Viola stood alone on the cliff by the castle and looked out at the stormy sea, her hair coming loose and whipping about her. It was morning now – a new day had started, full of possibilities both good and bad, but she had no idea how it might end.
She had called a halt to their painful discussion late last night and banished Richard from her bed, telling him that she was exhausted by emotion and needed to think, needed time away from him. Just then, she could not find it in her to care what corner he might find to lay his weary head for the rest of the night, or if it would be cold, draughty and uncomfortable, as seemed likely. That would do no more than serve him right, in fact. The castle need not be such a ruin as it still was; it could all have been put right by now, if he’d been honest with her in the first place. Had his world truly become such a convoluted mess that he could no longer distinguish between necessary and unnecessary deception?
She’d done this sort of thing once before, of course, a few weeks back – sent him away and then a short while later, fallen back into his arms all the same, despite all her doubts – but she was not sure if she would do so again. If she should. They’d been so close to something that had felt precious and real, for a tantalisingly brief moment; normal happiness such as she’d never known in her life had almost been within reach, and now this fresh revelation had come crashing down upon her, casting everything she’d thought she’d been building into question.
Viola had never imagined that the revelation of her pregnancy, which should have been a joyful moment they would both remember forever – so unlike the last time she had had cause to pass on such news – would lead to such a conversation, and to the pouring out of so many confidences, both welcome and unwelcome. It was a great deal to take in all at once, and hard for her to know what she should feel about it. It would be all too easy to let the knowledge that Richard had never forgotten her, and worked so diligently and for so long to win her, to sweep everything else away. But should she?
She stood, and watched the sea crash onto the rocks in relentless motion, and the clouds moved across the big Yorkshire sky, and still she did not know.
She’d breakfasted in bed, and the boys had come in to see her, bringing gusts of bracing air, chattering excitedly about their plans for the day. Richard was taking them to Whitby, they told her, and they’d been sent to ask if she wanted to come too; of course she would be very welcome. If they considered it at all odd that her new husband had not thought to ask her himself, they made no mention of it. She’d smiled with only a little effort and told them that she was rather tired, Lord Ventris having got back so late the night before. She thought she would prefer to have a lazy day here instead, and rise later than they would like, and so they should go without her and be sure to enjoy themselves. They’d run off without questioning her further, and their cheerful shouts had echoed up the stone stair for a while, until at last, the place had fallen silent and she must presume they’d gone, and their father along with them. She wasn’t alone here, but in the oppressive silence, it felt as though she were the only person in the huge building. At least she had a little precious space to think.
Hewastheir father. He had fought for them and for her, risked his life, even, and won them at last, or so he’d thought. He had always loved them even when he’d been deprived of the chance of knowing them, and they were coming to care for him, partly at least because he was being so careful and respectful of them. Certainly, they enjoyed his company and were beginning slowly to trust him and value his opinions. It was too soon to say that they needed him, but if they stayed much longer in his company, they soon would. If she intended to leave him – and of course, she’d take them with her if she did, she couldn’t contemplate anything else – it had better be soon. Long before this child in her belly stirred, long before he or she knew what it meant to have a father, or to be deprived of one.
It was all too easy to say that she could not do this cruel thing to Richard – but she should forget him for a moment if she could; he was a grown man and had made his own bed – or to any of her children, born and unborn. Ned and Robin had lost one father already – must they lose another? Must her third child never know one at all?
Yes, he was their father and yes, she could not doubt that he loved his little family, including her, as fiercely as one might hope to be loved. But he wasn’t perfect, far from it – he had behaved recklessly, even thoughtlessly, and allowed the ruthlessness with which he’d had to conduct his dangerous daily existence for so many years to seep into his emotional life when, from her perspective, it hadn’t been necessary. Of course she had been waiting for him all this time, though she’d never admitted as much to herself, let alone to anyone else. But it wasn’t reasonable to expect him to know that – he could not. Was she really going to throw everything that they were building together away because he’d cherished a wild, desperate hope about her underlying feelings for him that was, in fact, fully justified?
That was all very well, very feminine and noble, very much the way that women were expected to behave, always to forgive the transgressions of their men, always to put their children first above themselves, but of what of her in all this? What didsheneed and want and deserve? It was very difficult to say, hurt and confused as she was just now. Perhaps it was after all impossible to lose something you had never truly had. Nobody could be expected to enjoy being manipulated, and she with all her painful history with Edward least of all. Andthathe should have known. If in the end, she could not find it in herself to absolve him for what he had done, that would be why.
And so if she stayed for the children’s sakes, and only for them, without ever being able to trust him fully, would it be a sacrifice of herself, a compromise too far, and one that she would later bitterly regret?
39
Richard had left her alone all day, exactly as she had wished, and when he’d returned home, they’d dined with the boys, which had made serious conversation impossible; it had been difficult enough to retain her composure and speak normally as they all sat together, as if nothing at all was wrong. But now the twins were in bed, she was alone with Richard, and she could avoid him no longer.
He looked exhausted, now that he too was no longer maintaining a cheerful facade for his sons’ benefit. They sat at table and confronted each other. It was very quiet; the wind had dropped and the only sounds were the shifting of the coals in the grate, the soft hissing of the flames.
‘What do you have to say to me, Viola?’ he asked her very softly.
‘I’m still not sure I know,’ she answered wearily. ‘What if I said that I could not find it in me to forgive you? What if I said that you had shown yourself no better than Edward in your manipulation of me, and that I must after all leave you, and take the boys? It could be no surprise to you if I did so. Good God, Richard, what were you thinking?’
