Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  “Good evening, Sir John.”

  In the hall, Sir John found he was breathing far too hard, his heart pounding, aching, a literal ache that made him think he would not be able to walk down the stairs and outside the house without fainting. He could feel grief and shame blocking his chest.

  Out of his loyalty to the Tamworth family, he had abstained from voting when Lord Devane’s part in the scandals came up from committee. He had had every intention of returning the funds to Alice. Only desperation had made him take them in the first place. She never looked at the accounts, left the money untouched sometimes for years because she had no need of it. He had not quite been able to catch up his affairs since the Bubble; nagging debts remained, and he had let more time than he realized slip by. All his life he had served—

  Stop this, he told himself.

  The world had changed. It belonged to the London moneymen and their clerks, who schemed bubbles and took honest men’s coin and found themselves favored for it, like Andreas downstairs. It belonged to vain young dukes who squandered their fathers’ patrimonies and know no love of the land and no decency, like Wharton. It belonged to churchmen who dealt in policy rather than God, not to old squires like him. It belonged to Whigs, the more venial the better. As Robert Walpole bragged, every man has his price.

  Go on home, Sir John said to himself, as quietly as you can. He managed to walk down the stairs, even though the shame at what had occurred was like hot stones in his chest. The doors to the great parlor were mercifully closed; he would not have to see that company again.

  One of the footmen standing in the large hall followed him to the front entrance doors. “Her Grace, the Duchess, asked that you join her upstairs.”

  “No, I am unable—tell Her Grace how sorry—”

  He had just enough sense about him to give the footman a coin for Christmas, as the fellow put a parcel in his arms. That parcel for Jane, from Barbara. Barbara and Jane had grown to womanhood together in the orchards of Tamworth and Ladybeth. Why, Harry might have married Jane, had Diana not needed a better match to cover the funds she had squandered in her misspent life. The Lord above knew Diana was on her knees at that time, and a squire’s daughter would not have been too low a match. How proud he had been of his years serving Tamworth. He’d seen a road put through, gotten funds for refurbishing the church, helped this or that family find places for extra sons in the army or navy. In one hand was the crumpled-up paper on which he’d written out the note pledging Ladybeth, his home, his life, to repay the money.

  “Give this to His Grace,” he managed to say.

  Outside Saylor House, it was raining, but Sir John walked unseeing toward the lodging he kept in London and where his horse awaited him. He found he was weeping as he walked, weeping as if his heart was broken; and, truth be told, it was.

  AT A knock on the door, Tony started and put down the tomahawk, whose handle he had been so absently caressing.

  “Come in.”

  In came Tim, carrying the Duchess, who still wore the headdress that had arrived this afternoon from Barbara. Does she intend to wear that to the wedding? thought Tony.

  “Wait outside,” the Duchess said to Tim, and to Tony: “What’s this?”

  In her hand was a piece of paper, which had been crumpled. Smoothing it out, Tony read the words, “I, John Ashford, do pledge to the Duke of Tamworth…”

  “How did you come by this?” He rubbed at the pulse in his temple.

  “Why do you rub your forehead? Your debauch last night?”

  Tony had a vague memory of inviting the actor Laurence Slane to his wedding. Had he done so?

  “It says that he pledges his farm to you. What has happened? I can see in your face that something has occurred. He didn’t come upstairs to say good-bye to me before he left. That is not like him. Have you quarreled? I’ve been meaning to talk with you about him, but there hasn’t seemed to be the time. He has been the member from Tamworth since before you were born, and—”

  “Sir John, and I say this with all respect to him, won’t do. He agrees with me—”

  “Won’t do? What on earth are you talking about?”

  “This is not something for you to involve yourself in, Grandmama. Trust me in my—”

  “To whom do you think you are speaking? I know more about policy and intrigue than half the men downstairs. I wish Sir John to continue as Tamworth’s member of the House of Commons.”

  Tony turned away. “I am sorry, Grandmama. That is not possible.”

  The Duchess pursed her lips. “Tell Tim to come and fetch me.”

