by Karleen Koen
Love me, Roger. Please love me.
* * *
In the first early morning light, Thérèse hurried across the gardens and into a side door. She reached down and wiped the dew from her shoes, pulled the mantilla from her head and stuffed it into her apron pocket. Whirling into the kitchen, she gave the orders for madame's luncheon. The cook stared at her, his eyes hostile behind the fat that almost closed them. He knew better than anyone what to cook to tempt Lady Devane's fragile appetite. But this one was under LeBlanc's protection, and no one could say a word to her.
In the hallway of the floor on which the bedchambers were, Thérèse stopped to look at herself in a mirror. Her cheeks were flushed from her running; her hair was curling more than usual from the morning damp, the damp in the church, which had crept in and chilled her to the bone. Her eyes were swollen. She always cried a little when she said the prayers for the baby's soul. Abruptly, she turned. She suddenly felt the presence of someone else, someone watching her.
Lady Devane's brother stood some distance away, his feet bare, his wig off—ah, his hair was dark, thick, like hers. He wore a huge, incredibly col ored robe, blue swirling into red swirling into green. She blinked at the sight of it. He stared at her. She grew still. She knew that look. Ah, she knew that look. Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus, how many men had looked at her so? Would he command her now to follow him to his room? Would he trick her into coming there? Or would he force her, now, in the silence, the emptiness of the hall? He was just like the rest. No better. Only handsome, and young with a youth that had charmed her heart. She was a fool. Suddenly she was so disappointed that she drooped, like a flower, and he ran forward to grab her. His mouth, so close to her, was full and red. Once she had allowed herself to think about kissing it. Now it would violate her. Take…before she was ready to give.
"Where do you go every morning?" His question was completely unexpected. "I can see you from my windows. I do not sleep well, and every morning I have seen you scurry across the terrace like a thief and disappear behind a garden door. You are gone for a while, and then you reappear. And most mornings, you have been crying, like this morning."
What right had he to pry in her affairs? If he knew the truth, he would truly rape her in the hallway like the whore he would consider her to be. His question was a ruse, a preliminary to one thing, and one thing only. But she surprised herself by answering, "I go to chapel. I pray every morning for a loved one." She waited, tense as a cat, for his next move.
"A loved one…fortunate loved one, who makes you cry. You are so lovely, Thérèse. Much too lovely to cry. I will not make you cry. When we are together, I will not make you cry. I promise that."
He walked back to his room, and she stared after him, angrier than if he had tried to steal a kiss.
* * *
Roger sat in the richness of Philippe's green salon. Everything here pleased the eye: the arrangement of the paintings; the masses of flowers in low vases atop small tables; the upholstery of the chairs, richly green; the matching draperies; the extravagance of gold fringe; the glass clocks; the porcelain figurines; the way in which the sun poured in, like gold spilling from a pot, through the open doors and windows; the fragrance of the garden's flowers drifting in through the windows along with a bee or two.
The two of them were near the opened windows, where they could feel the breeze and the sun and smell the gardens. They had spent many afternoons thus, watching spring tint the white winter landscape with soft color, talking of everything—their pasts, their future, Bentwoodes. Today Roger was silent while Philippe talked. Of the margin of success Law's new bank might enjoy; of the tangle France's finances were in; of the profit Roger might make; of the cost to build Devane House; of the plans Lord Burlington's protégé, William Kent, had drawn up; of the scandalous conduct of the Duchesse de Berry. She had strolled through the gardens of her palace at Luxembourg, gardens open to the public. She had dressed herself as a lower–class bourgeois to hear what people said of her, and what she heard so infuriated her that she attacked three men and their wives and had to be dragged off screaming and cursing by her own guards. He talked of anything and everything, anything to fill the silence between them with words, words which allowed other words not to be said.
"She needs a child," Roger said. As easily as that she came into their conversation.
Philippe's knuckles tightened on the curling arm of his chair. There was no need to identify the "she."
"Of course she does." He tried to make his smile genuine. "She should have several children, all of them, we can only hope, as handsome as you or her famous grandfather."
Richard, thought Roger. What would he think of me now? Of this coil I twist myself on? Of the unhappiness I have caused? Would he understand and forgive? Could he? Could any man? Who can understand but two men such as Philippe and myself? Who are we? Who am I?
"She is unhappy, Philippe. More than I have ever seen her. I think it is mostly the deaths, but some of it is my fault also. And I find it hard to forgive myself. She is a child, and for her, the world revolves around me."
As for us all, Philippe thought bitterly, but he said, "What do you want me to do?"
Roger smiled at him, his wistful, charming smile. "How well you know me. Nothing. Everything. We talked of meeting this summer in Hanover and then traveling together to Italy. Could you understand and forgive if I wanted to be with Barbara alone? Just for a few months. I feel that I must give her that time; that I must devote myself to her. And perhaps, out of it will come a child, and she will not need me so completely then."
