Dark Angels (77 page)

“Annie,” she said to Susannah’s granddaughter, sitting dark and glowering on a stool because she must have disobeyed Susannah, “guess who’s come to see us.”

In the arbor, Richard knelt before Alice. “Don’t weep,” he said. His throat was tight. He’d cried like a boy at the sight of Pharaoh. He took a hand from her face, began to kiss it, unable to help himself.

“You mustn’t touch me,” Alice said.

He walked away.

S
UPPER WAS QUIET,
strained. Louisa refused to eat with them. A tiny moth came in to play with the flame at one of the candles, and Jerusalem kept waving it away, looking from Richard to Alice and back again. Alice looked weary and drank more wine than Jerusalem had seen her do since arriving at Tamworth. Richard played with the food on his plate, gave short answers to any questions Jerusalem asked.

“How did he die?”

“He just stopped breathing.”

“Have you your letter to Turenne?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve resigned, then?”

“Yes.”

“Was anything said of it?”

“Yes.”

“For example?”

“I don’t wish to speak of it.”

“Nan Daniell wants a word about Walter. Will you take the time to speak with her?”

“Walter’s gone.”

“Gone? Where?”

“We don’t know. Effriam thinks he’s run away.”

“But why would he run away?”

“I don’t know, Mother.”

Jerusalem threw her napkin on the table. “Why don’t you both go out and look at the stars? Alice, take your shawl.” She walked over to her flute, began to play it.

Out on the terrace, Alice and Richard were silent. Stars were bright, spattering the sky. I can’t breathe, thought Alice. It was because of him.

“I’m leaving the army, Alice. I’m going to France.”

“I think that’s likely a good thing, Richard.”

“What if I loved you, too?” he said.

She couldn’t answer. Dreams, as far as she could see, did not come true. She felt desperate, weak. “If you touch me, Richard, I’m lost. Please don’t.”

In answer, he put his hand up to cup the back of her neck, entangling his fingers in her hair, and like the moth at the candle, she stepped into his arms, and his mouth was on hers, not in friendship, but in deliberation and desire and something else, and she was lost, everything she’d felt and seen and grieved and loved welling up in her. She could not have enough of him, his mouth, his taste, his tongue, his body against hers. She ran her hands along the sleek bones of his face, the strong muscles of his neck. She would die for him. She was his to do with whatever he pleased. She was fire and light and love from head to foot. When he lifted his mouth from hers, she had to bunch his coat in her hands and hang on to him not to fall. He put her head against his heart, and she could hear it pounding. I will go anywhere with you, she was thinking, and then lovelier verses floated into her mind, tamping down some of her heat, painting it with something sacred, which was part of her love, also, Wither thou goest, I will go. Jerusalem read the Bible to the household at night, the verses echoing in Alice’s mind when she closed her eyes to sleep.

“I could lie with you right now, here, with your mother in the other chamber,” she whispered.

“And in the morning?”

“I would rise and tell Balmoral.”

He stepped back, and the distance between them loomed huge. “Why?”

“I owe him truth. And there’s more truth to be told. I asked Monmouth to flirt with your sister. Whatever’s happened, I’m a piece of it.”

He stepped even farther back from her. “What a meddling fool you are, Alice.”

“Yes.”

The sound of the flute ceased.

“Children,” called Jerusalem, “time to come inside.”

A
LICE STOOD AT
the window staring at stars long after Poll was faintly snoring. What if he loved her, too, he’d said. She hadn’t a shred of pride to separate her from him. Pride. What a meddling fool you are, Alice. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool, Richard’s mother read. She adored him; she was besotted. Except that she’d hurt his sister. Except that she owed Balmoral her honor. Oh, Barbara, you said it was so sweet. Here was why Caro betrayed—she could so easily betray Balmoral. Richard had only to walk through that door, and she would lie down wherever he wished and open herself to him, meet him kiss for kiss, touch for touch, wild, wanton, feverish, not think of consequences, a slave to this desire she felt for him. There was such longing in her heart, such sadness. What was there to do? Step back from Balmoral? At this late stage? How could she? How could she not? Clever Alice, no longer clever. Would you be a soldier’s wife, follow the drum for him? Yes and yes again. Would you live as nobody, hidden away on a farm? No and no again. Would Balmoral ruin Richard if she should marry him? Yes, it was likely. Would Richard forgive her the mischief with Louisa? Who knew? She could scarcely forgive herself. The kitten mewed, leaped down from her bed, came to threaten and fight the tail of her nightgown. The headache was here, growing on each side of her head. “Stop it, Dulcinea.” Alice lay down on the floor, pressing her forehead to the cool of the floor, as the kitten leaped and tried to kill her dark and riotous curls.

A
T MIDNIGHT, THE
little owl flew once over the stable and then back to the wood. Richard led the saddled horse out of the stall.

“Did you mean to leave without saying good-bye?” His mother stood in the door of the stable, a lantern in her hand.

Richard walked his saddled horse toward his mother and out into night that promised morning.

