Royal Harlot (53 page)

“Oh, I’ll grant you will, Nell,” he said slyly, looking me up and down with unabashed interest. “They say your voice puts the very lark to shame.”

“They say true, my lord.” I smiled, tipping my head coyly to one side. In return for a song, I likely could cull him for a whole shilling, maybe two. “I sing like a bird, and dance like a sprite.”

“I’ll wager a crown that you swive like a stoat, too,” called one of the other young gentlemen at the table, to the roaring approval of his friends. “Like a wild stoat in heat!”

“Then I’ll answer your wager, sir,” I called, easily raising my voice to be heard over their din, a skill I’d practiced even then. “I’ll wager that
you
bray your wit like a wild ass.”

“Hah, Brinton, pay up, pay up, for you are most decidedly an ass.” The young earl patted his hand on the table, his gold rings glinting by the light of the fire. “Come now, pay up. Don’t keep this admirably clever lass waiting.”

Grudgingly Brinton took the coin from his pocket, standing to push it across the table toward me. “It’s a damned sorry day when you take a whore’s side against me, Rochester,” he said, wounded. “A damned sorry day.”

Swiftly I claimed the coin before they changed their minds. “It’s night, not day, sir,” I said, “and I’m no whore.”

“If you’re no whore, madam,” Brinton said with a drunkard’s certainty, “then truly I
am
an ass. Rochester, we’ll leave you to your
lady
.”

Unsteadily he and the others reeled off into the crowd, and the earl looked back to me.

“How can you be in this place, dearling,” he asked, “and not be a whore?”

I drummed my fingers lightly against my waist. “How can you be in this place, my lord, yet be a peer?”

“How?” With a single forefinger, he reached out to trace the angle of my bent elbow, so light and featherlike a touch that I shivered. “Because wherever I am, low or high, I will remain the Earl of Rochester.”

“Just as I’m Nellie Gwyn, at Madam Ross’s or anywhere else,” I said firmly, drawing myself away from his wicked, teasing touch. “’Tis said the fairest blossom grows on the dunghill, you know.”

He laughed again, settling back in his chair. “But unless that blossom’s plucked at the height of its glory, then the stink of the dunghill will in time spoil even its sweet petals. What is needed is a wise gardener, to guide you through the seasons of love.”

Love, hah. I knew full well what kind of offer this was, just as I knew I’d be a fool to accept it.

“My blossom’s done well enough without some meddlesome gardener, my lord,” I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder to show my disdain, “and even if I were crying for one in the market, why, I’d—”

“It’s the king!” exclaimed a man behind us. “His Majesty’s here!”

At once the words were picked up like a chorus all around us. Everything else was forgotten; every head craning toward the door to see if it were true. Unsure of what was proper to do, some men bowed low and women curtseyed, while others simply gawked to find the king so suddenly in our midst. Without a thought I hopped onto a nearby bench, desperate to see for myself over the crowd of heads.

“The king is here?” asked Rochester with disbelief as he, too, rose to gape. “In
this
place?”

But there was never a chance of mistaking Charles Stuart for anyone else, he was that much taller than the three gentlemen attendants who’d come with him, and every other man in the room. And that was not all: he was dark, almost swarthy, with long, curling black hair that set him apart from ordinary Englishmen, and even from across the room, I could feel the force of his personality, his regal power, and his genial charm, too.

His Majesty! His Majesty!
I’d glimpsed him from afar like this many times since he’d returned to his throne two years before: when he strolled with his courtiers outside Whitehall Palace, or sailed in the royal yacht on the river, or rode on horseback through St. James’s Park. With each sighting he’d bewitched and inspired me further, until I was fair lovesick with him, a man who’d no notion I lived and breathed within his very realm.

“He’s come here to this house before, my lord,” I now whispered with awe. “We’re not supposed to recognize him, dressed so plain like that, but of course we all do. He’ll take two or three girls upstairs at a time, and lah, they do swear he is the first gentleman of the kingdom in every way!”

“So it
is
him,” Rochester said, his whisper a match for my own. “But why would he come to Drury Lane when he’d so fine a lady as Barbara Palmer waiting in his bed at Whitehall?”

“Oh, Mrs. Palmer,” I scoffed. I’d often seen the king and his reigning mistress together. I’d grant that she was as fair as everyone said, dressed and bejeweled as richly as any true queen, but she’d also seemed to me to be haughty and shrewish, and unworthy of so glorious a king. “I’ve heard the king’s lost all interest in her since she’s swelled with his bastard.”

“Mrs. Palmer’s my cousin,” Rochester said, “and I assure you, her grasp of the king’s royal cods has never been tighter.”

I made a small snort of dismissal. The king was laughing with Madam Ross now, while the house’s three prettiest girls were blushing before him, as giddy as if they were rank virgins still. “His Majesty deserves better. Besides, Mrs. Palmer’s old.”

