Forever Amber

CHAPTER SIXTY

SPRING THAT YEAR was somewhat dry and dusty. There was too little rain. Nevertheless by May the meadows about London were thick with purple clover, bee-haunted, and there were great red poppies in the corn-fields. Cries of “Cherries, sweet cherries, ripe and red!” and “Rosemary and sweetbriar! Who’ll buy my lavender?” were heard once more. Summer gowns, tiffany, sarsenet and watered moire in all the bright colours—sulphur-yellow, plum, turquoise, crimson—were seen in the New Exchange and at the theatres or stepping into a gilt coach that waited in St. Martin’s Lane or Pall Mall. The warm windy delightsome months had come again.

Nothing in years had caused so much excitement and indignation as the spreading gossip that York had at last become a confirmed Catholic. No one could be found to prove it; the Duke would not admit it and Charles, who must know if it actually was true, shrugged his shoulders and refused to commit himself. All the Duke’s enemies began to scheme more furiously than ever to keep him from getting the throne while at the same time it was observed that York and Arlington seemed suddenly to have become good friends. This gave impetus to the rumours of a pending French-English alliance, for though Arlington had long been partial to Holland he was thought to be a Catholic himself, or at least to have strong Catholic sympathies.

As these rumours began inevitably to seep out into the town Charles found it difficult to conceal his annoyance and was heard to make some bad-humoured remarks on the meddlesomeness of the English people. Why couldn’t they be content to leave the government in the hands of those whose business it was to govern? Ods-fish, being a king these days was of less consequence than being a baker or a tiler. Perhaps he should have learned a trade.

“You’d better to begin to study something useful,” he said to James. “It’s my opinion you may have to support yourself one day.” James pretended to think that his brother was joking and said he did not consider the jest a funny one.

But certainly there could no longer be any doubt that unless the King married again York, if he lived long enough, would succeed King Charles. Catherine had had her fourth miscarriage at the end of May.

A pet fox frightened her by leaping into her face as she lay asleep and she lost her child a few hours later. Buckingham bribed her two physicians to deny that she had been with child at all, but Charles ignored their testimony. Nevertheless both King and Queen were in despair and Catherine could no longer make herself believe that she would someday give him a child. She knew now beyond all doubt that she was the most useless of all earth’s creatures: a barren queen. But Charles continued to resist stubbornly all efforts to get him to put her aside, though whether from loyalty or laziness it was difficult to say.

There were several young women to whom these discussions of a new wife for the King caused apprehension and almost frantic worry—they had so much to lose.

But Barbara Palmer, at least, could listen with an amused smile and some degree of malignant pleasure. For even she knew now that she was no longer his Majesty’s mistress, and the hazards of that position need trouble her no longer. But that did not mean she had dropped into obscurity. Barbara had never been inconspicuous. While she had her health and any beauty left, she never would be.

For though she was almost thirty and far beyond what were considered to be a woman’s best years she was still so strikingly handsome that beside her the pretty fifteen-year-olds just come up to Court looked insipid as milk-and-water. She remained a glittering figure at Whitehall. Her constitution was too robust, her zest for living too great, for her to resign herself placidly to a quiet and dull old age after a youth so brilliant.

Very gradually her relationship with Charles had begun to mellow. They were settling into the pattern of a husband and wife who, having grown mutually indifferent, take up a comfortable casual existence fraught no longer with quarrels or jealousy, passion or hatred or joy. They had their children as a common interest, and now there was between them a kind of camaraderie which they had never known during the turbulent years when they had been—if not in love—lovers. She was no longer jealous of his mistresses; he was relieved to be out of the range of her temper and found some mild amusement from observing, at safe distance, her freaks and foibles.

Amber waited impatiently for the months to pass and wrote one letter after another to Almsbury at Barberry Hill, asking if he had heard from Lord Carlton or if he knew exactly when he would arrive. The Earl answered each one the same. He had heard nothing more—they expected to reach England sometime in August or September. How was it possible to be more explicit when the passage was so variable?

But Amber could not think or care about anything else. Once more the old passionate and painful longing, which ebbed when she knew she could not even hope to see him, had revived. Now she remembered with aching clarity all the small separate things about him: The odd green-grey colour of his eyes, the wave in his dark hair and the slight point where it grew off his forehead, the smooth texture of his sun-burnt skin, the warm timbre of his voice which gave her a real sense of physical pleasure. She remembered the lusty masculine smell of sweat on his clothes, the feeling of his hands touching her breasts, the taste of his mouth when they kissed. She remembered everything.

But still she was tormented, for those piecemeal memories could not make a whole. Somehow, he eluded her. Did he really exist, somewhere in that vastness of space outside England, or was he only a being she had imagined, built out’ of her dreams and hopes? She would throw her arms about Susanna in a passion of despair and yearning—but she could not reassure herself that way.

Yet in spite of her violent desire to see him again she had stoutly made up her mind that this time she would conduct herself with dignity and decorum. She must be a little aloof, let him make the first advances, let him come first to see her. Every woman knew that was the way to prick up a man’s interest. I’ve always made myself his servant, she chided, but this time it’s going to be different. After all, I’m a person of honour now, a duchess—and he’s but a baron. Anyway—why shouldn’t he come to me first!

She knew that his wife would be along but she did not trouble herself too much about that. For certainly Lord Carlton was not the man to be uxorious. That was well enough for the citizens, who had no better breeding, but a gentleman would no more fawn upon his wife than he would appear in public without his sword or wearing a gnarled periwig.

Lord and Lady Almsbury were back in London in July to put their house in order, hire new servants and prepare for the entertainment of their eagerly expected guests. The Earl came to see Amber and, determined to show him how nonchalant she was at the prospect of seeing Bruce, she chattered away furiously about her own affairs—her title, her great house abuilding in St. James’s Square, the people she had invited to supper for that Sunday. From time to time she asked him what he did in the country and then hurried on without letting him answer—for everyone knew there was nothing to do in the country but ride and drink and visit tenants. Almsbury sat and listened to her talk, watched her vivacious display of mannerisms and hectic charm, smiled and nodded his head—and never mentioned Bruce at all.

Amber’s conversation began to slow down. She grew perplexed and quieter, and finally—realizing that he was teasing her—she became angry. “Well!” she said at last. “What’s the news!”

“News? Why, let me think now. My black mare—the one you used to ride, remember?—foaled last week and—”

“Blast you, Almsbury! Why should you use me at this rate, I’d like to know! Tell me—what have you heard? When will he get here? Is she still coming?”

“I don’t know any more than I did last time I wrote to you—August or September. And, yes, she is coming. Why? You’re not afraid of her?”

Amber shot him a dark venomous glare. “Afraid of her!” she repeated contemptuously. “Almsbury, I swear you’ve a droll wit! Why should I be afraid of her, pray?” She paused a moment and then superciliously informed him: “I’ve got an image of her—that Corinna!”

“Have you?” he asked politely.

“Yes, I have! I know just what she’s like! A plain meek creature who wears all her gowns five years out of the style and thinks herself fit for nothing but to be her husband’s housekeeper and breed up his brats!” The portrait was a reasonably accurate one of Almsbury’s own wife. “A great show she’ll make here in London!”

“You may be right,” he admitted.

“May be right!” she cried indignantly. “What else could she be like—brought up over there in that wilderness with a pack of heathen Indians—”

At that instant a weird and raucous voice began to screech. “Thieves, God damn you! Thieves, by God! Make haste!”

Involuntarily both Amber and the Earl leaped to their feet, Amber overturning the spaniel which had settled on her skirts for a nap. “It’s my parrot!” she cried. “He’s caught a thief in there!” And she dashed toward the drawing-room with Almsbury beside her and Monsieur le Chien yapping excitedly at their heels. They flung open the door and burst in, to find that it was only the King who had strolled in unannounced and picked out an orange from a bowl of fruit. He was laughing heartily as he watched the parrot prancing on his perch and teetering back and forth, squawking frantically. It was not the first time the bird, trained to apprehend intruders, had mistaken his man.

Almsbury left then and a few days later he went back to Barberry Hill to hunt, while Emily stayed in town to welcome the guests should they arrive unexpectedly. Amber had no opportunity to discuss Corinna with him again.

For the past year she had been going three or four times a week to watch the progress on Ravenspur House.

Planned in the new style without those courtyards which had evolved from the enclosing castle-walls, it was a perfectly symmetrical four-and-a-half-storied cherry-brick building with windows made of several hundred small square glass panes. It fronted on Pall Mall, which was lined with elm trees, and the gardens in back were adjacent to St. James’s Square—now become merely a sordid receptacle for refuse, dead cats and dogs, the garbage and offal carted from the great houses and dumped there.

Neither Captain Wynne nor his patron had overlooked any possibility for making the house the newest and most sumptuous in London. Coloured paint on wood-work was no longer the mode, and so instead there were several rooms decorated with large panels of allegorical figures, mostly from Greek or Roman mythology. The floors in every important room were parquet, all laid in intricate designs. Glass chandeliers, looking like great diamond ear-drops, were very uncommon, but Ravenspur House had several; all others, including the sconces, were of silver. She had one room panelled in fragrant pale-orange Javanese mahogany. The letter C, entwined with crowns and cupids, was a recurring motif everywhere—to Amber that C meant Carlton, as well as Charles.

Anything she might have forgotten to put in her bedchamber at Whitehall she intended to have in this one. The gigantic bed —the biggest in all England—was to be covered with gold brocade and decorated with swags of gold cord and fringe. Each of its four posters was surmounted by a bouquet of black-and-emerald ostrich-feathers with a bordering of aigrettes. Every other piece of furniture was to be coated with gold-leaf and all cushions on chairs and couches were of emerald velvet or satin. The ceiling was a solid mass of mirrors; the walls had alternating panels of mirrors and gold brocade; Persian carpets of velvet and cloth-of-gold, pearl-embroidered, scattered the floor. Furnishings of other rooms were to be of a similar raucous splendour.

One hot day late in August Amber was there talking to Captain Wynne and looking at the house—she wanted to move in soon and had been urging him to hurry the work on it, while he protested that it could be done only at the cost of inferior craftsmanship. The summer heat and haze still lay upon London, but fall was fast coming on; already the willow trees hung in golden strips. And all about them were the dry and dead leaves, sifting to the ground.

As Amber talked her attention was distracted by Susanna who ran about, laughing gleefully as she evaded the clumsy pursuing footsteps and grasping hands of her nurse. She was five years old now, old enough to wear grown-up dresses, and Amber clothed her beautifully, from her innumerable silk and taffeta gowns to each pair of tiny shoes and miniature gloves. Two-year-old Charles Stanhope, the future Duke of Ravenspur, gave every indication that one day he would be at least as big as his father and, also like the King, he had a droll precocious seriousness. His nurse was holding him in her arms and he looked at the house with as much seeming interest and solemnity as if he realized the role he was expected one day to play there.

Finally Amber, in exasperation, stamped her foot and shouted at Susanna: “Susanna! Behave yourself, you pestilent little wench—or I’ll take a course with you!”

Susanna stopped in her tracks, looked slowly around over her shoulder at Amber, and her lower-lip thrust out stubbornly. Nevertheless she turned about and walked with a kind of mock demureness back to her nurse, reaching up to slip her small hand into the woman’s palm. Amber pursed her lips and frowned, displeased with her daughter’s naughtiness. But just as she was about to turn away she heard a loud burst of masculine laughter and swinging about she saw that it was Almsbury, climbing out of his coach and starting toward her.

“Wait till she grows up!” he bellowed. “Just wait! She’ll lead you a mighty merry chase about ten years from now, I’ll warrant!”

“Oh, Almsbury!” Amber’s own lip stuck out now, in an expression very much like Susanna’s. “Who wants to think about ten years from now!” The older she got the more she dreaded and feared the encroachment of the years. “I hope it never comes!”

“But it will,” he assured her complacently. “Everything comes, if you wait long enough, you know.”

“Does it!” snapped Amber crossly. “I’ve waited long enough and everything hasn’t come to me!” She turned her back to him and was about to take up her conversation with Captain Wynne again when something she had seen in his eyes caused her to turn and look at him. He was grinning at her, obviously very much pleased with himself.

“Almsbury,” she said slowly, and all of a sudden her throat felt dry and tight. “Almsbury—what did you come out here for?”

He strolled up to stand very close beside her, and his eyes looked down into hers. “I came, sweetheart, to tell you that they’re here. They got in last night.”

She felt as though she had just been struck across the face, very hard, and for a paralyzed moment she stood staring at him. She was aware that one of his hands reached out and took hold of her upper arm, as if to steady her. Then she looked beyond him, over his shoulder, out to where his crested coach stood waiting.

“Where is he?” Her lips formed the words, but she heard no sound.

“He’s home. At my house. His wife is here too, you know.”

Swiftly Amber’s eyes came back to his. The dazed almost dreamy look was gone from her face and she looked alert and challenging.

“What does she look like?”

Almsbury answered gently, as if afraid of hurting her. “She’s very beautiful.”

“She can’t be!”

Amber stood staring down at the wood-shavings, the scraps and piled bricks that lay all about them. Her sweeping black brows had drawn together and her face had an expression of almost tragic anxiety.

“She can’t be!” she repeated. Then suddenly she looked back up at him again, almost ashamed of herself. She had never been afraid of any woman on earth. No matter what kind of beauty this Corinna was she had no reason to fear her. “When—” She remembered that Captain Wynne was still there, just beside them, and changed the words she had been about to say. “I’m having a supper tonight. Why don’t you come and bring Lord Carlton with you—and his wife too, if she wants to come?”

“I think they won’t be going abroad for a few days—the voyage was longer than usual and her Ladyship is tired.”

“That’s too bad,” said Amber tartly. “And is his Lordship too tired to stir out of the house too?”

“I don’t think he’d care to go without her.”

“Ye gods!” cried Amber. “I’m sure I never thought Lord Carlton would be the man to fawn over a wife!”

Almsbury did not try to argue the point. “They’re going to Arlington House Thursday night—you’ll be there, won’t you?”

“Of course. But Thursday—” Again she remembered the presence of Captain Wynne. “Did he go down to the wharves today?”

“Yes. But he’s got a great deal of business there. I’d advise you to wait till Thursday—”

Amber gave him a glare that cut off his sentence in the middle. Then, mocking her, he gulped a time or two as if in fright, bowed very formally, and turning walked back to his coach. She watched him go, made a sudden little movement to run after him and apologize—but did not. His coach had no sooner disappeared from sight than Amber lost all interest in her house.

“I’ve got to go now, Captain Wynne,” she said hastily. “We’ll talk about this later. Good-day.” And she half ran to get into her own coach, followed by the nursemaids and the two children. “Drive down Water Lane to the New Key! And hurry!”

But he was not there. Her footman went up and down the wharf inquiring; they saw his ships riding at anchor and were told that he had been there all morning but had left at dinnertime and not returned. She waited for almost an hour, but the children were becoming cross and tired and at last she had to go.

Back at the Palace she immediately wrote him a letter, imploring him to come to her, but she got no reply until the next morning and then it was merely a hasty scratched note: “Business makes it impossible for me to wait on you. If you’re at Arlington House Thursday, may I claim the favour of a dance? Carlton.” Amber tore it into bits and flung herself onto the bed to cry.

But in spite of herself she was forced to take certain practicalities into consideration.

For if it was true that Lady Carlton was a beauty then she must somehow contrive to look more dazzling Thursday night than ever before in her life. They were used to her at Court now and it had been a long while since her appearance at any great or small function had aroused the excitement and envy she had been able to stir up three and a half years ago. If Lady Carlton was even moderately pretty she would be the object of every stare, the subject of every comment, whether it were made in praise or derogation. Unless—unless I can wear something or do something they won’t be able to ignore, no matter how they try.

She spent several hours in a frenzy of worry and indecision and then at last she sent for Madame Rouvière. The only possible solution was a new gown, but a gown different from anything she had ever seen, a gown no one had ever dared to wear.

“I’ve got to have something they can’t help staring at,” Amber told her. “If I have to go in stark naked with my hair on fire.”

Madame Rouvière laughed. “That would be well enough for an entrance—but after a while they would grow tired and begin to look at the ladies with more on. It must be something indiscret—and yet covering enough to make them try to see more. Black would be the colour—black tiffany, perhaps—but there must be something to glitter too—” She went on, talking aloud, sketching out the dress with her hands while Amber listened in rapt attention and with glowing eyes.

Lady Carlton! Poor creature—what chance would she have?

For the next two days Amber did not leave her rooms. From early morning until late at night they were filled with Madame Rouvière and her little sempstresses, all of them chattering French and giggling while scissors snipped, deft fingers stitched and Madame wrung her hands and shrieked hysterically if she discovered a seam taken in a bit too far or a hem-line uneven by so much as a quarter of an inch. Amber stood patiently hour after hour while the dress was fitted, and they literally made it on her. No one was allowed to come in or to see it and to her great delight all this secrecy set up a froth of rumours.

The Duchess was going to come as Venus rising from the sea, dressed in a single sea-shell. She was going to drive a gilt chariot and four full-grown horses up the front stairs and into the drawing-room. Her gown was to be made of real pearls which would fall off, a few at a time, until she had on nothing at all. At least they did not doubt her audacity and their ingenuity gave considerable credit to hers.

Thursday they were still at work.

Amber’s hair was washed and dried and polished with silk before the hair-dresser went to work on it. Pumice-stone removed every trace of fuzz from her arms and legs. She slathered her face and neck a dozen times with French cold-creams and brushed her teeth until her arm ached. She bathed in milk and poured jasmine perfume into the palms of her hands to rub on her legs and arms and body. She spent almost an hour painting her face.

At six o’clock the gown was done and Madame Rouvière proudly held it up at full length for all of them to see. Susanna, who had spent the entire day in the room, jumped and clapped her hands together and ran to kiss the hem. Madame let out such a screech of horror at this sacrilege that Susanna almost fell over backward in alarm.

Amber threw off her dressing-gown and—wearing nothing but black silk stockings held up by diamond-buckled garters and a pair of high-heeled black shoes—she lifted her arms over her head so that they could slide it on. The bodice was a wide-open lace-work of heavy cord sewn with black bugle beads, and it cut down to a deep point. There was a long narrow sheath-like skirt, completely covered with beads, that looked like something black and wet and shiny pouring over her hips and legs and trailing away in back. Sheer black tiffany made great puffed sleeves and an over-skirt which draped up at the sides and floated down over the train like a black mist.

While the others stood staring, babbling, ecstatically “oh-ing,” Amber looked at herself in the mirrored walls with a thrill of triumph. She lifted her ribs and tightened her chest muscles so that her breasts stood out like full pointed globes.

He’ll die when he sees me! she told herself in a delirium of confidence. Corinna could not scare her now.

Madame Rouvière came to adjust her head-dress which was a great arch of black ostrich-feathers sweeping up over her head from a tight little helmet. Someone handed her her gloves and she pulled them on, long black ones clear to her elbows. Against the nakedness of her body, they seemed almost immodest. She carried a black fan and over her shoulders they laid a black velvet cloak, the lining edged in black fox. The stark black against her rich cream-and-honey colouring, something in the expression of her eyes and the curve of her mouth, gave her the look of a diabolical angel—at once pure, beautiful, corrupt and sinister.

Amber turned now from the mirror to face Madame, and their eyes met with the gleaming look of successful conspirators. Madame put her thumb and fingers together and made the gesture of kissing them. She came up to Amber and said with a hiss in her ear: “They’ll never see her at all—that other one!”

Amber gave her a quick grateful hug and a grin. Then she bent to kiss Susanna, who approached her mother very carefully, almost afraid to touch her. And with her heart beating fast, her stomach churning maddeningly, Amber walked out of the room, put her mask to her face and went along a narrow little corridor leading out to where her coach waited. She had not felt so excited at the prospect of a party, so apprehensive and frightened, since the night she had first been presented at Court.

CHAPTER SIXTY–ONE

ARLINGTON HOUSE, WHICH had been Goring House before Bennet bought it in 1663, stood next to the old Mulberry Gardens on the west of the Palace. In it the Baron and Baroness gave the most brilliant, the most elaborate, and the most eagerly attended parties in London. Nothing else could be compared to them. The invitations they sent out were a sure barometer of one’s social standing. Nonentities were never asked.

His Lordship was known as the most lavish and thoughtful host of fashionable society. He served superlative food, prepared by a dozen French cooks, and wines from a vast cellar. There was music in every room; gambling-tables were piled with gold; candles burned by the thousand. The house swarmed with earls and dukes and knights, countesses and duchesses and ladies, and to the casual eye everything seemed most decorous. Satin-gowned ladies curtsied and smiled over spread fans, brocade-suited gentlemen bowed from the waist with a flourishing sweep of their hats. Voices were low and conversation apparently polite.

But in fact they were gleefully at work destroying one another’s characters. The men, as they stood watching a pretty woman, boasted that they had laid with her, discussed her physical defects and compared her behaviour in bed. The women yanked reputations apart with equal or greater vigour. Darkened bedrooms all over the house sheltered couples seeking a temporary refuge. In some obscure corner a Maid of Honour was lifting her skirts to let the gallants decide whether her legs were as pretty as another’s, squealing and giggling when they ventured to employ their hands too boldly. One of the fops had sneaked a girl from Madame Bennet’s into the house under the guise of mask and cloak and she was performing for several young men and women somewhere behind locked doors.

Arlington never interfered with his guests but let each amuse himself according to his own tastes.

At seven o’clock, the night being still young and most of the guests sober as well as curious, they were gathered in the main drawing-room and keeping one eye at least on the new arrivals. They were waiting for two women who had not yet come: the Duchess of Ravenspur, and Lady Carlton. Her Ladyship—whom almost no one had seen—was rumoured to be the greatest beauty ever to appear in England, though opinions on this score were already strong and divided. Many of the women, at least, were prepared to decide the moment she arrived that she was by no means as beautiful as had been reported. And the Duchess of Ravenspur, no doubt from fear that her Ladyship would outshine her, was expected to do something spectacular in order to save herself.

“How I pity her Grace,” said one languid young lady. “It runs through the galleries she lives in terror now of losing what she has. Gad, but it must be a bothersome thing to be great.”

Her companion smiled with lips pressed together. “Is that why you never climbed the ladder?—for fear of falling off?”

“I don’t care a fig for Lady Carlton or what she looks like,” commented a thin young fop who kept his hands busy with manipulating a woman’s fan, “but I’ll be her slave if she can put the Duchess’s nose out of joint. That damned woman has grown intolerable since his Majesty gave her a duchy. I used to lace her busk for her when she was only a scurvy player—but now every time we’re presented she makes a show of never having seen me before.”

“It’s her vulgar breeding, Jack. What else can you expect?”

A voice like a trumpet interrupted them. “Her Grace, the Duchess of Ravenspur!”

Every eye in the room swept toward the door—but only the usher stood there alone beside it. They waited for an impatient moment or two and then, with her head held high and a kind of fierce challenging pride on her face, the Duchess came into view and slowly walked through the doorway toward them. A wave of shock and amazement swept along before her. Heads spun, eyes popped and even King Charles turned on his heel where he was talking to Mrs. Wells and stared.

Amber came on imperturbably, though it seemed all her insides were quaking. She heard some of the older women gasp and saw them set their mouths sternly, square their shoulders and fix upon her their hard reproving glares. She heard low whistles from the men, saw their eyebrows go up, their elbows reach out to nudge one another. She saw the young women looking at her with anger and indignation, furious that she had dared to take such an advantage of them.

Suddenly she relaxed, convinced that she was a success. She was hoping that Bruce and Corinna were there somewhere to have seen her triumph.

Then, almost at once, she became aware that Almsbury was just at her side. She looked at him, a faint smile touching the corners of her mouth, but something she saw in his eyes made her expression freeze suddenly. What was it? Disapproval? Pity? Something of both? But that was ridiculous! She looked stunning and she knew it.

“Holy Christ, Amber,” he murmured, and his eyes went swiftly down over her body.

“Don’t you like it?” Her eyes hardened a little as she looked up at him and even in her own ears her voice took on a confident brassy sound that was part bravado.

“Yes, of course. You look gorgeous—”

“But aren’t you cold?” interrupted a feminine voice, and turning swiftly Amber found Mrs. Boynton beside her, looking her over with feline insolence.

