Royal Harlot (18 page)

With the edge taken from our hunger by that first encounter, we took our pleasure for the rest of the night with more leisure, and more invention. To my amusement, his dogs remained on the bed with us as panting witnesses, though they’d thoughtfully shifted to the farthest corner of the bed to be away from our sport. We rattled the bedstead against the wall, and afterward laughed into the pillows as we imagined what the other guests lodged around us must have thought of our noisy racketing.

We were both of the perfect age for such amusement, with our eyes unclouded by protestations of love and our souls unbound by the shackling obligations of marriage vows. Instead our tenuous attachment was born of common attraction and little more, and for us, that was sufficient. I matched his every suggestion and desire with another more daring of my own, pleasing him, I know, far beyond his expectations. And so, I will admit, did he do equally for me.

I woke first in the morning. Untended, the fire had long since burned down to gray ash, and the small chamber was so cold that my breath showed as a cloud when I peeked from the warm snuggery of the bed. A dovecote on the roof across from the room’s single window had come to life with the dawn, and fat maiden doves fluttered and cooed beyond the frost-etched glass. Within the lodging house I could hear servants and others on the stairs and in the hallway, laughing or shouting or quarreling. The house, and the city, had begun the day, and it was past time I began mine as well.

I pushed myself upright, shoved my hair from my face, and looked down at the sleeping king beside me. He lay flat upon his back, one large arm thrown over his head to show the whorl of hair beneath. He did not snore, most rare in a large man, and I smiled fondly at him. He’d a right to sleep as long as he wished, for he’d pleased me well. My body ached wonderfully from all the contortions I’d asked it to assume, my hair was a magpie’s nest of knots and snarls, and I smelled as rank as any brothel on a Sunday morning.

My dear royal majesty! I’d not felt so enchanted with a lover since my earliest days with Philip.

Taking care not to make the rope springs of the bedstead creak and wake him, I slipped from the warm cocoon we’d created of coverlet and sheets and into the chilly room. I scurried shivering about the room, naked save for my earrings, to gather up my clothes from where they’d been dropped—always the most humbling conclusion to a night of passion.

“Barbara?” His voice was muffled, thick with sleep. “Where are you, sweet lady?”

“Not far.” I pulled my smock over my head and drew my hair free. “Forgive me, sir, but I must go.”

“You can’t.” He propped himself up on one elbow to watch me. His jaw was darkened with a night’s growth of beard, wicked as a Caribbean pirate. “I won’t permit it.”

“In this, sir, I fear you have no choice,” I said, combing my hair as best I could with my fingers. “I must begin my journey home to England.”

“Why today?” he asked. “Why not tomorrow, or the day past that?”

“Because Sir Alan Broderick was forced to make the most complicated arrangements imaginable to convey me here and to take me back,” I said as I separated my hair into thirds for braiding. “There are drivers waiting for me at every step, and a boat to carry me across the Channel to England, all planned by Sir Alan.”

“Sir Alan Broderick,” the king said, musing, as a brown-and-white spaniel pressed against his shoulder to be petted. “What do you make of him?”

“I?” I paused in my braiding, surprised he’d ask my opinion, but determined to be honest. “I believe Sir Alan cares much for your cause, sir, and has a gift for complicated plans such as the ones that brought me here. But as a man, he drinks too deeply, and grows quarrelsome from it, which in the end would make him not to be trusted.”

He nodded in agreement, gently stroking the dog’s long, silky ears. “That was my unfortunate experience with Sir Alan as well. Yet you will trust his plans to take you home?”

“God willing, yes.” I realized now I’d just passed judgment on Sir Alan’s careful hopes for the future, and I realized with a start that this was a taste of the rare power I’d have from sharing the king’s bed. “But if I don’t go as I should, then I’ll vex Sir Alan, and inconvenience a great many others besides.”

“If you leave, Barbara,” he said, “you’ll inconvenience me more than all these great many others combined.”

“Oh, pish,” I protested, even as I hopped back into the bed, pushing him back onto the pillow as I lay across his chest. “You may be the king, but you cannot say such tenderling things to me. It’s not fair.”

