Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel

Copyright © 1986 by Karleen Koen Cover and internal design © 2003 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koen, Karleen.

p. cm.

Arranged

Through a glass darkly / by Karleen Koen.

1. Great Britain—History—18th century—Fiction. 2.

marriage—Fiction. 3. London (England)—Fiction. 4. Paris
(France)—Fiction. 5. Nobility—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3561.O334 T47 2003
813'.54—dc21
2003003847

Dedication

2003: For Blake and Samantha

Acknowledgments

To Randall M. Stewart for his professional word processing of the manuscript and for his continuing encouragement.

When I was a child, I spake as a child. I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

   For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

   And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

I CORINTHIANS 13:11–13

PART I

BEGINNINGS

ENGLAND

AND

FRANCE

1715–1716

Chapter One

Two voices, raised in anger, carried through the half-opened window of the library. Recognizing them, Barbara stopped and looked for a place to hide, a place where she might listen but not be seen. Seconds later, she was burrowing into the ancient ivy that crisscrossed the mellowed red-pink brick of the house. Entangled, dense, persistent, its vines as thick as her wrists in places, the ivy released the house reluctantly. Each spring it sent cunning, thin green fingers curling under the window frames and into the rooms, and each spring her grandmother calmly snipped the fingers to bits with a pair of sewing scissors and ordered the gardeners to trim it down to size. Now, in November, it clung to the house stubbornly. Already many of its glossy dark green leaves were dulled yellow–brown with cold.

   "Fool! Impudent young fool!"

   Her mother's voice carried clearly from the library.

   "Did you imagine I would approve it? Were you going to come crawling like a whipped dog for my blessing? Blessing! I could kill you. Do you realize what you have almost done? Did you think—or has all feeling ceased, save for that hard prick between your legs?"

   It was impossible to describe the effect of her mother's voice. Its usual tone was low and husky, but when anger and scorn were added, the result was numbing.

   Harry muttered something, and Barbara tried to move closer to the window so that she could hear better, but the ivy was tenacious. It had been there first, being as old as the house, which had been built well over a hundred years ago in the time of Elizabeth I. The house sprawled over several stories, its once modern features now considered quaint and old-fashioned: twisted chimney stacks of brick, no two of them alike; sharp, pointed gables all across the roofline; windows with many small panes of blown glass; dark, cold rooms with uneven floors; and outside, arbors of wych elm, a bowling green, fish ponds, an old garden maze. Barbara loved it, for it was both her birthplace and her home. She knew every path and pond and orchard and creaky place on the stairs. She felt safe and beloved here…except when her mother visited, which was fortunately not often. It was Harry who must have brought her down from London, she thought. How could she have found out? She envisioned her mother's beautiful, white face and felt foreboding for her brother.

   "You are such a fool," said her mother, and her voice paralyzed with its scorn. "The match is totally unsuitable. Now more than ever. John Ashford was appalled when I told him." Harry must have made some movement—she could picture him, crouched in a chair, his face as hard and cold as their mother's, his hands clenched with the effort to hold his temper—because her mother's voice changed.

   "Yes, I told him! With his daughter standing beside him to hear me. If she had not cried like the weak, mewling child she is, her father would have beaten her, something I would have done, at any rate. God, I wanted to strike her! As for you, your conduct is unforgivable. Any alliance we form now is crucial—as you should know better than anyone!"

   Each word had the clear, harsh sound of finality. Barbara knew that Harry, always thoughtless about the future, must be stunned by their mother's sudden appearance from London, by her quick, sure, numbing action.

   "Damn the family!" Harry said. "And damn you. I love her. What does it matter whom I marry? There is no scandal I could create to equal what you and my father have already begun—"

   The crack of a palm against flesh sounded. Barbara's body jerked as if it were she, and not Harry, who had just been slapped.

   "Do not say your father's name in my presence again."

   What venom there was in those words.

   "He is out of my life. As Jane is out of yours. She is to marry her cousin within a few months; already the Ashfords are packing her off to London to stay with a relative. And you are going away also, Harry. Tomorrow. A few months' stay in Italy, a visit to France, should add the polish and patience necessary to a youth of your…what? Impulsive? Yes. Impulsive nature. I prefer impulsive to stupid. Your face, Harry! I wish you could see it. The mention of Italy calms the ardent lover within you somewhat, does it not?" She laughed. "I thought it might."

