Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  Her voice. He’d forgotten how husky, how sensuous it was. Or had he? Wasn’t it always there, in his memory, like the promise of the girl in her eyes.

  “Where is your other dog? I remember there being two.”

  “Charlotte died in Virginia.”

  “Listen to me carefully, now. I am no threat to you or anyone. The invasion will not come. I stay only because I must for a time. Grant me the favor of your silence.”

  The ship sent from London for Ormonde had come back without him. Ormonde had never even been able to set foot on board. Agents and ambassadors of King George had moved too quickly in that little space of time at the end of April. Twelve thousand arms, said the captain of the ship, lay in barns in Spain, and we could not get to them. Ormonde himself was on shore, in disguise, and we could not touch him. Officials from the court of Spain came aboard, every day for over two weeks, looked in every corner of the ship, took down names of passengers, made a listing of our cargo. We finally sailed without Ormonde. We did not know what else to do. Saints’ finger bones, thought Slane, rubbing his brow.

  He saw Barbara shrinking from him and found himself saddened, then angered by that. He reached out and took one of her wrists, and though she tried to pull it away, turned it over and looked at the scrapes on the palm. She’d hurt herself today when she’d fallen hard.

  “What did you say to Walpole?” he asked.

  “That you were Viscount Duncannon, a gosling. The most famous of the goslings. And that he’d best find you. He thanked me profusely and promised he’d see me made a duchess.”

  Without a word, Slane dropped her hand and walked toward the windows. In another moment he was gone.

  Barbara leaped out of the bed, ran to the window, leaned out over the balcony’s edge. He had jumped to the gardens below, and he was nowhere to be seen. Then, thinking a moment, she stepped back, moved herself into the soft draperies of the window, and waited.

  It seemed a long time. It was a long time. But finally she heard a movement, faint but definite. Tiptoeing, her heart beating so loudly she could barely hear past it, she edged onto the balcony. There he was, walking toward the darker shadows of the trees of the gardens. He’d been hiding in shrubs below, waiting until he thought it safe to move on.

  I was more clever than you, she thought, but then he turned and walked back toward the house. She stepped behind the drapery. He stood, in the open, as if waiting.

  Does he wait upon me? she thought. After a time, curious, she showed herself.

  Slane stared at the figure on the balcony, the woman as slim as a candle in her pale nightgown, but he really didn’t see her.

  Jacobites were drawing back, waiting to see what Walpole did, though a few still planned and plotted, tried to salvage what was in place. Slane plotted with them, unable to give up, yet. He could taste how much he wanted to see Walpole and the others frightened, on edge, humbled, the way the Jacobites were. After the soldiers at Hyde Park are sent back to their garrisons, they said, then Ormonde can invade, in autumn. Slane had a feeling it was a fool’s dream, but he couldn’t stop himself, dreaming it.

  There had been a chapel in the house in France in which Slane had grown up to boyhood. He could still remember how the sun came into the chapel, colored and cooled by the stained-glass windows. There had been wax tapers as tall as he at each end of the altar, and when they were lighted, the altar silver gleamed dully. There were statues of the saints, a carved memorial to various ancestors of the owner of the house. Upon a stone table was a small carved chest holding a relic, the finger bone of a saint, brought, it was said, from the Holy Land during the Crusades. As a boy, he often opened the small chest and viewed the slender ivory bone, wondering at it, daring sometimes to touch it, then later to lift it from its cushion and hold it in his hand.

  He had secreted in the chest the small gifts from King James, his senior by only six years. He could remember a knife, a bird’s feather, a letter, a gold ring with a ruby stone. He’d gone into service to James early, when he was thirteen, following him from place to place—Jamie the Rover, the King was called, as he was forced to move from place to place as the English won their battles and demanded that France would not succor the Stuarts. He’d gone from the court of the Czar to Florence for James, looking always for money or promises of soldiers with whom to invade England, looking always for ways to exploit grievances with the Hanover George and his policies.

