Page 47 of A Tale of Two Dukes

A few days later, Lord Ventris’s horse made his weary way up the drive that led to Mr Tarquin Armstrong’s home in the Lincolnshire Wolds, Lindsey Manor.

The poor beast had been plodding valiantly on for hours through the chill afternoon, but his pace increased a little now; perhaps he sensed that a warm stable was near, and a rest. He’d earned it.

Richard had not been here for years, and noticed signs of neglect even in the gathering dusk.

Broken fences, overgrown rides, rank pasture.

It was a rich, fertile hill-country, one from which it should be possible to make a good living, but that would require putting back more than one took out, at least at first – a concept which his late father had not understood, and Tarquin emphatically did not either.

The Jacobean house had come into this branch of the Armstrong family through his late grandmother, his father’s mother, and had been short-sightedly managed by men who did not appreciate it as it deserved for as long as anyone could remember, so that the damage ran deep.

This had been his own home once, in his boyhood, but he would not think to call it that now; his home was where Viola was, or he hoped it would be.

He’d never been particularly happy here, nor had his poor mother.

He wished nothing more than to make his stay here now as brief as possible.

He still remembered his way about the old place, and half an hour later, after he’d taken good care of his footsore mount, he was making his way silently through the house to the library – a pretentious name for a room which had always been lined with crumbling books that nobody ever read.

The estate was plainly not over-provided with servants; he’d met nobody since his arrival, which suited him perfectly.

Despite what he’d said to Viola, he was quite prepared to kill Tarquin if he had to.

But he hoped the necessity could be avoided; he needed no more deaths on his conscience.

He had a thick letter in his pocket, heavy with official seals, and he had permission to show it to anyone who might need to see it.

His brother was among that number, though he didn’t know it yet.

If Tarquin’s wife was here, she’d likely be in some comfortless private parlour, sitting sewing or reading, amusing herself as best she could.

Mr Armstrong was not the sort of man who spent his evenings chatting sedately with a woman – certainly not his own wife.

Richard expected to find his brother doing nothing at all, nodding over his cups just as their father had each night, and he was not disappointed.

Tarquin was there alone, dozing, reminding him suddenly and unexpectedly of Edward doing the same at Winterflood so many years ago.

They were all Armstrongs, after all. The squeak of the ill-oiled library door woke him, and he sat up startled in his shabby armchair, blinking owlishly at the unexpected sight of his only sibling, the black sheep of the family.

Richard closed the door behind him, and locked it with the key he’d taken from the other side of the lock, out in the hall.

‘Brother,’ he said coolly, pocketing it and advancing across the dusty chamber. ‘I hear you’ve been busy.’

It seemed to take Mr Armstrong an inordinate amount of time to gather his wits, such as they were.

‘In York,’ Richard prompted, his lip curling.

‘Bursting into people’s homes, making all kinds of melodramatic threats, like some villain in a pantomime.

Boo! I say. You do nothing but make yourself ridiculous. ’

They glared at each other, with rancour vivid and alive on both sides.

There was a certain resemblance between them, in the colour of hair and eyes rather than in any particular lineament of face, or mannerism.

But Richard’s skin was tanned from exposure to the elements, whereas his brother did not look like a sporting man, unless gaming and drinking and wenching should be considered sports.

‘I am not the one who is ridiculous,’ Tarquin sneered at last, recovering himself a little and sitting up straighter.

‘So, you’ve married the widow. Felicitations!

I daresay she is happy enough to have her bed warmed after all these years, and doesn’t much care who by.

But it won’t do you any good, or her. I mean to expose her, and her bastard brats.

Are they yours, I wonder? I’ve not seen them, but I hear they look like Armstrongs rather than mongrel scum, so I expect they are your get. ’

‘Shut up,’ Richard said emotionlessly. ‘Stop posturing before you say something that prompts me to knock your silly head off and use it as a football. There can be no legal proof that what you say is true, and you should know it. In law and custom, a man’s children are those he accepts as his, even if all the world knows different.

Edward lived with the boys for eight long years, and with their mother; he made wills in their favour to provide for their future.

He stood in church at their side, before his God, Sunday after Sunday.

The older boy bears his name. Your efforts are preposterous, and everyone will know that they come only from your pathetic jealousy.

You thought the dukedom yours – it never will be now.

Get over it, can’t you, and live your own life with what you have? ’

Tarquin’s face, which had been pale, was unhealthily flushed now. ‘I know those brats aren’t Edward’s. They can’t be. The world should know it too!’

‘You should have considered a career on the stage, really. Nobody gives a damn, can’t you grasp that?

Half the children in the polite world were sired by men not married to their mothers.

I grant you that you might once have made trouble and advanced your cause, if Edward had died when they were in the womb, or newly born.

Then you might have had a case. But he didn’t.

You’re too late. Get a new hobby, a more wholesome one. ’

‘Even if I admit you’re right, I can still spread damaging gossip,’ Tarquin said, ill-advisedly. ‘I can make the whore you married as notorious as Lady?—’

He was not destined to finish his slanderous sentence.

Richard was at his side in a flash and had him by the throat, so fast, he was almost a blur.

‘Now we come to it,’ Ventris said into his brother’s face, still eerily calm, his breathing apparently unaffected as his prey gasped and choked for air.

‘And this is what I rode all this tedious way to say to you. You won’t bully me or mine, and I’m no longer five years old and scared of you.

You should be scared of me . If you smear my wife’s name, or my sons’ – yes, they are my sons, and if you reflect for a moment, you’ll see why that should worry you – I will kill you.

’ Each word of that final phrase was punctuated with a vigorous shake.

‘Do you understand me? I will kill you. I told my wife I wouldn’t, but I lied. It’s a bad habit I have.’