   It was always fatal to show emotion to their mother; she pounced on it and turned it against you. Her voice was fainter now, she must have moved from her position in the room. Barbara had to stand on tiptoe, straining, the ivy around her uncooperative, to hear.

   "You will obey me in this. Meres will be with you until you sail, so there can be no final, romantic farewells between you and your little sweetheart. And no final surprises nine months from now, either! It is over. Accept that. It was calf love, a brief spark, the first of many, I trust. I leave you to your thoughts, my dear Harry. If you are capable of summoning any."

   There was silence. Barbara wanted to go to her brother, but she knew better. He had been humiliated, quickly, ruthlessly, thoroughly, and he would not want her witnessing the aftermath. She wedged her foot on a thick ivy vine; she would climb up slightly, just enough so that she could look in the window and see him—

"Mistress Barbara!"

She jumped. Without a doubt, it was one of the serving girls calling to tell her that her mother was home. Well, with any luck, she could miss her mother's visit entirely. Or, at worst, see her for a few moments tomorrow before she returned to London. She backed off the ivy, still torn between her instinct to escape and Harry.

   "Mistress Barbara!"

   The voice of the serving girl was closer now. Escape won hands down. She ran across the wide flagstone steps of the library terrace. She ran past her grandmother's faded rose garden, the bushes now bare, ugly with their thorns and fat hip pods, the lush petals of summer all gone into her grandmother's potpourris and brandies and wines and remedies. She ran past the clipped yew hedges whose dense evergreen shapes would hide her. The woods bordered the yews; once there it would be easy to spend the afternoon in the warm kitchen of one of her grandmother's tenant farmers, sipping tea, eating blackberries or walnuts while the housewife baked a winter wild plum pie and talked of the corn and barley harvest, of recipes and children.

   "Mistress Barbara!"

   She doubled her speed, her cloak billowing out behind her like a dark sail. The woods loomed ahead. She ran toward them as if her grandfather's hunting dogs were at her heels. It did not matter that now no one could see her from the house. Her mother was home.

* * *

   In the withdrawing chamber of the Duchess of Tamworth, Diana, Viscountess Alderley, sank into an armchair and lifted her feet to an old–fashioned, embroidered, silver–fringed stool with heavy, dark, twisted legs. She was a beautiful woman with dark hair and violet eyes, a white complexion and sweet, red lips, all of which she emphasized to the fullest with paint and powder and dye pot. Her looks were deceiving. She had the stamina (and sensitivity) of a horse. All that giving birth to eleven children had done was take away her waist, which her stays disguised, and make deeper a hard line on each side of her face from nose to mouth. A young girl fluttered beside her to arrange pillows behind her back, her gown into more graceful folds. Diana waved the girl away, taking no more notice of the maidservant than she would an annoying fly. She surveyed a dish of comfits, small, fat plums preserved in sugar, on the table beside the armchair, selected one, and bit into it slowly. Some of the sticky plum juice ran down the corners of her mouth and stained the bodice of her gown.

   Seated in a straight–backed chair, her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Tamworth, waited impatiently. Her wrinkled hands were folded over her cane, her eyes fixed on Diana, and a muscle clenched now and again in her jaw. Unlike her daughter, the Duchess had never been beautiful. Once it had mattered, but it no longer did. Time had taken care of such things, peeling away her youth and flesh until she was almost nothing, but in the process highlighting the strong, clean bones of her face, the sharp intelligence and will of her eyes so that now, in her sixties, she had presence—made up of character and age and strength—that Diana, in spite of her violet eyes and beautiful face, would never know (but then character was not something Diana worried about). The Duchess watched her daughter select another comfit and eat it slowly.

   "Enough, Diana," the Duchess said. She knew her daughter as she knew her own heart, and she would stand for so much, for Richard's sake, bless his departed soul, and no more. "Send the girl from the room," she said in her gruff way.

   The heavy doors creaked closed behind the girl.

   "Harry." The Duchess spoke his name abruptly.

   Diana licked her fingers, taking her own time with each one. The Duchess knew the action was deliberate, and so she remained impassively in her chair, even though her hand itched to pick up her cane and beat her daughter across the back with it. She and Diana had been in a struggle of wills most of their lives, and she had no intention of allowing Diana a victory at this late date. She had not expected Diana to come from London when she had written her of her suspicions about Harry and Jane. She had expected to handle it herself. So Diana's sudden appearance today had been as surprising to her as it had been to Harry because she knew how her daughter had handled the situation. Ruthlessly, going straight for the jugular, without one thought to anyone's feelings or needs.

