Royal Harlot (14 page)

I recrossed my ankles again so that my skirts slipped farther up my legs, and lightly prodded my husband’s thigh with the toe of my shoe, the better to make my point. “The truth is, Roger, that for a young woman, reasonable beauty always trumps reasonable sense. So long as I go about my journey as if I’ve every right to be wherever I am, no guard, watchman, or soldier will question me, except to prolong the chance to have my attention to himself.”

Roger grunted, not really conceding, and looked down at my foot resting against his leg. “Are you wearing scarlet stockings?”

“Yes,” I said. “They caught my eye at the mercer’s last week. They’re very merry, aren’t they?”

From the look on his face, I knew I’d won my argument, though I was clever enough not to gloat. I pointed my toe and made little circles in the air to better display not only my red thread stockings but also the plump yellow ribbon rosettes I’d added over the tongues of my shoes. And if Roger—or any other gentleman—took notice of my ankles, too, well, wasn’t that the real reason for bright stockings and ribboned shoes?

“They’re merry indeed, Barbara.” He captured my twirling foot and rested it on his leg. Lightly he ran his fingertips back and forth along my shin, almost as if he were seeing it for the first time.

“You’ve as pretty a leg as I’ve ever seen, Barbara,” he said, his voice gruff. “Very pretty.”

I chuckled, and with my hands still tucked within my muff, I raised it to cover the lower half of my face to peek beguilingly over the fur at him. I wondered if the scarlet stockings were lure enough for him to be more impulsive and take me here in the rocking carriage on the open road.

At once the fancy seized me: such a posture was not the fastest way to find release, to be sure, but a pleasurable enough way to pass the time. It would be only a moment’s work for me to untie his breeches and coax his cock to rampant life for me to sit astride. What better way for us both to forget the dull, dutiful effort he’d put forth in bed last night, and provide a more luscious reminder of one another while we were apart?

I lowered my eyes and puckered my lips, and blew a kiss to him over the muff, gently ruffling the fur. As I did, I slid lower on the carriage seat, so that I could rub my leg against the inside of his thigh. I thought that would be invitation enough, even for Roger.

I’d thought wrong.

His hand stilled on my leg. “Why wear those stockings today, Barbara? Do you hope to inflame the good sailors who’ll carry you on this errand? Is that your scheme to amuse yourself on this journey?”

“I don’t have a
scheme
, Roger.” I pulled my leg away from his hand, dropping my skirts. I was not accustomed to being refused, and I did not like it. “I’m risking my life for the sake of carrying letters to the
king
.”

He grunted with contempt and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know you too well for protests like that, wife. You’ll rise from your coffin to beguile the gravedigger who’s come to bury you.”

“Better that than to be so consumed by jealousy that I’m incapable of enjoying the pleasures that life offers!” I could not venture which offended me the more: that he’d thought I’d nothing to offer to the Royalist cause, or that I’d worn my new stockings only for the sake of amusing a crew of common sailors.

“Listen to me, Barbara,” he said sharply. “This journey is not for your pleasure. The sole reason I am permitting it is so that you might further the Palmer interests with the king.”

“Oh, yes, the
Palmers,
” I said, as scathing as Roger deserved. “How should I ever forget the importance of your family, great and good above everyone else, even the Stuarts?”

“You are one of us through marriage, Barbara,” he said sharply, “whether you care for it or not.”

I didn’t bother to answer, but turned away to stare unseeing from the window. There was no use quarreling with him when he was like this. Besides, what did I stand to win, anyway? He cared more for that wretched nest of Palmers and all their imagined slights and sufferings than he ever would for me. I don’t believe he truly cared for His Majesty, either, except for what could be gained for the Palmers with the king returned.

All that truly mattered to my husband was his retribution. I meant to see that he received it, too, exactly as we both deserved.

Chapter Six

BRUSSELS, SPANISH NETHERLANDS
February 1 6 6 0

 
“Hurry, Wilson, make haste, make haste!” I hooked my garnet ear-bobs in place while my maidservant finished lacing the back of my bodice. “Make it as tight as you can now. I must look my best for His Majesty.”

