Ladies in Waiting (18 page)

“Then why does everyone say it of you?” Beth asked.

“Because the world will say something about everyone, given half a chance. I suppose I smiled at some countess, or kissed a dowager’s hand when I let her keep her wedding ring, and now I’m a gallant of the road, the robber seducer. I warrant it makes my job easier, for the women all keep their husbands from fighting me, while the men are all too eager to give up their coin in place of their wife’s honor . . . or their own. Every criminal needs a legend. D’you suppose Robin Hood really gave to the poor? Perhaps he did once and a story was born. Now, hush, and doubt no more, my love. I moved heaven and earth to discover when you would be on the road, but I dare not meet you like this again. But there’s another way, if you are brave. Do you know the mulberry grove?”

Beth returned, flushed, and with all eyes on her the highwaymen made a practiced escape. When they were nothing more than a distant line of dust, the coachman finally mustered the courage to shake his fist at them.

“I’ll see you drawn and quartered! Ravens will eat your guts, and your maggoty head will stand on a spike, you accursed whoresons!”

Only then did Beth fully realize what occupation her lover had chosen, and what fate would await should mischance catch him. She fainted into her friends’ arms.

They cut one of the horses from its traces and the postillion lad was sent to Whitehall. However, as he had fouled his small clothes in the initial attack, he was too ashamed to go in by any of the main passageways and lurked behind the kitchens until someone noticed him. So the maids of honor waited a good hour by the roadside before anyone rushed to their aid, subject to the curious stares of the populace. A goat-girl offered them ladlefuls of milk, a timid swain dropped a pretty bouquet of violets at their feet, but no one pursued the dread highwaymen.

At last two coaches came, and riding hard on a bay before them all, the king himself. He saw Beth, conscious but prostrate and weeping, and Frances, who was now bored but burst into fresh tears at the sight of Charles and the renewed thought of what could have occurred, but he strode straight to Zabby and said, “Tell me what happened, and no concealment.”

She tried to pretend he came to her because he loved her best, but she knew it was because she was the only one of the maids whose judgment he could completely trust. His next words confirmed it. “Did the blackguards touch her?” His eyes flicked to Frances, as if he couldn’t trust himself to look at her and find her soiled.

“No,” Zabby said spitefully. “Your Frances buried her face in the mud so they wouldn’t notice her. They took a fairer flower: Beth.”

He had the decency to look guilty. “And did they . . .”

“It was only one, the man they call Elphinstone, and as far as she will say, he offered her no insult.”

“Though they say the man will ravish grandmothers, big-bellied matrons, anyone. Are you sure? Neither she . . . nor Frances?”

Disgusted, Zabby pulled away, in time to see the Countess of Enfield step from the first carriage and stoop over her child. Shoving Eliza aside, she took Beth by the shoulders and pulled her up, looking her over.

“You stupid, stupid girl!” she shouted, shaking her. “How could you let this happen? Spoiled! Spoiled! And not a mark on you. Before you let yourself be violated you should have fought with all your strength, so he would be forced to ruin your face to have your honor. Did you give in because you feared bruises and blood?” She slapped her.

“My lady!” Charles said, endeavoring to restrain her, but loath to touch her. “The child was not harmed, as far as I can tell.”

“Not harmed? Better her face should be scarred, her bones sundered, than her one treasure stolen from the family. Why didn’t you fight him, you slut? Your skirts aren’t even torn. Did he lift them so easily?”

“Mother, I swear . . .”

“What good is your oath when all the world will know you were alone with that Elphinstone, and for all I know every scurvy cutthroat in London! Your Majesty, I believe there is a physician in the second coach?”

“Yes, when word came I didn’t know if anyone was hurt.”

“And he is your own physician? Is he the one who verified the queen?”

“Whatever do you mean, madam?”

“Her chastity. Is he the one who checked her, or did you use a midwife?”

“My queen was never subject to such an indecent . . .”

The countess made an undignified snort. “Took her word, did you? Like as not she’s barren now because she had a dozen abortions before she came to you. Ha! Ignorant wretch, even with a crown on your head. You there!” she called to the portly little doctor as he stepped out and Charles tried to decide whether to charge the countess with treason. “Here’s your patient. Tell me if she’s been raped.”

