Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (22 page)

   "Tell that to my fatherless children. Go away, Mr. Walton."

   "Walpole," Walpole said, to nobody in particular. The duchess and Carlyle had already left, and Montagu was helping Diana fasten her cloak.

* * *

   The approach of Christmas kept Barbara busy, as it did Tony. He took her to St. James's Park so that she could feed the deer who trotted up, their hooves touching the wet, brown ground delicately and ate out of her hand as tamely as any household pet. Mary, who accompanied them, excitedly explained that in the spring, the milkmaids with their cows gathered near Rosamond's Pond and you could buy a cup of fresh milk to drink as you wandered in the park. Barbara had convinced her aunt to release Mary from her rigid schedule of lessons for the holidays. Abigail considered it a small sacrifice if it kept Barbara from asking too many questions.

   Barbara had told Mary every detail she could remember about the theater, from the orange girls to the tightrope walkers, but not what Carlyle had said about Roger. She had cried for hours that night, and she thought about it all the time. She had too much pride to go to her mother or her aunt or even Fanny and ask about it. All she could do was wait and suffer silently. Meanwhile she saw the horse guards parade, the king in his carriage, London's fine spacious squares of Soho, Leicester Fields, and St. James's (where Roger lived). She saw the city mansions of the Duke of Ancaster, the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Bedford and the Duke of Buckingham. She and Mary spent a delightful afternoon with their great–aunt Shrewsborough, who served them tea in a grand style, with ornate silver teapots and two footmen to wait on them. Afterward, she took the two girls upstairs and let them play in her jewelry and fuss with her pots of face paint. She allowed them to powder, rouge, and patch to their hearts' content, and even if her maid had to scrub their faces until their cheeks burned, to the girls it was worth it. Barbara put feathers in her hair and strutted up and down in front of her aunt's mirror and pretended she was Roger's countess, while Mary had so many black silk patches on her face it looked as if she had the smallpox. It was quite their favorite afternoon in a series of good afternoons.

   Barbara even saw Roger once. Fanny had taken her and Mary shopping at the New Exchange, a long, sleek building with small shops lining its corridors. Barbara had some money, and she wished to buy New Year's presents for her brothers and sisters. Mary was enchanted with the idea that she could help choose toys for Tom and Kit and Anne and Charlotte and Baby, whom by now, through Barbara, she felt she knew as well as if she had grown up with them. They had agreed at once on lead soldiers—bright with red and white paint—for Kit. They argued over Tom, Mary wanting a hoop and stick, but Barbara thinking Tom's dignity too old now. They compromised on a history book that had intricate cardboard pages that popped up to make a scene. Barbara allowed Mary to choose the dolls for Anne and Charlotte, and they finished up with a tiny wagon for the baby. Barbara was giving the man her grandmother's address—for a few extra shillings, he would wrap them and have them delivered—when she saw Roger across the corridor in front of a bookshop. He stood outside, sifting through loose sheets that lay on a table so the prospective purchaser might read the book if he were not sure he wished to buy it. Once sure, the buyer then selected the color and style of the leather binding. That man, the strange, odious Tommy Carlyle, was with him.

   She ran across to them. Roger smiled at her and she forgave him everything. He bowed over her hand with the grace of a young god. How could he be so beautiful? Fanny and Mary joined them. "Ah, a nursery party," Carlyle said. They talked of shopping, of Christmas plans, of his trip to France.

   Nothing was said of Diana. Nothing was said of the negotiations. Fanny spoke in a high, strained voice that Barbara knew meant she was nervous. Afterward, in the carriage, Barbara said, "Fanny, what is happening? You must tell me!" But Fanny would only look away and say, "Hush, hush." Barbara felt a foreboding building inside her. She made a plan. She would be good and meek and patient for Christmas. Surely, sooner or later, it was inevitable that she would see Roger again. And this time, no matter who was with him or her, she was going to ask him straightforwardly about their marriage.

   Something was happening. Mary, her ally now, had told her that several invitations had come to her and her mother from Roger, and that her aunt had put them away. She knew better than to bother asking her mother or her aunt about it. They were up to some game of their own, some game that had her heart involved in it, no more important to them than a beggar's off the street. But they had bargained wrongly if they thought her docility covered docility, which was fine for a girl who did not know what she wanted. Barbara did know. And she was going to have it.

