Now Face to Face (69 page)

“I fell. Never mind it.”

She lied. Nothing changes, and everything changes. Of her children, this child had done as she so pleased, always. Of her children, this child had said, Leave me be. She had cared for this child’s children, had paid this child’s debts, had dampened what she could of this child’s scandals, but she had not liked her. Yet there was something between them that went beyond regard, some fine-grained, steely quality each possessed and recognized in the other; and in the end, perhaps that was stronger than any affection. Amazing to think that out of Diana had come Barbara.

“Settle yourself, and tell me the gossip in London. When I was at Lindenmas, they were gossiping about the Bishop of Rochester. Do they still say he is implicated in treasonous correspondence by a letter about a little spotted dog?”

“Oh yes.”

Chapter Forty-one

T
HE SMALL VILLAGE OF
T
WICKENHAM WAS JUST ACROSS THE
river from Richmond House, where the Prince and Princess of Wales lived in the summer. Barbara had the coachman find out where the Duke of Wharton lived. Wharton’s servant told her he was in the back garden. Walking back to it, she saw him in a chair by the river, saw, too, that he had been drinking. She called his name.

Wharton stood, steadying himself on the back of the chair, held out his hands. “My very dear Barbara, am I drunk or just dreaming?”

She hugged him.

“Drunk, I think. Oh, Wart, it is so good to see you.” He was her substitute for Harry. When you lost people you loved, you were less unforgiving of those left.

She looked around. There was no one but them and the river weaving its way greenly among reeds. She pushed him down in his chair, pulled another one close.

“Tell me about the invasion. Everything. No lies, but the truth.”

“There are plans for an autumn invasion going forward, and my part is, as you may imagine, to be in the thick of it.”

So Duncannon lied? Barbara frowned down at a fold in her gown, disappointed—no, more than disappointed. No one now, except her family, and not even all of them, would be telling the truth, but she’d expected more of Duncannon.

“Tell me something, Wart. Tommy Carlyle wrote me that the fine Parliament put upon Roger need not have been so high, that the ministry, that Robin, did not defend Roger as they might have. That Roger was a scapegoat.”

“It is possible, Bab. Anything is possible.”

“What do you remember?”

“Only the vile baseness of the Hanoverians and everything their greedy hands touched. They were like highwaymen, piling up South Sea stock and selling it again. No one was worse than the Duchess of Kendall. And Walpole is beneath contempt. He always has been.”

“Why?”

“Because he has no honor, Bab.”

A woman was wading through the shallow part of the river, through the reeds, her skirts pulled up. Barbara recognized her, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was older than Barbara and Wharton, by perhaps a decade; her face was lightly marked with smallpox scars. There were no lashes around her large, dark eyes. The same smallpox that had marked her face had taken her eyelashes. The lack gave her an odd, staring, almost rude look. She walked forward into the grass, her feet bare and wet, the ends of her skirts dripping, at her ease.

“It is easier to come by river than by garden path, and I have to confess I enjoy wading in the river like a child. You’re Lady Devane, aren’t you? Yes, I remember, quite the loveliest young woman at court. I thought you were in a colony somewhere. Wharton, you’re drinking wine already, and I have walked over most particularly to invite you to one of my gatherings tonight. Try to be sensible when you arrive. Senesino, from the opera, is going to sing. His voice is divine, Lady Devane. You must come, too, though you haven’t to splash by river, as I have. Wharton, I depend on you to join me tonight and to behave. Good-bye, Lady Devane.”

She walked back into the shallows of the river, her gown dragging. Barbara watched her, remembering that Lady Mary’s sister was married to a Jacobite, one who’d fled England in 1715. Lady Mary is in the plot, thought Barbara. I’ll bet coins on it.

“I’ve been told there will be no invasion,” she said.

“Ormonde will come in the autumn, when the soldiers in Hyde Park go back to their garrisons. Do you think it will be possible to remain neutral, as you did in Italy? You had not a serious thought in your head then, Bab.”

“As if you and Harry were serious—”

“We were.”

“You were drunk.”

“But deadly serious, nonetheless. What are all these feathers and beads about your person? You look magnificent.”

“I go to see the King at Hampton Court. I must make an impression.”

“Playing both ends? Coward.”

She stood, irritated.

“I think you tilt at windmills, my friend. Did you see the number of soldiers in Hyde Park? And I was told that more were available, upon notice, from the Dutch. The war is lost before it is begun.”

“Never.”

“Dear Wart, please be careful, please. I would not want to see you beheaded. That is still the penalty for treason, you know.”

“Would you cry?”

“Indeed, I would.”

“Then you would be the only one. Did you hear of my hour of triumph, Bab? Lord Sunderland and I were like father and son. He was maneuvering to see me brought into service as one of the King’s ministers. Is that not amusing? We were maneuvering to see Walpole gone. How I want to see Walpole gone. Everything was right there, in our hands, Bab. And then Sunderland died.”

She was silent. She knew better than anyone the twists of Fate, when life seemed to spiral downward.

“It’s good you’re back, Bab. I am going to make you Jacobite. See if I don’t.”

“If Harry couldn’t do it, what makes you think you can?”

“I am more clever than Harry…. I miss him, Bab.” He looked ather, a tear in his eyes. The wine he drank brought emotion up.

“I do, too,” she said, softly.

