Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (37 page)

   "My grandmother is exhausted," Barbara said firmly. "See that she is escorted home. And make sure someone goes with her. Kiss me good-night, Grandmama. You must leave now. You are so tired. I will be fine. Truly."

   The Duchess leaned on Martha's arm. Barbara was correct; she was tired; she did need her bed. And her granddaughter did not need her now. She was ready to start her own life, she did not want her old grandmother hanging about. Which was as it should be. She kissed Barbara and walked away, feebly leaning against Martha as if the maid were all that was keeping her up. It was time for her to be home, time to drink her special wine, time to have her legs wrapped. She could do no more. The future was up to Barbara and Roger.

* * *

   When Roger entered his bedchamber, he found his young wife on her knees, by the side of his bed praying. Her back and buttocks and legs showed plainly through the thin material of her gown. Except for a certain inherent female roundness and slight breasts, she was almost as lean as a boy. The sight of her on her knees made him laugh (even while her slightness touched something protective inside him). Was she praying for deliverance? It was too late. She was his. He had never been responsible for another human being before. Seeing her, the extent of his future responsibilities leapt to his mind. The full implication of his marriage was just beginning to crystallize.

   Barbara jerked around at his laugh, jumped up and scrambled into bed. She pulled the covers up to her neck and stared at him with wide, serious eyes. Her hair curled about her face and neck with luxuriant richness. She had beautiful hair. It would feel good to run his hands through it. He felt so tired. All evening he had worked to prevent Catherine from making a scene and Barbara from feeling neglected. What a hypocrite Catherine was. He knew she was sleeping with Carr Hervey. But she still had to feel that it was she that was tired of him, rather than the other way around. Roger knew women, especially unfaithful women, too well. Would this child, staring at him with such big eyes, be unfaithful too? In all likelihood, she would. But if she gave him sons for his dreams, she could do as she pleased and he would not grudge her pleasure. Lord, she had a sweetly shaped face. Like a valentine. He poured himself a glass of wine. She must have some also before he entered her. It would ease the hurt he must do to her. Dear God, it had been years since he had lain with a virgin. He sat down on the edge of the bed. She had put down the covers, and she was watching him. He could see her slight breasts through the thin material of her gown. The sight touched him. She was so young.

   "What were you praying for, Barbara? An annulment?"

   She laughed, deep, rich, throaty laughter, astonishing from such a young girl. The zest of it reminded him of her grandfather. Even when Richard had been old, he seemed young when he laughed. Roger drank more of his wine.

   "I ought to be," she told him. "I have been warned by Fanny and Grandmama what to expect. Fanny says to submit. Grandmama says it is the same as the animals mating—only she hopes you will have more finesse."

   Her ability to jest at such a moment caught him by surprise. He had not yet taken the time to know her. Who was she? More than the thin child of his memory. She had a sense of humor. That was good. A witty woman was so much more interesting to live with. Wit outdid even beauty in the long run; a thing few men realized until it was too late. God knew he had made the same mistake himself many times.

   Barbara was watching his face. "What are you thinking? Are you angry?"

   "Angry? Why?"

   "At having to marry me so quickly."

   He smiled at her. You are Bentwoodes' fairy godmother, he thought. Without you, I would not have it. It was his, finally. Tomorrow he was going to spend all day with surveyors and engineers. Even while he was in France and Hanover and Italy, Bentwoodes was going to take shape. Angry? he thought. I am elated. He touched her cheek with his hand. Such a soft cheek. She leaned toward him, a sensual, feminine, instinctive movement. He felt desire rising in him. That, too, was a surprise. Not that he should have an erection. He knew exactly what to think of to make himself hard. But that it should have happened without the thought. Perhaps she was going to be good for him. Perhaps her wit and resemblance to her grandfather would bury old ghosts that haunted him.

   "I love you," she said softly, holding his hand against her cheek. "I have loved you since I was a little girl."

   "You are still a little girl," he said.

   "No."

   "You have so much to learn, Barbara."

   She leaned forward until her lips were nearly on his.

   "Teach me, " she whispered. "Please, Roger."

