by Jane Ashford
The dowager’s thin brows rose.
“So cold and…unfeeling.”
“I don’t know what you mean, my girl.”
It was the same thing she’d called the servant, Violet noticed. She started to object to the way the old woman treated her, then changed her mind. “Why do you persecute Mama so?”
“Persecute? I saved her life. We took her in after she had ruined herself over a worthless foreigner. Even when we discovered her…condition, I did not repudiate her.”
“You wanted her fortune,” accused Violet.
But her attempt to embarrass the dowager failed. “Of course we did. It was all anyone ever wanted from Harriett.”
“Cruel!”
“Perhaps,” the old woman admitted. “But cruelly true. Would you rather we had ended the engagement? George wished to.”
“Papa…” But he wasn’t. “He did?”
“He’s a man. He didn’t like losing out to a…rival. But if we had, Harriett’s parents would have disowned her, you know. And the money would have gone to some charity or other. It wouldn’t have done anyone any good.”
“You made him marry her?” Violet hadn’t seen many signs of affection between her parents, but she’d never imagined it was as bad as this.
“Of course I did. I forced him to see—at last—that an earldom doesn’t survive without some sacrifices. I must say it was more difficult than I’d expected to finally get him into her bed to get an heir.” She gave Violet a beady-eyed look, perhaps hoping she was embarrassed by this intimate information.
She was. And distressed by the history of anger and humiliation it revealed. So this was why her two brothers were so much younger.
“Unlike Harriett, he had spirit,” the old woman went on, obviously relishing her discomfort. “If no brains. He’s just like his father in that. Any mental acuity your half brothers possess comes from my side of the family. Fortunately, it was ample.”
Violet was engulfed by a sadness so deep she could scarcely speak. The impatience and distance, even heartlessness, she’d explained away as reticence or tradition were revealed as simple truth. The people she’d been taught to call Father and Grandmother were not only unrelated to her, which would have been troublesome enough. They would have been happy had she never existed.
“So, now it is time for all this nonsense to stop,” declared the dowager.
For a moment, Violet thought she meant her girlhood illusions.
“I will not see the work of nearly thirty years wasted,” the old woman continued. “You will not be allowed to run wild and create a scandal.”
“I have no—”
“Like your friend Lady Granchester.” She sniffed. “I never cared for that girl. Far too flighty.”
Violet stiffened. As a child, she’d seen her grandmother as omniscient. No deviation from the rules escaped her eye. But she’d dismissed that belief as fantasy some time ago. “What about Marianne? I don’t understand you.”
The dowager’s lips turned down even farther. “If you wish the world to see you as virtuous, you should choose better friends. Lady Granchester is indiscreet, though she seems to imagine otherwise. Her husband will not tolerate it, you know. She is a fool if she thinks so. He will crush her.” She shook her head. “Rakes can be so very scrupulous about their wives. I suppose they have more reason than most to suspect their fellow man.”
“She is not—”
“Please.” The dowager waved her to silence. “Lady Granchester has been seen—more than once—in a clearly compromising position. And you’ve shown your true colors by condoning her lechery.”
Violet wanted to protest the word, to argue that her participation had been accidental and unwilling. But she knew the dowager wouldn’t believe her, even if she sacrificed Marianne in her own defense. Which she would not. Yet she couldn’t help saying, “How do you even know—?”
“Servants chatter, Violet. Good God, you know that. You aren’t stupid.” The old woman flicked this off with a contemptuous gesture. “Or at least, I never thought so. But on top of everything, you begin a flirtation with the Regent.”
“I did not—” But as usual, she was not given an opportunity to speak. She’d been judged and sentenced without recourse.
“So, this is how it will be. You will cease making a spectacle of yourself. You will wear proper clothing and behave properly as well.”
“Properly,” she echoed.
“As you were taught,” the old woman replied.
“By you.”
This earned her a glare.
“To make sure no one notices me,” Violet added, her voice strengthening.
“A true lady does not attract undue notice.”
“Or finds me interesting or compelling.”
“You cannot afford to compel interest.”
“I must be mousy and silent—”
“You always had a tendency to overdramatize, Violet. I put it down to your foreign ancestry. You will simply retire to the country and produce some heirs for Langford. That is your job, after all.”
“And all I’m good for?”
The dowager looked pained.
“Perhaps a bit of gardening or charity work?” Violet added.
“Hightower’s mother does have an abnormal interest in the indigent,” the old woman agreed. “As if it weren’t their own fault that they’re poor.”
“How their fault?” Violet wondered, momentarily diverted.
“Because it is God’s plan, or they are lazy or shiftless or immoral. How would I know?”
“How indeed?”
The dowager’s cane rapped sharply on the floor. “Do not attempt impertinence with me, girl! You are in no position to do so.”
“You don’t care about me at all, do you?” Violet said, the full reality of it finally hitting her. Even when she was most frustrated or angry, she’d assumed that her grandmother acted out of concern for her, even affection, of a sort. She’d taken the bonds of family for granted.
The old woman sighed.
“You see me…always saw me as a…a cuckoo in the nest. An intruder.”
