But she was not yet so secure that she could do without Frances Stewart, and she made sure that they were all but inseparable. She visited Frances in her rooms, walked with her in the galleries—for the weather was often too cold to go out-of-doors—and sometimes stayed the night with her when the roads were bad or the hour very late. Amber never talked about herself but seemed tremendously interested in everything Frances said or thought or did and Frances, unable to resist this lure of flattery, soon began to confide in her.
The Duke of Richmond had recently made her her first proposal, a circumstance which had greatly amazed the Court —for Frances was considered nothing less than Crown property. He was a not unhandsome young man of twenty-seven and a distant relative of the King but he was stupid, drunken, and habitually in debt. Charles had accepted the news with his customary aplomb and asked the Duke to turn his financial papers over to Clarendon for an examination.
One night when she and Amber were tucked snugly in bed, one great feather-mattress beneath them and another on top, Amber asked casually if she intended to marry his Grace. Frances’s reply amazed her. “There’s nothing else I can do, now,” she said. “If the Duke hadn’t been so kind as to propose I don’t know what would have become of me.”
“What would have become of you! Why, Frances, what nonsense! Every man at Court is mad in love with you and you know it!”
“Maybe they are,” admitted Frances, “but not one of ’em has ever made me an honest proposal. The truth of it is I’ve ruined my good name by allowing his Majesty so many liberties —without ever letting him take that one which might have been to my benefit.”
“Well,” drawled Amber idly, though actually she had a strong curiosity on the subject, “then why didn’t you? No doubt you could ’ve been a duchess without the trouble of marrying —and a mighty rich woman as well.”
“What!” cried Frances. “Be the King’s whore? Oh, no—not I! I’ll leave that to other ladies. It’s bad enough a woman has to lay with her husband—I’d rather die than lay with some man who wasn’t! Lord! It gives me the vapours to think of it!”
Amber smiled in the close darkness, very much amused and not a little surprised. So that was what Frances’s much vaunted virtue amounted to—not morality at all, but repugnance. She was not chaste, but squeamish.
“But don’t you like the King? There’s no finer man at Court—It isn’t only because he’s King that the ladies all fall in love with him.”
“Oh, yes, of course I like him! But I just can’t—I just couldn’t—Oh, I don’t know! Why do men always have to think about things like that? I know I’ve got to get married one day—I’m nineteen now and my mother says I’m a disgrace to the family—But, Lord! to think of getting in bed with a man and letting him—Oh! I know I’ll die! I’ll never be able to bear it!”
Ye gods! thought Amber, completely nonplussed. She must be cracked in the head. But she felt a little sorry for her too, a kind of contemptuous pity. What did the poor creature think life was about, anyway?
Their friendship was soon over. For Frances was jealous as a wife of the King’s love-affairs, and Barbara had not let her remain long in ignorance when rumours began to spread that the King was secretly visiting Lady Radclyffe at Almsbury House. But Amber thought her position assured and was glad enough to dispense with Frances, whom she had always considered to be silly and boring. She had grown very tired of paying her compliments and pretending to be interested in what happened to her. And Charles, who always showed a quick rush of infatuation at the beginning of any new affair, would not let her be neglected now. At his insistence she was invited everywhere and treated with the same surface respect which Castlemaine had once commanded and Stewart still did. Even the ladies were forced to become her sycophants, and before long Amber began to think that nothing was beyond her.
She was walking along the Stone Gallery early one morning when she saw Chancellor Clarendon coming in her direction. The hall-way was chill and damp and cold and all the numerous men and women who hurried along it were wrapped in heavy woollen or velvet cloaks, their arms folded in great fur muffs. From one end to the other the gallery was a mass of black-hooded figures, for the Court was still in mourning for the Dowager Queen of Portugal—Amber was glad that since she must wear black the other ladies could not bloom publicly in bright colours and jewellery.
Clarendon came toward her with his head down, glaring at the floor, preoccupied with his gout and the innumerable problems which a ruined England expected him to solve. He did not see Amber any more than he saw anyone else and would have gone on by but she put herself in his path.
“Good morning, Chancellor.”
He looked up, nodded his head brusquely and then, as she made him a low curtsy, was forced to pause and bow. “Your servant, madame.”