He chuckled, shoving aside my smock to cup my bottom with his hand and make certain I couldn’t wriggle free again. “
This
is not fair, madam. Sir Alan sends me the rarest beauty in my entire kingdom, and now he wants to steal you back.”

“To my husband,” I said softly. To be sure, I was in no haste to return to Roger, but to my surprise I found I’d grown to like the king so quickly and so well that I’d no wish to leave him, either. I’d caught myself in my own snare, and my regret was for once genuine. “Mr. Palmer will be expecting me to return.”

The king’s brows rose with wry skepticism. “Is Mr. Palmer that much of a fool, or so very trusting?”

I wrinkled my nose, deciding how best to answer, while the crystal heart around my neck seemed to grow heavier. I’d keep my word to Roger, whether he deserved it or not.

“He is, I think, ambitious to serve the crown,” I said with care, “as his father did your father before him.”

His hand spread across my nether cheek, appreciatively encompassing more of my soft flesh. “We like Mr. Palmer’s ambition. He’ll be remembered when we come back to power.”

I smiled smugly, thinking of how my ass had accomplished so much more than
Monsieur’s
wretched thousand pounds. “Mr. Palmer will be honored to have their loyalty rewarded, sir.”

“I cannot scoff at any loyal subjects,” he said, sharing my amusement. “Especially when this one’s been so obliging with his wife.”

I said no more, contenting myself with only a smile. I doubted that Roger would indeed be so obliging about being openly crowned with his cuckold’s horns, even for the sake of the Palmers of Dorney Court, and I foresaw much unpleasantness before this all was settled.

“There will be a place for you in my court, too, madam,” he continued. “Whitehall Palace will need your beauty and grace after so much dreariness.”

My heart leapt with joy, to have such a prize dangled before me. “I will be waiting for you in London, sir,” I said breathlessly. “Never doubt my loyalty.”

“Soon, then,” he said. “Very soon.”

“Truly?” I asked, startled by his confidence. It was not that I doubted him, but it seemed I’d been hearing of the king’s imminent return to power for all my life. Now to be told by His Majesty himself that those longed-for hopes would be answered, and soon—why, it seemed too grand to believe. “How? Is there an army ready, a force gathering to carry you to victory?”

He smiled. “It will be a quieter victory than that, I think, more the work of diplomats than soldiers.”

“But how?” I asked again, my excitement growing. This
was
news. “How can such a feat be arranged?”

He touched his finger to my nose. “I cannot tell you, my fair, demanding imp, not yet. Suffice to say that I believe that Cromwell’s death, combined with the incompetence of the Rump Parliament, has at last made the London climate warm toward me.”

“Oh, yes, the Rump is done,” I said. “Do you know that boys in the London street will taunt one another to ‘kiss my Rump,’ as if it were the same as their very asses!”

“They do?” He laughed, and I laughed with him. “Then let me hope those same boys will cheer my return.”

“I think they’d cheer anyone who’d promise to keep the country from more war,” I said, and then my laughter fell away. “The whole city’s on edge with discontent, sir, not knowing what may come next. The price of food is very dear, for farmers don’t wish the risk of coming to market, and some shops stay closed tight as drums. We hear rumors, of course, that General Monck’s army will come down from Scotland, or that the Common Council of the City is demanding a newly elected Parliament to take the Rump’s place. Doubtless you’ve heard it all from others with more knowledge than I, but that is what I see.”

“I’ve heard it all, yes,” he said, shaking his head. “But that’s no reason not to hear it again. Londoners have suffered enough, and God willing, I mean to end their troubles soon. I cannot share more than that, sweet, but it will be common knowledge once Hyde has finished all the proper negotiations.”

“Sir Edward?” I asked, my heart sinking at the name. “He is behind your return?”

“One of many,” he answered solemnly. “There’s no man more devoted to me, or to the throne, nor is there another better able to cope with these foreign ministers than a barrister brought up at the Middle Temple.”

I sighed, my breasts pressing against his chest. “You know he does not care for me.”

“He’ll like you less after last night,” he said evenly. “His chamber lies directly below this one. I doubt we gave him a moment’s peace for sleep.”