   "He was angry," Diana drawled. (Her voice was low and husky, as distinctive, as famous as her eyes. When she had first gone to London, years ago, as a young wife on Kit's arm, men could talk of nothing else but her beauty and her voice.) "Angry and defiant. The defiance was not difficult to handle. Now, if it had been Barbara…" But she veered away from where that thought would take her. "And he went from defiance to…acceptance. Like his father, he has no backbone."

   The Duchess rose stiffly and limped to one of the leaded windows overlooking a parterre, a garden of box shrubs kept rigidly pruned to create an overall design. Richard had worked for over a year on that garden, laying out its pattern, an A surrounded on each side by an
S,
choosing the gravel, planting shrubs, directing the gardeners on how closely to clip them, interweaving masses of flowers into their pattern. It was looking unkempt. She must see to it…but not now. Now she must deal with Diana and this mess of Harry's— like his father perhaps, but only in some ways, and her grandson nonetheless. And Diana had a few messes of her own that had to be cleaned up. Her hands clutched the intricate golden handle of her cane.

   "You hurt him," she said. It was not a question.

   "Of course I hurt him! What else was I to do after you wrote me the news? Send the pair of them my compliments?" Diana did not notice the spasm of pain that crossed the Duchess's thin face, but was diverted by another thought, like the heedless, selfish person she was.

   "I must say, Mother, I was surprised by Jane. To my mind, there is nothing there to catch any man, even if she and Harry have grown up together. She is quiet. And not pretty. Especially when she cries. Of course, Harry was thinking with what is between his legs. Anything could have caught him. Well, he leaves tomorrow; Meres is packing a trunk right now. I have written to Caroline Layton in Italy. Do you remember her?"

   The Duchess nodded grimly.

   "Harry will stay with the Laytons. They owe me a favor. And knowing Caroline as I do—she has such a weakness for young men—she will be certain to further Harry's knowledge of women." Diana laughed wickedly, her sharp little teeth glinting. "And then there will be France. Between France and Caroline, poor Jane will be nothing but a faint memory by the time six months have passed."

   "You have been thorough," the Duchess said from the window. Her words were not a compliment, but Diana did not notice.

   "I am always thorough. In my position, one learns to be." Her tone was bitter.

   The Duchess smiled sardonically. For once Diana, clever Diana, beautiful Diana, was caught in a web she had not devised, and if the Duchess had been less personally involved, she would almost have enjoyed watching her daughter's desperate twists and turns. But she was involved—the merciful Lord above damn Diana and Kit to the hell they both deserved. They had been foolish and reckless all their lives. Kit drank; they both gambled and lost money neither possessed; Diana went from bed to bed like a cheap Southwark whore. All of which paled beside the fact that five months ago, two steps ahead of the bailiffs sent to arrest him, Kit had fled to France. He stood accused of supporting the Stuart Pretender to the throne against England's newly crowned King George I of Hanover. Diana was liable not only for the enormous debts he left behind, but also for his treasonous conduct, and she, without asking anyone, had petitioned Parliament for a divorce. It was almost unheard of; marriage was, after all, a sacred sacrament, forever binding, and people made the best of what they had. Oh, there were unofficial separations, sometimes nasty court wrangling over finances and dowers, but divorce itself was so rare, so contrary to the Lord's word, so much trouble and scandal (too much family dirt aired on both sides) that it was seldom tried. The entire family, including the young present duke, the Duchess's least favorite grandchild, "that fat, idiot spawn of Abigail's," as she referred to him, was in an uproar, tarred by his actions and divided over hers.

   It galled the Duchess almost beyond bearing to think that a daughter and son–in–law of hers should so threaten the family. All those years that she and Richard had spent in loyal service—the money, the lands they had amassed— to be threatened by the whims of a feckless gambler, who could hold neither his liquor nor his mouth, and by a woman who did not know the meaning of the word "loyalty." Thank God, Richard was dead. At one time, she would have written letters to all she knew, somehow made things right with her own sheer persistence and political skill. But time and age and events (all the deaths tearing out her heart) had left her too easily tired, too easily disgusted with the machinations of those about her. Thus, she only said bitterly, as bitterly as Diana, "The Alderleys were always fools for the Stuarts—"