Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Historical Note
List of Characters
Fall
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Winter
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Spring
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Summer
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Fall
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Winter
Chapter Sixty
Spring
Chapter Sixty-one
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Karleen Koen
Copyright
Dedicated to my dear sister,
Carmen Marie Smith Rawlinson.
She made the life of everyone who knew her special.
I am grateful that she lived long enough
to read this manuscript.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man,
I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now
I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.
—I CORINTHIANS 13:11–13
HISTORICAL NOTE
SPIES, TREACHERY, FINANCIAL DISASTER, AMBITION, ROMANCE—elements of fiction and elements of history weave themselves like silver threads into the setting of Now Face to Face.
This book is, of course, first and foremost a novel, and it recounts the loves, losses, and adventurous life of a fictional character, Barbara, Lady Devane. Yet the historical period in which Barbara’s story unfolds is important, too, to the action, as human lives are always affected by the times in which they are lived.
Now Face to Face takes place in the early eighteenth century, when two men, cousins, claim the right to wear the crown of England, and each has just cause. A tangled web of events preceded the rival claims. By the time the Elector of Hanover, George, crossed the English Channel in 1714 to be crowned King of England, division was deep within the minds of many of his English subjects. Who was the right and proper king? Was it George, who had never set foot in England, but crossed over now from Hanover? Or was it James III, he who had been born twenty-six years earlier in London, and was a direct descendant of the Scottish House of Stuart, and of a king of England, James I?
George or James?
James was the third of his line to bear that name, and the two Jameses before him had both been kings of England. One, James I, was his great-grandfather; the other, James II, was his father.
To tangle the knot further, this man, this James III—or the Pretender, as he was known among those loyal to George I—was half-brother of Anne, the English queen who had just died in 1714. Years earlier, in 1688, Anne and her sister, Mary, who was queen before Anne, had turned their backs on this little half-brother born late in life to their father and his second wife. Many said that in the last years of Queen Anne’s reign, as one after another of her children had died, and it became clear that there would be no heirs to the throne through her, Anne regretted her earlier betrayal and wished the crown to go to the man she’d seen only as a tiny baby. He was a grown man now, a half-brother, but a brother she had betrayed. And certainly courtiers and ministers in her court intrigued—whether out of guilt over past deeds or from simple expediency—to have the crown return to him who owned it by right of birth: James III.
But there was a law, passed in 1702, that the one who wore the English crown must be Protestant. Bloody religious and civil wars marked the years between Queen Elizabeth’s reign and Queen Anne’s. James III was Catholic. George of Hanover was the closest living relation to the House of Stuart who was also Protestant.
In 1688, James III, while yet a baby, was removed from London by his mother and father, then King and Queen of England, who feared for their lives. They lived to see the King’s own grown daughters, Mary and Anne, declare open rebellion against their father and assume, one after the other, the English throne. Mary’s husband, the Dutchman William of Orange, invaded England in 1688, at the invitation of most of its nobility. And for the rest of his life, King James intrigued to be returned to his throne; he led two invasions to try to accomplish this. His son, James III—the Pretender who figures in the story of Now Face to Face—also plotted, also invaded.
Intrigue, espionage, betrayal, lies, not to mention true love—these are the stuff of history, and of fiction. Welcome to Now Face to Face.
LIST OF CHARACTERS
TAYLOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS
BARBARA MONTGEOFFRY, COUNTESS DEVANE—Widow of Roger, Earl Devane, and granddaughter of the Duchess of Tamworth
THÉRÉSE FUSEAU—Devoted servant of Barbara
HYACINTHE—A ten-year-old slave, servant of Barbara
ALICE SAYLOR, DUCHESS OF TAMWORTH—Barbara’s grandmother and the widow of England’s famous General Richard Saylor
ANTHONY RICHARD SAYLOR (“TONY”), THE SECOND DUKE OF TAMWORTH—Grandson of the Duchess of Tamworth and inheritor of his grandfather’s title and land; cousin of Barbara
MARY, LADY RUSSEL—Tony’s sister; Barbara’s cousin
CHARLES, LORD RUSSEL—Husband of Mary, and former lover of Barbara
ABIGAIL, LADY SAYLOR—Tony’s mother; daughter-in-law of the Duchess of Tamworth
DIANA, LADY ALDERLEY—The Duchess of Tamworth’s daughter; mother of Barbara
CLEMMIE—Servant of Diana, Lady Alderley
LOUISA, LADY SHREWSBOROUGH (“AUNT SHREW”)—Sister-in-law of the Duchess of Tamworth; great-aunt of Tony and Barbara
SIR ALEXANDER PENDARVES—Friend of Louisa, Lady Shrewsborough
SIR JOHN ASHFORD—Neighbor and oldest friend of the Duchess of Tamworth
JANE CROMWELL—Daughter of Sir John Ashford; Barbara’s
childhood friend
THE REVEREND AUGUSTUS CROMWELL (“GUSSY”)—Husband of Jane; secretary to the Bishop of Rochester
PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON (“WART”)—Friend of Barbara
PHILIPPE, PRINCE DE SOISSONS—Cousin to the royal family of France; friend of the late Roger, Lord Devane
ANNIE, PERRYMAN, TIM—Servants of the Duchess of Tamworth in her country residence, Tamworth Hall
HOUSE OF HANOVER
GEORGE I—King of England as well as Elector of Hanover; born in Hanover
GEORGE, PRINCE OF WALES—Heir to the throne through his father, George I
CAROLINE, PRINCESS OF WALES
TOMMY CARLYLE—A courtier in the court of George I
ROBERT WALPOLE (“ROBIN”)—Minister of George I
LORD TOWNSHEND—Minister of George I; brother-in-law of Robert Walpole
LORD SUNDERLAND—Minister of George I and rival of Walpole and of Lord Townshend for the King’s favor
DUCHESS OF KENDALL—Mistress of George I
HOUSE OF STUART AND JACOBITE FOLLOWERS
JAMES III (“JAMIE”)—Known as the Pretender, born heir to the throne of England; cousin of George. His followers were called Jacobites.
