Now Face to Face (62 page)

“Please yourself.”

Tony walked for a long time among the tents, stopping to watch the soldiers as they squatted before their campfires, listening to their talk, their laughter and complaints. An officer came up to him, and when Tony said his name, a grizzled soldier nearby called out, “The Lionheart’s grandson, are you? I’ll drink a dram of rum to your grandfather tonight, Your Grace, for he was one of us. We could use him in this fight we’re facing.”

When he was finally tired, he left the park, crossed the road to the smaller Green Park, which lay at one side of St. James’s Palace. Tony stood a moment, looking at the palace, thinking of the Hanovers.

In 1715, for months after King George had landed, a rising had been expected, a civil war. We accept a foreigner before the English-born son of our late king had been one of the sayings. Rise in the name of James, he who is our own. There were riots in Bristol and Oxford and Bath. He had been sixteen then, and his uncle, Barbara’s father, Kit, Lord Alderley, was one of the Tories around whom rumors of treason wove themselves. Alderley, Bolingbroke, Marr, Oxford, Ormonde—great Tory lords, mighty in the last years of Queen Anne.

If there was war, Tony’s loyalty was with this house, this king, this family. The crown was theirs by law, a Protestant must sit upon the throne, and King George had been generous, granting favors and honors to him and to his sister. If there was a war, he would raise a regiment and fight.

Halfway across the park, he thought about Aunt Shrew and turned his steps toward her townhouse. She was playing cards with Pendarves and Laurence Slane. Diana was with them, sitting in a chair, not playing, but watching. Diana did not look her best. The elemental vitality that even powder did not dim was missing tonight.

“Give me a kiss, boy,” Aunt Shrew said, her bracelets jangling as Tony hugged her.

“I will sleep safer in my bed this night knowing you are in town. Did your sister birth her brat yet? No? Last time I noticed, that rogue of a husband of hers was in Twickenham, staying with the Duke of Wharton, and the pair of them were drinking the village dry. What do you say to a wager, Tony, that when I wake in the noon tomorrow, I will feed breakfast to a handsome soldier who walked out of Hyde Park to turn Jacobite in the night?”

“This is no time for jests, Aunt,” Diana said.

“Jest? If Ormonde sets foot on English soil, King George can kiss his troops upon their buttocks, because that is all he will see of them, their backs as they march to join Jamie’s general. You sulk, Diana, because you have made your bed with the Whigs, in more ways than one.” She slapped a card viciously upon the table. “My point, Lumpy.”

“You’re speaking treason,” Tony said.

There was a moment’s silence. Aunt Shrew threw back her bewigged head, narrowed her eyes at her nephew.

“Since when has truth become treason? Do you arrest me?”

“I would not dare. I simply ask you to think before you speak. We’re on the verge of war, and what people say may be taken in the wrong manner. I’ve been wanting to see you,” Tony said to Slane.

There was a deep, not quite healed scar breaking the fine, thick line of one of Slane’s dark brows, and he looked tired, the darkness under his eyes as dark as the eyes themselves.

“Have you, Your Grace? Here I am. How may I serve you?”

“You were at Tamworth, I understand.”

“I fell from my horse.” Slane touched his brow. “And I have this to show for it. Your grandmother nursed me most kindly.”

“You left Tamworth Hall without a word.”

Slane smiled. “There was a woman I had to see. The situation is complicated, Your Grace. Unfortunately, there is a husband in it.”

“How do you know my cousin, Lady Devane?”

“I do not know your cousin.”

“My grandmother said you said her name.”

“I could not. I do not know her name.”

“Do you deny saying the name Barbara?”

“The name of my amour is Barbara, Your Grace. I must have said it aloud, not knowing your grandmother was about. To tell you the truth, I remember very little more than fainting, though I do have a memory of a cat sitting upon me.”

“Why did you leave without a word to my grandmother?”

“I went to see my friend, thinking I would return, but there was a complication with her husband, and it seemed best to leave the area. What can I add, Your Grace, except that later, it was easier to continue on to London than to stay and explain my lack of manners. I hope I caused no distress.”

“You did cause distress. She was greatly upset.”

“Then I offer a thousand apologies. Will you convey them to her on my behalf?”

“What does it matter?” said Diana.

Tony took Diana’s hands in his, knelt, looking into Diana’s face. “Are you well?”

She looked quite pale, the circles under her eyes dark, like Slane’s.

“Never better. Only frightened, like everyone else.”

“She wanted to be with family on a night like this, or so she says,” said Aunt Shrew. “Play me a hand, nephew. Lumpy has lost this game, and I know all his moves anyway. I tell you, this story of invasion is folderol.”

“What has gotten into you?” said Pendarves, shaking his head. Then, commenting on what was as important to his heart, “Stocks will go down over this. And we were only beginning to recover from the Bubble.”

“We’ll have to send for our regiments in Ireland if war does break out,” Tony said. “I walked among the troops in Hyde Park this evening. They’re saying the word is Ormonde has six to eight battalions of foot soldiers with him. The spirit of our men is good, though. They are ready for a battle. I don’t think they will desert.”

“It is the Saylor coming out in you. Blood will tell every time, won’t it?” Aunt Shrew’s bracelets jangled harshly. “Did your grandfather ever tell you about Malplaquet, Tony?”

“Malplaquet?” said Diana.

