“Oh, you impertinent dog! I could kill you for this trick! Anyway—I only meant to raise your blood—I was just passing the time with you—”
“A very pretty pastime for a person of quality, I must agree. But I didn’t take up that post to be seduced by my Lady Castlemaine. You know what I’m here for.”
“Not I, I’m sure. I’ve had no hand in your troubles.”
“Only that you gave my secret away to his Majesty.”
“Gave it away? You lied to me! You told me it was York’s horoscope you were having cast!”
“Even a lie, apparently, was unsafe with you. The King needs only a sentence to guess at the whole plot of a play.” He shook his head, as though in sympathy for her. “How can you be so foolish, Barbara, when it’s only by my good nature that you remain in England at all? However, it will doubtless be easy enough to buy my freedom now. I have an idea he’d forgive a much greater offense than mine to know that those letters are burned—”
“George!” cried Barbara frantically. “My God, you wouldn’t tell him! You can’t tell him! Oh, please, darling! I’ll do anything you say! Command me and I’ll be your slave—only promise me you won’t tell him!”
“Lower your voice or you’ll tell him yourself. Very well then —since you want to bargain. What will you give in exchange for my silence?”
“Anything, George! Anything at all! I’ll give you anything—I’ll do anything you say!”
“There’s just one thing I want at present—and that’s the clearance of my name.”
Barbara sat down suddenly, scared and hopeless, her face turned white. “But you know that’s the one thing I
“Stop that! I hate a drivelling woman! Old Rowley can watch you mope and wail if he likes but I’ve got other matters to think of! Look here, Barbara: your influence with him isn’t wholly gone. You can convince him, if you try, that I’m innocent. I’ll leave you to think of your own means—A woman never needs help making up lies.”
He put the black wig onto his head again and picked up his musket. “I’ll make it possible for you to communicate with me.” He bowed. “I wish you success, madame.” Turning then on his high heel he left her apartments and the Palace; the broad-shouldered, black-haired sentry was never again seen at Lady Castlemaine’s door.
EVEN AFTER AMBER was married she continued to remain at Almsbury House, for she hoped soon to be given an appointment at Court and live there.
As for her husband, she suggested that he take lodgings in Covent Garden, and because he had been henpecked from the cradle he did so, though against his better judgment. For despite the fact that it was permissible, even correct form, for husbands and wives to hate each other, to keep mistresses and take lovers, to bicker and quarrel in public and circulate the grossest slander about each other—it was not permissible to occupy separate homes or to sleep in separate beds. Amber was amused to discover that she had started a scandal which swept all the fashionable end of town.
Her husband was named Gerald Stanhope, and the title conveyed upon him by the King was Earl of Danforth. He was just twenty-two, a year younger than she, and to Amber he seemed an arrant fool. Timid and non-assertive, weak and thin, he lived in a habitual froth of worry as to what “Mother” was going to think about everything he or his wife did. Mother, he said, would not approve of them occupying separate lodgings, and finally he brought the news that Mother was coming up to London for a visit.
“Have you room for her in your apartments?” asked Amber.
She sat at her dressing-table having her hair arranged by a Frenchman newly arrived from Paris, over whose services the ladies were clawing one another. In one hand she held a silver-backed mirror, surveying her profile, admiring the lines of her straight forehead and dainty tilted nose, the pouting curves of her mouth and small round chin.
I’m handsomer than Frances Stewart any day, she thought, rather defiantly. But still I’m glad she’s gone and disgraced and will never be back to trouble us more.
Gerald looked unhappy, pale and ineffectual. Travel on the Continent had not polished him; a moderately good education had not given him mental poise; the customary indulgence in whoring and drinking had certainly not made him sophisticated. He seemed still like a confused uncertain lonesome boy and this new turn his life had taken only made him feel more lost than ever.
