by Karleen Koen
"To–to the finest…friend a man ever had," Walpole said, slurring only a few of the words, his mind on the difficult act of holding his glass and raising it to his lips. "I owed him five thousand…and he…never asked for–for a penny. Not that I could have paid it."
Montagu made a sound, and the other two turned to him.
"Speak, great duke," bellowed Walpole in his best House of Commons voice.
Montagu opened his mouth. He belched. A long, loud, rumbling belch. Then, without warning, he fell over, his head dropping to the table before him like a cannonball, knocking over the empty brandy bottles with their burning candles, knocking over the half–full brandy bottle from which they had been drinking, knocking over their glasses. Immediately, two waiters entered and stamped out those candles that had not burned out upon impact with the floor. In seconds, they were extinguished, spilled brandy mopped, broken glass swept, a fresh bottle and glasses upon the table. They glanced at the Duke of Montagu lying across the table, his wig tipped over his nose, but Carlyle waved them out.
"Be gone," he said grandly. He stood up, and to the background of Montagu, who had begun to snore, he recited, one hand over his heart, as he swayed dangerously:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul; see, where it flies!
Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."
He waited.
Walpole stopped humming the popular ballad he had begun to hum in time to Carlyle's recitation and said, irritably, "Helen who?"
"Helen of Troy."
"Helen of…what has that to do with Roger? Good God, man, my dearest friend has just died, and you stand around reciting some nonsense about Helen of Troy!" He blew his nose on the lace of his sleeve and glared up at Carlyle.
"'Fairer than the evening air,'" repeated Carlyle. "That was the point." He began to weep, his tears making little paths through the rouge and powder of his face.
"Helen, Helen, Helen," sang Walpole softly, rocking back in his chair. "Helen, Helen, Helen…"
* * *
Outside, sleet beat against the windowpanes. Abigail listened to it. Sleet tapping against her window, beating down the branches of the trees, covering the flower beds with another layer of frost. Tony was out in it, riding to Tamworth, to Barbara. She stared down at her hands, puffy around her diamond rings. Roger Montgeoffry, so ageless, so impervious to time, dead. Even though she had seen him at Devane House, seen the seriousness of the attack, she read the words of the letter from Tamworth with a sense of unbelief. Dead. The poisonous tendrils of the South Sea Company had fastened about him and killed him. Walpole had burst into tears upon hearing the news, it was said. The king, in a council meeting, had walked away from his ministers to spend an hour alone in his chapel. Well, Roger was free from South Sea now. He would never stand before the House of Lords and answer their angry questions. He would never be fined or imprisoned, as some in the Commons had demanded. Forbid the directors to leave the kingdom. Inventory their estates. Appoint a committee of secrecy to investigate. Others would bear the burdens he left behind him. Barbara…and Tony…and others. What shall I do? Mary had sobbed to her yesterday. She will take him back now. One death, and all plans, her children, lay vulnerable. She closed her eyes. The crackling of one of the logs in the fireplace made her open them again. She must write to Philippe. He would want to know. She put her hand to her breast, well exposed in the deep black velvet gown she wore. There was an ache there. He would want to know.
* * *
"Jane," said Gussy, coming into her darkened bedchamber. "I have some sad news."
Sad news, thought Jane. Her mind felt dull, wrapped in flannel, like a shroud, like the white flannel shroud one wrapped a dead child in. Jeremy lay outside under the white snow. She had dressed him in his warmest clothes, tenderly wrapping a muffler about his neck and down his chest, so that he should not be cold in his coffin. It was foolish, but it gave her a small comfort to know he would be warm. His body had been so thin, so frail under her hands as she washed him that final time. Her mother had helped her. And her Aunt Maude. And her sisters. Her friends. All soft and murmuring. Quietly talking as they washed and dressed Jeremy and watched her comb his wayward hair. Sharing her grief. Knowing. Many of them having done the same as she now did, having bathed and dressed a beloved child for burial. "Where is Jeremy?" Amelia had demanded, her tiny hands on her hips. "When will he come back?" Never, never, never, never. "I want Bab," Amelia had screamed, and her father had picked the child up and hushed her. Bab was nursing her husband at Tamworth. He lay dying, said her father. Dying, Jane had thought dully. This is the winter of death.
"Barbara's husband has died," Gussy said.
He held her hand and began to say prayers. She did not even know if Barbara loved her husband anymore. Once she had. She knew she should feel sad for her, but she felt nothing. The hurt for Jeremy took all. Green pastures, thought Jane. Still waters. Surely the Lord had green pastures and still waters for her Jeremy. It was the only way she could bear his death. To believe so.
