It was easy to think cheerful thoughts here, so far away from all she’d known before, busy in her new life setting the Castle to rights, watching the boys and Richard learn about each other by slow degrees, learning about her new husband herself, and spending night after night in his arms. They’d not resumed their painful discussion about his past, and she did not mean to, since it did no good to dwell on what could not be mended. She’d ascertained that Tarquin had never been here, neither in his childhood nor more recently, because of course he was no Ventris, no relation at all, and had no business and no place here. Day by day, as they lived together undisturbed, she grew less anxious and more hopeful for the future.
31
Richard had taken the boys fishing while Viola had headed into York with a long list of items that might help in her continuing quest to make Ventris Castle vaguely habitable. He had suggested frivolously that the task was doomed to failure and that a substantial charge of gunpowder was what was really needed, but she was not a woman to be so easily discouraged, and was already making a perceptible difference, he would freely admit.
She’d left as soon as it was light, and would spend the night at an inn in the city if her errands took too long; he pushed away any notion of missing her, or wishing he had accompanied her. That would be the height of folly – York was a place best avoided by him, because of some passages in his recent history that he’d prefer not to dwell on.
He could only be grateful that she was allowing him to spend time alone with the boys, when many another woman might not have done. They had soon after their arrival engaged a tutor to make sure that their education was not entirely neglected – a young and energetic local curate who had the wit to keep them amused so that learning proceeded almost by stealth – but this was not one of his days, and Richard was making good use of it.
It wasn’t the season for trout, for the gentlemanly sort of fly-casting in rivers that was so popular in the summer, but he had always found sea-fishing from this wild coast exhilarating, and he could see that Ned felt the same. Robin had been fascinated by the novelty at first, but had long since wandered off along the beach, looking for the curious stones and fossilised creatures that abounded there, leaving Lord Ventris and the young Duke perched on the rocks, wet with spray, faces flushed.
There was an icy wind blowing straight off the water. It was what made the season so perfect for the sport, forcing the waves up onto the rocky outcrops that stretched their fingers out into the stormy North Sea, and driving the cod along with them, but it would be all too easy for the lad to get chilled through, and Richard had no desire for illness to be the result of this first expedition; Viola would never forgive him, and he’d never forgive himself.
‘I think it’s time to stop,’ he said firmly now. ‘We’ve caught enough between us to make a fine dish or two for this evening’s table, and my poor old bones are frozen through.’ His own boyhood was recent enough for him to know that suggesting his companion might be cold was not the best way to put an end to the day’s activity. A sturdy lad of eleven would allow himself to become a human icicle sooner than admit that he felt any physical discomfort or might need to seek out warmth. But he could raise no objection if his poor old stepfather admitted to such sad weakness.
‘Of course, sir,’ the boy said with alacrity. Richard couldn’t be sure, not knowing his son well enough yet, if his ready acquiescence could be put down to good manners alone, or if he was relieved to be given the excuse to stop, to leave this exposed spot and regain feeling in his extremities – both, perhaps. It was a painful joy, this heaven-sent opportunity to be a part of their lives at last. Every moment spent in their company was more precious than anyone could know. But it was far from being a straightforward relationship, and he wondered if it ever would be.
They’d been wary of him – understandably – at their first meeting, when he and Viola had gone to fetch them away from school a few weeks ago in order to bring them north. But they seemed to have settled well enough in the Castle, and to have taken a great liking to the place and its people. They both seemed happy, at the moment – Viola, who knew them best, agreed that this was so. Yet he must be conscious that this, however much they seemed to relish it, was a substantial disruption to their lives. It was one that they would set entirely at his door, and rightly, if it ever occurred to them to resent it one day. Their existence had been ordered and predictable for years, they must think, till he had come along and upended it, pulling them away from their home and their friends, claiming his share of their mother’s attention into the bargain, and threatening further upheavals in the future, with the likely arrival of new siblings.
