SH05_Revolution Read online

  Hugh cocked his head. “Monsieur Choiseul is our country’s most dedicated enemy, Reverdy. He is determined to raise France to greatness again, even on the heads of his own people, or on their empty stomachs. He is rebuilding France’s navy, to better oppose our own. Nothing is more dangerous than a humiliated Frenchman bent on restoring his honor.”

  “I found the French delightful company.”

  Hugh smiled in concession. “They are delightful, even in war. At least, they are in Europe. Over here, though, they are quite barbaric, even though they think themselves superior in every way.”

  Reverdy frowned in thought. After a moment she remarked, “I find it amazing that you do not attend services here. Not that I am so conscientious about it.” She studied him for a moment. “Of course, I am not surprised by your remarks. I remember how you silenced Vicar Faure that evening, when we visited you in London. I know your thoughts on the Church.” She paused. “He married us, in Eckley.”

  Hugh smiled. “I have read much of the premiere French atheist’s works, and found that I had progressed beyond his principled indifference to God and religion — since last we met.”

  “Who is that? Perhaps we encountered him. We met many clandestine atheists at the salons in Paris. They are quite civil and not the monsters churchmen make them out to be. In fact, I found them to be a decenter sort than most churchmen.”

  Hugh smiled in agreement with her observation. He said, “You will undoubtedly have reason to repeat that sentiment once you have met Reverend Acland.” He paused. “Who was that French atheist? Julien Offray de la Mettrie. I have a copy of his book, Man the Machine, in my library. He wrote that even if a God existed, there was no moral reason why anyone should worship him. That has been my position for as long as I can recollect. But I don’t think you could have met him. He died some years ago. However, there is another fellow, Baron d’Holbach, a chemist who contributes often to Diderot’s Encyclopédie. I believe he is an advanced atheist.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, to openly profess atheism or even freethinking here would invite severe consequences. It is not even an acceptable subject of speculation. Here, religious matters are taken much more seriously than in England.”

  Reverdy nodded in concession. “And I have observed that people take politics more seriously here than they do in England, as well. James and I have met a number of them who have the same regard for His Majesty as your de la Mettrie had for God.”

  Hugh chuckled, not at her, but because Reverdy was making some very agreeable observations. He said, “And I expect that number to grow. Your brother James was right, what he said last night over supper. The Crown means to have a revenue from us, by fair means or foul.”

  They were quiet for a while. Mrs. Vere returned with a tray and a tea service. After she had poured cups, she vanished back inside the house.

  Reverdy sipped her tea once, then said, “I was surprised to note my portrait in your library, Hugh. I confess I did not expect to see it.”

  “Surprised, and pleased?”

  “Pleased? Yes.” Reverdy took another sip. “Has it always been there?”

  “Ever since I moved here, Reverdy.” Hugh smiled. “It was one of the first pictures I had put up. I still have your locket, as well, somewhere among my things.” He paused. “Do you still have mine?”

  Reverdy shook her head. “Mother asked me to remove it, and I did. She took it to a shop in Eckley and sold it”. She paused. “But that never could cause me to forget you, Hugh.”

  “And I could never forget you, Reverdy.” Hugh shook his head. “I own that there was someone else for a while, but she was merely the hope of desperation.” He smiled. “You were always on the wall of my library of concerns, elevated above all those tomes, as a measure of what I wanted.” After a pause, he added, “And you are lovelier than ever, and, I own, more tempting and godly than you were on the afternoon of our moment at the brook on your father’s estate.”

  “Oh, Hugh!” whispered Reverdy. She reached over and touched his hand. “I am so sorry I caused you pain.”

  Hugh gripped and held the hand over his. “It is past.”

  “Is it, Hugh?” asked Reverdy. “I know that you are not a forgiving man.”

  “It must be past. And it is not a matter of forgiveness. You are not afraid of me now, nor of my ‘cargo of virtues.’” Hugh looked at her with hungry admiration. “And I have never been afraid of you.”

  This time it was Reverdy who took his hand and raised it to her lips. The hand in hers turned and traced her lips with a finger, and then the palm caressed her cheek. She breathed once into the palm, then thrust it away and abruptly rose. In a strained, subdued voice, she said, without looking at him, “I think I should take a nap, as well, Hugh.”