LAURENCE SLANE (ALIAS OF LUCIUS, VISCOUNT DUNCANNON)—Devoted friend of and spy for James III
THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER—Bishop of the Church of England; secret agent for James III in England
CHRISTOPHER LAYER—Agent for James III in England
PHILIP NEYOE—Agent for James III in England
VIRGINIANS
SIR ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD—Deputy Governor of the colony of Virginia
COLONEL VALENTINE BOLLING—Landowner whose nephew’s estate, First Curle, was lost to Barbara’s brother in a game of cards
KLAUS VON ROTHBACH—Bolling’s nephew by marriage; captain of Bolling’s ship
COLONEL EDWARD PERRY—Landowner; neighbor of Barbara
BETH PERRY—Colonel Perry’s daughter
MAJOR JOHN CUSTIS—Landowner; knowledgeable on gardens and tobacco seed
JOHN BLACKSTONE—Servant indentured for his part in the Jacobite invasion of 1715 and overseer for Barbara
ODELL SMITH—Overseer for Barbara on First Curle
MARGARET COX; MAJOR JOHN RANDOLPH—Neighbors of Barbara in Virginia
KANO, SINSIN, BELLE, MAMA ZOU, JACK CHRISTMAS, MOODY, GREEN, CUFFY, QUASH—Slaves on First Curle
Fall
When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man,
I put away childish things.
Chapter One
ON THE FIRST DAY OF SEPTEMBER IN THE YEAR OF 1721, A GALLEY with a center mast and one sail glided through the waters of the James River in His Majesty King George I’s Royal Colony of Virginia. It was manned by slaves on oars, and in its middle, as if to emphasize her importance, sat its principal passenger, Barbara Montgeoffry, widow to an earl, and therefore a countess: the Countess Devane. She was young to be widowed already, only one-and-twenty, like the century. She sat small, exquisite yet fragile-looking in her widow’s weeds—clothes solidly black as the manners of the time demanded.
Other passengers included the Deputy Governor of the colony and the Countess’s servants, a young French maid and a page boy, a slave himself. Two pug dogs, a cow, and six willow baskets with chickens inside were wedged in and around trunks, wooden boxes, barrels, and furniture wrapped in oilcloth.
The river was wide, the sky blue-white. Birds chirped in trees that stood like ancient sentinels on the banks. For some time now, from the east, from the direction of Williamsburg—the principal town and capital of the colony—clouds had been gathering, rolling over and into each other. At this bend in the river, there were no houses, only fields and trees, a forest of trees, huge trees, primeval trees, as old possibly as the land itself, certainly older than the colony, which had existed upon the shores of this river and three others to the north only since 1607.
“Governor Spotswood, how much farther?” asked Barbara impatiently.
She was the reason the Governor had taken time from his duties to man a galley up the James River.
“We are not half the way yet. Are you unwell again? Shall we land? Perry’s Grove is an hour or so ahead,” Sir Alexander Spotswood answered. An older man, in his fifties, he was deputy governor of the colony. As he spoke, a sudden wind came up to shake the fringe on his buckskin coat and pull at the sides of his wig, a full, formal, dark wig, in the style that the late king of France, Louis XIV, had made fashionable. It was parted in the middle to hang down majestically around the face.
“I’m quite well, just impatient to reach First Curle.”
