Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (7 page)

* * *

   There were no more lectures on duty in the days that followed. Trunks had to be dragged down from the attics and aired and then packed. Then, more often than not, they would have to be repacked, according to her grandmother's latest dictate. The Duchess had taken to her bed, cold and emotion having taken their toll on her legs. She ran the household as forcefully as ever and oversaw every detail of Barbara's leaving. A hundred times during the course of a day Barbara would be summoned to her grandmother's chambers. She would find her propped up in bed, pillows behind her back and all around her to support the wooden trays that held her paper and pens and ink pots and empty teacups. She wore at least three Spanish shawls, her huge lace cap and mittens, these in spite of the roaring fire in the fireplace. Dulcinea stayed nearby, dozing, or if she was in a playful mood, slapping at the feather in the Duchess's pen as she checked yet another item off her ink–stained lists. All the clothes must be checked, laces resewn, ribbons cleaned, dried lavender, mint and rose petals sprinkled carefully in their folds.

   "Mother! I will have gowns made in London! These are old-fashioned!" Diana cried in exasperation, but the Duchess paid no attention because she was arguing with Annie on how best to clean the stained silk ribbons.

"You pare four or five good–sized potatoes, being careful to slice them very thin. You lay them in a quart of cold water for a few hours. Then you sponge the silk with the water and iron it dry!"

   Annie folded her arms stubbornly. "Spirits of wine, powdered French chalk, and pipe clay is what my mother always used—"

   "Your mother was an idiot, then! Check my recipe books. It is my grandmother's recipe! Are you missaying my grandmother, God rest her soul, you stubborn old stick?"

   Then Annie had to find the milk of roses—made from sweet almonds beaten to a paste with drops of oil of lavender and rose water added—and carefully measure out a portion for Barbara to take with her. It would protect her complexion and keep it smooth and white.

   "It is already smooth and white, Mother!"

   "This will make it smoother and whiter still! She is after a husband, and a good complexion helps! And you, chit! If you do marry Roger, and I am not saying you will, but if you do, be sure you take care not to wear pearls at your wedding. They are a symbol for tears, you know!"

   "She is driving me mad!" cried Diana. But Barbara said nothing. She knew this briskness and bustle covered softer feelings and was her grandmother's way of blessing her venture not with holy water, but with the more intimate, homier ingredients of lavender and milk of roses and clean silk ribbons.

   "Will she need candles? There are some freshly made."

   "Good God, Mother! Candles may be bought in London!"

   "Do not take the Lord's name in vain, Diana. It is a sin—run along, Bab. You will never get to London and that fine husband you covet if you dawdle in my chambers all day!"

   She slipped out of the room, away from the beginning of a rousing quarrel between her mother and grandmother. She would be summoned again in a few hours with fierce demands as to why she was never around when she was needed, but for now, while she was free, she would go up to the schoolroom and hear the children at their lessons. Her one grief in all of this was leaving them and her grandmother. But Roger was rich now, they said. And he was kind. She knew that someday soon her brothers and sisters would come to live with her. And Roger. She would provide for them. It was one of the duties of a gentlewoman, to provide for family. She opened the door quietly and sat down at her scarred wooden desk–table, folding her hands to listen. They were reciting their Bible verses and the sound of their clear, high young voices soothed her.

   "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth,

   "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled—"

   She closed her eyes. Kit and Charlotte recited smoothly, while Anne stayed just a word behind. She had not learned her verses and was trying to fool Cousin Henley.

   Bless me, dearest Lord, she thought, on this, the most important venture of my life. I promise I will be good; I promise, if you will make Roger marry me.

* * *

   The day had arrived. She stood in the middle of her chamber, her woolen cloak lined with fur tied securely, her traveling gown laced and hooked in place, her hair combed neatly, her heart beating like a drum. Everything that had made this chamber hers was gone, packed in those trunks tied to the luggage cart that would follow the carriage. She had given her birds' nests to Kit. Her mattress had been rolled up, taken outside to air before servants replaced it on her bed. She touched the edge of one of her bed curtains, her fingers on the raised pattern of the crewelwork. Her heart was beating so hard that she thought it would explode from her chest. Her childhood was over. The next time she returned to Tamworth, she would return as a wife, possibly as a mother, God willing, as He must be willing. She felt dizzy with the emotion swirling inside her.