It was almost as though that was exactly what he’d expected her to say, what he’d been anticipating through the lonely night and this long day. He let out an inarticulate sound of distress. ‘Oh, Viola, my heart… I could not think to blame you, or try to persuade you, or, God forbid, trick you further if you decide you cannot bear this. I am done with all that. We are married, but if you do not love me and cannot get past this, our union is nothing more than a piece of paper. I was a damn fool ever to think otherwise. The direction of your life, and the boys’, is yours entirely. It must be. You will go where you wish to go, and spend your time in the manner you wish to spend it, and share your existence with whomever you wish. I hope it will be me, but I can make no demands on you. I have not earned that right, if indeed any man ever has it over another free being, but forfeited it by my folly. I will not try to sway you now by speaking of my feelings. You would be right to say that they are no concern of yours.’
‘Despite the fact that I am carrying your child?’
He had not touched her since she had told him, but he did now, very gently, and after a second’s indecision, she did not push him away. He had moved his chair closer to hers, his hand lay lightly on her belly and there were tears in his eyes, she saw. ‘Despite that, my love. You have no reason to trust me, I am aware, but please know that the last thing I will ever do is to exert the rights the law gives me over you. I did not do this bloody stupid thing in order to get you in my power, though I know it must seem that I did. You are nobody’s possession. Nor are your children.’
‘Our children,’ she corrected him, and now she saw a fragile hope flicker in his bleak face.
It was time she made her feelings clear to him. ‘When I considered whether I should marry you from my own point of view – because after all, your aunt’s will was your problem, not mine – the reasons I could raise against it were two: your reputation, and the loss of my independence.’
‘Only two, when there could be so many more?’ he asked, with some return to his old sardonic manner. It was a fragile cloak he wore, she realised, to protect himself from hurt. ‘Well, that’s encouraging.’
‘Just those two, and you have answered both of them now, it seems. I did not ever think that I could not marry you because I did not love you, Richard. I always loved you. I never stopped. I loved you even as I stood at the altar half-hating you.’
He was hesitant, torn as she could see between hope and disbelief. His life so far had given him little reason to believe himself loveable, and it might take years to put that right. She had been luckier in that respect – at least she had her sisters, and the boys, and Emily, even if her relationship with her mother would always be prickly. ‘And my actions have not killed your love for me?’
She shook her head, and put her warm hand over his, where it still rested. ‘Love is not so easily snuffed out, even if reason tells me it should be. I seem to have a gift for constancy. If years spent thinking you were a rake, a libertine, a murderer and even a traitor did not destroy my love, your recent actions could not. And I think – I should not say this, for it will give you a dreadful conceit of yourself – I think that in some respects, you were right.’
His smile was rueful, incredulous, as if he could not begin to understand his luck. ‘How could that be, love? I came perilously close to ruining everything.’
‘Your ridiculous scheme gave me an excuse to marry you. And I needed an excuse. However much I have pined for you for all this time, I am not sure how I would have come to that point by myself, if you had made me a more conventional offer. I have my pride, and Edward, as you know well, crushed it utterly. I had enough with him, more than enough, of sitting at home waiting for a husband to notice me, to treat me decently and give me permission to have any sort of life of my own. The hurt runs deep – it would always have been hard for me to trust you unless you had found a way of showing me I could, beyond mere words of wooing. Before yesterday, you have not been the most open and communicative of men, have you? And more than that, no man had touched me, from the moment you left me till you came back. How could I set all that wasted devotion, as I saw it, aside, thinking as I did that you had lain with half the women in London in the years between, when I had been so lonely? And yet I wanted to, with all my heart.’
‘But in my clumsy desperation, I made flippant reference to your fertility, and I should have known that that would wound you,’ he said soberly, clearly determined to have everything out in the open at last. ‘I thought you’d realise that of course I meant both of us – the way Edward tried to use us both as little more than breeding livestock, the hope that we could somehow set it right. But I could not expect you to know how I had never stopped thinking of you, day after day after day, months, and weary years, wondering what you were doing, if you were happy, aware that I was missing so much, aware of the years with you and Ned and Robin that Edward and circumstance had cheated me of. I knew that I had no place in your lives – that one or all of you could be gravely ill or die, and nobody would think to tell me, for weeks, forever. It drove me a little mad at times. I could not dare to hope that you were feeling anything similar. Indeed, I should be generous enough to hope you weren’t. I hate to think of you in such pain.’
‘But I was, my dearest love,’ she told him unsteadily. ‘I have been happy with the boys, and shared moments with them that can never be restored to you, both while Edward was alive and after he died. Their first steps, their first words – I will not torture you with the recitation of it all. They have been the joy of my life. But always the shadow has been there – that it was wrong, what he did to us, and no less wrong because we lay down together with our eyes open, as we thought. I was eighteen and you were one and twenty – what did we know of what we were losing, of what he was taking from us permanently because of his own selfish obsession? He could easily have lived another twenty years, at your expense, and mine. I could have died, as you said, without ever seeing you again, or you could have, and yes, nobody would even have told me of it, because he had made sure we could be nothing to each other when we should have been everything.’
‘Can it ever be mended?’ he asked her unsteadily. ‘When you describe it like that – and justly – it makes me doubt that it ever can. And I have done nothing but make matters worse, in my desperation and folly.’