   He put down his glass, and held her face in both his hands. She was staring at him with love and trust. Gently, slowly, he leaned forward and touched her lips with his. What a sweet girl she was. Her youth, her open avowal of love, disarmed him, touched that part of himself he thought closed off to all feeling, He leaned her back against the pillows and pushed the heavy curling hair from her brow and face. He smiled again before covering her face and neck with soft, gentle kisses, as light as the touch of a feather. But then his kisses grew more demanding. She shivered. He was at her mouth again, his tongue gently exploring. She gasped with surprise. She had never been kissed so…she had not known…he raised his head. His eyes were so blue that they dazzled.

   "What is wrong?" he whispered. "Have I frightened you?"

   She twined her arms around his neck. "No…kiss me like that again… please, Roger."

   He smiled at her, a lazy, slow, sensual smile that made the tips of her breasts grow pointed…from the smile and from what was in his eyes. He desired her…he desired her.…no one had ever desired her…and now Roger desired her. Leisurely, he put his mouth on her, one hand caressing her slim, bare hip under her gown. She had never been so exhilarated, with its tiny, electrifying undercurrent of fear, in her life. His tongue was exploring her mouth again, and his hand was moving up to her breast, and she could not think clearly anymore.

   "I am going to touch you here, Barbara…and here…" he said into her ear, his voice, his hands sending shivers down her spine. "I am going to touch you many places and if any of them should displease you, you only have to tell me."

   "And if they please me?" she said breathlessly.

   He bit her neck. "Tell me that, too."

   "Roger…" Her eyes were like night stars. Finally, he had to close his eyes at the expression in them….

* * *

The Duchess lay awake. She had drunk too much wine. Was, in fact, drunk. To drown out fears. Worries. Old ghosts. Which had surrounded her today, in fact, all these days again in London….Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. On their wedding night Richard had memorized the Song of Solomon…Behold, thou art fair, my love; thou hast doves' eyes…to show his regard and desire, he had said. Our bed is green…our rafters of fir…behold thou art fair, my love.

Chapter Nine

Barbara's brother Harry lay beside the plump body of Caroline Layton. It was late morning, and his head ached from drinking. He sat up, the sheet falling away to expose his abdomen and thighs.

   "Darling," murmured Caroline, her hand lazily caressing his back, circling around to caress his thighs.

   He lay down, perfectly willing to see what she would do. She played with him delicately, skillfully, kissing his thighs, his manhood, trailing her pointed, pink tongue along a path of her own devising. He became aroused. Caroline expertly slid her body over and atop his; he was inside her before he quite realized it.

   She began to move slowly, sensuously, atop him, intent on her own pleasure, and he was content to lie still, allow her to do as she pleased. Her hands caressed his thighs, his buttocks, his chest as she moved and swayed to a rhythm that brought pleasure to them both. The tips of her overfull breasts jabbed his chest as she began to move more urgently, falling against him in little pants.

   "Good…oh, Harry. Good…young…so young. I…oh…love young men."

   She pushed against him, her face contained, intent on her feelings, and he joined her in her urgent, restless dance to completion, his mind empty, feeling only the full, glistening breasts, the slide up and down him, the hot, moist beat surrounding him.

   She cried out and dug her fingernails into him. He held her hips and jabbed his way to his own pleasure even as she fell limp against him. After a moment, she moved off him and lay down beside him.

   "Darling," she said.

   He did not answer, but rose, careless of his nakedness, and went to the window. His body was small and muscular with wide shoulders tapering to narrow hips. His face was his mother's, only masculine. It was a face that intrigued women. He was only beginning to explore the power of his looks. Caroline was the fulfillment of his most erotic, frustrated schoolboy dream. But he wanted far more than Caroline; he wanted a taste of all the women in the world. And he was learning that he had only to smile lazily and say whatever it was they wished to hear. Married women were best, insatiable if their husbands were dull enough. It did not matter that he had no money. It only mattered that he was well-born and young, and, of course, too handsome for his own good. They were more than willing to pay for his clothes, his tobacco, his gambling. He would never bother with virgins again. He remembered Jane's shrill "no's" when his hand touched her breasts. He remembered his own suffering and guilt and wanting. It was not that he had not loved Jane. He had. And he still did. But she was like a pale daydream against the reality of Caroline Layton and others. When he had first arrived in Italy, angry, heartsore, he had gone straight to a portrait artist and commissioned a miniature of Jane. He had described her minutely. Then he had met Caroline. In a month, when the miniature was finished, it had taken him a moment to recognize it as Jane. The pale, frail blondeness painted there could have been anyone. He had already forgotten exactly what she did look like, and the miniature, which he had meant to wear every waking moment, had been put under his shirts. And sometimes, when he was down to his last one, he would come upon it and gaze at it and try to remember how he had once desired her. But the young man under the apple trees at Tamworth was too far away from the young man standing naked, looking out the windows of Caroline's villa.