“As you wish, madam.” Obediently Wilson gave the lace an extra-hard tug, jerking me backward a step with the force of it, but I was satisfied. I hadn’t had room to bring another petticoat with me other than the one in which I’d traveled here, but I had made certain to bring this bodice: dark blue velvet that heightened the color of my eyes, piped with pale green silk cording and embroidered with swirling vines across the full sleeves. Wearing this atop, no one would notice if below I wore a petticoat of sailcloth.

The bodice was well boned and snugly cut, and set to sit below my shoulders. The puffed sleeves reached only to my elbows, leaving the lace edging along the neckline and cuffs of my smock to offer a veiled enticement to my breasts and my forearms. Roger disliked this bodice, damning the cut as too French for his wife’s modesty, but it had always been Philip’s favorite.

Now I hoped it would please the king as well.

“Your shoes, madam.” Wilson knelt down to slip my shoes with the rosettes onto my feet, clad once again in the scarlet stockings that had caused such trouble for me with Roger.

I gave my skirts a sweeping flourish and took three small steps, as if in a dance without music, and laughed gaily. “I’m ready, Wilson. Come, fetch your cloak, and you shall walk me to His Majesty’s lodgings.”

Sir Alan’s arrangements had placed me in an inn run by an Englishman and his Dutch wife. This had been chosen for both the convenience of my native tongue and for its proximity to the king, so I might deliver my letters and gold with ease and speed, and without the bother of hiring a carriage. Courier or not, my situation remained an uneasy one, an English lady alone, save for my maid, in a foreign country. But now that I’d been specially invited to return this night to His Majesty’s lodgings and join him and his company, I praised Sir Alan’s careful arrangements with fresh appreciation.

From my mother, I’d heard tales of the old king’s court at Whitehall Palace before the wars and Cromwell: handsome lords with their beautiful ladies, all lavishly dressed and bejeweled as they attended to King Charles and his queen, Henrietta Marie. There’d been much drink and rich food served on porcelain and plate, elegant paintings by the greatest master artists upon the walls, witty conversation and elaborate masques and music composed by Italian
maestros
expressly for a single night or occasion. I’d no knowledge of my own of this long-lost world of the court, of course, but I was eager to experience it now, even if on a reduced and exiled scale.

But the sad little gathering I found when I returned that night to His Majesty’s lodgings bore no resemblance to the bright and glorious company my mother had described. Instead I was shown into the same small, plain parlor where I’d first met the king earlier in the day.

Now on a stool in one corner sat an Irish fiddler, bowing a mournful tune that seemed fit to echo every detail of the chamber. The white plaster walls were marked with sooty black patches behind the sconces, and the close-set, unpainted beams overhead had likewise been cured dark by countless fires and pipes. The furnishings were common, too: well-kicked benches against one wall, a trio of dark wood chairs with inhospitably low backs arranged around a small table cleared for playing cards. Another table was covered with a threadbare carpet, overlaid with a diaper cloth, and set with a humble supper centered by a half-carved roast fowl, its bare-picked breastbone jutting awkwardly from the plate like Lazarus halfway from the grave.

“Mistress Palmer.” Sir Edward Hyde was the first to greet me, which was fortunate, since I knew no other in the room besides him. His Majesty had yet to appear, else I would have noticed him at once. So this, then, was the English royal court in exile: a dozen or so gentlemen standing in conversation about the tiny fire, shabbily garbed in outmoded clothes. There were also two tired-looking ladies, whom I surpassed so thoroughly in both beauty and youth, the coin of women’s power, that I took no further notice of them. My real interest lay with the gentlemen. Ill dressed they might be now, but when the king came back to London and to the throne, these would be the men whose loyalty in desperate exile would be rewarded first, and most lavishly—the men who’d likely have the most power in a new government, and not the likes of Roger, who remained safe and snug in our home in London.

“Mistress Palmer,” Sir Edward said again to recollect my attention. He cleared his throat, sending his fleshy chins aquiver, clearly peeved that I’d been looking past him to the others. I guessed he must be nearly sixty years of age, though he still clung to the inflexible and priggish manner of the barrister he’d long ago trained to be. “Mistress Palmer, His Majesty will be pleased that you were able to attend.”

