Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (76 page)

   "Dear me, no," she said, and her voice was cutting. "He was amusing….for a while. You are a sweet dear to worry over me." Now go away, Mary, before I begin screaming and do not stop.

   Mary leaned forward and hugged her. Her blue–gray eyes, clear and limpid like Tony's, gazed into Barbara's. "I had to know. I love you. Be well, Bab. Please."

   I will not cry, Barbara thought, as the carriage jumped forward. I will not.

* * *

   Carlyle, in the Richmond Lodge stable yard waiting for a groom to bring his horse, looked up and saw Roger, about to mount a horse, sag suddenly against its side. He broke into a run, all affectation gone, to reach Roger and take him by the arm.

   "Roger! What is it? Are you ill? Where is your carriage?"

Roger raised his face. It was drained of color, and the sight of it frightened Carlyle.

   "Barbara…has it," he said slowly, as if speaking each word hurt. "I am fine. I–I felt a small pain."

   "Let me call another carriage for you. You sit there on the steps, and I will—"

   "No. Tommy. I will be fine. I…I am feeling better already." With an effort, and to Carlyle's horror, he hoisted himself into the saddle. His face was pale, and there was a sheen of perspiration suddenly all across it.

   "I…must be getting old," he said, looking down at Carlyle.

   "Not you," Carlyle said quickly. "Never you. Roger, go home and rest. Promise me."

   Roger smiled. The smile was a grimace. "I will." Carlyle shivered and stared after him until someone cursed at him angrily to move out of the middle of the stable yard.

* * *

   The carriage lurched crazily over the dried mud ruts on the road to Tamworth. Barbara was silent in a corner, her feet tucked under her, both dogs asleep in her lap. Hyacinthe rode outside with the coachman, and Thérèse, sitting opposite, understood her mood and said nothing. They would have to stop in another hour or so at a tavern to spend the night; they had gotten away from Richmond too late to reach Tamworth until tomorrow afternoon. Barbara leaned her head against the corner of the seat and carriage side. How weary I am, she thought. Bits and pieces of the day kept flashing in her head: the expression on the Frog's face as he watched her advance with Roger; the way she felt when she walked into her parlor and saw Roger this morning; the brief glimpse she had caught of Charles's face; the way her heart hurt at the mere sight of Philippe, the ugly memories his presence ignited; Mary's question…we deserved to end so much better than we did, she thought…oh, Charles. And then there was the numbing fact of Jemmy's death. His death haunted her, perching on her shoulder like a black crow. He was so young…

   "Hello, stop! Stop the carriage!"

   The words penetrated her thoughts. Thérèse was leaning out the window.

   "Three men," she said tersely. "On horseback. One of them is trying to stop the carriage."

   Barbara began to jerk off rings and bracelets, looking for a place to hide them. She slipped a ring down the front of her gown.

   "Not there!" cried Thérèse. "Your shoe. Put them in your shoe—"

   And then both of them looked at each other and said, "Hyacinthe!" at the same time. If John should fire off his pistol, if the highwaymen should have firearms—Barbara pushed the dogs from her lap. Thérèse was already half out of the window. Barbara moved across the seat to hold her waist and legs to steady her. She saw a horse and rider go by. The carriage began to slow down. It stopped. Thérèse fell back into the carriage. Her face was white and pinched about the nostrils. Hyacinthe leaned over, his head upside down in the window. He grinned at them.

   "Lord Charles," he said. "It is Lord Charles."

   Barbara wrenched open the door and stepped out into the dirt of the road. One rider had the reins of the carriage horses. Another two were just riding up. She recognized Charles immediately.

   "How dare you stop my carriage in this way!" she yelled at him, fright making her shrill. "You are fortunate John did not blow your head off!"

   Charles leaned down toward her, his face strained, a smear of dirt across one thin cheek.

   "Listen to me. I have to speak with you. We cannot leave things as they are."

   "There is nothing left for us to say—"

   Her words ended in a gasp, for he put one arm around her waist, and with her dangling like a sack of meal, trotted away toward a small copse of oak trees. The horse's gait, the way Charles's arm clasped her waist, knocked the breath from her.

   She almost fell down when he let her go. He dismounted and tried to take her in his arms. She stepped back.

