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

sound, half laugh, half cry. "Ah! You 'overheard.' Oh Bab! Someday you are going to overhear something that will singe your pretty little ears."
       She said nothing. What was there to say?
       "Well, tell me, my dearest sister"—the sarcasm in his voice hurt even though she knew it was not meant for her—"how did you like my part in the comedy Mother and I played this afternoon? Was I not heroic? Did you note how gallantly, how firmly I defended my love? How cleverly I argued? I was a man. But not the man our mother is."
       "Harry," she said breathlessly, the violence under his words frightening her. "She—you were not ready for her—"
       He laughed softly. "No. I was not. I walked into that room like a cock on a dungheap, ready to fling her words back into her painted face. I thought she had come down to skewer me for being expelled." He laughed again, a grating, unpleasant sound. "And I was ready for that. Oh, I was ready. Of course I was in a duel, I was going to tell her. When a man calls your mother a whore who would sell her soul for a guinea, it is your duty to defend her honor, even if such a quality does not exist in her."
       "Who said that?" She grabbed his arm and tried to see his face more clearly.
       "I should have killed him. I misjudged my aim. Or perhaps my heart was not truly in it, knowing that what he said was true."
       "Harry! Who would say such a thing to you?"
       The candlelight threw odd shadows on his face. "It matters little whom I dueled with," he said softly. "A friend, or so I thought. Our lady mother in her wisdom and avarice has petitioned Parliament for a divorce. The news of it has for the moment eclipsed even the pitiful, half–baked rebellion brewing in Scotland."
       She lay back on the bed, stunned. "Sweet Jesus in his heaven above," she whispered. A divorce…No wonder Harry could not have Jane.
    "Yes," he said, mocking her tone, "Father's flight left her reeling, but she has landed nimbly. She has become the most fervent Whig of all, and begs the Parliament, humbly, to sever her ties with a treasonous Jacobite who has besmirched her lineage. She is, after all, the only daughter of the great Duke of Tamworth, the hero of Lille, the defender of England's foes at home and abroad—do not look at me so! I am quoting you directly from the pamphlet she has had distributed to plead her cause. She only wishes to live her life quietly in the king's service—which caused my friend to utter the words which I fought him over. Though God knows he is correct."
       "When did this happen?" she demanded.
       The tone of her voice made him focus on her. She lifted her chin.
       "Are you angry?"
       "No one told me!" she cried out. "I have a right to know!"
       He tried to take her hand but she pulled it out of his grasp.
       "I am not a child," she said. "Why does everyone treat me so?"
       But Harry's attention had drifted from her. He was staring into the darkness over her shoulder, darkness the light of her solitary candle could not penetrate.
       "She thinks if she is divorced from Father she may be able to save some of the properties. Some…I missay her, Bab. All of them. She will have them taken from Father and given to me. I will be the new viscount, and Father will be banished forever—erased. A mistake the Lady Alderley made in her wild youth. I will inherit his debts, his title, his estate, and more than likely I will go to debtors' prison before I am twenty trying to salvage the mess. All hail the new regime, Bab. Those who do not will be crushed." He quoted softly into the dark:
       "Farewell Old Year, for thou with Broomstick Hard
       Had drove poor Tory from St. James's Yard.
       Farewell Old Year, Old Monarch, and Old Tory.
       Farewell Old England, thou has lost thy Glory."
       His words, faintly treasonous, froze her heart and overlaid the anger she felt. Oxford and London had already seen the flashes of