Another voice, a man’s this time, came from her other side. “Ods-fish, madame. But this is the greatest display that ever I’ve seen in public since I was weaned.” It was the King, lazy, smiling, obviously amused.

Amber felt suddenly as if she had been hurt inside.

She turned sick with a feeling of horror and self-disgust. What have I done! she thought. Oh, my God! what am I doing out here half undressed?

Her eyes swept round the room and every face she saw was secretly smiling, covertly sneering at her. All at once she felt like the person in a dream who sets out confidently to go uptown stark naked, gets halfway there and then realizes his mistake. And, like the dreamer, she wished passionately that she were back home where no one could see her—but to her wild dismay she realized that this time she was caught in her own trap. She could not wake up from this bad dream.

Oh, what am I going to do? she thought desperately. How am I going to get out of here? In her anguish and self-consciousness she had all but forgotten Lord Carlton and his wife.

And then, so unexpectedly that she almost started, she heard their names called out, loud and clear: “My Lord Carlton! My Lady Carlton!”

Without even realizing that she had done so she grabbed Almsbury by the hand and her eyes turned toward the door. The colour drained out of her face and neck as she watched them walk in; she did not even see the quick glance Almsbury gave her but she felt the warm reassuring pressure of his hand.

Bruce looked very much as he had when he had left London two years before. He was thirty-eight years old and perhaps a little heavier than when last she had seen him, but still handsome, hard-skinned and vigorous-bodied, a man who changed little with the years. Amber only glanced at him—and then shifted her attention to his wife who walked beside him, her fingers resting upon his arm.

She was rather tall, though slender and graceful, with clear blue eyes, dark hair, and a skin pale as moonlight. Her features were delicate, her expression serene. To look at her brought up some elusive emotion—the same feeling evoked by an exquisitely painted porcelain. The gown she wore was cloth-of-silver covered with black lace and a black-lace mantilla lay upon her head; about her neck was the diamond and sapphire necklace which had belonged to Bruce’s mother and which Amber had always hoped might one day be her own.

The King, ignoring ceremony, went forward with Lord and Lady Arlington to greet them—and as he did so all the room set up a noisy buzzing.

“My God! But she’s a glorious creature!”

“I know that gown was made in Paris, my dear, it must have been, it couldn’t have—”

“Can they really have women like that in Jamaica?”

“Poise and breeding—than which I admire nothing more in a woman.”

Amber was actually sick at her stomach now. Her hands and arm-pits were wet, all her muscles seemed to ache. I’ve got to get out of here before they see me! she thought wildly. But just as she made an involuntary movement to escape, Almsbury’s grip on her hand tightened and he gave her a little jerk. She looked up at him, surprised, but then quickly composed herself again.

Charles, with no respect for etiquette, was asking Lady Carlton to dance with him, and now as the music started for a pavane he led her onto the floor. Others followed and it was soon crowded with slow-moving figures, pacing to the rhythmic cadence of spinets, flutes and a low-beating drum. Amber scarcely heard Almsbury asking her to dance. He repeated his request, louder this time.

She glanced at him. “I don’t want to dance,” she muttered, distracted. “I’m not going to stay here. I—I’ve got the vapours—I’m going home.”

This time she picked up her skirts and took a step, but the Earl caught her wrist and gave her so vigorous a jerk that her breasts shook and her curls bounced. “Stop acting like a damned fool or I’ll slap you! Smile at me, now—everyone’s watching you.”

With a quick shifting of her eyeballs beneath half-lowered lashes, Amber glanced round the room. She wanted to turn and scream or pick up something to throw at them, something that would destroy them all where they stood and wipe out of her sight forever those pleased smirking faces. Instead she looked up at Almsbury and smiled, pulling the corners of her mouth as tight as possible to keep the muscles from quivering. She put her hand on his extended arm and they moved toward the floor.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” she told him, under cover of the music. “I can’t stay!”

His expression did not change. “You won’t leave if I have to tie you up. If you had the courage to wear that thing in the first place, by God you’ll have the courage to stay till the end!”

Amber clenched her teeth, hating him, and as her feet kept moving in time to the music she began to plan how she would escape—slip away through some side-door the first time he let her out of his sight. Damn him! she thought. He acts like my grandmother! What’s it to him if I stay or don’t! I’ll go if I—

And then, all unexpectedly, she saw Lady Carlton not more than ten feet away. Corinna was smiling at Almsbury, but she gave a little gasp of surprise as she caught sight of his partner. Amber’s eyes blazed in fury and Corinna looked swiftly away, obviously embarrassed.

Oh, that woman! thought Amber. I hate her, I hate her, I hate her! Look how she minces and smiles and sets her foot so! Hoity-toity! How mightily prim and proper! I wish I was stark naked! That would make her eyes pop out! I’ll pay her back for that! I’ll make her sorry she ever clapt eyes on me! Just wait—

But suddenly her energy was consumed. She felt weak, lost, helpless.

I’m going to die, she thought wretchedly. I’ll never live through this. My life won’t be worth tuppence to me now—Oh, God, let me die right here, right now—I can’t take another step. For the moment it seemed that Almsbury’s arm was all that kept her from collapsing. Then the music stopped and the crowd began to move about, gathering into groups. Amber, with Almsbury still at her side, pretended to see no one as she made her way among them.

I’m going now, she told herself. And that damned blockhead isn’t going to stop me!

But as she started toward a door he took hold of her arm. “Come over here and meet Lady Carlton.”

Amber jerked away. “What do I want to know her for?”

“Amber, for the love of God!” His voice, scarcely more than a whisper, was pleading with her. “Look about you. Can’t you see what they’re thinking?”

Amber’s eyes again flickered hastily around in time to catch a dozen pairs of eyes which had been fixed upon her glance aside, eyes that glittered, set above mouths that curled with amusement and contempt. Some of them did not even trouble to look away but met her with bold scornful smiles; they were watching, and waiting—

She took a deep breath, linked her arm with Almsbury’s and together they walked toward where Lord and Lady Carlton stood in a group made up of the King, Buckingham, Lady Shrewsbury; Lady Falmouth, Buckhurst, Sedley and Rochester. As they approached, the small gathering seemed to grow quieter —as if expecting something to happen from the mere fact of her presence. Almsbury presented Lady Carlton to the Duchess of Ravenspur and both women, smiling politely, made faint curtsies. Lady Carlton was friendly and gracious and obviously altogether unaware that her husband might know this gorgeous half-naked woman. While the men, including his Majesty, all turned their heads to look at her, their eyes admiring her figure.

But Amber was conscious of no one but Bruce.

For an instant Lord Carlton’s expression might have betrayed him—but no one was looking—and then immediately it changed, he bowed to her as though they were the merest acquaintances. Amber, as their eyes met, felt the world rock and tremble beneath her. The conversation began again and had been going on for several seconds before she was able to follow it: King Charles and Bruce were discussing America, the tobacco plantations, the colonists’ resentment of the Navigation Laws, men the King knew who had gone to make their homes in the New World. Corinna said little, but whenever she did speak Charles turned to her with interest and unconcealed admiration. Her voice was light and soft, completely feminine, and the brief glances she gave Bruce revealed that here was that unheard-of phenomenon in London society: a woman deeply in love with her husband.

Amber wanted to reach out and rake her long nails across that tranquil lovely face.

When the music began again she curtsied, very cool and aloof and with some delicate suggestion of insult, to Corinna, nodded vaguely at Bruce and left them. After that she defiantly began to pretend that she was enjoying herself and was not at all embarrassed by her own nudity. She ate her supper attended by half-a-score of gallants, drank too much champagne, danced every dance. But the evening dragged with interminable slowness, and she thought wearily that it would never end.

After an hour or so the dancers began to disappear into the rooms beyond, where the gaming-tables were set up. Amber, a nervous ache in her back and an agonizing tiredness through every bone, excused herself and went into the dressing-room which had been set aside for the ladies. There they might powder their faces or touch up their lips, adjust a garter or sit down for a few minutes and relax—impossible in the presence of men.

But for a couple of maids, the room was empty when she walked into it and she stood for a moment, completely off her guard, shoulders slumped and head buried in her hands. Then all at once she heard steps behind her and Boynton’s voice cried gayly: “How now, your Grace? An attack of the vapours?”

Amber gave her a quick glance of scorn and disgust and bent to smooth up her stockings and tighten the garters. Boynton flung herself onto a couch with a heavy relieved sigh, spreading her legs and stretching them out before her, turning her neck from side to side to relieve the tension.

Giving Amber an arch sidewise glance, she began to strip off her gloves. “Well—what d’ye think of my Lady Carlton?”

Amber shrugged. “She’s well enough, I suppose.”

Boynton laughed loudly at that. “Well enough, indeed. The men all think she’s the prettiest woman here—if not the nakedest!”

“Oh, shut up!” muttered Amber, and turned her back on her to look into one of the mirrors, her hands pressed flat on the table-top. Did she really look so tired, or was it only that her face had gotten a little shiny? She asked one of the maids to bring her some powder.

Just at that moment Lady Carlton appeared in the doorway. Amber saw her in the mirror, her heart came to a sudden stop and then sped on again, almost suffocating her. She took the box of powder and began to dust her nose.

“May I come in?” asked Corinna.

“By all means, your Ladyship!” cried Boynton, shooting Amber a glance of malicious triumph. “We were just saying that since the Duchess of Richmond’s had the small-pox you’re the greatest beauty to come to Court.”

Corinna laughed softly. “Why, thank you. How kind of you to say that.” Her eyes glanced uncertainly at Amber’s back, as though she wished to speak to her but did not quite know how to begin. Actually, she wanted to make some kind of apology for her clumsiness earlier in the evening. London, she realized, was not America, and here no doubt it was quite correct for a lady of the highest rank to appear all but naked at a private party.

“Your Grace,” she ventured at last, “would it seem rude if I told you how much I admire your gown?”

Amber did not even glance at her, but continued busy with the hare’s-foot. “Not if you meant it,” she said tartly.

Corinna looked at her, both puzzled and hurt by the rudeness, wondering what reply she should or could make to that. Already she had been surprised and baffled to discover the savage under-currents that existed in the glossy polite stream of Palace etiquette.

But Boynton spoke up instantly. “But your own gown, Lady Carlton, is the loveliest one here tonight! How do you get such clothes in America? The cloth-of-silver, and that lace—it’s exquisite!”

“Thank you, madame. My dressmaker is a Frenchwoman and she sends to Paris for the materials. Why, really,” she added with a little laugh, “we aren’t such savages in America. Everyone seems surprised I don’t wear a leather dress and moccasins.”

Amber picked up her fan and gloves, turned around again and looked Corinna straight in the eye. “As for that, madame, you may find it’s us who are the savages!”

With that she swept out of the room, but not before she had heard Boynton say gleefully, “Pray, my lady, you must excuse her. She’s had a mighty bad shock tonight.” All of them were thinking, Amber knew, that she was jealous because King Charles had been paying her Ladyship such marked attention.

“Oh,” murmured Corinna’s sympathetic voice, “I’m sorry—”

Amber found Bruce at the raffling-table—for he never remained long in a ball-room when the cards were being dealt or the dice were running—and so absorbed in the play that he did not see her until she had been standing across from him for several moments. Self-consciously she had put on her most becoming expression, lower lip softly pouting, brows slightly raised to tilt the corners of her eyes.

The instant he looked at her she knew it and glanced over swiftly, a half-smile on her mouth. But his mouth did not answer and his green eyes looked at her seriously for a moment, then lightened and slid down her body with a kind of lazy insolence. Slowly they returned to her face and one eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. At that instant she felt like the commonest kind of drab, displaying herself for any man to see and appraise and—worst of all—to reject.

Ready to cry with rage and humiliation she turned swiftly and walked away.

When she blundered into Lord Buckhurst and he suggested that they find some private room she went with him, as much to get away where she could not be seen as for anything else. But she stayed for more than two hours and got a morbid kind of satisfaction from thinking that Bruce would probably know what she was about. She had been lucklessly trying for nine years to arouse his jealousy, but still she was not convinced it would never be possible.

They returned to the drawing-room after eleven to find the gambling still going on and a group gathered about the King and his Royal Highness—James was playing a guitar and Charles was singing, in his magnificent bass voice, a rollicking Cavalier song of the Civil War days. The first person she saw, even before they got to the bottom of the stairs, was Almsbury, and he came toward her with a look of worry on his face. But he said nothing and he and Buckhurst exchanged polite bows. His Lordship went off then and left her with the Earl.

“Ye gods, Amber, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I thought you’d gone—”

All at once Amber found herself ready to burst into tears. “Almsbury! Oh, Almsbury, please take me home! Haven’t I stayed long enough!”

They went outside then and got into the coach and there Amber began to cry with furious abandon, sobbing almost hysterically. It was several moments before she could even speak and then she wailed miserably: “Oh, Almsbury! He didn’t even smile at me! He just looked at me like—like—Oh, God! I wish I was dead!”

Almsbury held her close against him, his mouth pressed to her cheek. “What else could he do, sweetheart? His wife was there!”

“What difference does that make! Why should he be the only man in London to care what his wife thinks! Oh, he hates me, I know he does! And I hate him too!” She blew her nose. “Oh, I wish I did hate him!”

She saw Lord and Lady Carlton the next day riding in the Ring. Amber knew that he disliked intensely the monotonous circling round and round, nodding and smiling to the same people two dozen times and more, but evidently he had come for Corinna’s entertainment, since the ladies always enjoyed that pastime. The following day they sat in adjacent boxes at the Duke’s Theatre, and the day after that they were in the Chapel at Whitehall. It was the first time she had ever seen him in a church. Each time both Lord and Lady Carlton bowed and smiled at her, and his Lordship seemed no better acquainted with her than his wife was.

Amber alternated between fury and despondent misery.

How can he have forgotten me? she frantically asked herself. He acts as if he’s never seen me before. No, he doesn’t, either! No man who’d never seen me before would look the way he does! If his wife had any wit at all she’d begin to suspect he knows me only too well—But she won’t of course! Amber thought petulantly. I swear she’s the greatest dunce in nature!

But despite his seeming indifference she could not believe it possible that he had been able to forget all they had meant to each other, for happiness and sorrow, over the nine years past. He could not have forgotten the things she remembered so well. That first day in Marygreen, those early happy weeks in London, the terrible morning when Rex Morgan had died, the days of the Plague—He could not have forgotten that she had borne him two children. He could not have forgotten the pleasures they had shared, the laughter and quarrels, all the agony and ecstasy of being violently in love. Those were the things that could never fade—nothing could ever erase them. No other woman could ever be to him exactly what she had been.

Oh, he can’t forget! she cried to herself, lonely and despairing. He can’t! He can’t! He’ll come to me as soon as he can, I know he will. He’ll come tonight. But he did not.

Five days after she had seen him at Arlington House, he and Almsbury came to her rooms late one afternoon as she was dressing to go out for supper. She had been thinking of him, both angry and excited at once, wishing passionately that he would come—and yet she was surprised when he and Almsbury walked into the room together.

“Why—your Lordship!”

Both men bowed, sweeping off their hats.

“Madame.”

Then, quickly recovering herself, Amber shooed the maids and other attendants out of the room. But she did not rush toward him as she had thought she would. Now that he was there she merely stood and looked at him, almost painfully self-conscious, and did not know what to do, or what she dared to do. She waited for him.

“I wonder if I might see Susanna?”

“Why—yes—yes, of course.”

She walked to the door and called to someone in the next room. She turned back to face him. “Susanna’s grown like anything. She’s—she’s much bigger than when you left.” She was scarcely aware of what she said. Oh, my darling! she thought wildly. Is that all you’re going to do—after two years? Just stand there—looking as if you scarce know me at all?

But the next moment the door was pushed open and Susanna stood in it, dressed in a grown-up, green-taffeta gown with the tiny skirt tucked up over a pink petticoat, and her golden glossy hair caught back at one side with a pink bow. She looked at her mother first and then, somewhat bewildered, at the two men, wondering what was wanted of her.

“Don’t you remember your Daddy?” asked Amber.

Susanna gave him another dubious glance. “But I have a Daddy,” she protested politely.

Charles had told her, when she had said that she had no Daddy, that he would be her Daddy now. And since then she had regarded the King as her father, for she saw him often and he always made a great fuss over her because of her prettiness and his own fondness for children.

Bruce laughed at that and coming forward he reached down, took hold of her, and swooped her into his arms. “You can’t fob me off with any such tale as that, young lady. You may have a new father, but I’m still your first—and it’s the first one who counts. Come now—give me a kiss—and if it’s nice enough perhaps I’ll find a present for you.”

“A present?”

Susanna’s eyes turned big and round and she looked back at her mother, who winked and nodded her head. Without further hesitation she flung her arms about his neck and kissed his cheek resoundingly.

Almsbury grinned. “Her mother’s own child. I see it more every day.”

Amber made him a face, but she was too happy now to take offense at his quips. Bruce carried Susanna to the door, opened it, reached outside and picked up a box, and then putting her down he dropped to his heels beside her. “There,” he said. “Open it up and we’ll see what’s inside.”

Both Amber and Almsbury came up close to see what it was as Susanna, now very self-important, picked up the lid. There lay a beautiful doll, perhaps a foot and a half tall, with light blonde curls done in the latest mode and wearing a fashionable French gown. Packed beside her was a wardrobe containing several more gowns, petticoats and smocks, shoes and gloves and fans and masks, all the paraphernalia of a lady of quality. Susanna, all but delirious with pleasure, kissed him again and again. Then, very carefully, she lifted her treasure from its satin-lined bed and held it in her arms.

“Oh, Mother!” she cried. “I want to have her in my picture too! Can I?” Susanna was having her portrait painted by Mr. Lely.

“Of course you can, darling.” She glanced at Bruce and found him watching both of them, and though he was faintly smiling there was something moody and almost wistful in his eyes. “It was so kind of you to think of her,” she said softly.

At last, when half an hour or so had passed, Amber glanced at the clock. “It’s time for your supper, sweetheart. You must go now, or you’ll be late.”

“But I don’t want to go! I don’t want any supper! I want to stay with my new Daddy!”

She ran to him where he still knelt on one knee, and he put an arm about her. “I’ll come back to see you soon, darling, I promise. But now you must go.” He kissed her and then, reluctantly, she made a curtsy to Amber and Almsbury. Primly she walked to the doorway, where, as the nurse held it open for her, she turned and looked around at them.

“I s’pose it’s time to go to bed with my new Daddy now!”

The nurse hastily covered Susanna’s mouth with her handkerchief and hurried her out, closing the door firmly, while the two men burst into laughter. Amber spread her hands and gave a shrug, making a comical little grimace. There was no doubt Susanna had been sent off many times with the excuse that it was time for Mother and Daddy to go to bed. Bruce got to his feet.

Amber’s eyes were on him instantly, questioning, begging.

Quickly Almsbury took out his watch. “Well—damn me! But I’m late now—I hope you’ll excuse me—” Already he was backing from the room.

But Bruce turned about swiftly. “I’m going with you, John—”

“Bruce!” Amber gave a little cry of anguish and ran toward him. “You can’t go now! Stay just a little—and talk to me—”

While he stood looking down at her Almsbury went out the door and shut it softly. Bruce glanced back over his shoulder as he heard the sound, hesitated a moment longer and then tossed his hat onto a chair.

CHAPTER SIXTY–TWO

AMBER LAY ON a low cushioned day-bed, her eyes closed, her face serenely peaceful and content. Her hair had come down and fell in tawny masses about her shoulders. Bruce sat on the floor beside her, arms resting on his drawn-up knees, head bent forward to lean on his wrists. He had taken off his periwig, coat and sword, and his wet white-linen shirt clung to his back and arms.

For a long while they continued silent.

Finally Amber, not opening her eyes, reached out and put one hand on his, her fingers tender and warm. He raised his head to look at her. His face was moist and flushed. Slowly he smiled, bent his head again and laid his lips on the back of her hand where the blue veins swelled.

“My darling—” Her voice lingered over the word, caressing it. Then slowly she lifted her lids and looked at him; they smiled, a smile born of recent memories and long acquaintance. “At last you’re back again. Oh, Bruce, I’ve missed you so! Have you missed me too—just a little?”

“Of course,” he said. It was an automatic reply, made as if he thought the question a foolish or unnecessary one.

“How long will you be here? Are you going to live here now?” She could have been almost grateful for Corinna if she had insisted that they live in England.

“We’ll be here a couple of months, I think. Then we’re going to France to buy some furniture and visit my sister. After that we’ll go back to Virginia.”

“We.” Amber did not like the sound of it. It reminded her again that his life, all his plans, included a woman now—a woman who was not herself. And it hurt her pride that he was taking Corinna to visit his sister for she had asked Almsbury once what kind of woman Mary Carlton was; he had told her that she was very beautiful, proud and haughty—and that she and Amber would not like each other.

“How d’you like being married?” she challenged him. “You must find it mighty dull—after the gay life you’ve lived!”

He smiled again, but now she knew that with every word she said he drew farther away from her. She was scared, but she did not know what she could do. She felt, as always, helpless to contend against him and hold her own. “I don’t find it dull at all. In Virginia we have a better opinion of marriage than you do here.”

She rolled her eyes at that and sat up, straightening her bodice around and beginning to fasten it again. “Hey day! How might ily proper you’ve grown! I vow and swear, Lord Carlton, you’re not the same man who left here two years ago!”

He grinned at her. “I’m not?”

She looked down at him sharply, then suddenly she was on her knees beside him, held close in his arms. “Oh, my darling, darling—I love you so! I can’t stand to know you’re married to another woman! I hate her, I despise her, I—”

“Amber—don’t talk that way!” He tried to make a joke of it. “After all, you’ve been married four times and I’ve never hated any of your husbands—”

“Why should you? I didn’t love any of them!”

“Nor the King, either, I suppose?”

She dropped her eyes at that, momentarily abashed. Then she faced him again. “Not the way I do you—Anyway, he’s the King. But you know as well as I do, Bruce, that if you’d let me I’d leave him and the Court and everything I have on earth to follow you anywhere!”

“What?” he asked her mockingly. “You’d leave all this?”

As he spoke she realized all of a sudden that he did not consider her position, the luxury and pomp in which she lived, to be of any real worth at all. It was the sharpest disillusionment she had had. For she had expected to brag about it, to impress him with her title, her power, her money, her gorgeous rooms. Instead, he had made her feel that all she had got from life—these things for which she had been willing to make any compromise—were unimportant. Worse, were trash.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Of course I’d leave it.” She had an inexplicable feeling of humility and almost of shame.

“Well, my dear, I wouldn’t dream of asking such a sacrifice of you. You’ve worked hard for what you have and you deserve to keep it. What’s more, you’re exactly where you belong. You and Whitehall are as well suited as a bawd and brandy.”

“What do you mean by that!” she cried.

He shrugged, glanced at the clock and got to his feet. “It’s growing late. I’ve got to go.”

Amber sprang up after him. “You’re not going so soon? You haven’t been here two hours!”

“I thought you were engaged for supper.”

“I won’t go. I’ll send a message I’ve got the vapours. Oh, stay here with me darling and we’ll have supper together! We’ll have—”

“I’m sorry, Amber. I’d like to, but I can’t. I’m late now.”

Her eyes, golden and hard with jealousy, accused him. “Late for what!”

“My wife is expecting me.”

“Your wife!” An ugly expression crossed her face. “And I suppose you don’t dare stay out by so much as half-an-hour or she’ll have you by the ear for it! It’s mighty strange, Lord Carlton, to see you, of all men, turned Tom Otter!” Tom Otter was the prototype of the hen-pecked husband.

He was getting into his coat and though he did not look at her his voice was sarcastic. “I’m afraid living in America has put me somewhat behind the fashion.” He buckled on his sword, set the periwig on his head and took up his hat. Casually he bowed to her. “Good-night, madame.”

But as he started out of the room she ran after him. “Oh, Bruce! I didn’t mean it, I swear I didn’t! Please don’t be angry with me! When can I see you again? And I want to see Bruce, too. Does he remember me?”

“Of course he remembers you, Amber. He asked me today when he was going to visit you.”

Suddenly her eyes took on a bright malicious sparkle. “What does Corinna—”

“Corinna doesn’t know that his mother is alive.”

