Now Face to Face (81 page)

He held Aunt Shrew close and patted her back, and thought, I will stay with you, dear friend, all this day and tonight, too. I’ll see that you are rouged and dressed to within an inch of your life tomorrow. You’ll go to the funeral, go on pride if nothing else. You must go anyway, so that we see what happens with Rochester. Ah, sweetheart, you are as brave and gallant as a man. Too bad of Pendarves to break your heart.

Barbara would be at the funeral tomorrow. Her cousin, the Duke of Tamworth, would march near the front of the procession in honor of his grandfather, Marlborough’s colleague and fellow general. O noble warrior, O valiant man, we will not see your like again.

Barbara would be there as the King’s guest. She had been at Hampton Court almost since arriving from Virginia.

Rumors were rampant: that Barbara would be made lady-in-waiting to the Princesses, that she was the King’s new mistress, that she was the mistress of the Prince of Wales, that the pair shared her. People were talking about Devane Square, saying that it was going to be made what it once had been; people were saying Walpole had explicit instructions from the King to see her fine reduced, that the King was going to build a palace where Devane Square had been.

E
ARLY THE
next morning, Slane was up, and walking through St. James’s Park from Louisa’s house. There were fields between Piccadilly and Tyburn Road, and in those fields he’d find rose-a-ruby blooming, so Jane said. Jane had told him about the red flower, one of the last ones thriving as August turned to fall and chill: The country maids believe, said Jane, that if they don’t have a sweetheart before it goes out of flower, they will have to wait another year, until it blossoms again. It would not do for Barbara to wait another year for a sweetheart.

A great bunch of rose-a-ruby picked, he walked to Devane Square, passing the few townhouses finished, the church. More rumors: that Sir Christopher Wren, quite old now, was wild to finish this church. It is my best, he said, a jewel of its kind. Sir Gideon Andreas held large notes against Barbara’s estate and could take Devane Square, except that the King demanded otherwise, it was said. Barbara had clearly maneuvered herself into a good position since she’d returned.

Slane walked to the fountain. Moss scaled its sides, scaled the stone figure of a nymph. The house had been beyond, he’d been told. There was nothing now, except a landscape canal. One could see the church spire of the hamlet of Marylebone. The bell in the spire of the church at Marylebone began to ring as Slane walked around the fountain, gazing at the nymph from every angle. The sculptor had left nothing much to imagine. There was the slim grace of the naked body, the sweet roundness of the arms, the long back curving into hips and buttocks, the beautiful stone face half hidden by cascading hair. What kind of man were you, Devane, thought Slane, to show your wife so? Did you brag or did you love?

Only the outward was captured in this stone, none of the inward, and so to Slane’s eyes it was not nearly beautiful enough. He dropped a blossom of the rose-a-ruby in the nymph’s arms and blew her a kiss before walking back toward Aunt Shrew’s, back toward this day on which Rochester and who knew who else might be arrested.

“P
ET, IT
is not that I do not love you….”

Pendarves stepped back, as if Diana were a witch and he the newt that would be tossed into her brew. She was in his bedchamber, but not upon the bed, rather sitting in a chair, skirts raised, head thrown back, eyes closed, touching herself, giving herself pleasure, as boldly as any whore. More boldly. He couldn’t take his eyes from her hand, moving in a sure, circular rhythm against herself. She made sighing noises in her throat and bit her lip and put her other hand to her breast. She could completely satisfy herself this way, and Pendarves found it more exciting, and more frightening, than anything he’d ever seen.

“You must stop….” He couldn’t catch his breath. He was too old for this on so frequent a basis, he’d tried to tell her that, but she didn’t seem to understand, and he—well, he was weak, a man, flesh and bones, after all. Sometimes it crossed his mind that she was a witch and trying to kill him. Like metal near a magnet, he moved closer to her, cursing his weakness, yet unable to overcome it. Diana put her hand on him and growled. She is going to kill me, thought Pendarves. Then, as she began to unfasten the buttons upon his breeches: What a wonderful way to die. The next thing he knew he was fainting, and it wasn’t the first time. His last thought was the hope he always hoped these days—that he’d wake alive.

T
HE FUNERAL
was over. People milled about one of the courtyards of Westminster Abbey, the Bishop of Rochester among them, as well as Robert Walpole and the King of England. If there was to be an arrest, there was no sign of it, but there was a tension in the courtyard, a tension that had been inside the cathedral and that was almost visible, so present was it. People vibrated with it, rustling and talking, something restless and odd in their rhythms, looking again and again to Walpole, to the King, to Rochester, waiting for the façades to fall, almost willing it.

Barbara, following an impulse to be alone, to escape the unnerving tension, some of which was her own—everyone had stared and whispered when she had entered the cathedral as part of the King’s household—had managed to find a quiet spot behind one of the supports of an archway. She hid in its shade and took a moment to gather her wits. Gussy was here. She did not know what she would do if they took Gussy away. Or Wart. She did not know if she could be silent in the face of that, be discreet.

She heard the sound of someone’s footsteps, a distinctive footstep, halting, short, as if someone possessed a limp. Finally, she thought, here we are, face to face. What would he say to her?

“You dropped this,” Philippe said. In his open hand was a medal. She knew it at once. “James as our only salvation,” the Latin upon it read. Prince of darkness, she thought, how you would adore to trap me. Well, you won’t. What had Tommy advised? Never reveal your thoughts. It’s court, pet, he told Barbara. The motto of a court is caress the favorites, avoid the unfortunates, and trust nobody.

“It isn’t mine.”