He released his wheezing brother and stood looking down at him contemptuously as he collapsed back into the chair from which Richard had half-dragged him.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Armstrong managed thickly at last, his voice hoarse. ‘I know you’re a disgrace to the name, but you can’t go round murdering people and expect to get away with it. Not in England, dammit!’

‘But you see, I do expect to get away with it,’ said Ventris, almost pityingly.

‘You’re right, for once – if I were what you think me, and what the world thinks me, I’d be rash indeed to lay a finger on you.

My position would be precarious, and I couldn’t afford to jeopardise it by killing anyone.

You’re not important enough for anyone but me to want you dead – don’t flatter yourself.

Unless your unfortunate wife does already, of course.

So if I killed you as you so richly deserve and I were indeed the notorious felon you think me, I’d be the obvious suspect and I’d have to flee, leave everything behind, expose myself irrevocably as a criminal – and here I am like you, just married, as you say.

Oh, I’m thoroughly tired of your theatrical nonsense.

Read this – I seem to recall you can read, can’t you, if you put your mind to it?

I know you must be sadly unaccustomed to the exercise. ’

Richard pulled out a bulky document from his inner pocket, and handed it to his brother. It crackled portentously, and bore two large, impressive seals.

Armstrong stared as he saw the familiar design on them. ‘But this is?—’

‘Read it, for God’s sake. Stop flapping your gums for a second and just damn well read it.’

Tarquin’s lips moved, and some phrases he spoke aloud, as his expression slowly changed to one of almost comic incredulity and his eyes bulged in their sockets.

‘Lord Wellington informs me… Many years of peril and secret service… Damage to your reputation… Debt that can never be repaid… Overthrown the most dangerous enemy agent… Course of the war… Our great nation… In recognition… Ancient and illustrious name of Ventris restored to its former glory… Invest you with the title…’

The final sentence seemed to be too much for him at last, and Richard’s lips twitched as he saw the impact it made on his brother. It was bitingly ironic, and one might almost pity him as he absorbed the news – almost.

‘So you see,’ he went on cordially, as Tarquin seemed to have lost the power of speech and movement, much like a clock that had wound down and could no longer do so much as tick, ‘I am in rather good odour at the moment, with the government and with our glorious Regent, may his name be ever blessed. He writes that he has summoned to meet him for a private audience as a sign of his special favour – did you get that far? I could probably dump your butchered corpse on the steps of Carlton House with my signature writ large on your forehead – does it have steps, by the way? You know, I can’t recall, but then I’ll be there soon enough – and still get away with it scot-free.

You’ve read the letter, and can read it again if you doubt the evidence of your eyes.

I promise you, it’s genuine; its contents will be made public within the next few days, at any rate. Do you care to risk it?’

‘You… you…’

‘I know,’ Richard said, amusement in his voice now.

‘Believe me, I know. You’ve always disliked and resented me, and now you will think you have even more reason, I expect.

But you know I’m not a traitor or even a criminal – quite the reverse.

So if we’re to talk of disgracing the name …

I think that’s more likely to be you, judging by the state of this place, and what I saw as I rode in.

And your recent reprehensible behaviour in York, of course, threatening innocent ladies in their own homes. ’

An uneasy little silence fell between them.

Richard said at last, ‘Did you know that Winterflood warned his wife against you on his deathbed? He always hated you beyond all reason – of course you were aware of that. So she’s been suffering the gravest anxiety ever since – thinks you’d stop at nothing, not even murder, to get your hands on the dukedom.

I haven’t really done as much as I might have to discourage the idea yet – but he was a sick man with an obsession and he was wrong, wasn’t he? ’

‘Of course he damn well was!’ Armstrong blustered. ‘My God… they’re only children. Of course I wouldn’t lay a hand on them!’

‘Nor pay anyone else to do your dirty work for you? You can understand why I ask, I expect. We’re going to settle this once and for all, here and now, so there can be no misunderstandings later.’

‘Dammit, Richard, we’re brothers – what do you take me for?’

‘A bully and a drunkard and a fool who likes to talk big, but not a murderer. That’s what I thought.

If I’m wrong, though, brother dear, I promise I will kill you in the slowest, most exquisitely painful manner a man of my wide and unpleasant experience can devise, and I won’t care if I hang for it after or not.

They are my family – not you, God knows – and I will go to any lengths for their sake.

Any lengths at all. Do you understand me yet?

’ His tone was silky, but also deadly serious, and his brother nodded, guilty-faced and shivering.

‘Then I have nothing more to say to you, and I shall leave you to your peaceful evening.’

Tarquin watched him cross the room with wet eyes, and just before he reached the door, said unevenly, as though his words pained him, ‘I’m sorry. I am. You have every right to hate me, I suppose. I never treated you well, I see that now, even when you were a brat at my heels. You make me ashamed.’

Ventris stopped for a moment, as if he was unsure whether he should make any response, and then said levelly, without turning to look at his brother’s face to see if his words had any impact, ‘I’m the last man in the world to go round preaching morality or virtue – that letter must have given you an idea of the sort of life I’ve led till now – but I think I have earned the right to say this: you’re newly married, you may have children soon.

Look about you at how you’re living; be a better husband and father and landlord and master and man than our disgrace of a father was.

Call me a sentimental fool for saying it, mock me and jeer at me as you did when we were boys – I won’t give a damn because I won’t know.

I’m not talking about a tearful family reconciliation, or any sort of sickly sentiment.

You’ll do what you wish; I won’t stop you, though I swear I will make you pay if you try to damage my family.

But think about what I’ve said, for your own sake if no one else’s. ’

He did not wait for an answer, unlocking the door and passing out through it, closing it softly behind him.

His brother sat staring blankly at it, and did not move for a long time.