  “Dilch will rouse you when it is time for dinner,” said Hugh simply.

  Torn between wanting to rush away and preserving her poise, Reverdy walked haltingly to the front door, and went inside.

  As she turned to open the door, Hugh noticed a tear rolling down one of Reverdy’s cheeks.

  He observed the tear and the conflict, and fought the impulse to follow her.

  “Not yet,” he said out loud to himself. He knew that his emotions were running far ahead of his reason. He said out loud, again, “Not yet. It has been only twenty-four hours, Master Kenrick. Wait.”

  * * *

  Reverdy was a maelstrom of emotions, tossing and turning on the bed, overwhelmed by Hugh’s behavior. Cruel tenderness, she thought. That is what he paid me. She had expected anything but that, anything but the noble arrogance of a forgiveness that was not a forgiveness. After all these years, she was still his measure. And he, hers. She wondered, now that she had seen some of the world, as much of it as he had, if she could submit herself to the requisites of his measure. She could not before, but then, looking back over the years, she had only been a girl, alternately frightened and thrilled by the thing she saw in him. His unrequited love, she mused. Could she answer it? Could she be what he expected her to be? Was he something to live up to, to aspire to be worthy of? Had she the strength? She thought she had, now. As did he. What gave him that idea? And what right to think it?

  Quietly, into the fabric of her pillow, she cursed Hugh and cried her renewed love for him.

  Restless with irresolution, she rose again and left her room. Downstairs, she knocked on the door of Hugh’s library, and when there was no answer, opened it and went in. He was not there. She crossed the breezeway, strode through the supper room, went outside to the kitchen and encountered Mrs. Vere in the midst of her chores. “Where is Mr. Kenrick?” she asked.

  “I believe Mr. Kenrick is in the fields, milady,” answered the woman.

  “I see.” She noticed Fiona Chance, Rachel, and Dilch preparing some vegetables for dinner. “When will dinner be served?”

  “At four of the clock, milady.” Mrs. Vere paused. “It is only two now, but I could ask Miss Chance to prepare you something now, if you like.”

  “No, thank you. I think I shall try to find Mr. Kenrick in the fields.” Reverdy turned for the kitchen door. As she left, she felt the eyes of the three women on her, and knew that they recognized her from the picture on the wall of Hugh’s library.

  Outside, she stood at the edge of the brick courtyard that divided the great house from the beginning of the fields, and scanned the expanse carefully, impatiently, a hand shielding her eyes from the mid-afternoon sun. She saw figures moving far off in the field; none of them was Hugh. She turned and used the brick walkway that skirted the great house. Perhaps he was looking after his landscaped lawn on that side of the house, she thought. But no one was there but one of the black tenants, busy pruning a row of boxwoods and young holly trees with a pair of clippers. She approached this person. “Have you seen Mr. Kenrick about?”

  The man rose from his task and doffed his floppy hat. “No, Missy, I haven’t. Sometimes, this time of day, he goes into town.” He paused. “Want I should look and fetch him fo
r you?”

  Reverdy shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ll wait until he returns.”

  The gardener doffed his hat again, then knelt again and returned to his task, trimming the shoots from the trunks of the plants. She wandered away in the direction of the river. She reached the edge of the lawn and the bluff that plummeted down to a narrow bank. Hugh had shown her and her brother the river and the plantation pier earlier in the day. A steep narrow path led from the lawn to the pier. She turned to look back at the great house. It seemed so far away now, and the gardener an indistinct figure half-hidden by the tall boxwoods and holly trees.

  Then she heard a noise, a splash, and turned to search for the source.

  She saw him swimming in the river below, close to the pier. She watched him stand up in the water, and saw that he was naked. She noticed his clothes piled on the sandy bank. He dived back into the water and swam out a distance from the pier.

  Without thinking, almost as though another Reverdy were pushing her to commit the act, she stepped onto the path and hurtled down to the pier, pulled at first almost as much by the momentum of the descent as by a blind, irresistible desire. When she was on the bank, she watched him swim with measured laziness back and forth in the deeper water, some yards from the pier. He did not notice her.