The sparkle went out. “A pretty arrangement,” she said sourly.

“You agreed to it. And please, Amber, if she ever sees you together don’t let her find out. I’ve made it clear to Bruce that he must never mention you.”

“Good Lord! I never heard of anything so ridiculous! Most wives don’t have to be pampered and protected so! Why—I give my husband’s whore an allowance!”

He smiled down at her, slowly and with a certain sad and cynical quirk at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes. “But Corinna, my dear, hasn’t had the advantages of your education. In fact, until she was married, she lived somewhat retired.”

“You men! Why is it the greatest whoremaster among you always marries some simple little sugar-sop who doesn’t know one end of him from the other!”

“When shall I bring Bruce here?”

“Why—any time. Tomorrow?”

“Two o’clock?”

“Yes. But, Bruce—”

He bowed to her again and went on, out of the room, while Amber watched him between anger and tears, undecided whether to break something or cry. So she did both.

They came together the next day at two. The little boy, now eight and a half, was much taller and looked a good deal older than when she had seen him last. His resemblance to his father was stronger than ever. He was not at all like her. He was a very handsome decidedly masculine child with great charm and delightful manners, and it seemed incredible to Amber that he could be her own, born of some brief ecstatic moment so many years ago.

His face was eager and joyous at seeing her again, but like a gentleman he paused just inside the door, swept off his hat, and bowed very formally. Amber ran forward with a little cry, dropped to her knees and flung her arms about him, kissing him passionately while her throat ached with tears. Abandoning his own manners then he returned her kisses but kept his face turned so that his father could not see the tears in his eyes.

“Oh, my darling!” cried Amber. “How fine you look! And how tall you’ve grown—and strong!”

He gave a surreptitious little sniffle, dashing the tears off his face with the back of one hand. “I’ve missed you, Mother. England’s so far away when you’re in America.” He grinned at her now, one brown hand on her shoulder. “You look mighty pretty, ma’m.”

She longed to break into sobs, but managed a smile. “Thank you, darling. I hope I’ll always look pretty to you.”

“Why don’t you come back to America with us? We live in a great house now, in Virginia. There’s room enough for all of us and more. Will you come, Mother? I’m sure you’d like it better than London—it’s mighty nice there, I promise you.”

Amber gave Bruce a quick glance, then kissed the little boy again. “I’m glad you want me to live with you, darling, but I don’t think I can. You see, this is where I live.”

He turned now and appealed to his father, with the air of one man stating a practical business proposition to another.. “Then why don’t we all live here, sir?”

Bruce dropped down so that his weight rested on his heels and his face was almost on a level with his son’s; he put one arm about the boy’s waist. “We can’t live here, Bruce, because I can’t leave the plantation. America is my home. But you may stay here, if you prefer.”

Quick disappointment showed on his face. “Oh, but I don’t want to leave you, sir. And I like America.” He turned back to Amber. “Will you come to visit us someday?”

“Perhaps,” said Amber softly, but she did not dare look at Bruce, and then she jumped to her feet. “Would you like to see your sister—Susanna?”

Together the three ran downstairs to the nursery where Susanna was being given her dancing-lesson by an exasperated Frenchman, and just as they arrived she was stamping her foot and screaming at him in a rage. She did not remember her brother at first for she had been only two and a half when he went away, but very soon they were chattering excitedly, exchanging news. Amber dismissed the servants and the four of them were left alone.

Bruce, for all that he seemed so grown-up, could not resist the temptation to brag to his little sister. For he lived in a great new country now, had sailed twice across the ocean, rode his own horse over the plantation with his father, was learning to sail a boat and had shot a wild-turkey just before they left. Susanna was not to be outdone.

“Pish!” she said scornfully. “What do I care for all that! I have two fathers!”

Bruce was taken aback for no more than an instant. “That’s nothing to me, miss. I have two mothers!”

“You lie, you rogue!” cried Susanna. Her challenge might have led to an open quarrel, but just at that moment Amber and Bruce interrupted with the suggestion that they all play a game.

After that she saw Lord Carlton frequently, and he came even when he did not bring the little boy. Usually he stayed no more than an hour or two, but he made no great effort to be secretive and Amber decided that marriage had not changed him as much as she had feared at first.

At last she grew bold enough to say to him one day: “What if Corinna finds out about us?”

“I hope she won’t.”

“Gossip spreads like the plague here at Whitehall.”

“Then I hope she won’t believe it.”

“Won’t believe it? Lord, how naive d’you think she is?”

“She’s not accustomed to London morals. She’ll likely think it’s malicious talk.”

“But what if she doesn’t? What if she asks you?”

“I won’t lie to her.” He gave her a quick scowl. “Look here, you little minx, if I find you’ve been up to any of your tricks I’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

Her eyes sparkled, her mouth smiled. She rolled over on the bed and her arms went about him, crushing her breasts against his shoulder. Their mouths came swiftly together. Corinna no longer existed for either of them.

As the time went by Amber’s confidence increased. For though he said that he loved Corinna she knew that he loved her too. They had shared so much together, there was so much between them, so many memories—those things remained in his heart and they would always remain there, she was sure of that. She began to feel that his wife was merely an inconvenience, a social handicap, and even Corinna’s great beauty held less terror for her than it had at first.

As she had expected, their meetings did not long remain secret. Buckingham, of course, and Arlington too must have known about them from the first—and, though Charles never mentioned it, undoubtedly he did—but all those gentlemen had other matters of greater importance to them than a woman’s love-affairs. The ladies of the Court, however, did not.

Lord and Lady Carlton had been in London less than a month when the Countess of Southesk and Jane Middleton came one morning to pay Amber a visit—and met Bruce just leaving. He bowed to them both, but though Mrs. Middleton gave him her most languishing look and Southesk tried to rally him into conversation, he made his excuses and left them.

“Oh, by all means, my lord!” gushed Southesk. “Do go along. Lord, I vow and swear no man’s reputation is safe if he’s coming out of her Grace’s chamber before noon!”

“Your servant, madame,” said Bruce, bowing again, and he walked away.

Middleton’s eyes followed him down the corridor, her pink lips pouting. “Lord, but he’s handsome! I vow and swear, the person in the world I most admire!”

“I told you! I told you!” cried Southesk gleefully. “He’s her lover! Come, let’s in—”

They found Amber taking a bath in a large marble tub set on a rug in the middle of her bedroom floor. There was asses’ milk in the water to cloud it and a white-fox robe was laid across the lower half of the tub, concealing her body from the waist down. The room was crowded with tradespeople all talking at once, and the monkey chattered, the parrot squawked, the dog barked. Just behind her stood the newest addition to her household, a tall blonde eunuch, handsome and no more than twenty-five. He was one of the many seamen captured each year by Algerian pirates and castrated to be sold back into Europe where they were bought as household ornaments by the finest ladies.

“No,” Amber was saying, “I won’t have it! It’s hideous! My God, look at that colour! I could never wear it—”

“But, madame,” protested the mercer, “it’s the newest shade —I just got it from Paris. It’s called ‘constipation.’ I vow and swear, madame, it’ll be all the fashion.”

“I don’t care. I’d look like a blowsabel in it.” And then, just as the two women came up behind her she gave a little cry of surprise. “Lord, ladies! How you sneak up on one!” “Do we so? We came in noisy as anything, your Grace. Your thoughts must have been elsewhere.”

Amber gave a little smile and snipped at the soap bubbles with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh, well—perhaps you’re right. You can all go now—” she told the tradesmen. “I don’t want anything more today. Herman—” She glanced over her shoulder at the eunuch. “Fling me a towel.”

Mrs. Middleton’s eyes were running appraisingly over Herman’s imposing physique and now she said, as though he were no human being but a mere inanimate object: “Where did you get this fine-looking fellow? My eunuch is a mere jack-straw—a frightful object, let me die.”

Amber took the towel and stood up to begin drying herself, conscious of their close jealous scrutiny. But let them stare as they could, she thought they would discover few flaws, for in spite of bearing three children she looked very much as she had at sixteen—her waist was as slim, her belly as taut and smooth, her breasts as high and pert. She had given herself the best of care, and yet perhaps she had been a little lucky too.

“Oh, I got him from what-d’ye-call—the East Indies merchant. He was mighty dear, but I think he makes a fine enough show to be worth the price, don’t you?”

Lady Southesk regarded him with contempt. “Gad, I wouldn’t have one of ’em about me! Filthy creatures! Unable to perform a man’s most significant function.”

Amber laughed. “Some of ’em will even do that for you, I’m told. Would you like to borrow Herman someday and find out if it’s true?”

Southesk looked furiously insulted at that, though certainly her reputation was none too tidy, but Middleton hastily changed the subject. “Oh, by the way, your Grace, whom d’you think we encountered just at your door?”

Amber gave her a quick narrow look, seeing that the cat was out. She was almost pleased, though she would not have dared spread the news herself. “Lord Carlton, I suppose. Do be seated, ladies. Pray, no ceremony here.”

Amber derived a great deal of malicious amusement from the etiquette which decreed that persons of inferior rank might sit in the presence of a duchess only with her permission, and then upon armless chairs. It pleased her every time a woman who had once ignored or sneered at her was forced to rise or to move to a less comfortable seat because she had entered a room.

Flinging the towel to Herman she slipped into a dressing-gown held by one of the maids, stuck her toes into a pair of mules and taking the bodkins from her hair gave it a vigorous shake. The glowing warmth which filled her each time she saw Bruce still lingered, and she had a wonderful sense of vigorous well-being. It seemed to her that life had never been more delicious or more satisfying.

“They say that Lord Carlton has a most wicked reputation,” Southesk told her now and Amber gave her a half-smile, one eyebrow raised. “I’m afraid your Grace’s reputation will suffer if he’s seen leaving your apartments very often.”

Before Amber could reply Middleton was prattling again.

“Lord, but he’s the finest person, let me die! I swear he’s the handsomest male I’ve ever clapped eyes on! But every time I’ve seen ’im he’s been so furiously absorbed in his wife! How the devil did your Grace contrive to make his acquaintance so neatly?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” cried Southesk. “Why, her Grace has known ’im for years!” She turned back to Amber and smiled sweetly. “Haven’t you, madame?”

Amber laughed. “I protest—you ladies are much better informed about all this than I.”

They stayed a few minutes longer, all three of them gossiping with idle viciousness of the doings of their friends and acquaintances. But Southesk and Middleton had found out what they had come for and soon they went off to spread the news through Whitehall and Covent Garden. Bruce, however, never spoke of it to Amber and, whenever she saw her, Corinna was as friendly and gracious as she always had been. It was obvious that she, at least, had no slightest suspicion regarding the Duchess of Ravenspur and her husband.

Then at last, some eight weeks after Lord and Lady Carlton had arrived, Amber went to call upon her—carefully choosing a day when she knew that Bruce had gone to hunt with the King. Corinna met her at the entrance to the sitting-room of their apartments in Almsbury House, and she smiled with genuine pleasure when she saw who her guest was. The two women curtsied but did not kiss for Corinna had not yet contracted the London habit and Amber could not have brought herself to it—though she habitually kissed and was kissed by many women she liked but little better.

“How kind of your Grace to call on me!”

Amber began to pull off her gloves, and in spite of herself her resentment and jealousy began to rise as her eyes flickered over Corinna. “Not at all!” she protested, very careless. “I should have called much sooner. But, Lord! there’s always such a deal of business here in London! One must go here and there—do this and that and the other! It’s barbarous!” She dropped into a chair. “You must find it a mighty great change from America.” Her tone implied that America must be a very dull place where there was little to do but tend babies and work embroidery.

But even as she talked her eyes were observing Corinna carefully, noticing every detail of her coiffure and clothes, the way she walked and held her head and sat. Lady Carlton was wearing a gown of pearl-grey satin with pink musk-roses thrust into the bodice and there was a fine strand of sapphires about her throat; she wore no other jewels except her gold-and-sapphire wedding-ring.

“It is different,” agreed Corinna. “But though it may sound strange I find there’s less to do in London—for me, at least—than in America.”

“Oh, we have a thousand diversions here—one needs only get acquainted with ‘em. How d’you like London? It must seem a great city to you.” Try as she would, Amber found that she could not speak without sarcastic overtones, belittling suggestions, a hint of superiority she was by no means secure in feeling.

“Oh, I love London! I’m only sorry that I couldn’t have seen it before the Fire. We left here before I was quite five, you see, and I couldn’t remember anything about it. I’ve always wanted to come back, though, for in America we all think of England as ‘home.’ ”

She was so poised, so quietly yet radiantly happy that Amber longed to say something which would shatter that serene protected world in which she lived. But she dared not. She could only murmur: “But isn’t it furiously dull—living on a plantation? I suppose you never see a living soul, save blackamoors and wild Indians.”

Corinna laughed. “I suppose it might seem dull to one who had always lived in a city, but it doesn’t seem dull to me. It’s such a beautiful land. And the plantations all front on rivers so that we travel easily by boat anywhere we want to go. We love to give parties—and often they last for days or weeks. The men are busy, of course, with their work, but they have time aplenty for hunting and fishing and gambling and dancing, too. Oh, forgive me, your Grace, I’m boring you with all this nonsense—”

“By no means. I’ve always wondered what America was like. Perhaps I’ll pay you a visit someday.” She could not imagine what had prompted her to say that.

But Corinna caught her up eagerly. “Oh, your Grace, if you would! My husband and I would love to have you! You can’t imagine what excitement it would cause! A duchess and a beauty in America! Why, you’d be feted in every great house in Virginia—but of course we’d keep you with us most of the time.” Her smile was so genuine, so guileless, that Amber boiled inside with resentful fury. Lord, but she must have lived a retired life! she thought scornfully.

Aloud she asked her: “When are you going over to France?” She had asked Bruce several times but had never received a definite answer, and since they had already been there two months she was afraid that they might be planning to leave very soon.

“Why—not for some time, I think.” Corinna hesitated a moment, as though uncertain whether she should say any more. Then quickly, with a kind of pride and the air of giving a precious confidence, she added: “You see, I’ve found that I’m with child and my husband thinks it would be unwise to start until after the baby has been born.”

Amber said nothing, but for a moment she felt sick with shock, her mind and muscles seemed paralyzed. “Oh,” she heard herself murmur at last. “Isn’t that fine.”

Angrily she told herself that she was being a fool. What did it matter if the woman was pregnant? What could that mean to her? She should be glad. For now he would be here longer than he had intended—much longer, for so far Corinna showed no evidence at all of pregnancy. She got to her feet then, saying that she must go, and Corinna pulled a bell-rope to summon a servant.

“Thank you so much for coming to call, your Grace,” she said as they walked toward the door. “I hope we shall become good friends.”

They paused just in the doorway now and Amber looked at her levelly. “I hope we shall too, madame.” Then, unexpectedly, she said something else. “I met your son yesterday in the Palace.”

A quick puzzled look crossed Corinna’s face, but instantly she laughed. “Oh, you mean young Bruce! But he isn’t my son, your Grace. He’s my husband’s son by his first wife—though truly, I love him as if he were my own.”

Amber said nothing but her eyes turned suddenly hard, and the swift fierce jealousy sprang up again. What do you mean! she thought furiously. You love him as if he were your own! What right have you to love him at all! What right have you to even know him! He’s mine—

Corinna was still talking. “Of course I never met the first Lady Carlton—I don’t even know who she was—but I think she must have been a very wonderful woman to have had such a son.”

Amber forced herself to give a little laugh, but there was no humour in it. “You’re mighty generous, madame. I should think you’d hate her—that first wife he had.”

Corinna smiled slowly. “Hate her? Why should I? After all—he belongs to me now.” She was speaking, of course, of the father, not the son. “And she left me her child.”

Amber turned about swiftly to shield her face. “I must go now, madame—Good-day—” She walked along the gallery but had gone only a few steps down the broad staircase when she heard Corinna’s voice again.

“Your Grace—you dropped your fan—”

She went on, pretending not to hear, unable to bear the thought of facing her again. But Corinna came hurrying after her, her high golden heels making a sharp sound as she walked along. “Your Grace,” she repeated, “you dropped your fan.”

Amber turned to take it. Corinna was standing just above her on the steps and now she smiled again, a friendly almost wistful smile. “Please don’t think me foolish, your Grace—but for a long while I’ve felt that you misliked me—”

“Of course I don’t—”

“No, I’m sure you don’t. And I shall think of it no more. Good-day, your Grace—and pray do come visit me again.”

CHAPTER SIXTY–THREE

ONE WARM NIGHT in early November there was a water-pageant on the Thames. This was a favourite entertainment of the King’s, and a group had gathered in his apartments to watch from the balconies. The skiffs and barges were decorated with flower-garlands and banners and a multitude of lanterns and flaring torches. From the other shore rockets shot up and fell back, hissing, into the water; streaks of yellow light crossed the sky. Music drifted from the boats and the King’s fiddlers played in a far corner of the room.

Under cover of the music, the rockets and confused chatter of voices, Lady Southesk spoke to Amber. “Who d’you think is Castlemaine’s newest conquest?”

Amber was not very much interested for she was concerned in keeping an eye on Bruce and Corinna where they stood, a few feet away. She shrugged carelessly. “How should I know? Who is it—Claude du Vall?” Du Vall was a highwayman of great current notoriety and he bragged that more than one lady of title had invited him to her bed.

“No. Guess again. A good friend of yours.”

Knowing Southesk, Amber now gave her a sharp glance.

“Who!”

Southesk looked over toward Lord Carlton and she lifted her brows significantly, smiling as she watched Amber’s face. Amber glanced swiftly at Bruce, then back at Southesk. She had turned white.

“That’s a lie!”

Southesk shrugged and gave a languid wave of her fan. “Believe me or not, it’s true. He was there last night—I have it on the very best—Lord, your Grace!” she cried now, in mock alarm. “Have a care—you’ll break your laces!”

“You prattling bitch!” muttered Amber, furious. “You breed scandal like a cess-pool breeds flies!”

Southesk gave her a look of hurt indignant innocence, tossed her curls and sailed off. Only a few moments later she was murmuring in someone else’s ear, a secret smile on her mouth as she nodded, very discreetly, in Amber’s direction. Amber, with as much nonchalance as she could muster, strolled over to link her arm through Almsbury’s, and as he greeted her she tried to give him a gay smile. But her eyes betrayed her.

“What’s the matter?” he whispered.

“It’s Bruce! I’ve got to see him! Right now!”

“After all, sweetheart—”

“Do you know what he’s been doing! He’s been laying with Barbara Palmer! Oh, I could murder him for that—”

“Shh!” cautioned the Earl, shifting his eyes about, for they were surrounded by a dozen pairs of alert ears. “What’s the difference? He’s done it before.”

“But Southesk is telling everyone! They’ll all be laughing at me! Oh, damn him!”

“Did it ever occur to you that they may also be laughing at his wife?”

“What do I care about her! I hope they are! Anyway, she doesn’t know it—and I do!”

When next she saw Bruce she tried to force him to promise her that he would never visit Barbara again, and though he refused to make any promises she later convinced herself that he did not. For she heard no more gossip and was sure that Barbara would not have been secretive about it. Her own affair with him, however, gained notoriety in an ever-spreading circle and though it seemed incredible, Corinna was evidently the only person left in fashionable London who did not know about them. But Corinna, Amber thought, was such a fool she would not have guessed that Bruce was her lover if she had found them in bed together.

She was mistaken.

The first night that Corinna had seen Amber she had been shocked by her costume and, later, sorry for her own bad manners in noticing it. The Duchess’s cold hostility she assumed to have been caused by that episode, and she had been genuinely pleased when she finally paid her a visit, thinking that at last she had forgotten it. But even before then Corinna had been aware that she was flirting with her husband.

In the four years since she had married him Corinna had watched a great many different kinds of women, from the black wenches on the plantation to the titled ladies of Port Royal, flirt with Bruce. Perfectly secure in his love for her, she had never been worried or jealous but, rather, amused and even a little pleased. She soon realized, however, that the Duchess of Ravenspur was potential trouble. She was, of course, extraordinarily lovely with her provocative eyes, rich honey hair and voluptuous figure—and what was more she had an attraction for men as powerful and combustible as was Bruce’s for women. She was no one any woman would like to find interested in the man she loved.

For the first time since her marriage Corinna was frightened.

Before long the other women began to drop hints. There were sly malicious little suggestions passed in the supper-table talk or when they came to call in the afternoons. A nudge and a glance would indicate the way her Grace leant over Lord Carlton as he sat at the gaming-table, her face almost touching his, one breast pressing his shoulder. Lady Southesk and Mrs. Middleton invited her to visit the Duchess with them one morning—and she met Bruce just coming out.

But Corinna refused to think what they so obviously wanted her to think. She told herself that surely she had enough sophistication to realize that idle people often liked to cause trouble among those they found happier and more content than themselves. And she wanted passionately to keep her belief in Bruce and in all that he meant to her. She was determined that her marriage should not be shaken because one woman was infatuated with her husband and others wished to destroy her faith in him. Corinna was not yet acquainted with Whitehall, for that took time, like accustoming oneself, after sunlight, to a darkened room.

But in spite of herself she found a mean resentful feeling of jealousy growing within her against the Duchess of Ravenspur. When she saw her look at Bruce or talk to him, sit across from him at the card-table, dance with him, or merely tap him on the shoulder with her fan as she went by, Corinna felt suddenly sick inside and cold with nervous apprehension.

At last she admitted it to herself; she hated that woman. And she was ashamed of herself for hating her.

And yet she did not know what she could do to stop the progress of what she feared was rapidly becoming an affair, in the London sense of the word. Bruce was no boy to be ordered around, forbidden to come home late or warned to stop ogling some pretty woman. Certainly there had been nothing so far in his behaviour which was real cause for suspicion. The morning she had met him leaving the Duchess’s apartments he had been perfectly cool and casual, not in the least embarrassed to be found there. He was as attentive and devoted to her as he had ever been, and she believed that she had a reasonably accurate idea as to where he spent his time when they were apart.

I must be wrong! she told herself. I’ve never lived in a palace or a great city before and I suppose I’m suspecting all sorts of things that aren’t true. But if only it were any other woman—I don’t think I’d feel the way I do.

To compensate in her heart for the suspicions she held against him, Corinna was more gay and charming than ever. She was so afraid that he would notice something different in her manner and guess at its cause. What would he think of her then—to know how mean she could be, how petty and jealous? And if she was wrong—as she persistently told herself she must be—it would be Bruce who would lose faith in her. Their marriage had seemed to her complete and perfect; she was terrified lest something happen through her own fault to spoil it.

Because of the Duchess she had come to dislike London—though it had been the dream of her life to revisit it someday—and she wished that they might leave immediately. She had begun to wonder if her Grace was the reason why he had suggested staying in London during her pregnancy—instead of going to Paris. That was why she did not dare suggest herself that they cross over to France to spend the time with his sister. Suppose he should guess her reason? For how could she explain such a wish when he had said it was for her own safety and both of them were so desperately anxious to have this child? (Their son had died the year before, not three months old, in the small-pox epidemic which was raging through Virginia.)

With some impatience and scorn she chided herself for her cowardice. I’m his wife—and he loves me. If this woman is anything to him at all she can be only an infatuation. It’s nothing that will last. I’ll still be living with him when he’s forgot he ever knew her.

One night, to her complete surprise, he inquired in a pleasant conversational tone: “Hasn’t his Majesty asked you for an assignation?” They had just come from the Palace and were alone now, undressing.

Corinna glanced at him, astonished. “Why—what made you say that?”

“What? It’s obvious he admires you, isn’t it?”

“He’s been very kind to me—but you’re his friend. Surely you wouldn’t expect a man to cuckold his friend?”

Bruce smiled. “My dear, a man is commonly cuckolded first by his friend. The reason’s simple enough—it’s the friend who has the best opportunity.”

Corinna stared at him. “Bruce,” she said softly. At the tone of her voice he turned, just as he was pulling his shirt off, and looked at her. “How strangely you talk sometimes. Do you know how that sounded—so cruel, and callous?”