   With her plan to sustain her, she took over the decorating of the house. She could not believe that Aunt Saylor left it to the servants, that Tony and Mary had never made Christmas wreaths or looped staircases with greenery. She ordered Tony about as if he were Bates or one of the servants. He straddled the hall's balustrades, painstakingly looping holly garlands around the railings, while Mary sat in the middle of the black and white squares of the floor, making laurel wreaths. When they were finished, Tony declared the hall had never looked so beautiful, and it never had. Loop after loop of dark green holly, christened with shining bunches of bright red berries, cascaded down each balustrade of the double staircase and met on the second–floor landing's balustrade to form a huge wreath. Each of the busts in the wall ovals wore a necklace of box and holly. Candles were set on the tables, and holly and rosemary crowned their bases. Every picture, every door frame in the hall and the public rooms had its garland of green. Ivy and rosemary and holly peeked from the cupboards, the mantels, around china bowls. Barbara had the maids pierce oranges and lemons with cloves, and she filled those bowls with these, mixing in crushed cinnamon and rosemary. She imperiously directed Bates to set white Christmas candles on every surface that could hold them. She wanted the house to glow for Jane, who was coming to tea with her aunt, and for Roger, if he should happen to visit. ("She reminds me of her grandmother," Bates told the housekeeper. "The house looks as it used to.")

* * *

"My…God!…I…" the Duke of Montagu moaned. He lay naked in a bed in rooms he rented for just this purpose. Closing his eyes, he moaned again. The woman with him, her mouth sucking his life's juices from his body, impatiently pulled back the covers that were over her. She glanced at him. His head was back against the cover, the muscles in his neck were rigid, his hands were gripping the sweaty sheets. She moved her mouth on his penis in a rhythm she had learned years ago. He groaned and clutched at the sheets. "God!" he cried again, and his body jerked, once, twice, three times. She sat up. She was as naked as he was, and her body was magnificent, huge white breasts with dark nipples, wide hips that curved out from a small waist. Only her belly had lost its shape and sagged from repeated pregnancies. She leaned back on her elbows, her legs open, the dark hair surrounding her sex, open to him. He half sat up.

   "Diana," he said, his eyes still closed, "you were wonderful—" He opened his eyes and now he leaned on one elbow, amazed and excited at the way she sprawled so openly before him. Not even the whores he bought did so. Watching him, her lovely face pouting, sensual, she closed her eyes and began to caress herself. He could not take his eyes from her. She played with her breasts, pinching the nipples until they stood out. She kneaded the soft, full flesh of her belly and finally, slowly, her hand went between her legs. Her red tongue licked her lips. To his amazement, he felt himself growing excited, growing hard again. He moved so that he was lying beside her. She had her eyes closed and had begun to move her body in a rhythm as old as time, as old as men and women and pleasure. He grabbed her hair and pulled it. She opened her eyes.

   "Wait for me," he said. "I will service you—"

   He leaned over to kiss her mouth, She bit him—which excited him even more. Grabbing her arms roughly, he pinned them down and moved on top of her. Her head was rolling from side to side. He plunged into her, and she moved against him and cursed him, and called him names that made him rigid with desire. She bit him and scratched his back, and he bucked against her like a madman, until his orgasm came with what was now painful intensity. He lay exhausted on top of her, but she was still moving under him.

   "More," she said fiercely. "More!"

   "Diana, I—"

   She jerked so that he fell off her, and he watched as she put one hand to her sex and one to her breast and then moved, her head lolling from side to side until she began to gasp over and over, while both her hands moved faster and faster. It took a long time. Finally, she moaned and then was still. She opened her eyes. He watched to see if she would be ashamed. She sat up.

   "I really don't need anyone," she said, shaking her hair out of her face.

   "I believe it," he whispered, almost in awe of her sensuality, so openly exposed to him. He felt intrigued and more than a little frightened. She traced the fine of his lips with her finger.

   "Say you will help me," she said. "Say you will sponsor my divorce—" She stopped. He moved away from her, to the edge of the bed. Something behind her eyes flickered as she stared at his naked, now unyielding back.

   "I have told you over and over that I cannot. What would people say? What would they think? How can I justify it—"

   "To protect a fellow noblewoman, the daughter of a great hero, who has been taken advantage of. To protect a fellow Whig, who has been cheated, lied to, betrayed by her Tory husband, who has deserted her." There was not much emotion in her voice. She had said the words so many times that they meant nothing to her, if they ever had.