“Must you enact a Cheltenham tragedy over the matter?” was the exasperated reply.
“But after all these years, all my life, how can you still regard me as a stranger?”
“How else should I regard you?”
“I was an innocent baby put in your care!” Violet heard the hurt in her tone and wished it away, but she couldn’t help it.
“You were not born in innocence,” said the dowager, unmoved. “You had bad blood from your father’s side and inherent weakness from your mother. It was my duty to make certain that this heritage did not infect the Devere line.”
“Infect?” Violet’s rising anger helped dispel the hurt. “I am amazed you allowed me to marry into a duke’s family in that case. What of my bad blood in the Langford strain?”
The dowager shrugged. “I did my best to discourage the match, but…”
“What?”
“Hightower would not be put off. He is quite a determined young man.”
“That’s why you were so rude to him?” Violet had never understood why a member of her family would risk offending Nathaniel during their courtship.
“I am never rude.” The old woman glared. “I was trying to do him a service. But he would not be moved. In the end I decided that my course of training had prevailed over your innate weaknesses. Apparently, I was mistaken. If you retire from society, however—”
“I haven’t the slightest intention of doing so,” interrupted Violet coldly. She rose, annoyed to find she was trembling. “I believe this conversation is finished.”
The older woman didn’t move. “If you do not, I will have no choice but to act.”
“Act?” For one bewildered moment, Violet envisioned the bent old woman on the stage.
The dowager nodded. “I shall be forced to”—she paused, as if running various ideas through her mind—“to tell your husban
d the whole, and instruct him to control you.”
Violet’s knees gave way. She half fell back into the chair. “You…you wouldn’t.”
The dowager nodded as if pleased with her reaction. “Why would you think me incapable? I always do what needs to be done.”
“The scandal…”
“Oh, there will be no scandal. Hightower is a sensible young man—despite that ridiculous carriage he has bought. He won’t wish to embarrass his family. He will want it hushed up, and I’m sure he will be only too eager to see that you conduct yourself with decorum.”
Violet had heard of people dying from fear, and always thought the idea ridiculous. But now her heart pounded so hard she feared it would burst. There was such a roaring in her ears that she could scarcely hear. Her hands shook as she imagined Nathaniel hearing the story of her birth from the dowager. She would put everyone involved in the worst possible light. She might even make it appear that Violet had purposefully deceived him by hiding her true ancestry. She clenched her fists to stop the trembling.
Nathaniel knew her grandmother. He wouldn’t credit all her venom. Would he? Violet remembered the way he always spoke of her as the perfect duchess. Though he made no great fuss over it, he was proud of his family name, its long history. He’d married her because she was the daughter of an equally illustrious line. Partly, mostly. She couldn’t think.
“I see that you understand me,” the dowager said, her tone and expression smug. Pressing down on her cane with both hands, she stood. “I expect to see the results without delay.”
Violet couldn’t find words, but that seemed to gratify rather than annoy her visitor. “Well, get up and see me out, girl,” she said.
Driven by a lifetime’s engrained reflexes, Violet obeyed, despite the old woman’s infuriating, triumphant smile. She wanted her gone more than she wanted to argue. Indeed, at this moment, she didn’t have the faculties to object. She only wanted to be alone and regain her composure.
She managed the solitude, but her other goal was more elusive. Violet sat, shaking, struggling with the understanding that there was little in her history that she could call love. Her mother had been, remained, too weak to stand up for her. Her—the man she’d called her father had been furious at her intrusion into his life. Her putative grandmother saw her as an alien and a threat. Her young brothers…well, they cared for her, she supposed. Separated by ten years and more, they had little experience in common. She had no real family. The one she’d grown up in was an illusion. She had no one.
Except Nathaniel. Violet shivered with joy and terror as the days and nights of their marriage lit her memory. Those confidences and delights were real. Her husband hadn’t been dissembling while he concealed a whole different story. He cared for her; she knew he did. And she…she’d fallen in love with him. In just a few short weeks, he’d gone from being a pleasant companion and suitable partner to becoming vital to her life and happiness.
Could the dowager take him away from her with this poisonous story? Violet felt as if she’d kill the old woman first. Only…she couldn’t really do that. How was she to stop her?
Violet rested her head on the chair back, trying to slow her pulse with deep breaths. She could obey the dowager’s orders, as she had all her life. She could return to her drab dresses and banal manner. Her heart sank as she contemplated a life with no more pretty gowns, no adventures. But she would have her marriage. And she liked the country. They’d been destined to settle there eventually. Perhaps it would be all right. Nathaniel would wonder at the change, but…
The trouble was, Violet didn’t believe the dowager would be satisfied with that, whatever she’d said. She knew her too well. When the old woman had the upper hand, she couldn’t resist using it. There would be further demands, perhaps harsher ones. And some of them might…would involve those heirs that it was her duty to “produce.” She would want to influence them, override Violet’s authority. The idea made her shudder. And how would she explain to Nathaniel when she complied? They had agreed that her…grandmother was unreasonable.
No, giving in wouldn’t work. Even if she could really manage it.
