by Karleen Koen
"You should have let me arrange a marriage with a docile, convent– bred French girl. She would have understood. And if she did not, you could have sent her back to the convent."
"But I have grown so fond of my country–bred English girl."
"To my profound sorrow."
"And mine. Life is never simple."
"Never mind," said Philippe, putting his arm around Roger's shoulders. "She will never learn our dark secret. You are safe. You can make her believe whatever you want. She is putty in your hands, as we all are. What is it about your fatal charm, Roger, that makes it so fatal?"
There was the beginning of a roaring in her ears. She made a small sound. Philippe turned his head toward her, and they locked eyes. He saw her; she saw him see her; and for that second she read his heart clearly. He hated her, and he loved Roger. My dear God, she thought, as Philippe turned back to the gardens as if she were not there. As if she were a ghost. Or nothing. Roger was oblivious to her. He put his hand on Philippe's face.
"I shall miss you," he said.
Philippe smiled at him, and then, before her disbelieving eyes, Roger pulled Philippe's head down, and their mouths met, and they kissed. She could not move. The kiss did not break. The morning sun, now in its first strength, surrounded them like a halo. She stepped back, back into the cool shadows of the room. Her thoughts were incoherent….They kissed like a man and a woman….She had seen it in Philippe's eyes. They were… her thoughts stumbled to the few, small gestures which had fastened themselves in her mind, ready, waiting for this moment. The day Harry had arrived. Last night. Devane, Soissons, Devane. It did not mean that she and Philippe were lovers; it meant that Roger and he…
"No," she said, stumbling back over a chair. It was as if she were a piece of glass, splintering into fragments. Everything was pressing in on her, becoming dark, yet through a tiny tunnel of light she could still see them on the terrace, still embracing. They were before her eyes even as she sank to the floor. Someone was screaming…over and over the sound filled her mind with pain….Roger…oh, Roger. She fainted.
Chapter Nineteen
The Duchess and Tony walked through the meadows bordering Tamworth Hall. It was early morning, the morning after Barbara's birthday, and the dew clung to their feet and wet the hem of the Duchess's skirt. It glistened on the green meadow grass, a grass green as only May could make it. A grass through which white meadow daisies and golden buttercups bloomed. The buttercups grew higher than the grass, and the Duchess was like a child, slashing at their heads with her cane, ruthlessly. But she could afford to be extravagant; the month of May was extravagant. The smallpox was gone, borne away on April winds. It had spared her Tony. The bees were out, already drunk on flower wine, zigzagging greedily from field to hedge to field again. Cowbells sounded in the morning stillness as the milkmaids herded cows to their morning pastures. A few birds called to one another. The hawthorn was showing its fat buds, its promise of sweet fragrance; the butterflies and bees and the Duchess checked on it anxiously.
"A week more," she said to Tony, "and the hawthorn will be open— smell it already." She would fill Tamworth Hall with hawthorn branches, as would every villager and farmer their own homes. There would be branches of hawthorn in cottage windows, in country parlors, filling houses with its wonderful sweetness, the beauty of its red or white or pink blossoms.
"This is my favorite time of year," said the Duchess, leaning on Tony's arm, surveying her rich fields, the woods between here and Tamworth Hall, woods whose trees had leaves the color of spring, a tender, moist green, under which bloomed violets and wood sorrel and sweet woodruff. She must go out soon, with Annie and a maidservant or two, to gather the woodruff. Its perfume would scent her drawers and trunks and cupboards for months afterward. She had it growing in her kitchen gardens, among the rhubarb and tender radishes and young onions and potatoes, among the cabbages and rows of spinach, but to her mind, no woodruff smelled as sweet as that which grew under the trees in her wood. She loved Tamworth. It was a part of her soul; even now it was healing her with its birds and flowers and bees and meadows. She missed the children, yes. Not to see them running in the meadows, climbing the trees, fishing in the stream. But they were gone. With their grandfather now in the family vault, and the only meadow flowers they would ever see again would be the ones she brought them. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity—yet not all. She was not alone. The Lord was good.
"Look at that sky, boy. It is as blue as the color of Barbara's eyes, or your grandfather's eyes. Someday this will all be yours, and now I can say those words gladly. You are a good boy, Tony. A good boy to look after your grandmother so."
