by Karleen Koen
She found Thérèse in the housemaids' bedchamber. Two housemaids sat in bed, laughing and talking as if Thérèse, lying across another bed, did not exist. They stopped laughing at the sight of Barbara, stared sullenly at her a moment, then rose from the bed to make slow curtsies. Why are they not working? thought Barbara, her eyes narrowing. She looked at them coldly, other things she had seen and heard in this household coming to mind.
"Get out," she said.
They scurried from the room. Thérèse sat up and wiped her eyes. She began to stammer an apology. Barbara held out her hand and opened it.
"Here," she said.
Thérèse stared at Barbara's palm. In it was the ring.
"Do you—do you wish me to clean it?"
"I wish you to have it."
Thérèse stared at the ring. She opened her mouth, but Barbara interrupted her.
"No! Do not say anything. I could not bear it. I–I loved him so."
She put the ring down abruptly on the bed and left the room.
Gently, Thérèse picked it up. She held it tightly in her hand. She would wear it on a gold chain, on the chain that held her tiny crucifix. It would lie between her breasts with the crucifix near her heart, a reminder of how she had loved him. She lay back on the bed. She had promised Caesar that she would see him tomorrow, and she would. When a person was on the edge, as Caesar was, it was important to see others' love, others' caring. If Harry had had someone in London…she could not finish the thought. Tears seeped down her cheeks. She began to pray. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.…
Downstairs, Barbara banged open the door to the library. Montrose, huddled among his inkpots and lists, stared at her.
"I want a list of all the servants in this household and the back wages owed to each. Tomorrow."
* * *
"Lady Devane. Lady Devane!"
Justin shook her out of sleep. She was out of the trundle bed instantly, moving toward the sickbed. He is dead, she thought. "The fever is broken," said Justin behind her.
She felt Roger's forehead. It was damp. His hair was matted with sweat. She touched his cheek with her own. It was cool. The fever was broken.
Justin smiled, she clapped her hands and covered her mouth to laugh. The fever was broken. Justin bowed, and she curtsied, and they did a country jig once around the room together, in the dark, stumbling into furniture, holding their laughter in like children doing something forbidden, and thus laughing even harder. The fever was broken.
* * *
That morning, the doctor felt Roger's pulse and frowned. He is still an ill man, he said, but Barbara did not care what he said. Roger's fever had broken. He was going to live. She would not allow him to die. She left the doctor clucking over Roger and threw on a shawl and went outside. He was going to live. When he woke, she would tell him how much she loved him, and she would nurse him carefully. If there was any way, any way possible, she was going to take him to Tamworth. She glanced up at the sky. There was not much time. One or two good rains, snow, and the roads would be impossible. The muddy ruts would rattle him to death. She would take him away from this house with its surly servants, take him away from London with its lying news sheets and gossips, to convalesce at Tamworth. Secure. Safe. Among those who loved him, and by spring, he would be well.
A horseman trotted up the circular road to the house and she ran forward, thinking it was Tony. Charles was off his horse in one lithe movement and holding her hands before she had a chance to speak.
He smiled down at her, and she saw herself reflected in his eyes. No rouge or powder, faded old gown, someone's woolen shawl. And she did not care.
"He is going to live, Charles," she said, taking her hands out of his. "The fever is broken." She looked up at the leaden sky and laughed out loud. "He is going to live!"
She felt suddenly like dancing, like running. Something that had been squeezing her heart had eased its hold, and she had not even realized it until now, when it was gone. I feel like celebrating, she thought. Celebrating survival, for I begin to think simple survival a feat in itself. He is going to live.
Charles watched her face. Everything she felt was clear on it. Goddamn me for a fool, he thought, staring at her face. Only she makes me act such a fool.
"Come and have tea with me," she said, her grandfather's smile on her face.
He shook his head. "I am happy at your happiness, Barbara. I rode over only to see how Roger—and you—did. And so I see. I have some happy news of my own. I wanted to tell you in person. I think I am going to be married."
He said the words calmly, as if he were telling her of the purchase of a new horse, his arms crossed on his chest, his eyelids half–closed. At his ease.
She was silent. Finally, she said flippantly, the Barbara of this summer, to cover what she really felt, "My condolences to the bride."
He threw back his head and laughed. She wanted to slap him. He stepped toward her, his eyes no longer half–closed.
"Give me a kiss of congratulations, for old times' sake. We both have what we want, do we not?"
He was looking at her in a mocking, half–challenging way, and she wanted to slap him again, and she stepped forward and kissed him quickly, hard, on the lips, but he caught her by her shoulders and said, his voice as mocking as his eyes, "Not like that. Never like that, Barbara. You have forgotten old times, I see. I will remind you." And he put his mouth slowly, deliberately, on hers, and she felt the shock of its warmth all the way through her body, and she thought, Charles, we might have been, we came so close, but I could never give you the whole of my heart…and then his tongue grazed hers, and she leapt back out of his arms, fiercely, frowning, saying, "Roger! Roger needs me! I do congratulate you. I do! Good–bye, Charles."
