – do you mean to tell her? If she has six daughters like her dam, what will you do then? Keep smiling and hoping and quoting Latin?’

‘She won’t. Her sister has a son, with some City mushroom the mother married her to, and I hear tell that she is in pup again.

I like my odds. It’s my only hope, you must see that.

And no, I don’t mean to tell her. Why should I?

In herself, she is of little consequence, though she’s not a bad chit.

She will be creeping around feeling terrible that she has betrayed me, but doing it all the same because she can’t help herself, not knowing it’s exactly what I want.

I wonder you cannot see the bitter humour in it. ’

‘I damn well can’t! Good God, man, you have shocked me!’

Viola heard the sound of glasses being filled and drained and set down, and roused herself enough to creep away. She doubted very much if she could face them if they came looking for her, and it would be safer not to, lest she betrayed her secret knowledge to Marchett’s sharp eyes .

In farrow. In pup. Of little consequence . She was still shaking; she had the quickness of mind to take her book with her so as not to betray her presence to anyone, and almost ran up the stairs.