Tony, hulking above his thin, frail grandmother, blushed like a child. A shame, thought the Duchess, that he is so plain. None of William's handsome looks at all, except for his height. All Abigail, watered down to nothing. Ah, well, we work with what we have. And we thank the Lord for His blessings. She squeezed Tony's arm and gestured for them to continue their walk. Abigail would be here tomorrow, anxious no doubt to see why her son tarried so long. The Duchess smiled grimly to herself. Abigail would have to loosen her hold a bit, for the Duchess claimed Tony now. He was hers. Given to her by the Lord God Almighty. Though she was prepared to share…to a certain point….Ah, she looked forward to quarreling with Abigail. She slashed the heads off a patch of buttercups with vicious satisfaction.
Dulcinea appeared from nowhere, her silvery–white fur sleek with dew, her tail slashing with jungle majesty. She was stalking birds, hoping with her cold cat's heart that perhaps a hatched babe or two had fallen from their nest. Above her, a pair of rooks circled and cawed and swooped down at her. Dulcinea was no fool; there was a nest close by; a baby on the ground perhaps. She ignored the Duchess and Tony, intent on her hunt, and went leaping into the woods with the grace of the primeval beast she was.
"Want one of Dulcinea's kittens, Grandmama. Do not forget."
"Say 'I,' boy! Can you not say the plain–English word 'I'? You are going to have to learn. I will not have the Duke of Tamworth sputtering around this country like a damned fool! Let me hear you say, 'Grandmama, I want one of Dulcinea's kittens.' Say it. Or I will give you nothing. Go on! Say it! You can do it, Tony."
Hesitantly, Tony said, "I…want one of Dulcinea's kittens."
The Duchess nodded vigorously. Poor Tony. Why should he hoard words as others hoarded gold? What was he afraid of? What kind of upbringing had he had that he could not declare himself? She remembered him as a child, fat, unblinking, staring about him silently, someone on Abigail's staff always correcting him, teaching him, pushing him, if Abigail herself was not worrying over him. Harry and Barbara teasing him unmercifully. She herself ignoring him. Poor lout, no wonder he was the way he was. Well, he was under her wing now, and she would bring him out of himself. Abigail had done her duty as she saw fit, but she had raised a shy, uncertain man and the Duchess meant to do better. God had granted her this last chick in her hour of need, and she would do her best by him. Never mind that he was not all his father had been. He was hers. They walked on through the woods, coming out of its cool shadows to the gardens near the house. She was tired now. She could feel her age dragging her down. She needed her morning rest.
"Never mind me, Tony," she said, softening the edge of what she had said before. "I am a crotchety old woman this morning. I did not sleep well last night. Barbara was on my mind. I felt a worry. Annie says the tea leaves bode evil. I do not like it!" She stamped the ground with her cane. "I hope she is happy. She should be happy. I pray she is. Sometimes one feels so helpless…a feeling I never like, Tony. I do not believe in helplessness."
He was silent. She knew what that silence meant. He still loved Barbara. Ah, what a tangle life was. Never giving us what we wanted, or worse yet, giving it. Well, there was no use coddling him. The truth had to be faced. That was how people healed, by facing the truth, as difficult as that was to do sometimes. But Tony was frailer than Barbara, not used to h
er gruffness as Barbara was. She had much to make up for in her handling of this boy— this dear boy. She squeezed his arm.
"You cannot have her. She is married, and even if she were not, she is too strong–willed for you. You would both be unhappy. Oh, I know you do not think so, but I am right, Tony. I see with the eyes of an old woman, and I am right. Come on, boy, pull me along. Tamworth is just a few more steps, and I must rest a bit. Ah, feel that breeze. Look, one of your grandfather's roses—they are called the Duke of Tamworth, named after him—is opening. Look at that color. Ah, there is nothing prettier than a Tamworth morning, is there?"
He smiled at her. It caught her heart. There was a glimmer—just the tiniest glimmer—of Richard in that smile.
"Bah!" she said, smiling back at him. "Never mind trying to charm me. It will do you no good. I am a tough old bird. All we Tamworths are. You will see. You are one of us. God bless you, boy, you are one of us. Pick me a rose, Tony. I want to go inside smelling your grandfather's roses."
PART II
Endings
ENGLAND
1720 –1721
Chapter Twenty
Bab," a voice called her softly, pulling her up from sleep's dark nothing, "wake up."