And she ran all the way to the house, not looking behind her even once. And in the house, she peeped through thick draperies at him, and he was still there, staring at the house, but a fog was in, slowly rolling over and over, through the gates, down the lane, slowly obscuring him.
When Roger woke, she was there. He opened his eyes and saw her and struggled to lift his hand, but could not and she lifted it for him and kissed it. "I am here. I love you," she said. "You are with me. I will take care of you."
"Barbara." He croaked out her name. "H–hurts."
"Hush, now. Go back to sleep. Rest. You must rest. And then you will get well. If you rest."
* * *
A carriage drove into the circular road and wheeled before Devane House. Diana and Annie descended from it and strode purposefully up the steps and into the house.
"Where is my daughter?" said Diana, pulling off black gloves and glancing down the hall.
"In the library," said Cradock, bowing.
"And Lord Devane?"
Cradock smiled. "His fever has broken."
"Oh," said Diana.
In the library, Barbara and Montrose were going through the list of servants.
"There was a riot in the lobby of Westminster yesterday," Montrose said.
Barbara shivered. "I want to take him away from here. I was thinking of closing the house, leaving only you and Cradock. If I sell my pearl tiara, it ought to more than cover the cost of wages to the other servants. As far as I am concerned, there is not a one among them worth—"
The library door opened dramatically, and Diana swept in, Annie following behind.
"Annie!" Barbara said, jumping up. "Annie!"
"I have come to nurse that husband of yours. Your grandmother sent me."
"I want to go to Tamworth, Annie. I want to take him away from here. The doctor says a journey will kill him, but oh, I want him out of here. Go and see him. Through those doors there. Did you bring Grandmother's medicines? Oh, Annie, I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you. Francis," Barbara said, turning to Montrose, "Annie can cure anyone."
Montrose coughed and glanced toward Diana, who stood to one side, watching Barbara with eyes that were both reproachful and mocking.
"Yes," said Diana. "So I see."
She looked at Montrose, who coughed again and left the room. Diana sat down. She picked up the piece of paper that held the names of the servants. Her face was hard, cold.
"Have you been to court?"
"No, Mother."
"And do you plan on going?"
Barbara's jaw hardened. "No, Mother." She tensed for the argument she knew was coming.
"I see."
Diana stood up and pulled back on her gloves. At the door, she said, "Do me the courtesy of letting me know when you leave town."
* * *
Thérèse fed White another spoonful of soup, talking all the while. "And his fever broke early this morning. How glad we were! Madame Barbara was dancing around that house like a little girl. And this afternoon, her mother and Annie—Annie is the Duchess's tirewoman and she knows everything about nursing—arrived. Madame Barbara says Annie will make Lord Devane well again." She smiled, and White smiled back. She leaned forward to put down the bowl, and her necklace swung out of her gown.
"May I?" asked White, and he held the mourning ring between two fingers.
"Harry's," Thérèse said. She kissed the ring and crossed herself and put the necklace back inside her gown. "Now," she said, "I have a proposition to lay before you."
White arched an eyebrow.
"We are closing down Devane House if we can leave, and only Montrose and one other servant will be there. I told Lady Devane about you—no, Caesar. Do not look at me that way. I told her only that you were in London, and she suggested that you come to stay at the house with Montrose."
"I do not need anyone's charity—"
"Shut up. I hate false pride. She made the offer out of her regard for you. She has no idea—of this," said Thérèse, making a gesture with her hand that took in his shabby room. White frowned.
"And why not? I thought it would give Montrose company, and you a place to become stronger. You might begin writing again. Well, you might. You can at least write to me. And in the spring, you could come to Maidstone, which is close to Tamworth, and convalesce." Thérèse stood up. "You think about it. I will be back tomorrow."
She put the bowl and spoon back into a basket and straightened the covers about White's body and fluffed his pillows. He watched her with eyes that were not as listless as the day before. She shook out her gown and tied her cloak and pulled the hood up over her face and picked up the basket. She kissed his forehead and went to the door. She paused.
"I overheard someone say Alexander Pope lost half his fortune, and John Gay everything."
White frowned at her.
She smiled back. "We are never alone in our misfortune, Caesar. Sometimes it only seems so." And she closed the door before he could think of a reply.