  She saw Tony glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Yes, I am taking it well, she thought, because I have no intention of allowing it.

  In her bedchamber, she was full of orders. “Go out on the street and hire a carriage,” she told Tim. “Find my warmest cloak,” she told Annie.

  “There’s a wedding at nine. Where are you going?”

  “Never mind that. Give this to Tony.”

  And when Annie didn’t move, only stared at the letter: “Go on.”

  “He’s the best of those before him.”

  Were those tears in Annie’s eyes? The Duchess set her mouth stubbornly.

  “The servants adore him, cannot say enough good things about him. When all is said and done, he’s the best.”

  “Do as I say. What’s that?”

  “Another New Year’s gift for you.”

  “Open it.”

  It was a scratchback, wonderfully made, of chased silver, resembling a cane in its length, but with a slender ivory hand at one end, and, if she wasn’t mistaken, a ring upon a finger of that hand. It was a wonderful gift, extravagant, and handy for reaching those itching places one could not reach when wearing a tight gown and stays.

  “Who gives it to me?”

  “Tommy Carlyle.”

  That rouged spider. Why? Never mind. Here was Tim.

  TONY STARED down at the map in front of him. It was Sir Gideon Andreas who had told him to look to his estates, who warned that bailiffs and stewards left unchecked while young heirs grew to manhood soon developed fingers to which many coins stuck. I have seen it time after time, Andreas said. It was Andreas who knew Sir John Ashford had been bitten deeply by the South Sea, and who had told Tony of it.

  And it was Andreas who was buying land all around Devane Square, as quickly and as quietly as he could.

  At the sound of another knock on the door, Tony expected Tim and his grandmother, but Annie whirled in like a dervish, handed him a letter, and tried to whirl out again before he could speak.

  “Wait,” he said. “What is this?”

  Annie didn’t answer for a moment.

  “Lady Devane’s letter,” she finally said, and her mouth was grim.

  Blood pulsed strong from head to heart, heart to head. Barbara’s letter had come today. The moment he’d seen it, he had felt as if it were June, and she was freshly gone.

  “Why does she give this to me? It is my wedding day.”

  Annie compressed her lips.

  “To be kind, or to hurt me? You know, Annie.”

  “I know nothing, Your Grace.”

  DIANA MOANED. The carriage lurched, and she moaned louder and shifted backward. She pushed aside her cloak impatiently, pulled down the front of her gown, that crimson gown whose top was so low that no man could keep from staring.

  She brought Charles’s head to her breasts and closed her eyes. The inside of the carriage was dark, and cold in spite of fur cloaks and carriage blankets. Charles made an impatient movement, as if he would throw her down to the seat opposite, but she stopped him. She was sitting in his lap, facing him. Legs braced against the seat opposite, he had his hands on her bare hips under bunched folds of gown and petticoat.

  “I can’t, cannot think,” Charles said.

  She leaned into him. Her breasts were at his mouth. He tasted the nipple of one, a diamond in her necklace sharp against his cheek. He kneaded the soft flesh
of her hips as she pushed against him…. Ah, the pressure…ah, the feeling…the sway of the carriage, the cold, the ways they were dressed but undressed—

  “Soon.” Her tongue flicked a moment in his ear. “Oh, Charles…” She put her arms around his neck and the carriage lurched and swayed. They were on their way to who knew where, the coachman had simply been ordered to drive. The insanity of what they were doing made him insatiable. The pleasure was hurtful, it was so exquisite it was unbearable, and then—sharply, suddenly—over.

  He sat there, watching her. He felt unable to move, but she was pushing herself back into her gown, straightening her jewels, touching her hair, pinning it back with its diamond pins. She pulled up her skirts to retie a garter. He wished he could see her face more clearly, but the shadows were too great. God, he felt so cold suddenly. As cold as ice. She pulled the edges of his cloak together and covered him with a carriage robe.

  “You called out Barbara’s name,” she said. “Never mind. I am getting out now. Don’t be late for the wedding. Are you listening, Charles? Charles!”

  “Yes.”