Philippe's knuckles were white against the arm of the chair. As white as his face. How ironic, he thought, that he should be the stronger of us. That I should need him more than he needs me. And all because of a skinny, red–haired girl young enough to be his daughter. He loves her. I think he loves her. And what I shall do when he learns it himself, I do not know. Ah, pride is bitter. It tastes like copper in my mouth. I want to kill him, I love him so. And yet if I lose him I shall die, wither in the sun of my life. And so I will be silent. I will swallow my pride, I will do whatever he asks and pray that it is enough. Pray that she does not become stronger with the years, taking away all his love for me with her youth and beauty and devotion and leaving me nothing. Ah, Barbara Devane, I wish you had been strangled at birth. I hurt more than the time I caught the splinters of a cannonball in my leg. More than the time I lay bleeding with my face slashed open. I hurt. I hurt.
"Take her to Hanover. To Italy. I will stay away. Do what you must, and I will be here for you, my dear friend. I cannot fight you, Roger, or fight what I feel for you."
Roger closed his eyes at all he heard in Philippe's voice.
"She suspects something," he said. Philippe saw the sorrow in his face.
"Then we will be more discreet," Philippe said calmly, although inside his heart was like a stone, even colder. I will show you no mercy, Barbara Devane, he thought. No mercy at all.
* * *
White walked through the early morning loveliness of the gardens attached to the house. It was as if, during the night, someone had come and frosted the trees, the shrubs, the flowers, with diamonds, for that was what the morning dew resembled, thousands and thousands of diamond droplets. But White's thoughts were not on the dew or the morning beauty of the gardens. His thoughts were on a piece of paper he had found yesterday afternoon nailed to the stable doors. On the ugly, clumsy verse printed upon it:
Devane, Soissons, Devane—'tis all in vain, Old and young, young and old,
Friends forever, tied with ropes that hold.
Devane, Devane—when all is done and said,
Soissons comes between—in life, in love, in bed.
Into his mind, like a falling star, had flashed that moment two weeks ago when he had stood on the terrace with Lady Devane and seen the prince touch Lord Devane on the shoulder and felt the earth shake. To his poet's eyes, the gesture had been larger than life, full of something
he did not understand. He had put it away as his overwrought imagination; a poet's watchfulness, always observing other people, their reactions, their emotions. But it had stayed with him, lying coiled like a sleeping serpent at the back of his mind, and even as he finished reading the last clumsily composed line it reared up and struck.
He had crumpled the paper, only to see another pasted farther down, and another and another. They were in the garden, on the front steps, in the stable yard. Anywhere and everywhere Lord Devane—or Lady Devane—might find them. He hunted them down, each and every one, and burned them, his own sweat dripping into the flames. If she should see…if she should see, would she even understand? He felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. He admired and respected Roger, who was everything he was not. Handsome. Charming. Noble. Generous. This was something he could not even think about; to do so made him want to cry, to vomit. His hero with an Achilles heel so monstrous that he could not bear it. His hero, a hero no more. All his verses, the epic poem he had been working on for so long, were nothing if it were true. They were a paean to something false, a man who was not a man. A man who loved another man. He could not think of it without shuddering.
Thérèse was leaning out an upstairs window, shaking out a rug. She waved to him, and after a moment, he waved back. Thérèse. He had seen her strolling in the gardens in the late evening twice with Harry Alderley. Laughing and talking together, looking at each other like two people who—he would not finish the thought. It hurt him. She had never let him do more than kiss her once or twice. And now she flirted, as he had wanted her to flirt with him, flirted with a spoiled young nobleman. It was not fair. Nothing was fair. What was happening? He felt as if his whole world were crumbling.
* * *
Hours later, across town, Harry Alderley watched Louise-Anne de Charolais being undressed by her maid. He sipped his glass of wine, grinning at her. Seductively, she smiled at him, now in her hoop and petticoat, her breasts pushed up, white, at the top of her corset. He reached across the dressing table to pour himself more wine, and in doing so the name on a crumpled piece of paper caught his eye. Devane, Soissons, Devane… He put down the wine glass and smoothed the paper, his face changing as he read. Louise–Anne, in her chemise and stockings, a silky robe over her shoulders, motioned for her maid to leave.
"What is this?" he asked her, a vein throbbing in his forehead. He shook the paper.
She had been walking toward him, ready for his embrace. She shrugged. "The latest street verses." She looked into his eyes and then away, quickly.
"The latest street verses," he said slowly. "About my sister and the Prince de Soissons!" He kicked the fragile chair he had been sitting in and it skittered across the room. "It is a lie!" he shouted. "Who would write such filth?"
"It is not about your sister," Louise–Anne said, watching him. "It is about Roger—and his lover."
He stared at her. "Roger and his—"
In two strides, he was beside her, one hand roughly on her arm. There was nothing of the lover on his face now. He shook her.
"Explain yourself!"
