Now Face to Face (55 page)

J
ANE, AFTER
rummaging through the papers on Gussy’s desk, sat down and held out her feet to the fire. She ran her gloved hands over the beautiful gown she wore. She’d made her father stop in Petersham, where she and Gussy lived. There she’d knelt and pried up the loose floorboard in the parlor with her fingers, taking out the box there, opening it, looking at a pair of green leather gloves that smelled of cinnabar. They were the only gift she had ever accepted from Harry after she had married Gussy. She had always hidden the gloves, even though Harry was dead, even though Gussy, with his kind and remote wit, likely would not have minded, would rather have said, Oh yes, Janie, they are lovely. That Harry was a fine fellow.

Would you rather be right or be happy?

When Gussy opened the door, Jane was sitting in a chair, the green gloves upon her hands.

“Jane!” he said, not unfastening his cloak but crossing this small chamber to kiss her, not chastely, but fiercely. “Jane, my Jane.” Then, “The children—”

“Are at Ladybeth, still. I know, Gussy—every single thing. There is to be an invasion, and my father heads Tamworth and neighboring counties, and you, you are in it, too.”

He put his hand to her mouth, roughly for Gussy. “I don’t know what you’ve heard, but this is no game, Janie, to prattle about—”

“No, it is true, and dangerous, and you, Gussy, are not going to do it without me.” She had always preferred King James over King George. After all, her first love had been a Jacobite, and he’d talked politics between kisses under the apple trees at Tamworth. She’d follow her heart, be Jacobite, too. Who would stop her? Her father? Her husband?

Harry gone, Jeremy gone; life was so short, so uncertain. She caressed Gussy’s face with soft green leather gloves. Whither thou goest, I will go. And where thou lodgest, I will lodge. These last months, she had been right, but not happy.

D
IANA SAT
down at a table, tapping her foot impatiently to the sound of March rain against her windows, paper, inkpot, pens, seal, wax, sand all laid neatly before her. She seldom bothered to write letters; in her girlhood, she hadn’t needed spelling and penmanship to get what she wanted. Swearing at her mistakes, she crossed through words and spilled ink here and there, but after a quarter of an hour’s struggle, she had down on paper what she wished to say:

Daughter,

Sir Hugh Drysdale will take Sir Alexander Spotswood’s place as deputy governor of the colony of Virginia. He will come to the colony aware of your family and your welfare, and you may put yourself under obligation to him. I desire nothing but your return to the home of your birth and the bosom of your family. Your second letter arrived in January. Everyone talks of your missing page boy. The Prince of Wales was filled with sympathy, asks of you and sends his regard.

Written by your loving mother this the tenth day of
March in the year of Our Lord, 1722.

She sprinkled sand over the paper and then blew it off, folded the paper into a square, melted wax, dribbled some of it onto the letter, and pressed her seal into the wax at the meeting of the folds. A footman came to tell her there was a visitor.

“I don’t want to see anyone.”

She frowned at a valentine, forgotten, left over from the month before. Today might have been a day in February. Rain beat against the windowpanes like the fingers of beggars’ children asking to be let inside. But there were far more robins in the trees in her garden than a month ago. Robin…the frown deepened.

Charles stood in the doorway of the parlor, Clemmie behind him. Clemmie gave Diana a long, blank glance before closing the door.

“Nephew, finally back from your journey, are you? I was writing to Barbara.”

Charles put his hat and cane upon a table, as if he had every intention of paying a long visit. “Were you?”

“Indeed, I was.”

“How are you?”

“Very well, thank you.”

“And Walpole?”

“We’ve quarreled. I wish the King would simply dismiss him outright and put us all out of our misery. It is all Robin talks of—when he will be dismissed, what he will do. The new rumor is that the King will make him an earl, to compensate, but Robin says he would rather remain a minister than become an earl. I’m quite tired of it. ‘You’ve been in disgrace before and survived it,’ I told him. ‘You can survive this.’ He can. He can survive anything, Charles. And, of course, he is making himself ill over the election. He and Sunderland fight for every seat in every town and borough they see an ally in. There have been betrayals Robin didn’t expect. I will be so glad when the votes are taken and things are more clear.”

“Sunderland and Wharton remain friends, I gather.”