* * *
Annie sat down at a table in the room Barbara had given her and dipped her pen in ink. She must write a letter to her Duchess, who would be waiting for it, who would not rest or sleep properly until she heard from her. They would be bringing Lord Devane to Tamworth, just as soon as Mistress Barbara closed the house and dismissed the servants. The Duchess must prepare for him. And other things, Annie shook her head as she wrote. Lord Devane was dying. Mistress Barbara would not see it, but he was. If she was careful, if she delicately added the mandrake to the foxglove, she could deaden the pain this journey would give him. And who knew? The foxglove might prolong his life…for a while. Mistress Barbara was correct in her impulse to want to take him to Tamworth. A man needed to die with the people who loved him by his side. In a house filled with tradition and memory. Where others had died, so that death was not unfamiliar, not frightening, to its walls, its household heart. She could give him the strength to survive the journey. Yes, that she could do. But no more. There was no medicine, no herb, no power—but the Lord above's—that could save him now.
Chapter Twenty–Seven
Robert Walpole flung one large, naked leg from under the bed covers and put his hands behind his head to watch Diana brush her hair. She whipped the brush back and forth, totally concentrated on her image in the mirror, and he smiled slightly at the intensity of that concentration. She sat at a dressing table skirted with gauze and lace. Two long arms of gauze wound down on each side of the large mirror affixed to the table's top, and a litter of crystal jars and bottles competed with rouge pots and brushes and ribbons of different colors, cherry, green, primrose, for space. Why she had the ribbons he did not know. She only wore black now. For Harry. But black became her, as she well knew. Clemmie scuttled in and out of his vision, a ponderous lump in moth–eaten satin slippers that had once belonged to Diana, picking up clothes and clearing the table of the supper he and Diana had eaten. She glanced at Walpole sideways and then put her hand in one of the pockets of his waistcoat to steal a couple of coins. Walpole pretended that he did not see her. Grinning with her gap–toothed smile, she clutched the coins in one hand, and the dirty pewter in the other, and still somehow managed to open and close the door behind her, Diana's slippers slapping against her bare heels.
"Does she always steal?"
"Always," said Diana, not taking her eyes from the mirror. She had lost weight since Harry's death, and it made her face harder, colder.
"And you?" he asked,
"Whenever I can." Though he had been joking, Diana answered seriously, concentrated now on rubbing l'eau de Ninon into her cheeks, and particularly into the deep lines on each side of her mouth. She missed the irony that the water was named after a famous French courtesan, said to have remained beautiful far past the time to age, but Walpole did not.
"Do you think Barbara has reached Tamworth yet?" he asked, his mind on age and beauty and death, and therefore Roger.
"Who knows?"
"You seem remarkably unconcerned."
Diana rubbed the water into her face with deft, hard strokes. "On the contrary, I am remarkably concerned, but when has she ever listened to me? She does exactly as she pleases. Now people are saying his illness is a false one. That he has fled the city and taken thousands of pounds with him and that Brussels, not Tamworth, is his final destination. I could have told her they would say that, but she would not have listened." She screwed the lid irritably back on l'eau de Ninon and rummaged through her many jars and bottles and pots for another. "Will the Commons press for an inquiry?"
Walpole rubbed his eyes tiredly. "I will do all I can to stop one."
"But can you stop an inquiry?"
"I do not know. All I know is that the best way to end this crisis is to concentrate on stabilizing the economy and not on punishing the directors."
"That sounds like a sentence from a speech you are planning for the Commons."
"As a matter of fact, it is," Walpole said. "Lord, I wish I had seen Roger before he left. Carlyle said he was so ill. In all the time I have known him he has never changed, except somehow to grow more handsome. I became fatter with the years, and older, and he more handsome. He has been a good friend to me, Diana. I will screen him when Parliament begins."
"You have so many to screen: the ministry, the king, the prince. Some of them will slip through the cracks."
"Not Roger. I promise."
"I hope to God you can keep your promise. I have spent this entire morning dealing with Harry's creditors. I do not want another bankrupt in the family. Who is Alexander Pendarves?"
The question surprised him. Suspicious, he leaned on his elbows to stare at her. She, however, appeared fascinated by something she had just discovered on her chin.
"He is a member from Newcastle," he said slowly, "a rich, miserable old miser who has not been to a Parliament in some twenty years, but is at this one to see vengeance done to the men who made him lose a half guinea on the exchange. Now why, Diana, do you ask?"
"Robert, whatever can this be on my chin? Just look!" And she swiveled around and thrust out her chin; there was nothing on it. "It is enormous."
He lay back on the pillows, chuckling, suspicion forgotten in his delight at his own wit.
* * *
Heavy rain pelted down as two carriages pulled into Tamworth's avenue of limes. Barbara wiped her eyes, kicked at her horse's sides with her heels and rode up to the carriage holding Annie and Roger. She knocked on its door with a riding crop. Annie rolled up the leather shade.
"We are here," Barbara said, rivulets of rain streaming down her face and neck in spite of the hood on her cloak. Annie nodded her head.