She tried to pull her arm away. "My uncle is Roger's lover. It is so simple, Harry. Are you as naïve as your sister? Do you not know that men may be lovers? Could you have spent all that time in Italy and never have seen them? It is called the Italian vice." She had put her hand on the front of his shirt as she spoke, her own words beginning to excite her, as did his violence. Now she stared at him, her mouth slightly slack, moist, ready. He dropped her arm as if it were a snake and backed away from her.
"I do not believe you."
She laughed at him. He smashed his fist down on her dressing table. Fragile jars and boxes went flying. She stopped laughing.
"Did you write this filth? Did you?"
She shook her head.
"Who did?"
"I do not know," she whispered. The expression on his face frightened her. He picked up the wine bottle and sent it crashing into the wall. She flinched at the sound. Wine dripped to the floor like blood.
"Go away," she told him, but he was already out the door.
On the street behind her mansion, it took him several minutes to calm down enough to orient himself. He began to walk in the direction of his sister's house, not yet noticing the pieces of paper—old and new—pasted to the buildings he passed. Finally, he looked at them.
"Devane, Soissons, Devane," he read. He ripped the paper from the wall and tore it to shreds. He walked farther down, carefully reading the notices now. Some of them he tore from the wall, crumpling them into balls and throwing them into the mud of the street. By the time he had walked six blocks, sweat was gleaming on his brow. They were everywhere. It would be mere chance if Barbara missed seeing them.
"Barbara," he whispered, the veins standing out in his forehead. "Barbara."
* * *
"Now let me see," Montrose said, "if I put Madame de Gondrin here, I will have to put the Comte de Toulouse there." Like a child, Montrose sat in the middle of the floor of the adjoining parlor he and White shared, playing with pieces of paper that were his seating arrangements for Lady Devane's birthday dinner party, two days away. There could be no ball, no reception, because of her mourning, but Lord Devane had insisted on an opulent, small dinner with a recital afterward. The household had been planning it since the beginning of the month. Montrose was working feverishly; he had managed to secure the talents of Adrienne Le Couvreur, the most famous actress in Paris, who would enact passages from Racine's tragic heroines afterward. There would be violins and bass viols on the terrace, where the guests would dine at a series of small tables. The regent and his wife would be coming, Lord Stair, John Law and his wife, the Prince de Soissons, the Duc and Duchesse de Saint–Simon, Lord Alderley, Lord Wharton, the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles, the Prince and Princesse de Condé and the Prince and Princesse de Bourbon, Madame de Gondrin, the Comte de Toulouse. Small, but select. A proper reflection of his master's influence.
"The regent here, at the table with Lord and Lady Devane and her brother. But who else shall I put with them? The Princesse de Condé or the Duchesse de Saint–Simon? The duchess, perhaps. She might inspire the regent to behave himself—Caesar, are you listening to me? Where shall I put the duchess?"
"In a dustbin, for all I care." White sat nearby, brooding. It might not be true. It might be some piece of political filth. Something twisted to disfigure a sincere friendship.
"What is wrong with you? You have been like a bear since yesterday. Have you quarreled with Thérèse again? Or has something gone wrong with your poem—"
"There is more to life than poems, Francis."
"How very original. I must write that down somewhere. There is more to life than poems. I sit here struggling with an impossible seating plan, and all you can say is "There is more to life than poems, Fran—'"
Pierre LeBlanc, the majordomo, burst into the room like an explosion. "Quickly," he panted. "Come quickly! They fight! They fight! It is everything terrible!"
"Who? Who?" Montrose, still sitting on the floor, looked and sounded like an owl.
"Lord Alderley! The prince! Lord Devane! He is tearing up the blue– and–gold salon! He is like a man gone mad! Help me!"
The three of them ran from the room, Montrose's pieces of paper scattering like dust.
Harry had not come back intending to fight. He stood in the doorway of the salon, swaying from shock, and watched Philippe put his hand on Roger's shoulder and say, "My dear, they are everywhere. What shall we do?" And something exploded in his mind then, red, orange, ugly. It was true. He burst across the room and threw himself on Roger's back, screaming, "You filthy, prick–licking son of a bitch! You are not fit to touch the hem of my sister's skirts!"
He threw Roger facedown on a table in front of him. Blood spurted, red and dark.
Philippe grabbed Harry, pulling him off, and like a frenzied bull Harry staggered back, sending them both barreling into plates and vases, crashing arou
nd them, porcelain victims. Harry and Philippe grappled like two wrestlers, their faces strained, panting.
"Bastard!" Harry screamed. "French fucking bastard!"
Shaking, Roger wiped blood from his mouth. LeBlanc and a footman ran in.
"Stop them!" Roger panted. LeBlanc and the footman seemed unable to move. Harry and Philippe were on the floor, rolling over and over, into tables and chairs. LeBlanc ran out. Picking up a vase, Roger ran forward and smashed it against Harry's head; Harry groaned and lay still atop Philippe. Kicking, Philippe pulled himself away.