At the gate, she turned to have a final look at him, Harry’s friend, and, when she’d gotten to know him, hers, too. He made gestures—see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil—and then pulled his hand across his throat in a slashing movement.

What was it Harry had said to her so long ago, the night, in fact, she’d learned she was to marry Roger? Politics, it is all politics, my innocent little sister. Hanover or James III. King or Pretender. One is supported by a majority of the powerful men in the country. One is not. Not the divine right of kings, Bab, but the divine right of power.

Slane, who’d been watching from the window in Wharton’s house, walked outside once Barbara had gone. Wharton was slumped in his chair, hands under his chin, frowning at the green reeds in the river. Swans were among them, the swans of the river, which belonged to the King of England.

“What did she say?”

“She wanted to know about the invasion. She won’t betray you, Slane. I know her.”

“She said she’d told Walpole.”

“If she had, she would have told me, first thing. Trust me in this. She didn’t even mention you. She’s protecting you for some reason.”

“How can you be so certain what she will and won’t do?”

“Barbara is one of the only people in this world whom I trust. Where do you go?”

“Off to follow your trustworthy friend. I have no desire to end my days in a dungeon in the Tower of London.”

She wasn’t far. She was at the river, stepping into a boat in which three other people sat. Slane recognized the dark-haired woman at once as the woman in the church. Was she a friend? wondered Slane. Or perhaps a servant? Yes, she must be Barbara’s maidservant. That was why he felt he knew her. He’d likely seen her with Barbara in Italy. The two men in the boat he didn’t know, but they were laughing and talking with Barbara as if they knew her quite well. One of them had a crippled arm. There were various boxes and baskets in the boat with them.

What are they doing? thought Slane, walking closer as the men rowed the boat out into the river. They were heading to the opposite shore, where the crumbling archway of an old riverside palace defined the village of Richmond. Slane watched as the boat was landed, as the men helped Barbara step ashore without wetting her gown’s hem. She looked wonderful, with some kind of topknot of feathers in her hair, and beads braided into it. Pieces of softened doeskin, each decorated with hundreds of beads, were sewn to her gown in harlequin’s patches. She wore a waistcoat that was nothing but layer after layer of intricate beading, with a tail of white feathers cascading down its back. And her maidservant had a single feather in her hair.

New World finery, thought Slane, used well. The men were gathering up some of the baskets. Slane watched as Barbara beckoned a boy, gave him a coin, and the boy stepped into the boat with the remainder of the boxes. The four walked toward the crumbling archway.

She goes to Richmond House, thought Slane, to call on the Prince and Princess.

S
LANE WAS
correct. Barbara did know the two men with her well. They were Caesar White and Francis Montrose, and they had been servants in her husband’s household when she’d married him. They’d seen her grown from girl to wife in a space of months.

As she walked with them down the long avenue that led to Richmond House, she thought, Does my father’s ghost ever walk along this avenue, searching for old friends and allegiances? Richmond House had belonged to the Duke of Ormonde. They’re gone, Father, scattered to the four winds. New conquerors, Father.

Standing under one of the trees that bordered the avenue, Tommy Carlyle saw Barbara before she saw him. He stepped in front of her, huge in his shoes with their high red heels, blocking the way.

“You have abandoned Virginia. How delicious. What a shaking you shall give our weary little court today, afraid of invasion, yet bored at the time it begins to take Jacobites to make good their invasion threats. ‘There
is
an invasion,’ I shall tell them. ‘An invasion of one, come to ravish us all with her beauty.’ My dear, you are a dream come true. We’re dreary, Barbara, dreary and frightened and bored, and here you are, landing like an omen in our midst. What do you portend, divine one?”

Barbara looked up at him, meeting his eyes directly. “I received your letter and the broadsheet.”

“Send these minions on their way,” he said, waving his hand disdainfully at Caesar and Thérèse and Montrose. “I make myself your humble servant from this moment forth. Command, and I obey.”

“I’ll keep my servants, thank you, but join us, Tommy, for we must talk. Take me to see Their Highnesses, first.”

“I know precisely where everyone is. I make it my duty to know. The Prince is fishing. It is the first time he has allowed himself the pleasure since the invasion was found out. He was ready to lead a regiment, himself, and now chafes at how long it takes Ormonde to make an appearance. Let us surprise him.”

The Prince, in a satin coat and embroidered waistcoat, stood among the reeds, shallow water to his knees, soldiers upon the bank to guard him. Seated in a French chair some distance away was a woman dressed in a satin gown: his mistress, Mrs. Howard.

An attendant, seeing Barbara and Carlyle and the others, splashed out to the Prince, in the midst of casting his line. Impatiently, he turned to look, and the expression upon his face as he recognized Barbara would once have upset her. He threw down his pole, stamped out of the water.

“His eyes bulge more than usual, at the sight of you,” said Carlyle. “Who was it among our small court who named him Frog?”

It had been Barbara.

“Ah, trouble to the east of us. Mrs. Howard has seen you. She’s no longer sitting placidly in her chair. She is standing up and the expression upon her face is worth the price of a ruby necklace. Here he is…. Your Highness, I found this vision of loveliness wandering in your avenue and brought her at once to greet you.”

“What’s this? What’s this?”

The Prince was breathless, angry, repeating himself in his distress. His eyes swept over Barbara furiously.

“I’ve returned from Virginia, Your Highness.”