  The carriage stopped, and she opened the door and was gone.

  He lay back against the leather seat, shivering inside his cloak. He would have the carriage go back to his room in the city, near St. Paul’s Cathedral, where he could wash off her rouge and change into another shirt and think about what had just occurred.

  THE ROOM was cold. Freezing. Charles’s hands shook as he lit a candle. He took the time to light a fire, knelt before the fireplace, holding out his hands to the small flames, willing the fire to grow before he died of cold. Parts of the fire were yellow-red, and he was reminded, sharply, of Barbara’s hair in certain lights. He found another shirt and changed into it, shivering and cursing. Standing before the mirror, he stared at himself, rubbing at his face with the first shirt long after any trace of rouge was gone. You have a deceiving face, sir, Barbara had said in one of their quarrels.

  He knelt before the fire again, holding his hands out for a last bit of warmth before he braved the street to find another carriage. What a jest it would be if he died from the cold, after a bout in a carriage with the most surprising whore he had ever had.

  Diana, he thought, lingering over her name. Diana. What am I going to do?

  But he knew what he would do. See her again, and again, until every lustful thought she conjured up was burned away in the ashes of coupling. Why not? She’d begun it. It was she who had touched him not an hour after arriving at Saylor House today, she who’d suggested they rendezvous in the carriage. A treat before the wedding. Are you hungry for a treat, Charles? Was this her heartbreak over there being no letter to her from Barbara? God.

  This was the lodging where he brought women—whores, ladies of court, merchants’ wives, the dancer or singer from the opera, whoever took his eye. Most men he knew had something like it. She said he had called Barbara’s name.

  The first time Barbara had walked through that door, she had been flippant and irritable and nervous, almost as if she were a virgin, rather than what her reputation said. She had been stiff in his arms; it had taken him a while to warm her, but the warming was a pleasure. What a strange affair they’d had; he never felt he knew her, except in a carnal sense, but he had loved her.

  It was her habit to sit up in bed afterward, chin on her knees, talking to him of anything and everything, shops and hats and Harry’s debts, what her dogs or Hyacinthe had done. He had sometimes felt an odd pang in the region of his chest, listening to her, feeling closer to her then, after the act of coupling, than when in its middle. He had liked Barbara in the way he liked his friends, and he had trusted her. Oddly enough, he still did, in spite of all that had happened between them. Someone, Tommy Carlyle perhaps, had said that the Prince’s mistress, Mrs. Howard, in a drunken mood had confessed to having known both passion and love, but tenderness, Mrs. Howard was reputed to have said, tenderness is best.

  Charles stood. He had taken Tony’s friendship for granted; only its absence made him aware how deeply he cared that all was changed between them now, since the duel. If you don’t fight him, I will, Charles had said, and so Tony had killed a man; that death had changed him, and remained in those grave eyes. If you looked closely enough, you could see it. You’re a dangerous friend, Charles, Wart had said. It took one to know one.

  The New Year was here. “Wassail!” they would say tonight, holding up goblets. To health and happiness. To triumph. To invasion. How he and Wart had laughed, that a great and noble Whig like Lord Sunderland, with such direct access to the King, should be embracing one of the highest Jacobites in the land. Wart.

  Is Slane pleased? Charles had asked. I don’t speak of Slane, Wart had said. Charles was impressed. Slane had certainly made his point. Charles did not even know who was the true head of this invasion, though he had his suspicions. He knew Wart, and through Wart’s misspeaking, Slane, but not who was above them. Wart said, mad grin intersecting the long ugliness of his face—and Charles could see Slane speaking through him—It is now that the men separate from the boys. There must be no faltering, Charles, and if we are somehow found out, you must deny it forever, no matter who of us goes down.

  Cursed be the wretch who seized the throne and marred our constitution. Cursed be the Parliament, that day who gave their confirmation. And cursed be every whining Whig and damned be the whole nation, so said a street verse.