* * *
Barbara lay back against one of the walls encasing a window seat, the beginnings of a list of those she would invite to a memorial service thrown to one side, the dogs huddled in her lap as she scratched their necks and backs over and over. They said New Year's Day had come and gone, but she had no memory of it. Twelfth Night was around the corner. Cook would bake the special plum cakes, two of them holding hard black beans, and those who found them in their cakes would be king and queen for a night. She closed her eyes. She could not sleep. She could not eat. She could not think for any length of time. A feeling of loss came upon her and took her in its jaws and shook her, leaving her stunned and bewildered. She had begun the list for the memorial service. Yet she found each name more difficult than the last to write because each name reminded her that he was dead. Tears rolled down her cheeks and fell silently into the fabric of her gown.
Outside, Hyacinthe and two stableboys built a snowman for her. But she was not watching. When a man rode into view, his horse tiredly picking its way through white drifts of snow that covered the avenue of limes, they stopped what they were doing and ran to him, slipping and falling on the ice. The man sat straight and thin in his saddle, and he wore a great sloping hat that partially covered his face. As Barbara opened her eyes, she saw him dismount and disappear from her sight as he walked into the small stone porch at the front entrance. Charles, she thought for the briefest of seconds, remembering even as his name flashed quicksilver in her mind that now he was married, no longer free to make the impulsive, generous gestures he could sometimes so unexpectedly make. How tired I am, she thought. I do nothing all day, but I am more tired than I have ever been in my life.
The dogs ran to the door, their paws skittering on the floor, whining, each lifting a front paw. They barked as the door opened, and a tall man took off his great hat and smiled slowly, shyly, at her. Tony. He had ridden all this way, through snow and sleet, for her.
She ran across the room to him, stumbling against her long skirts and her dogs, and he caught her in his arms and lifted her off the floor and held her tightly against him, one hand in her hair, so that her cheek was hard against his. His cheek was so cold, so firm, so alive. Roger, she thought. It should be Roger holding me so, and she curled her fingers into the wet folds of his cloak and began to cry again. He carried her across the room to the window seat and sat with her in his lap, and she shivered and trembled and sniffled with her tears, and he untied his cloak and wrenched it off and wrapped it around her, tying it neatly at her neck as if she were a child. She laughed and hiccuped and then cried even harder. Gravely, he gave her his handkerchief, and she sobbed into it, deep, rasping sobs that shook her body, that felt as if they were tearing out pieces of her heart, cl
otted pieces of heart. Roger, Roger, Roger. He held her and rocked her, and his love was warm around her like a woolen, fur–lined cloak and it was good, it was kind, it was gentle, it was Tony…but it should have been Roger.
* * *
"How do you think she does?" Tony asked.
"As well as can be expected." The Duchess's answer was short.
"I brought her letters. From the solicitors, from Montrose. She has many decisions to make, for I am almost certain Roger will have left her executor of his estate, and the Commons are after that estate. Walpole's engraftment is a side issue now. They have selected a committee to investigate wrongdoing, and many want reparations from the directors."
"Roger's death is not enough?"
"Not nearly enough."
Startled, upset by this unexpected visit of Tony's, the Duchess stroked Dulcinea. Tony sat before her rubbing his eyes, slimmer than ever, a dimple having appeared in one cheek from further loss of weight, quite a handsome dimple. His face needed shaving, and somehow that fact made it more masculine, stronger, and she was frightened by it. There was an air of suppressed excitement about him. Of purpose. How he had gotten through the snow she did not know. His horse must be half–dead. But Barbara was a widow now, and something lay behind those blue–gray eyes, eyes that reminded her more and more of Richard's in their calmness. He had been with Barbara for hours. There was nothing that happened in her household that she did not know if she had a mind to know it. In his lap, Annie had said grimly, her news coming from the housemaid sent to rekindle the fire in Barbara's bedchamber. Barbara slept now like a baby, said Annie, her first long sleep since Roger's death. She slept curled up in her cousin's cloak on the duke's great bed. In his lap. The Duchess had a memory of sitting in Richard's lap long ago. Much could happen in a man's lap, especially a determined man's. Too much.
She watched Tony rubbing his face, stretching. She pretended to half– doze, as her cat did. He would break his heart loving Barbara. He would. He frightened her. His growing strength. His young maleness. His determination. Never had she imagined that he would be stronger than she, and yet she lay old and frail and tired in her bed, and he had ridden through miles of snow and bone–chilling cold to see his heart's desire. It was a mistake to show himself so clearly…it also showed his youth. He would be formidable with more years on him, far more formidable than she could ever have imagined. She shivered, and Tony, seeing it, leaned forward to pull up her bed covers, and she shrank back from him, forgetting why she was frightened, but feeling frightened just the same.
"Grandmama, are you cold?" He smiled that sweet, grave smile. A woman could grow to love that smile.
"Go away!" she said harshly in her confusion. "Leave me be!"
Her anger rolled off his back as water did a duck's. He leaned over and kissed her cheek, and she smelled him, leather and horse and sweat and young man. She touched his unshaven face with her gnarled hand—she could not help it and smiled at him.
"Rest," he said to her. "I will take care of Barbara now."
She snatched her hand away. Frightened again, but not remembering quite why. Something about Barbara. Something about the way she could feel the young, male impatience of him straining against the leash with which he held it. He left the room.
