by Karleen Koen
"Tony is a fool!"
Barbara and Clemmie looked at each other. Barbara covered her mouth to giggle. Tony, her aunt's oldest son and the present Duke of Tamworth, was indeed a blockhead.
"How dare you! Tony is the kindest, the dearest—"
"He is a fool! And you know it!"
"Well," her aunt said, "no bigger a fool than you to marry your young daughter to one of London's biggest libertines. I wish her the joy of him! He will make her unhappy! That I prophesy!"
"What husband does not? She can do as the rest of us and be unfaithful—"
"Speak for yourself!"
"Ah, yes, I forgot. It was my brother who was unfaithful in your marriage, was it not?"
Clemmie rolled her eyes at Barbara.
"You go too far, Diana! I came here in loving kinship to keep you from making a terrible mistake. You must know Roger's reputation! I wish better for my niece—"
"Do not bleat 'my niece' to me! It is the dower you are concerned with! Bentwoodes! I see it in your face! Barbara could marry the Devil as long as Tony got Bentwoodes!"
There was a long silence. Barbara held her breath. Her aunt began to speak again, in a calmer voice.
"Let us not argue, Diana. I came here to help you. I have talked it over with some of the family, and we feel that it might be better to dower Barbara with money, rather than lands—lands that belong in the family. In exchange for Bentwoodes I might be able to come up with a significant cash settlement."
"Not three months ago, I went to you begging for money, and you refused to loan me so much as a penny." Diana's voice was deadly quiet.
"I was upset, distraught over Kit and your petition for divorce. Everyone in the family was aghast. Those dreadful street pamphlets, calling you every sort of harlot. Our name bandied in Parliament as if we were common criminals. The suspicion, the distrust stirred up. I could not forgive you for your part in it all. Now I am more myself, and I want to do my duty to you, and to my dear niece. If you must marry her, good. There are any number of young men I can recommend. But listen to reason; leave Bentwoodes out of it—"
"You are too late, Abigail! I intend to marry my daughter to England's newest earl, upstart that he is, and enjoy a considerable amount of money for myself as part of the bargain! I will never need you or anyone in the family again, and nothing you can say or do will stop me!"
"Stop you!" her aunt spat out, all pretense of family feeling forgotten. "You fool! It is all over London that you plan to marry your daughter to Roger Montgeoffry. I may not know Roger well, but I know men. They never do what you want them to when they think they are being forced. Ah, now it is your turn to stare, Diana! You have overplayed your hand!"
"Who gossips so?"
"Tommy Carlyle, among others. You know how he is—"
"And who told Tommy?" Diana interrupted.
"How should I know?" her aunt snapped. "But the bucks at White's coffeehouse are betting as to whether you will pull off the marriage or not. It is vulgar and common, Diana! I expect such of you, but Roger, upstart though he is, has more taste. He will not be pleased to have his name, or his bride's, a byword in the streets and taverns. You should see your face. Yes, you are going to lose! And when you do, I will still be here, at Saylor House, to bail you out. But I promise you, I will not forget what you have said to me, and I will not be as generous as I planned to be today. You will regret to your dying day that you ever spoke so to me, Diana Alderley! Now, good day! And good fortune! For the Lord above knows you will need plenty of it!"
The parlor door opened, and Barbara and Clemmie fell back. Her aunt stopped short, raking them both with her eyes, her bosom (a bosom she was fond of displaying) heaving with anger.
"You are more like your mother than I imagined!" she said.
Barbara raised her chin.
"Yes," her aunt said, "be proud. 'Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' And you have a long, long fall, my poor girl."
She reached into her muff and pulled out a bag of coins, obviously struggling with her temper. "Here," she said. "I meant to give your mother this. At least move to a better section of town!"
Barbara would not take the bag, but Clemmie had no such scruples. She curtsied and smiled her gap–toothed smile and thanked Abigail profusely as she scuttled to open the front door. With a great, final swish of hoop and petticoat, Aunt Abigail was gone. Barbara ran into the parlor. Diana stood by the table, draining a glass of wine. She turned on Barbara like a tigress.
"If you say one word to me—just one—I shall beat you until my arm drops off! Now get out of my sight! I have to think!"
Behind Barbara, Clemmie waved the bag of coins.
"Thank God," Diana said. "Bring that here. I will get my jewels out of pawn—"
Lying on her bed, Barbara tossed and turned. The quarrel meant she was not going to Saylor House. That she must stay here. They were hiding, hiding from creditors, from family, from disgrace. Her mother would not move them to better lodgings. Her mother did not care how they lived. She had not realized what her father's flight, her mother's actions, the debts, meant. None of it mattered at Tamworth, with her grandmother and her brothers and sisters. But here, it was different. She was ashamed, and shame was a new emotion to her—scalding and corrosive, like wormwood. Please come soon, she prayed, her thoughts going out the window, into the square, past the cobbled, dirty, busy streets, somewhere into the great, throbbing city she had yet to see. Please, Roger, come for me. I know as soon as I see you everything will be fine again.