   "Forgive me," he said, and his wide, sensual, beautiful mouth was so grim it was a thin line, but not any grimmer than the expression in his eyes. "Say you forgive me."

   "You killed him—"

   "God, Barbara, do you think anything else has been on my mind since the moment I saw him fall? Do you think I have no feelings at all? I have to live with the knowledge of what I have done for the rest of my life. But I cannot live knowing you hate me."

   "Oh, Charles, I do not hate you."

   He took a step toward her, but she turned and leaned into a thick tree trunk, her cheek against the rough bark.

   "How could you do it, not only to Jemmy, but to me?" she said, and her voice was trembling. "Can you not see? It is over."

   "I will not believe that," he said quickly. "We both have much to regret. But we can change, Barbara. If we only try…"

   He put his arms around her. She did not lean back into him, as once she would have done, but she did not pull away either. He rested his chin on the top of her head as he spoke softly, gently, persuasively.

   "I love you. I love you in a way that frightens me. I could not stand the idea that another man had touched you. I was wrong. Drunk and crazed. Never have I humbled myself as I am doing now. Say you forgive me, Barbara. Say you love me. I need to hear the words."

   She turned around and looked up at him. His eyes searched her face. It is too late, she was thinking. I do care for you. But there has always been Roger between us, though you did not know….there is so much you do not know, Charles, and now there is Jemmy, and the hurt and shame there is so deep atop too many other hurts.…It is too late for us. Oh, God, I am no different from Roger, allowing you to love me that way he allowed me. Oh, God….

   "There is someone else," she said slowly, her face white, as if all the blood had drained from it. "There has always been someone else—"

   He stepped back, the angles of his face changing, so that for a second, she might have been facing Roger. But he was not Roger. He never would be.

   "What a fool I am," he said, moving now toward her, anger, more than anger in his face. "I am nothing to you. Nothing at all. Goddamn you—"

   She stepped back at the expression on his face, but the tree trunk was behind her, and he was before her, shaking her shoulders savagely.

   "I may have to live with killing him, but you have to live with his lovemaking and what that makes you! Go on! Run away to wherever it is you are going, and when enough time has passed, crawl back to the safety of that husband of yours, if that is what you plan, for it is certainly what he plans! But you will miss me, and by God in heaven, you will need me! Because I am young, like you. And he is old, and I love you. As much as—or more than—he does. And I am the better man….God, I would like to strangle you!"

   He let go of her contemptuously, and she almost fell. He looked down at her.

   "All summer you have been playing a dangerous game, Barbara. Yes, you hate me at this moment for saying the truth. Well, I could not keep myself from loving you in spite of it, which only makes me a fool. But what does this summer make you?"

   His words were flames in her mind, crackling and burning, and too close to truth to be borne. She wanted to kill him for saying them. She had run away from Richelieu not to become so and yet here she was and there was the gleam of Philippe's white, even teeth as he smiled at what was achieved, slowly but surely, if one only waited long enough. She grabbed Charles's cloak and twisted it in her hand, pulling him to her, surprising him with her surge of angry strength.

   "In my life, I have known only four men, and one of them just died for it, and perhaps that does make me a whore, but I don't think so. And I mean to be so much else! You will never know all I mean to be! And Roger, for all you despise him, would never have killed a boy, no matter what I had done! Which makes him the better of us both! You will never be the man he is, not if you live a thousand years! And I will never love you the way I once loved him!"

   She dropped the cloak, panting, and Charles stared at her, and all that was in his face hurt her. But she could not stop. Not now. The anger and despair and his words were all too much.

   "You go away," she told him. "You go far away and marry, as your mother keeps urging you! Some sweet, docile girl who has no fears and hurts and so can never disappoint you as I have done! You are right in one thing, Charles! I hate you for saying the truth! And I always will!"

   Her words carried clearly. The men who had come with Charles looked down at the ground, and Thérèse put her hand to her mouth and accidentally leaned against the carriage door so that it opened, and Harry and Charlotte went leaping out, yapping and barking, straight to their mistress. They sniffed Charles's legs, and even though he was familiar to them, they growled at him. He kicked at them.

