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.”