* * *
Roger mounted a restless Spanish stallion and nodded for the groom to loosen his hold on the bridle. He was to meet Sir Christopher Wren at one o'clock. The horse beneath him reared and pawed at the cobblestones, but Roger held him back as he trotted past the fountain railed off in the center of St. James's Square. He moved into Pall Mall Street, his horse pulling his head and prancing sideways. Fingers of sunlight had managed to poke holes into the day's grayness. It was slow progress, weaving his way with a restless horse through pedestrians, sedan chairs, other riders, and carriages with footmen running beside them. He lived near the royal palace of St. James, near Westminster Abbey and Parliament, and traffic was always terrible. On St. James's Street he managed to avoid trampling some government clerks coming out of White's, so intent were they on their conversation that they did not notice him until he pulled his horse up to keep from riding over them. At the corner of St. James's Street and Piccadilly, be pulled short and sat gazing at the walls of the Earl of Burlington's house to his left. He had heard rumors that Burlington was going to redo it, and sure enough, from where he sat, he could see piles of brick inside the gates. The house itself was modest, redbrick, two stories, but its gardens were magnificent, extending far out until their walls stopped amid undeveloped land and fields at their rear. But not undeveloped for long. He had also heard that Burlington intended to convert those fields to the north of his gardens into streets and houses. Restive, the stallion struggled to have his head, and Roger spurred him into Old Bond Street. There was less traffic now, and he let the horse trot smartly. So Burlington was going to build. And the Earl of Scarborough was said to be planning to develop land farther north of Burlington's. And to his right, where there were now small rolling hills and a sprinkling of farms, Richard Grosvenor had started two roads that were to give access to a square he was planning. Already in his lifetime, he had seen open fields across from the palace of St. James become bustling, cobbled streets crammed with town homes and shops. The city was growing this way.
He was now on New Bond Road; Tyburn Road was ahead. He let his impatient horse find his own stride. At Tyburn Road he reined him in and, trotting the animal up and down, allowed him to cool down. To his northwest rose the spires of the church in the village of Marylebone, to the southwest lay the broad, green acres of Hyde Park. To his west were more fields. To the east was Tottenham Court Road, the way to the village of Hampstead.
Between Tottenham Court Road and the boundary of Hyde Park lay smooth, fertile fields that were leased in small farms. An old country lane led to a crumbling manor house, built in the time of Henry VIII, and lived in by the Duchess of Tamworth's great–great–great– grandfather, Baron Bentwoodes. A rambling stream coursed through fields until it reached Tyburn Brook. Part of the land near Hyde Park was still dense woods where deer and hare could be hunted. The Bentwoodes and then the Duke of Tamworth had always allowed their sovereigns full use of it, as Roger intended to do when it belonged to him. He glanced to his left. Sir Christopher was arriving. Ahead pitched a coach pulled by four horses, the coachman pulling them to a stop in front of Roger.
A leather shade at one of the windows rolled up, and Sir Christopher Wren put out his head. An old man now—he was in his eighties—with staring, lashless eyes, a domineering nose and a genius for building, one of his most magnificent creations being St. Paul's Cathedral in London. He wore a heavy black wig that ridiculed the lines in his face.
"Can the coach go in?" Sir Christopher asked.
"I will show you a road. Have your coachman follow me."
The coach lurched dangerously over the deep, muddy ruts, but Roger did not stop until he was in front of the crumbling manor house and the remains of its courtyard. The manor house had once been U–shaped, but a fire had gutted one of its arms to make it a leaning L of singed and darkened red brick, intersected every foot with dark wood, a Tudor carpenter's trademark, as were the old–fashioned windows with their many small, diamond–shaped panes of broken glass. A sagging porch shaded the front of the ground story, and Roger tied his horse to a porch support and watched the coachman spring down to pull at the coach steps. Wren, leaning on a cane, stepped down carefully. All around them was silence, broken only by the occasional lowing of a cow. Roger offered Wren his arm, and the two of them wandered out of the courtyard and into the overgrown gardens, where they talked for a long time, one or the other of them pointing to different views of the property. The stallion grazed on the grass growing between the bricks. The coachman settled under the safest part of the porch to smoke a pipe. He was lighting his third one when Roger and Wren returned.
"See if there is any furniture inside—a chair or stool for your master," Roger told him.
The man hesitated. "Will the door not be locked and barred?"
"And rotted. Never mind it, just push it in. I know the owners."
The coachman shrugged and pushed at one of the half–timbered doors. To his surprise, it gave almost at once. He went inside. Wren leaned against one of the stronger porch supports and rubbed his gloved hands together for warmth.
"You are correct, sir," he told Roger. "It is a fine property—the finest in one complete piece that I have seen in many a year. I will have it surveyed for you. Happily. But I am too old, Lord Devane, for all else you suggest. I will die long before you finish, and I do not like to see things left incomplete."