Chapter Ten

The Duc d'Orléans, regent of France for the boy king, Louis XV, snorted once or twice and, in doing so, woke himself. Outside, in the dark night, sleet tip–tapped against the windows. Inside, bodies lay sprawled in chairs and under tables. Another supper was ended. Orléans's suppers were private. No one was admitted except by invitation, and no servants were allowed because of what they might see. The guests did their own cooking, which was served on a specially designed set of china depicting men and women, women and women, men and men, in various stimulating, explicit sexual poses. As if the china were not enough to arouse appetites other than those of hunger, each guest consumed about three bottles of champagne apiece while watching a naked ballet performed by several of the young girls in the chorus at the opera, or a lantern show in which the figures outlined in the light of the lantern copulated like dogs, or perhaps with dogs.

   Orléans stood up shakily and began to rouse those guests who had not passed out. It was three in the morning. Those that could walk began to put on their clothes, pull down their skirts, button their breeches and leave. Orléans kept a special staff of footmen who would enter in a few moments when he rang for them and remove the unconscious to their carriages. He stepped over the naked bodies of two opera dancers intertwined around the half-nude body of Henri, the young Chevalier de St. Michel. Orléans paused a moment to study their positions. The guttering candlelight softened the flesh tones, the explicitness. He shook St. Michel by the shoulder, and the man moaned and then tried to sit up. Orléans moved to his daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, who lay sprawled in a chair, snoring, her skirts pulled up, naked from the waist down. A man was still licking between her heavy thighs, moaning and pulling at the material of his crotch. Orléans pushed him away, and the man rolled against a sleeping comtesse, fumbled with her tousled skirts, settled himself atop her and began to pump against her with the mindlessness of an animal. The comtesse never moved. Orléans pulled down his daughter's skirts and closed her mouth. He glanced around the room. Most of the men were dressed and had left. As for the women, only his daughter mattered. He rang for the footmen, and then wandered out into the corridor to his own apartments, every now and again pausing to look out the great windows into the dark night. Sleet made faint tapping sounds against the windowpanes.

   Inside the supper room, the footmen, their faces impassive, began to carry guests away. Now and again, they would pause to look at a naked girl who was pretty, and a certain furtive look would pass between them, but nothing was said. When all of the guests were settled into their carriages, except for two of the opera dancers, naked, still asleep, the footmen, six in all, reassembled in the room. They took turns at the sleeping girls, those who were not engaged in sex pushing in chairs and stacking dirty plates and dousing the candles in the heavy crystal chandeliers or in the wall sconces until it should be their turn. They were silent and swift and efficient in both their lovemaking and their tidying. Very soon, they would be finished; the opera dancers would be sent home, never knowing of their final lovers except for an extra soreness the next morning.

   When the last candle was extinguished, and no trace left of what had gone on in the room, the footmen shut and locked the door and went to bed. The room was now silent and dark. It needed the light of the candles to show off its beauty, for by candlelight it was exquisite. The walls, painted a cream color, were separated into different panels whose outlines were with a thin layer of pure gold. Within the panels were perfectly carved figures of nymphs fleeing from fauns and satyrs against a backdrop of dark forest and winding rivers. An artist had painstakingly painted each tiny figure as if it were real. The flesh of the nymphs was as glowing, as pink, as those of the opera dancers who had earlier been there. The paneling itself was interspersed with large mirrors and paintings by the great Italian and French and Dutch masters, the subject of each, naturally, being love. The room was a reflection of the best and finest in French craftsmanship.