He flung the shirt aside and went to her, taking her into his arms. Tenderly he smiled. “I’m sorry, my darling. But there are so many things about me you don’t know—so many years I lived before I knew you that I can never share with you. I was grown up and had watched my father die and seen my country ruined and fought in the army before you were ever born. When you were six months old I was sailing with Rupert’s privateers. Oh, I know—you think all that doesn’t make any difference to us now. But it does. You were brought up in a different world from mine. We’re not what we look like from the outside.”

“But you’re not like them, Bruce!” she protested. “You’re not like these men here at Court!”

“Oh, I haven’t got their superficial tricks. I don’t paint my eyebrows or comb my wig in public or play with ladies’ fans. But—Well, to tell the truth the age is a little sick, and all of us who live in it have caught the sickness too.”

“But surely I live in it?”

“No, you don’t!” He released her. “You’re no part of this shabby world. And thank God you’re not!”

“Thank God? But why? Don’t you like these people? I thought they were your friends. I’ve wished I could be more like them —the ladies, I mean.” Now she was thinking of the Duchess of Ravenspur.

His mouth gave a bitter twist at that. “Corinna, my darling, where can you have got such a foolish idea? Don’t ever dare think of it again. Oh, Corinna, you can’t know how glad I am that I saw you that day in Port Royal—”

Suddenly her fears and jealousies were gone. A great and wonderful sense of relief swept through her, washing out the hatred, the poison of mistrust that had been festering there.

“Are you glad, darling? Oh, I remember it so well!”

“So do I. You were on your way to church. And you were wearing a black-lace gown with a black veil over your hair and roses pinned in it. I thought you were Spanish.”

“And my father thought you were a buccaneer!” She threw back her head and laughed joyously, safe back there in those happy days when no slant-eyed minx with the title of “duchess” had existed to try to take him from her. “He was going to send you a challenge!”

“No wonder. I must have been a disreputable looking fellow. I hadn’t got ashore half-an-hour before. Remember—I followed you into church—”

“And stared at me all through the service! Oh, how furious father was! But I didn’t care—I was in love with you already!”

“Dirty clothes, five-day beard, and all?”

“Dirty clothes, five-day beard, and all! But when you came to call that night—oh, Bruce, you can’t imagine how you looked to me! Like all the princes out of every fairy-tale I’ve ever read!”

She looked up at him, her eyes illumined like stained-glass in a chapel. Suddenly his own eyes closed, as if to shut out the sight of something that troubled him, but at the same time his arms drew her close and his head bent to kiss her. Oh, you’ve been a fool! Corinna told herself. Of course he loves you—and of course he’s faithful! I’d see it when he looked at me, I’d feel it when he touched me, if he weren’t.

And yet, the next time she saw the Duchess of Ravenspur, her resentment was stronger than ever. For the woman looked at her, she knew it, with a kind of sliding contempt, a sort of secret sneer, as though she had an advantage over her. Her Grace seemed, however, more friendly than she had at first, and she always spoke to Corinna pleasantly.

But at last Corinna felt that she could bear this uncertainty, these jealous suspicions of hers no longer. And finally, as if in the hope that she could exorcise the demon by speaking its name, she determined to talk to Bruce, as casually as she could, about the Duchess—though it had been some time since she had been able to hear the woman’s name without wincing inside. They were coming home one night from the Palace when she forced herself to begin the conversation. She had known for a long time what she would say and had repeated the sentence over so many times that the words seemed to come out flat and stilted.

“How lovely the Duchess of Ravenspur looked tonight. I do think she’s more beautiful than my Lady Castlemaine—don’t you?” Her heart was pounding so that she could scarcely hear her own voice and her hands, clenched tight inside her muff, felt wet and cold.

Horsemen rode beside the coach and the torches they carried threw a bright unsteady light in upon them, but Corinna looked straight ahead. It seemed to her that he hesitated a long while before answering and those few seconds passed in torture. I should never have said it! she thought miserably. The sound of her name means something to him—something I don’t want to know about. I wish I had kept quiet–

Then she heard him say, with no more emotion in his voice than if it were some comment upon the weather: “Yes, I think she is.”

She felt a kind of sudden relief and now she said, almost gayly: “She flirts furiously with you. I suppose I should be jealous of her.”

Bruce looked at her and smiled faintly, but made no reply.

But Corinna was determined not to stop now that she had made the break. “Is it true she was once an actress? Or is that only gossip? The other women don’t seem to like her. They say terrible things about her—of course, they’re probably jealous,” she added hastily.

“Do women ever like one another? Not very often, I think. But it’s true she was an actress—several years ago.”

“Then she isn’t of quality?”

“No. Her people were yeomen farmers.”

“But how did she come by her fortune and title?”

“The only way a woman can come by such things if she isn’t born to them. Somehow she contrived to marry a rich old merchant, and when he died she inherited a third of his money. With that she bought a title—another old man. He’s dead too.”

“She’s married now, though, isn’t she? But where’s her husband? I’ve never seen him.”

“Oh, he comes to Court sometimes. I don’t think they’re very well acquainted.”

“Not very well acquainted! With her own husband!” Genuinely astonished at that, Corinna forgot her own wretched feeling of nervous tightness. “What did she marry him for, then?”

“To get a name for the King’s bastard, I think.”

“Oh, heaven! I feel as though I’m in a strange new world here! Everything seems to be turned upside down!”

“It is upside down—unless you’re standing on your head with the rest of them. You’ll be glad to get home again, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” Then, regretting her too hasty enthusiasm, she added, “But only because I miss Summerhill—and everything it means to us.” She turned her head to look up at him, and he was so close their lips brushed and then his mouth pressed down upon hers.

A few days later Corinna went with her waiting-woman to make some small purchases at the New Exchange. The Exchange, located far out on Thames Street, was a great blackened stone building with a double gallery on two separate floors. Each tiny shop had its own sign that hung so low that anyone of more than usual height must duck or dodge to avoid striking his head. The shopkeepers were for the most part attractive well-dressed girls—though there were a few young men—who kept daily court for their admirers. It was the most fashionable lounging-place and rendezvous of the town, much frequented by beaus waiting to meet some masked lady who had a father or husband to outwit. Pretty young women came there too, flirtation-bent—but always pretending to be very pert and disdainful when first approached.

With her woman Corinna mounted the staircase and strolled along the gallery. Stares and low whistles and audible comments followed her, for many of the fine ladies would rally with the gallants, bandying barbed compliments and insults sweetened with a smile. Corinna, however, had not caught this London habit either and she paid them no attention.

At last she paused before the booth of a pretty little woman, Mrs. Sheldon, who had been temporary mistress to several great men but was just now without a keeper.

“Good-day to you, Lady Carlton!” she cried pleasantly. “I didn’t know you were with his Lordship this morning.”

“Oh. Is my husband here?”

She turned, glancing around, and as if she had known exactly where to find him she looked across into the opposite corridor and saw him standing with his back to her, evidently talking to someone who was hidden by his size and bulk. Impulsively she started forward, intending to go around and surprise him, but just at that moment he stepped aside to let someone pass. She saw then that he was talking to the Duchess of Ravenspur.

Horrified, she stopped.

Could he have met her there by accident? Of course! With all her heart she wanted to believe that that was what had happened. But after all the doubts and hints and suspicions of the past weeks the sight of them standing there together could mean only one thing to her. Corinna turned back, trying to conceal her agonizing confusion and shame. Little Mrs. Sheldon looked as miserable as though she had unwittingly given away a state secret.

“He’s talking to a friend just now,” murmured Corinna, scarcely aware of what she was saying. “I’ll make my purchases and meet him below in the coach.”

“Can’t I show you the embroidered ribbons I told you about last week, your Ladyship? They came in on the packet-boat from France not two days since!” She almost fluttered as she talked and in spite of herself her eyes shifted again and again across to the opposite corridor. Red-faced over the terrible mistake she had made she was frantically piling great heaps of ribbons on the counter. Oh, if only it had been anyone else but Lady Carlton—so lovely, so gentle, so kind!

Corinna’s head was ringing and her eyes were blinded; she could see nothing but a blur of colour before her. “Yes,” she said softly. “I’ll have three yards of this—and ten of this, I think.”

Lord Carlton and the Duchess of Ravenspur were strolling toward them now, taking a leisurely path along the crowded corridor, absorbed in their own conversation. Quickly Corinna’s woman stepped around behind her mistress to shield her from them as they passed. And little Mrs. Sheldon was babbling distractedly in hope of keeping her from hearing their voices.

But Corinna’s ears, almost abnormally alert, heard the Duchess’s low-pitched voice, just as they went by, saying: “—and Bruce, only to think, we’ll have all—”

Corinna, holding with her fingers to the counter, her eyes closed, swayed slightly and felt herself growing sick and weak. Passionately she prayed that she would not faint and draw a crowd about her. But within a few seconds she had regained control of herself. “And I’ll take twelve yards of this silver ribbon, Mrs. Sheldon. I think that will be all.” Even before her waiting-woman had finished paying for them Corinna turned and started away in the opposite direction, longing to get back into the safety and solitude of her coach.

That night, to her own surprise, Corinna heard herself say to Bruce, in a voice which sounded impersonal and but politely interested: “What did you do this afternoon, darling? Play tennis with his Majesty?”

They were in the bed-chamber and he was writing a letter to his overseer while she sat brushing their three-year-old daughter’s hair. “For a while,” he said, pausing with the pen in his hand to glance around. “Then I went to the House of Lords for an hour or two.”

He returned to his writing and she continued, automatically, to brush Melinda’s hair. Even now that it had happened she could scarcely believe that he would lie to her. Melinda, a black-haired blue-eyed miniature of her mother, looked up into Corinna’s face with her eyes large and serious and solemn, ducking her head a little at each stroke of the brush. And at last as Corinna leaned over to kiss her an unexpected tear splashed onto the little girl’s head. Hastily Corinna brushed it away with her hand, lest Melinda should notice and ask why she was crying.

Corinna felt that her life had ended.

It was enough now for her merely to see the Duchess of Ravenspur look at Bruce to know that he was her lover. How could she have been so simple as not to have realized it long ago? For now she had no doubt that the affair had begun when they had first reached England—or perhaps much earlier. He might have met her when he had gone there in sixty-seven, for she knew that the Duchess had been at Court then and some of the women had taken pains to let her know about her residence at that time in Almsbury House.

They would have told her more—all the things she both wanted and dreaded to know—but she refused to let them. And for some reason, perhaps the very fact that she was so different from them, they were a little kinder; they did not force her to hear it against her will.

But this could not go on indefinitely. Something must happen—what would it be?

Would he send her back to her father in Jamaica and remain here in London himself? Or perhaps he would even take the Duchess with him to Summerhill—to her own lovely Summerhill which she had named and which they had built together out of their dreams and their love and their limitless plans and hopes for the future. All the things that were gone now. They must be gone, since he loved another woman.

For several days Corinna, not knowing what she should do, did nothing. She thought it could do no good to accuse him. For what did it matter whether he would deny it or not—since the fact could not be denied? He was thirty-eight years old and had always done as he liked; he would not change now and she did not in any real sense want to change him for she loved him as he was. She felt lost and utterly helpless here in this strange land, surrounded by strange manners and strange customs. The ladies here, she realized, had all of them doubtless met this same situation many times, tossed it off with a smile and a witty phrase and turned to find their own amusement elsewhere. She had never realized so acutely as now what Bruce had often told her—that she was not a part of this world at all. Everything inside her recoiled from it with horror and disgust.

When he took her into his arms, kissed her, lay with her in bed, she could not put the thought of that other woman out of her mind. She would wonder, though she despised herself for it, how recently he had kissed the Duchess, and spoken the same words of passion he spoke to her. Why doesn’t he tell me? she asked herself desperately. Why should he cheat me and lie to me this way? It isn’t fair! But it was the Duchess she hated—not Bruce.

And then one day Lady Castlemaine paid her a visit.

King Charles had recently given the Duchess of Ravenspur a money grant of twenty thousand pounds and Barbara was so furious that she was determined to make trouble for her in some way. She was convinced that any woman—even a wife—of Corinna’s beauty must have considerable influence with a man and she hoped to spoil her Grace’s game with Lord Carlton. Very convenient to her purpose, Rochester had just written another of his scurrilous rhymed lampoons—this one on the intrigue between the Duchess and his Lordship.

It was Rochester’s habit to dress one of his footmen as a sentry and post him about the Palace at night, there to observe who went abroad at late hours. With information thus secured he would retire to his country-estate and write his nasty satires, several copies of which would be scribbled out and sent back anonymously to be circulated through the Court. They always pleased everyone but the subject, but the Earl was impartial—sooner or later every man and woman of any consequence might expect to feel the poisonous stab of his pen.

For the first few minutes of her visit Barbara made trifling but pleasant conversation—the brand-new French gowns called sacques, yesterday’s play at the Duke’s Theatre, the great ball which was to be held in the Banqueting House next week. And then all at once she was launched upon the current crop of love-affairs, who slept with whom, what lady feared herself to be with child by a man not her husband, who had most recently caught a clap. Corinna, guessing what all this was leading to, felt her heart begin to pound and her breath choked short.

“Oh, Lord,” continued Barbara airily, “the way things go here—I vow and swear an outsider would never guess. There’s more than meets the eye, let me tell you.” She paused, watching Corinna closely now, and then she said, “My dear, you’re very young and innocent, aren’t you?”

“Why,” said Corinna, surprised, “I suppose I am:”

“I’m afraid that you don’t altogether understand the way of the world—and as one who knows it only too well I’ve come to you as a friend to—”

Corinna, tired of the weeks of worry and uncertainty, the sense of sordidness and of helpless disillusion, felt suddenly relieved. Now at last it would come out. She need not, could not, pretend any longer.

“I believe, madame,” she said quietly, “that I understand some things much better than you may think.”

Barbara gave her a look of surprise at that, but nevertheless she drew from her muff a folded paper and extended it to Corinna. “That’s circulating the Court—I didn’t want you to be the last to see it.”

Slowly Corinna’s hand reached out and took it. The heavy sheet crackled as she unfolded it. Reluctantly she dragged her eyes from Barbara’s coolly speculative face and forced them down to the paper where eight lines of verse were written in a cramped angular hand. Somehow the weeks of misery and suspicion she had endured had cushioned her mind against further shock, for though she read the coarse brutal little poem it meant no more to her than so many separate words.

Then, as graciously as if Barbara had brought her a little gift, perhaps a box of sweetmeats or a pair of gloves, she said, “Thank you, madame. I appreciate your concern for me.”

Barbara seemed surprised at this mild reaction, and disappointed too, but she got to her feet and Corinna walked to the door with her. In the anteroom she stopped. For a moment the two women were silent, facing each other, and then Barbara said: “I remember when I was your age—twenty, aren’t you?—I thought that all the world lay before me and that I could have whatever I wanted of it.” She smiled, a strangely reflective cynical smile. “Well—I have.” Then, almost abruptly, she added, “Take my advice and get your husband away from here before it’s too late,” and turning swiftly she walked on, down the corridor, and disappeared.

Corinna watched her go, frowning a little. Poor lady, she thought. How unhappy she is. Softly she closed the door.

Bruce did not return home that night until after one o’clock. She had sent word to him at Whitehall that she was not well enough to come to Court, but had asked him not to change his own plans. She had hoped, passionately, that he would—but he did not. She found it impossible to sleep and when she heard him come in she was sitting up in bed, propped against pillows and pretending to read a recent play of John Dryden’s.

He did not come into the bedroom but, as always, went into the nursery first to see the children for a moment. Corinna sat listening to the sound of his steps moving lightly over the floor, the soft closing of the door behind him—and knew all at once that little Bruce was the Duchess’s son. She wondered why she had not realized it long ago. That was why he had told her almost nothing at all of the woman who supposedly had been the first Lady Carlton. That was why the little boy had been so eager to return and had coaxed his father to take him back to England. That was why they seemed to know each other so well—why she had sensed a closeness between them which could have sprung from no casual brief love-affair.

She was sitting there, almost numb with shock, when he came into the room. He raised his brows as if in surprise at finding her awake, but smiled and crossed over to kiss her. As he bent Corinna picked up Rochester’s lampoon and handed it to him. He paused, and his eyes narrowed quickly. Then he took it from her, straightened without kissing her and glanced over it so swiftly it was obvious he had already seen it, and tossed it onto the table beside the bed.

For a long moment they were silent, looking at each other. At last he said, “I’m sorry you found out this way, Corinna. I should have told you long ago.”

He was not flippant or gay about it as she had thought he might be, but serious and troubled. But he showed no shame or embarrassment, not even any regret, except for the pain he had caused her. For several moments she sat watching him, the opened book still in her lap, one side of her face lighted by the candles on a nearby table.

“She’s Bruce’s mother, isn’t she?” she said at last.

“Yes. I should never have made up that clumsy lie—but I wanted you to love him and I was afraid that if you knew the truth you wouldn’t. And now—how will you feel about him now?”

Corinna smiled faintly. “I’ll love him just as much as I ever did. I’ll love you both as much as I ever did.” Her voice was soft, gentle, feminine as a painted fan or the fragrance of lilacs.

He sat down on the bed facing her. “How long have you known about this?”

“I’m not sure. It seems like forever, now. At first I tried to pretend that it was only a flirtation and that I was being foolishly jealous. But the other women dropped hints and I watched you together and once I saw you at the New Exchange—Oh, what’s the use going over it again? I’ve known about it for weeks.”

For a time he was silent, sitting staring with a scowl down at his feet, shoulders hunched over, elbows resting on his spread legs. “I hope you’ll believe me, Corinna—I didn’t bring you to London for anything like this. I swear I didn’t expect it to happen.”

“You didn’t think she’d be here?”

“I knew she would. But 1 hadn’t seen her for two years. I’d forgotten—well, I’d forgotten a lot of things.”

“Then you saw her when you were here last—after we were married?”

“Yes. She was staying here at Almsbury House.”

“How long have you known her?”

“Almost ten years.”

“Almost ten years. Why, I’m practically a stranger to you.” He smiled, looking at her briefly, and then turned away again. “Do you love her, Bruce—” she asked him at last. “Very much?” She held her breath as she waited for him to answer.

“Love her?” He frowned, as though puzzled himself. “If you mean do I wish I’d married her, I don’t. But in another sense-Well, yes, I suppose I do. It’s something I can’t explain—something that’s been there between us since the first day I saw her. She’s—well, to be perfectly honest with you, she’s a woman any man would like to have for a mistress—but not for a wife.”

“But how do you feel now—now that you’ve seen her again and can’t give her up? Perhaps you’re sorry that you married me.”

Bruce looked at her swiftly, and then all at once his arms went about her, his mouth pressed against her forehead. “Oh, my God, Corinna! Is that what you’ve been thinking? Of course I’m not sorry! You’re the only woman I ever wanted to marry—believe me, darling. I never wanted to hurt you. I love you, Corinna—I love you more than anything on earth.”

Corinna nudged her head against him, and once more she felt happy and secure. All the doubts and fears of the past weeks were gone. He loves me, he doesn’t want to leave me. I’m not going to lose him after all. Nothing else mattered. Her life was so completely and wholly absorbed in him that she would have taken whatever he was willing to give her, left over from one love-affair or ten. And at least she was his wife. That was something the Duchess of Ravenspur could never have—she could never even acknowledge the son she had borne him.

At last Corinna said softly, her head resting just beneath his chin: “You were right, Bruce, when you said that I belonged to a different world from this one. I don’t feel that I’m part of it at all—no Court lady, I suppose, would dare admit she cared if her husband was in love with someone else. But I care and I’m not ashamed of it.” She tipped back her head and looked up at him. “Oh, darling—I do care!”

His green eyes watched her tenderly and at last he gave a faint rueful smile, his mouth touching the crown of her head just where the glossy dark hair parted. “It won’t do any good for me to tell you I’m sorry I’ve hurt you. I am. But if you read any more lampoons or hear any more gossip—Believe me, Corinna, it’s a lie.”

CHAPTER SIXTY–FOUR

IN HYDE PARK there was a pretty half-timbered cottage set beside a tiny lake, where all the fashionable world liked to stop for a syllabub or, if the weather was cold, a mug of lambs’-wool or hot mulled wine. It was almost Christmas now and too late in the year to ride, but there were several crested gilt coaches waiting in the cold grey-and-scarlet sunset outside the Lodge. The drivers and footmen smoked their pipes, sometimes stamped their feet to keep warm as they stood about in groups, laughing and talking together—exchanging the newest back-stairs gossip on the lords and ladies who had gone inside.

A sea-coal fire was burning high in the oak-panelled great room. There was a cluster of periwigged and beribboned young fops about the long bar, drinking their ale or brandy, throwing dice and matching coins. Several ladies were seated at tables with their gallants. Waiters with balanced trays moved about among them and three or four fiddles were playing.

Amber—wearing an ermine-lined hooded cloak of scarlet velvet and holding a syllabub glass in one hand and her muff of dripping ermine tails in the other—stood near the fireplace talking to Colonel Hamilton, the Earl of Arran and George Etherege.

She chattered fluently and there was an ever-shifting, vivacious play of expression over her face. She seemed to be engrossed in the three of them. But all the while her eyes watched the door—it never opened that she did not know who came in or went out. And then, at last, the languid golden Mrs. Middleton sauntered in with Lord Almsbury at her elbow. Amber did not hesitate an instant. Excusing herself from the three men she wove her way across the room to where the newcomers were standing, Jane still pausing just within the doorway to give the crowd time to discover her.

Amber gave Middleton- only a vague nod as she came up. “Almsbury, I’ve got to talk to you! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

The Earl bowed to Mrs. Middleton. “Will you excuse me for a moment, madame?”

Jane looked bored. “Oh, lord, sir, you must excuse me! There’s Colonel Hamilton beckoning me now—I just recalled he asked me this morning to meet him here and I’d all but forgot, let me die.” With an airy wave of one small gloved hand she drifted off, not even glancing at Amber who seemed unaware she had ever been there.

“Come over here—I don’t want a dozen big ears listening to us.” They crossed the room to a quiet little corner near the windows. “Tell me what’s happened!” she cried without an instant’s hesitation. “I haven’t seen him alone for fourteen days! I write to him and he doesn’t answer! I talk to him in the Drawing-Room and he looks at me as if I’m a stranger! I ask him to visit me and he doesn’t come! Tell me what’s happened, Almsbury! I’m going stark staring mad!”

Almsbury gave a sigh. “My Lady Castlemaine showed his wife the satire that Rochester wrote about you—”

“Oh, I know that!” cried Amber scornfully, cutting him off. “But what’s happened to make him treat me like this!”

“That’s what’s happened.”

She stared at him. “I don’t believe you.” Both of them were silent, looking at each other, for a long moment and then Amber said: “But that can’t be the only reason. Just because his wife found out. It must be more than that.”

“It isn’t.”

“Do you mean to tell me, John Randolph, that he’s been using me like this because his wife told him to!”

“She didn’t tell him to. He decided it for himself. I may as well tell you the truth, Amber—he doesn’t intend to see you alone any more.”

“Did he tell you that?” Her voice spoke to him, just above a whisper.

“Yes. And he meant it.”

Amber stood helplessly. She put her drink down on the broad sill of the casemented window and stood staring out at the bare-branched trees. Then she looked up at him again. “Do you know where he is now?”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. You do know! And you’ve got to tell me! Oh, Almsbury—please tell me! You know how much I love him! If only I can see him again and talk to him I can make him see how foolish this is! Please, Almsbury—please, please! He’s going away soon and then I might never see him again! I’ve got to see him while he’s here!”

For a long moment he hesitated, looking at her shrewdly, and then finally he gave a jerk of his head. “Come along.”

As they passed Jane Middleton he stopped to speak to her but she tossed her curls and turned him a haughty shoulder. Almsbury shrugged.

The afternoon was cold and the mud hard and slippery with a thin layer of ice. Together they got into Amber’s enormous crested gilt coach which was drawn by eight tawny horses, their manes and streaming tails braided with gold and green ribbons. The coachman and eight running footmen wore her emerald-velvet livery and there was another dressed all in white and carrying a white wand with an orange fastened to one end for his refreshment, who ran ahead to proclaim her coming. Some of the footmen hung onto the sides, while others jogged along in back or went ahead to order the rabble out of the way. Inside, the coach was upholstered with emerald velvet, deep-tufted on seat and sides and roof, festooned with gold swags and tassels.