Violet pounded her fist on the arm of the chair. She wanted to shriek. She wanted to run. She wanted to erase the last two days from her life. She’d waited so long for freedom, and now she wondered if any such thing existed. And if it did, did it mean that she had to be completely alone?
Fifteen
It was nearly dinnertime before Nathaniel made it back from the race. The course had run quite a distance, and it had turned out to be fascinating to watch each driver negotiate its twists and turns. Indeed, even the fellow who came last had demonstrated a few tricks that Nathaniel hadn’t seen before. He’d found it far more exciting than a horse race. There had been one spill, resulting in a broken arm, and another near overturning, which he decided he wouldn’t mention to Violet.
And then afterward, a group had gathered at a roadside inn to review the race over pints of ale. Nathaniel had been inducted into the comradeship of those deep into the arcana of driving a four-in-hand. Men more familiar with the sport had noticed nuances that he’d missed, had suggestions that intrigued. He’d enjoyed their expertise and enthusiasm, and gradually come to see that there was an art to driving that was almost mathematical.
And on the way back, Rochford had allowed him to take the reins of his phaeton, a mark of confidence that Nathaniel appreciated. For some reason, he’d never driven a four-horse team before, and he’d found it a thrill to tool along, right on the edge of his skills, using his physical strength to handle the horses, his judgment to gauge the tolerances, and his fortitude to “thread the needle” of two narrow gates. It had set his heart thumping.
“I’ve determined to try a race myself as soon as I’m more accustomed to the phaeton,” he told Violet as they sat together in the parlor after their meal.
“It isn’t dangerous?” she said.
“Not if you know what you’re doing.” And he did; he would. Several men who’d seen him drive said he showed a natural talent for racing. And there was another thing. Nathaniel had been struck by Rochford’s response when an observer wondered about the purpose of the race. Why should gentlemen risk their expensive vehicles and their persons in such a way, he’d asked. Rochford had replied, with that amused languid air he always had, that there was no reason on Earth. Nathaniel had rather liked the idea of doing a useless thing, though the challenge of the sport wasn’t quite that. “I shall make sure I’m well prepared,” he added. “It’s often more a matter of tactics than speed.”
As he told her more about the race, it gradually struck Nathaniel that Violet wasn’t listening, which was unusual. But then, racing was not a matter of great interest to ladies. “I don’t mean to bore you with all the details,” he said, expecting a polite denial.
“Do you think,” she said in an abstracted voice, “that we should go home now? We have had a fine holiday. Perhaps it is time to take up our duties and…begin life in earnest.”
“I thought you were enjoying Brighton,” replied Nathaniel, surprised. Her tone was odd. He couldn’t quite put his finger on how. Perhaps as if she was testing out an abstract hypothesis?
“Yes, of course. But…I suppose there is a great deal to do back at Langford.”
He felt a brief spark of resentment. But surely she hadn’t meant to echo one of his nagging inner voices. “The estate is getting along quite well without me.” Perhaps there were things he should be attending to. Well, there were. But none that couldn’t wait a bit longer.
“I expect your father misses your help, though.”
The resentment flared. He couldn’t believe she would twit him where he was most vulnerable, particularly when the visit to Brighton had been all her idea. “I thought you wanted to ‘have fun.’” Why should she change her tune now, when he’d just discovered a new pleasure?
“Yes.”
This one word sounded so forlorn that Nathaniel was pul
led up short. “Is something wrong?”
Violet hesitated just too long before saying, “No.”
He examined her face. This morning she’d been obviously happy; now, she was abstracted and… Pensive? Melancholy? “It seems to me that there is.” He reached over and took her hand. “Are you angry that I left you alone all day?”
“Of course not.”
She sounded sincere. But was that a glint of tears in her eyes? “What then?”
“Nothing,” she insisted.
Nathaniel had witnessed countless evasions and confessions from five younger brothers. He could recognize an untruth when he heard one. “Have I not earned your trust?” he asked.
“That and more,” she exclaimed, her voice vibrating with emotion.
Nathaniel waited. “And so?” he said finally, when she didn’t speak.
“Gr… Grandmamma came by.”
He nearly cursed aloud. “I wish she would leave Brighton. Surely it is clear to her by now that we don’t want her and won’t listen to her. I suppose I must go over there and tell her so.”
“No!”
The volume and vehemence of her refusal startled him. “You mustn’t let her upset you, Violet. I won’t allow her to. She must be told—”
“It wasn’t her. I’m not… I wasn’t…”
Again, he waited. He’d found silence very effective in extracting information from his brothers.
“I am very worried about Marianne,” she blurted out.
Nathaniel frowned. “Your friend Lady Granchester?”
“Yes.”
“What’s amiss with her?”
“She is…she means to… I’m afraid she is about to get into terrible trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?” It must be serious, he thought. She seemed so distressed.
“I shouldn’t say… I swore not to tell.” Her hands twisted in her lap.
Nathaniel suppressed a sigh. “You promised to keep her secrets,” he said, “but now you are afraid that was a mistake. You would like to ask for help. But honor forbids.” How often had he heard a tale like this from one of his brothers?