  By that time, she understood what had propelled her to the bank: a chance to relive, or recapture, the moment at the brook years ago, on her father’s estate, when Hugh had come upon her and paid her an honor she had not since received from another man. Not even from Alex.

  Slowly, but deliberately, she removed her garments, all but her chemise.

  It was when she stood in only the chemise that he happened to look up and notice her on the bank.

  A cool breeze played with the folds of her chemise, making her more aware of her body, and pleasing her more than if she were naked. Reverdy wondered, almost as an afterthought, if she resembled the drawing of her that she had seen at Windridge Court in London, when she happened upon the plans he had drawn of a Doric temple on a secluded part of the Danvers estate. She acknowledged now that it was those plans that had frightened her the most, not their first kiss then, not the violent, possessive way he had held her, not even his outrageous actions and unconventional thinking before then and since, and the trouble those aspects of him would always cause. It was those drawings, and his vision of her, that had planted deep in her consciousness an unreasoning fear of him.

  But that is what he is, she thought, and that is what draws you to him. And she felt that other Reverdy take possession of her, and compel her to commit herself to this moment, to be what she was at the side of the brook, even if it meant the demise of everything that had happened after she had written him that last letter. He sees something in me, and it is here now, she thought. She wondered if this was what he meant by justice, as well.

  She stepped into the water, not feeling how cold it was. She waded out until the water reached her hips, then immersed herself up to her shoulders.

  Hugh swam slowly towards her. She watched him approach for a while, then closed her eyes. In a moment, she felt his hands gripping her shoulders, then one hand was planted firmly in her back, holding her close to him, the other exploring her form beneath the water with wondrous, renewed greed. She answered by moving her hands up to grip his shoulders. Then his mouth was on hers, and they kissed for a long moment.

  He picked her up and carried her to the bank. He removed her chemise, then laid her down on her own garments, and knelt over her for a while, drinking in the vision stretched out before him, staring into her half-closed eyes. She reached up, clutched his face, and brought it down to her breasts. A moment later, when he entered her, she whispered into his ear, “I love you, Hugh.” His answer was a groan and teeth biting into her neck.

  Later, as they lay together in each other’s arms, warmed by each other and by the sun, she said into his neck, in the manner of a solemn oath, “I will try to be what you expect me to be, Hugh.”

  He replied, in a slow cadence, his eyes closed in rapturous exhaustion, “Perhaps, in the effort to be what I expect you to be — or what you imagine I expect you to be — you will become it. Then you will know me better, and I, you.”

  She pressed her face closer into his neck and inhaled deeply, as though she were trying to breathe some essence of him into her own being.

  * * *

  Chapter 15: The Amazons

  It was not until late November, when all the other invitations had been accepted and fulfilled, that Hugh was able to take his guests to visit the Frakes at Morland Hall. On a dreary, overcast afternoon, Hugh rode with Reverdy in the riding chair, while James Brune rode one of Meum Hall’s mounts, the short distance to Morland Hall.

  The round of dinners and suppers with neighboring planters over the last two weeks had tired them, but Hugh was looking forward to introducing the Brunes especially to his most cherished friends, and assured them that the conversation at Morland Hall would not remain courteously conventional and safely topical. He said little more about the Frakes and their other expected guests, other than giving the Brunes brief backgrounds of Jack and Etáin, of Thomas Reisdale and John Proudlocks.

  Hugh and Reverdy met alone when they could. He did not care if their discreet, passionate unions broke all proprieties that governed the relationship between a man of his rank and a gentlewoman of her status.

  “It is the end of my Carthusian sojourn,” he said to her once as they lay together in his bed one night. “I am almost grateful that Governor Fauquier has prorogued the Assembly, for otherwise I should be in Williamsburg now, engaged in far less joyful matters, and we would only be able to see each other over tea in Mr. Marot’s coffeehouse.” He pressed some of her disheveled hair to his lips.

  Reverdy said lazily into his ear, “Have you been such a monk? You make love, not like a man who has forsaken all earthly ecstasy, but like a master of its arts.”