The dead are not dead, the slaves sang, and yet the Duke of Marlborough had just been given his death song, and Roger was gone, and she and Philippe seemed doomed to be left behind arguing over whom Roger had loved best. That was what this was ultimately about, wasn’t it? Whom Roger had loved best?

“How proud Roger would be,” he was saying, “to know you are giving yourself to so worthy a man as the Prince of Wales. I congratulate you upon your cleverness.”

Cruel man, with your smooth and malicious voice, how dare you insult me so? Do you think me fifteen and a girl still? Do you think I have learned nothing, that I have no weapons, no claws of my own? She knew what to do. She’d thought it over carefully. Here was a man, if ever there was one, to use. She must not let her anger with him interfere in her use of him.

“Wouldn’t he be proud of the pair of us? My curtsying to a frog and your aiding a false friend.”

She had him, this man of ice, this man of disdain and deliberate cruelty.

“What do you mean by ‘false friend,’ my dear?”

“Walpole, the King’s most gracious minister, our dear, fat Lord Treasurer, my mother’s paramour, Roger’s friend: Walpole allowed Roger to take the whole of the blame for the South Sea Bubble. Such is his idea of friendship.”

“There was nothing else possible.”

“No? Go and ask Tommy Carlyle, who was every day in the House of Commons during the investigations. Walpole allowed Roger’s estate to be ruined more utterly than anyone else’s. Why? Because there must be a scapegoat—and who better than a dead man? There must be a scapegoat who takes the attention of the mob, and thus others—those alive—creep by while everyone else is looking elsewhere. Lord Sunderland told the Bishop of Rochester that it was agreed among the King’s ministers that they would fan the flames against Roger, see how large the hatred grew, how it might be useful. It was agreed to reluctantly, I’m told, but that isn’t the point. The point is that they agreed at all. You’re a man of subtlety. Don’t you see? There was anger against Roger, yes. But so much anger that his fines were among the largest? That his face was drawn on broadsheet after broadsheet? That he was made the largest villain? No, I think not. That anger, that vileness, was helped along, not by his enemies, but by his friends, so that they might survive.”

“I do not believe you.” But his face was pale.

He does believe me, thought Barbara. “There will never be anything built as glorious as that which Roger built, and all of it was needlessly destroyed so that those still living might have smaller fines or keep their places in service to the King. Devane House would have been a monument to Roger, and the house is gone because it satisfied the mob to see it gone, to see it dismantled. Roger’s name is forever besmirched, and why? For the same reason you imply I would bed a frog. Ambition. Expediency. Roger was dead and others were alive. Ask the Bishop of Rochester. There he is, in the courtyard. Go and ask him before the King’s soldiers drag him off to the Tower and he is forever silenced. Ask him what the Earl of Sunderland said about it all. Ask Tommy Carlyle. Go on, sir, see if this woman you so despise knows of what she speaks.”

She watched in satisfaction as he approached Rochester. The two men moved, Rochester slow because of his crutches, to a quieter place to talk. She leaned her head back against the stone of the archway. It was set in motion. Her first powerful move against Robin. Easy enough, perhaps too easy.

She touched her face. Tears. Why? Because she began a dangerous and ruthless game? You might need years, said Tommy. Could she give it years? Would she? Roger, to build it all back is hard. More, sometimes, than I think I want to do. She moved to a door, opened it. An empty chamber. Good. She closed her eyes and put her arms around herself, as if to give herself comfort. Her stepfather wished to loan her funds to finish the church in Devane Square.

“Why do you do that? Is there no one you trust to comfort you?”

It was Slane, actor, hero, spy, Jamie’s favorite. When had he returned? She’d dreamed of his return. She’d not heard his approach. He closed the door to the chamber.

“What is this?” she said to the bunch of dying wildflowers he held out to her.

“Rose-a-ruby.”

“What am I to do with it?”

“Put it under your pillow until your sweetheart comes.”

She looked at him. These last weeks in the King’s household had brought forward the hypocrisy that was court. The rumor that she was to have a place in the household meant that everywhere she went people gathered to compliment her and be her friend. It was good to feel, to see, after the disgrace of the South Sea, after all that she’d lost, but something in her warned, over and over again, Beware, know the flattery is for a purpose, not your purpose but theirs. Pick and choose friendships with care. Trust nobody.

“I want to come courting. Have I your permission?”

“Courting whom?”

She knew whom. I want this, she thought, never mind it might end tomorrow.

“Thérèse, of course,” he said.

She laughed. “She won’t tell you anything of the King’s household. Her lips will be sealed.”

“I won’t be asking her of the King’s household, and I’ll be kissing those lips, instead.”

“She has been betrayed before. It has made her wary and unforgiving.”

“She will have nothing to be wary of, nothing to forgive.”

His words made her heart stir. Actor, hero, spy, Jamie’s favorite. Man of honor, they’d called him in Italy. Harry had honored him, been like a boy in his worship of him. There was that in her regard for him, respect.

“May I call on her? Allow me to call on her tonight.”

She liked that, the way he pushed for what he wanted.

“I do not know how much time I have,” he said.

“She’ll be at St. James’s Palace. Won’t that be dangerous?”

“I like the danger.”

“And if they arrest Rochester?”

He stopped smiling.

“I’ll be late.”

She took the rose-a-ruby, and before she could speak, he was gone. She was alone again in the chamber. Later, on her way to the carriage, she saw a bloom of it atop a gravestone, as if waiting for her. She went to it, stood a moment reading the words carved there in the stone: “Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.”

Harsh words, untrue. She’d left honor and returned. So must others.

The sweetest wooing she’d ever know was about to begin.

Chapter Forty-nine