   Montagu sighed. He still had his back to her. "Diana, what can I say to you. I cannot—"

   "A diamond necklace."

   He turned to stare at her. "What?"

   "Give me a diamond necklace—"

   "And you will not bother me about the divorce anymore?"

   "Give me the necklace and see…."

* * *

   Jane Ashford was at her Aunt Maude's house in London. Her aunt, who was her mother's sister, lived on King Street in a narrow three–story town house with a Dutch roof. Her husband was a minor official in the navy department, and her aunt lived for the two official court functions they attended each year. She filled in the rest of the year with collecting as much gossip as she could about the court and those people who graced it, such as Roger Montgeoffry, the Earl Devane, the king's favorite English friend. "The king keeps himself surrounded by Hanoverians, you know," she told Jane, as they were out riding in her carriage (of which she was extremely proud, for it was very expensive and put her a step above other wives). "That von Bothmer and Bernstorff are all he ever sees, other than Lord Devane— and you grew up with the girl he is said to be marrying—Jane, you sly puss! She will be so rich and influential! You must ask her about a living for Augustus. Do not look that way, Jane, dear, you will put wrinkles on your face—a wife must do what she can to advance her husband's career. Why, I am always on the lookout for Edgemont—" (Edgemont was her husband, a quiet man who rarely spoke except when paying bills—then he and Maude quarreled as loudly and abusively as Jane had ever seen! She thought that he was silent because he knew his silence maddened her aunt and made her talk even more, a clear example of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.)

   Jane sighed and looked out of the carriage while her aunt's voice clacked on and on. Everything about her aunt was thin, even her voice. She was tall and thin, her face was long and thin, her hair was black and thin, her nose was pointed and thin. Every morning she sat at a table positioned in front of her parlor windows and dipped pieces of toasted bread in her tea and wagged her thin leg back and forth while her thin slipper hung on the edge of her thin foot. She watched the men going in and out of the coffeehouses, she read the news sheets bought for a halfpenny from the street boys. She rattled and rustled and talked until Jane thought she would go mad.

   She poked and prodded at her—not physically, but verbally. Jane had no idea what her mother and father had written to Aunt Maude, but it must have been something, for her aunt watched her like a hawk, except when Augustus visited. Augustus Cromwell was plain and tall and yes—thin! His nose was too long and he had bad teeth. At twenty–four he was just finishing his studies at Oxford, and he rode down every Saturday to see her. Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the leather of the carriage seat.

   "Look, Jane, this is Whitehall and there is the Admiralty. Edgemont is there—in the room at that window there—see, Jane—and now we are going to Charing Cross. That statue is of King Charles I, the one that was beheaded—do look, Jane—"

   Do look, Jane, do see, Jane, do listen, Jane. Her whole life lay ahead of her, obedience to others, including Augustus, Gussy, as he was called, as her husband and master. She had not minded obedience to Harry; she would have walked on hot coals for him. But Gussy—he talked a great deal about his work—he was beginning a study on the papacy during the Reformation. Excited about it, his brown eyes would actually glow as he went on and on, and she smiled and nodded and her thoughts were so far away—oh, Harry, how will I ever get through this? Harry, so dark and handsome and passionate. At night, she dreamed of his kisses. Yes, she had let him kiss her. Thank Jesus in his heaven above that her parents had no idea. But she had, and they had been so good, making her tingle inside, in her abdomen and in her breasts. Yes, it was true! And now, now all she had were memories. She dreaded to think of the day when Gussy would kiss her. Harry's teeth had been even and white. How could she stand it?

   Dear Lord, every day she watched and waited and hoped against hope for a letter. She ran to the door whenever she heard the door knocker sound. "How sweet you are, Jane, what a help you are, Jane. Edgemont, I tell you, this girl is a treasure," her aunt would say, never knowing that she was always hoping that a postboy would be there with a letter and she would slip it in the pocket of her apron and run up to her small room and read it, read his words of love, of assurance and be better, be stronger, be able to face what she had to do. They all thought she was such a good girl, never knowing the perfidy in her heart, never knowing what she really thought—the look on her father's face when she left—she had cried for miles and miles. He had looked as if his dreams or faith in life were gone because of her, because of her wildness. She knew he could not afford to be sending her to London. He was always working, always, and there were so many of them to feed, and there were her brothers to educate, and she had to be sent to London. She was bad, bad.