   "Goddamn you!" screamed Barbara. "You leave my dogs alone!"

   He turned and walked away. She knelt down and gathered Harry and Charlotte into her lap. They whined and licked her face.

   "Good dogs," she whispered. "Good dogs."

   She wiped her face. She was crying. Damn him.

Chapter Twenty–Four

The Duchess was inspecting her beehives, or rather, she was watching her doddering beekeeper (as old, as ancient as she was) inspect the hives, sheltered in specially built sections of a garden wall constructed in her great– grandfather's time. The spring had been cold, and she and the beekeeper had used tried and true methods to keep the bees thriving. They had fed them honey boiled in rosemary in little wooden troughs put near the hives; they had fed them toast soaked in ale; she had ordered more thyme and lavender planted nearby—although there was already an ancient wisteria vine that had attracted them years ago—and lamb's ears and soapwort and Queen Anne's lace and mint and violets, surely more than enough to tempt any capricious bee's driven little heart. But the queen was new and the Duchess and her beekeeper wanted to ensure that the colony expanded itself properly and continued to make sweet, mint–flavored honey, a Tamworth specialty.

   The bees were her new interest, an interest necessary these last years. She had Tony to keep her going, and he had, especially when Barbara had not returned amid such terrible, wild rumors reaching them from France and Hanover. But Tony was a man, and to protect that manhood, the Duchess pushed him to depend on no one, herself least of all. And so, she had her bees. It ought to have been Barbara. Any fool with one eye in her head could see she was not well when she appeared this spring, but Barbara was a woman now and bent on her own way. Something had happened to her in Paris, but had she come home, home to Tamworth where she belonged and where the Duchess could have nursed and cared for her? No. She had racketed about the city of Paris with some rascal called the Duc de Richelieu and earned herself quite a reputation in the bargain. And a year later, she had handled her father's death and burial and sending of the body home by herself, without so much as a word to the family, other than a terse letter informing them of the death. And still she stayed away. And so the Duchess busied herself with her bees, demanding, exacting little creatures, temperamental, apt to move their hive if it became too crowded or the herbs and flowers nearby did not suit them. They had to be treated carefully, fed their special diet in a cold spring. Bees would not thrive if they were quarreled over; they had to be informed when a death in the family occurred. They were nervous, busy creatures who would sting you in a second if you disturbed them improperly, even though it meant their own death.

   Lately, death had been much on her mind. All the deaths—Kit's, Richard's sister Elizabeth's, Cousin Henley's, her own. For it was coming. She had lived far past her prime; she was a doddering, nearly toothless old hag. She never knew when her legs would fail her and she would have to be helped about by a footman, like a cripple. (Now, for example, at a discreet distance, was the latest in a series of footmen Annie assigned to watch over her. She hated it, but her body was failing her more and more, and there seemed to be nothing she could do. She was a prisoner inside it. Some mornings she woke and felt young again, but then, as she struggled out of bed, she knew the truth. She was very old.) It was time to let go and fade away. No one needed her anymore, and that was the plain, simple truth of it. She had outlived her usefulness. Just the other day, she had been discussing it with Richard, which was another sign of her old age. She talked out loud to him now and did not care a sixpence who heard her.

   Richard, she had said, sitting beside his marble tomb, I am thinking of joining you. All the children are gone, and Barbara and Harry and Tony— and God knows, Diana—do not need me, and I am old and my legs always hurt and sometimes I cannot walk. And even your memory is growing dim, my love, and I thought that would never happen. Never. I want to be with you and the boys. I am tired of bees. And then she told him the latest scandal about their granddaughter, described in lurid detail in a recent letter from Abigail. (The footman, over in a corner out of her way—she hated to be reminded visibly of her infirmities—had averted his head at the sight of tears slowly trickling down the Duchess's old, wrinkled face.)

   Leaning heavily on her cane, the Duchess walked slowly away from the garden wall toward Richard's rose garden. The beekeeper, who had been in the middle of explaining when he would take the honey, exchanged a glance with the footman. More and more, the Duchess's mind seemed to wander. She would be talking, or listening, and without warning she would drift off. But woe to the person who dared correct her. She came back with startling, killing suddenness.