  He’d forgotten about the chest for a long time, and then, this last time he was in Paris, he’d gone back to the estate upon which he had lived as a boy, gone to the chapel to see the finger bone once more, to see if he could recapture his boy’s feeling of mystery and certain vision. The small carved chest sat where it always had, upon the stone table, under the memorials, and he had opened it, heart beating strongly, to find all was gone, finger bone and gifts. The priest who looked after the chapel had no idea what had happened; neither did the owners of the estate.

  My heart hurts, Louisa had said when she learned the ship was back without Ormonde. It has all been for nothing. Not for nothing, he answered her. We have a network in place. We will plan for another time. King James says we’ll invade when the element of surprise is ours again. Louisa had not replied. Despair and fatigue were etched in deep lines upon her aged face, like solemn good-byes to boyhood and dreams of saints’ finger bones.

  Slane bowed to the figure on the balcony and was gone, stepping like a ghost into dark shadow and disappearing.

  Barbara shivered, stepped back, pulled down the window as quickly as she could, then another, then another, locking them all. She ran to her bedchamber door and locked it. She ran to the bed, pulled the linens up to her chin.

  He’d known she was waiting because she hadn’t closed the windows at once. That would have been the natural thing for her to do, close and lock all the windows. He had been listening for sounds of that.

  He showed himself to her to tell her so, to show her she was not as clever as she imagined. We were counting coup, she thought, and he wins.

  Why did I tell him I told Robin? I’m not going to betray him. And that had something to do with her brother, Harry, but it had something to do with Duncannon himself. Hero, he’d been called. He was revered in Italy for his daring exploits for King James. He lived what he believed, had risked his life more than once, was here now, doing it again, in a way that Harry, for all his words, never had.

  Her reasons for not informing Walpole had to do with her father and with Harry, with growing up loving them, listening to them. They had wished to be what Duncannon was.

  He’d kissed her in a garden. She had waited for him to call the next morning, after that kiss in the twilight; she was certain of herself, of her effect upon any man she chose to charm and many a one she chose not to. He did not call. Later, they learned he’d left Rome unexpectedly, left the night he kissed her. Adventure more compelling than you, Harry had teased. Perhaps he was warned how fickle and cruel you are, Bab, how no man ever pleases you.

  Keep thy heart with all diligence. Something in her had responded the moment she saw him walking forward with her dog; it was not the response she had to a Charles or a Klaus, but something deeper. The way I felt toward Roger, she thought, and she closed her eyes tight, just as she used to when she was a girl and believed wishes came true.

  Tomorrow, she’d begin the journey to Tamworth. Richmond House and Hampton Court were upon the way, and she’d make her obediences. And, as soon as possible, she must talk to Tommy Carlyle and to Wart. Tommy she must question to his face; and Wart—well, Wart she simply must talk to. He was a friend. He wouldn’t lie.

  IN THE morning, she left instructions for Tony’s coachman that they were leaving in the afternoon; then she rode back to Devane Square. Leading her horse, she walked into the heart of it. She would look at it more carefully this time; move past the confusion and grief, to think, to come up with a plan. You have all you need inside yourself, Perry had said.

  Only on
e end of the square had been finished into townhouses, they and Sir Christopher Wren’s tiny, perfect church were all that remained. Another section of houses had been framed in wood, but the wood was gone now, so the church and townhouses faced each other in lonely splendor among fields. The windows of the townhouses were boarded over, as were the windows of the church; its front door was padlocked and chained. The interior had never been finished, she remembered.

  There had been a beautiful garden in the center of the square, and a lawn, gravel walks, flowers, trees. The garden at the square’s center had, in its moment of abundance, rivaled the curiosities in the royal gardens at Kew House. Even Major Custis had heard of her husband’s garden at Devane Square—he’d sent twenty swamp laurels to it, all gone now, grass growing up unevenly over the wounds where once a wealth of rare trees and shrubs had been, where people had strolled on neatly raked gravel walks and sat upon heavy stone benches to admire the view.

