Royal Harlot (3 page)

Obediently I turned my face toward the leaded glass casement. My eyes were often remarked, so dark a blue that they were mistook for black, and framed with thickets of dark lashes unlike my hair.

“As I thought,” she pronounced as she reached once again for the dish with the orange. “That’s more of your Villiers legacy, Barbara, and precious little Bayning. The first duke had those same rare eyes, and look how far they carried him.”

Sheltered as I’d been, even I knew of that first duke: my notorious great-uncle, George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham. A most beautiful youth at the court of King James I, he’d used his charm and grace to win the favor of the slobbery old pederast king. I’d overheard tales of my uncle and his scandalous actions when my elders thought I wasn’t listening, and learned how much he’d been hated yet envied in his time, and how even now, thirty years after he’d been killed, he was still so reviled that his murderer was lauded a hero. But I also knew that through his beauty, my uncle had raised himself to a dukedom, and his family—
my
family—to power and influence that continued now with the second duke, in exile on the Continent with his friend, the young King Charles II.

Yet no one before had dared tell me that I favored this fantastical uncle so, and the notion startled me both with its possibilities and its hazards.

“Do not look so shocked, Barbara,” my mother said, her voice brittle. “I cannot provide you with a suitable fortune with which to attract a husband. No one will care for the Villiers name now, not when the most desired brides are the daughters of Cromwell’s ill-born generals. You must pray that your beauty makes some suitable gentleman desire you in spite of your poverty. Why else do you think I’ve brought you here to town?”

“I—I thought you wished to see me,” I stammered through my disappointment. “I thought you wished my company.”

“Your
company
?” repeated my mother with scathing incredulity as she bit into another slice of the orange. “You’re fifteen, Barbara. When I was your age, your father had already fought a duel with Lord Newark for the right to my hand, and I was wed to him before my next birthday.”

Her smugness, and my own dismay, made me speak more frankly than was perhaps wise. “You were worth twenty thousand pounds a year. You’ve told me that yourself. That’s why you’d gentlemen fighting over you.”

Her pale eyes sparked. “You would fault me for having no fortune left to lavish on you? Foolish child! Have you any notion where that money has gone?”

“Any
child
knows that.” I flipped my loose hair over my shoulders. “Because we’ve followed the rightful cause of the king and Father died fighting for it, we’ve been treated like traitors, and all our estates confiscated by the low villains of Cromwell’s Parliament.”

“What a tidy explanation.” She took another slice of the orange, plucking the white membrane from the tender fruit with vengeful precision. “But only half the tale, you see. What you,
child,
do not know is that the slow rapine of my estate was begun by your own father, long before Cromwell’s war. Your father made loans to his high-blown friends, secured by their property. Ten thousand to the Earl of Cleveland! Another eighteen thousand to the Duke of Lennox! It was nothing to your father, yet less than nothing to those fine friends. For years I’ve tried to sue for repayment, but where do I take my case when there’s no longer a House of Lords? Where’s my recourse when the estates that were my security have been sequestered by another pack of thieves?”

She bit into the orange as if the fruit itself were those negligent lords, heedless of the sweet juice that sprayed and stained the silk of her jacket.

“But that is not all, Barbara,” she said. “Consider all the money I’ve tossed away upon those drabs who raised you in the country. I can get nothing from those others, but you—you owe it to me, yes, to make as favorable a match as you can.”

I’m certain she intended this speech to make me feel suitably contrite and docile. I hadn’t known that my father had made such loans against her dowry, reason enough, I thought, not to let my fortunes depend entirely upon my husband. Perhaps if she’d seen fit to offer me so much as a slice of her orange and a smidgen of kindness, I might have gone that way with her. But instead the obligation she wished to instill in me turned against her, and made me feel not filial duty but rebellion.

“Perhaps I do not wish to wed so soon, madam,” I said tartly. “Perhaps I’d rather enjoy the pleasures of the city before I am saddled with some tedious husband.”

“The pleasures of the city are vastly overrated, Barbara,” she said with acid on her tongue. “If you do not take care, you will find those ‘pleasures’ will bring you nothing but sorrow and pox.”