   "Your lady mother says to hurry." Her maidservant spoke sullenly. Barbara was not taking her servant to London with her—her retaliation for the betrayal that first evening to Diana. If she could not be loyal here in Tamworth, what would be her worth in London? Besides, she would hire a French maid as her personal attendant. She was going to be fashionable and elegant, as Roger was. He would be proud of her.

   "Tell her I will be only a few moments longer." She had to say one last good-bye to her brothers and sisters, a task as heartrending as that of leaving her grandmother. She had spent all morning in her grandmother's chambers. Together they had said prayers, and her grandmother had read to her from the Bible.

   "'Keep thy heart with all diligence,'" the Duchess had recited, "'for out of it are the issues of life.'" She had sat holding her grandmother's hand while Annie brushed her hair and tied ribbons in it. She promised that she would remember to say her prayers, to attend church services, to mind her manners, to watch her temper, to be polite and respectful to her elders, to listen to all that was told her, to speak quietly and seldom, as became a modest young woman of good family.

   "And take this," her grandmother said gruffly, at the last minute, thrusting a bag of coins into her hands. "I gave your mother money, but I have no doubt it will fall through her hands like water. It always has. It always will. This is a secret between you and me, mind. Now go and say your farewells to those brothers and sisters of yours."

   Kit, Charlotte and Anne were lined up like a row of dolls in the nursery. Only the baby was missing, asleep in his cradle, and Tom away at school, and—of course—Harry. She came forward with a smile, holding out her arms to them. They ran to her, even Kit, who usually felt that he was too old to show emotion. She sat down on the floor, heedless of her gown, and pulled Charlotte, who was already crying, into her lap. Anne clutched a fold of her sister's traveling cloak in one tight little fist and said nothing.

   "Do not leave me, Bab!" Charlotte sobbed. "Please! You are the only one I can talk to. Grandmama is so old!"

   From her corner by the window Cousin Henley frowned, and Barbara saw it. Anne began to cry. Even Kit made a furious wipe at his eyes. Cousin Henley rose, and Barbara shook her head at her.

   "Leave it be, Cousin," she said. "They may cry. Listen to me. Listen!" she soothed. "When I am married, I will send for you, all of you, and if Henley is not kind, I shall hire a new governess to care for you, and we shall live in a big, grand house. And you will be aunts and uncles to my babies."

   In her corner, Cousin Henley shook her head.

   "Really, Bab?" said Kit.

   "R–Really?" hiccoughed Charlotte. Anne kept her head fastened to Barbara's cloak, but she stopped crying. A footman peeped around the doorway. "Mistress Barbara, your mother says come."

   Charlotte began to wail again. Barbara crushed the three of them in her arms,

   "Hush, my darlings," she said. "I am going to London for a great adventure, and you must wait here until I write for you. But I will send dolls, sweets, soldiers, and even something for Cousin Henley, if she is very nice. Think of those things! Think of what I will be sending!"

   "You will not forget, Bab?" said Kit. She took his face in her hands.

   "You are the oldest until Tom comes home from school, Kit. You must look after the little ones. In my place. Protect them."

   Kit glanced toward Cousin Henley and squared his jaw. Barbara stood up, and with Anne still clinging to her cloak, went over to the baby's cradle. The last Alderley lay sleeping like an angel. She touched a curled–up, plump fist. Good-bye, little William, she said silently. She closed her eyes a moment. It was so hard to leave them. Gently, she disentangled Anne from her cloak and put the child's hand into Kit's. Charlotte continued to cry. Barbara spoke hard and clearly to her cousin. "Be kind to them, or by God, when I am a countess, I will have you sent packing to someone else!"

   "Bab!" Charlotte cried out, but Barbara ran from the room and down the series of staircases and out the great hall before the children could see her weep. She ran past a startled and disapproving Perryman and, her heels crunching the gravel of the courtyard, she jumped into the carriage without waiting for a footman to assist her.