   The rosebushes are glorious now, she thought, in their last season of blooming, their litter of falling petals only one reminder of the end of summer. Yes, already August was on the wane, and autumn was coming. She could feel it in her bones; she could see it around her. The sun set a little earlier in the evenings, and in the mornings sometimes a mist rose from the stream trickling in the woods. Many of the birds were gone—she missed their shrill, sweet songs—and the ferns in the woods were beginning to show new splotches of russet color among their fans of green. She took a deep breath of rose–scented air. Autumn, around the corner, was a good time. A busy time. Idle hands were the Devil's plaything, as was an idle mind. She would have no time for idleness; there would be all the harvesting to oversee. Where now there was a sea of green stalks bursting with golden heads of fat wheat, there would soon be nothing but blackened stubble. Then came the picking of plums and pears and apples, and the frantic making of jellies and jams and preserves. Her stillroom would be worse than any beehive, as Annie and she and helpers mixed potpourris and made rose brandies and lemon drops and strawberries in wine and cordials for fever and pearl in the eye and coughs and agues. Candles and soap had to be made, ale brewed, hogs slaughtered, all before winter. Before the time of hibernation. Of rest. Of death. Well, she would savor each small thing this autumn, the ripe darkness of a gooseberry, the high squeals of dying hogs, the smell of hive wax and bayberry essence in candles, the distilled perfection of drying rosebuds. Each detail would be sweet. Bittersweet. As life so often was.

   Ahead of her, a small, fluffy white kitten cleaned herself on the broad flagstone steps of the terrace. The new Dulcinea. The old one had gone into a decline after her last litter, of which this new kitten was the Duchess's choice to continue the cycle. She had outlasted even her ancient cat. She sighed and hobbled her way up the steps. Time to ascertain if there was enough in the pantries for the coming harvest supper, when the last of the corn was harvested, and laborers and tenants and farmers and all of Tamworth celebrated with a huge supper on the lawns, a tradition that went back to the beginnings of Tamworth itself. Richard would want plenty of good ale for the workers, and Giles would not yet be off to school and could help her….No. Richard was dead. A long time dead. And Giles. She knew that. She knew it as well as she knew her own name, yet sometimes the past was more real to her than the present. Dulcinea leapt up as she passed by and batted at her long skirt.

   "Bah!" she said. "You will never match your mother."

   "Your grace!"

   It was Annie calling. Annie, and her butler, Perryman, ancient enemies over household precedence, had formed an unholy and uneasy alliance these last years to watch over her. Annie was a fretful old hen, always clucking. And Perryman was a great fool without the bells on his cap. The Duchess scowled at the sound of Annie's voice. She would be wanting her to rest, which was exactly what the Duchess had in mind, but she did not like to be reminded of it. The footman assigned to follow her, a big, bold young man with a round, merry face and an impudent smile in spite of broken front teeth, suppressed a smile at the expression on her face.

   "You!"

   She had turned on him, with startling suddenness for such an old woman, and was glaring at him. He stiffened.

   "You, there. Jim! Or is it John?"

   "Tim, madame."

   "Tim, is it? Well, you just go tell Annie where I am before she bellows the house down. Go on. Do as I say. I am not liable to fall down these steps, and if I do, I daresay I will he healed in a month or so. What did you say your name was?"

   "Tim, madame."

   "What happened to John?"

   "Ah, John was…needed in another part of the house, madame."

   "Could not put up with me, could he? You, Jim, go on now—"

   "Tim, madame."

   "I know. Do not keep interrupting me, boy! Go and do as I say. I do not have all day to talk with footmen!"

   She sat down on one of the stone benches and Dulcinea jumped up in her lap and rolled on her back and began to bat at her hands. The Duchess scratched her belly. You are already fat, she thought. You will be fatter than your mother. Poor Dulcinea. It was the last litter that killed her, for she was too old to be bearing kittens, but she always got an itch at the cry of a tomcat. I hope you are going to be the proud, selfish, immoral hussy your mother was, the Duchess thought, looking down at the white bundle of fur which had wrapped herself around her hand. What a shame I will not live long enough to see you in your prime. Well, Tony will take you. Tony is a good, dear boy who comes to see me often and lies and says how Barbara is always asking after me when I know Barbara never gives me one thought anymore. What happened in Paris? And was it my fault, Dulcinea? Was it?