I smiled, for his meaning was clear enough. “And you are not, Hyde?”

His watery blue eyes were cold toward me. “I knew your father, madam, and was honored to call him friend. He was an excellent, pious gentleman of great bravery and rectitude.”

I put an edge to my words. “None of which you believe me to be, sir, do you?”

“His Lordship your father was an exemplary gentleman, madam,” he said, dancing away from my question with a courtier’s finesse, “and I am led to believe that your husband, Mr. Palmer, is as well. But I cannot say the same of Lord Chesterfield.”

“Then you must never have had the pleasure of Lord Chesterfield’s personal acquaintance, Sir Edward,” I said, “else you’d hold a different opinion entirely.”

I continued to smile, opening my fan blade by blade. It was not that I needed the breeze the fan could provide, not this far from the fire, but because I wished to reinforce the barrier between me and this odious fat man.

Sir Edward smiled in return, but with challenge, not amusement. “I fear you’re mistaken, Mistress Palmer. I am thoroughly familiar with Lord Chesterfield, and stand by my assessment of his character.”

“Indeed, sir,” I said over the curve of my fan. “Then I must conclude you’ve likewise judged me.”

He’d stopped bothering with even that cursory smile. “His Majesty is not Lord Chesterfield.”

“Nor am I you, Sir Edward.”

He made a snuffle of disgust. “His Majesty is more than clever enough to discern the difference between us, Mistress Palmer.”

“Oh, I quite venture he already has,” I said, recalling how His Majesty had kissed me—and kissed me well—before I’d left him earlier. “But tell me, Sir Edward. Am I so . . . daunting that for the sake of your king you must treat me with this show of ill manners? Do I threaten you so much as that?”

His face turned a florid purple, answer enough, his lips compressing so tightly that I doubted he could make them bring forth a reply even if he’d wished to. Instead, he abruptly turned away, abandoning me to make my own way in the company.

I watched him go, his broad bottom waggling beneath the skirts of his doublet like a goose’s backside. I didn’t care that Sir Edward had known my father, or that he had the ear of the king. If he was so determined to dislike me, why, I was happy to oblige him, and return his disregard.

I looked back to the gentlemen at the fireplace. Some were watching me in turn with bold interest, while the rest were pretending not to do so, while doing exactly that, being guided by Sir Edward’s rudeness toward me. The fiddler’s music would have masked our words, but even a child could have seen the inhospitable manner in which I’d been treated.

I could remain here in the door, keeping forlornly apart until one of these gentlemen deigned to come forward and rescue me. That, I suppose, would be what Roger’s ideal, modest lady-wife would do. But I’d never before been afraid of gentlemen, in number or alone, and in all my days I’d yet to be either modest or ideal.

Instead I gave my fan a languid pass across my breasts to make certain the gentlemen had not overlooked my splendid blue velvet bodice, and approached the fireplace as if I’d every right to join them—which, of course, I did. I held my head high and smiled not with invitation but with confidence, and as I walked I took care to place my beribboned feet in time to the fiddler’s tune, as much to amuse myself as to beguile them. I’d make certain they wouldn’t forget either me or my name.

“Good day, my lords and gentlemen,” I said. “I am Mistress Palmer.”

Knowing that there’s less sin to be found in giving too much respect than too little, I decided to treat them all like lords until I learned otherwise, and swept a pretty curtsey. I lowered my eyes and bowed my head the precise amount necessary to make my bright chestnut hair tumble over my shoulder, and smiled as I rose, confident that I’d made near conquests of them all. The ring of widened eyes and gaping mouths and pipes clutched forgotten in frozen fingers before me only proved it.

Hah, I thought merrily, how long these gentlemen must have been banished from their native soil, if the presence of one fair English lady could reduce them to such unthinking simpletons!

Yet before I could press home my point and claim every one of their hearts, I heard a rough sort of scuffling across the floor behind me. I turned and discovered two small dogs, brown-and-white-spotted spaniels with long ears and feathered legs and tails, scurrying toward me with their tongues hanging from their mouths. The fiddler recognized these dogs for the harbingers they were and immediately stopped playing, then slipped from his stool. The others around me, too, began to bow low as a young equerry hurried into the room after the two dogs.