“I will be marrying Viola at Christmastime, presumably at Brambledean,” he said. “It will be a valid marriage. I have no secret wife hidden away somewhere. I will care for all her needs for the rest of her life and make provision for her in the event that I predecease her. Miss Abigail Westcott will be welcome in my home and will be more than adequately provided for.”
“All her needs?” Riverdale said. It was a quietly, courteously posed question, but it was pure venom, Marcel decided. He was beginning heartily to dislike this oh-so-correct, oh-so-dutiful earl, who was not a blood relative of Viola’s or even a relative by marriage.
It took effort not to answer as he would have liked to answer. He did not need the goodwill of any of Viola’s relatives. He could live very well without it, in fact. But she could not. She had proved that down on the beach. She was missing them, damn it all. She had chosen them over him.
“All,” he said with quiet emphasis.
“Abigail is illegitimate,” Cunningham said, “just as my wife is. Just as I am. You are willing to taint your children by having her live in your home with them?”
Marcel looked at the man with a new respect. He wanted the answer to a question that delicacy might well have led the lot of them to ignore—until it became a possible problem later.
“And my mother-in-law was in a bigamous marriage for longer than twenty years,” Cunningham added. “Though it was no fault of hers, the ton has been inclined to treat her as they would a leper. You are willing to face what this may mean after your marriage?”
“If the ton should treat my wife with anything less than the full respect due the Marchioness of Dorchester,” Marcel said, “then the ton will have me to reckon with. And I can assure you those are no idle words. And I treat with contempt any idea that Abigail’s illegitimacy somehow disqualifies her from full participation in the sort of life for which she was raised.”
They all looked at one another for a few moments.
“There was no betrothal was there,” Riverdale said at last, “until you saw us outside the cottage from down in the valley this afternoon.”
“Does it matter?” Marcel asked.
“Yes,” Cunningham said. “She is my mother-in-law. My wife and my sister-in-law love her dearly. So do my daughters. I hold her in the deepest affection. If the price of her happiness is some arrangement made among the ten of us to tell a plausible story and never divulge the full truth, then I am prepared to pay it.”
Riverdale said nothing.
It was his way out, Marcel thought. And Viola’s too. A way out of a situation that was intolerable to them both. No one need know of her disgrace, though what a ridiculous way that was of looking at an affair a woman older than forty had entered into quite freely and enjoyed immensely—until she was enjoying it no longer. No one need know except the eight people who had found them at the cottage this afternoon. And—as he had said to Viola earlier—all the people to whom those eight would confide the truth, and all the people in whom they would confide. And the Prewitts and Jimmy Prewitt’s great-niece.
Besides, he was at heart a gentleman, he supposed, and at the heart of every gentleman even partway worthy of the name, there was a core of honor.
“Your mother-in-law will be happy with me,” he told Cunningham with a glance at Riverdale. “I will see to it.”
They looked far from convinced. He ought to have left it at that.
“I fell in love with her fourteen years ago,” he added, embellishing the story he had told earlier at the cottage, “and she with me, though she was far too dutiful a wife to admit any such thing at the time. She sent me away before our attraction could ever be put into words or deed, and I went. She was a married lady—or so we both thought. Sometimes, however, if it is real, love does not die. It only lies dormant.”
“From what I know of your reputation, Dorchester,” Riverdale said, “your definition of love is not mine.”
“Ah,” Marcel said, “I have another word for my dictionary, then. I plan to write one, you know, though Viola is skeptical, since until now I have had only one word to go in it—the verb to jollificate. Now I can add love with all its myriad meanings and shades of meaning. Just the one word should be good for several pages, do you not think?” He was becoming angry. He deliberately drew a few slow breaths.
“I would settle for your assurance that you will treat her honorably,” Cunningham said.
The anger almost broke through his control—until he realized what was happening here. He was in the presence of very real love. Here were two men, neither of whom had any blood relationship to Viola but both of whom cared. Because she was a member of their family, and family mattered to them. Family stood together and defended its own.
For a few moments he felt unutterably bleak. What had he squandered in the name of guilt and self-loathing and staying out of the way of what he was not worthy to claim as his own?
“You have my assurance,” he said curtly. “I suppose you speak of fidelity. You have my assurance.”
“Perhaps,” Riverdale said, “you should add the word fidelity to your dictionary too, Dorchester. It has far more meanings than the obvious one.”
Marcel got to his feet. “I must rescue my son from the taproom,” he said, “and the chance that he is sampling the ale too freely.”
They made no move to follow him.
He could cheerfully break a few chairs and a few tables and smash a few windows, Marcel thought. But as it turned out he could not even relieve his feelings by scolding Bertrand or berating André. His son was drinking water.
“Bert never touches alcohol,” André said, clapping the boy on the shoulder, “or intends ever to do so. I think it is time, Marc, that you rescued him from the clutches of his uncle and aunt.”
Marcel looked at his son, whose nostrils were slightly flared, though he said nothing. Marcel agreed with his brother—or did he? And he wished André had not picked up Estelle’s pet name for her twin.
“Bertrand is seventeen years old,” he said. “Almost eighteen. Old enough, I believe, to make his own decisions.”
His son flashed him an indecipherable look before picking up his glass. He must have looked just like Bertrand when he was seventeen, Marcel thought. And yes, old enough to make his own decisions, good or bad. His anger had been converted to melancholy.
But he still wished he could smash a few chairs.
* * *
• • •
The evening at the cottage was long and unutterably tedious, though somehow civility was maintained. Perhaps, Viola thought when it was over, that was because they were all ladies and had been brought up to deal with even the most awkward of social situations.
Though there could not be many more awkward than this one.
Mrs. Morrow was icily civil. But Viola could not blame her for the hostility that obviously seethed just below the surface of her good manners. She had been forced into the company of a woman she must consider beneath contempt. And despite the fact that she showed no real emotion, it seemed to Viola that the woman cared for her young niece, whom she had brought up almost from the girl’s birth. Lady Estelle Lamarr’s modest, docile manners in the presence of her elders were testament to her aunt’s training.
Viola’s training and long experience as a society hostess stood her in good stead too. She was able to rise to the ghastly situation of being hostess at a cottage that belonged to her lover. She was able to organize dinner and refreshments and converse with practiced and apparent ease.