   "You are crushing my gown!" Diana exclaimed, pulling away irritably. The carriage lumbered away. Barbara hung her head out the window, ignoring Diana's protests. She thought she caught a last glimpse of a limp lace cap on a thin face in one of the bay windows. They lurched past the outbuildings, the dovecote, the dairy and the stables. She saw the kitchen maids carrying in pails of water. A stableboy trotted down a path leading one of the horses. Then they were on the avenue of limes, and then turning sharply out of the entrance gates, on the road to London.

   There was a spreading ache in the center of her chest, and a burning in her eyes, but she would not allow herself any indulgence, not with her mother and her mother's maid in the carriage with her. She set her jaw and rolled down the window's leather shade. She focused on the only thing that could soothe the pain she felt…Roger.

   "Did Mother give you any money?" Diana said, breaking into her thoughts. Barbara stared at her mother, not knowing what to answer.

   Diana held out her hand. "I thought so. Give it to me at once."

* * *

   The Duchess sat up in her bed, her heart pounding. She stared into the dark, remembering now what had eluded her. That scrap of gossip about Roger. In one of her letters. Not even written out plainly. Hinting of Roger and the French vice. She had laughed out loud when she read it. And wished Richard were alive so she could tell him. He would have laughed louder than she. The two men had once been as close as brothers. As father and son. Why, she could still remember the expression on Roger's face at the funeral… something long buried turned over and showed her its face in her mind. She cried out.

   "Annie!" she said, her voice rising. "My candle! Hurry!'

   There were scuffling sounds in the dark, and then the scratch of steel striking flint and Annie's grumbling. She saw tiny sparks catch the cotton rag shreds in the tinder box and smelled the pungent sulfur as Annie touched a stick dipped in it to the burning shreds, and it caught fire, and she lit the candle with it. The Duchess's eyes fastened on the flame. In the shadows, Annie stared at her, her features frowning, sharpening into worry. She opened her mouth to speak.

   "Go away!" the Duchess said harshly. "Leave the candle."

   The flame. She would stare at the flame and cleanse her mind with it. It would catch hold of her thought, igniting it as the sparks had the cotton shreds. Before she had the chance to think on it more. Oh, dear God, why should she have suddenly thought what she had? As if a piece of puzzle were about to be fitted into place, but she did not want it to fit. Why, she knew Richard as she knew her own heart. There had been no vice in him, no darkness. And none in Roger…no…none…she began to breathe a little more easily. The thing was going. Slipping back into its hole with all else that was unspeakable. Unthinkable.

   "Bah!" she said out loud, not meaning to. Meaning only to hurry it away.

   Annie started up from her chair and was at her bedside in seconds.

   "My legs," the Duchess said gruffly
.
Annie gave a satisfied nod. The Duchess allowed her to rub them, to bring her a cup of wine, which she drank down gratefully.

   "Extinguish that candle and go to bed," she said after a while. And at Annie's look, "I am better."

   And so she was. There was no need to write Diana. What could she say? I remembered some gossip. People always gossiped. I had a fear. She always had fears. No. She would leave it be. She knew both men. She would tarnish neither with her foolishness. She turned over to sleep, comforted now by her decision.

   Unbidden, familiar words came to her as she lay there: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

   "Go away," she said loudly, not caring what Annie might think. "I will not hear you."

Chapter Three

The first Earl Devane, or Roger, as his friends called him, turned to better view himself in the long, gilt mirror of Venetian glass held by his valet. A wig maker and tailor hovered like shadows in the mirror's murky background. It was late morning; not a morning on which Roger received visitors, but a few friends had called, and since he never liked to be alone for long, he allowed them in. He stood staring at himself seriously, the eyes of everyone else in the room riveted on him, as if the cut of his coat or the style of his wig were the most important thing in the world. And, at this moment, both were. He struck another pose before the mirror in a room that was one of the most luxurious in London.