"Annie," she called weakly, her legs paining her, and when Annie did not come, she reached for the small silver bell on her bedside table and in her reaching—the pain had suddenly doubled—she knocked over a vase of winter holly and ivy leaves, and water drenched the books and papers littering her table.
She pushed Dulcinea to one side and stiffly hoisted herself to rescue her papers…too many of them…no telling what they were…letters months old…a deed. A deed?
She waved it to and fro, and then opened it, blowing on the smeared ink. "I, Harry Christopher Alderley, do deed the following to Alice Margaret Constance Saylor, Duchess of Tamworth, if I should not pay her the loan of June 6th, the year of Our Lord 1720, within sixty days…"
Well. It was long past sixty days. She struggled to remember…something about Harry looking at her with those violet eyes, serious for once. Leave me some dignity. Yes, he had said that….and she had signed his paper. Carelessly, never intending to keep it. In fact, forgetting it until this moment. She read the deed, squinting. She was mistress of some two or three thousand acres in Henrico County, Virginia, wherever that was. What on earth would she do with this? Add it to Diana's legacy. Or to Tony's. Perhaps leave it to Barbara. The thought struck her then, a bolt of lightning flashing across a dark summer's sky. A wild, foolish, mad thought.
"Richard," she said out loud.
She stared at his portrait, above the fireplace. I am stronger than Tony, she thought, remembering now the reason for her fears. But only just. He will be angry. Richard looked at her from the portrait, strong, young, calm, forever gone from her. He will not forgive me. She closed her eyes. She was old. She was foolish. But their times were not right, his and Barbara's… and it was not her doing, it was life's.
"I will have to bear the consequences," she said to Richard. "He will hate me. And I love him. I do."
Her lower lip trembled. She looked down at the deed. The decision would not be hers…only the offering of the opportunity. She felt old and frail.
She rang the silver bell impatiently.
"Pen and paper!" she snapped when Annie finally ran into her bedchamber.
"The way you were ringing that bell, I thought your legs—"
"My legs be hanged. They hurt. They always hurt. I am old. Bring the pen and paper, Annie. Now." And then, to the portrait, "Watch over me. I depend on your care."
* * *
A sleigh pulled by two horses, whose leather bridles were adorned with jingling bells, crept down the avenue of limes, the driver and his two passengers bundled up into anonymous lumps against the cold. When it pulled up before the porch, one of the lumps descended imperiously, knocked impatiently on the front door, swept past Perryman when he opened it, and said in an unmistakable voice, a low, throaty voice that might have been Barbara's, but was not— "Pay the driver and help Clemmie down. She is too fat to move."
Unwrapping layers of shawls and mufflers and scarves and cloaks, Diana walked through the house. Before the door of her father's apartments, she smoothed back the wings of striking gray in her dark hair and smoothed her cold cheeks, nervous gestures, uncharacteristic. She took a deep breath and opened the door. A scene of quiet domesticity met her eyes. Barbara sat before a table, writing, Hyacinthe and the two dogs stretched out at her feet under the table, and Tony lounged long and lean in a window seat, reading a book.
Startled at the sight of Tony, who rose as he saw her, she swept forward to Barbara, who put down her pen.
"Mother."
The dogs barked and came out from under the table to leap up on Diana's skirts. She kicked at them, and Hyacinthe called them softly and held them.
"I came as soon as I could," she said. "I have been a week traveling. The weather."
"That was kind of you, but you did not have to come. He is—he is buried. Some two weeks ago. Tony and I are working on the guest list for his memorial service. I intend to hold it in London as soon as I go there, in a month or so. He–he died quietly, Mother. In his sleep—" Her voice broke, and she stood up abruptly and walked to the window, her back to Diana. Diana frowned at Tony, her expression telling him to go away, but he stayed where he was. His eyes met hers levelly.
Diana made an impatient movement. She walked forward and put her hand on Barbara's shoulder.
"Barbara," she said, and her voice was soft, none of the hard undertone of which she was such a master. "I am sorry. Truly."
Barbara whipped around. "You never wanted us to be together, not when you saw this South Sea thing! I know that. Well, you have your wish!"
Diana bowed her head and began to cry. Barbara stared at her, her eyes narrowed.
"Why do you cry? You did not love him!"
"But you d
id!" Diana said, her face contorted, ugly with its weeping. "And you are all I have left! And if I lose you I will have no one. I cry for you." She put her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving. "I loved Harry. And I love you."
Hesitantly, Barbara took one of Diana's hands, and Diana cried even harder. Gently, she helped her to the window seat and sat beside her and patted her hand. Poor Mother, she thought. It is too late, too late for you and me. But she continued to hold her hand. What had her grandmother once told her….compassion comes from great pain….and so it did.
"I have brought you letters," wept Diana. "Letters of condolence. The prince has written one, he was m–most upset. And others were too. Many cared for him, Barbara."
But I loved him, thought Barbara. And I always will.
* * *