I turned away without her permission, and in unhappy petulance went to stand before the grate. There was no fire, it being a warm day, but over the mantel hung a framed engraving that at once caught my interest.

A melancholy portrait of the martyred King Charles I was flanked by smaller ovals with his two elder sons, James, the Duke of York, and Charles, now King Charles II; pictures such as Royalists would keep in secret, for such shows of loyalty were banned by parliamentary law.

James was comely enough, with a winning smile and fair, flowing hair, but it was his brother the king who both fascinated and attracted me. Charles was a young man not so much older than myself, with coal-black hair and dark, heavy-lidded eyes that were more Italianate than English. I had yet to kiss a man, or have a kiss bestowed upon me, yet still I intuited the sensuality in this young king’s full lips, and the warmth that Nature must have granted with his regal blood.

“I wish there were still a royal court in London,” I said wistfully, more to the engraved king than to my mother.

“I suspect you’ll find mischief enough here, Barbara, without courtiers to lead your way.” My mother sighed crossly behind me, and I heard the clatter of her setting her now-empty dish on the table beside the bed, as if she wished to discard me, too. “I’ll see that you’re properly dressed as fits your rank, and taught the skills that seem so sadly lacking in you. Then Lord Anglesea and I will introduce you into company, with the hope that you will attract a suitable attachment, a gentleman with not only the proper political connections to help us but a fortune as well.”

“I am ready, madam,” I said, turning to face her. I was so eager, so confident, to start this new life, I was almost giddy with it. Not even my mother’s ill humor could tamp my spirits. “For whatever London may offer, I’m ready.”

 
As summer progressed, I began to take my place in this new world, as boldly and as bravely as any voyager exploring new countries to stake beneath his own flag. To anyone who recalled the old London, before the war, this new version under Cromwell’s rule must have seemed but a withered, empty shell. My mother and my uncle complained of it often, as if all the deprivations and changes had been ordered specifically for their torment.

The playhouses were long since shuttered, puppet shows and traveling acrobats banned, and the gardens made for pleasure empty. Music was forbidden, from the orchestras and singers who had entertained the court to the great choirs in the churches. Most celebrations and holidays—May Day, Christmas, Twelfth Night, St. Valentine’s Day—were deemed either pagan or papist, and likewise forbidden. Books and papers were strictly censored, and nothing could be printed without a special government license. The grand houses that had belonged to the noblest families of the country had been confiscated and given to Cromwell’s generals instead.

Even the great cathedral of St. Paul’s on Ludgate Hill, near to where we lived, had been sadly ravaged, its colored glass windows smashed, its hangings and high altar destroyed, and its long nave converted to a stable for use by the parliamentary cavalry.

But to me, with nothing but the tedium of Suffolk for comparison, London seemed an endless string of diversions and amusing company. We Royalists lived beneath the surface of Protectorate London, like clever foxes tunneling our burrows beneath the fields, and so long as we kept to ourselves and drank to His Sacred Majesty’s health and return to the throne out of their hearing, we escaped the government’s reprobation. This wasn’t so very hard. At that time London had nearly 300,000 citizens, behind only Paris and Constantinople in size, and as many before me had discovered, it’s always easier to keep from notice in a crowded city than in a country village.

If the playhouses were closed, then the players now gave their performances in the great chambers of private houses, for a smaller, select audience. Musicians who had once performed at royal masques and other palace entertainments now gave their concerts for us. We attended fine suppers or visited the more genteel dining houses. We rode through the parks in carriages or along the river in boats. We played every manner of card game: whist, ombre, bassett. We even attended church, and flirted shamelessly with one another over our pews, ignoring the fact that even our Anglican prayer books had been banned by the Commonwealth.

There was, of course, a tattered melancholy to our pleasures. The world seemed changed forever for people of our rank, with little hope of it changing back in our favor. Even the slightest attempts at rebellion had been instantly quelled by the Commonwealth’s forces— most recently the sad small uprising at Salisbury led by Colonel Penruddock—and were followed by such punitive measures as the Decimation Tax, a 10 percent levy against the income of anyone with Royalist leanings.