His mother touched the nose of the horse he’d chosen. “There’s a yearling of Pharaoh’s that Winston Ashford has. I could buy him back. You didn’t tell me how he died.”

“I don’t know. Effriam came to find me, and when I got to the stables, he was down, gone.” He put his arm around her, looked into the pale oval of her face. “I’m not coming back, Mother.”

“To France?” Tomorrow was Easter. She bit her lips to stop the words, Stay for Easter.

“Yes. I leave trouble behind me. His Grace the Duke of Balmoral is unhappy over a failure of mine, angry that I’ve resigned. He called me a fool, and—” He stopped. He wouldn’t mention Renée’s tears, her begging him not to leave. I’ve ruined you, she had cried, and of course, her unhappiness meant King Charles could not be a happy man at the moment. He wouldn’t mention mortgaging Tamworth for every pence, of buying into Prince Rupert’s Hudson Bay Company. It was enough he had brought Louisa home, her fighting him every step of the way.

“Do you love her?”

“Who?”

“The French one.”

“Yes, I love her.”

“And this one?”

“Her too.”

“You’ve food?” It was one of the ways she had known he was leaving, the cook coming to her late and telling how he’d packed food for the young baron, a stable boy telling her he’d asked for a horse to be saddled, Annie saying he’d put a miniature portrait of his father in his saddlebag.

“Yes.”

“Let me get some coins from the strongbox.”

“I just want to be on the road, away from here. I have no letter for Alice. I sat up half the night trying to write one, but there was nothing I could think to say.” He spoke jerkily, holding emotion in check. “Will you say good-bye for me, tell her that I—tell her that she will always have my deepest regard, tell her I forgive everything? Make sure you say that word—everything. It’s important. Will you bless me?”

He knelt before her in the dark, the horse, her reins dangling, waiting for him a few feet away. Jerusalem put her hand on Richard’s head, closed her eyes, feeling all the things she would not say to this man whose body encased the boy she had loved, the boy who looked back at her often even now when she met his eyes, but who had transferred his heart’s allegiance elsewhere, as was fitting, even though she did not entirely like it. So his father had done once upon a time. In her mind, she hugged the boy to her, seeing all his eagerness for life, all his sweet innocence, enclosed forever in a man’s body and a man’s needs and a man’s ambitions. She spoke prayers for him, putting him in God’s care. Nothing was ours to keep forever. So it had been. So it would always be.

After he’d ridden away, she walked along the side of the house to the kitchen. Cook was up, and to her gladness, so was the baby. She took her from a sleepy, weeping Nan, who wept because Walter was gone and had sent her no good-bye.

“Oh, ma’am, you mustn’t bother yourself with us,” Nan said.

“But I want to.” This child-mother had no idea how precious it was to have a baby in the household again. She sat in a rocking chair near the window and began to play cat’s cradle with the child’s hands. “Annie,” she cooed. “My sweet little girl.” All the little heartbreaks, thought Jerusalem. Louisa, upstairs, cried and raged hers. Alice and Richard tried the opiate of duty, Nan simple tears.

“Bah,” said a voice from the corner. It was Tamworth’s other Annie, up because Richard had left. Doubtless she’d witnessed the farewell, lurking somewhere as was her way. “I don’t like her having my name.”

“What shall we call her, then?”

“Stupid.”

Later, Poll came to tell her that Alice was ill with the headache again. Jerusalem went into her stillroom, mixed St. John’s wort with safflower while Poll held the baby for her. Cook brought some warmed wine, and Jerusalem mixed the herbs into it, thinking all the while about love and its many circles.

I
N THE MORNING,
Alice glared at Poll. “I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. He left late in the night, Nan Daniell says. Good riddance, I say, what with your eyes glowing like candles whenever you see him. I want to call you ‘Your Grace,’ not Mrs. Nobody.”

“Get out.” Alice threw a pillow. “Out!” She didn’t weep. Some things went too deep for weeping. She didn’t go to Easter service that day. There was no Jerusalem and no Louisa at supper that night, just Alice. She sat in the opened windows of one of the house’s bays, looking out into the twilight. He did not leave a letter. Better that way. He did what he had to do, and so would she. It would have been so sweet to have a letter, but she would have been a fool over it, treasuring it. Jerusalem found her in the arbor that night, sitting on a twig bench in the dark, and held up the lantern. “Poll is fretted about where you are.”

“Let her fret.”

“Richard left this morning for France. He asked me to say goodbye for him and give you his deepest regard. He said he forgave you everything. I’m sorry it has taken me all day to tell you.”

Alice twisted fingers together in her lap, glad for the dark, her thoughts flying out everywhere, dropping back to the arbor only when she heard Jerusalem say, “It seems your lord was displeased with Richard’s leaving for France.”

Displeased? How dare Balmoral be displeased? That would not do. She would see that Richard got every glory he deserved. Yes, she could do that, couldn’t she?

“You’ve not answered the letters from your father, from His Grace. They’ll be showing up on my doorstep demanding to know what I’ve done with you. Only a few weeks until your wedding.”

“Am I well enough to marry just yet?”