She ignored the hand on her bare shoulder, clinging to the dark in her mind, but it shook her again, insistent. As insistent as the throbbing bright sunlight coming in through the open windows. Closing her eyes more tightly, she snuggled into the rumpled sheet, still cool from the early morning damp. Then someone kissed her shoulder.
"Darling," a soft, shy, young voice said. "I must go. At least wake to tell me good–bye. Please, Bab…"
Thoughts went skittering into one another inside her head. Dark. Shrill. Like a summer night's bats disturbed in their cave. Sweet Jesus, she thought, her face pressed into the pillow, this is a nightmare. Wake me when it is finished.
"I am meeting Wart at Garraway's. South Sea is making another stock offer to annuity holders, and I must convert mine before it is too late," the voice said. "Otherwise I would not leave you like this. But I told John to serve you tea. Wake up…love." The last word was hesitantly, shyly, said.
It was enough to make her turn over and open one eye to see Jemmy Landsdowne (seventeen and no nightmare) sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her with eyes that adored her. Oh, dear, sweet, merciful God, she thought, turning her face away as he leaned forward to kiss her lips. Quickly, she shut her eyes. He contented himself with touching a strand of her long, tousled, red–gold hair instead.
She listened to the sounds he made as he left the room, the rustle of fabric as he pulled on his coat, the sound of his heels tapping across the floor, the merry off–key tune he was whistling as the door closed. Nausea gripped her by the throat. It was last night's drinking, but it was this also. The door reopened, and she did not move. She played being asleep, while the nausea choked her, and thoughts circled in her head, a head that pounded, that felt as if it were being tightened in a vise. She heard the sounds of china rattling against a tray, the dull clink of silver. What have I done? she thought. This is not happening. The door closed.
She sat up and slowly shook out her hair. It billowed out around her like a lion's mane. Wrapping a sheet around her naked body, she got up from the bed and poured herself a cup of tea. Her hands were shaking so badly that she spilled some, but the hot liquid burned her tongue and throat and some of the bile in her stomach. She went to the open window and leaned out. The hot, still air of London's August fell on her like a blanket. She could smell the stench from the Thames River, matching what lay on top of her stomach. A cart rolled slowly by, the barrels on its back pierced with holes that sprinkled water on the street to keep the dust down. Across, on the front steps of a house, his basket of tools and fresh rushes at his feet, a chair mender stood mending the broken rushes of a chair while the housewife watched him from her front window. The shrill cries of street vendors on the main street just around the corner could be heard: "New river water!" "Ripe strawberries!" "Knives, combs, or ink horns!" "Crab, crab, any crab!" Somewhere, a man and woman were quarreling. Barbara wedged herself in the open window, like a gypsy or lazy maidservant and sat there, watching the chair mender and sipping tea.
Have I bedded Jemmy Landsdowne? she thought very slowly, for thinking hurt her head. Asking that question made the nausea rise in her throat. Never run away from the truth…that was her grandmother's voice in her mind. Bits and pieces of the countless homilies, lectures, and sermons she had listened to as a girl always drifted in and out of her mind at random to remind her that she was not living up to her grandmother's standard of a gentlewoman. She needed no sermon…her everyday life these days was reminder enough.
Never run away from the truth because you carry it on your shoulder and someday it will put its ugly face into yours and say, "Boo." A lecture pulled out and recited by her grandmother whenever she and Harry had lied about their latest mischief. They both used to jump back—even though they knew what was coming—at Grandmama leaning forward, her fingers curling on each side of her face like a witch's, to cry, "Boo!" in a loud voice. But facing the truth of stealing from the Tamworth kitchen or Sir John's orchard was a far cry from facing the truth of waking up in the bed of a boy she had no feelings for. (A fondness…there was that…the resemblance to Kit…but fondness could not justify…Boo…Thank you, Grandmama, I can say boo for myself.)
How can this have happened? she thought, leaning back against the window frame. Suddenly, she wished with all her heart that she could be fifteen again, with the vigor and sureness she had felt then. The sense of knowing exactly what she wanted; the sense of knowing exactly what was right and what was wrong. Now she was twenty and she knew nothing. Except that she was sitting in a window, under Jemmy's sheet naked as a Covent Garden whore, and in similar circumstances. And I know this, she thought, and the thought rang sharp and clear like a bell in the morning in her mind. I know I do not like what has just happened. What has been happening to me all this spring and summer. I know, I am afraid. Do you hear me, Grandmama? Does anyone hear me? I am afraid. But her grandmother did not answer. How could she? One did not answer what was never asked. Ugly little truths jumped down from her shoulder and went leaping like demons before her eyes. Boo, she told them. Boo.
