Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel (94 page)

   "Not this. This came later. Much later; it is not part of the entail."

   Intrigued, Barbara waited.

   "Decisions…" said the Duchess, drifting.

   "Grandmama!"

   "What? What? Did I doze off again? My mind—"

   "What estate do you need to make a decision about?"

   "Oh! Oh, yes. I must make a decision whether or not to sell a plantation in Virginia."

   Barbara stared at her, her mouth open. The Duchess smoothed back a wisp of hair which had come loose from her lace cap.

   "Harry left it to me. When I lent him money in the summer, he deeded it to me as collateral. I forgot all about it—you know my mind these days, Barbara, and now it seems the cousins of the original owner are interested in buying it back. I do not know, I have not seen it. I do not like to sell something sight unseen. That is bad business."

   "Where on earth is Virginia? And what is a plantation?"

   "A farm. They grow hemp—no! Tobacco. Yes, they grow tobacco. It is across the sea, a colony in the North Americas. I have a map." She saw the interest and curiosity in Barbara's face and went on as if she had not seen it. "I do not know whom to send. I cannot go myself. There is no one—" She stopped and clapped a hand to her breast and looked at Barbara, amazement crossing her face. "Bab! You could go for me! You have no ties. You could go and act as my agent and look at it and tell me what to do—" She stopped at the expression on Barbara's face.

   "Go across the sea to some place called Virginia and inspect a plantation for you?" Barbara repeated slowly.

   "I thought…I thought it might be worth keeping. It might be well to acquire other properties there. I have funds made from South Sea, and they sit idle at Hoare's bank, drawing interest. And you might like it there well enough to oversee it for me—"

   "You are jesting!"

   "Am I?" snapped the Duchess, suddenly sitting up straight, while a butterfly perched on her cap. "And have you any better offers?"

   "Indeed I do!" Barbara, snapped back. "I can become Charles's mistress, or the Frog's. And there is always Mr. Pendarves, if Aunt Shrewsborough does not scratch my eyes out first. Have I told you of Pendarves? He is Mother's latest candidate for my husband, and a far cry from Roger Montgeoffry, let me tell you. As far as one can go."

   "Never mind," said the Duchess, slumping down, looking tiny and frail again. "It was a madness on my part. I am old, after all. At times, I do not think properly. I can send someone else. Or simply sell it."

   "It was a madness," said Barbara firmly.

* * *

   Barbara laid a bouquet of meadow daisies and bluebells at the base of Roger's bust and sat down on the marble bench, her hands twisted together in her lap, as she remembered not only Philippe's words, but many other things. I loved you so, she thought, looking at the bust. Since I was fifteen my life revolved around you, hating you, trying to hurt you, hurting only myself, nursing you, burying you, planning your memorial, and now it all is done. You are gone from me, and the core of me is empty. Unfilled. I love you, Charles writes to me, and his letter is ardent, but never as beautiful as yours were. I could love him, Roger, but I do not want to be his mistress again for reasons other than Mary, yet Mary is reason enough, and I know if I see him again what will happen. We will quarrel, and we will kiss, and we will bed. It is inevitable. The desire between us is so strong. Was it that way between you and Philippe? Love, Philippe said, it was love. I knew it, and yet I had never heard the words from your lips. Remember in Paris how you refused to speak to me of him, and so there was always the faintest of doubts to hold on to, to cherish. It hurts me, Roger. It takes my grief for you and makes it harder to bear. There is so much of you that I did not know, that I cannot now understand.

   She waited, almost as if the bust would open its cold lips and reply, and after a moment, when she realized what she was doing, she shook her head. I am too young to ape my grandmama, she thought, talking to a tomb's statue, loving a portrait. Standing up, she walked restlessly about the chapel, stopping before each tablet, reading the names, touching some of them with her fingertips, as if she could touch the person whose name they spelled out, but she touched only cold. She leaned her cheek against the bronze of Harry's tablet. I miss you so, she thought. The silence of the chapel answered her. I am alone, she thought. Truly alone.

* * *

   A few days later, she strode into the Duchess's bedchamber, the dogs swirling and barking at her feet. Dulcinea leapt from the bed to attack the dogs and the three animals went whirling under the bed, snapping and growling at one another.

   "How much do you know of this Virginia?" Barbara said abruptly.

