Island of the Swans (54 page)

M
AY
1780

W
ITHIN THREE DAYS OF
T
HOMAS’S RETURN TO
G
ERMANTOWN
, General Howe and Lord Cornwallis repulsed the anticipated four-pronged attack boldly mounted by Washington to regain Philadelphia for the Patriots. Then, within three weeks, Cornwallis and his men were on the march again, embarking on a two-and-a-half year odyssey that was to take them from the Jersey palisades to the swamps of Savannah.

By the spring of 1780, Thomas found himself far from Antrim Hall, among the conquerors of Charleston, South Carolina, sharing quarters with his fellow officers at Number 10 Atlantic Street. His flatmates included Hamilton Maxwell, who had been traded late in 1778—along with Colonel Archibald Campbell—for the rebel colonel, Ethan Allen. Ham had caught up with the 71st in time to take part in the siege of the southern port city.

The house where Jane’s brother and Thomas were billeted was a handsome red brick edifice overlooking the convergence of the Ashley and Cooper rivers. One night, shortly after the British occupied the beautiful city of Charleston, Thomas stood in the fading twilight, relishing the absence of the cannon’s roar and the sound of crackling muskets. Leaning against the frame of the French doors that opened on to the piazza outside his elegantly furnished room, he quietly drank in the musky scent of the night-blooming jasmine floating on the soft May air. Its languorous perfume recalled a jumble of memories of his last visit to Antrim Hall: an octagonally shaped summerhouse, cool in the sweltering heat. His thoughts drifted even farther and he lazily recalled Arabella lying alone in a four-poster, a pistol beneath her pillow.

Savoring erotic recollections of that voluptuous creature, he wondered, idly, how soon the rebels would surrender. If they did, and if he could manage it somehow, he fully intended to pay at least one more call on the mistress of Antrim Hall… that is, if the good Colonel were not at home.

Thomas yawned and stretched, cheerfully anticipating the comfort of the soft feather bed awaiting him. Considering the fact that Arabella O’Brien Delaney Boyd had ruined his life, he acknowledged to himself with some surprise that he
liked
the wench! She could never call forth from him the love or blinding emotion that the mere memory of Jane Maxwell would forever evoke. But Jenny was irrevocably lost to him, he firmly reminded himself, and his glimpse of Arabella’s vulnerability under that tough exterior had touched him somehow.

“Thomas, my man,” Hamilton Maxwell called genially from the far end of the veranda, interrupting his thoughts. “Come see this. A letter from home’s finally caught up with me.”

From time to time, Thomas and Ham had shared a brandy on the wide piazza after dinner while they awaited for official word that the 71st was to leave Charleston. Thus far, Thomas had studiously avoided all but the most perfunctory mentions of his fellow captain’s sister—all part of his current campaign to attempt to dissolve, once and for all, the bonds linking Jenny to him. Bonds that could only continue to bring them both unhappiness and pain.

Hamilton held in his hand a letter with a distinctive stag’s head crest stamped in crimson wax.

“It arrived with a packet for Lord Cornwallis this morning,” he said genially.

Hamilton Maxwell had never been one for subtleties or sensitivities. In fact, Thomas doubted whether the blustery captain judged that he and Jane had ever been anything much more than childhood sweethearts.

“Jane writes that the Dowager Duchess of Gordon breathed her last just before Christmas,” Ham noted cheerfully, pointing to the date
1779
at the top of Jane’s lengthy missive. “That must have reduced Alex’s estate expenses considerably!” he added wryly. “No wonder my sister and the duke can afford to take a fashionable house in St. James’s Square again for the season in London.” He scanned a few pages of the letter and smiled broadly. “Here… here’s the part I wanted you to hear. Jane says, ’With the wee one just three, now’—she means little Louisa… this was written last September—” Ham interjected helpfully, “’I find myself with more time to pursue those interests which you, dear brother, most likely would consider unfeminine in the extreme. Eglantine and I have taken to donning men’s attire several days a week, and stealthily invading the gallery in Parliament to hear debates on subjects most intriguing. The Duchess of Devonshire is ever so put out when I can converse with that rising young barrister, William Pitt (and others who enjoy the king’s confidence) in an informed and lively manner that her ladyship simply cannot fathom. She prides herself on her intelligence and finds it all most distressing that I should be so fully informed about the burning issue of the day!’”

Hamilton rested the letter in his lap and laughed uproariously.

“Can you imagine
that
, Thomas?” he said, wiping the mirth from his eyes. “A mother of five, and she’s dressing up like a lad to hear the debates! Sounds like some of the antics the two of
you
used to get up to, eh, laddie?”

“A mother of five? Jenny had another child?” Thomas inquired carefully, hoping his voice sounded steady.
The child had lived! Who was its sire?
he thought, his heart thumping in his chest.

“Aye, as I said, a little lass, named Louisa… born in early September, back in seventy-six when I was languishing in that Boston prison.” Hamilton smiled. “
You
should be especially pleased… they named the bairn after Alex’s uncle Lewis, the only Gordon to fight with Prince Charlie in the Forty-five!”

“Aye…?” Thomas replied faintly. “Is the child as comely as her mother?” he added lamely, for he realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that Ham had never seen his niece, born after the regiment sailed for America—exactly nine months following the idyll Thomas had spent with Jane on the Island of Swans.

“See for yourself,” Hamilton said jovially, pulling a small round object from the pocket of his scarlet officer’s coat. “This came wrapped inside Jane’s missive.”