Yet our despair also bound us together. I quickly made friends among the young Royalists of noble families, many of whom, like me, had lost both fathers and fortunes in defense of the king.

Over that first summer, my mother concentrated on improving me and polishing away my country manners. I was taught to dance to develop my grace, which I enjoyed, and given lessons upon the virginals, which I did not. We spoke French at meals so I would learn that language. My plain stuff gowns were replaced with lutestrings and satins, and my hair was cropped shorter around my face, the better to curl into tendrils and lovelocks against my cheeks. I grew in height and in slenderness, while my breasts blossomed to a more womanly fullness.

And by early autumn, when Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, returned to London from France, I was ripe to fall headlong into love for the first time.

 
“Who is that gentleman, Anne?” I whispered behind my fan. “He is most splendidly handsome, don’t you think?”

Beside me, Lady Anne Hamilton’s green eyes widened with delicious interest. Lady Anne was one of the four daughters of the Duke of Hamilton, but more important, the dearest of my new London friends, one whose wicked laughter alone could cheer me from the deepest doldrums. She had a frizz of blond curls and wide-set eyes, and together we made an eye-catching pair on account of being so opposite. Though we were close in age, she had been in the town much longer than I, and I learned of many things in her company that doubtless my mother would wish I hadn’t.

Now Anne leaned close to whisper in my ear. “Why, that is Lord Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield. And yes, yes, by all that’s holy, he
is
the most handsome gentleman in this room.”

I nodded in agreement, watching this same young gentleman as he stood chatting with a group of other men. We had gathered here at Lady Walthrop’s house for the eventual purpose of dancing, but for now, while the musicians readied their instruments in the next chamber, we were all occupied by observing one another. I knew most everyone else in the room save this Chesterfield, and I forgot them all while studying him.

He was beautifully dressed in the French fashion, with many elegant ribbons and love knots strewn across his doublet and sleeves, and a fawn-colored satin cape tossed over one shoulder with disarming carelessness. His auburn hair flowed over his shoulders in a profusion of curls, and his dark eyes showed both wit and spirit.

“He’s already been widowed once, and only twenty-three,” Anne continued in my ear. “And he tried to wed General Fairfax’s daughter Mary—a plain, sorry creature, but vastly well placed—and though the banns had been cried twice for them, she finally ran off and married the Duke of Buckingham instead.”

“My cousin George Villiers?” I whispered with surprise. I’d heard of this before, of course, for abandoned bridegrooms made too good a tale to forget, but I’d imagined the jilted fellow to be some homely scarecrow, not this lovely fellow, and my estimation of my cousin’s political audacity—as well as his amatory skills, to win the heart of such an influential lady—rose even higher. “She chose George instead?”

“She did,” Anne said soundly. “I’ve heard poor Chesterfield’s now come to London to find diversion from his broken heart.”

“To lose both a wife and a bride must be most grievous to a gentleman,” I murmured. “No wonder he needs diversion and consolation.”

“Take care, Barbara,” my friend warned. “Lord Chesterfield is charming, yes, but also rash and reckless. He drinks and plays and games and swears dreadful oaths. They say he’s killed at least five men through dueling, and claimed a wreath of ladies’ hearts. Why, he boasts of making love to six or seven at once!”

“In the same bed?” I asked archly. “He’s every right to boast of that, if he’s able to please so many ladies like a heathen sultan with his harem.”

“Hush.” Anne giggled. “You shouldn’t speak so, Barbara. You know not even the most debauched gentleman could manage
that
.”

“I know nothing of the sort,” I said, pretending worldliness. “And neither do you, Anne.”

I grinned behind my fan. In the time since I’d come to town, I’d caught the eyes of several gentlemen, and permitted a few trifling favors, more from youthful curiosity than anything else. In turn none had captured my lasting interest as a possible husband, least of all the somber young men proposed by my mother. Yet still Anne and I prattled endlessly to one another of love and longing and gentlemen, and of how much we wished to have charming lovers of our own rather than to be bound by the demands of a single grumpy husband.