Page 34 of A Tale of Two Dukes
Naturally, Viola was not in a position to be able to explain to her mother why this statement, so eminently reasonable on the surface, was untrue.
She’d never had secrets from her mama before – but then, she’d never had secrets from anyone.
She was in uncharted territory here, and she could not share her love for Richard and the shocking truth about her child’s parentage with anybody at Winterflood.
If she told her mama that she had been unfaithful and conceived because of it, she’d be horrified, and probably angry at her recklessness; if she revealed the full circumstances, there was no knowing what would be unleashed upon Edward.
Much as he might deserve chastisement, the consequences of an enraged and outraged Italian mother speaking her mind to him were too unpredictable to contemplate.
So, silence was her only option, difficult as it was to have no one at all in whom she might confide.
Emily – no. Emily was a dear friend, but she was very easily shocked and would not comprehend any part of this dreadful muddle, innocent as she was.
Sabrina, perhaps, would be more understanding…
but Sabrina was not here. This wasn’t the sort of news you could put in a letter, and probably it was best not to tell her at all, but to keep her secret safe from everyone.
They couldn’t stay forever. Even as mild-mannered a man as Mr Constantine required that his wife and family should eventually return to his side.
Perhaps the unaccustomed peace and quiet had begun to make him nervous.
In the end, it was agreed that Allegra would remain to keep Viola amused (and, as a bonus, learn more thoroughly how to go on in a grand house and in grand company, in preparation for her debut and a great match of her own) while the rest of the family and their governess returned home.
It was several months yet before the happy event could be expected, and Leontina would be sure to come back in good time for it.
Viola had previously spent very little time alone with her next sister, who had just celebrated her sixteenth birthday here at Winterflood, and was a little ashamed to acknowledge that she barely knew her.
She and Sabrina had always been a pair, whether they’d been fighting or sharing confidences, and their come-outs had been just a year apart.
She realised now that she hadn’t always treated Allegra, whom in her youthful arrogance she’d always viewed as a very poor substitute for Sabrina, as kindly as she might have done.
Though Allie was little more than two years her junior, the gulf between a fine young lady of seventeen who was out in society – and thought herself very grown-up even before she had been courted by a duke – and her jealous fourteen- or fifteen-year-old sister had not been easily bridged, all the more because Viola hadn’t cared enough in her self-absorption to bridge it.
But now she didn’t feel grown-up at all, but making life up as she went along, and looked at her ignorant, confident younger self with a sort of pitying horror.
It was hard not to see Allegra as the next potential victim – although of what, Viola would have struggled to say.
Not of their mother – Leontina was only responding to the situation in which she found herself.
Of the way the world had always worked, perhaps.
They were walking slowly together in the shade of the trees that lined the carriage drive late one August morning, and Viola, though she was in two minds about it still, thought she must speak seriously.
This moment was as good as any, and certainly private enough.
‘You know, Allie,’ she said with elaborate casualness, ‘now that Sabrina and I are married and will be able to support you all if poor Papa were to die, which of course we all hope he will not for many years, there is no great urgency for you to rush into marriage when Mama brings you out, whether it is next year or the year after. You can afford to take a little time and look about you.’
None of Mrs Constantine’s daughters were stupid. ‘You almost talk as though you regret marrying Edward at the end of your first Season,’ Allegra replied, going straight to the heart of the matter in a manner that would have made her mother proud.
Her only Season. ‘I don’t think anyone should get married at seventeen,’ Viola countered evasively.
‘Especially not to a man of five and forty?’
She sighed, fanning herself in the growing heat and trying to remember where the nearest seat was.
‘I don’t criticise Mama’s choice for me.
She would never let any of us marry someone whom she thought was unkind or unpleasant or unreliable, and she is a shrewd enough judge of people.
But no, since you ask me, I don’t think a gap of almost thirty years between husband and wife is a good idea.
I am reminding you – not Mama, but you – that your situation is different from mine, and you need not marry the first man who offers for you, nor the second or third, even if Mama is confident he is a good man.
I am sure she will work her magic and find you someone unexceptionable – but it might also be possible to wait, and look about you, and one day, when you are ready, choose for yourself.
’ Maybe someone not unexceptionable but whom you love and who loves you, assuming you should be lucky enough to meet him before it is too late, she thought but did not say.
‘Do you regret it? You have… all this.’ Allegra gestured vaguely at the trees and placid sheep and the low wooded hills beyond them, everything that they could see being part of the extensive Winterflood estate. ‘But I have observed that you and Edward are not close.’
‘I’m not surprised you have noticed that; anyone might.
He is still in love with his dead wife and probably always will be; he married me simply in order to have a child.
All men do, I suppose, unless they are in love, or of course if they are marrying a woman for her money and connections.
As to regrets… it’s complicated. I do not underestimate what I have when I know that many people have so little, but it’s hard, Allie, to spend weeks and months alone with someone with whom you have very little in common and who barely converses with you.
I am very grateful that you have stayed with me this summer, or I might as well be alone.
I am sorry if I have not told you so before. ’
Her usually lively sister looked up at her, dark brows drawn together in a frown.
‘I’ve always been impatient to grow up – I expect it comes of having older sisters who thought I was a child, and younger sisters who are just little children.
I’ve always longed to be out in the world as you are, and Sabrina, and have a house of my own and fine clothes and some space, but I’m beginning to see that it’s not so simple.
It’s beautiful here, but you never go anywhere else, do you?
And before we came, you hardly had any visitors apart from Edward’s stuffy old friends and relations. I’d go screaming mad, I think.’
Viola shrugged. ‘Edward does not want to travel, and so we do not travel. It’s not as though he discusses it with me.
Women have very little power, if they are married or if they are not – do not deceive yourself about that for a moment.
If you are married to a man who loves you, as Laurence love Bree, he may choose to share everything with you; he may give you power.
But you cannot take it for yourself if he does not.
Most men are not like Laurence or like Papa.
I once thought, as you did, that if I need not worry endlessly about money as Mama has always been obliged to, I would be happy.
And perhaps I should be – perhaps it is some flaw in me – but I have not been.
Maybe things will be different when my child is born.
But don’t get married at seventeen, Allie, please.
I thought I knew everything then, and I knew nothing. ’
Allegra said tentatively, ‘Are you scared of having a baby? You’re only two years older than me, and I can’t imagine it for myself, not for ages.’
‘And that is an excellent reason not to be married for a good while yet,’ Viola said drily.
‘Yes, of course I am. Of childbirth, naturally, as everyone must be, and of being a mother – the responsibility of it. I will have a great deal of help, as most women do not, and it’s not as though I don’t have experience of babies – I have plenty, as do we all; they hold no mystery for me.
But my own… that’s daunting, when I allow myself to think about it. And if I do not have a son…’
‘You will love your daughter as Mama and Papa love all of us,’ said her sister stoutly, and Viola, from the eminence of eighteen, was reminded of how young Allie truly was.
She would love her daughter – of course she would, all the more fiercely because she was Richard’s.
But would Edward? Would he love or even treat kindly a girl who was a profound disappointment to him by her very existence – and was not even his own child?