   Ten years ago, he had lived in rented lodgings and on the largess of his latest mistress. Now, in his bedchamber alone, expensive silk imported from Lyons, the shade of a new daffodil stalk, lined the walls and the inside of heavy, oyster–colored draperies. Green and silver–threaded tassels tied back the draperies, which edged tall windows overlooking the most fashionable square in London, on which Roger had leased the largest house. Silver fringe hung like moss from the edges of all his chairs and stools; his writing cabinet, veneered in elm and ebony, boasted silver mounts, silver drawer pulls, and a silver ink pot. Even the fireplace tongs and shovels were of silver. Various opulent Italian landscape paintings, their colors dark and moody, hung from the walls on long velvet ties. Only three of the paintings were of people. One was a small portrait of King George; another was a portrait of Madame, Princess Elisabeth–Charlotte of Bavaria, sister–in–law of the dead French king Louis XIV, and one was a portrait of his grace, Richard, first Duke of Tamworth.

   A loud belch broke the silence. Everyone's eyes shifted to Robert Walpole, sitting on a fringed green velvet stool near the fireplace, wiping the last bits of a currant bun from his fingers onto his coat. Glazed sugar clung to his fat, cherubic face, a face punctuated by two heavy, dark eyebrows over intelligent eyes. At thirty–nine, Robert was leader in the House of Commons and first lord of the Treasury.

   "Was that an opinion?" asked Roger.

   Robert shook his head. Near him, in a chair with arms, dozed his brother Horatio, just as fat, but not as talented. Horatio was serving as minister to the United Netherlands because of his brother's influence. He opened one eye to look at Roger, then closed it again. Roger frowned at himself in the mirror. Both the wig maker and the tailor held their breaths, each hoping it was the other's merchandise he might be displeased with. Lord Devane was a style setter, and if he was satisfied, he would not only buy at least five wigs and order who knew how many coats, but everyone else in polite society would copy him.

   "Do not buy the wig," said John, Duke of Montagu, wearily. He was a tall man with drooping eyelids, and he stood on the other side of a shining walnut table that held silver trays of food: currant buns white with sugar, fluffy scones so fat they looked like sponges, and plump cheeses surrounded like castles by moats of hothouse grapes and oranges. Silver bowls held yellow–white butter, thick, fresh cream, shimmering strawberry and plum and apple jellies. Three silver urns served coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. But, unlike Robert Walpole, Montagu had not touched a bite. He and Roger had been up most of the night gambling in one of the private rooms at Pontac's, a fashionable tavern. Roger never drank heavily when he gambled, but Montagu did, and this morning he was paying for it. He was in Roger's town house because he had passed out in the middle of the last game, falling over on the table with a dead man's thud, and Roger had decided to bring him home to sleep in one of his spare bedchambers rather than send him off at dawn to face his wife.

   "Do not buy it," he repeated. "If you do, I must purchase one like it, and the style will not flatter me the way it does you."

   "My lord," the wig maker squeaked hurriedly, "I assure you it is the latest style from France. You are the first I have shown it to."

   "I know it is the latest style," Roger murmured. "But is it becoming?"

   "My dear one, you look wonderful, as you well know," drawled Tommy Carlyle, a raw-boned, hulking man with rouged cheeks and lips and a face powdered stark white. He sat in a chair pulled away from the others, his big hands folded on top of his cane, his eyes following every move Roger made. In his left ear was a large diamond earring. It was an affectation of his, and only one of the reasons that the other men in the room despised him. But Roger was amused by him and allowed him free access, almost like a lapdog, except that Carlyle was far too big and apt to bite.

"God's wounds!" Robert Walpole muttered. "He looks as if he could eat Roger whole!" Without opening his eyes, his brother grunted.

   Roger turned back to face the mirror, smiling at what he saw. Reflected was a man in his early forties, who passed for thirty–five, or, on a good day, even less, when he had had plenty of rest the night before. This morning, his face was puffy; the small sags along his jawline, the tiny wrinkles around his eyes were there in full force, but he was still an extraordinarily handsome man, his looks more striking, more refined than any of the other men in the room, even those who were far younger. Shorter than average, he was lean and spare like a boy, and his face was tanned and thin, with the high, pronounced cheekbones of an Italian Renaissance angel. His smile was unexpected, charming and wistful, possessing a quality that made women think he had suffered a tragedy they alone might be able to heal. That smile and his face had always been his life's good luck charms, charms he needed, for he was the younger son in a family that had lost everything in the civil wars, as had so many families. But while his older brothers were content to farm the land and marry in obscurity, he had more ambition. He somehow cajoled the money from them to buy a position in the army, and once there, his smile, his face, a very definite grace of manner and his bravery, had done the rest. He always knew the right thing to do, whether it was to lead a surprise attack against an enemy's flank or charm the wife of a general at a tea party.