  Charles smiled, his even face made handsome and bold. What would Wart say to his seduction of the sometimes mistress of one Robert Walpole? Even the arrogant Laurence Slane would have to be impressed. The edges of the memory of what had happened with Diana in the carriage were suddenly sharper than the event itself had been. He wanted Diana again, as soon as he could have her. He would have her again. She liked the danger as much as he. What a useful way to pass the time until spring, until the invasion. He raked apart the coals and blew out the candle and shut and locked the door behind himself.

  “WHAT HAPPENED then?” Gussy asked Slane. They were talking of Tony.

  “He said his grandfather was among the roses, when he somehow cut his arm. A thorn or something—Is that your father-in-law come to say good-bye? I’ll wait on the other side of the door.”

  There was another exit from the chamber, and Slane stepped out into a hall, put his ear to the door, heard the sound of someone weeping.

  Sir John was here to pick up letters and parcels to take to Ladybeth. Slane had helped Gussy select the gown that was his wife’s New Year’s gift. She will look beautiful in this, Gussy, Slane said. Why not take it to her yourself? Lace her in it, tight, then lace her right back out, and show her that you love her. Too many children, Gussy answered. Childbirth is difficult for her. She is afraid of having another child.

  I’ll buy you French letters, said Slane. Do you know what those are? Put on before a man enters a woman, it keeps him from catching the pox. But it also keeps him from giving away his seed. He’d shocked Gussy as he explained it all to him.

  Carefully, Slane cracked the door. Sir John was sitting like a large child in a chair before the fire, hands to his face, crying, while Gussy moved around him in what could only be described as a fluttering way. There was some kind of disjointed confession going on—stolen funds, the Duchess of Tamworth’s friendship, the Duke’s contempt; Sir John wasn’t to represent Tamworth in the Commons. Something about age, duty, the Tories.

  Slane’s mind went leaping.

  Someone knocked upon the door Sir John had used. Gussy went to open it, and in came the Bishop of Rochester in his nightgown, nightcap on his head, upon his crutches, and behind him the Duchess of Tamworth, carried by her footman. What is that upon her head? thought Slane. Feathers and some kind of claws. Is that a wedding headdress?

  “I have to speak with you,” the Duchess said to Sir John, who jumped up at the sight of her.

  The footman put her in a chair, and then Gussy and Rochester and the footman were going out the door. Sla
ne stepped back down the hall, lightly, lithely, went around a corner.

  Rochester stood with his ear pressed to the door. Gussy was peeping in through the keyhole. Only the footman had the dignity to stand away.

  Slane went back to his own secret place, put his eye to the crack.

  “I don’t believe you!” The Duchess’s hand, fastened to the head of her cane, clenched and unclenched. “You are not a thief. It is a mistake. We will call it a loan. I will give you—”

  “You will give me nothing, because I accept nothing. I have broken the trust between us, stolen from you, and that is that. I am willing to go to trial, if the Duke wishes it.”

  Everything about Sir John was set and stiff, from the angle of his head to the way he stood to the jut of his jaw. Only his eyes, the rapid blinking of the lids over them, betrayed what this conversation was costing him.

  “To trial? Are you mad? That would be a pretty sight, your fellow justices sitting in judgment upon you—or have you forgotten that you are also a justice of the peace? There will be no airing of dirty linen—”

  “Dirty linen? It is a matter of the failure of trust! Do you not hear me, Alice? I took two thousand pounds from your rents over a year ago and have yet to pay back a penny of it.”

  “We have been friends for thirty years—”

  “Which makes this all the more reprehensible upon my part. I understand that all friendship must be severed between you and me, that you can scarcely bear to look me in the eye. I will trouble you no more, except to say you have my pledge that I will repay every penny I owe, with interest, by the end of spring. Good evening to you, Your Grace.”

  “All finished? A thirty-year friendship does not finish in the expanse of a quarter-hour’s quarrel, no matter the deed done. This is absolute nonsense, and I won’t have it! You have let your dreadful temper and worse pride—”

  “Pride? Pride! Yes, I have pride, enough pride not to allow you to treat me like a child. I am a man, madam, and I take my punishment with the best of them! Tim!”