  “I have imagined what I would do, how I would be with you, Reverdy, so many times. You were never forgotten, not in any sense.” Hugh turned his head to gaze at her. He gently ran the back of a hand from her breasts up to her shoulder, to her neck, then to her face, ears, and hair. “You look magnificently consumed, Reverdy, like a woman who is resting from a violent ride to heaven.”

  Reverdy blushed with pride, pressed her face into his, while her hand dug cruelly into the muscles of his bare upper arm.

  When Etáin met Reverdy Brune-McDougal, she instantly recalled, from so many years ago, during their first meeting at Enderly at the victory ball, Hugh’s and her exchange about the woman, whom she recognized from the framed profile of her in Hugh’s library.

  “Ancient lore has it that a dying Amazon would hold her slayer’s eyes, and cause him to fall in love with her, so that after she was gone, he would pine away in regret. Love of her was her cruel retribution.” “Has an Amazon gazed into your eyes, Mr. Kenrick?” “I no longer think so. She is not slain, and has married a Boeotian. It is the stuff of one of Mr. Garrick’s plays.” “One of his tragedies?” “For my role in it, yes. For hers, a farce that was not so amusing. You see, she wrote me a kind letter.…”

  Etáin now asked herself, as she appraised the regal, elegant woman who was introduced to her by Hugh: Had it been a tragedy, or a farce? Had this woman truly married a Boeotian, as Hugh had called the woman’s late husband? How could this woman have given up Hugh? She glanced at him. He was introducing her brother James to Jack, Thomas Reisdale, and John Proudlocks. He looked happy, and somewhat proud, and at ease as he introduced Reverdy to the men.

  And she glanced at Jack. This was one of the rare times that he had decided to hold a supper for purely social reasons. John Proudlocks had brought the news that Meum Hall had visitors, and that they were friends of Hugh’s from England. Jack had extended the invitation out of sheer curiosity.

  “Except for John Ramshaw, I don’t know any of Hugh’s other friends,” he said when he proposed the supper to he
r. “For once, I am genuinely intrigued by his past associations.”

  Etáin had nodded in agreement. “Mr. Proudlocks said that the woman is Hugh’s former fiancée, and the man her brother. They grew up together, I understand.”

  Jack was also appraising the woman, and seemed tentatively to approve of her.

  Reverdy Brune-McDougal made her own observations, as well. She could tell by the way Etáin spoke to Hugh, by the way she looked at him, by her manner with him, and by his manner with her, that this woman had been his “hope of desperation.” She was not certain she could like her, or her husband. Thomas Reisdale was civil to a fault, while the bronze face of the Indian fascinated her when she knew it should not. She wondered what his place was here. She and James had seen a few Indians in Norfolk, and in Hampton, and they were nothing like this man.

  After supper, while Mary Beck, the cook, and Ruth Dakin, her assistant in the kitchen, served tea, coffee, and dessert, Jack Frake announced, “I have decided to use this occasion to allow Mr. Proudlocks there to present his first ‘fragment’ on politics and law.” He glanced at the curious faces of his guests. “He is studying law under Mr. Reisdale. I have not heard yet what he is to read, but I am certain that what he has to say will enliven conversation.” He nodded to his friend at the other end of the table.

  Reverdy leaned forward a little and addressed her host. “Mr. Kenrick warned us not to expect the usual table talk, Mr. Frake.”

  Jack Frake nodded in acknowledgement. “Life is too short to spend on the mundane, Madam.”

  Proudlocks glanced at his tutor. The lawyer motioned to him to rise. Proudlocks stood up, took out a sheet of paper from his coat, and smiled shyly at his audience. “This is my understanding of the Glorious Revolution of late the last century. Please forgive any errors or miscomprehensions I may relate to you.” Then he brought up the paper and read from it.

  After reciting briefly the events that led to the Revolution, he read, “They all wanted a king, and abhorred a republic, a kingless republic, that is. They could not think beyond the notion of a monarchical nation. The throne was unoccupied, perilously vacant. Filling it with a special human figure was not so much an obsession, as it was a mental necessity, somewhat like a picture justifying a gilt frame. The throne was the linchpin of constitutional polity; remove it, and society would fly apart. The government was like an elephant. If it lacked the requisite appendages, such as a stately trunk, which could be said to be a sovereign, how could it still be an elephant?