Almsbury gave the coachman his directions and then climbed in beside Amber. “He’s at his stationer’s in Ave Maria Lane, I think, buying some books.” He looked around him, whistling softly. “Jesus Christ! When did you get this?”

“Last year. You’ve seen it before.”

She answered him abruptly and without paying much attention for she was absorbed in her own thoughts, trying to plan what she would say to Bruce, how she would convince him that he was wrong. It was several minutes before Almsbury spoke again.

Then he said: “You’ve never been sorry, have you?”

“Sorry for what?”

“Sorry that you left the country and came to London.”

“Why should I be sorry? Look where I am!”

“And look how you got here. ‘All rising to great places is by a winding stair.’ Have you ever heard that?”

“No.”

“You’ve come by a winding stair, haven’t you?”

“What if I have! I’ve done some things I hated, but that’s over now and I’m where I want to be. I’m somebody, Almsbury! If I’d stayed in Marygreen and married some lout of a farmer and bred his brats and cooked his food and spun his linen—what would I be? Just another farmer’s wife and nobody would ever know I’d been alive. But now look at me—I’m rich and a duchess and one day my son will be a duke—Sorry!” she finished with scornful positiveness. “My God, Almsbury!”

He grinned. “Amber, my darling, I love you—But you’re an unprincipled calculating adventuress.”

“Well,” retorted Amber, “I didn’t have anything to start with—”

“But beauty and desirability.”

“There are other women aplenty who had that—hut they aren’t all duchesses today, I’ll warrant you.”

“No, sweetheart, they aren’t. The difference is that you were willing to make use of both to get what you wanted—and didn’t care too much what happened to you on your way.”

“Lord!” she cried impatiently. “You’re in a scurvy humour today!” Abruptly she leaned forward and rapped on the front wall, shouting at her coachman: “Drive faster!”

Ave Maria Lane was one of the tiny streets which formed a maze about the great burned pile of old St. Paul’s. When at last they arrived, Almsbury took her to the entrance of a new-built brick courtyard and pointed to one of the signs. “He should be in there—the ‘Three Bibles and Three Bottles of Ink.’ ” Too excited even to thank him, she picked up her skirts and ran into the court; he watched her go and, when she had disappeared into the building, turned about and left.

It was now dark outside and the shop was dim-lit; there was a thick dusty smell of ink, paper, leather and frying tallow. The walls were lined with book-shelves, all of them crowded, and piles of brown- or green- or red-bound volumes were stacked on the floor. In one corner, reading by a flickering light in the wall-sconce, stood a short plump young man. He had a pair of thick green spectacles on his nose, a hat on his head, and though it was close and too-warm in there he wore his cloak. No one else was in the room.

Amber looked about and was on the point of going through the door beyond when an old man came out, smiling, and inquired if he might help her. She crossed to him and asked, very softly so that if Bruce were there he would not hear her: “Js my Lord Carlton in there?”

“He is, madame.”

She put a cautioning finger to her lips. “He’s expecting me.” Reaching into her muff she took out a guinea and pressed it into his palm. “We don’t want to be disturbed.”

The man bowed, glancing surreptitiously at the coin in his hand, still smiling. “Certainly, madame. Certainly.” He grinned, pleased to be party to a rendezvous between his Lordship and this fine woman.

She went to the door, opened it, stepped inside and softly closed it. Bruce, wearing his cloak and plumed hat, stood several feet away examining a manuscript; his back was to her. Amber paused, leaning against the door, for her heart was pounding and she felt suddenly weak and breathless. She was almost afraid of what he might do or say when he saw her.

After a moment Bruce, without glancing around, said, “This manuscript of Carew—how did you get hold of it?” And then when he got no answer he turned and saw her.

Timidly Amber smiled and made him a little curtsy. “Good even, my lord.”

“Well—” Bruce tossed the manuscript onto a table just behind him. “I would never have taken you for a book-collector.” His eyes narrowed. “How the devil did you get here?”

She ran toward him. “I had to see you, Bruce! Please don’t be angry with me! Tell me what’s happened! Why have you been avoiding me?”

He frowned slightly, but did not look away. “I didn’t know any other way to do it—without a quarrel.”

“Without a quarrel! I’ve heard you say that a hundred times! You, who made your living fighting!”

He smiled. “Not with women.”

“Oh, I promise you, Bruce, I didn’t come to quarrel! But you’ve got to tell me what happened! One day you came to see me and we were happy together—and the next you’d scarce speak! Why?” She spread her hands in a gesture of pleading.

“You must know, Amber. Why pretend you don’t?”

“Almsbury told me, but I wouldn’t believe him. I still can’t believe it. You, of all men, being led by the nose by your wife!”

He sat down on the top of the table near which they were standing and braced one foot on a chair. “Corinna isn’t the kind of woman who leads a man by the nose. I decided myself—for a reason I don’t think I can explain to you.”

“Why not?” she demanded, half insulted at that. “My understanding’s as good as another’s, I’ll warrant you! Oh, but you must tell me, Bruce. I’ve got to know! I have a right to know!”

He took a deep breath. “Well—I suppose you heard that Castlemaine showed Corinna the lampoon—but she said she’d known we were lovers long before that. She’s gone through a kind of agony these last weeks we don’t know anything about. Adultery may seem no serious matter to us, but it is to her. She’s innocent, and what’s more, she loves me—I don’t want to hurt her any more than I have.”

“But what about me?” she cried. “I love you as much as she does! My God, I think I know a thing or two about agony myself! Or doesn’t it mean anything to you if I’m hurt?”

“Of course it does, Amber, but there’s a difference.”

“What!”

“Corinna’s my wife and we’ll live together the rest of our lives. In a few months I’ll be leaving England and I won’t come back again—I’m done travelling. Your life is here and mine is in America—after I go this time we’ll never see each other again.”

“Never—see each other again?” Her speckled tawny eyes stared at him, her lips half-parted over the words. “Never—” She had said that to Almsbury only an hour before, but it sounded different to her now, coming from him. Suddenly she seemed to realize exactly what it would mean. “Never, Bruce! Oh, darling, you can’t do this to me! I need you as much as she does—I love you as much as she does! If all the rest of your life belongs to her you can give me a little of it now—She’d never even know, and if she didn’t know she couldn’t be hurt! You can’t be here in London all these next six months and never see me—I’d die if you did that to me! Oh, Bruce, you can’t do it! You can’t!”

She threw herself against him, pounding her fists softly on his chest, sobbing with quiet, desperate, mournful little sobs. For a long while he sat, his arms hanging at his sides, not touching her; and then at last he drew her close against him between his legs, his mouth crushing down on hers with a kind of angry hunger. “Oh, you little bitch,” he muttered. “Someday I’ll forget you—someday I’ll—”

He rented apartments in a lodging-house in Magpie Yard, just about a mile from the Palace within the old settled district which had been missed by the Fire. They had two large rooms, furnished handsomely in the pompous heavy style of seventy years before. There were bulbous-legged tables, immense boxlike chairs, enormous chests, a high-backed settle next the fireplace and worn tapestry on the walls. The oak bed was of majestic proportions with carved pillars and head-board, and it was hung with dark-red velvet which, though faded by the years, showed a richer, truer colour deep in the folds. Diamond-paned windows looked down three stories into a brick-paved courtyard on one side and the noisy busy street on the other.

They met there two or three times a week, usually in the afternoons but sometimes at night. Amber had promised him that Corinna would never know they were still seeing each other and, like a little girl put on her good behaviour, she took the most elaborate precautions to insure perfect secrecy. If they met in the afternoon she left Whitehall in her own clothes and coach, went to a tavern where she changed and sent Nan out by the front door in a mask and the garments she had been wearing—while she left in her own disguise by some other exit. At night she took a barge or a hackney, but then Big John was always with her.

She went to a great deal more trouble than was really necessary to conceal herself, for she enjoyed it.

One time she would come in a black wig, calf-high skirt, rolled-up sleeves, a woollen cloak to protect her from the cold, with a trayful of dried rosemary and lavender and sweet-briar balanced on one hip. Another time she was a sober citizen’s wife in plain black gown with a deep white-linen collar and cap which covered her hair—but she did not like that and stuffed it into a chest, taking out something gayer to wear home. Again she dressed as a boy in a snug-fitting velvet suit and flaxen periwig and she went strutting through the streets with a sword at one hip, hat cocked over her eyes, a short velvet cloak flung up across her chin.

Her disguises amused both of them and he would turn her about to look at her, laughing while she mimicked the speech and manners of whomever she was supposed to be.

She was convincing in her roles, for though she sometimes passed people she knew on the street none of them ever recognized her. Once a couple of gallants stopped to talk to her and offered her a guinea to step into the nearest tavern with them. Another time she narrowly missed the King himself as he came along the river walking with Buckingham and Arlington. All three gentlemen turned their heads to look after the masked lady who was lifting her skirts to get into a barge, and one of them whistled. It must have been either the Duke or Charles himself—for certainly Arlington would never have whistled at a woman though she were walking down Cheapside stark naked.

Sometimes Bruce brought their son with him and occasionally she brought Susanna. They had many gay suppers together, often calling in a street fiddler or two to play for them while they ate, and the children thought it an exciting adventure. Bruce explained to the little boy, as well as he could, why he must never mention those meetings to Corinna; and Susanna could not betray them by some innocent remark for she never saw anyone who might guess what she was talking about but the King—and Charles was not the man to meddle in his mistress’s love-affairs.

Once, when there were just the three of them, Bruce brought Susanna a picture-book so that she could amuse herself while they were in the bedroom. Afterward, while Amber was dressing, Susanna was admitted and stood by her father’s chair thumbing through the book and asking him one question after another—she was not quite five and curious about everything. Pointing to one picture she asked:

“Why does the devil have horns, Daddy?”

“Because the devil is a cuckold, darling.”

Amber, just stepping into her three petticoats, each one of them starched crisp as tissue-paper, gave him a quick look at that. His eyes slid over to her, amused, and they exchanged smiles, enjoying the private joke. But Susanna persisted.

“What’s a cuckold, Daddy?”

“A cuckold? Why, a cuckold is—Ask your mother, Susanna; she understands those things better than I do.”

Susanna turned to her immediately. “Mother, what’s a—”

Amber bent over to tie her garters. “Hush, you saucy little chatterbox! Where’s your doll?”

About the first of March Amber moved into Ravenspur House, though it was not quite finished. It still had a look of raw newness. The brick was bright-coloured, for the London smoke had not had time to darken and mellow it. The grass in the terraces was sparse; the transplanted limes and sweet chestnuts, the hornbeam and sycamore were only half-grown; the hedges of yew and roses were yet too young to be trained or decoratively clipped. Nevertheless it was a great and impressive house and to know that it belonged to her filled Amber with passionate pride.

She took Bruce through it one day and showed him the bathroom—one of the very few in all London—with its black-marble walls and floors, green-satin hangings, gilt stools and chairs and sunken tub almost large enough to swim in. With a flourish she pointed out that every, accessory in the house was silver, from chamber-pots to candle-snuffers. She told him that the mirrors, of which there were several hundred, each framed in silver, had all been smuggled from Venice. She showed him her fabulous collection of gold and silver plate displayed, as was customary, on several great sideboards about the dining-room.

“What do you think of it?” Her voice almost crowed, her eyes sparkled with triumph. “I’ll warrant you there’s nothing like that in America!”

“No,” he agreed. “There isn’t.”

“And there never will be, either!”

He shrugged, but did not argue about it. After a while, to her surprise, he said: “You’re very rich, aren’t you?”

“Oh, furiously! I can have anything!” She did not add that she could have anything—on credit.

“Do you know what condition your investments are in? Newbold tells me he has a difficult time to make you leave any money at all with him to put out at interest for you. Don’t you think it might be wise to have two or three thousand pound, at least, where you couldn’t touch it?”

She was astonished, and scornful. “Why should I! I can’t trouble myself with those matters. Anyway—there’ll always be more money where this came from, I warrant you.”

“But my dear, you won’t always be young.”

She stared at him, a look of horrified and resentful surprise on her face. For though the passing years filled her with terror and her twenty-sixth birthday was but two weeks away, she had never let herself think that he might know she was growing older. In her own mind she would never be more than sixteen to Bruce Carlton. Now she sat, thoughtful and quiet, till they arrived back at the Palace, and once alone she rushed to a mirror.

She studied herself for several minutes, giving her skin and hair and teeth the most ruthless scrutiny, and finally she convinced herself that she had not yet begun to deteriorate. Her skin was as smooth and creamy, her hair as luxuriant and ripe in colour, her figure as fine as the first day she had seen him in Marygreen. There was, however, a change of which she was only vaguely conscious.

Then her face had been untouched by vivid experiences, now it gave unmistakable evidence of rich and full and violent living. The same eagerness and passion showed in her eyes and seemed, if anything, to have heightened. Whatever the years between had been they had served neither to destroy her confidence nor to moderate her enthusiasm; there was in her something indestructible.

Nan came into the room and found her mistress staring at herself with almost morbid intensity. “Nan!” she cried, the instant the door opened. “Am I beginning to decay?”

Nan looked at her, flabbergasted. “Beginning to decay? You?” She ran over to Amber and bent down to peer at her. “Lord, your Grace, you’ve never been handsomer in your life! You must be running distracted to say a thing like that!”

Amber looked up at her uncertainly, then back into the mirror again. Slowly her fingers reached up to touch her face. Of course I’m not! she thought. He didn’t mean that I was growing old. He didn’t say that. He only said that someday—

Someday—that was what she dreaded. She tossed the mirror down, got to her feet and walked swiftly across the room to begin changing her clothes for supper. But the thought that one day she would grow old, that her beauty—so flawless now—would perish at last, invaded her mind more and more insistently. She pushed it back but still it crept in, an insidious determined foe to her happiness ...

The first party that Amber gave at Ravenspur House cost her almost five thousand pounds. She invited several hundred guests and all of them came, as well as several dozen more who had not been asked, but who got in despite the guards stationed in front.

The food was deliciously prepared and served by a great horde of liveried footmen, all of them young and personable. There was champagne and burgundy in great silver tubs, and in spite of his Majesty’s presence several gentlemen drank too much. Music and shouts and laughter filled the house, reaching into every corner. While some of the guests danced others gathered around the card-tables or knelt in excited circles about a pair of rolling dice.

King Charles and Queen Catherine were there, as well as the town’s reigning courtesans. Jacob Hall and Moll Davis performed and—more privately—some of Madame Bennet’s naked dancing-girls. But the coup of the evening was when a harlot, who for some months had been attracting attention about town and amusing the Court by her credible imitation of Lady Castlemaine, arrived late wearing an exact replica of Barbara’s own gown. Amber had found out, by bribing one of the Lady’s serving-women, what she would wear, and had hired Madame Rouviere to duplicate the gown. Furious and humiliated, Barbara appealed to the King to punish the outrage, or at least send the creature away—but he was as much amused as he had been by the practical joke Nell Gwynne had played upon Moll Davis.

Barbara Palmer, Lord and Lady Carlton, and some few others left rather early, but everyone else stayed on.

At three in the morning breakfast was served, a breakfast as lavish as the supper had been, and at six the last stragglers were engaged in a pillow-fight. Two excitable young gallants fell into dispute, pulled out their swords and might have killed each other in the drawing-room—Charles was gone by then—but Amber put a stop to that and all their friends accompanied them to Marylebone Fields to settle the issue. And finally, exhausted but happy, Amber went upstairs to her gold-and-green-and-black bedroom to sleep.

Everyone seemed agreed there had not been such a successful party in months.

CHAPTER SIXTY–FIVE

AT FIRST AMBER was perfectly content to meet Bruce in secret. Having come so close to losing him she was grateful for the furtive hours, determined to savour to the full each moment they had together. For now she realized that he never would come back again and she saw the time running out—days, then weeks, then months, and her life seemed to be going with it.

But slowly a resentment began to grow. When he had said it she had believed implicitly that he really meant he would see her no more if Corinna found out. And yet he had broken one promise to his wife—why not others? And never, in the ten years she had known him, had he seemed so genuinely and deeply in love with her. It did not occur to her that she might be responsible for that herself—for she had never made so few demands, or been so unfailingly cheerful, without arguments or complaint. And so gradually she persuaded herself that she was of such great importance to him that no matter what happened he would never give her up. Consequently, she grew more dissatisfied with her lot.

What am I to him? she would ask herself sourly. Something between a whore and a wife—a kind of fish with feathers. I’ll be damned if he can continue to use me at this rate! I’ll let him know I’m no farmer’s niece now! I’m the Duchess of Ravenspur, a great lady, a person of quality—I won’t be treated like a wench, visited on the sly and never mentioned in polite company!

But the first time she hinted her indignation, his answer was definite. “This arrangement was your idea, Amber, not mine. If it no longer suits you—say so, and we’ll stop meeting.” The look in his eyes frightened her into silence—for a while.

Still she thought that there would always be a way to get what she wanted, and she grew more rebellious and defiant. By the middle of May her patience, which had been dragging thin these past five months, was worn through. As she went to meet him one day, bouncing and jogging along in a hackney, she had reached a peak of reckless and unreasonable irritability. Corinna was expecting her child In another month and so they could have no more than six or seven weeks at the longest left in England. She knew well enough that she had no business poking the hornet’s nest now.

But who ever heard of treating a mistress so scurvily! she asked herself. Why should I have to sneak about to meet him like a common pick-purse? Oh, a pox on him and his infernal secrecy!

She was dressed like a country-girl, perhaps come in from Knightsbridge or Islington or Chelsea to sell vegetables, and out of sentiment she had chosen a costume very much like the one she had been wearing the day of the Heathstone May Fair. It consisted of a green wool skirt pinned up over a short red-and-white-striped cotton petticoat, a black stomacher laced tight across her ribs, and a full-sleeved white blouse. Her legs were bare, she wore neat black shoes and a straw bongrace tilted far back on her head. With her hair falling loose and no paint on her face she looked surprisingly as she had ten years ago.

The day was warm for the sun had come out suddenly after a morning of early summer rain, and she had lowered the glass window. Rattling along King Street she came to Charing Cross where the Strand met Pall Mall, and as the coach drew to a stop she stuck out her head to look for him. The open space was filled with children and animals, beggars and vendors and citizens; it was busy, noisy, and—as London would always be to her—exciting.

She saw him immediately, standing several feet away with his back turned, buying a little basket of the first red cherries from an old fruit-woman, while a dirty little urchin pulled at his coat, begging a penny. Bruce had not taken to disguises with the same gusto she had but always wore his own well-cut unostentatious suits. This one had green breeches, gartered at the knee, and a handsome knee-length black coat with very broad gold-embroidered cuffs set on sleeves that came just below the elbow. His hat was three-cornered and both suit and hat were in the newest fashion.

Her face lost its petulant frown at the sight of him, and she leant forward, waving her arm and crying: “Hey, there!”

Half-a-dozen men looked around, grinning, to ask if she called them. She made them an impudent teasing grimace. Bruce turned, paid the old cherry-woman, tossed a coin to the little beggar, and after giving the driver his directions got into the coach. He handed her the basket of cherries and, as the hackney gave a lurch and started off, sat down suddenly. With quick admiration his eyes went over her, from her head down to her fragile ankles, demurely crossed.

“You make as pretty a country-wench as the first day I saw you.”

“Do I so?” Amber basked under his smile, beginning to eat the cherries and giving a fistful to him. “It’s been ten years, Bruce—since that day in Marygreen. I can’t believe it, can you?”

“I should think it would seem like many more than ten years to you.”

“Why?” Suddenly her eyes widened and she turned to him. “Do I look so much more than ten years older?”

“Of course you don’t, darling. What are you, twenty-six?”

“Yes. Do I look it?” There was something almost pathetic in her eagerness.

He laughed. “Six-and-twenty! My God, what an age! Do you know how old I am? Thirty-nine. How do you imagine I get around without a cane?”

Amber made a face, sorting over the cherries. “But it’s different with men.”

“Only because women think so.”

But she preferred to discuss something more agreeable. “I hope we’re going to have something to eat. I didn’t have dinner today—Madame Rouvière was fitting my gown for his Majesty’s birthday.” It was the custom for the Court to dress up on that occasion. “Oh, wait till you see it!” She rolled her eyes, intimating that he would be thunder-struck at the spectacle.

He smiled. “Don’t tell me—I know. It’s transparent from the waist down.”

“Oh, you villain! It is not! It’s very discreet—as discreet as anything of Corinna’s, I’ll warrant you!”

But, as always, she knew that it had been a mistake to mention his wife. His face closed, the smile faded, and both of them fell silent.

Riding there beside him, jogging about uncomfortably on the hard springless seat, Amber wondered what he was thinking, and all her grievances against him rushed back. But she stole a glance at him from the corners of her eyes, saw his handsome profile, the nervous flickering of jaw muscles beneath the smooth brown skin, and she longed to reach out and touch him, to tell him how deeply, how hopelessly, how eternally she loved him. At that moment the coach turned into the courtyard of the lodging-house and as it stopped he got swiftly out and reached a hand in to help her.

Chickens, clucking and cackling, had rushed for cover as the horses came in and a cat streaked out of the way of the wheels. The sun lay warm on the brick-paved yard though the smell of recent rain was there, and pots of flowers against the wall had put out green leaves and dainty buds, tipped with colour. Overhead, hanging from lines or flung across balcony railings, was the stiff-dried wash, bed-sheets and shirts and towels and the billowing smocks of the women. A little boy sat in the sun, stroking his dog and singing an idle endless song to himself; he looked up curiously but did not move as the coach stopped short of him by only a few feet.

Amber put her hand into Bruce’s and jumped down, flipping off her hat to feel the sun on her hair and skin, smiling at the youngster and asking him if he wanted some cherries. He was on his feet in an instant and after taking out a handful she gave him the basket. As Bruce had now paid the driver they strolled into the side entrance which led up to their apartments, Amber eating the fruit and spitting out pits as she went.

He had ordered a meal sent up and when they arrived the waiters were just leaving. A heavy white-damask cloth was laid on a small table before the fireplace, with flat silver and napkins, a seven-branched lighted candelabrum and handsome Italian dishes of wrought silver. There were strawberries in thick cream, a crisp broiled carp caught that morning in the river, a plateful of hot buns with a spattering of caraway seeds on them, and a jelly-torte—a delicious achievement with moist cooked apples in the center and apple-jelly poured over the whole. And there was a pot of steaming black coffee.

“Oh!” cried Amber in delight, forgetting that they had been on the narrow edge of hostility. “Everything I love!” She turned joyously and kissed him. “You always remember what I like best, darling!”

And it was true that he did. Time after time he had brought her unexpected gifts, some of the greatest value, others of none at all. If a thing was beautiful or if it was amusing, if it reminded him of her or if he thought that it would make her laugh, he bought it—a length of some marvellous green-and-gold glinting material, a fabulous jewel, or a mischievous monkey.

She flung her hat aside and loosened the laces of her corselet so that she would be more comfortable, and they sat down to eat. All her resentment had gone. They talked and laughed, enjoying the good food, absorbed in each other, both of them happy and content.

They had come at only a few minutes past two and it had seemed then that there was a long afternoon before them. But the sun had moved from where it had been falling across their dining-table, around to the bedroom, onto the recessed seat below the square-paned windows, and finally out of the room altogether. Inside it was already cool shadowy dusk, though not dark enough yet to light the candles. Amber got up from where she had been lying on the bed with a pile of nutshells between her and Bruce, and went to look out the window.

She was only partly dressed, bare-footed and wearing her smock. Bruce, in his plain-cut breeches and wide-sleeved white shirt lay stretched out and resting on one elbow, cracking a nutshell in his right hand, watching her.

She leaned out a little, looking toward the busy barge-laden river where the sun was going down, turning the water to red brass. Below in the shadows of the courtyard two men stood talking, turning their heads as a girl walked by with a slopping pail of water in each hand, her hair bright as flames where a last shaft from the sun struck it. There was a languor and quietness in the air as the long day drew to a close—and the movements of all creatures were slower and a little weary. Amber’s throat swelled and began to ache; her eyes were wet with tears as she turned to look across the room at him.

“Oh, Bruce, it’s going to be a glorious night. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to take a barge and sail up the Thames to some little inn and ride back in the morning—”

“It would,” he agreed.

“Then let’s!”

