Page 43 of A Tale of Two Dukes
He and Ned picked up their rods now, along with the basket holding the fish they had caught and all the rest of their paraphernalia, and headed back over the rocks, the boy running agilely ahead of him, but waiting for him once he reached the sand.
He really did have excellent manners, but Richard would expect nothing less from Viola’s son.
Robin was a crouched figure in the distance, absorbed by some treasure he had found on the beach.
The young Duke said, in a tone that suggested this was something he had wished to get off his chest for some while, ‘My mother told me that you were very close to my father, but you never came to Winterflood before he died, so I wondered if that was true, or if she was just saying it to reconcile us to your marriage.’
This was plain speaking. ‘Your mother doesn’t stoop to untruths, not even in a good cause.
Edward and I were close when I was a boy, but it’s true that we had grown somewhat distant by the time of his death.
I think this was in part because my business carried me overseas a great deal, and it was difficult to maintain a steady correspondence, and therefore occasions for me to visit Winterflood became rarer, and then stopped altogether.
’ Viola might not lie, but Richard did – it could be said that he had made a career of it – and he had no intention of revealing any part of the complex truth to the boys.
But he found he had an odd scruple about uttering blatant falsehoods to his son, so he was picking his way carefully through this thicket of difficulties.
Ned didn’t seem to be satisfied by this bland response, and worried away at the matter like a terrier with a rat.
‘Something I overheard one of my aunts say to my mama once made me think that my father did not always treat her well. And if you liked her even then, you might have felt angry with him…’
They were straying on to dangerous ground indeed. ‘You know that your father had been married before, and that he loved his previous wife Elizabeth very deeply.’
The boy nodded; he too had seen the damn portrait a thousand times, no doubt, and heard Edward speak of her in his tactless way.
‘They had many happy years together, though they were never blessed with children. When he married your mother, he was still grieving for his loss, and perhaps as a result, he was not as considerate of her feelings as he might have been. The age gap between them was very great, so they had less in common than a couple closer in age might have done, and it was harder, I believe, for the natural distance between them to be bridged. And you are right, I did mention it to my cousin when I saw how things stood. Perhaps that lay at the root of the separation that grew between us, yes. But it’s also true that our lives were very different, so we might have drifted away from each other in any case. ’
None of this was inaccurate, but it was as close as he wished to go to the perilous facts.
If Ned and Robin were ever to be told the truth of their origins, it must be when they were fully grown and able to understand and not to judge.
He was uncomfortably aware that many people, perhaps most, never reached such a happy state of maturity, however long they lived.
For his own part, he knew little of the relationship between his own dead parents, and what little he knew, he did not care for much.
He certainly had no desire to be acquainted with any more details of things that had happened years ago and were unalterable and far past crying over.
So perhaps the day would never come when the boys could be told how it was that they existed in the world and passed as another man’s children.
And if that were so, he must accept it. Viola, he suspected, had perforce made her peace with this uncomfortable reality years ago.
‘I don’t like to think of my mama being unhappy,’ Ned said baldly now.
This was a boy who would not take the world or the persons in it at surface value, despite his youth; it gave Richard a pang to see in his son this awkward quality that he presumed must somehow have been inherited from himself, and which, as he already knew to his cost, did not tend to make one content in life.
What would he have wanted someone to say to him on that awkward topic, at eleven?
Not easy platitudes, such as little children were given to soothe them, certainly.
‘I did not know your mother before she married, but I understand that she was very young, and conscious that her family circumstances required that she make a good match. But I know she was not forced by anyone to accept your father – do not be imagining anything so Gothic or dramatic. Many people – I do not say many women, for I do not think that distinction a fair one – might have been satisfied with the worldly advantages the marriage gave her, but she does not care greatly for such things, does she?’ He stopped, and they faced each other across the sand.
‘I do know that your happiness, both of you, has always been her greatest concern, from your birth and even before it, and that it was my cousin’s chief preoccupation too.
’ In that moment, he could not quite bring himself to say your father .
He was their father, in blood and flesh and bone, even if they never knew it.
He went on carefully, ‘You have not seen a great deal of the world yet, but I daresay that you know already that marriages at every level of society, but perhaps particularly at the highest, are not always driven by love, or by free choice, and nor for that matter are children always cared for – in mansions as in cottages – as they should be. But you have been, and always will be. I think you should rest secure in that, and not dwell on past difficulties that cannot now be mended. Most people never concern themselves in the slightest about such matters, lucky devils, and are probably the happier for it.’
‘That’s what Robin says,’ Ned replied with a slightly strained grin.
‘He says I talk a deal of nonsense always, and perhaps he’s right.
He’s always merry as a grig and never worries about such things.
But I can’t help being different. Are you that way too, sir?
I thought from what you said that you might be. ’
‘I’m afraid I am. It can be both a blessing and a curse.
’ This was all he could manage, over some sudden obstruction in his throat.
They had drawn close to Robin now, and found him still squatting upon his haunches, with a little pile of stones and shells beside him.
But he didn’t look up at their arrival, or even seem aware of it, being fully absorbed in gazing down in wonder at the miniature world of bustling life and colour in the rockpool by his toes.
He didn’t seem to want to interfere with it as many another child would have done – to catch one of the crabs or the tiny fish and transparent shrimps, to make himself a mighty and destructive god in their universe – but was content merely to observe.
Richard wouldn’t necessarily have expected such fierce concentration and forbearance from the livelier, more boisterous twin – but then, he was just learning to know them both after so many wasted years. He needed to remember that.