Page 36 of A Tale of Two Dukes

Viola lay drowsing in her bed with a flickering candle beside her, knowing she should be sleeping while she had the chance but aware that at least one of the twins would surely be hungry soon and demanding food.

She was exhausted, had no idea what day it was, and felt ridiculously happy.

This was an unexpected gift, and she cherished it.

The arrival of the twins hadn’t been a complete surprise – towards the end of her pregnancy, there’d been times when the number of limbs kicking and prodding her belly in a sort of vigorous internal country dance had definitely seemed more than the traditional four – but her child or children had always felt theoretical before they’d emerged after a long day of pain and fear.

A son, a daughter – cut-out figures from a child’s chapbook in frilled shirt or muslin gown.

But these were people . Often angry, wailing little people, pink and furious, but people all the same.

Robert – but she had already decided he was Robin – the younger boy, was easy enough to please.

He would bellow lustily when he was hungry or wet, but he suckled with evident contentment, ceased crying as soon as he was made comfortable, and was already bigger than his brother.

Edward – Ned, God knows he would never be Edward if she could help it – was more discontented, restless, his needs harder to fathom.

But they both gazed up at her with such trusting dark-blue eyes, and she worshipped them from the top of their downy dark heads to their perfect toes.

The Duke, of course, was besotted with them, as well he might be – but she didn’t care about that very much.

When the door opened, she wriggled upright against the pillows, her breasts already leaking in anticipation – it would be her nursemaid, Sarah, bringing the insatiable monsters to be fed, though oddly, she couldn’t hear any screaming.

Perhaps they were just stirring and Sarah had decided to bring them quickly, before they woke the whole house.

But it wasn’t her.

Richard strode across the room to her side and sank to his knees next to the bed. He was pale and travel-worn, and he didn’t seem to know what to say. She reached out and stroked his dark head just for a moment – so like his sons’, so very like.

‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,’ she whispered.

He found her hand and pressed it to his cold lips. ‘I had to come, Viola. I heard you were with child – it was quite the sensation in London, you can imagine. I wanted to see you then, I have never stopped wanting to see you, but I thought my coming here would be dangerous for you.’

New mothers were supposed to be a picture of milky contentment, but she was apparently the exception to that rule, now that she saw him at last. ‘And now it isn’t?’

‘I know it is still. I know I could easily have found you surrounded by people – nursemaids, your family… But I needed to see you once, needed it too badly to be thinking straight. I hope you’ll forgive me for the risks I took.

It wasn’t out of lack of love, I promise you.

Are you well? You look well – you look wonderful.

I’m so glad you did not come to any harm. I can’t even imagine…’

Of course he couldn’t; no man could. She knew she didn’t look wonderful. She had huge, dark circles under her eyes, and spots, and her body was no longer her own, if indeed it ever had been. But let that pass for now.

‘He wrote to you?’

‘I think he wrote to everybody.’

She laughed, though she could have cried.

‘He’s very proud, considering he had nothing at all to do with any of it.

But if you are worried that he will not love them just as if they were his own, you can banish that thought from your mind.

He does. At first, when I saw him holding them, I wanted to yell at him, to say that he must put them down because he had no right.

But I realised that would be wrong, and selfish.

They deserve a father’s love, and he will be their father.

He is their father, as far as the world will ever know.

’ She saw the raw pain in his face and said with a little impatience, ‘Richard, what other option is there? Once, I foolishly asked you to take me with you, but if I repeated that folly now, if I said, “Take me and our sons, so that we can be together as a family!”, where would we go and what would we do? I don’t blame you for it.

It’s just the truth. You were the sensible one once – well, now I must be. ’

He said bleakly, ‘I’ll always love you.’

‘I don’t suppose you will, you know. You have your life to live. I don’t ask it of you – I’m sure there will be other women. Perhaps there already are. What good is that kind of love to either of us? All it can do is hurt us terribly.’ She became aware that she was weeping.

‘Viola, I didn’t come here to make things harder for you.’

She’d missed him so much, she’d lain awake for hours longing for the comfort of his embrace and the passion his lightest touch could evoke in her, she’d wept night after night at the thought that she would probably never see him again, but now that he was here, he brought her no comfort, only pain.

He was a reminder of a world that lay outside Winterflood that she could never really be part of.

Her life was here with Edward. Even if nothing else had tied her before, her unbreakable love for the boys did now.

But that did not mean she had to be a helpless prisoner.

‘I mean to speak to him, when I am steady on my feet again. I mean to tell him that he cannot keep me all but locked up here as he has done. My wishes must be considered in future. He has allowed my family to stay with me – because it suited his purposes, of course, while I was increasing – and that must continue even though there will never be another child for me. Perhaps Emily can come and live with me to keep me company. Once the boys are older, I would like to travel a little. London is not so far away.’

‘You have it all worked out, it seems.’

Now she was growing angry. ‘Should I not? You said to me once that I was only seventeen when I married Edward and didn’t know what I was doing.

It was true – but I did it, and I am obliged to live with the consequences.

All of the consequences. Should I go into a decline because I cannot have what I want?

Most people don’t get what they want in life; it’s childish to expect it. ’

‘I don’t expect anything. You’re right, I have nothing to offer you. Or any woman. Unless you think the boys might like a sister one day. I seem to have that ability…’

‘That’s a dreadful thing to say.’

‘Is it?’ He sighed. He was still crouching by the bed; it must be uncomfortable. ‘I suppose it is. I’m sorry, Viola. I’m too weary to know what I am saying, and I should not make my pain your problem. I should go, perhaps.’

‘Not before you’ve seen those you really came to see, surely?

The nursemaid will bring them to me in a moment – you can hide in my dressing room until she is gone, and then come out.

’ She regretted the sharpness of her first words as soon as she had said them.

It must sound to him as though she was jealous of her sons, their sons, resentful that he’d only come to her after she’d given birth, not before, when really, she wasn’t.

Of course he was allowed to care for the children he might never see again and she saw every day.

In that respect, she was far more fortunate than he.

It could break her heart afresh to think of all he had lost and all that he would miss.

But it was all so hopeless. And the plain fact was that soon, he’d leave her once more.

He was always leaving her and she was always being left behind.

A few shopping trips to London next year, a week in Bath or Cheltenham Spa to take the waters, could not change that fact.

‘I would like to see them just once. To hold them. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

’ He saw the hurt and confusion on her face and said raggedly, ‘This situation is broken beyond all mending, isn’t it?

If Edward were to die tomorrow, I could hardly marry you and live off his estate.

What would that make me? And even setting aside my pride, as I might happily do if I could be with you, it’s all too easy to imagine what the gossips would say, let alone my brother, the thwarted heir.

What a gift that would be to him – one he’d be very quick to make use of.

You’d still be in danger of ruin and disgrace if anyone realised the truth, and the boys too.

It would not be at all hard for people to realise that truth, if you and I married.

Tarquin would tell the whole world your sons were bastards.

It’s as I said, I have nothing to offer – all I can do is cause you more damage.

I love you, Viola, but it’s not enough, is it? ’

‘It doesn’t seem to be.’

He rose to his feet and bent to kiss her – one last precious kiss, full of sadness and regret. She fought the urge to cling to him, and mastered it.

It was as well that they had not lost themselves in each other, for her sharp ears came to her rescue now. ‘Richard, I can hear… Go and hide, quickly. That door – go!’