Lord Marchett had been obliged to accede to his right to have the ordering of the boys’ education himself now that Richard stood in the relation of a father to them; Richard had sought him out for a highly awkward face-to-face interview just before his marriage, and made certain of his capitulation by a little plain speaking.
Of course, he had not then known that Marchett had written to Viola some years before and warned her of his clandestine activities, but it was doubtful if the knowledge would have made any difference. If Marchett had risked speaking openly,hecould not have done – not yet. The older man obviously thought no better of him in the role of Viola’s new husband than he had as her clandestine lover twelve years ago, but he could do nothing in the world about it. Richard might easily have given him a dressing-down for the way he had so disregarded the Duchess and her wishes as a mother, but it had seemed pointless to pull caps with the old booby, who was not likely to develop more enlightened, modern views on the situation of women at this stage in his life. He was sixty, and no longer active in public life, suffering as he did from crippling gout. He’d aged a good deal since they’d last met, but then Richard often felt that he had too.
‘You know as well as I do,’ he had said bluntly to the Earl, ‘that the boys are mine. Edward made you party to his deception, and you accepted that role, and will have to live with its consequences. I imagine that you greatly dislike my marriage – you make it plain by your stiff-rumped manner and your disapproving countenance. But you cannot say that it is anything but a belated step to set things right, and mend – insofar as such matters ever can be mended – the damage that my cousin did to all of us a dozen years ago.’ He saw that the man’s face was still frozen in aristocratic disdain, and said impatiently, ‘What else would you have me do? I’d honestly love to know. You are a father. Do me the credit of admitting that my natural human feelings for my sons are as strong as any other man’s. This situation is not of my making, nor of the Duchess’s making. But we are obliged to do our best with it, and so must you.’
‘You’re all but blackmailing me, which I suppose should not surprise me,’ Marchett said gruffly, shifting his bandaged leg restlessly on its footstool. It was unclear how much of his distress was physical and how much mental; he’d never been a man who enjoyed being challenged, Richard recalled, and his pride was making him stupid now.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, man! Of course I’m not doing anything of the sort. I merely need your co-operation. You know I have not the least desire to bring disgrace on my sons, nor on their mother. It is not in my interests to expose their true parentage to the world – apart from anything else, that would risk making my dear brother Duke of Winterflood, which is the last thing I want.’
‘And it would make you his heir, and him a libertine and wastrel who is not likely to reach a great age, so forgive me if I don’t believe you, Ventris,’ Marchett said querulously, as though the gout were in his grizzled head rather than his swollen extremities.
Ventris was silent for a moment, glad that he had long since been obliged to develop habits of rigid self-control. ‘If you were a younger man, or at least one who could stand upright without a stick, I’d knock you down for that,’ he said at last between gritted teeth. ‘This isn’t a damned melodrama or a three-volume novel; it’s my life. My children’s lives. Why in God’s name would I marry a woman and then immediately plot to disinherit her sons and mire her in disgrace? If I wanted to cut them out because of some elaborate and fanciful scheme of my own, I could merely leave her be and spread the rumour that I’m their father without appearing in the matter at all. Not that such gossip would hold any water legally, after so long. What nonsense you talk. The plain truth is that I’ve never expected or wanted Winterflood to fall into my lap. I already have an estate that I never thought to gain possession of – I think one is enough. You’ll be accusing me of murdering my poor cousin Simon next. Be sensible. You have no power to stop my marriage, whatever you think of me – all you can do is make Viola’s life more difficult than it need be in your position as the boys’ guardian. I repeat: you know perfectly well that I am their father, and how that came about. You have always known it. You’re enmeshed as deep in this mess as we are.’
The old man had caved in, as Richard had always known he must, and in effect had resigned his charge, though he would still be guardian in name for the rest of the boys’ minority, if he lived that long. And Viola had readily agreed to bring her sons to Ventris for the winter, though he knew that that was at least partly because she was still concerned for their safety.
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 sayyour 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.’
