“But I will see you tonight at the opera, yes?” I asked Ban anxiously.
Ban drew a small leather-bound book from his pocket and opened it, flipping the pages for a few moments. “The twenty-third of July—Handel’s Julius Caesar. Yes, I have it written down,” he assured me. With a swift embrace and a passionate kiss that left me pining for more, he added, “A conqueror never forgets.”
Twenty-three
Misfortune’s Mistress
1783…age twenty-five
I felt so dreadfully hollow after Ban departed from my apartments that morning. And yet I was not empty—I had been filled by him so completely that in one way he remained. I carried a part of him within me now at every moment. I had not begun to show the physical signs of our domestic contentment, but I felt the emotions surge and change within me hourly as though I were a tempest-tossed sea turned inside out. Weak tea and dry salted biscuits, even ginger root, did little to quell my daily bouts of nausea.
I had to keep Ban beside me—and if not so in the most literal sense, then at least in London, at least in Albion! Absent his debts of honor, he would not need to flee. If I could raise the money…
I dressed in haste, donning a walking frock of hand-painted China silk, and left my auburn curls unpowdered, ringlets flirtatiously peeking from beneath the respectability of a muffin-shaped white bonnet. It was but a brief walk from my flat in Berkeley Square to Clarges Street, where I instructed the servant to inform Mr. Fox that Mrs. Robinson was waiting to see him.
“My darling Mary!” He greeted me effusively, pressing my hands in his. “What means such an early visit?”
“We must keep Ban in England,” I said, coming straight to the point. “I daresay you and his betting cronies will miss him as much as I—and I hold you accountable in part for the necessity of his departure.”
Fox looked surprised. “I? I hold no man against his will.”
“Not literally, perhaps. But you never send him home when his losses have amassed to such a state as—”
“Egad, my good girl, I am not the man’s wet nurse!”
“Nevertheless, he admires you in every way, from your politics to your wagering. Lend me the money and we’ll both get what we want.”
“You do know we’ve managed to get him on full pay again, don’t you?” I regarded Fox quizzically. “With Drummond’s note a veritable sword of Damocles over Ban’s head, his connexions got him gazetted as a lieutenant colonel of the new American Dragoons! Rather ironic, don’t you think?”
This was welcome news indeed, but I explained that Ban had far more duns than Drummond’s.
Fox inquired as to the sum Ban owed in gambling debts, his bushy brows furling at the amount. “I can manage three hundred today.” He wrung his hands together as if to wash them. “And I can send you an additional five hundred pounds tomorrow—if you can wait that long. My poor girl. You look so despondent. No hard feelings between us, of course. It’s the way of the world. But I hate to think that being in love can bring you so much pain. ’Tisn’t how it’s supposed to be at all.”
“That’s because in our circle love is not expected to be part of the equation. Except in poetry. One is permitted to be as effusively in love as possible, if it’s in verse. And even then the hyperbole is so extreme that no one believes a word of it anyway, unless they’re either daft or deluded. But we live in an age of effusion, at least in our strata of society.”
With three hundred pounds in my reticule and the promise of the balance on the morrow, I searched for Ban to bring him the good news. But he was not at Boodles, nor at White’s nor at Weltje’s. No one at the Cocoa Tree had seen him either, and I left word for him at every venue.
That night the duc de Lauzun joined me in my opera box. But by curtain, Ban had failed to appear. “Perhaps you are the reason for his absence, my dear duc. Not because you and I have been lovers, but because you and Ban were enemies on the battlefield. He will not discuss with me your encounter, but as he is not present to prevent my hearing it, I beg of you to tell me the story.”
The opera was about to commence, but typical of the fashion, the better part of the audience was more interested in making and renewing acquaintances, arranging rendezvous, or quizzing the rest of the assemblage in search of the next adventure.
“Not two years ago—1781—the thirteenth of October,” whispered the duc. “Ban and his men were foraging in the woods at dawn, when they received news that the enemy—that would be my hussars—was advancing on them in great force. We swept down upon them before they knew what had hit them, as you say.” The violinists raised their bows and the conductor lowered his baton for the downbeat. “Roaring like the devil in the van of his green-clad English dragoons, Ban was charging toward us when his black stallion reared! He fired his pistol—right at me—aimed straight for my head.” The duc poked at his temple with a bejeweled finger. I trembled in fear, even though I knew Ban had survived the onslaught. In my mind’s eye I could see the carnage, smell it, knew the bitter copper-tinged taste of blood on my tongue. “Just at that moment one of the French uhlans drove his lance into another dragoon’s horse.