* * *

In another mansion in Paris, a mansion as beautifully furnished as the Palais Royal, in which Orléans lived, a French princess tossed and turned on her bed. She was twenty, with olive skin and chestnut-colored hair, a petulant mouth and blue eyes that bulged slightly. And her small, childlike body had just miscarried a fetus because she had gone to her favorite abortionist. Her personal maid had changed the bloody sheets and taken the clotted blood that had been the beginnings of a child away to burn in the furnace. It was not the first infinitesimal fetus the furnace had burned. If it had lived to be born, the maid would have packed it naked and squalling in a basket and taken it across the Seine River to be sold to the beggars that specialized in child buying, in child slavery. If the princess felt anything, she did not show it. Abortion was the price she paid for living as she pleased. She had no intention of changing her way of life, though she did try to change the price. She had experimented with every method of birth control available: drinking man's urine and willow tea; raising her thigh; coughing and sneezing after sex; seaweed plugs and various douches, from rock salt to lye water to pomegranate juice. Coitus interruptus, which her sisters swore by, was too uncertain. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, she forgot to insist. Now her maid suggested a new method. It seemed that a household servant from Turkey said the women there tied a piece of thread to a small sponge, soaked the sponge in lemon juice, inserted it inside the vagina before the act, and afterward pulled the thread to retrieve the sponge. The princess pulled her legs up to ease some of the sharp cramps which still seized her. Outside her windows, the sleet beat itself against the panes, and finally, tired from the loss of blood and from the pain, she slept.

* * *

It was January in Paris and a bad winter; fires burned day and night in the houses of those who could afford firewood; the bodies of those who could not were stacked up in the street, frozen, like so much human firewood. The great king, Louis XIV, who had fought all of Europe for over thirty years, who spent his reign building the massive palace of Versailles, who said, "I am the state," whose symbol was Apollo, god of the sun, had died in September of 1715. He left a nation bankrupt from wars; and he left a great-grandson of five to rule in his place, governed by a regency made up of his nephew, Orléans, and his bastard sons by one of his mistresses. His palace of Versailles was shuttered, left to the caretakers and mice. The grandeur, dignity, order, and authority it stood for died with its creator. The other attributes it had fostered—greed, envy, malice, passion, and ambition—moved on to Paris, where the regent lived, and the court followed. He set the tone for the times, one of wasted talents, dissipated pleasures, cynical boredom, and open display of vice and perversion.

* * *

   The next evening, Barbara pushed her way through a crowd of revelers at a masked opera ball held at the theater in the Palais Royal. Thirty violins were playing as laughing, costumed people danced on the new marvel, the large space created in the opera house by special machinery that raised the floor of the auditorium to the level of the stage. Anyone who dressed properly could attend; it had been hoped that holding public balls at the Palais Royal would stop some of the scandals erupting at other, more private ones in and around Paris.

   Barbara was searching for Roger. This morning, she had slept so late that she had missed him, even though she had given Martha orders to wake her. "I thought you needed your sleep," Martha had said to her when she raged at her. She spent the rest of the morning as she had spent every morning since they had arrived in Paris five days ago, in her rooms. When Roger had returned for dinner (he held an open table, which meant that anyone who wished to might dine with them, and the places around the dining table were always filled), she had to act as hostess and concentrate on her French and try to make intelligent conversation. Among the guests were John Law, the Scotsman who had some theory of money and credit and was the current darling of French society, and the Duc de Saint-Simon, a tall, dignified man who seemed mainly concerned about precedence among the princes of the blood, a subject Barbara found completely confusing. And then she had to dress for a reception and the opera ball following. The only time she had been alone with Roger was in the carriage. As soon as they had gotten to the ball, Roger had chucked her under the chin and told her to behave herself. She had watched his red–cloaked back disappear into the crowd. Behave herself indeed! She was beginning to feel angry at his casual treatment of her. A woman standing near her said, "Care to follow me, dear? I can show you things a man would never think of."

   Barbara pulled her cloak closer about herself and reached up to make sure the intricate headdress she wore, drooping pearls and feathers attached to a velvet face mask, was straight. She wove her way through the crowd, back toward the dancing. Men continually grabbed her hands, but she pulled them away. How could Roger abandon her like this? A woman ran shrieking past her, followed by two men, costumed as birds of prey. Barbara found a chair and sat down amid a circle of old women, their mouths going like magpies as they shredded the reputations of everyone they thought they recognized.

