Every day I would costume myself for my new role—that of Mr. Fox’s mistress. We respected each other’s minds as much as he revered my body. His brilliance made him beautiful in my eyes. Fox inculcated me with his staunch Whig politics and made a convert of me, for my mind has ever been open to learning.
Throughout my life I never sought to make a conquest; I was always the prey, though not above flirtation. Flirtation was the coin of the realm and I spent it freely.
Thus, how could my eye not have been drawn to the striking figure who sat beside me awaiting his sitting in Sir Joshua Reynolds’s studio. I was swathed to the ears in furs, for it was the twenty-eighth of January, 1782, one of those frosty London days when your breath forms warmly foggy words upon the air. I, too, had an appointment to sit for the master portraitist. It would have been impossible for me not to notice at my elbow the dashing coat of the Green Horse Troop, the tan breeches that clung like a lover to the stranger’s muscled thighs, the tall black boots shined to such perfection that I might have seen my reflection in them, the impeccable white stock that led my eyes to the sardonic curve of a smile, the laughing eyes, and raffish shako adorned with the feathers of an obliging black swan.
“I know you,” said the military hero, his accent most decidedly Lancunian. “Mary Robinson—the Perdita—pupil of Garrick, light of the London stage. I read about your triumphs in America.”
Under my bonnet I blushed to the roots of my auburn curls.
“But I have never been in America, sir,” I said coyly, the writer in me taking advantage of his dreadful syntax.
“You will forgive me, Mrs. Robinson. I make my point with swords and not with words. What I meant to say was that the American newspapers—”
I turned to my companion with a winning smile. “I know what you meant to say, sir. But you didn’t say it. Evidently you are as adept at butchering the King’s English as you are at hacking apart his colonial subjects. I know you, too, Banastre Tarleton—‘Bloody Tarleton’ of the Waxhaws victory, Butcher Tarleton, the Americans call you—scourge of the Carolinas. I saw you, you know. Ten days ago. I was sitting in my carriage watching the parade of our returning colonels. It was also the day of the queen’s birthday ball, and in truth, I had staked out a rather particular location in the hopes of glimpsing an old amour.”
“The Prince of Wales, I take it.” Tarleton’s eyes flashed like a man unaccustomed to losing—though in point of fact he had made a mess of it at Cowpens, his men suffering such a routing in this South Carolina skirmish that the redcoats forfeited any further hope of a victory in America’s southern states.
“Tell me, is it true what dear Horace Walpole says—that you have slain more men and lain with more women than anyone else in His Majesty’s army?”
His gloved hand boldly touched my arm. “Frankly, I’ve never counted.”
“I’m glad you’re not too perfect,” I said, my gaze traveling from his handsome physiognomy to his mangled right hand. Two fingers of his glove were empty. “I don’t like my men to be too perfect. It’s unnatural.”
“Perfection is entirely overrated. I’ve never been a tremendous admirer of it myself. I am, however, a lifelong admirer of the Theatre—even fancied myself an actor at one time. Don’t look so surprised; I’m quite clever at delivering oratory, as long as I’m not expected to write it myself! Ahh—you wish to laugh at me. Well laugh at this, then: back in the seventies, my dear friend Major John Andre and I ran an amateur theatrical troupe in a deserted playhouse on South Street in Philadelphia. And I will have you know that we performed to packed houses—in a city of Quakers, to boot! We even gave them Shakespeare. Our motto was We act Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. My own motto, however, and make no mistake about it, is Swift, Vigilant, and Bold.”
I tilted my chin and gazed at Tarleton. “Do you mean to make a conquest of me, then?”
He made no reply, but said a few moments later, “You were looking at my hand. An unfortunate collision between a rifle ball and my anatomy on the fourteenth of March last year, near Salisbury, in the Carolinas. There was another skirmish a few hours later, in which I was wounded again. With my right arm in a sling, I was compelled to take my stallion’s reins with my left—not the best of circumstances, of course. At the end of the day, the surgeon, Dr. Stewart, amputated the fore and middle fingers of my right hand. After that, I was all for retiring from the whole bloody business of soldiering, but General Cornwallis refused my application to return home. ‘Damme, Ban Tarleton with one hand is better than anyone else with two!’ he declared—and that put an end to the matter.”
Even seated, the man managed to swagger.
“Well!” said I. “Your appendage may not be entirely whole, but I vow your ego is certainly healthy!”
Twenty-two
My Heart Dragooned
1782…age twenty-four
The gilded sphere in which we moved encompassed a rather narrow scope. It should
