Now Face to Face (50 page)

He knelt before the fire again, holding his hands out for a last bit of warmth before he braved the street to find another carriage. What a jest it would be if he died from the cold, after a bout in a carriage with the most surprising whore he had ever had.

Diana, he thought, lingering over her name. Diana. What am I going to do?

But he knew what he would do. See her again, and again, until every lustful thought she conjured up was burned away in the ashes of coupling. Why not? She’d begun it. It was she who had touched him not an hour after arriving at Saylor House today, she who’d suggested they rendezvous in the carriage. A treat before the wedding. Are you hungry for a treat, Charles? Was this her heartbreak over there being no letter to her from Barbara? God.

This was the lodging where he brought women—whores, ladies of court, merchants’ wives, the dancer or singer from the opera, whoever took his eye. Most men he knew had something like it. She said he had called Barbara’s name.

The first time Barbara had walked through that door, she had been flippant and irritable and nervous, almost as if she were a virgin, rather than what her reputation said. She had been stiff in his arms; it had taken him a while to warm her, but the warming was a pleasure. What a strange affair they’d had; he never felt he knew her, except in a carnal sense, but he had loved her.

It was her habit to sit up in bed afterward, chin on her knees, talking to him of anything and everything, shops and hats and Harry’s debts, what her dogs or Hyacinthe had done. He had sometimes felt an odd pang in the region of his chest, listening to her, feeling closer to her then, after the act of coupling, than when in its middle. He had liked Barbara in the way he liked his friends, and he had trusted her. Oddly enough, he still did, in spite of all that had happened between them. Someone, Tommy Carlyle perhaps, had said that the Prince’s mistress, Mrs. Howard, in a drunken mood had confessed to having known both passion and love, but tenderness, Mrs. Howard was reputed to have said, tenderness is best.

Charles stood. He had taken Tony’s friendship for granted; only its absence made him aware how deeply he cared that all was changed between them now, since the duel. If you don’t fight him, I will, Charles had said, and so Tony had killed a man; that death had changed him, and remained in those grave eyes. If you looked closely enough, you could see it. You’re a dangerous friend, Charles, Wart had said. It took one to know one.

The New Year was here. “Wassail!” they would say tonight, holding up goblets. To health and happiness. To triumph. To invasion. How he and Wart had laughed, that a great and noble Whig like Lord Sunderland, with such direct access to the King, should be embracing one of the highest Jacobites in the land. Wart.

Is Slane pleased? Charles had asked. I don’t speak of Slane, Wart had said. Charles was impressed. Slane had certainly made his point. Charles did not even know who was the true head of this invasion, though he had his suspicions. He knew Wart, and through Wart’s misspeaking, Slane, but not who was above them. Wart said, mad grin intersecting the long ugliness of his face—and Charles could see Slane speaking through him—It is now that the men separate from the boys. There must be no faltering, Charles, and if we are somehow found out, you must deny it forever, no matter who of us goes down.

Cursed be the wretch who seized the throne and marred our constitution. Cursed be the Parliament, that day who gave their confirmation. And cursed be every whining Whig and damned be the whole nation, so said a street verse.

Charles smiled, his even face made handsome and bold. What would Wart say to his seduction of the sometimes mistress of one Robert Walpole? Even the arrogant Laurence Slane would have to be impressed. The edges of the memory of what had happened with Diana in the carriage were suddenly sharper than the event itself had been. He wanted Diana again, as soon as he could have her. He would have her again. She liked the danger as much as he. What a useful way to pass the time until spring, until the invasion. He raked apart the coals and blew out the candle and shut and locked the door behind himself.

“W
HAT HAPPENED
then?” Gussy asked Slane. They were talking of Tony.

“He said his grandfather was among the roses, when he somehow cut his arm. A thorn or something—Is that your father-in-law come to say good-bye? I’ll wait on the other side of the door.”

There was another exit from the chamber, and Slane stepped out into a hall, put his ear to the door, heard the sound of someone weeping.

Sir John was here to pick up letters and parcels to take to Ladybeth. Slane had helped Gussy select the gown that was his wife’s New Year’s gift. She will look beautiful in this, Gussy, Slane said. Why not take it to her yourself? Lace her in it, tight, then lace her right back out, and show her that you love her. Too many children, Gussy answered. Childbirth is difficult for her. She is afraid of having another child.

I’ll buy you French letters, said Slane. Do you know what those are? Put on before a man enters a woman, it keeps him from catching the pox. But it also keeps him from giving away his seed. He’d shocked Gussy as he explained it all to him.

Carefully, Slane cracked the door. Sir John was sitting like a large child in a chair before the fire, hands to his face, crying, while Gussy moved around him in what could only be described as a fluttering way. There was some kind of disjointed confession going on—stolen funds, the Duchess of Tamworth’s friendship, the Duke’s contempt; Sir John wasn’t to represent Tamworth in the Commons. Something about age, duty, the Tories.

Slane’s mind went leaping.

Someone knocked upon the door Sir John had used. Gussy went to open it, and in came the Bishop of Rochester in his nightgown, nightcap on his head, upon his crutches, and behind him the Duchess of Tamworth, carried by her footman. What is that upon her head? thought Slane. Feathers and some kind of claws. Is that a wedding headdress?

“I have to speak with you,” the Duchess said to Sir John, who jumped up at the sight of her.

The footman put her in a chair, and then Gussy and Rochester and the footman were going out the door. Slane stepped back down the hall, lightly, lithely, went around a corner.

Rochester stood with his ear pressed to the door. Gussy was peeping in through the keyhole. Only the footman had the dignity to stand away.

Slane went back to his own secret place, put his eye to the crack.