In the palm of Hamilton Maxwell’s hand was a painted miniature of a child with rich, russet curls and high cheekbones who reminded Thomas of no one in the world so much as himself.

The day was hot for early June, and the London thoroughfares and alleys reeked of rubbish and rotting refuse even more than they usually did. A handsome carriage rolled through Leicester Fields and drew up in front of the impressive residence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who had been duly knighted in 1768 as the founder of the Royal Academy of Art. First to emerge from the coach was a sea-green parasol that shielded the elegant passenger from the sun’s unrelenting rays.

“Good afternoon, Your Grace,” a young woman said politely as she opened Sir Joshua’s door to her visitor. She inclined her head respectfully toward the Duchess of Gordon who had arrived for the first sitting for her portrait precisely at the agreed-on hour of two. “I’m pleased to see you’ve not been inconvenienced crossing the city, what with the troubles brewing at St. George’s Fields today. Imagine that riffraff—”

Sir Joshua’s young niece and housekeeper, Offy Palmer, froze, midsentence, and clapped her palm over her mouth.

“B-begging your pardon, mum,” stammered the portraitist’s niece, blushing crimson. “I meant no—”

“Please do not trouble yourself to apologize to
me
for the insane actions of my husband’s brother… that blithering demagogue!” Jane replied crossly, stepping over the threshold of Number 47 Leicester Square. She shut the parasol with an irritated snap. “I can’t think that two chimney sweeps would turn up for Lord George Gordon, that impudent pup—let alone forty thousand Londoners!”

They both referred to the platoons of pious Protestants who had responded to the call of Alex’s eccentric sibling to assemble outside Parliament and publicly demand the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act.

It was totally preposterous, Jane thought crossly. Couldn’t Lord George, that idiot M.P.,
see
that the deuced war in the Colonies demanded that the government relax the rules against Catholics? That way, the army could attract more Irish recruits to fill the depleted ranks. Lord George’s wild ravings against the “Popish Devils” had surely raised the specter of Gordon Madness in earnest, this time.

“Then, you haven’t heard the news, mum?” Miss Palmer said timidly.

Jane handed the young woman her parasol.

“Pray, what news, Miss Palmer?” she asked warily.

“The mob has already crossed Westminster Bridge. Some say there’s sixty thousand or more, all wearing the blue cockade and chanting ’No Popery!’ Tis far more than just Lord George’s Protestant Association, mum. They’ve got flags and banners and Scottish bagpipes skirling, and they say they’re going to storm the very doors of Parliament!”

“You can’t be
serious
,” Jane scoffed with a toss of her head.

“’Tis what Sir Joshua’s groom told me when he returned from delivering a portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire—”

“Georgiana Cavendish has commissioned
another
work by Sir Joshua?” Jane demanded incredulously.

A handsome, full-length canvas of the celebrated and charming duchess had been completed in 1776, depicting one specific detail for which the Duchess of Devonshire was famous—a set of plumes worn in her hair, some a foot and a half tall! So associated were these feathers with Georgiana and the great ladies of the Whig party—which often locked horns with the king—that Queen Charlotte forbade the wearing of plumes at court. One might wear a model of a British Man-of-War or even a genuine candelabrum attached to one’s gargantuan wig, but not plumes.

“Oh, no, mum,” Miss Palmer hastened to explain. “The Duchess of D is not sitting for Uncle again. We’ve merely changed the frame and cleaned the likeness for Her Grace.”

“Ah… I see,” Jane murmured, relieved to hear her own future portrait would not compete with a new work depicting her current rival. After having admired Reynolds’s likeness of the angelic-looking Duchess of Devonshire, Jane had decided on the spot to have Sir Joshua’s assistant render a miniature of little Louisa to send to Hamilton, who had never seen his niece. She had wondered for months if he ever received it… or had ever showed it to Thomas.

Jane slowly removed her gloves, her thoughts drawn to her youngest daughter. Louisa was now three years old and so like her true father in looks and nature, Jane’s heart almost jumped each time she beheld her redheaded child. It was because of Louisa, and Alex’s subtle rejection of the lass, that Jane had pleaded with her husband to lease the house on St. James’s Square once again. When Louisa was but a year old, Jane had left Alex to his clockmaking, archery, and estate business for a few months, and fled with the children and the nursemaid, Nancy Christie, for London to fill the void left by Alex’s studied indifference toward her and her last born. Thereafter, for at least half of each year, Jane exchanged the gloom and silences of Gordon Castle and its dour laird for the city’s hectic social scene.

Tucking her gloves into her reticule, Jane acknowledged to herself ruefully that she was now counted among London’s fashionable inner circle at court. She had even become an intimate of Queen Charlotte. For reasons that seemed rather silly to Jane, people had begun to speak of her and the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire in the same breath. They had been dubbed “The Two Duchesses,” as if they were in some kind of competition. Jane and Georgiana—who held violent Whig sympathies, in contrast to Jane’s more moderate political outlook—argued about everything and anything: from the day’s gossip to the latest battle fought in the Colonies.

The Colonies…

Thomas’s words of farewell spoken in his room at Gordon Castle when he was packing to leave for America had haunted her for four years.

Give it up…

Sternly, Jane forced her thoughts back to the matter at hand as she followed Offy Palmer toward a sweeping staircase at the far end of the foyer.

“Did my groom deliver my gown and court robes?” Jane asked Reynolds’s niece as they reached the landing and headed down a dim passageway.