Page 49 of A Tale of Two Dukes
Much later, they lay damp and sated in each other’s arms in the big four-poster bed. She murmured, ‘Your timing is excellent.’
‘It’s been mentioned occasionally before, in a different context,’ he replied lazily. ‘But it’s always pleasant to receive unsolicited compliments from a lady.’
‘That’s not what I mean and you know it, Richard. I have news for you, which I am happier to tell you now than I could have been last week, when I thought I had married a traitor and a murderer.’ She sat up so that she could see his face.
‘You’re with child,’ he said, smiling up at her and taking her hand, holding it against his heart. ‘I suspected that you might be, but I was waiting for you to tell me.’
‘And in the end, you did not let me do so,’ she replied in mock-indignation, unable to keep a smile from curling her own lips. It was a momentous thing that she was sharing with him, and they both knew it.
‘I’m sorry. I don’t always get things right with you, Viola.
It’s not that I care too little, but that I care too much.
I have been used to being so guarded always, so watchful and so careful…
It’s not easy to let that go. To take time, to behave naturally as anyone else would. How do you feel, my dear?’
‘We are both learning about each other still, are we not? But to answer your question, I am well. Very well – no sickness yet. Last time, I was dreadfully sick at first. But yes, I am with child, I have no doubt of it, though a few weeks only. The baby should be due in July, or thereabouts. Well within your deadline. Naturally, there can be no guarantees…’
He was suddenly and surprisingly agitated. ‘It doesn’t matter. All that matters is your health. Of course I would be devastated if you lost our precious child, and I devoutly hope that you do not, but it’s you I’m concerned for. Put the damn deadline entirely from your mind, I beg you, Viola.’
She stared at him. ‘I appreciate your concern for me, and it is good of you to reassure me of it, but it is not like you to utter empty words. The deadline is crucial, surely. I am excessively glad that your reputation is to be rehabilitated, but your aunt’s will still stands, and we are in desperate need of money to continue with the refurbishment of the Castle.
How shall we manage without it, when there is still so much to be done, and the costs so high? ’
And now it seemed he could not meet her eyes. ‘Ah… that. Well, the plain fact is…’ He did not seem able to continue.
‘The plain fact is…?’
‘I lied.’
‘You lied about what?’ She was cold all at once, shivering, the lingering heat of their lovemaking leaving her in an instant. ‘I thought that all that lay between us now was the truth. I have had more than enough of lies.’
‘I know, Viola, but… I have to tell you. I lied about my aunt’s will. The need to have a child, the deadline. All of it. I made it up. My aunt, despite her grave reservations about my character, left me everything unreservedly. I have her fortune in my hands, to use as I please.’
‘You…’ She was speechless for a moment, and not angry yet, though she could feel anger building within her as the shock subsided. ‘For what possible purpose?’
He sat up and dragged the coverlet across the bed to wrap it around her trembling body.
‘I must go back a little to explain, I think. As soon as I heard Edward was dead, I knew that there was a chance you and I could be together at last. If I had ever concerned myself with the prospect of gossip about the boys’ legitimacy, I was confident that that danger was long done with; Edward had accepted them unreservedly as his sons in the intervening years, though I knew Tarquin might yet try to make mischief.
I was confident I could deal with him. But I still was not free to be with you, because of the path in life that I had chosen.
I could not think of approaching you. God knows I wanted to. ’
Her voice was high and indignant. ‘This was three years ago. More. You wrote to condole with me, in conventional words anyone might have penned – of course I knew that you were bound to be cautious in what you wrote, for my sake if not your own, but I still did not trust myself to reply to you; I made Emily do it for me. And after that, nothing. Three whole years, Richard, without so much as a word!’
His tone was bleak. ‘I know it; I counted every wasted day. But I could not risk entering into communication with you when my life was still so precarious. The last thing in the world I wanted was to put you or the boys in danger because you had begun to associate with me. I arranged a meeting with my masters – it is unnecessary and still unsafe to name them, though you would recognise their titles if I did – and made it clear that I had had enough. They had had ten years of my life by that point, and I could do no more. I wished to make an end of it. But they are hard, ruthless men, my dear, though if they ever spoke of it, they would tell you glibly that it is all in a good cause. They would not let me go.’
He sighed. ‘Harsh words were uttered on both sides – that damn grandiose letter does not go anywhere near conveying the dirty truth of it, I assure you. I said they could not force me to continue; they told me I was mistaken, and had the gall to speak to me of patriotism and my duty. “Shoot me, then,” I said. “Shoot me or hang me as the thief and traitor half the world thinks me. You might as well, for I want no more of this life.” In the end, we came to an agreement – I would be free and publicly exonerated once I made sure that the serious matter of Lesmire was resolved. It’s no exaggeration to say that his continuing operations threatened the progress of the war, and they would be satisfied if he were put down – neutralised, by any means available.