“I don’t believe you!” The Duchess’s hand, fastened to the head of her cane, clenched and unclenched. “You are not a thief. It is a mistake. We will call it a loan. I will give you—”

“You will give me nothing, because I accept nothing. I have broken the trust between us, stolen from you, and that is that. I am willing to go to trial, if the Duke wishes it.”

Everything about Sir John was set and stiff, from the angle of his head to the way he stood to the jut of his jaw. Only his eyes, the rapid blinking of the lids over them, betrayed what this conversation was costing him.

“To trial? Are you mad? That would be a pretty sight, your fellow justices sitting in judgment upon you—or have you forgotten that you are also a justice of the peace? There will be no airing of dirty linen—”

“Dirty linen? It is a matter of the failure of trust! Do you not hear me, Alice? I took two thousand pounds from your rents over a year ago and have yet to pay back a penny of it.”

“We have been friends for thirty years—”

“Which makes this all the more reprehensible upon my part. I understand that all friendship must be severed between you and me, that you can scarcely bear to look me in the eye. I will trouble you no more, except to say you have my pledge that I will repay every penny I owe, with interest, by the end of spring. Good evening to you, Your Grace.”

“All finished? A thirty-year friendship does not finish in the expanse of a quarter-hour’s quarrel, no matter the deed done. This is absolute nonsense, and I won’t have it! You have let your dreadful temper and worse pride—”

“Pride? Pride! Yes, I have pride, enough pride not to allow you to treat me like a child. I am a man, madam, and I take my punishment with the best of them! Tim!”

Sir John had opened the door. To Slane’s amusement, neither Gussy nor Rochester had time to move from their positions of obvious eavesdropping.

“Tim, come and take the Duchess away.”

The big footman was leaning down to lift up the Duchess, still in her cloak and headdress.

“You may not tell me what to do, John Ashford!” Her headdress was quivering as much as her voice.

“I want to see no more of you, no more! Good evening, madam!”

Sir John had made her cry. The footman was carrying her away, she crying. Sir John was cursing, a long string of curses—good ones, thought Slane, who knew how to curse in Spanish, French, and Italian. He opened the door, but the others didn’t see him.

“Impossible! She was always impossible. To act as if I am not a thief—”

“You are not a thief!” said Gussy.

“Of course, I am.” Sir John turned to Rochester. “I am humiliated that you had to see my shame, but you may as well know the worst about me.”

And just then, Rochester looked beyond Sir John and saw Slane.

Yes, thought Slane, you think the same as I. I wish I had known you when you were younger. Lion, they called you, you were the lion’s roar, just as Richard Saylor was the lion’s heart. Shall we, O Bishop of Rochester, gather the rosebuds while we may? Gather this old warhorse into our arms? We need a strong leader for our rising in the south.

“There is someone I want you to meet,” Rochester was saying. “Turn around, Sir John, and meet Laurence Slane, a friend and, you may as well know, a fellow conspirator.”

A
T THE
wedding, Diana stared at Charles, through him; he might never have existed.

It seemed to Charles that he could not keep his eyes from her, but when her glance locked with his, hers was indifferent. You are good, very, very good, thought Charles, but so am I. His wife, Mary—Tony’s sister—looked almost pretty tonight. Light lashes and brows were combed with lead to darken them, a trick her cousin Barbara had taught her. Everything Barbara had done in dress and style had been copied by the young women at court.

Suddenly, Charles was bored.

“Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health; and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?” the vicar was asking Tony.

In the candlelight, Charles saw a sheen of perspiration on Tony’s upper lip.

“I will,” said Tony.

Will you? Do any of us? wondered Charles.

Later, when they were back from the church, they gathered in Saylor House’s great parlor and hall. Musicians had been hired, and guests who had not been invited to the wedding ceremony were invited to this celebration afterward. The King was coming, as well as the Prince and Princess of Wales.

“The Duchess says she wants to go back to Tamworth tomorrow,” Harriet, the bride, was telling Mary. They were close friends. “She says she will go in spite of the weather and muddy roads. She says she wants to see the first robins in her gorse bushes.”

“What was the Princess speaking to you about for so long yesterday evening?”

Harriet looked around to see if anyone was close enough to hear.

“Marriage,” she whispered. “About men and women and the relations between them. The world is theirs, she says, and while you are young, they may, for a while, desire you. But always, another woman will come into their eyes, and like children who must have everything, they will have her, too, she says, because they can. She told me: ‘Be a good wife to Tamworth, enjoy the sport which can come between you in bed—’”

“She said that?”

“Yes. ‘But never, never take it to heart,’ she said, ‘for then your heart will be broken. Love other things—policy and intrigue if that is your bent, or your home, your children, your horses, your dogs—not only him. In fact, if you are wise, my little Harriet, you will not love him at all. I tell you this as my favorite maid of honor—’ I’m such a fool. I’ve made you cry.”

“No, no.” Mary wiped at her eyes and looked around, as Harriet had done, to see who might be watching. No one. They put their heads together again.

“Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said something nearly the same. ‘How I agonized,’ she said, ‘how I fretted, before eloping with the man I married. How I read and reread his letters to me and finally took on disgrace to have him’”—it was a great disgrace for a young woman of good birth and family to elope with a man—“‘only to discover my love was a pompous bore.’”

Mary laughed, and Harriet said, “That’s better. You need to laugh more, Mary. You used to laugh—”

“A dance, madam,” Charles interrupted their conversation abruptly.

“You have had too much wine, Charles.” Mary’s eyes were clear and gray, like her brother Tony’s.

Charles pulled her up and kissed her, letting his tongue just brush her mouth.

“How very wifely of you to say so.”

He felt her tremble, saw out of the corner of his eye that Tony’s bride was taking it all in, and he looked up to see Diana, too, watching. He smiled, lazily, and then kissed his wife yet again, long and lingeringly.