It took some time for the doctor to be made to understand what the countess required of him, first because Beth, with her quicker apprehension, realized and began to wail, and second because it was utterly out of his customary line of work. He could let blood from a vein so neatly that his patient wouldn’t even feel it, make the suction of a red-hot glass cup almost pleasant, slip in a clyster with buttered fingers, but he had no truck with what lay between a woman’s hips and thighs. That was a midwife’s territory.

“Are you incompetent as well as a fool?” the countess inquired as the doctor stammered his protests. “It is quite simple. Is she virgin or not? Go, straight away, and tell me!”

“Do you mean you intend me to perform an examination here? The girl looks untouched.”

“Here! Now!” She had enough sense to add, “In the empty carriage will do, I suppose. It has curtains.”

Struggling weakly, weeping mightily, Beth was half coaxed, half dragged into the coach and closeted with the physician for a good ten minutes. She emerged red-faced and disheveled, her eyes firmly on the ground.

“Well?” the countess demanded, hands on hips. The sun glinted off her shining hawk’s beak, blinding the doctor, and he knew in his heart that, whatever had been his findings, he’d not risk the wrath of this horror by declaring her daughter not intact. He knew what so often happens to the bearer of bad news.

“I am pleased to inform you,” he declared to all present, “that your daughter is still a virgin.”

For a brief moment the countess looked almost human. A relief that might have been maternal washed across her face, but Beth knew better.

“The family fortune is still in its purse, Mother,” she said grimly.

“And a good thing, too,” the countess said, “for I’ve found you a suitable husband.”

Once again, Beth found solace in unconsciousness.

Chapter 14

The Collector of Beauty

T
HE EARL OF THORNE
made no move to greet mother or daughter as they were shown into his library two days later. He was so immobile that for a moment Beth thought he was only another statue, albeit smaller than the dozens that towered in the grand room, Grecian nudes twice the size of life.
They belong outside,
she thought.
They’re trapped in here, without the sun warming their marble shoulders.

She spied him at last only because he was clothed, and if anything even more handsome than the classically muscled statues, for all that he was nearing fifty. She’d always thought beauty and youth went hand in hand, and as much as she thought about her own looks, expected to lose them after a few years of marriage. But this man was as well preserved as one of the king’s specimens steeped in strong spirits, unnaturally young despite his years.

The earl’s face was like the death mask of a young man, cast in unlined bronze, without expression. His black hair lay in neat, unmoving waves. He blinked heavily, once, making Beth start, as if she had seen a corpse become reanimated, and then very slowly he began to descend the spiral staircase leading from the second-story alcove he’d just quitted. Before the door shut, Beth caught a glimpse of richly ornamented volumes, a rolled scroll, another marble nude, much smaller, still classical, but more along the lines of a Pompeii bathhouse than an austere temple.

He stopped before them, his face immobile. It was his habit never to speak first.

Beth’s mother dropped the barest hint of a curtsy, excused by her ailment from any elaborate show, and said, “Here she is, then, my lord. My treasure.”

“I see,” Thorne said, and continued to regard them without apparent emotion.

“Tell his lordship how pleased you are to make his acquaintance.”

“Mother, I. . .” But she broke off at a dangerous look and said, mechanically, “I am so pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Pleased,” he said, as if to himself. “Are you, now? I have made a study of pleasure since I was only a bit older than you, Lady Elizabeth. My own, not that of others.” He took a step closer and examined her. She wanted to squirm away. “Is that what pleasure looks like, then?” He turned from them and took a book from among the hundreds on the shelves. “You may leave us now, Lady Enfield.”

Beth’s mother rapped her cane smartly on the marble floor. “I will not, sir! My daughter is alone with no man.”

“Save footpads and cutpurses,” he drawled without looking up from his book.

“Blast and damnation! The king’s own physician swears she was not touched. Isn’t that enough for you? The girl is pure, and any man with eyes can tell she’s the most lovely thing in England. Now, anything you wish to say to her must be in front of me, and if you slander her good name once more, we leave this place.”

