A Lady for a Duke

CHAPTER 2

The Marleighs—who a less-documented part of their family history suggested may once upon a time have been wool merchants—had first risen to prominence during the sixteenth century, but it was not until the early eighteenth century that Viola’s recently ennobled great-grandfather had acquired a piece of land in Devon and upon it the Stuart manor that would become Marleigh Court. It had taken some eighty years and two generations of Marleighs to transform that once modest family home into an enduring testament to Georgian taste: Palladian architecture, rococo interiors, and rolling acres of lushly landscaped parkland.

And this, too, Viola had abandoned. Rejected. Thrown away. Insofar as one could say that of a place one still inhabited. If someone had asked her yesterday, she would have said without hesitation that she did not regret it. Except today Lady Marleigh—however well-intentioned she might have been—had stirred up the past like it was Christmas punch, and now nothing seemed certain anymore.

Perhaps, Viola thought, as she made her way through the gardens and out into the park beyond, the paths as familiar to her as her own skin and bone, it was not the loss of her estate she mourned. Not exactly. It was what it represented. Legacy. Home. Family. Things she was, at last, liberated to want, but completely unable to have. There were times she could almost have laughed at how absurd it was. This endless dance of what was given and what was taken away, what felt like freedom, and what its cost had been. A children’s game of barter: this piece of string for a marble, a sea-smoothed pebble for a peacock feather, your self for your future, your choices for the loss of them. After all, it was better to laugh than to weep.

Lost in her thoughts, she wandered further from the house than she intended. And it was not a good day for walking, being chill and blustery, without even the promise of brightness. The little woods that slanted down to the Plym were bare and bleak, just the squelch of decomposing leaves beneath her half-boots, and trees twisted in naked entreaty to an unremitting sky. But inclement weather did not deter Viola from her wanderings and nor, it seemed, did they deter Little Bartholomew, who was marching resolutely along the riverbank with the singular determination of aggrieved childhood.

Viola’s immediate instinct was to run and catch him up in case he fell in and drowned, but that would have been contrary to Lady Marleigh’s wishes. “A child who can’t even make it past the age of seven without drowning itself in some brook or other,” she would have said, “is likely to make a very annoying adult.” And, to give Little Bartholomew due credit, he had managed to discharge his not-drowning duties thus far with admirable competence.

So instead of interfering with the course of nature, she made her way down to the riverside to see what the matter might be. Despite Louise’s hopes, her son was showing little sign of inheriting his father’s cheekbones, stature, or remarkable blue-purple eyes. In fact, he was taking strongly after his mother, being mousey in a number of areas. But also, from Viola’s experience, in the realm of not being an unbelievable fluffhead.

“Hello, Bartholomew,” she said. “Where are you going?”

Little Bartholomew continued to march. “I am running away.”

He didn’t seem to be running, more going for a strengthening stroll, but stubbornness was another trait that Little Bartholomew had inherited from his mother, and if he had resolved to run away, away he was liable to run. At least until something distracted him. “Why are you running away?”

“Because Mama is leaving and will not take me with her, and I think that very cruel.”

“She is not leaving for very long,” replied Viola, attempting what reassurance she could in pursuit of familial harmony.

“Where is she going?” asked Little Bartholomew.

“Northumberland.”

“Why?”

That was complex. Too complex to explain to a child. Or perhaps that was an excuse. After all, she’d been similarly hesitant to explain who she was to Little Bartholomew, but Lady Marleigh had insisted. “Children are stronger than you think,” she’d argued. “Besides, they haven’t had years and years of silly people filling their heads with silly ideas about what you’re meant to do or say or be.” And she’d been right. He’d accepted Viola the same way he accepted that the sun rose or that audivi and auditum followed audio and audire.

Which was to say he’d asked why about sixteen times but ultimately been satisfied with “because that’s the way it is.”

“Your mother,” she tried, “has had a letter from an old friend. You probably don’t remember the Duke of Gracewood, do you?”

“No. But Mr. Dowling says the de Veres are an illustrious connection for the family to possess.”

Mr. Dowling was Little Bartholomew’s tutor, and one of the dreariest men Viola had ever encountered. “He would. In any case your mother received a letter from the Duke’s sister, Lady Miranda. And it seems…” Again Viola hesitated, wondering how best to explain so delicate a situation to Little Bartholomew without telling too many lies or too much truth. “I think,” she went on carefully, “the Duke is very sad. And because he is sad, he is making his sister sad.”

“Why is he doing that?” wondered Little Bartholomew aloud. “Is he a very wicked person?”

The question stung. No, not stung. Cut. For a moment Viola couldn’t bear to answer. “No,” she said at last. “No, he—I can think of no man less wicked. But I think perhaps I hurt him. A long time ago.”

“Oh.” For a moment Little Bartholomew seemed satisfied. Then he was immediately unsatisfied. “Are you a very wicked person?”

