My Last Duchess, стр. 27

“Excellent,” Ophelia said, pushing aside a sudden thought that Viola would be happy in a pack of children running and shriekingon the ice. Eight children, to be precise. “Please let Fiddle know that I intend to take Viola to the Frost Fair this morning.”

Her maid nodded, and hurried through the door to talk to the butler.

Viola was nestled against Ophelia’s side, busily making patterns in melted butter on the silver tray. “Come on, love,” Opheliasaid. “I’ll show you the patterns that Jack Frost made on our windows last night.”

Out of bed, she propped her daughter on her hip and took her over to the window. “Aren’t they beautiful ferns?” she asked.Viola touched the cold windowpane and squealed.

The duke’s children would be mothered by Lady Woolhastings, who would never show them frost on a windowpane. Or take themto a Frost Fair, for that matter. Lady Woolhastings was the sort of woman who didn’t stir from her fireplace unless it wasto enter her carriage and be transferred to another warm fireside.

Ophelia stared out the window while Viola used her plump fingertips to melt the ferny patterns. The duke’s eight childrenweren’t her problem.

After a while, her nursery maid, Betty, entered. “May I take Miss Viola to her bath, madam?”

Ophelia nodded. “Yes, thank you. Please put Viola in wool stockings and her warmest clothing. We are going to the Frost Fair.”

Viola shrieked when she realized that Betty had arrived to take her away, but Ophelia kissed her forehead. “Let me bathe anddress, poppet, and we’ll go somewhere marvelous.”

“Snow?” Viola asked.

“Another word!” Ophelia broke into a huge grin and dismissed the idea that any children could be more wonderful than the oneshe had. “You have a new word!”

“Go, snow,” Viola said obligingly, showing her few pearly teeth.

“That’s a sentence!”

“She’s a bright child,” Betty said cheerfully. “Now come along, dearie. You’ll need your furry pelisse because it’s nippyout there.”

“Nip-pe!” Viola cried.

“Did she show you her new trick, madam?” Betty asked.

Ophelia shook her head, smiling.

“Hurrah!” Betty cried, clapping.

Viola began clumsily patting her hands together. “Ray! Ray!”

“That’s three new words in as many moments,” Ophelia said. “Not to mention the fact that you learned how to clap, Viola. Brava!”

By the time Ophelia’s carriage—not the elegant one with the broken axle, but the sturdy, family-sized barouche—reached theFrost Fair, Viola had at least twenty words and counting.

“How is this possible?” Ophelia said aloud, laughing. “You went to bed with the same two words you’ve had for weeks: ‘No’and ‘Mama.’ You woke up a different person. Not a different person, but with different skills.”

“Pills,” Viola offered, and patted Ophelia’s cheek.

Ophelia was fighting off one of those urges known to widows and widowers, a moment in which one desperately wishes to talkto a person who is no longer there.

She pushed away the image of the Duke of Lindow as an alternative to Peter. “He’s getting married!” she told herself, aloud.

“Mawied,” Viola said, nodding.

“And not to me,” Ophelia told her. “He moved on directly, didn’t he? I said no, and he didn’t even try to change my mind. He strodeinto another ballroom and picked out a different woman to mother his children.”

Somehow that made her more furious than the fact he was planning to marry again.

He had replaced her with Lady Woolhastings, who was not old, exactly, but she wasn’t young either. Her daughters were frightfullywell-behaved and rather dull.

Hugo . . . He couldn’t be planning to bed her. Not the way he offered to make love to Ophelia. He couldn’t.

But he had said that he was looking for a woman uninterested in bedding him.

The problem with having red hair was that it proverbially goes along with a temper, and in Ophelia’s case, it did go along with that temper. To this point, she’d been feeling disconsolate about the fact that the duke had so easily thrownher aside and snatched up another available lady.

But now a flame of anger began to burn in her chest. He had said things to her and she believed them. He had implied thathe was falling in love. He had refused to make love to her unless she married him.

He had made her feel special, as if bedding him was an admission ticket to a wonderful life.

But even furious as she was, she couldn’t imagine that Lady Woolhastings had paid the price of admission. But then . . .

To be a duchess?

Who wouldn’t sleep with a handsome, younger man in order to be a duchess? It was just so . . .

So what?

She turned him down. She had no right to decide that he was making a horrible mistake, that he was an idiot who should have comeback the next day and pleaded with Ophelia. Begged her.

The fact of the matter was that he hadn’t wanted her enough to do that.

She hadn’t paid the price of admission, and if that made the duke a despicable person, so be it. He hadn’t meant the kindthings he said, so she’d had a very lucky escape.

“Lucky,” Viola said, which was the moment when Ophelia realized that she was so angry that she had said the last sentencealoud, and fiercely too.

“He’s made his choice,” Ophelia told Viola, kissing her. “You and I will go to the Frost Fair and have a wonderful time. We’llbuy gingerbread, and his children will be home in the nursery. Perhaps he’ll greet them, if he finds time.” She shook her head. “I don’t want thatfor your father.”

The thought steadied her. It wasn’t just a matter of her mothering the eight orphans; the duke would become Viola’s fatheras well.

“She won’t take them to the Frost Fair,” Ophelia said. Somehow it felt like vindication. He was choosing Lady Woolhastings becauseshe was related to royalty, and uninterested in bedding him. But there was more to being a mother than the name alone.

By the time they reached the edge of the Frost Fair, a great frozen expanse of the Thames, the sun was out, albeit in a chillyway. Ophelia climbed out of the carriage and took a look, her coachman standing at her