Wearily, she concentrated on remembering what she could of the night before. She had left Richmond Lodge in the early afternoon with Charles. At the thought of Charles, she stiffened. A new and dangerous element was introduced into her predicament. Did he know? Well, he must not know for all their sakes. Go on, she told herself, trying to get past Charles. Face the rest. Everyone was crammed into carriages: Charles, Harry, Pamela, Wart, Judith, drinking from silver flasks and laughing—except herself. She had not wanted to go. She was in one of her moods, as they were known… those dark times in her life, coming lately again with increasing frequency (she had thought them left in France), times when she felt she had lost her place in the world, when living from day to day was not enough. But how did she explain such feelings to people who never felt so? There was no explaining.
And she and Charles had begun to quarrel, and naturally they had stopped at taverns along the way to London (she could just picture the others piling out of the carriage like pumpkins spilling from a cart, so glad were they to be away from the quarreling). There was the memory of smoky rooms, ale foaming, Pamela's whiny, high–pitched voice, Judith's inane laughter, Harry losing a quick game of cards, her headache. Her boredom. Her distaste. Everyone was laughing and talking and having a good time. Only she sat apart. And so she began to drink, to be like them, to feel a part of their fun, glass after glass, until at last everything was soft, a golden blur, and she could laugh and joke as they were doing. Where Jemmy came in she had no idea. Only that somewhere, in some tavern, he was there, with his own group of friends. All younger than she by three or four years, and one of the young men began to flatter her—as did any young man who considered himself fashionable these days
, for she was "Fair Aurora, the dawn's sweet, young queen."
If she tried, she could still hear the echo of Wart and Harry baying like hyenas when they had read the stanzas to each other, stanzas from Caesar White's last book of poetry, which had made her famous even before she put the toe of one of her satin shoes on English soil…the poetry…and Richelieu. She closed her eyes at the thought of Richelieu; the corner of her mouth trembled slightly. "You still love him," he had said, his face so different from that first time when he had whispered, "I have waited such a long time…touch me, Barbara…touch me." But she had been too numb, too crazed inside to appreciate his skill. Revenge had been on her mind, only revenge. She shook her head to chase away thoughts that would only bring tears and took a sip of her cold tea. There was no use in crying. She had not cried since those terrible weeks after she had seen the truth of Roger and Philippe, weeks in which she had thought she would go mad, weeks in which she had screamed and wept and been for all the world the same as one of those wretched women chained in Bedlam Hospital.
She put one hand to her face at the thought of that time and its aftermath, seared in her mind, as seared as the moment she had seen Roger kiss Philippe, for the aftermath was Roger walking away from her as if she were nothing. Walking out of her life. That was the moment she stopped crying. The hurt was too deep for tears. It went to her core, her essence, her being. All that had existed was loss—choking her with darkness, the way water does a drowning man. She had thought she would die. (What a child she had been to think a broken heart would kill her, but it had felt so; yes, at the time, it had felt so.) She had not died. Nor had she cried again. Not even when she and Harry journeyed to Italy to bury their father. We bring nothing into this world, the curate had chanted (the wooden coffin was slowly being lowered down, down, down into dust and nothingness, and no one was there to mourn, save the curate…and her…and Harry…and she knew what nothingness was because that was all that was in her heart), and it is certain we can carry nothing out. ("I will bring him home," Harry told her, his face a shadow against the dark sky. "I swear I will bring him home." He did not. She arranged it herself, Roger paying for it, as he paid for all things. A sack of gold arrived for her each month, wherever she might be, and there was always a banker she could call upon for extra funds. The first time the gold had arrived, she had the clear memory of flinging it against a wall in such a fit of rage that the sack burst and gold coins went skittering everywhere. She could still picture Harry and Wart on their hands and knees hunting for coins. Two years later, she was staring at a newly arrived sack and wondering if Roger had touched it, if the mark of his hands might still be upon it, and she could not keep herself from touching it also, as if her act would lessen some of the distance separating them. Touching it gently, delicately, as if some of his warmth might have crossed the miles from England to France to make her well again.) The Lord gave, the curate had chanted, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.