Through a Glass Darkly: A Novel by Karleen Koen Page B

complete now. She could see nothing. Her glance went to the Advent wreath lying on the table by the bed. She had fashioned it herself from sweet evergreen bought at the market below. It was the season of Advent. If she had been at Tamworth, she would be walking in woods and gardens gathering mistletoe and holly and evergreen and rosemary, which she and her sisters would weave into garlands and wreaths to decorate the village church, her grandfather's private chapel, and the great hall at Tamworth. She would be supervising the packing of baskets of food for the tenants and the poor, her task since she was ten: "Time enough to learn one of a gentlewoman's duties, the succor of those less privileged," her grandmother had said then.
       She heard the raised voices of her mother and Aunt Abigail. Already they were quarreling. They always quarreled. Why was her aunt here? To take her and her mother to Saylor House? She would not wait to be told. She would find out just as she always had.
       She crept into the hall to listen. Clemmie was already there, her ear against the parlor door. Graciously, she moved over for Barbara.
       "—do not like it! None of us do! I thought it my duty to tell you so. I have only your welfare at heart!" her aunt was saying.
       "It is none of your affair!" shouted Diana.
       "Bentwoodes belongs in the family—"
       "I am family, and Bentwoodes belongs to me! Yes, stare, Abigail, you greedy bitch! It is mine, promised to me when I was born, and I may sell it to the Devil if I so please!"
       "Roger Montgeoffry has no right to it! He is an upstart! A nobody!" He aunt's voice trembled with rage.
       "A very wealthy and powerful nobody! And how did your grandfather earn his earldom, my dear? I always heard it was from service in the right bedchambers!"
       "How dare you? You are trash, Diana! You always have been! You always will be! Stealing off like a thief in the night, leaving your house in Westminster empty, your servants wageless, while you conspire in Tamworth and hide here to escape the horde of creditors and tradesmen trying to catch you! Why, they are sleeping seven deep on your front steps—it is the scandal of the street! When I drove up to find you, they descended on my carriage like a plague of locusts! And then I heard you are selling your daughter like a whore in Covent Garden to the highest bidder! Without even one word to us! Tony is the head of the family! He should have been informed—"
       "Tony is a fool!"
       Barbara and Clemmie looked at each other. Barbara covered her mouth to giggle. Tony, her aunt's oldest son and the present Duke of Tamworth, was indeed a blockhead.
       "How dare you! Tony is the kindest, the dearest—"
       "He is a fool! And you know it!"
       "Well," her aunt said, "no bigger a fool than you to marry your young daughter to one of London's biggest libertines. I wish her the joy of him! He will make her unhappy! That I prophesy!"
       "What husband does not? She can do as the rest of us and be unfaithful—"
       "Speak for yourself!"
       "Ah, yes, I forgot. It was my brother who was unfaithful in your marriage, was it not?"
       Clemmie rolled her eyes at Barbara.
       "You go too far, Diana! I came here in loving kinship to keep you from making a terrible mistake. You must know Roger's reputation! I wish better for my niece—"
       "Do not bleat 'my niece' to me! It is the dower you are concerned with! Bentwoodes! I see it in your face! Barbara could marry the Devil as long as Tony got Bentwoodes!"
       There was a long silence. Barbara held her breath. Her aunt began to speak again, in a calmer voice.
       "Let us not argue, Diana. I came here to help you. I have talked it over with some of the family, and we feel that it might be better to dower Barbara with money, rather than lands—lands that belong in the family. In exchange for Bentwoodes I might be able to come up with a significant cash