Now Face to Face (31 page)

“Letters.”

Tim, her footman, who had been to the village for letters, walked into the chamber. Grinning a broken-toothed grin—his two front teeth were chipped off at the middle—he made a bow and put a letter in her lap.

It was from Tony. The Duchess’s heart fluttered like a girl’s. June, July, August, September, October. Finally, Tony forgave her for Barbara. On October the tenth, the Duchess thought to herself, feeling joy, my grandson and I were reconciled. She ripped past the seal.

“I told you he would write. My bones. I felt it in my bones,” Annie said to Jane.

A duel. He was fighting a duel and asked her prayers if he died. Died? Tony could not die. There was to be his wedding, and an election. She saw suddenly Tony sitting next to her bed last spring, calmly discussing Barbara’s troubles. She remembered the strength in that face, and the quiet passion. Enormous fear combined now with shock; she could not breathe; she clawed at the air before her, and the cat in her lap leaped away. The world was whirling. Everyone’s face loomed large at her, Jane’s, Tim’s, Annie’s, mouths all open at once saying things she could not hear. Why did they mumble so that she could not hear, when they knew she was old?

Richard, she thought, they’ve made me fall with their foolishness. Catch me.

“W
HAT IS
it?” The Duchess pulled her bed linens up stubbornly to hide her mouth.

“It is a syrup of violets for fever,” Annie said.

“I do not have a fever.”

“You are too warm! I felt your forehead myself. And your cheek. You are too warm!”

It was not like Annie to be so emotional. The Duchess opened her mouth to the syrup. Heartache was a tight band around her heart. Syrup of violets did not cure heartache. But try telling Annie that.

“Is Jane still about?”

“Of course she is still about! You must sleep. You must—”

“Send her to me; then I will sleep.”

In the antechamber, Tim and Perryman, the steward, went to Annie and hovered over her like a pair of birds whose bad-tempered chick has fallen from the nest.

“What did—”

“Is the Duke—”

Annie swept past them to Jane. Of course the Duke was not dead. If he had been, they’d have known already. A special messenger would have been sent. The letter had been written before the duel, it appeared to Annie, in case the worst happened, and an idiot servant must have sent it by mistake.

“It’s you she desires to see,” Annie said to Jane, and to the men, darkly, “I will deal with you presently.”

Annie ushered Jane into the bedchamber. The draperies were drawn now, the chamber quiet. “Do not tire her.”

With a whirl of skirts Annie was gone again. Jane sat down carefully on the big bed.

“I’ve sent Barbara to a paradise,” the Duchess said. “In Virginia there are grapes and poplars, pines and cedars. Wood grows at every man’s door so fast that after it has been cut down, it will grow up again in seven years’ time to firewood. There are cherries and plums and persimmons. I miss Barbara, Jane. She was the light of this house—our candle, Annie called her. ‘There goes our candle.’ The Duke of Tamworth loves her. Did you know that? He has not forgiven me for sending her away. But I did what I did for the best. Why can people not see that? That I act for the best, always. Do you remember the time you and Barbara and Harry fed my pigs brandy? I thought the grooms would die from laughing. And it was my best brandy, too.”

“The duel?”

“If Tony were dead, they would have sent word by now.” You thought I was not good enough for her, Grandmama, Tony said in her mind, but I am. The memory of those words hurt.

“I used to tell Jeremy about my adventures with Barbara and Harry. At the last, I told them over and over because they seemed to comfort him. He died in my arms,” said Jane.

“No better place to die.”

A woman was not a set of stone wheels and wooden ratchets, was she? the Duchess thought. Needing only grease to forever turn. Each child she bore took time to grow inside her, took strength from her. I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, the Lord said. In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. Easy enough for Him to command. He did not have to birth them, and He did not have to bury them. See to Jane, Grandmama, Barbara had commanded. But it seemed that Jane saw to the Duchess instead.

“See that miniature there,” the Duchess pointed, and Jane took a portrait from the bedside table. “My son, Giles, was the only one of the three to resemble me; the others were Richard Saylor’s to the inch. But Giles was mine, small, dark, bright as three brass buttons. He died of smallpox, Jane. He was away at school, and we’d heard there was smallpox near, and I sent Perryman to fetch him, and he brought him home, all right, but in a coffin. I did not see him before he died. I saw none of my boys before death. So you see, Jane, you have the better of me, for at least your Jeremy died with loving arms tight around him.”

Jane touched at her eyes.

Yes, weep, thought the Duchess, go ahead. Don’t let them tell you not to weep. Don’t let them tell you not to sorrow. They do, you know. Her mind went to Richard, of how his grief and guilt turned inward and into madness, and reduced him day by day until in the end she had lost her golden man and buried his mad shadow. She would never love anyone the way she had loved Richard Saylor. Wood violets and lionhearts, impossible not to adore. Hold my hand, Jane, and let my old age find comfort in your shining youth.

In the antechamber, Perryman said to Annie, “She is—”

“Warm! More than likely feverish!” Annie turned on Tim like a thin brown whirlwind. “Have you no sense? Dropping that letter on her like that!” She slapped at him, and he raised his arms to ward her off. Her blows would not have hurt him much anyway; he was twice her size. “Let me have all the letters from now on!
All
the letters!”

“It would not be proper,” said Perryman. “I do not think I will allow that. I am steward of the household.”

“‘Allow that’! You fat old capon! You are nothing! I am the Duchess’s tirewoman! I know what is best!”

