She came to stand before him and looked up into his face, her eyes coaxing, inviting him. She still hoped that a kiss and half an hour in bed could change everything—expunge the animosity and distrust which had grown out of the passionate infatuation with which they had begun. He stared at her steadily and then, very faintly, he smiled; his hand made a light gesture and he walked beyond her and out of the room. Barbara turned to watch him, stunned, as though she had had a slap in the face.
A couple of days later she went into the country to have an abortion, for this child, she knew, he would never own. But it had also occurred to her that if she was gone for a few weeks he would forget everything that had been unpleasant between them and begin to miss her—he would send for her to come back, as he had done in the old days. Someday, she told herself, he’ll love me again, I know he will. Next time we meet, things will be different.
SHE LIVED AT the top of Maypole Alley, a narrow little street off Drury Lane, in a two-room lodging which looked exactly as she always did—careless and untidy, with nothing in its place. Silk stockings were flung over chair-backs, a soiled smock lay in a heap on the floor just beside the bed, orange-peelings littered the table and empty ale-glasses stood about, unwashed. The fireplace was heaped with ashes and apparently had not been swept out for years. Dust coated the furniture and puffs of it drifted over the floor, for the girl she hired to come in and clean had not been there for several days. Everything suggested an abandonment to chaos, a gay headlong contempt for stodgy tidiness.
In the middle of the floor Nell Gwynne was dancing.
Barefooted, she whirled and spun, twisted her lithe body and flung her skirts high, completely unselfconscious, absorbed and happy. In one chair sprawled Charles Hart, watching her through half-shut lids, and sitting astraddle another was John Lacy, who also acted for the King’s Company and who also had been Nelly’s lover. A fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy, a street-musician they had called in, stood nearby and scraped on his cheap fiddle.
When at last she stopped and made them a curtsy so deep that her bowed head touched her knee, the men broke into hearty applause. Nelly looked up at them, eyes sparkling with eager delight, and still panting from the violent exertion she leaped to her feet.
“Did you like it?
Hart waved his hand. “Better? Why, you make Moll Davis look clumsy as a pregnant cow!”
Nelly laughed, but her face changed swiftly. She reached for an orange and began to peel it, rolling out her lower lip in exaggerated pique. “Much good it does me! There’s no one there to see me these days. Lord, the pit’s been empty as a Dutchman’s noddle ever since his Majesty gave her that diamond ring! They’ve all got to have a look at the King’s latest whore.”
“You’d think a new royal mistress wouldn’t be such a curiosity any more,” remarked Lacy, knocking out his pipe on the edge of the table, stepping on the ashes as they fell to the floor. “I can count a baker’s dozen from the stage any day I like.”
At that moment there was a loud rapping on the door and Nelly ran to open it. A liveried footman stood there. “Mrs. Knight presents her service to you, madame, and would like a word with you. She waits below in her coach.”
Nelly glanced back at the two men from over her shoulder and screwed up her face to wink. “Speak of the Devil—here’s another one below. You’ll find sack and brandy in the cupboard. Maybe there’s something to eat in the food-hutch. I’ll be back in a moment.”
She disappeared, but an instant later returned to slide her feet into a pair of high-heeled, square-toed pumps, and then picking up her skirts she went swooping down the stairs and out into the street. A gilded coach-and-four stood there, the door held open by a footman. Mary Knight sat inside, her beautiful face painted an almost glistening white, and she reached out one jewelled arm to take hold of Nelly’s wrist.
“Come, sweetheart—get in. I want to talk to you.” Her voice was warm and sweet as a melody, and she smelled of some drowsy perfume.
Nelly obediently climbed in and flounced down beside her. Not at all conscious of her own griminess, she looked at Mary with passionate admiration. “Lord, Mary! I swear you’re prettier every time I see you!”
“Pshaw, child. It’s only that I wear fine clothes nowadays, and a jewel or so. By the way, whatever became of that pearl necklace my Lord Buckhurst gave you?”
Nell shrugged. “I sent it back to ’im.”
“Sent it back? Good God! What for?”
“Oh—I don’t know. What good is a string of pearls to me? My mother would have pawned it to buy brandy or to get Rose’s husband out of Newgate.” Rose was Nelly’s sister.