“You know we can’t.”

“Why not!” Her voice and eyes challenged him. But he merely looked at her, as though the question were superfluous. Both of them were silent for a few moments. “You don’t dare!” she said flatly at last.

Now it came welling back into her again, all the anger and resentment, the hurt pride and baffled affection of these past months. She came to sit beside him again on the rumpled bed, determined to have it out with him now.

“Oh, Bruce, why can’t we go? You can think of something to tell her. She’ll believe anything you say. Please! You’ll be gone so soon!”

“I can’t do it, Amber, and you damn well know it. Anyway, I think it’s time to leave.” He sat up.

“Of course!” she cried furiously. “The minute I mention something you don’t like to hear then it’s time to leave!” Her mouth twisted a little and there was bitter mockery in her tones. “Well, this is one time you’re going to hear me out! How happy d’ye think I’ve been these five months past—sneaking about to see you, scarcely daring to give you a civil word in company—all for fear she might notice and be hurt! Oh, my! Poor Corinna! But what about me!” Her voice was harsh and angry and at the last she hit herself a smack on the chest. “Don’t I count for something too!”

Bruce gave her a bored frown and got to his feet. “I’m sorry, Amber, but this was your idea, remember.”

She sprang up to face him. “You and your blasted secrecy! Why, there’s not another man in London coddles his wife the way you do her! It’s ridiculous!”

He reached for his vest, slipped it on and began to button it. “You’d better get into your clothes.” His voice spoke shortly and the line of his jaw was hard; the expression on his face roused her to greater fury.

“Listen to me, Bruce Carlton! You may think I should be pleased you’ll so much as do me the favour of lying with me! Well, maybe I was once—but I’m not just a simple country wench any longer, d’ye hear? I’m the Duchess of Ravenspur—I’m somebody now, and I won’t be driven around in hackneys or met at lodging-houses any longer! And I mean it! D’ye understand me?”

He took up his cravat and turned to the mirror to knot it. “Pretty well, I think. Are you coming with me?”

“No, I’m not! Why should I!” She stood with her feet spread and hands planted on her hips, watching him with her eyes defiantly ablaze.

The cravat tied, he put on his periwig, picked up his hat and walked through the bedroom toward the outside door, while Amber stared after him with growing fear and misgiving. Now what was he going to do? Suddenly she ran after him and just as she got to him he reached the door, took hold of the knob and turned to look down at her. For a moment they looked at each other in silence.

“Goodbye, my dear.”

Her eyes shifted warily over his face. “When will I see you again?” She asked the question softly and her voice was apprehensive.

“At Whitehall, I suppose.”

“Here, I mean.”

“Not at all. You don’t like meeting in secret—and I won’t do it any other way. That would seem to settle the matter.”

She stood and stared at him in horrified unbelief, and then all at once her fury burst. “Damn you!” she yelled. “I can be independent too! Get out of here, then—and I hope I never see you again! Get out! Get out!” Her voice rose hysterically and she lifted her fists to strike at him.

Swiftly he opened the door and went out, slamming it behind him. Amber flung herself against the panels and burst into wild helpless angry tears. She could hear his feet going down the stairs, the sound of his footsteps fading away, and then—when she quit sobbing for a moment and listened—she could hear nothing at all. Only the faint sound of a fiddle playing somewhere in the building. Whirling around she ran to the window and leaned out. It was almost dark but someone was just coming into the courtyard carrying a lighted link and she saw him down there, rapidly crossing the square.

“Bruce!”

She was frantic now, and thoroughly scared.

But she was three stories above the ground and perhaps he did not hear her; in another moment he had disappeared into the street.

CHAPTER SIXTY–SIX

SHE DID NOT see him at all for six days. At first she thought that she could make him come to her, but he did not. She wrote to let him know that she was ready to accept an apology. He replied that he had no wish to apologize but was satisfied to leave it as it was. That alarmed her, but still she refused to believe that all those tempestuous years, the undeniably powerful feeling they had for each other, could end now—tamely, uselessly, disappointingly—over a petty quarrel that could so easily have been avoided.

She looked for him everywhere she went.

Each time she entered a crowded room her eyes swept over it, searching for him. When she walked through the Privy Garden or along the galleries she expected and hoped to see him there, perhaps only a few feet ahead of her. At the theatre and driving through the streets she kept an eager alert watch for him. He filled her mind and emotions until she was conscious of nothing else. A dozen different times she thought that she saw him. But it was always someone else, someone who did not really look like him at all.

Not quite a week after their quarrel she went to a raffle at the India House in Clement’s Lane, Portugal Street, which opened just off the Strand and had several little shops patronized by men and women of fashion. On that day every surrounding street was blocked by the great gilt coaches of the nobility and crowds of their waiting, gossiping footmen.

The room, which was not a very large one, was packed full of ladies with their lap-dogs and blackamoors and waiting-women, as well as several gallants who stood among them. Feminine voices and high little shrieks of laughter babbled through the room like a spring freshet dashing headlong toward the river. China tea-dishes clinked and taffeta skirts whistled softly.

The raffle had been under way for an hour or more when the Duchess of Ravenspur arrived. Her entrance was spectacular, made with the sense of showmanship and ostentation which proclaimed her still more actress than great lady. Like a wind she swept upon them, nodding here and smiling there, well aware of the sudden lull she had caused, the murmurs that followed after her. She was, as always, splendidly dressed. Her gown was cloth-of-gold, her hooded cloak emerald velvet lined in sables and there was a spray of emeralds pinned to her great sable muff. The blackamoor carrying her train wore a suit of emerald velvet and his skull was bound in a golden turban.

Amber was pleased by their interest, malicious as it was, for only jealousy and envy ever got a woman such attentions from her own sex she thought. Next to a man’s admiration she valued a woman’s envy. Someone quickly placed a chair for her beside Mrs. Middleton, and as she took it Jane’s face clouded with the resentful troubled expression of a pretty woman forced into comparison with one far handsomer.

Amber saw at a glance Middleton’s ambitious costume, too expensive for her husband’s modest estate, the pearls that had been given her by one lover, the ear-drops by another, the gown in which she had been seen more times than was fashionable and which should have been on her waiting-woman’s back several weeks since.

“My dear!” she cried. “How fine you look! I vow and swear, that gown! Where’d you ever get it?”

“How kind of you to say so, madame, when of course you outshine me by far!”

“Not at all,” protested Amber. “You’re too modest, with every man at Court adying to be your servant!”

The fencing-match of compliments ended when a young Negro brought Amber a bowl of tea which she took and began to sip while her slanted eyes moved about the room—looking for him. He was not here either, though she would have sworn that was Almsbury’s coach in the street. They were preparing now to auction off a length of Indian calico—the expensive flowered cotton which the ladies liked to have made into morning-gowns, because of its extreme rarity. The auctioneer measured down an inch of candle and stuck a pin into it, the candle was lighted, and the bidding began. Middleton gave Amber a nudge and smiled at her slyly from over the top of her bowl, glancing off across the room.

“Well! Who d’ye think I see?”

Amber’s heart stopped completely and then began to pound.

“Who!”

But even as she spoke her eyes followed Middleton’s and she saw Corinna sitting just a few feet away, but half-turned so that only the curve of her cheek and the long black arc of her lashes was visible. Her cloak fell slantwise, concealing the grotesque bulge of pregnancy, and as she moved her head to speak to someone her full profile appeared, serene and lovely. Amber was seized with a fury of murderous hatred.

“They say,” Middleton was drawling, “that his Lordship is mad in love with her. But it’s no wonder, is it?—she’s such a beauty.”

Amber dragged her eyes away from Corinna, who either did not know that she was in the room or pretended not to know it, and gave Middleton a savage glare. The bidding was idle and the customers inattentive for, as at the theatre, they were more interested in themselves than in what they had ostensibly come for. Without much success the auctioneer tried to whip up some competition; the calico was a beautiful piece, printed in soft shades of rose and blue and violet, but the highest bid so far was only five pounds.

Amber was leaning across the woman on her left to talk to a couple of young men and the three of them were busily murmuring and laughing together over the newest scandal.

The night before Charles had gone with Rochester to the Russia House, a brothel in Moor Fields, and while the King’s attentions were occupied his Lordship had stolen his money and left. When he was ready to pay his fee and go Charles found himself penniless and was only saved from a severe beating when someone chanced to recognize him. Rochester had gone to take the country air and, no doubt, to polish a new set of lampoons which would soon flood the Court.

“D’you think it’s true?” Henry Jermyn wanted to know. “I saw his Majesty this morning and he looked as spruce as you please.”

“He always does,” the other reminded him. “It’s his Majesty’s great good fortune that his dissipations don’t show in his face—at least not yet.”

“We’ll never know if it’s true or not,” said Amber. “For he won’t tolerate being reminded the next morning of what he did the night before.”

“Your Grace should know.”

“They say he’s mightily taken with Nell Gwynne these days,” said Jermyn, and he watched Amber carefully as he spoke. “Chiffinch tells me he goes to see her two or three times a week, now her belly’s got so big she can’t hop in and out of hackneys.”

Amber knew that already, and in fact Charles had not visited her at night for several weeks. Ordinarily she might have been worried about it, but she had been too much concerned over Bruce to give it very much thought. He had neglected her before, and she knew that he would do so again, for the King liked variety in his love-affairs and no one woman could satisfy him for long. It was a habit he had contracted early in life and which he had never wanted or tried to change. But it made her angry to have others know and remind her that she was less a favourite than she had been on her first coming to Court.

She might have thought of something flippant to say in retort, but at that moment she caught the end of the auctioneer’s sentence: “—if no one else wishes to bid, this length of cloth goes to my Lady Carlton for the sum of six pound—” His eyes went over the room. “Is there another bid? No? Then—”

“Seven pound!”

Amber’s voice rang through the room, loud and clear and defiant; she was half startled herself to hear it. For certainly she had no use for that calico—pretty as it was; it was printed in colours she never wore and would not have considered wearing. But Corinna had bid for it, wanted it—and must not have it.

Corinna did not turn her head to look at Amber, but for several seconds she sat quietly, as if surprised or embarrassed. The auctioneer was setting up a lively chatter, sensing that these two ladies were rivals who might be persuaded to bid against each other. Amber, fully expecting that Corinna would retire meekly and let her have the cloth, was astonished when her voice, soft but determined, spoke again.

“Eight pound.”

Damn her! thought Amber. I’ll get it now if it costs me my last farthing!

The flame was burning close to the pin. In just a few moments the pin would fall out and whoever had made the last bid took the prize. Amber waited until the auctioneer was once more announcing that the cloth went to Lady Carlton and then she interrupted him.

“Twenty pound!”

The room had grown quiet now and at last they were taking an interest in the auction, for the Duchess of Ravenspur’s affair with Lord Carlton was known to all of them. They understood why she was so anxious to get the cloth, and they hoped to see her beaten and embarrassed. Their sympathy for Corinna was not great, but their resentment against Amber was. She had got too much, been too successful, and now even her sycophants and pretended friends hoped secretly for her unhappiness. No defeat of hers could be too small to give them satisfaction.

Corinna hesitated, wondering if it was not absurd to haggle with a woman who had neither the breeding nor the manners to appreciate that both of them were being made conspicuous in the worst possible way. Amber had no such misgivings. She sat tensely forward in her chair, her eyes wide and shining with excitement, fists clenched inside her muff.

I’ve got to beat her! she was thinking. I’ve got to! It seemed that nothing else in her life had ever been so important.

And while Corinna hesitated the flame burned closer to the pin, melting the wax, and slowly it began to droop. Amber was breathing faster, her nostrils flared a little and her muscles held taut. There! It’s sliding out! I’ve got it! I’ve won!

“Fifty pounds!” called a masculine voice, as the pin fell from the candle onto the table.

The auctioneer was holding the cloth in his hands, grinning. “Sold, for fifty pound, to my Lord Carlton.”

For a moment Amber sat, unable to move, while every other head in the room turned curiously to watch him making his way through the crowd. Then, as though her neck operated on a creaky hinge, Amber forced herself to turn her head, and just as she did so she looked up into his face. His green eyes met hers for a moment and there was a faint smile on his mouth; he nodded at her, and went on. She saw other smiles too, all around her, mocking jeering faces that seemed to close in upon her, to swim and dance all about her head.

Oh, my God! she thought wretchedly. Why did he do that to me? Why did he do it?

Lord Carlton now stood beside his wife and she was getting to her feet; her waiting-woman had gone to take the piece of cloth and she held it in her arms, triumphantly. Chairs scraped and moved, gentlemen stepped aside as Bruce and Corinna walked out. The room was murmurous as a bee-hive, and not every smirk was covered with a polite fan.

“Lord!” said a nearby baroness. “How’ll we shift if it should become the fashion for a man to prefer his wife to his whore?”

Amber sat there, feeling as though she were imprisoned where she could neither see nor breathe, and that if she did not somehow break her way out she would explode. Lord and Lady Carlton were gone now and the auctioneer was measuring down another inch on his candle, but no one paid him any attention.

“What d’ye know!” cried Middleton, ruffling her fan and showing her teeth in a simulated smile. “Aren’t men the most provoking creatures?”

All of a sudden Amber ground her heel on the other woman’s toe. Middleton let out a yelp of pain and reached one hand down to massage her injured foot. Threateningly she glared back up at Amber, but Amber ignored her. She was sipping her tea, eyes cast into the bowl, and she did not so much as give a surreptitious glance around the room to see who was watching her, for she knew that they all were.

But later at home she was so sick that she vomited and went to bed and wished she would die. She contemplated suicide—or at least some spectacular try at suicide to rouse his sympathy and bring him back to her. But she was afraid that even that might not succeed. Something in the expression of his eyes, seen for just that moment as he passed, had convinced her at last that he was done with her. She knew—but she would not accept it.

Somehow, somehow, she told herself, I can win him back again. I know I can. I’ve got to! If only I can talk to him again I can make him see how foolish this is—

But now he did not even answer her notes. The messengers she sent came back empty-handed. She tried to meet him herself. Once she dressed in boy’s clothes and went to Almsbury House. She waited more than an hour in the rain at the door he was supposed to leave by, but did not see him. She had her informers posted everywhere, to let her know the moment he entered the Palace grounds, but apparently he never came to Whitehall any more. At last she sent him a challenge to a duel —the one infallible means she knew to make him see her again.

“For some months, sir,” it read, “I have suffered the embarrassment of being your cuckold. This has damaged the repute of my family, as well as of myself, and to repair the honour of my house I do hereby challenge your person to mine, by whatever arms you may choose, and do request your attendance at five of the clock tomorrow morning on the twenty-eighth day of May in Tothill Fields where the three great oaks stand by the river. Pray, sir, do me the favour of keeping our rendezvous a secret, and come to it unattended. Your humble servant, sir, Gerald, Duke of Ravenspur.”

Amber thought it had the ring of authenticity and sent Nan to an amanuensis to have it copied in a hand like Gerald’s, for though she knew it was unlikely Bruce had ever seen his writing, she intended to take no chances. If this failed—But it couldn’t fail! He had to come—no gentleman dared refuse a cartel.

But Nan protested. “If your husband had been going to fight ’im at all, he wouldn’t have waited till now.”

Amber would hear no objections. “Why not? Look how long it took the Earl of Shrewsbury to challenge Buckingham!”

Early the next morning while the Palace was still asleep, she set out on horseback, attended only by Big John Waterman. She wore a riding-habit of sage-green velvet embroidered in gold, and the brim of her Cavalier’s hat was loaded with garnet-coloured ostrich-plumes. Though she had scarcely slept at all excitement kept her from feeling or looking tired. They clattered down King Street and through the narrow dirty little village of Westminster into the green fields beyond, past the Horse Ferry and out to the three great oaks. There Amber dismounted and Big John went on with her horse; he was to keep out of sight and not to return until she gave him a signal.

It was just beginning to grow light and she stood there alone for several moments, surrounded by quiet familiar country sounds: the river washing its banks, the “tick-tick” of a stonechat, the unseen scurrying of many little creatures. All about her the fog moved gently, like breath blown on a cold morning. She watched a Polly Dishwasher dragging at a worm, cocking its head in bewilderment when the captive slipped away and disappeared into the earth again. She laughed nervously aloud at that and then started suddenly, glancing around her. Quickly she darted back behind the tree, out of sight, for he was riding toward her across the meadow.

She did not dare to peek for fear he would see her, wheel about and go back, but she could hear the sound of hoofs coming over the soggy ground and her heart sped with relief and apprehension. Now that he was here—what would he do? She had never had less confidence in her ability to coerce and charm him.

She could hear the horse, heaving and panting, and she heard him talking to it as he swung down and stood there beside it. Trying to screw up the courage to show herself she hesitated several moments longer. At last he gave a short impatient shout.

“Hey! Are you ready?”

Her throat was too dry and tight for her to answer, but she stepped out from behind the tree and confronted him. Her head was lowered a little, like a child who expects a beating, but her eyes darted up quickly to his face. He did not look very much surprised but gave her a faint one-sided smile.

“So it is you,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think your husband was an ardent duellist. Well—” He had been holding his cloak in his hand and now he swung it on again, turned and walked back to where his horse was grazing.

“Bruce!” She ran toward him. “You’re not going! Not yet! I’ve got to talk to you!” She reached for him, seizing his forearms, and he paused, looking down at her.

“What about? Everything there is to be said between us has been said a thousand times.”

There was no smile on his face now, but seriousness and the impatience and simmering anger she had come to recognize and to dread.

“No it hasn’t! I’ve got to tell you how sorry I am! I don’t know what happened to me that day—I must have been crazy! Oh, Bruce—you can’t do this to me! It’s killing me, I swear it is! Please, darling, please—I’ll do anything, anything in the world if only I can see you again!” Her voice was intense and passionate, pleading with wild desperation. She felt that she had to convince him somehow, or die.

But he looked skeptical, as he always had at her extravagant promises and threats. “I’ll be damned if I know what you want. But one thing I do know, and that’s that we’re done meeting. I’m not going to cause my wife any more unpleasantness when her confinement is so near.”

“But she’d never know!” protested Amber, frantic at the uncompromising hardness she saw on his face.

“Less than a week ago she got a letter telling her that we were still seeing each other.”

Amber looked at him in momentary surprise, for she had not sent it herself and had not known of it, and then a pleased secret smile came to her lips.

“What did she say?”

A look of disgust flickered across his face. “She didn’t believe it.”

“Didn’t believe it! She must be an awful fool!”

Suddenly she stopped, one hand clapped to her mouth, staring at him and wishing that she could bite off her own treacherous tongue. Her eyes fell and all her spirit crumpled.

“Oh,” she murmured, “forgive me for that!”

After a long moment she looked up again to find him watching her, some strange expression of mingled tenderness and anger in his eyes. They stood there while several moments passed, eyes locked. And then all at once she gave a little sobbing cry and flung herself against him, her arms about his back, her body pressed close to his. For a moment he stood perfectly still and then his hands took hold of her shoulders, his fingers pressed hard into her flesh. With a wild exultant sense of triumph she saw the expression on his face shift and change.

Her eyes closed and her head tipped back. She felt almost delirious with the violence of her desire. Everything else had been swept away but a longing for union with him. Her mouth, moist and parted, formed his name.

“Bruce—”

He gave her a sudden rude hard shake. “Amber!”

Her head snapped and her eyes opened, looking up at him dizzily. Slowly he bent and kissed her mouth, but his hands held her forearms so that she could not move. Then all at once he released her and before she had recovered her senses he walked swiftly to his horse, mounted, and set out at a gallop back toward the city. Amber stood there alone beneath the trees, still too stunned to move or cry out, and helplessly watched him go. The pale white light of daybreak was beginning to sift down through the leaves upon her uncovered head.

CHAPTER SIXTY–SEVEN

MINETTE WAS COMING to England again. It would be the first time she had seen her two brothers since the joyous days just after the Restoration when, a gay sixteen-year-old, she had come visiting with her mother. That had been the beginning of a new life for all of them—a life which promised to repay the long dark years of wandering and hopelessness. Ten years had passed since then. Now there were only three of all the nine children still living—Charles, James, and Henriette Anne. The Queen Mother had died eight months before.

The visit had been planned for more than two years, but each time it had had to be postponed—usually through the jealous malice of her husband. At last, however, Charles had a pretext of such importance that Monsieur and his objections were thrust aside. England and France were to form a secret alliance and when Charles demanded that this sister be allowed to visit him before he would conclude it, Louis told his younger brother that state interests came first. But he did allow Monsieur to refuse her permission to go beyond Dover.

Dover was a fog-laden dirty little town of only one narrow ill-paved street about a mile long, lined with ramshackle cottages and inns. The great old castle had guarded the coast in feudal times, an impregnable barrier to invasion, but after the invention of cannon it had fallen into disuse and was now merely a prison. The English Court came into the village—the men first, for Charles still hoped that Monsieur might be persuaded to let her go on to London—in gilt coaches and on gorgeously caparisoned horses. Early the next morning the French fleet was sighted, far out in the Channel.

Charles, who had been up most of the night, restless and impatient, immediately got into a small boat with York and Rupert and Monmouth and set out to meet her. He stood up recklessly, constantly urging the men to row faster and faster, until it seemed their arms would tear from the sockets. The French fleet bobbed toward them over the waves, gilded hulls gleaming in the bright early sunlight, coloured sails blown up like fat bellies by the wind. The clouds looked white as suds where they lay piled on the horizon and sea and sky were sharp stinging blue.

James came to stand beside his brother, dropping one arm about his shoulders, and Charles, with his own arm around the Duke’s waist, grinned at him, his black eyes shining with happiness and excitement. The ships were now coming so close that it was possible to make out figures moving on deck, though they could not yet be distinguished individually.

“Only think of it, Jamie!” cried Charles. “After ten years—we’re going to see her again!”

And then all at once it was possible to pick out Madame who stood in the fore-deck, her white satin gown whipping about her, eyes shaded with her fan against the glare of the water; as she raised her arm and waved to them the brothers gave an excited shout.

“Minette!”

“James, it’s Minette!”

Swiftly the barge and the French sailing-vessel drew together. They had scarcely touched when Charles made a leap and started up the rope ladder, hand over hand, as swiftly and easily as though he had lived all his life at sea. Minette ran forward to meet him and as he bounded onto the deck she rushed into his arms.

He held her close to him and his mouth touched the sleek-brushed crown of her head; there were emotional happy tears in his eyes and Minette wept softly. Instinctively he spoke to her in French, for it was her language, and the words were like a tender caress.

“Minette,” he murmured. “Ma chère petite Minette—”

All at once she tipped back her head and looked up at him with a laugh, quickly brushing the tears away with her finger-tips. “Oh, my dear! I’m so happy I’m crying! I was afraid I would never see you again!”

Charles looked at her silently, adoration in his eyes, but also a dark anxiety—for he had seen at once how greatly, how tragically she had changed in ten years. Then she had been still half a child, buoyant, eager, unafraid—wholly delightful; now she was completely a woman, poised, accomplished, worldly, with a kind of heart-wringing charm. But she was too thin and even behind the joyous laughter on her face was a seriousness that troubled him, for he knew what had caused it. Pretending could not fool him; she was unhappy, and she was ill.

The other men had come aboard and Charles released her while she embraced first James, then Rupert and Monmouth. Finally Minette stood with Charles and James on either side of her, her arms linked with theirs, her face radiant as she looked from one to the other. “We’re together again at last—all three of us.” The brothers were in deep-purple mourning for their mother, and Minette too wore royal mourning—a simple white satin gown with a thin black veil thrown over her hair.

None of them dared say what each was thinking: There are only three of us left now—how long shall we be together?

Behind the royal family on the deck stood a splendid crowd of men and women, for though Minette’s suite was a small one of only about two hundred and fifty persons, each had been selected with the utmost care: the women for beauty and grace, the men for gallantry and a great name.

Among them, her eyes fixed intently on the English King, was a pretty young woman with the face of a little girl grown up and become sophisticated—Louise de Kerouaille, whose family, though ancient and honourable, was no longer rich. This trip was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her, her first real opportunity to make a place for herself in the great world where she knew she belonged. There was speculation in her eyes now as she watched Charles, admiring his dark saturnine good looks, his height and broad shoulders and handsome physique. She caught her breath with a quick little gasp as Minette and the two men turned, and the King’s eyes flickered briefly over her face.