   Attached to the staff of the Duke of Tamworth, he might have been content to remain there forever, except that his thirties crept up on him, and in the mirror were lines that would only deepen, and in his heart were things he could not explain, and so he left Queen Anne's England and the constant bickering between the men surrounding the ill queen, men jockeying for power and using the army and war in Europe as their battlefield. He went across the sea to Hanover. Proximity to the next heirs to the English throne might provide him opportunities that England itself could not. The duke had written letters of recommendation. His charm and face and personal courage, and his luck, did the rest. When he heard of Robert Harley's idea to create the South Sea Company in 1710, a firm to be allowed the monopoly of South Seas trade in exchange for taking over part of the public debt, he immediately sold or pawned everything he owned or could borrow from friends, relatives, acquaintances, and willing women, sailed to London, and invested every penny into that stock—every penny and every prayer to God that it would succeed.

   His hunch paid off a thousandfold (he was one of the first on the huge, speculative wave of credit foaming over England and Europe). It paid off just as his leaving England for Hanover had a few years before. Money seemed to fall into the very pockets that had once been empty, and his relationship to the future king broadened all his horizons. Now he was considered a fortunate man; no one remembered those years when he had simply been another young officer living off his face and wits. Everyone wanted some of that good fortune. Merchants, tailors, government officials, petitioners, impoverished poets, poor relations, gossipmongers and friends crowded his downstairs hall every Thursday when he held his official morning reception, each hoping to be bid past the ornate public rooms into his even more ornate private rooms, until finally, like pilgrims reaching their shrine, they entered his bedchamber, a paean to his taste and power and ability to indulge both.

   Among them was Diana, lovely, drooping, an old friend in need, an instinctive judge of people whom she could use. The idea of developing Bentwoodes, first seen on a morning horseback ride with Diana, who had been weeping with fear because Kit had just fled the country, at first intrigued him, then began slowly to obsess him. He would found a great family, symbolized by a house and square that would astonish London with its beauty (his years in Europe and particularly in France had heightened a natural eye for beauty of form and line). And the idea of a young, fecund wife who could give him sons to carry on his wealth and title did not displease him. It was time he married, and a young wife would not expect him to remold himself for her benefit; rather she would change for his.

   He remembered Barbara only as an engaging, talkative, long–legged ragtail of a girl, with glorious red–gold hair rioting all over her head, her blue eyes—her grandfather's eyes—following him whenever he moved. She had had a fondness for him. He knew that, and it had both amused and touched him. The last time he had seen her was some five years ago at Richard's funeral, not that he could remember her. He remembered only the black, terrible grief that had consumed him, lingering for too long afterward, a darkness coloring all he said and did and achieved. It was as if he had seen the burial of his youth, his ideals, with Richard's body, and he had begun an affair out of that feeling—and the darkness—an affair that opened depths within that exhilarated him beyond all he had known but the immediacy of the battlefield, when all issues in life crystallize at one point, that of survival. He felt destroyed inside when the affair ended, felt burned to ashes, felt old for the first time. He needed Bentwoodes, its concept, its symbolism, its connection to Richard and to his young self, to fill the empty place inside.

   Ironically, he was at the apex of his life, rich beyond what he had ever imagined; courted by one and all; handsomer for all his wrinkles than when he had been a fresh–faced youth. Diana did not know all of his feelings; she did know that in spite of his wealth and power, he was vulnerable. And she intended to use him. And, for his own reasons, he intended to let her.

   "Are you going to buy it?" repeated Montagu.