Just now they were discussing how badly dressed one of the regent's daughters was. Roger had already taken her to the nearby palace of the Tuileries, where the boy king lived with his bodyguards, his tutors and governess and household. She had liked the king's shy manner, his dark eyes, his dignity. It was a far contrast to his uncle, the regent, who had been drunk the first time she was introduced to him. He sat, fat and red–faced, under a canopy in a reception room at the Palais Royal. One of the attendants announced them. He jumped up and embraced Roger, kissing him on each cheek. But when he bowed over her hand, she could smell the brandy and see the red, broken veins on his nose, and he would have fallen over, dragging her with him, if a footman had not caught him. She did not know what to do. Roger's face was impassive. She could not tell what he was thinking.

   The regent burped and pinched her cheek. He held her arm, for support most likely, and led her to a stately woman with fat cheeks whom he introduced as his wife. The Duchesse d'Orléans was surrounded by young daughters in varying stages of ugliness. Of them, the only one who made an impression on her was the widowed Duchesse de Berry, who was quarreling with her mother.

   Roger had been amused by her reaction to it all. He tried to explain to her, "Orléans is a libertine, a dissolute cynic, and the most intelligent man in France. He knows more of science and music than any man I know. His problem is one many royal princes share. He was never given any power, Barbara, never given anything useful to do. So he became a drunk and a lazy wastrel to pass the time, and now it is his habit. He cannot help himself. As for his wife and family, I will make no excuses for them, except to say that they have always done as they pleased. They consider themselves above the rules of ordinary conduct. It is something you must accept if you are to understand the French."

   She tossed her head.

   "Do not be a prig," Roger said to her. "As you grow older and more experienced, you will learn that most things in life are neither black nor white, but a shade of gray. Never make judgments upon people, Barbara, because they may come home to roost."

   Barbara leaned her head against the wall. The old women's chatter was giving her a headache, either that or her headdress was. She wanted to go home. And there was Roger, standing near a far wall in his red cloak with his back to her. She went up to him and when she was behind him, she slipped her arms about his waist and whispered, "Will you take me home? I am so tired."

   He turned in her arms, his mask different from the one Roger had worn.

   "But of course, mademoiselle. Yet if I take you home it will not be to sleep."

   "Forgive me, monsieur," she stammered, backing away. "I thought you were my husband."

The man followed her. "Your husband? How disappointing."

   Whatever I answer, thought Barbara, I will appear foolish. So she said nothing, but stared at him, her chin lifted, until he bowed and moved to one side so that she could pass by.

   I am a married woman, she was thinking to herself. I do not have to be escorted home like a baby. I can order my carriage and go. Roger will have to find another way home. She did not realize that the man in the red cloak was following her and heard her give her name to the Swiss Guards so that they might call her carriage.

   "Henri!"

   Someone tugged at the man's sleeve, a small, child-sized woman with olive skin and a petulant mouth, made more petulant by the vermilion rouge coloring it and by the black mask she wore. Her hair was chestnut-colored and her eyes were blue.

   "I am bored, Henri. Dance with me."

   "Bored, Louise-Anne?" he said. "How can this be? Have you broken with Armand?"

   "Oh, no." She pouted. "But I am incapacitated just now, and Armand finds consolation in the arms of some little opera dancer. Nothing is fun when you cannot fuck."

   He laughed. "Louise-Anne! You shock me."

   "Pooh! Nothing shocks you. Dance with me before I die of boredom."

* * *

   Barbara was silent as Martha untied the laces of her gown and unpinned the headdress and her hair. It was not simply that she hated Martha, though she did…it was Roger. Outside, sleet began to beat against the windows as she burrowed under the eiderdown in sheets that had been warmed and shivered anyway. Once again, Roger had either decided to stay in his own apartments or he was still out. She had no idea which. This was not the way she had thought to begin her marriage.

   On the journey, he had been very kind, but then, he was always kind. She had been seasick as they crossed the channel, and he left her to Martha's care. Then she got a headache from the jolting sway of the carriage; the roads to Paris were rutted, muddy ribbons of dirt that rattled her head until her teeth shook. Then her flux began (it never came with the regularity of other women's). She kept up a pretense of good spirits, because the men (White, Montrose, and Roger's valet, Justin, traveling with them) seemed not to mind the cold or the carriage or the discomfort of the flea-ridden inns. They stayed downstairs near the fire drinking hot wine while she shivered upstairs under moldy, damp sheets and suffered from cramps.