Putting up her fan she whispered to the woman beside her: “Ninon—do you suppose that all the stories they tell about him are true?”

Ninon, perhaps a little jealous, gave Louise a look of amused scorn. “You are naive!” At that moment Charles glanced at her again; faintly he smiled.

But though he was never too much occupied to notice a pretty woman, Charles had no real interest now in anything but his sister. “How long can you stay?” was the first question he asked her when the greetings were over.

Minette gave him a rueful little smile. “Just three days,” she said softly.

Charles’s black eyes snapped and his brows drew swiftly together. “Monsieur says so?”

“Yes.” Her voice had a guilty sound, as though she were ashamed for her husband. “But he—”

“Don’t say it—I don’t want to hear you making excuses for him. But I think,” he added, “that perhaps he will reconsider.”

Monsieur reconsidered.

A messenger was back from across the Channel the next morning bringing word that Madame might remain ten days longer, provided she did not leave Dover. Minette and Charles were jubilant. Ten days! Why, it was almost an age. He was coldly furious to think that the conceited foppish little Frenchman had dared tell his sister where she might go on her holiday, but Louis sent a note asking him to respect Phillipe’s wishes in this matter, for Monsieur had learned of the treaty and might talk indiscreetly if angered too far.

Queen Catherine and all the ladies of the Court came down from London, and with the brief time he had Charles set about doing what he could to make the dismal little sea-coast village into a place fit for the entertainment of the person he loved best on earth. Dover Castle was cold and dark and damp, with the scant furnishings of feudal austerity; but it came alive again when the walls were hung with lengths of golden cloth; and scarlet and sapphire and vivid green banners streamed down from the windows. But even the Castle was not large enough to house them all and lords and ladies of both Courts were quartered in cottages or crammed into inns.

These inconveniences did not trouble anyone, and through every hour ran the noisy laughter and gay high spirits of a Court on holiday. Gilt coaches rattled through the narrow rocky little street. Handsomely gowned women and men in perukes and embroidered coats were seen in the tight courtyards, in the public-rooms of taverns and inns. Life was a continuous round of plays and banquets, balls at night and magnificent collations. While they danced and gambled flirtations sprang up like green shoots after rain between French ladies and English gentlemen, French gentlemen and English ladies. The gossip was that Madame had come to England for the very solemn purpose of laughing the English out of their own styles and back into French ones—temporarily discarded during the War—and that set the tone of the festivities.

Yet the plots and intrigues went on. They could no more be suspended, even temporarily, than could the force of gravity—for they were what held the Court together.

It took only a few days to get the treaty signed; it had been in preparation more than two years and there was little left to do but put the signatures to it. Arlington and three others signed for England, de Croissy for France.

For Charles it marked the successful culmination of ten years of planning. French money would free him, in part at least, from his Parliament; French men and ships would help him to the defeat of his country’s most dangerous enemy, the Dutch. In return he gave nothing but a promise—a promise that one day, at his own convenience, he would declare himself a Catholic. Charles was much amused to see how eager the French envoy was to complete the business, how eager they were to pay him for protection against a war he had never intended to wage.

“If everything I’ve ever done,” he said to Arlington, when it was signed and complete, “dies when I die—at least I’ll leave England this much. This treaty is a promise that one day she’ll be the greatest nation on earth. Let my French cousin have the Continent if he wants it. The world is wide, and when we’ve destroyed the Dutch all the seas on it will belong to England.”

Arlington, who sat with one weary hand pressed to his aching head, sighed a little. “I hope she’ll be grateful, Sire.”

Charles grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and reached down to give him a friendly pat. “Grateful, Harry? When was a nation or a woman ever grateful for the favours you do her? Well—I think my sister’s abed now; I always pay her a call last thing at night. You’ve been working too hard these past few days, Harry. Better take a sleeping-potion and have a good night’s rest.” He went out of the room.

He found Minette sitting up waiting for him in the enormous canopied four-poster bed. The last of her waiting-women were straggling out, and half-asleep on her lap was her little tan-and-black spaniel, Mimi. He took a chair beside her and for a moment they sat silent, smiling, looking at each other. Charles reached out one hand and covered both her own.

“Well,” he said. “It’s done.”

“At last. I can scarcely believe it. I’ve worked hard for this, my dear—because I thought it was what you wanted. Louis has often accused me of minding your interests more than his own.” She laughed a little. “You know how tender his pride is.”

“I think it’s more than pride, Minette—don’t you?” His smile teased her, for rumours still persisted that Louis had been madly in love with her several years before and had not yet quite recovered.

But she did not want to talk about that. “I don’t know. My brother—there’s something you must promise me.”

“Anything, my dear.”

“Promise me that you won’t declare your Catholicism too soon.”

A look of surprise came into Charles’s eyes, but was quickly gone. His face seldom betrayed him. “Why do you say that?”

“Because the King is troubled about it. He’s afraid you may declare yourself and alienate the German Protestant princes-he needs them when we fight Holland. And he fears that the English people would not tolerate it—he thinks that the best time would be in the midst of a victorious war.”

An almost irresistible smile came to Charles’s mouth, but he forced it back.

So Louis thought that the English people would not tolerate a Catholic king—and was afraid that a revolution in England might spread to France. He regarded his French cousin with a kind of amused contempt, but was glad it was always possible to hoodwink him. Charles had never intended and did not now intend to try to force Catholicism on his people—of course they would not tolerate it—and he preferred to keep his throne. It was his expectation to die quietly in his bed at Whitehall.

Nevertheless he answered Minette seriously, for even she did not share all his secrets. “I won’t declare myself without consulting his interests. You may tell him so for me.”

She smiled, and her little hand pressed his affectionately. “I’m glad—for I know how much it means to you.”

Almost ashamed, he quickly lowered his eyes.

I know how much it means to you, he repeated to himself. How much it means—He made a fervent wish that it would always mean as much to her as it did now. He did not want her ever to know what it was to believe in nothing, to have faith in nothing. He looked up again. His eyes brooded over her, his dark face earnest and unsmiling.

“You’re thin, Minette.”

She seemed surprised. “Am I? Why—perhaps I am.” She looked down at herself and as she moved the spaniel gave a resentful little grunt, telling her to be still. “But I’ve never been plump, you know. You’ve always called me ‘Minette.’”

“Are you feeling well?”

“Why, yes, of course.” She spoke quickly, like one who hates to tell a lie. “Oh—perhaps a headache now and then. I may be a little tired from all the excitement. But that will soon pass.”

His face hardened slowly. “Are you happy?”

Now she looked as though he had trapped her. “Mon Dieu! What a question! What would you say if someone asked you, ‘Are you happy?’ I suppose I’m as happy as most people. No one is ever truly happy, do you think? If you get even half of what you want from life—” She gave a little shrug and gestured with one hand. “Why, that’s all one can hope for, isn’t it?”

“And have you got half of what you wanted from life?”

She glanced away from him, down at the ornate carved footboard of the bed; her fingers stroked through Mimi’s scented glossy coat. “Yes, I think I have. I have you—and I have France: I love you both—” She looked up with a sudden wistful little smile. “And I think that both of you love me.”

“I do love you, Minette. I love you more than anyone or anything on earth. I’ve never thought that many men are worth a friendship or many women worth a man’s love. But with you it’s different, Minette. You’re all that matters in the world to me—”

Her eyes took on a mischievous sparkle. “All that matters to you? Come now, you can’t really mean that when you have—”

He answered her almost roughly. “I’m not jesting. You’re all I have that matters to me—These other women—” He shrugged. “You know what they’re for.”

Minette shook her head gently. “Sometimes, my brother, I’m almost sorry for your mistresses.”

“You needn’t be. They love me as little as I love them. They get what they want, and most of them more than they’re worth. Tell me, Minette—how has Philippe treated you since the Chevalier’s banishment? Every Englishman who visits France brings back tales about his behaviour to you that make my blood run cold. I regret the day you married that malicious little ape.” His black eyes gleamed with cold loathing and as he set his teeth the muscles of his jaw flexed nervously.

Minette answered him softly and there was a look of almost maternal pity on her face. “Poor Philippe. You mustn’t judge him too hard. He really loved the Chevalier. When Louis sent him away I was afraid that Philippe would go out of his mind—and he thought that I was responsible for his banishment. To tell you the truth I’d be glad enough to have him back again—it would make my own life much more peaceful. And Philippe’s so jealous of me. He suffers agonies when someone even compliments a new gown I’m wearing. He was half wild when he learned I was to take this trip—you’ll never believe it but he slept with me every night, hoping I’d become pregnant and the trip would have to be postponed again.” She laughed a little at that, though it was a laugh without much mirth. “That’s how desperate he was. It’s strange,” she continued reflectively, “but before we were married he thought that he was in love with me. Now he says it turns his stomach to think of getting into bed with a woman. Oh, I’m sorry, my dear,” she said swiftly, seeing how white he had become, so white that a queer almost grey pallor showed through the bronze tones of his skin. “I never meant to tell you these things. It doesn’t matter, really. There are so many other things in life that are delightful—”

Suddenly Charles’s face contorted with a painful spasm and he bent his head, covering his eyes with the heels of his two hands. Minette, alarmed, reached over to touch him.

“Sire,” she said softly. “Sire, please. Oh, forgive me for talking like a fool!” She flung the little spaniel aside and hastily got out of bed to stand beside him, her arms about his shoulders; then she knelt in front of him, but his face was hidden from her. “My dear—look at me, please—” She took hold of his wrists and though at first he resisted her, slowly she dragged his hands down. “My brother!” she cried then. “Don’t look like that!”

He gave a heavy sigh; all at once his face relaxed. “I’m sorry. But I swear I could kill him with my bare hands! He won’t treat you like that any more, Minette. Louis will see that his brother mends his ways, or I’ll tear that damned treaty into bits!”

In the little room, draperies of scarlet and gold embroidered with the emblem of the house of Stuart had been hung to cover the stone walls. Candelabra with masses of tapers were lighted, for though it was mid-afternoon it was dark indoors because there were no windows—only one or two narrow slits placed very high. A heavy stench of perfumes and stale sweat clogged the nostrils. Voices were low and respectfully murmurous, fans whispered in languid hands, half-a-dozen fiddlers played soft tender music.

Only Charles and Minette occupied chairs—most of the others stood, though some of the men sat on thick cushions scattered over the floor. Monmouth had taken one just at his aunt’s feet and he sat with his arms clasped about his knees, looking up at her with a face full of frank adoration. Everyone had fallen in love with Minette all over again, willing victims to her sweetness and charm, her ardent wish to be liked, the quality she had in common with her oldest brother which made people love her without knowing why.

“I want to give you something,” she was saying to Charles, “to remember me by.”

“My dear—” His mouth had a whimsical smile. “As though I’m likely to forget you.”

“But let me make you a little gift. Perhaps a little jewel—something you can put on sometimes that will make you think of me—” She turned her head and spoke to Louise de Kerouaille who was standing just at her shoulder. Louise was never far from Minette when the King was in the room. “My dear, will you bring me my jewel-box—it’s in the center drawer of that cabinet.”

Louise made a delicate little curtsy; all her movements were graceful and pretty. She had a kind of well-bred diffidence, a refinement and an easy elegance which Charles admired in women but seldom found combined in the gustier ladies of his own Court. She was Parisian to the last fibre of her body, the last thread of her gown. And though she had undeniably flirted with him she had never been brazen or tactless or bold—she was a woman who must be won before she might be possessed. Charles, quite thoroughly jaded, was piqued at the notion of being once more the pursuer, not the pursued.

As she stood now before Minette, holding the box in her two hands, he said: “Here’s the jewel I want—Let her stay in England, Minette.”

Louise blushed, very becomingly, and lowered her eyes. Several of the English ladies stiffened perceptibly. The Duchess of Ravenspur and the Countess of Castlemaine exchanged indignant glances—for all the English mistresses had been allied against Louise from the first moment they had seen her. Amused and subtle smiles appeared on the faces of the men. But Minette shook her head.

“I’m responsible to her parents, Sire. They trust me to bring her back.” And then, to smooth over the awkward moment, she added: “Here—whatever you like—whatever will make you think most often of me.”

Charles smiled suavely, not at all offended or embarrassed, and made a selection from the trinkets in the box. Within a moment he seemed to have completely forgotten the episode. But he had not at all. Someday, he promised himself, I’ll have that woman—and his memory was often as long in such matters as it was short in others.

At that moment the Queen entered with several of her ladies, among whom the Duchess of Richmond was always to be found these days. Since Frances’s disfigurement by small-pox she and Catherine had become ever faster friends, until now she hung about her Majesty with a kind of trustful pathetic dependence in which the lords and ladies of Whitehall found cause only for contemptuous amusement.

Minette left the next day.

Charles, ’with York and Monmouth and Rupert, went on board the French ship and sailed partway out into the Channel. From the moment he had seen her he had been dreading this hour of parting; now he felt that he could not bring himself to let her go. For he had a mortal fear that he would never see her again. She looked tired; she looked disillusioned; she looked ill.

Three times he said goodbye, but each time he returned to embrace her once more. “Oh, my God, Minette!” he muttered at last. “I can’t let you go!”

Minette had tried not to cry, but now the tears rolled down her cheeks. “Remember what you promised me. And remember that I love you and that I’ve always loved you better than anyone else on earth. If I don’t see you again—”

“Don’t say that!” Inadvertently he gave her a little shake. “Of course I’ll see you again! You’re coming back next year—Promise me—promise me, Minette!”

Minette tipped back her head and smiled at him, her face suddenly cleared and peaceful. Like an obedient child she repeated after him, “I’m coming back next year—I promise—”

CHAPTER SIXTY–EIGHT

AMBER HAD BEEN almost as annoyed as Charles that Monsieur insisted upon Minette remaining in Dover—for she had not wanted to leave London. Until the last moment she hesitated, but when the Queen set out she went along. All the fortnight of Minette’s visit, however, she was unhappy and ill-at-ease. She wanted desperately to go back to London, to try someway, any way she could, to see him again. She was passionately relieved when the French fleet set sail and Minette was on her way home.

She had no more than entered the Palace—where she kept and often occupied her old suite—when she sent a footboy to discover Lord Carlton’s whereabouts. Impatience and nervousness made her irritable and she found fault with everything as she waited, criticized the gown Madame Rouvière had just completed, complained that she had been jolted to a jelly by that infernal coachman who was to be discharged at once, and swore she had never seen such a draggle-tail slut as that French cat, de Kerouaille.

“What’s keeping that little catch-fart!” she demanded furiously at last. “He’s been gone two hours and more! I’ll baste his sides for this!” And just then, hearing his quiet “Madame—” behind her, she whirled about. “Well, sirrah!” she cried. “How now? Is this the way you serve me?”

“I’m sorry, your Grace. They told me at Almsbury House his Lordship was down at the wharves.” (Bruce’s ship had made two round trips to and from America since last August and he was now getting them ready to sail a third time. On the next trip back they would put into a French port and he and Corinna would sail from there with the furniture they intended to buy in Paris.) “But when I got there he was nowhere to be found. They thought he had gone to dine with a City merchant and did not know whether he would return later today or not.”

Amber glowered sullenly at the floor, her right hand clasping the back of her neck. She was desperately worried, she was agonizingly disappointed, and to add to her troubles she had begun to suspect that she was pregnant again. If she was, she was sure that the child must be Lord Carlton’s, and though she longed to tell him, she dared not. She knew also that she should see Dr. Fraser and ask him to put her into a course of physic, but could not bring herself to do it.

“Her Ladyship is at home,” said the footboy now, eager to be of some help.

“What if she is!” cried Amber. “That’s nothing to me! Go along now and don’t trouble me any more!”

He bowed his way out respectfully but Amber had turned her back on him and was absorbed in her own worries and plans. She was determined to see him again—it made no difference how, and she cared not at all that he only too obviously did not wish to see her. Unexpectedly the words of the little footboy came back to her. “Her Ladyship is at home.” He had not been gone a minute when she snapped her fingers and whirled around.

“Nan! Send to have the coach got ready again! I’m going to call on my Lady Carlton!” Nan stared at her for an instant, dumfounded, and Amber gave an angry clap of her hands. “Don’t stand there with your mouth half-cocked! Do as I say and be quick about it!”

“But, madame,” protested Nan. “I just sent to have the coachman discharged!”

“Well, send again to catch him before he leaves. I must use him for today at least.”

She was hurrying about to gather her muff and gloves, mask and fan and cloak, and she left the room close on Nan’s heels. Susanna came running up from the nursery at that moment, having just been told that her mother was back, and Amber knelt to give her a hasty squeeze and a kiss, then told her that she must be off. Susanna wanted to go along and when Amber refused she began to cry and finally stamped her foot, very imperious.

“I will too go!”

“No, you won’t, you saucy minx! Be still now, or I’ll slap you!”

Susanna stopped crying all at once and gave her a look of such hurt and bewildered astonishment—for usually her mother made a great fuss over her when she had been gone a few days and always brought back a present of some kind—that Amber was instantly contrite. She knelt and took her into her arms again, kissed her tenderly and smoothed her hair and promised her that she might come upstairs that night to say her prayers. Susanna’s eyes and face were still wet but she was smiling when Amber waved goodbye.

But as she sat waiting for Corinna in the anteroom outside their apartments Amber began to wish she had not come.

For if Bruce should return and find her there she knew that he would be furious—it might undo whatever chance she still had left to make up the quarrel with him. She felt sick and cold, trembling inside, at the mere thought of confronting this woman. The door opened and Corinna came in, a faint look of surprise on her face as she saw Amber sitting there. But she curtsied and said politely that it was kind of her to call. She invited her to come into the drawing-room.

Amber got up, still hesitating on the verge of giving some random excuse and running away—but when Corinna stepped aside she walked before her into the drawing-room. Corinna had on a flowing silk dressing-gown in warm soft tones of rose and blue. Her heavy black hair fell free over her shoulders and down her back, there were two or three tuberoses pinned into it and she had another cluster of her favourite flower fastened at her bosom.

Oh, how I hate you! thought Amber with sudden savagery. I hate you, I despise you! I wish you were dead!

It was obvious too that Corinna, for all her smooth and charming manners, liked her visitor no better. She had lied when she had told Bruce that she did not believe he had continued to see her—and now the mere sight of this honey-haired amber-eyed woman filled her with loathing. She had almost come to believe that while both of them lived neither could ever be truly at peace. Their glances caught and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes: mortal enemies, two women in love with the same man.

Amber, realizing that she must say something, now remarked with what casualness she could: “Almsbury tells me you’ll be sailing soon.”

“As soon as possible, madame.”

“You’ll be very glad to leave London, I suppose?”

She had not come for simpering feminine compliments, insincere smiles and subtly disguised cuts; now her tawny speckled eyes were hard and shining, ruthless as those of a cat watching its prey.

Corinna returned her stare, not at all disconcerted or intimidated. “I shall, indeed, madame. Though perhaps not for the reason you suppose.”

“I don’t know what you mean!”

“I’m sorry. I thought you would.”

Amber’s claws came out at that. You bitch, she thought. I’ll pay you off for that. I know a way to make you sweat.

“You’re looking mighty smug it seems to me, madame—for a woman whose husband is unfaithful to her.”

Corinna’s eyes widened incredulously. For a moment she was silent, then very quietly she said, “Why did you come here, madame?”

Amber leaned forward in her chair, holding tightly to her gloves with both hands, eyes narrowed and voice low and intense. “I came to tell you something. I came to tell you that whatever you may think—he loves me still. He’ll always love me!”

Corinna’s cool answer astonished her. “You may think so if you like, madame.”

Amber sprang up out of her chair. “I may think so if I like!” she jeered. Swiftly she crossed the few feet of floor between them and was standing beside her. “Don’t be a fool! You won’t believe me because you’re afraid to! He never stopped seeing me at all!” Her excitement was mounting dangerously. “We’ve been meeting in secret—two or three times a week—at a lodging-house in Magpie Yard! All the afternoons you thought he was hunting or at the theatre he was with me! All the nights you thought he was at Whitehall or at a tavern we were together!”

She saw Corinna’s face turn white and a little muscle twitched beside her left eye. There! thought Amber with a fierce surge of pleasure. She felt that one, I’ll wager! This was what she had come for: to bait her, to prod her most sensitive emotions, to humiliate her with boasting of Bruce’s infidelity. She wanted to see her cringe and shrink. She wanted to see a woman who looked as miserable, as badly beaten as she felt.

“Now what d’you make of his fidelity to you!”

Corinna was staring at her, a kind of repugnant horror on her face. “I don’t think there’s any shred of honourable feeling left in you!”

Amber’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer; she did not realize how unpleasant she looked, but was past caring if she had. “Honour! What the devil is honour! A bogey-man to scare children! That’s all it’s good for these days! You can’t think what a fool you’ve looked to all of us these past months—we’ve been laughing in our fists at you—Oh, never deceive yourself—he’s laughed with the rest of us!”

Corinna got to her feet. “Madame,” she said coldly, “I have never known a woman of worse breeding. I can well believe that you came out of the streets—you act like it and you talk like it. I am only amazed you could have produced such a child as Bruce.”

Amber gasped, completely taken aback at that. Lord Carlton had never told her that his wife knew she was the boy’s mother. And yet she did know and had never said a word to anyone, had not refused to have him about her, and seemed to love him as sincerely as if he had been her own.

Good Lord! the woman was a greater fool even than she had thought!

“So you did know that he’s mine! Well, now you know me too, and I wonder how you like knowing that one day my son will be Lord Carlton—everything your husband has and is will belong to my child, not to yours! How d’you like that, eh? Are you so damned virtuous and noble that it doesn’t rankle in your flesh at all?”

“You know very well that’s impossible unless his legitimacy can be proved.”

She and Corinna stood very close, breathing each other’s breath, staring into each other’s eyes. Amber felt an overpowering desire to grab her by the hair, tear at her face, destroy her beauty and her very life. Something, she hardly knew what, held her in check.

“Will you please leave my rooms, madame,” said Corinna now, her lips so stiff with fury that though they shook they scarcely moved to form the words.

All at once Amber laughed, a high hysterical laugh of fury and nervous repression. “Listen to her!” she cried. “Yes, I’ll leave your rooms! I can’t get away from you too soon!” With swift jerky movements she gathered up the muff and fan she had dropped and then turned once more to face Corinna, breathing hard, quivering in every muscle. She could no longer think but she began to say, half unconsciously, something she had long wanted to say to her.

“You’ll soon be lying-in, won’t you? Think of me sometimes then—Or d‘you imagine he’ll be waiting by your bed like a patient dog till you’re—”

She saw Corinna’s eyes close slowly, the irises rolling away. At that instant a man’s harsh voice cracked through the room.

“Amber!”

She whirled and saw Bruce striding toward her, looking gigantic in his fury. She started a little as though about to run, but he seized her by the shoulder, spun her around and at the same instant his other hand lashed out and struck her across the face. For an instant she was completely blind and then she caught a flashing glimpse of his face above her, contorted, ugly —and she knew that he was angry enough to kill her.

Her reaction was swift, partly through fear and her own violent instincts of self-preservation, partly because all control over her mind had been gone long before this. Wild as an animal she began to kick and scratch and pound at him with her fists, shrieking with rage, cursing him with every vile word she knew. Over and over again she screamed that she hated him. For the moment her lust for revenge was so powerful she would have killed him if she could—all the pain she had ever suffered because of him, all the jealous hatred she had for Corinna had seized hold of her and made her something evil, dangerous, demoniacal.

After his first swift outburst of fury Bruce had instantly recovered himself. Now he was only trying to bring her to her senses, though the strength begot of her rage made it almost impossible for him to control her.

“Amber!” he shouted, trying to break through her deafness and blindness. “Amber, for God’s sake—be still!”

One side of his face was raw and bleeding and long claw marks showed where she had raked her nails across his cheek. His wig and hat had fallen off, Amber’s gown was ripped across one breast and her hair had come undone. Corinna stood watching them, motionless with horror, sick with dread and humiliation.