  She mounted the horse again, urged it along the lane beside Wren’s unfinished church. The house had been behind the church, toward Marylebone, upon its own road, Barbara Lane. Great gates had opened to a magnificent setting, the house in its midst. There was nothing now, only silence broken by the morning twittering of birds, as her horse moved to the fountain, searching for water, of which there was none. The nymph’s shell was dry. Barbara stared at the nymph, who had been modeled after herself, it was said, to the scandal and delight of London.

  She was at the place where the entrance gates had been. Before her was the outline of the drive. The house was gone, as were the hundred orange trees in silver tubs and the small, perfect Temple of Arts built at one side of the house, near the landscape canal. Roger had called it a summer temple, and in it had been his growing collection of paintings and statues. All was gone, nothing to show any of it had ever existed, except what was stored in a warehouse, the items Parliament had allowed her to keep, anything which could be proved to have been purchased before 1719. The horse shied and danced, and she turned her head.

  Another rider was approaching. She remembered the man vaguely—she’d seen him at court more than once—but she didn’t remember his name. He was older, stocky, his face marked with the myriad tiny, puckered stars that a light case of smallpox made. He circled his horse around her twice. The second time she became angry.

  “This is private property,” she flashed.

  “Well, I know it, and you are its owner.” He pulled his horse short. “How do you do?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I am Sir Gideon Andreas. We were introduced once, but I doubt you remember it. I knew your husband. I ride this way every morning that I am in London and the weather allows. I give my horse a drink from your landscape pool there, before going on to Marylebone. I hope you don’t mind.”

  His eyes, gray eyes, light eyes, moved from her to the stone nymph and back again. Barbara raised her chin.

  The nymph was naked, holding out a shell. When there had been water, water had dripped from the shell into the larger pool in which the nymph stood. I ought to duel with Roger over this, Harry had said, on first seeing the nymph’s face.

  “When did you return from Virginia, Lady Devane? I had not heard you were back, so it must have been just recently.”

  “Yesterday.”

  “And already you come to look over your property. Quite right. A woman of sense as well as of great beauty, I see. I’ve been buying land all through here, and you and I must talk someday soon. We shall. Now, I’ll say good day and disturb you no more.”

  She trotted the horse to the tangle of wild grass that was the churchyard, dismounted, and leaned her elbows upon the yard’s stone wall. Andreas was at the landscape pool, allowing his horse water. Then, with a bow to her, he was galloping away toward the quaint village of Marylebone.

  Andreas, Andreas, thought Barbara, as she rode back toward Saylor House. That was it—if she was not mistaken, that was one of the names among those to whom Roger had owed funds. And so, now, must she. He reminds me, faintly, of Bolling. I’d best remember that.

  Chapter Forty

  AT TAMWORTH, TIM LIFTED THE DUCHESS OUT OF HER CARRIAGE, an ancient, unfashionable vehicle that she refused to replace. She was just returned from Lindenmas, half a day’s journey away. She had been there all of June, waiting for Ormonde to invade. She was tired of waiting now, and missed Tamworth, so she’d come home. I may as well die in my own bed, she told Tony. I’ll come to see about you, he said.

  “Chapel, Your Grace?”

  “I must rest first. Then, yes, chapel.”

  “One of the hives isn’t thriving.” Tim glanced back through the opened door, but Annie was still outside, Dulcinea in her arms. He said, “It’s the Gypsy, I think.”

  As he carried the Duchess up the stairs, he told a tale of sitting up all night on the summer solstice in the porch of the church because custom had it one might see the spirits of those who were going to die in the next year. Bathsheba, out gathering herbs for Annie—St. John’s-wort, fern frond, vervain, and rue, which must be gathered at night, and what better night than solstice?—had unpinned her long, lank hair, crept up to the porch church, and peered suddenly around its opening at him.

  “I ran for a mile before I stopped. I thought her a witch. Now one of the hives isn’t thriving and there is quarreling among the kitchen maids,” said Tim.

  Later, when Annie was fussing about the bedchamber, making certain everything was as it ought to be after their absence, the Duchess said, “I won’t have a Gypsy upsetting my household. She may well have cursed my bees. One of the hives isn’t thriving. How long has that Gypsy been here? She was only to stay until spring.”