"What if I told you the property could be mine by spring?"
Wren shook his head regretfully. "Even so, there are plans to be drawn up, permits to be granted, roads to be made. It would be a year before building could begin, and you want such a grand scale. You speak of a church, a playhouse, town houses, shops, a square, a mansion for yourself, a market, the surrounding streets necessary for access. I could not do it."
"If I have it by spring, you could build me a church," Roger said persuasively, smiling into the eyes of the older man. Churches were Wren's weakness. "You could do that, could you not? Within three or four years—"
"A church—"
"Just a small one. Like the one you built for Henry Jermyn at St. James's. I am inspired whenever I am in it. It is small enough to allow worshippers to see and hear all, yet lovely and spacious enough for them to think themselves truly in paradise."
"You flatter me."
"On the contrary, I cannot flatter you enough."
Wren was visibly softened. He looked past Roger to the fields that lay all around them. "It will be very beautiful here when you are finished," he said softly. "Done on a grand, unified scale. I like that. After the great fire, we tried to rebuild the city according to a model plan, but it never quite worked out; business interests and politics interfered. This"—he spread his arms, cane and all, wide—"would last long after you are dead and buried. Bentwoodes House—"
"Devane House." The words were quiet, but firm. "How well you put things, Sir Christopher. Nothing can so symbolize a man as what he leaves behind—as well you know, having left so many beautiful things to survive after you. I had hoped, had dreamed, really, of having one of your churches. I saw it as a rare jewel, perhaps the last achievement, of your brilliant career. No politics, no business interests, just your own free will and imagination combined with your long years of experience."
"Free will, you say."
"I would not consider interfering in any way, except to provide money, of course. It would be sacrilege. But I see that you know best. A man knows when a project is too much for him. I forget your years—you act so much younger."
The coachman appeared in the doorway, his hat and coat covered with dust and spiderwebs, a smear of dirt across his left cheek, but triumphantly, a chair, its back nearly broken off, in his hands.
"I had to look everywhere, your lordship. All over this great barn of a place. I nearly broke my leg on those stairs. They are rotten, you know. But I found one—"
Roger gave Wren his arm. The older man leaned on it as they walked toward the coach. The coachman might never have existed. He sighed and dropped the chair and followed them to the coach.
"I might do a church," Wren was saying. "Just a small one, mind you. And look over your plans for the rest when they are done. Offer suggestions. Nothing else."
"You are kindness itself, Sir Christopher. I cannot tell you what an honor you do me. But men will see how I have been honored each time they worship their Lord. Tell me, sir, since you refuse my whole project, what do you think of Colin Campbell or even William Kent as architect?"
Wren pursed his lips. "What you desire calls for a man of extraordinary talent—"
"But you said you would not do it!"
Wren smiled sourly at him. "Extraordinary talent and patience." Roger helped him inside the coach. Wren shook his cane at him. "One church now. No more. And perhaps a few sketches to give you an idea of how it all could look. But no more."
Roger smiled at him. "It is entirely more than I expected. You are graciousness itself."
Wren looked around him. From where he sat, he could see a line of great oak trees following the curves of the hidden stream. "I congratulate you. This will be the finest property in London in ten years' time."
"So I hope, Sir Christopher. So I hope."
* * *
That evening, after several hours of sleep, Roger made an appearance in the Princess of Wales's drawing room in St. James's Palace. The chamber was crowded with people, rich in their velvet and damask and satin, jewels glinting under the candlelight of the chandeliers. A massive allegorical painting covered every square inch of the ceiling. Gods and goddesses lolled on clouds or posed in chariots; from their hands, ropes of roses trailed through blue sky and legions of cherubs. The faces remained plump and forever serene, unlike those of the humans who strolled beneath them. Except, of course, for Roger, who had rested and therefore looked handsome and unbelievably young and distinguished. He wore a silver-blond wig on his head, a black velvet coat trimmed in silver lace and braid, with matching black velvet breeches, a few tiny black silk patches on his face, and black leather shoes with huge velvet bows and diamonds in the heels. People could not help but look at him as he walked by, bowing and smiling in every direction. It was as if everyone wanted a moment of his attention, for he was golden, blessed, untouched, unlike the rest of them with their liver spots and missing teeth and fat hanging over their breeches. It was as if his age underlined his continued beauty in a way the smooth roundness of yo
uth could not.
King George stood at one end of the room. Near him was his thin, ugly mistress, Countess Melusine von Schulenburg. A semicircle of courtiers had formed about them, most being content to be seen by the king, make their bows and curtsies, then leave discreetly. King George did not speak English before his courtiers. Nodding to the right and left at friends and acquaintances, Roger went first to the Princess of Wales, Caroline, a plump, blonde woman with a pretty, round face and shrewd blue eyes. He bowed over her hand and kissed it, smiling charmingly at her young maids of honor, who surrounded Caroline's chair like luscious flowers. They fluttered their fans at him.