The Duchess tried to think above the sudden roaring in her ears.
"I have books and maps—"
"May I see them?"

   She managed to wave casually toward her crowded bedside table. "Look there. Or there. They are here somewhere. Perhaps there."

   "Have you ever heard of a place called Virginia?" Barbara asked Thérèse as she brushed out her hair. The windows were open to the night, and Tamworth's night sounds came in through the window, crickets' cries and gate creaks and branches rubbing together, as did its smells: fresh dirt plowed up in the fields, dung from the stable horses, perfume from the flowering vines.

   Thérèse's brushing stopped. Harry had won a plantation in Virginia. In the early summer, after three days and nights of card playing in a back room at Young Man's tavern, and the loser had gone back to his lodgings and blown out his brains with a pistol. Or so Harry had said. She had not known whether to believe him or not, his eyes were so teasing. Come with me to Virginia, he had said, taking her by the waist and holding her close. Come live with me and be my love. And for a moment, they had laughed and dreamed a little, of the journey, of how they would live. But Harry went on to another day, and it was not mentioned again, and she forgot it easily, never taking him seriously.

   "I have heard of it."

   "Well, Grandmama has asked me to go there. Harry left her a plantation, which is a—"

   "Farm."

   "Yes, a farm, and she wants me to go over and see it to decide if she should sell it or not."

   Thérèse heard the underlying excitement in her voice, but she did not quite comprehend all the words yet. The Lord moved in mysterious ways…Virginia yet again….Barbara stood up and ran to the window, her body rail–thin in her nightgown. She sat in the open window like a gypsy.

   "At first, I said no. I thought the idea mad. And then, the more I have thought about it, the more I think, Why not? There is nothing here for me, Thérèse. I have no ties. Montrose can handle the details of the estate, and there are people I do not want to see. And it might do me good—" she paused and smiled, "—to have an adventure."

   Thérèse held her hands together so that Barbara should not see their trembling. "It is across the sea."

   "Yes. Six weeks' journey, I understand." She stared out the window into the night. "What would you do if I went?"

   "I…I could find another position. Or stay and work here, perhaps. Or go back to France."

   "Would you come with me?"

   Thérèse stared at her. Barbara smiled, and she reminded Thérèse of a little girl, a bad little girl up to mischief. Jane's Amelia had nothing on Barbara at this moment.

   "It is craziness," said Thérèse.

   "It is madness," agreed Barbara.

   "We might die in a shipwreck."

   "There are savages there. They might eat us."

   "What would we do with Hyacinthe and the dogs?"

   "Take them, of course. More for the savages to eat."

   Thérèse began to smile. "You are mad," she said to Barbara.

   Barbara jumped down from the windowsill and ran across the room and whirled around and around in its center, making Thérèse laugh.

   "I am mad. And I need an adventure that hurts no one, just one tiny adventure," she sang. "Then I will be good. I promise."

* * *

   She sat on her grandmother's bed, Dulcinea and the dogs wedged between them, while she and her grandmother whispered together like conspirators.

   "I will want to know everything," said the Duchess. "What the property yields, how fertile its fields are, the crops grown, the profits, the losses. If I should buy other properties. What I should pay for them. You may hate it once you are there, but I expect you to do your work before you come home to me. You see if that property is worth keeping. Visit the other landowners. Look at their fields. Ask their yields. Their problems. Find out where they are buying land. There might be money to be made, and part of whatever I make will be yours. If you are careful, Bab, you could build up another estate."

   Barbara's eyes shone suddenly.

   "Caesar will handle the travel arrangements for us," the Duchess continued. "You should leave from Gravesend and not London." Barbara did not ask why. She knew Gravesend was farther from London, closer to the sea. There were those in London who must not know.

   "Montrose will need to know," she whispered back. "As my agent of business."

   "Can he keep a secret?"

   She nodded, beginning to feel greatly excited. She and Harry and Thérèse and Hyacinthe and the dogs had journeyed across France to Italy, and they had loved it, the exhilaration of travel, of motion, of new sights, overcoming even the discomfort.

   "Are you certain?" whispered her grandmother.

   She nodded her head and then shook it.

   "Good," said the Duchess. "At least I am not sending a fool to tend my business."

* * *

   "A cow!" Barbara stared at her grandmother, "I am to take a cow?"

