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

her head.
       "Really, Bab?" said Kit.
       "R–Really?" hiccoughed Charlotte. Anne kept her head fastened to Barbara's cloak, but she stopped crying. A footman peeped around the doorway. "Mistress Barbara, your mother says come."
       Charlotte began to wail again. Barbara crushed the three of them in her arms,
       "Hush, my darlings," she said. "I am going to London for a great adventure, and you must wait here until I write for you. But I will send dolls, sweets, soldiers, and even something for Cousin Henley, if she is very nice. Think of those things! Think of what I will be sending!"
       "You will not forget, Bab?" said Kit. She took his face in her hands.
       "You are the oldest until Tom comes home from school, Kit. You must look after the little ones. In my place. Protect them."
       Kit glanced toward Cousin Henley and squared his jaw. Barbara stood up, and with Anne still clinging to her cloak, went over to the baby's cradle. The last Alderley lay sleeping like an angel. She touched a curled–up, plump fist. Good-bye, little William, she said silently. She closed her eyes a moment. It was so hard to leave them. Gently, she disentangled Anne from her cloak and put the child's hand into Kit's. Charlotte continued to cry. Barbara spoke hard and clearly to her cousin. "Be kind to them, or by God, when I am a countess, I will have you sent packing to someone else!"
       "Bab!" Charlotte cried out, but Barbara ran from the room and down the series of staircases and out the great hall before the children could see her weep. She ran past a startled and disapproving Perryman and, her heels crunching the gravel of the courtyard, she jumped into the carriage without waiting for a footman to assist her.
       "You are crushing my gown!" Diana exclaimed, pulling away irritably. The carriage lumbered away. Barbara hung her head out the window, ignoring Diana's protests. She thought she caught a last glimpse of a limp lace cap on a thin face in one of the bay windows. They lurched past the outbuildings, the dovecote, the dairy and the stables. She saw the kitchen maids carrying in pails of water. A stableboy trotted down a path leading one of the horses. Then they were on the avenue of limes, and then turning sharply out of the entrance gates, on the road to London.
       There was a spreading ache in the center of her chest, and a burning in her eyes, but she would not allow herself any indulgence, not with her mother and her mother's maid in the carriage with her. She set her jaw and rolled down the window's leather shade. She focused on the only thing that could soothe the pain she felt…Roger.
       "Did Mother give you any money?" Diana said, breaking into her thoughts. Barbara stared at her mother, not knowing what to answer.
       Diana held out her hand. "I thought so. Give it to me at once."

    * * *

       The Duchess sat up in her bed, her heart pounding. She stared into the dark, remembering now what had eluded her. That scrap of gossip about Roger. In one of her letters. Not even written out plainly. Hinting of Roger and the French vice. She had laughed out loud when she read it. And wished Richard were alive so she could tell him. He would have laughed louder than she. The two men had once been as close as brothers. As father and son. Why, she could still remember the expression on Roger's face at the funeral… something long buried turned over and showed her its face in her mind. She cried out.
       "Annie!" she said, her voice rising. "My candle! Hurry!'
       There were scuffling sounds in the dark, and then the scratch of steel striking flint and Annie's grumbling. She saw tiny sparks catch the cotton rag shreds in the tinder box and smelled the pungent sulfur as Annie touched a stick dipped in it to the burning shreds, and it caught fire, and she lit the candle with it. The Duchess's eyes fastened on the flame. In the shadows, Annie stared at her, her features frowning, sharpening