And then, to their surprise, Annie burst into tears and ran out of the door of the antechamber. Tim stared after her; he had never seen her cry before. He did not know the Lord had given her tear holes.

“You will continue to deliver the Duchess’s letters as always,” Perryman said, after a moment in which he and Tim were speechless. Naturally, Perryman recovered first. “However, if one should be from His Grace, the Duke, you will inform me of it so that I may prepare Her Grace properly.”

Tim, a big, bold, merry-faced fellow, did not say anything. Give the letters to Annie. Give the letters to Perryman. Ha. The Duchess would hack his head off with a dull ax for doing so, and those two would stand on either side as his head rolled across the lawn, Perryman saying, None of my doing, none of my doing, and Annie, Hack him again.

W
ONDERFUL LITTLE
broadsheet, thought Slane, pacing his small room like a lion while Rochester and others argued over the plan of invasion. London sizzled and buzzed with the news of the Duke of Tamworth and of the duel. The details, so obvious from the broadsheet, were simply too delicious. Everyone was talking about the South Sea Bubble, who had lost what. They were glad to remember perfidy and lies.

T
ONY WAITED
in a small antechamber at St. James’s Palace for the King to receive him, as commanded in the summons he had received. The ceiling was adorned with intricate plastering, created to surround allegorical paintings, which consisted of the usual nymphs in trailing, diaphanous robes, the inevitable warriors in their chariots. Tony was staring up at one of the nymphs, his mind not on what he looked at, not at all. There had been his life before the duel, and there was his life now. It seemed to him that he could move nowhere without looking up to see someone watching him. Whispers died away when he walked into a chamber, then began anew. Masham was quite ill—a fever in the blood, the doctor said.

Forgive me, Tony told Masham, for he had gone to see him each day since the duel. There is nothing to forgive, Masham said. I was a drunken fool. The duel had cleared Masham’s mind wonderfully, as it had Tony’s. I am sorry that your cousin’s name should be so bandied about, said Masham.

Masham refused to talk to anyone, refused to admit there had been a duel. Tony did the same. But sometimes, when he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror—and there was no great house in London without its wall of mirrors—he didn’t know who it was staring back at him. He hated the gossip about him, but hated even more the gossip over Barbara. It was vicious. Never had there been so wanton a woman as Barbara, it seemed.

And so it seemed to him that he had failed her. Even though he knew that she would forgive him, he didn’t know if he could forgive himself. Was it only a few days since the duel? It seemed lifetimes. And his fool of a valet had sent off the letters, so that his mother and sister had done nothing but weep for days. You might have died, they told him, weeping. How could you? Barbara is bad for everyone, they said.

Behind him, someone remarked, “Yes, there is a resemblance to the divine Barbara in the nymph farthest to the left, I quite agree.”

Tony looked to see who spoke so. Tommy Carlyle. Hulking, rouged like a woman, standing on shoes with heels enameled a deep red, the clear signature of a gentleman of fashion and of a certain age. No younger men wore them anymore. Carlyle sat down on one of the silk-covered benches, crossed his legs, admired the bows upon his shoes.

“One hears that you were seen coming out of Holles House yesterday. How are Lord Holles and his countess—and your sweet young bride-to-be?”

Carlyle probed for news, like the bird of prey he was. Tony kept his face stoic. It seemed to him these last days that his face had frozen into place. “Very well, thank you.”

“You may as well tell me all, as I shall find out one way or another. Is the marriage on or off? I am more a friend to you than you know, Tamworth.”

I’ve lost what little reason I have left, Tony thought to himself, for I feel like telling him. Carlyle could not have kept a secret if his tongue were taken out.

“I have the honor to take Harriet as my bride in a year.”

So much he did not tell Carlyle: the humiliation of having to wait for Lord Holles in the drawing room like a disobedient boy; telling Harriet’s father the truth, the apology tight in his throat. Asking if he might see Harriet to apologize to her, but not being allowed to.

The Duke of Wharton was her cousin. He’d get Wart to take a private letter to her. In it he would beg her pardon for his behavior, tell her that though her father had merely put the marriage off for a year, she might step back from it completely if she wished. He would honor her wishes over her father’s. It seemed only fair.

“Do I offer congratulations or condolences? You are too choice a plum, my dear Duke. If you were half-witted and crippled, they would marry their daughter to you.”

“I have no wish to call off the marriage.”

Carlyle was silent a moment, digesting this. Then, he said, “One hears that a certain banker has been to Devane Square: Sir Gideon Andreas, who I need not remind you is otherwise known as Midas Andreas. Sir Gideon is among trustees who are to sell the assets collected from the South Sea directors to pay their fines. Those board members will put more than one estate in their pockets, I would imagine. Has he a fancy to obtain Devane Square for himself, do you think? And I swear I noticed an infinitesimal slackening of vigor in Walpole, our plump Norfolk squire, at certain key points in the debates over the directors’ fines, over Roger’s fine.”

“Roger and Walpole were friends.”

“And friends never betray friends—is that it? Interest in self never wins out?”

“Are you saying Walpole did not defend Roger? That’s one manner of interpreting it. But I saw a man who saved whomever he could, a man who now pays the price of great odium for having done so. I thought you and Walpole were friends.”

“Ah, here comes the King’s servant. You have an interview with His Majesty, do you not? Yes, I know that, too. Annoying, isn’t it, how I know everything. People talk, and I listen. You have much to learn, my dear Duke, about policy and intrigue. Shall I be your teacher? First lesson, Tamworth: Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”