“She’s only twenty-one,” he said beside me, “and she’s still the most beautiful woman in London, as well as the most wanton. Anyone with a mind to see the king does well to see my cousin Barbara first. Faith help me, he’s looking this way!”

The earl dropped back down behind the others and into his chair, and to my surprise grabbed me with him. He pulled me onto his lap, his arm tight around my waist.

“What in blazes are you doing?” I demanded, shoving hard against his chest. Earl or no, I’d box his ears for him for his trouble, and he wouldn’t be the first, nor the last. “Let me go!”

“Stay, stay, I beg you, for a moment,” he said, drawing me closer. “I’m supposed to be at Oxford, and the king will have my head if he finds me here. Come now, lass, help me hide in plain sight!”

Before I could answer, he’d pushed me back into the crook of his arm and was kissing me hard, and no amount of scuffling would make him stop. I’ll grant he kissed better than most whelps his age, but I was in no humor for it, and the first moment I felt him relax, I jerked my mouth free of his.

“You base rogue!” I gasped, pulling my hand free to strike him. “I told you I’m no whore!”

He grabbed my hand and held it, while other men around us laughed and called encouragement to him. His face was flushed, I suppose from kissing me, but his gaze seemed strangely old for his age, as if he’d already seen too much of the world.

“I did not kiss you as a whore, pet,” he said, “but as a friend. You saved me before the king, and I thank you for it.”

“Bah, why should the king care what you do?” I said, and spat on the floor, to show both my contempt for him, and to cast away any remainder of his kiss from my lips. “What could you be to him?”

“My father was his last guide from England,” he said softly, “and at the peril of his own freedom and life, led Charles from Cromwell’s men to exile. When my father died, Charles declared himself my guardian, rather like a favorite uncle.”

The earl’s sudden solemnity intrigued me, making me forget my rage, even as I still sat perched upon his thighs. I didn’t doubt his story was true. My own father had likewise been killed in the old king’s service, and besides, Rochester had no reason to lie to me. “If you are so dear to him, then why do you avoid his company?”

“Because I’ve no wish to disappoint him, or risk losing his favor,” he said, and smiled wryly. “I cannot give him any excuse not to call me to court.
That’s
where my future will lie, in the brightest eye of the world, and not among dry old dons and pederasts. For the king to see me here, tending to my pleasures instead of my studies—that would not do. That wouldn’t do at all.”

“I wish he’d seen
me
, my lord!”

He frowned, turning his head a fraction to look at me askance. “What? You wish you’d been one of those giggling jades he hauled up the stairs?”

I shook my head, determined to make him understand. “My fate will be grander than that. You’ll see. I won’t be here forever. I’ll have a future for myself that’s every bit as bright as yours.”

His smile was indulgent, yet skeptical. “A miss with ambition!”

“Aye, and where’s the sin in that?” I demanded. “I can sing and dance and recite by rote any piece you please. And everyone says I’m more than passing fair.”

“That you are,” he said, and as if to prove my words, his hand slid from my waist to cover the sweet, round swell of my breast.

Impatiently I shoved his hand away. “I told you, I’ll not be a common whore, rucking up my skirts against a wall in Covent Garden.”

He laughed, as if he’d been expecting me to rebuff him anyway. “There’s no use saving yourself for His Majesty,” he said, not unkindly. “He’s no taste for virgin flesh, you know.”

“Did ever I say I was?” I asked, though of course that very desire had long been in my heart. “I mean to make all London speak of me, and rise as high as I can in this world. Then the king will seek my company, and the rest of the court besides.”

The earl leaned his face closer to mine, so close his long curls did mingle with my own. “Then let me confide the first lesson of the court, my sweet Nell. If you truly wish to rise to such heights, you must take care to please and favor those who hold the rungs steady beneath your feet as you climb.”

I narrowed my eyes, and lightly tapped my forefinger twice across his lips. “I am sorry, my lord, but I must disobey your lesson, just as you have disobeyed your tutors. For I mean to continue as I’ve already begun, and please only myself—me, Nellie Gwyn!—and not give so much as a kiss your hand for the rest.”

“Kiss your hand, you say.” He gave an odd little smile, one I’d come to know better in time. “Ah, Nell, in truth then there’s little left for me to teach you. You’ve already learned the hardest lesson, haven’t you? If you can but please yourself as you say, then Fame shall always be your willing subject, and the court your servant.”

“And so long as
you
make pretty speeches like that one, my lord,” I said, kissing his cheek, “then I vow you’ll find fat success at court, too.”

He laughed at that, and I with him, a careless scrap of wit between us. Why should it be any more? We were much alike, despite the difference in our rank and place, and of the age for such foolishness. The Earl of Rochester was but fifteen, and I scarce more than twelve. Yet before the year was done, we’d each of us learn that fame came always linked to peril and bright fortune twined with danger, and as for the true cost of being a favorite of the King of England—ahh, we learned that lesson soon enough, too.

And so, my friend, shall you. . . .