My eyes widened with surprise, even embarrassment. Then I pictured Sir Edward sputtering and shaking his fist impotently at the ceiling as our bedstead had creaked and thumped over his head, and I laughed, and again the king laughed with me.

“Ah, Barbara, you’re a bold, wicked creature behind that beautiful face,” he said, laughing still. “Is it any wonder I don’t wish to let you go?”

I smiled, easing myself more completely over him, my legs splayed over his hips. He was already hard; he’d need little encouragement from me for a final flourish before I had to leave.

“Then bid me a proper farewell, sir,” I whispered, my voice husky with promise as I reached down to guide him home. “Give me more to remember and keep dear, until you can return to London, and to me.”

 
The journey back to London with Wilson seemed at once tediously long and unfairly short, with only Roger waiting for me at the end of it. I’d too much time alone with my thoughts and the memories of the king’s handsome dark face, how we’d made one another laugh, and how we’d delighted in the bold, lascivious play I’d shared with him. Truth to tell, I missed him, not just as a Royalist misses her king but as any woman longs for a man.

I’d likewise too much time to recall that lengthy list of the royal bastards he’d already sired. Too late I lamented how careless I’d been with myself in that regard, and knew from the looks that Wilson gave me that she was thinking of that, too. On the night I returned home, I made sure to lie with Roger, taking his seed deep within me. That way if I were in fact with child, I could fairly say it was my husband’s, and not the king’s.

Four days later, my flowers came to prove I’d nothing to fear. Yet for the first time in my womanly life, I was mournful and sad. I shut myself away in my little closet and wept, and grieved for what had never been.

LONDON
May 1 6 6 0

 
For those of us who suffered through the time of wars and of Cromwell’s rule, England had seemed a somber, unhappy place, as if the endless dark days of winter would never give way to the cheery hope of spring. Yet just as it seems that every April all at once green shoots will thrust through the cold ground and the sun’s warmth will come again, so it felt that the king’s return happened overnight.

While I’d been away in Brussels, General George Monck had finally decided the country could bear no more chaos and indecision, not if it wished to be spared another civil war. As governor of Scotland, he’d kept his army from the old days, and marched at their head to London. Parliamentary resistance melted away before this show of well-trained force, and as soon as he’d entered the city, he demanded that the tattered remnants of the Rump Parliament dissolve themselves, setting the way for new elections. This we’d been expecting— and was the reason that Roger had been so busily organizing his own campaign for a seat—but it still came as both a relief and a joy to most Londoners. Bells pealed from every steeple and tower at the news, and dozens of bonfires lit the winter night skies around the city. Blessings were called after the general in the street, and the joyous crowds pressed drink and money into the hands of his soldiers.

Roger won his seat handily. In celebration, buckets of ale were drunk by his supporters at Dorney Court, and Roger himself seemed to glow from within from his new title and prestige. I congratulated him, as was his due, but remained unimpressed by my new status as the wife of the member for New Windsor. I aspired to higher titles, and honors won by my own wit.

But first more wonders were to come. As we all learned much later, Monck had decided privately that England’s only true salvation was to restore the monarchy and welcome back Charles Stuart as king. The most secret negotiations flew back and forth between the king and Monck, acting on behalf of the state. I pictured His Majesty sitting with his little spaniels in his humble lodgings in Brussels, sorting through these momentous letters in his darned thread stockings as he weighed not only the future of his monarchy but of England as well.

By late March, at Monck’s delicate suggestion, the king shifted from the Spanish Netherlands—now an inappropriate perch for a possible English sovereign, considering how England and Spain were officially still at war—to the politically neutral town of Breda.

In early April, the king wrote formally to the new Speaker of the House of Commons, and likewise sent forth the Declaration of Breda for the rest of his countrymen. Both promised that the king would be merciful, intent upon healing the breaches of every sort within the country, and would stand fast in the Protestant faith.

But in the declaration, the king outlined his plans for the future in more detail. He offered indemnity to all who’d taken part in the wars against him and his father save those excluded by Parliament, freedom of conscience and tolerance for worship, land settlements, and reparation of long-overdue pay to the army—all, of course, dependent not on the king himself, but on a vote by Parliament. Except for those directly responsible for his father’s death, the king was willing to pardon anyone who was willing to ask his forgiveness.