  “There is a letter. It came while we were gone.”

  Some timbre in Annie’s voice distracted the Duchess momentarily. “Who is it from? And never mind preparing me. You will send me to my grave one day preparing me.”

  “It is from Lady Alderley.”

  Diana.

  Annie held up the letter. The pair of them stared at it as if it would explode.

  “Open it.”

  Annie slit open the letter—it might have been Diana’s throat—and handed it over.

  “She writes to tell me that she comes to Tamworth. From the date of this, she should be here today or tomorrow. Like Job, I have not enough suffering at the moment. Invasion, a Gypsy cursing my hive and my household, and now this. I doubt I will sleep a moment, and I am old, and I need my rest.”

  “Then rest.”

  “I won’t sleep. I won’t close my eyes.”

  The Duchess closed her eyes and fell asleep at once.

  LATER, IN the evening, England’s wonderful summer evening in which light stayed for a long time, Tim took the Duchess to chapel, going by way of the hives so that she could see them for herself. They were kept at the garden wall, each straw skep shaped like a bishop’s hat, sitting in its own enclosure, built into the wall. He showed her the poor hive.

  All kinds of flowers were planted here to entice the bees. Beyond the wall was her orchard—apple, pear, plum trees—and beyond that a field of clover, the fat heads of the blossoms growing up thickly together, moving gently, like waves on a sea, in this summer’s breeze. At the wall grew an ancient, vining wisteria and brambleberries, mint and violets and Queen Anne’s lace, rosemary and daisies and an old, varicolored damask rose planted so many years ago that no one knew how old it was. The bees loved it.

  The Duchess breathed in the smell of the flowers, the sight of roses and clover. Bees were everywhere, their hum a wonderful chant to her, better than a choir at evensong. Now that war loomed, all was doubly precious. Each moment must be treasured. She must fill her eye with this view of Tamworth, her favorite. Barbara, she thought, I wish you were here, but if we’re to have war, I’m glad you’re not.

  Chapel was as always, a cool dip of water for a hot, troubled mind. It was so peaceful. Tim helped her to sit in her favorite spot. Richard’s marble tomb, with its r
eclining figure of him, dominated all.

  “Ormonde isn’t here yet,” she said to Richard. “Barbara is still in Virginia. You would approve of Harriet. The marriage is a success.” Weary not in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. She’d done well, led the family into further wealth. The Tamworth legacy was secure, buffered and enlarged by all that Harriet brought. Nothing could hurt it now. The remaining problem was Barbara, what to do about the debt, the shambles her dearest’s life had become. She closed her eyes and drifted into memories of her sons and Richard, of Barbara and Harry and Jane in other, younger days. Her head nodded.

  Tim touched her shoulder.

  “Tell those children I’ll cane them if they feed the pigs brandy again,” she said.

  Tim bent down to pick her up in his strong arms. She looked at him. He was a bold-faced fellow. It was difficult to resist the smile in his merry eyes.

  “Bah.”

  He grinned, showing his broken front teeth.

  “Shall I take you by the beemaster? Now that you have seen the Duke, you ought to be up to quarreling.”

  “I do not quarrel. I never quarrel. What goes on at Ladybeth?” How did Sir John get on? Was he still ridiculously angry?

  But Tim didn’t know.

  They took a way back that brought them through Tamworth woods, verdant green and wonderfully shadowy. And there was the house, built in the time of King Henry VIII and his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, rising ivy-greened and many-gabled before them. Octagonal bays in its front corners, woods and park, garden maze and iron gates opening to a curving avenue of lime trees, the house was a part of the life of everyone for miles around. The Duchess made Tim stop a moment, so that she could enjoy the view. Ormonde may not have this, not one acre, not one brick of it. I will die for it, she thought.

  “Richard’s roses are at their best. Just look there.”

  Together, they admired the crimson heads of the roses in the garden. It was the first day of July. July was a good month for roses.