   Annie, thinner, browner, bossier than ever, came outside to the terrace. Too bossy. But the Duchess had not the strength these days to deal with insubordination. Emotion tired her. Anger tired her. Sweet Jesus, getting out of bed in the morning tired her! What would happen to Annie when she died? Who would have an irritable, thin old brown stick who knew every charm in the east of England and could recite the recipes for half the Duchess's concoctions by heart? Well, doubtless Tony would see after her, too. I only hope that little actress is making him happy, thought the Duchess, giving a grim chuckle. (Her sister–in–law Louisa had written her that gossip and she had gone off in a choking fit of laughter that nearly killed her.)

   "It is from Barbara," Annie repeated impatiently.

   She ought to be more patient, thought the Duchess. I am old. Then the sense of the words penetrated. She held out her claw of a hand and ripped past the seal. Dulcinea batted at the single sheet of parchment.

Dearest Grandmama,

Doubtless you already know the news of my latest scandal, but

what you do not know is that I am coming to you. The thought was

there before the scandal. Look for me the day after this letter.

Your loving granddaughter,

Barbara, Countess Devane

   Annie glanced at the Duchess's face, which was without expression.

   "Help her to her bedchamber," she ordered Tim, the footman.

   Tim put his hand on the Duchess's bony elbow.

   "Bah!" she snapped, slapping at him. "Take your hands off me. I am no cripple!"

   Startled, he stepped back.

   She stood up. Without a word, she hobbled into the house, Dulcinea following.

   "I knew the letter would cheer her up," Annie said.

* * *

   Housemaids were bustling and had been since early morning, cleaning and polishing places already cleaned and polished, but Mistress Barbara was expected today, said Annie, and her grace was in a demanding mood. Windows in the late duke's bedchamber were opened to air out the room. For the first time since his death, it was going to be used. For Mistress Barbara. The Duchess had been in the gardens all morning, ruthlessly ordering the cutting of roses and snapdragons and pinks and dahlias. Stableboys were sent to the woods to gather gillyflowers and harebells and ferns. Every room still used had its vase of flowers with trailing tendrils of dark green ivy down its sides.

   A dinner had been in preparation since before dawn: a great roast beef and spinach tarts and patties of calf brains and a fricassee of rabbit and a salad of radishes and lettuce and boiled summer peas. And as a special treat, a gooseberry–apple pie, as big as a wagon wheel, with preserved flowers sprinkled across its crust. Even now Perryman and one footman sensible enough to handle the responsibility were mixing Tamworth punch, peeling the lemons, stirring the sugar and brandy and rum, arguing over the amount of nutmeg and gin. "Not that she deserves a bit of this," the Duchess could be heard to mutter on and off throughout the morning, as she was everywhere, in the garden, the kitchen, the great hall, the duke's bedchamber, her keen eye on every item, while Dulcinea curled in the crook of her arm and she leaned on Tim.

   She rested at noon, refused any luncheon. and allowed Annie to dress her in her second–best gown and place a black lace cap on her head. Now she sat in a parlor off the great hall that overlooked the avenue of lime trees Barbara's carriage would drive down. Her hands clasped and reclasped the golden head of her cane, as Dulcinea dozed on and off in her lap and played with the lace on her sleeves (and got slapped for her mischief). Young house servants tiptoed past the open door, whispering and pointing at her solitary, motionless figure gazing out the windows until she told Tim irritably to close the door.

   Sometime in midafternoon, a young stableboy came running down the avenue, leaping barefooted across the gravel in the courtyard to dive into a side door of the house, startling both Perryman and Annie, drinking tea in the servants' hall.

   "It is her! It is her! I saw the carriage!"

   Perryman rose majestically. "Very good. I will inform her grace—"

   Annie glared at him. The rivalry between them was as ancient and fierce as that of any savage tribe. "I am her tirewoman, and I will do the informing. Her system must have no shocks to it."

   "She has the constitution of a rock, and my news can hardly be a shock since Lady Devane is expected. I have been in this household since the Duchess became a duchess. My father served hers! I believe I know my responsibilities."