Beth had never heard her mother sound afraid before. A stranger would have seen only fury, but Beth knew her mother better than anyone, and she could hear the desperation behind the snapping indignation.

“Very well. Come here, both of you.” He plucked a dark hair from his head and used it to mark his place in the book, then led them to a statue of a young woman.

“Hero,” he said. “Kept in seclusion by her parents to be a virgin priestess of Aphrodite, as if there could be such a thing, but myths, like men, become corrupt over time.” He permitted himself a chuckle. “In my early days as a collector I occasionally trusted my acquisitions to another, a scholar of some repute. He’d made several small purchases on my behalf in the past, which pleased me, so I entrusted him to procure this Grecian beauty for me. The price was exorbitant, but he vowed it couldn’t be had for less, and a doge was bidding against me, so I paid freely, with a large fee for his efforts. Imagine my surprise when I removed my statue from the straw and found this!”

Not understanding, Beth said, “But it’s lovely.”

“It is a forgery, sculpted not above fifty years ago!” He looked at her as if she were an ignorant worm. “I’ve kept it all these years to remind me of two things. First, to always be sure what I acquire is worth the price I pay.”

He stopped and stroked the statue’s bare breast. After a very long pause, the countess asked, as he’d meant her to, “And the second thing?”

“To severely punish those who deceive me. Look here.” He circled to the far side of the statue where the virginal stone was marred by a reddish substance. “When I finally found the deceitful scoundrel, I broke his head against hers. False she may be, but sturdily made.” He sighed. “I had to throw away a fine Turkish carpet, though. Brains never quite come out.” He smiled broadly for the first time. “Now, let us see. Where to begin?”

“I won’t marry him, Mother. I can’t!” Beth was still hot with indignation at her second examination in as many days. This one was less intimate but far more disturbing.

“Nonsense,” her mother said. She was in a prime mood, and while Beth’s protests would usually earn her a slap, now the countess was positively jovial as they bounced in the carriage back to Whitehall. “He has fifty thousand a year at the very least, a house in London, a castle in Cornwall, a palace, from all I hear, somewhere in Italy. He’s settling a thousand a year on me, which I don’t care a fig about, but it shows he’s a gentleman who does things thoroughly. And as for you, dear, why, you’ll never want again! Think of it!”

She did. She thought of her mother free from worry and care, perhaps even happy. She could have the best physicians, sea-soaks, and patent unguents, possibly a cure.

And what will I have?
Beth wondered.
A husband I don’t love. Can’t love. Not even if dear Harry didn’t exist.

“Mother, how could you have let him do that?”

“He’ll be doing it soon enough after you take your vows, that and more. There’s no escaping that, if you marry a beggar or a king. It’s not taking liberties so long as I was there to make sure he didn’t go too far. You heard what he said about that flummery statue of his, the brazen hussy. Ah, but I’ve done a fine job keeping you pure, my girl, haven’t I? There’s nothing amiss with you, firm, tender fruit that you are! What’s a press and squeeze here and there? He had to be sure of what a splendid creature he’s acquiring. He took the royal physician’s word on your chastity—you can be glad of that at least.”

“And you’d probably have let him examine that, too,” she said under her breath.

“Perhaps I would, ungrateful chit! Do you know what it will mean to you . . . to me . . . to the family to unite with Thorne? That’s worth a feel or two.”

“I felt like a pig at the market.”

The countess laughed. “And what a pink little squealer you are. But save your blushes for your wedding night.”

“I told you, Mother, I won’t marry him.”

The countess glanced out the window to be sure they were unobserved, then dug her nails into Beth’s arm. “What is it, you fool? Do you think you’re in love with some fresh-cheeked page or beribboned court popinjay?” She got so close to Beth’s face that the silver hawk’s beak touched her nose. “Who will have you, eh? Oh, they’ll pet and praise and hope for a tumble behind the stairway, but who will have you to keep? Look at us, look where life has dragged us. You’ll never have another chance like this, and I swear, by my blood and bile, if you foul this prospect I’ll kill us both!”

“But Mother . . .”

“Not a word!”