Suddenly he seized Amber by the back of her hair and gave a violent jerk that snapped her neck so hard the vertebrae cracked. She let out an agonized scream and the next instant her fist smashed into the side of his face, bruising her knuckles and knocking his head backward. His eyes turned green and he seized her neck in both hands, his strong lean fingers began to close in. Her face darkened. Frantically she tore at his hands, her tongue was forced out and her eyes seemed to burst from the sockets. She tried to scream.

Corinna rushed toward them. “Bruce!” she cried. “Bruce! You’re killing her!”

He seemed not to hear but Corinna dragged at his arms, hammered with her fists against him, and all at once he let her go. Amber dropped like a sack. With a look of unutterable disgust on his face—disgust which seemed as much against himself as Amber—he turned away, holding up his hands, the fingers still bent, and he stared at them as though they did not belong to him. Corinna was watching him, tenderly, with a pity that was almost maternal.

“Bruce—” she said at last, her voice very soft. “Bruce—I think you must send for the midwife. The pains come often now—”

He stared at her dully, slow realization spreading over his face. “You’re having pains—Oh, Corinna!” There was a sound of almost agonized remorse in his voice. Suddenly he picked her up in his arms and walked into the other room to the bed. There he laid her down. The blood on his shirt and coat had smeared her gown and the side of her cheek. His hand reached down to wipe it away; then swiftly he turned and ran out of the room.

For two or three minutes Amber lay senseless on the floor. As she began to regain consciousness it seemed to her that she lay in a warm, soft and comforting bed; she tried to pull the blankets about her. It was several moments longer before she was conscious enough to remember where she was and what had happened. Then she tried to sit up. The blood thumped heavily in her ears and eyes, her throat ached and she felt dazed and stupid. Very slowly she dragged herself to her feet and she was standing there, almost as though hung from a hook, her head drooping, when Bruce came into the room again. She looked up and he stopped for a moment beside her.

“Get out of here,” he said. He spoke softly, between his teeth. “Get out.”

CHAPTER SIXTY–NINE

FOR THE NEXT several days Amber scarcely left her bedroom in Ravenspur House. Visitors were turned away and she did not go once to the Palace. Someone started a rumour that she had been poisoned by Lady Carlton and was dying. Others said she was recovering from an abortion. Someone else insisted she was suffering from the effects of her latest perversion. Amber would not have cared no matter what they said—but when Charles sent to inquire she told him she had a severe attack of ague.

Most of the time she merely lay on the bed, her face unpainted and her hair in tangled snarls. There were dirty circles about her eyes and her skin was sallow; she had been eating too little and drinking too much. Her tongue felt thick and leathery and had a nasty taste. She thought she might as well be dead.

She had known in the past dark bitter moments of loneliness, self-distrust, desolation—but this was something more. Whatever she had hoped for the future, whatever she held dear in the present had been lost that day at Almsbury House. In only a few minutes she had destroyed everything, and the destruction had been complete; there seemed nothing left on which to build. Even her energy, the intense vitality which had never failed, now seemed dissipated.

When Buckingham tried to interest her in his latest plot he found her, to his annoyance and surprise, indifferent almost to apathy. To get any response at all he had to offer twice what he had intended. But with his usual early enthusiasm he was prepared to squander all that remained of his fortune for this most dark and fantastic of all his schemes. It was his intention to poison Baron Arlington.

Amber heard him explain the plan with mounting if half-reluctant admiration. At the end she gave a mock shudder. “Lord, but your Grace is an ingenious murderer! Then how d’you plan to rid yourself of me?”

Buckingham smiled blandly. “Get rid of you, madame? I protest. Why should I? You’re far too useful to me.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “I doubt not you’d rather see my head stuck on a pole over London Bridge than your own.”

“Bah! His Majesty wouldn’t put you to trial if you murdered his own brother. He’s far too tender of any woman he’s ever laid with. But don’t trouble yourself, madame—I’m no such clumsy contriver as to endanger either of us.”

Amber did not argue with him on that point, but she knew well enough why he could not manage the business without her —he wanted a scapegoat should anything go wrong. And she was, furthermore, the one woman then at Court most likely to be able to wheedle the King into thinking or pretending to think that his Lordship had died from natural causes. If she failed, then it was she who must suffer the consequences.

But Amber did not expect to fail. Almost by the time he had told her what his plan was she had another of her own. The Duke’s scheme was a challenge to which her own ingenuity could not but rise and she began to shed some of her paralyzing torpor. She thought she could see a way to deceive the Duke, outwit the Baron, and make herself a great sum of money at very little risk.

Buckingham delivered to her the twenty-five hundred pounds he had promised—the other half to be paid when the Baron lay safe in his grave—and Amber sent for Shadrac Newbold to come get it. She did not intend to chance having his Grace steal it back. Then she went to keep the appointment she had made with Arlington.

It was near midnight when she left the Palace in a clothes-hamper borne by two porters, covered with her own soiled smocks and petticoats which were supposedly being carried to her laundress. A moment later Nan came out the same door. She was dressed in the clothes and jewels Amber had had on earlier that day and she wore a wig the colour of Amber’s hair; her face was covered with a vizard. A man who had been loitering about that entrance since nightfall looked after the hamper as if undecided whether he should follow it or not—but when Nan appeared, climbed into Amber’s great coach and went off, he whistled to signal his own coach and followed her instead.

Nan took a leisurely roundabout course across town to Camomile Street, giggling as she watched the Duke’s spy try to keep at a discreet distance without losing sight of her. He waited outside a lodging-house for her for three hours and when she had gone inquired of the landlady who lived there. On being told that the apartment was taken by Mr. Harris, a young actor of the Duke’s Theatre, he went to make his report to Buckingham, who sat picking his teeth with a gold toothpick and meditatively sucking air through them, amused that the Duchess should be consorting with such low creatures after all the trouble she had taken to rise above them.

Amber, meanwhile, was carried to an obscure little courtyard in one of the festering alleys of Westminster. The porters had some difficulty getting their burden up to the dirty little third-floor tenement lodging, and Amber alternately held her breath and cursed as she felt the hamper tip, slide, thump on each step. But at last they set her down and went out. Hearing the door close she knocked up the top of the hamper, flung off the covering linen and drew a deep breath. She was just climbing out when Arlington entered from an adjoining chamber—his black cloak swept almost to the floor, his hat was pulled low over his eyes and he held a vizard in one hand.

“The time’s short, my lord,” said Amber, untangling a petticoat from about her shoulders and neck and throwing it aside. “I’ve got some information of great value—I’ll give it you for five thousand pound.”

Arlington’s expression did not alter. “That’s very civil of you, madame. But five thousand is a considerable sum. I don’t think I can—”

Impatiently Amber interrupted him. “I’m no mercer, my lord, to let you run on tick. My payment must be cash. But maybe we can strike up a bargain. I’ll tell, you part of what I know now and if you pay me tomorrow I’ll take care the plot miscarries. If you don’t—” Lightly she shrugged, and the implication was that some very unpleasant misfortune would befall him.

“That sounds a reasonable piece of thinking for a woman.”

“Someone intends to murder your Lordship—I know when and how. If you pay me I can spoil the plot—”

Arlington remained imperturbable. He had more enemies than he knew, and he knew a great many—but this seemed to him transparent.

“I think I can spoil the plot myself, madame, and save five thousand pound.”

“How!”

“If I made an accusation—”

“You don’t dare, and you know it!”

She was right, for if he so much as hinted his suspicions to the King, Buckingham would be upon him and drag it out into the open. And the Duke was still too powerful, had too much interest outside Court in quarters where the King desperately needed what support he could get. If Arlington were to accuse him of plotting his murder the Duke could ruin him politically even quicker than he could end his life by poison. Perhaps that, after all, was what he wanted—perhaps that was why he had brought her into the plot. Arlington regarded this as another instance of a woman meddling to make his life more difficult—and expensive.

“For all I know,” he said, “this may be only a plot of yours to get money. I don’t think anyone would dare poison his Majesty’s Secretary of State.”

The bluff did not impress Amber. She smiled at him. “But if someone does dare, my lord, next week or next month you’ll be as dead as herring—”

“Suppose I give you the money. How do I know you won’t let the plot—if there is one—go through anyway?”

“You must trust me for that, sir.”

The Baron was now looking very ill-tempered. He knew that she had caught him and could see no way to save both his life and his money. For he dared not take the chance. Buckingham was, he knew, at certain times and in certain moods capable of engineering his murder without a qualm. Or if not Buckingham, some lesser enemy—But blast this woman! Why should she get five thousand pound from him! The King’s wenches came by their money at scant trouble to themselves—but it would take him months of hard work to replace that much. He had never felt such a bitter dislike of all females, but most particularly of the Duchess of Ravenspur.

“I’ll see the money is delivered into your hands tomorrow. Good-night, madame. And thank you.”

“By no means, my lord. Your life is too valuable to England. Thank you.”

Buckingham’s plot was simple. The next day he brought to her a handsome fifteen-year-old boy from the Baron’s household, John Newmarch, whom Amber was to persuade to poison his master for the sake of King and country. When Arlington was dead Buckingham intended to give the boy one hundred pounds, have him declared dead of small-pox, and send him abroad to live. But the Duke had told him nothing of all this —only that the Duchess of Ravenspur had seen and admired him and wanted to make his acquaintance. With the precocious sophistication induced by the Court John came eagerly, convinced he knew what she wanted. He was wrong.

Amber plied her charms and John Newmarch agreed to the plan. But having received Arlington’s five thousand, she gave him only a harmless sleeping-potion to stir into the Baron’s sack-posset. Buckingham stopped her the next morning as she was on her way to the Queen’s apartments, and he looked both anxious and angry.

“What did you do!” he demanded. “He’s with the King at this moment!”

Amber paused and stood face to face with him. “Is he?” She pretended surprise. “Well—now that’s mighty strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes, isn’t it!” he repeated sarcastically. “John says he didn’t so much as touch the posset—and he drinks ’em every night! I know that, for I’ve had his habits watched. Answer me, you bitch! What’ve you done?”

They stood staring at each other, and neither could pretend any longer. There was frank detestation on both their faces. When Amber answered him the words came out slowly between her clenched teeth.

“If you ever dare speak to me like that again, George Villiers, I tell you to your teeth the King’s going to hear some things you don’t want him to know!”

She did not wait for him to answer but turned and walked away. He hesitated a moment longer, looking after her, then spun about on his heel and strode off in the opposite direction. Nan watched him, her eyes wide, and then catching up her skirts she ran after Amber.

“Lord, mam! You should’ve seen his face! I vow he’s a devil!”

“A devil with the pox to him! I’m not afraid of that officious sot! I’ve a mighty good mind to—”

But at that instant, as she was about to turn into her Majesty’s apartments, she saw Almsbury coming through the crowd in her direction. He was with three other men and they were laughing and talking together. She had not seen him since the day she had last gone to Almsbury House, but now she stopped and waited, hoping he might give her some news of Bruce. Corinna had been delivered of a son that same day and she knew they were planning to sail for France as soon as she was able. Now, to her amazement, she saw the Earl catch sight of her, turn suddenly, and disappear down some little side corridor.

“Why!” she cried, as hurt as though he had publicly slapped her.

But she did not hesitate, and grabbing up her skirts she started after him, running and dodging through the busy hall, brushing aside whoever was in her way. Coming up behind him she caught at his arm.

“Almsbury!”

He turned with reluctant slowness and looked down at her, but said nothing.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Why are you running away from me?”

He made no answer but merely gave a faint shrug of the shoulders.

“Tell me, Almsbury, when are they going?”

“Soon. Tomorrow, perhaps, or the next day.”

“Has he ever—” She hesitated, almost timid at asking this question, for she could not mistake the hardness and disapproval she saw in his eyes. But nevertheless she blurted it out. “Has he said anything to you about me?”

A look of disgust went across his face. “No.”

“Oh, Almsbury!” she cried imploringly, heedless of the curious glances they were getting on every hand. “Don’t you hate me too! I swear I’ve suffered enough—You’re the only friend I have! I don’t know what happened to me that day—I was out of my head! But, oh, Almsbury! I do love him! And now he’s going away and I’ll never see him again! I’ve got to see him once more—Won’t you help me, please? I won’t say a word—I just want to look at him. And I don’t know where to find him now—he never comes to Court. Oh, Almsbury! I must see him again!”

The Earl set his mouth grimly and turned away. “Not with my help you won’t.”

Baron Arlington was in conference with his physicians, being treated with leeches. But when his Grace of Buckingham was announced, all unexpected, the creatures were hastily plucked off and, engorged with blood, tossed into the wide-necked bottle in which they were kept. The Duke was ushered in and found his Lordship lying in bed, propped up by pillows, with papers scattered everywhere about him and a secretary on either side, reading letters. Buckingham, more affable than he had been in years, bowed and smiled with that charm which he could muster when an important occasion demanded.

“My lord.”

“Your Grace.”

At the Baron’s suggestion he took a chair next the bed, and once seated he spoke to him in a low voice, with an air of great confidential seriousness. “I have a matter of the gravest importance to discuss with your Lordship.”

Arlington dismissed the servants, though he knew that one or two would remain within easy hailing distance.

“I won’t dissemble with your Lordship,” continued Buckingham as soon as they were alone. “You know, of course, that the Duchess of Ravenspur has been for some time employed in my interests.”

Arlington gave a scarcely perceptible nod of his head.

“And I am likewise aware that she was engaged in yours—taking money from both of us to work against both. There’s no objection to that, I’ll admit, for it’s the custom of the Court. But now I’ve learned that her Grace has undertaken to murder your Lordship.”

At this Arlington’s cold austere face showed a faint indication of surprise. But the surprise was at the audacity of this man who, baulked by nothing, would somehow turn any circumstance to his own advantage.

“She intends to murder me, you say?” he inquired mildly.

“Yes, sir, she does. I can’t tell you how I found out, but I can tell you this much: The plot originated in France, where some persons of high authority are afraid your Lordship may try to hinder the proposed commercial alliance between our two countries. Someone has paid her an enormous sum to put you out of the way. I come in the name of our old friendship to warn you against her and put you on your guard.”

All through the recital Arlington had continued to stare solemnly at the Duke with his protruding pale-blue eyes. Something had obviously discouraged his Grace from his project and now here was the Duke trying to make out that the French wanted him murdered so that he could not obstruct a commercial alliance. When already he had sealed and signed a treaty far more complete and important! The man was a sort of strange phenomenon, interesting to observe as were the freaks of Bartholomew Fair.

“That woman’s a damned nuisance,” continued Buckingham. “I think she’d undertake to poison Old Rowley himself for a price. But that fatal weakness of his for never casting off a woman he’s once been in love with may keep her in power many years longer—unless you and I, sir, put our heads together and get rid of her!”

Arlington carefully placed his spread finger-tips against each other. “And how does your Grace propose to get rid of this menace to my life?” His tone was faintly, but politely, sarcastic, and there was the suspicion of a sneer about his mouth.

Buckingham now put on an air of good-natured frankness. “Your Lordship knows me too well to believe that I act only in your interests. I’m heartily sick of her myself—she’s cost me a great deal of money and I’ve got next to nothing by it. But we don’t dare poison her or have her kidnapped and shipped away. Old Rowley would never forgive it.”

“Your Grace is a chivalrous man,” observed the Baron in mock admiration.

“Chivalry be damned! I want to get her out of England—and I don’t care how it’s done so it doesn’t bring reprisals on my head!” He wanted to get her out, in fact, before she had a chance to tell someone that it was he who had plotted the Baron’s death. In his opinion the island would no longer comfortably hold both him and the Duchess—and he did not intend to leave.

Arlington dropped his aloofness and superiority. He knew that the Duke was lying baldly but he was altogether in sympathy with his proposal. For her influence with the King was just great enough to make her an inconvenience. If she were gone it would be one woman less for him to deal with. And he had no doubt Buckingham was now thoroughly frightened out of his intention to murder him.

“I think I know a way to make her leave England immediately, and be glad to go,” he said.

“How, for the love of God?”

“Suppose your Grace leaves the business to me. If I fail—then do your worst on her, and with my blessing—”

Amber sat in her coach, nervously tearing to shreds a lace fan she had snatched up as she ran out of the house. It was still so early in the morning that mist hung low on the trees along the Strand and the tops of the great houses disappeared into the thick of it. She felt sick and weak as she waited, and was almost sorry that she had come, for it terrified her to think of actually coming face to face with him again.

She had bribed one of Almsbury’s pages several days ago, and not three-quarters of an hour before he had come to the Palace to tell her that his Lordship was going down to the wharves. Amber, sound asleep when he arrived, had flung on her clothes, pulled a comb through her hair and set out. Now as she waited she tried with shaking hands to powder her face and paint her lips, but her eyes searched anxiously through the coach window more often than they looked into the mirror. It seemed to her that she had been sitting there a long long while and that he must be already gone. Actually, she half hoped that he was, for desperately as she wanted to see him her fear was perhaps even greater.

Suddenly she caught her breath, sitting up intense and alert, dropping the mirror and powder-box into her lap. The great door of Almsbury House had swung open.

Now, while she watched with passionate anxiety, both Bruce and the Earl appeared, spoke to someone behind them, and walked down the steps. Neither took any notice of the hackney which stood beyond the gates, half lost from view in the yellow fog. For three or four minutes they stood talking, waiting for their horses, and when the grooms had brought them they mounted and came toward her at a leisurely pace.

Stiff and trembling with excitement Amber sat there, wretched, sure she would never be able to summon courage enough to speak to him. Then, just as they came abreast of her coach, she leaned forward through the opened window and called his name.

“Lord Carlton!”

Both their heads turned swiftly. A look of surprise crossed Bruce’s face, and he reined in his slow-moving horse. Half turned in the saddle, he sat looking down at her.

“Madame?”

His voice spoke to a stranger. His eyes had never seen her before. Amber’s throat swelled with pain and she wanted to cry: Love me again for just a minute, darling! Give me something happy to remember.

Very softly she said: “I hope her Ladyship is recovered?”

“She is, thank you.”

She searched his eyes with eager tenderness. There must be something there, something left of all the years they had known and loved each other. But they only stared at her, cool green eyes, watching her without emotion or memories.

“You’ll be sailing soon?”

“Today, if the wind serves.”

Amber knew that she was going to make a fool of herself. With the most terrible effort of all her life she murmured quickly, “A good voyage, my lord,” and as her lashes dropped her closed fist came up to press against her mouth.

“Thank you, madame. Goodbye.”

His hat went back to his head and both men gave a gentle slap of their reins; the horses started off. For a long moment Amber sat in frigid stillness, and then with a bursting sob she flung herself back in the seat. “Drive away!” she cried. Slowly the coach circled about and began to move. For several seconds she fought with herself, but at last she could stand it no longer. She turned, jumping to her knees, and scrubbed with one moist palm at the tiny dusty pane above the seat. They were far in the distance now, cantering, but the thick fog which drifted in shreds obscured them both and she could not tell which one was Bruce.

At noon the page came again. He told her that Lord and Lady Carlton had just sailed on one of the royal yachts which carried persons of quality across the Channel.

The next afternoon a letter was brought to her from Lord Buckhurst, who had sailed on the same vessel. Amber tore it open without much interest. “Your Grace,” she read, “I believe this may be of some concern to you. Lady Carlton, during the crossing, fell suddenly ill and was dead by the time we reached Calais. His Lordship, they say, intends to set sail immediately for America. Your very humble and obliged servant, madame, Buckhurst.”

It was not easy to book passage just then, for most of the merchant-ships sailed in great convoys that set out three times a year, but at last she found a captain who was going to America in an old vessel he called the Fortune, and she gave him a big enough bribe so that he agreed to load hastily and sail with the next tide.

“I’ll shut up my house and pretend I’m going into the country,” she told Nan. “I can’t take much with me—but I’ll send for whatever I want once we’re settled. Oh, Nan! It’s—”

“Don’t say it, mam,” warned Nan. “It’s bad luck to be made happy by another’s death.”

Amber sobered immediately. She was afraid of that herself, afraid to be as happy as she felt, afraid to be grateful now that the one thing she had wanted had come to pass. And so she refused to think about it. She was too busy, and too excited, to think very much anyway. But she told herself it had happened because God had willed it—had always meant them to be together. It was just as she had said to Bruce after the Plague—they had been fated for each other from the beginning of time. Only it had taken him so long to find it out. Perhaps he didn’t realize it even now—but he would, when he saw her again. Even the unwelcome pregnancy of which she was now convinced, fitted into the pattern. That had been fated too—their child would help him forget.

Amber spent the night at Whitehall, pretending that everything was just as usual, while Nan was at Ravenspur House packing and getting the children and their nurses ready to go. They would be ten, altogether: Amber, Nan, Big John, Tansy, Susanna and Charles and their four nurses. And of course Monsieur le Chien. She did not even try to sleep when she came back at midnight from watching a play in the Hall Theatre, but instead changed her clothes and spent her time nervously going through some of her belongings to decide what she would have sent.

But she was not able to think coherently or make any real decisions. Just before five, her footman came to say that the Fortune would be ready to weigh anchor in an hour.

Amber snatched up her cloak and flung it on, dropped her gloves and picked them up again, started out the door and ran back for her fan and when she was halfway down the corridor remembered she had forgotten her mask. Automatically she turned and started back, then suddenly muttered, “Oh, the devil take it!” and ran on. Her coach had been kept in readiness all night at the Palace Gate and Nan and the others would meet her at the wharf.

Entering the Stone Gallery from the narrow corridor she ran directly into a group of men just emerging from Lord Arlington’s suite of rooms across the way. It was still half dark in there and a footman who accompanied them carried a torch. Startled, Amber stopped still, then abruptly she started on again. She did not notice who they were and would have passed them without a glance had not a familiar voice spoken to her.

“Good morrow, your Grace.”

She looked up into the Baron’s face and for a sudden panic-stricken moment she wondered if the King had found out her plan and sent him to stop her. In another moment Buckingham, too, had come out of the shadowy group to stand beside his Lordship. Now she was sure it was some plot! But nothing should prevent her from leaving—nothing on God’s earth. Ignoring the Duke, she raised her head defiantly and looked at Arlington.

“My lord?” Her voice was cold, sharp.

“Your Grace is abroad early.”

Unexpectedly she was ready with a facile lie. “Lady Almsbury is ill—she sent for me. And isn’t this early for you, too, my lord?” she inquired tartly.

“It is, madame. I go on a mission of the gravest importance—I’ve just got word the King’s sister died yesterday morning.”

For a moment Amber was shocked into forgetfulness of her own affairs. “Minette?” she repeated. “Minette—dead?”

“She is, madame.” He bowed his head.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She had an instant of passionate pity for Charles.

Then the Baron raised his head again and looked at her. All at once she saw some strange gleam of amusement in his eyes. She glanced swiftly at Buckingham—he was smiling. Both of them seemed to be laughing at her. What was it? What did they know? What had happened? It must be something that concerned her, something unpleasant, to please them so much.

And then, with sudden unexpected relief she realized that it no longer mattered. In another hour she would be gone from England—gone from Whitehall and its plots and schemes forever. She would never come back again, never. She would not have believed it possible, even yesterday, that she could be so glad to leave England.

I’m so sick of all of you, she thought. Then Arlington was speaking again.

“Don’t let me detain you, madame. Your business, also, is important. You mustn’t be late.”

Amber curtsied, the Baron bowed, and they passed.

Buckingham looked around over his shoulder, Arlington did not look back, but they exchanged smiles. “Good riddance,” muttered the Duke. Then suddenly he laughed. “Gad, but I wish I could see her face when she arrives in Virginia and finds Lady Carlton in good health! I congratulate you, sir. Your plot worked better than I hoped. We’ve put that troublesome jade out of our way.”

“Her Grace may be gone,” said Arlington. “But there’s never an end to trouble here at Whitehall.” The tone of his voice was significant and Buckingham looked at him with quick suspicion. Arlington’s face turned blank. “Come, your Grace—there are matters of real importance to attend to this morning.”

Amber had picked up her skirts and started to run. Outdoors it was growing light and the sun streaked over the tops of the brick buildings. Her coach stood waiting. As he saw her coming the footman flung open the door and reared back in rigid attention; she laughed and gave a snip of her fingers at his braid-covered chest as she climbed in. Imperturbably he slammed the door, motioned to the driver and the coach rolled forward. Still laughing, she leaned out, and waved at the closed empty windows.

THE END