   Roger's smile faded to a frown. The wig maker began to murmur to himself, almost as if he were praying.

   "I am afraid," Roger said slowly, pausing for dramatic effect—small beads of sweat broke out on the wig maker's forehead—"I shall have to take it." The relief on the wig maker's face was so obvious that Robert Walpole choked on a biscuit, and even Carlyle allowed himself a pointed smile. Montagu walked around the table and pounded Robert on the back. Walpole's choking laughter woke his brother up.

   "What did he buy now?" Horatio asked immediately, his wig slipping off to one side. Robert went off into another bellow, unencumbered this time by the biscuit.

   "You need not worry about it, Horatio," Carlyle answered in his biting, effeminate way. "Nothing you wear can help."

   "I shall order four more," said Roger. "Two of brown, one of black and one of blond."

   "You will look superb in blond," drawled Carlyle, holding up an eyepiece connected to his smooth, swansdown waistcoat by a twisted gold chain. "Yes, I see you in blond."

   Montagu groaned out loud. Carlyle turned the eyepiece toward him slowly, like a bear who had been diverted from the catch in hand to another more tempting.

   "You must buy one, too, Monty," he said. "It will make you look more— how should I express it—theatrical, perhaps? A good thing, too." He touched his red lips with a filmy handkerchief.

   Montagu flushed. Robert Walpole put down the jam scone he had begun. Roger bit his lip. Everyone knew Montagu's latest mistress, an opera dancer, had run off with an actor from the Haymarket Theatre, but no one, except Carlyle, had the impoliteness to refer to it. Horatio, who did most things slowly, stepped into the awkwardness of the moment with a sudden loud question about Montagu's father–in–law, the Duke of Marlborough, who was ill. Montagu slowly unlocked his eyes from Carlyle to answer the question, and conversation turned naturally to the duke's illness and to his quarrelsome wife's arguments with her daughters. Carlyle sat back, quiet for the moment, content with the tension he had been able to create. Roger took no part in the conversation, which ambled from the duchess's quarreling ways to the duke's winning ones, for Marlborough was one of England's great military heroes. He pulled the new wig from his head and ran his fingers through his own short– cropped silver–blond hair. He consulted with his valet about which wig he would wear today, and once or twice his eyes strayed to the portrait of the Duke of Tamworth. But no one, except Carlyle, noticed. They were too interested in Montagu's family gossip.

   A door set in the far wall opened, and two young men walked over to Roger, who was intently watching his valet adjust on his head a short wig tied with a black ribbon at the back. Both men waited quietly and respectfully. One of them was Francis Montrose, who served as Roger's secretary. He was neat and slim with an earnest, round face. The other was Caesar White, an ordinary–looking man except that his left arm was deformed. It stopped just below the elbow, from which grew a tiny, useless hand. White was a poet, serving as Roger's clerk of the library so that he would not starve to death before he finished his third volume of poems (which would, naturally, be dedicated to Roger). Carlyle's gaze ran over both men, and then returned to Montrose.

   "Where do you find them?" he murmured. Both the young men ignored him. They were accustomed to Carlyle; they were accustomed to the way Carlyle looked at Roger, and other men. If Roger did not mind, why should they?

   "The Duke of Bedford and Sir Christopher Wren are both here, sir," Montrose said.

   Roger clapped his hand to his head. "I completely forgot about Bedford. We will have to delay him, Francis. Tell him…" He paused, tapping a finger against his lips. He grinned suddenly, and Montrose, a serious–minded young man, could not help grinning back. "Tell him I am undecided—it is true, Francis, I swear it—and that I have stupidly made another appointment, which I will cut short for his convenience. Meanwhile, send Sir Christopher to the red withdrawing room, and have him wait for me. Give him some wine, women, whatever he wishes. I will see him immediately and change our expedition to another day. Then, if these gentlemen will go home, where they belong"—he bowed to his friends, who had stopped talking to listen to his business—"you may allow Bedford in here to wait for me. He can view the painting again; it will whet his appetite, not that I intend to sell. I will join him as soon as I can politely leave Sir Christopher. There, Francis. I have solved all your problems. Whatever do I pay you for?"