They knew it gave me a great incentive for my labours, you can be sure.
And I did resolve it, in such a way that scandal was avoided.
Their gratitude was not unbounded, for that is never their way – they tried very hard to persuade me I had more to do, just one more important task, or maybe two, the merest nothings – but I was resolute in holding them to their word. ’
‘I understand all this.’ That wasn’t quite true – Viola’s mind was still reeling from Richard’s admission that he’d been determined to win her from the moment of Edward’s death – but that was not her chief concern just now.
‘None of it explains why you felt it necessary to lie to me and trick me in such an elaborate and pointless fashion.’
‘Lying and trickery have become my way of life, perhaps,’ he said with a trace of lingering bitterness.
‘That’s no sort of excuse, but… When it came to it, I did not have the courage to come to you and say openly, I have always loved you, Viola, a day has not gone by when I have not longed for you, for the chance to be with you and with our children .
My reputation was so bad, and matters were moving so confoundedly slowly to set it right, and all at once, I could not wait.
I dared not wait. I feared losing you to another man.
I thought it was inevitable, if I delayed any longer, that you would be wooed and won by some smooth fellow with a past that would bear scrutiny in every particular, as mine would not.
It seemed to me incredible as the months passed that you had remained unmarried as long as you had.
The truth is, I panicked and concocted a ploy to win you without telling you the truth.
And when I saw you laughing and flirting with Brummell, I was all the surer that I was right to do so.
You wouldn’t marry him – but you were bound to marry someone. And I was so close…’
Her voice was raised now, almost shouting. ‘Why did you think up such a preposterous scheme? What could you possibly hope to achieve by it?’
‘You. Secure in my arms and in my bed and in my life. Hope for the future.’
She glared at him, unappeased. ‘Why could you not simply be honest with me about your feelings?’
‘Because I knew that months might go by before I could tell you the whole truth, as indeed they have, and because I also knew that, remaining in ignorance as you did, you could not fail to be angry with me. You must still believe I was a criminal and always had been, as all the world did – and there was nothing I could do to change that yet. You might even have heard that I was a spy. And I gambled. I thought it safer to have you in my life angry, furious, hurt, than not at all.’
They fell silent. Then he whispered raggedly, ‘I dared not make it a test. It looked too much like a test to me, and I have not been so loved in my life that would ever feel confident testing anyone. I dared not come to you and tell you of my enduring love and hope that you would say you felt the same, and that you did not care a damn what the world said of me. I dreamed a thousand times of you saying such wonderful words – but I could not quite believe in it. I did not know if you felt that – I still don’t.
So many years had passed since we had declared our sentiments towards each other that I was terrified.
I had so little reason to be secure in your feelings for me, and yet I simply could not contemplate for a moment the prospect of losing you.
‘I know now that in my failure to be truthful, I may have done the very thing I wished above all things not to do, and driven you away. In my unpardonably selfish desperation to win you, it did not occur to me until it was too late – until we were already married – that there can be no love without openness. I was na?ve – I of all people, the great deceiver, it is laughable. I have lost the habit of trust, I fear, if indeed I ever had it in my life, but these weeks with you and the boys have scraped me raw and left me utterly exposed. Naked and defenceless. Have I ruined everything?’
Viola’s head was whirling. ‘You were so determined to have me that you did it by deception? You feared losing me so much that you did not stop to consider whether I might actually not still love you and want to marry you at all, and capturing me would therefore be worth nothing?’
He shook his head. ‘You are only partly right. I would have done anything to win you, even though I see now that you are right, it means nothing unless you come to me willingly. The second – no. Of course I stopped to consider that you might not want me any more. I stopped there and could not get past it. I was quite confident you didn’t.
Why should you? And I saw that I was correct as soon as we met – there was so much pain lying between us that no simple declaration could ever have bridged the gap and rekindled your love for me.
I still do not know what I could have done – waited, I suppose.
Trusted. Hoped. I know I have wronged you; I know I made a terrible mistake.
It’s too much to ask, for you to forgive me. I can see that.’
He took a deep breath. ‘Despite everything, having you and the boys in my life has made me happier than I have ever been. Only when I experienced that did I realise how much more we could have, if I could just tell you the truth. I knew I would have to in the end, all of my shameful secrets, and now I have. Whatever comes of it.’