“A battle, which you ought to know,” snapped Aunt Shrew, “as it was one of your father’s finest. James, of course—may I call him James, Lumpy, or must I say the Pretender?—fought upon the side of the French against us, but he fought so well, charging the Dutch and English lines twelve times in one day, even after he was wounded in the arm, that the English soldiers drank to his health around their campfires that night. Your grandfather did, also, Tony. The armies faced each other across a river nearly all of that summer, and James would ride beyond the French outposts and sit atop his horse watching the English soldiers drill. Not a man of them would have thought of shooting at him, Brother said. He said he would have hanged the first who lifted his musket. What honor there was then, Tony. It makes my heart quicken to think of it, the way men fought each other face to face in the morning and drank to the other’s valor at night, a kind of honor of which there is no evidence anymore. Brother told me that sight haunted him all the summer, James atop his horse watching his countrymen, men who might have been his to command. The love for them was plain, said Brother, even from across the river.”

I will not weep, Slane thought.

“Look out the window, Diana, and tell me if you see any ships yet,” said Aunt Shrew.

“Stop it,” said Diana.

“I must go.” Slane bowed to Aunt Shrew, and for a moment the two of them looked at each other. Under the jangles, the rouge, the harsh flippancy, she was as stunned as he. They had no idea what was happening, whether Ormonde had sailed or not. Slane had only just returned from an exhausting trip to Paris. He’d offered to go to Spain, to give Ormonde an order to invade immediately. The invasion is set for May tenth, they said. King James approves. Even a day may make a difference, he had argued. And so it did. This day was May seventh. Was Ormonde stopped in his tracks, or had he sailed? There was no way to know. They could only wait.

“You have a care,” she said to him.

And you also, my sweet friend, Slane thought.

“Please give your grandmother my apologies and tell her I thank her for her nursing of me. Tell her I am a ragamuffin Irishman with no gratitude or manners in me,” Slane said to Tony.

“Why are you still in the city?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“All Catholics were ordered to leave. You have only until morning.”

“Am I Catholic?”

“I believe you told my grandmother so.”

Slane took a breath. Tony’s forcefulness was a surprise. But why? He was of Richard Saylor’s blood. And the Duchess’s. “I haven’t prayed in so long a time I’ve forgotten what I am. I think the truth is, I believe in nothing.”

“It might be well if you left the city for a time. If you stay, as my aunt says, have a care to yourself,” said Tony.

Out on the street, Slane walked toward Hyde Park, to see with his own eyes the troops in camp. There had not been one whisper, one rumor of this. He felt the same sense of stunned stillness as when he’d been thrown from his horse, and lay on the ground. It was masterly upon the part of King George, and frightening. Was Ormonde stopped? What was known? How long had the ministry been intercepting Jacobite letters?

Slane leaned a moment against the brick wall that enclosed one side of Hyde Park. Feeling sick, he touched his head, the bad pain of it with him again. He had waked early in the morning, waked to the sound of drums, the throb in his head matching the beat of the drums.

Five days ago, six, if the Duke of Ormonde had landed then, these soldiers would have still been scattered across half of England, in their various postings. The first plan would have accomplished that. The Paris advisers clung to their second plan, their precious date of May tenth, saying King George would be gone. There was a possibility Ormonde would still be able to leave Spain. If so, all was not lost. Let him land, let there be one battle, just one battle, here, at England’s heart. For that I would give my life, thought Slane, to be able to look once into the faces of my enemies and battle them for the throne.

“Here, now,” said one of the guards posted along the fence. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Looking at the King’s fine army.”

“Never mind looking. You move on, unless you want to talk to my lieutenant and tell him why you linger.”

He must find Wharton, must go to Arran, to North, to Lord Oxford, to Rochester, persuade them to hold strong, even in the face of this, to await Ormonde. Bad things come in threes. The saying stumbled over itself in his head. There had not been a whisper of this. God, he wanted to weep. The sight of James watching his English troops from across the river at Malplaquet was in his head so clearly. Not a whisper of this. That’s what came of losing Sunderland. They’d have been forewarned, if Sunderland had been alive.

A
FEW
hours later, Tony walked with Diana to her townhouse. On the way, they passed the house in St. James’s Square where Barbara had lived when she was in London.

Fortunate that Harry is dead, thought Tony. In his heart was the ache that was Barbara, only changed now, lessened by his wife. Thank God for that, thought Tony, staring at the tall, narrow front of the house, leased now, to someone else, so that Barbara might collect the rents. Barbara.

“Do you think there will be war, Tony?”

“Yes, I do.”

He took Diana’s hand. “Come back with my mother to Lindenmas. It is far enough away from London that you will be safe, at least for a time.”

She allowed him to hold her hand a moment. They were standing before her townhouse. “You’re kind, Tony. Does your wife please you? You act as if she did.”

“She does.”

“Barbara would have pleased you more, you know. In every way.”

Diana ran up the steps, leaving Tony to stand in the dark, staring after her.

I
NSIDE THE
house, a man stepped out of the dark of the hall, pinned Diana against a wall, began to kiss her neck, her shoulders, pushed her gown down, roughly.

“Eat, drink, and be merry,” whispered Charles, “for tomorrow, we die. Sit on that table. Pull up your gown. Yes, like that. What if we die on the morrow, Diana?”

He bit the tip of her breast, uncovered now. “I leave for Lindenmas tomorrow. I must have something to remember. Your leg, here, where your stocking stops, is smooth, Diana. I have only to think of you to feel desire, and no whore but you satisfies me any longer. Does that please you, whore?”