She’d come to Virginia from England to look over her grandmother’s plantation, but there had been a delay of a week while she recovered from a fever. Her arrival was completely unexpected, as was her fever; to the Governor, it was as if a shimmering butterfly had landed unexpectedly in his colony, a butterfly with the most impressive of ancestors. The Countess’s grandfather Richard Saylor had been a renowned and beloved general in the long war with France that had taken up the Governor’s young manhood—and that of so many others—in the 1680s and 1690s and into the beginning of this century. Richard Saylor’s military exploits had earned him a dukedom. The Governor had served under him once upon a time.
Is there going to be rain? thought the Governor, staring at the sky. The clouds were suddenly closer; he’d swear they had moved at least a mile since the last time he checked them. He looked at the shore, estimating where they were, where to take shelter should it begin to rain.
He looked over to the young Countess, his fragile black butterfly. He did not imagine her responding kindly to a storm of rain, though she had displayed nothing but beautiful manners so far, beautiful manners that matched a beautiful face the precise shape of a heart, a fair and sweet face.
The Lionheart’s granddaughter, thought the Governor, for a moment taking time to wonder at the world, at its smallness. Richard Saylor had been called the Lionheart by his soldiers. To imagine that he took the Lionheart’s granddaughter to a river plantation that belonged to the family. What honor. And what obligation. He glanced once more at the sky. The clouds were above them now. It was going to rain.
Do I land or keep going? he thought. Will she be more angry to be wet or to be delayed? She’s been ill. She’s in mourning. She is not used to our roughness—only look at the entourage she’s brought with her: a French lady’s maid, a page boy, and two pug dogs. Her dogs, her servants, were the talk of Williamsburg. I’d better seek shelter and see that she is protected, he thought.
Large, determined drops of rain splattered the oilcloth covering the table and chairs, the barrels and trunks. The waters of the river stirred underneath the galley, as if something large and menacing had turned over. Wind rattled the ropes and iron rings on the sail, and the galley rocked back and forth in spite of the steady, powerful rhythm of the rowers. The cow, wedged among boxes and barrels, stretched out her neck toward land and lowed.
At that moment, the wind struck like a fist, and a basket of chickens fell over, the chickens in them escaping, clucking, squawking, flying into everyone. The dogs began to bark, and the young page boy, Hyacinthe, leaped up to lean dangerously over the side after a chicken.
“Hyacinthe! Sit down! Never mind the chickens! What is happening, Governor Spotswood? Thérèse! For God’s sake, shut those dogs up!”
It was the fragile black butterfly, Barbara, who spoke, yanking her page boy back down on the plank seat beside her as she did so.
Spotswood did not answer, for he was maneuvering his way through the cargo to get to the center mast and let down the sail, which was whipping in its rigging like something desperate to be free. A squawking chicken flew straight into his face. It screamed. But not any louder than he did.
“Damnation and blast and confounded hands of Jesus Christ! A storm, that is wha
t is happening, Lady Devane. A large one!”
He sent the chicken whirling overboard. Over them, the sky was rolling ominous, cresting clouds. The day was, in a moment, dark, as if evening had come. Barbara watched yet another chicken cluck and cry and run amok until it flew into the water and disappeared, squawking and screaming to the last, under water that was now foaming and cresting dangerously.
“Oh no,” said Hyacinthe in French, “your grandmother the Duchess—” He did not finish. But then, he did not have to. Barbara’s grandmother, the Duchess of Tamworth, Richard Saylor’s fierce and indomitable widow, was quite proud of her chickens and cows, wanting them on her plantation in Virginia. She had been specific in her instruction.
“Never mind,” Barbara said, also in French. “The chickens have no importance as long as we are safe.”
She raised her face to the rain, to the dark sky, exhilarated rather than frightened by this sudden wildness coming up from nothing around her. During the week she had lain impatiently in the best bed in the best bedchamber in the Governor’s house in Williamsburg, ill with an ague, or fever, which was one of the hazards of coming to this colony, they had warned her of these sudden storms. They’d described ferocious lightning and deafening thunder as part of the storms.
Carters, Burwells, Lees, Pages, Fitzhughs, Ludwells. They were among the biggest landowners, the Governor had told her, the gentry of this colony, and she was wise enough in her fever to smile upon them as they buzzed around her sickbed like bees, buzzing colonial bees, attracted by her title and family, the surprise of her crossing the ocean to join them. They rode in from their plantations, the Governor said, to see her. They brought her flowers, wines, cooling fever waters; they were profusely apologetic that she should be sick, as if it were their fault she had the ague. They chattered to her of their colony—the vastness of its bay, the size of its rivers, the deadliness of its snakes—as proud of its flaws as they were of its beauties.