At this, she gave a half smile, for sometimes she thought she might be. “Dreadfully.”

“That must be hard.” Little Bartholomew looked grave. “Mr. Dowling tells me that terrible things happen to wicked people.”

A chill came over Viola. A slow, sick chill that started below her stomach and ran up her back and over her shoulders. “I’m afraid that Mr. Dowling is wrong. Wicked people often prosper, and the good often suffer.”

“Then should I be wicked?” asked Little Bartholomew. From the look in his eye, the idea held a certain appeal.

“It would make other people very sad,” she warned him.

Little Bartholomew was briefly silent. Then he folded his arms. “Well, other people are making me sad. That is why I’m running away.”

Looking down, Viola did her best to strike an auntly tone. “One should not repay sadness with sadness.”

Unfortunately, Little Bartholomew remained unconvinced. “Why? Would that not be equitable? Mr. Dowling says we should strive to be equitable.”

Viola didn’t quite have an answer for that. “Perhaps,” she conceded. “But I suppose I believe that the world is always better with less sadness in it.”

“And will Mama be very sad if I run away?” asked Little Bartholomew.

“She will.”

Little Bartholomew stopped marching. “I should not like Mama to be sad. I should go to her and explain that I am safe and well, and tell her I am sorry for leaving.”

If only, Viola reflected, it were that simple. But then it was, for a child. For a grown woman, with a lifetime of choices and regrets behind her, it was so much harder. “I think that’s a good idea. Shall we return?”

Little Bartholomew nodded, and, still adrift in one too many pasts, Viola stooped in order to lift him into her arms. This, she quickly regretted. “You’ve grown,” she told him as she set him back down. “A lot.”

“I’m seven and a third,” he replied. “Which is also seven and two-sixths, or seven and four-twelfths, which is the same as seven years and four months.”

At least Mr. Dowling had taught him something. “Come on.” She took his hand instead. “Let us not worry your parents more than we have to.”

“When Mama goes to Northumberland”—Little Bartholomew pronounced the word very carefully, as if it were some distant country—“will you stay with me?”

It was wrong to be flattered by the affections of a seven-and-a-third-year-old. Viola was not, after all, his mother. Just his favourite aunt, although the competition for that title was somewhat limited, for she was also his only aunt. “I,” she began, hardly knowing what words were going to come out of her mouth, “I don’t think I can.”

“Why not?” was Little Bartholomew’s inevitable response.

And now they were back to complicated. “Because the Duke is my friend, and you help your friends if you can. Even if it is painful.”

Little Bartholomew considered this. “See. I knew you were not wicked.”

And now Viola considered that. “I hope I am not.”

They made their way back to the house in thoughtful silence, Viola hand-in-hand with Little Bartholomew, who was now heir to the estate that would have gone to the son she would never have. He was a good boy, she thought, for all his occasional flirtations with wickedness. She expected he would grow up kind, like his mother and father. And she would be there to see it, for birthdays and Christmases and school holidays. A part of the family, if not at the heart of it. The spinster aunt in the guest bedroom. A small, solitary portrait in some dusty corner of the gallery for future generations to wonder about.

It was something. More than she could have hoped for. She had long told herself she could be content with that, imagining in turn a whole life for Gracewood—one where he grieved her and forgot her, and married and moved on. Became a better father than his own father had ever been to him. It would have been impossible, otherwise, to let him go.

But now there was the letter. And the letter was real. And it turned her imagined world into a thing of wisps and fragments. She did not know—could not know—what had become of Gracewood in their years apart. Only one thing was certain, the truth she had offered Little Bartholomew: that Gracewood was her friend, and she his, and that too was real.

Even before Waterloo, when everything else had been illusion.

CHAPTER 3

The problem with long coach journeys—even putting aside the tedium and the discomfort—was that they gave one time to think. And the problem with thinking was that it furnished one with a comprehensive list of all the ways in which one’s most recent decision was terrible.

“I think”—Viola lifted her head from where it lolled heavily against the squabs—“this was a terrible decision.”

Lady Marleigh opened her eyes. “On the contrary, you’ve chosen to do as I suggested, which is always the best decision possible.”

“Please don’t make me do this.”

“I’m not making you do anything.”

“And how was I supposed to react when you told me that my oldest and dearest friend had sequestered himself in the country, lost to grief and laudanum.”

“I think you’ll find”—Lady Marleigh gave her a sharp look—“that what I said was Miranda seems to have gone strange, she probably needs a season. It was your mind that jumped straight to Gracewood.”

“Perhaps,” offered Viola, “he too needs a season.”

It was a woeful attempt to be amusing, and Lady Marleigh denied it even the most cursory of smiles. “I understand this is difficult, but it’s the right thing to do.”

“How can it be? Miranda I barely know, and Gracewood I know too well.”