Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

for what? Her mind floated gently, probing the bits and pieces of thought that had bobbed to its top while she slept.
       "Match is totally unsuitable…now more than ever." Her mother's words to Harry echoed in her mind. Why? Because Father had fled to France during the summer's investigation conducted by Parliament? "Hens' scratching!" her grandmother had snorted about the investigation then, before Father had run away. "Digging in the dirt to see what they can turn up!" He never even said good-bye. Sir John Ashford's voice had carried clearly the day he had ridden over during summer's hottest hour, his face flushed and sweating. He found her grandmother in the stillroom. She stood silent while he shouted. "Like a rat!" Her father had run like a rat, he said. Lost his nerve.
       Words clashed together and fell apart in her mind. Tory, Jacobite, treason. Her grandmother's abrupt questions. The shade of the stillroom. The coolness. The smell of drying herbs. Sir John's face. Veins standing out on his forehead. The sun shone jewellike through the jars of red and orange and plum jellies. Father had never said good-bye. Just disappeared in the dead of night. They sent her away. Harry, home for the summer, had explained.
       "He is not a traitor, Bab." His dark, handsome face, Diana's face, was strained, pinched at the nostrils. They had sat under the shade of one of the great oak trees. He kept jabbing at the smooth green lawn with a stick as he talked.
    "Politics. It is all politics, my little innocent sister. Hanover or James III. King or Pretender. But who is the Pretender? One is a Protestant; one is a Catholic. One is supported by a majority of the powerful men in this country. One is not. It is so simple, Bab. Not the divine right of kings, but the divine right of power. He who has promised and can uphold those promises wins. Father backed the loser. He always has!"
       His face was bitter. She stared at him. Poor Harry. He was too young, too handsome for bitterness, and yet there it was, the black slimy worm in the glistening red apple. Their father had gambled away his inheritance. Everyone knew it. Harry's school was paid for by their grandmother, who also gave him a small allowance. But not enough for him to live in London like other young men his age. And now Father had risked the last bit left to him—his title. She reached out her hand to him. He turned away from it, his face bleak. She could be content with the obscurity of disgrace; after all, what had she ever known but Tamworth? She had never been farther than Maidstone for the fair. But Harry. Harry had been to Oxford. To London. He had seen what life offered. He hungered after its treats and could not have them. No wine. No women. No song…and no Jane. Strange that one man's actions could touch so many other people, like a single, thoughtless breath of wind coming in an open window and blowing the playing cards every which way. "Any alliance we form now is crucial." Ah, Roger. She shivered and sat up in the bed. Somehow her father's act had reached out and brought Roger within her grasp. The thought whirled around in her head just as the leaves did outside in the dark night.
       She threw back the bed covers and swung her feet over the edge. Legs dangling, she sat there, her hair hanging down, thick, curling, falling about her shoulders like a lion's mane. She felt she could jump out of her skin. Her chamber, her very life, seemed suddenly too small for her. She understood now how Harry must feel. She looked around her, knowing even in the darkness where every item, no matter how small, was located. This was her refuge, her nest. How she had resisted her grandmother's suggestion that she move down to the next floor and enjoy a larger apartment. No. She would stay in the nursery wing. She had lived here all her life. Everything was to her liking: the small, cramped sizes of the rooms, the way they ambled about with no rhyme or reason, some