   The Duchess's lips worked stubbornly. "And chickens."

   "Surely those things are already there."

   "It is my plantation, and you are acting as my agent, and I wish it stocked with Tamworth's finest."

   Barbara stared at the stubborn set of her grandmother's face. "But what if I decide the plantation should be sold?"

   "It will fetch an even greater price with Tamworth stock on it. And if we do not sell it, we have eliminated the need of your sending for stock."

   Barbara stared at her grandmother, wondering for a moment what was in her mind, truly.

   "Richard," said the Duchess. She gasped and closed her eyes, and her voice as quavering. "Is that you?"

   Barbara turned away. "That will do you no good. I will take the chickens but not the cow."

   "You will take the cow. She has mated with my best bull, and if she calves, you will have the best stock in Virginia. Why, we could make a fortune off mating fees alone. You will take the cow."

   "Richard," said Barbara, imitating her grandmother down to the quaver in her voice, "she will not take the cow."

   Someone burst out laughing. The Duchess turned swiftly in her chair to glare at Tim. He sobered at once.

   "Another sound out of you, and I will send you across the sea with her."

   "Oh, no, ma'am. Not me. I leave adventure to Lady Devane and Robinson Crusoe."

   "You will take the cow," said the Duchess, turning back around.

   "Annie," she said later, when Tim had carried her to her room, and Annie was rubbing liniment into her legs. "She looks better. I see it. I do. She always was ripe for an adventure. Do you remember when she made Harry run away with her to Maidstone—"

   "Hush," said Annie. "You need to rest."

   "Is Thérèse copying the recipes? There are so many. How will we know what she will need over there? There is a great wood of trees there, endless, Annie, and a river as wide as the sea—"

   "Hush now."

   "Bah!"

   "Bah, yourself."

   "I will send you to Virginia with Bab if you are rude to me!"

   "Oh, bah, yourself. Bossy old stick."

* * *

   The letter came from London informing her that Parliament had found Roger guilty of breach of trust as a South Sea director and was fining him a portion of his estate and earnings. There was no cash with which to pay the fines, wrote Montrose, and she must seriously consider Jacombe's recommendation to dismantle Devane House and sell it piece by piece. Part could go toward Parliament and part toward Lord Devane's creditors, who were becoming increasingly insistent. Enclosed were papers that would begin the process of dismantling.

   Barbara looked up from the letter. She sat on an old stone wall that separated the woods from the orchards. The apple and plum and cherry trees were full of blossoms, lacy white, edged with pink, their fragrance the sweetest of smells. Bees dove among them drunkenly, so swollen with the nectar of their flowers that they could scarcely fly. She stared once more at the papers she must sign. The dismantling of Devane House—necessary, or she would live under a burden of debt which would crush her forever. Only the plans would be left, the dead dreams in a wooden box.

   On the way back to the house, she gathered all the bluebells she could hold in her arms, and walked into the great hall with them, past her grandmother, who sat by a window in the sun, reading her letters.

   The Duchess looked up at her, at her straight back and rigid profile, as she began to arrange bluebells in a bowl.

   "Abigail writes me the news. I am sorry."

   Barbara was silent, and the Duchess said no more. Abigail had written, in addition to the news about Roger's estate, that Robert had been made first lord of the treasury and chancellor—a victory indeed for a man who had been outside the king's cabinet for three years. A victory that would keep Diana in London, sharing the triumph. Another month and she would send her granddaughter to Gravesend with Perryman to board a ship sailing to the Americas. Another month and she would buy her granddaughter time. The only thing that healed one completely…time.

* * *

   May Day, and Tamworth village held its May feast in the churchyard. The young men of the village competed against one another in leaping and vaulting and archery, and they raised a maypole, though Vicar frowned, not quite sure of the church's position on such pagan rites. The girls danced around it, flowers in their hair. Barbara, sitting beside her grandmother, both of them in black, was a severe contrast to the white and scarlet and green of the village maidens' gowns, to the pastels of the flowers woven in their hair. The Duchess had hired a troupe of Morris dancers, and everyone watched, enthralled, as they acted out a garbled version of the legend of Robin Hood, entwined with dancing and singing and the sound of pipes and tabor, and the children cheered for Fool and Hobby Horse while the maidservants sighed at Maid Marion and dashing Robin Hood.