“Friends? I never see one without the other. Have you heard about Hyacinthe?”

“One of the first pieces of news told me when I arrived in London. And I saw the broadsheet. I gather the woman weeping in the forest is Barbara, and the fat minister with his back turned to her distress, Walpole. What did it say, something about woe—”

“‘Woe is me, the South Sea hath taken all from me.’ The King and the Prince of Wales are both upset. Robin says the Prince told him that it was his fault Barbara traveled to Virginia. You know Tommy Carlyle says Robin didn’t do all he ought in the matter of Roger’s debts. He says it to anyone who will listen. Sometimes I listen, and I think, No, Robin would not lie to me. Then other times, I think he might. When it comes to survival…” Diana looked down at the small knife she used to sharpen the point of her quill. “If it is so, I swear I will cut out his heart and eat it before his eyes.”

“And what does Robin say?”

“That Carlyle is a vicious half-man who can’t be trusted, that Roger was his friend and he did everything possible, that the King’s personal letter about Hyacinthe is going to the Governor.” She touched the sealed letter on the table before her, mockingly. “You don’t seem distressed for Barbara.”

“I am. I want you to add a postscript to your letter.”

He walked toward her, and Diana closed her eyes a moment, almost as if she felt weak, or afraid.

“It is foolish of you to call here, Charles.”

But Charles was kissing her neck and shoulders and then her breasts through the material of her gown.

“Charles, we cannot be long. I play cards with the Princess at three—”

He kissed her mouth. She dug her fingers into the column of his neck. He pulled off his wig.

“Here is my postscript for Barbara. And see if the Princess smells me on you.” After that, there was no talk, there was only the desperate heat of the joining, and a kind of despair for them both.

Chapter Twenty-nine

L
INNETS, REDSTARTS, AND HATTERS SETTLED IN THE TREES OF
Tamworth to nest. Annie had Tim fetch periwinkle from the woods and wove it into a wreath to place on the Duchess’s legs for cramp. She had nothing for heartache. Now the Duchess fretted not only over Sir John and Barbara, but over Laurence Slane.

The Duchess wrote to Tony about Slane. “How does he know Barbara?” she asked. “He left Tamworth like a thief in the night. I don’t like it. Find him in London and demand an answer.”

The Gypsy woman rose from childbed, pumped water from the kitchen garden pump into a bucket, found a brush, went into the stillroom. Perryman, informed by Cook, sent for Annie. Annie stared for a long moment before speaking.

“Why do you scrub the floor, girl?”

No answer. Annie looked her over. Dark hair pulled back into a tight knot. Eyes kept downcast; occasionally one glimpsed their fern green. Hands red from the scrubbing water and years of work. Gypsies were said to be fugitives from Egypt. They spoke their own language, possessed secret, sinful signs, read fortunes, sowed ill will, stole livestock, picked pockets.

“I see you are up from your bed at last. The Duchess will give you a coin. We’ll find you a bit of food to tide you over, some clothing for the child. You’d best be on your way now. Spring is coming.”

Spring was easier to survive than winter. Perhaps the child would live through it.

The woman did not raise her head. Something about the way she knelt on all fours, continued scrubbing as if Annie had not spoken, not with pride in the action, but with a kind of stubbornness that was enduring in its insistence, made Annie remember the scene of birth in the kitchen. An abandoned, disgraced woman was among the most despised of all God’s creatures.

“Are you a Christian?”

No answer. Scrub went the brush. Water circled and crested near the toe of Annie’s shoe.

“It is cold out still. The baby might perish. For that, I will allow you to stay a month or two more. Only that, mind. Then you must go.”

There was the tiniest of quivers in the woman’s body, a movement that touched Annie to her soul.

“Mind, if one item is found missing, it will be on your head. I will have you dunked in the village pond and tried for a witch. Your name?”

“Bathsheba.”

Annie pursed her lips. She ought to have known.

“You’ve picked a Gypsy to mother, have you?” said Tim, later in the kitchen. “Might as well have picked a wild animal.”

Annie glared at him.

Tim held up a book. Annie made a grab for it, but he held it out of her reach easily.

“This book of sermons you’re reading,” said Tim, who could not read, but was still too clever for his own good, “I’d like to hear them, too.”

Chapter Thirty