The French Mistress (17 page)

I was expecting the same ceremony that accompanied Madame’s appearance at the French Court, for as monstrous as Monsieur was, he was still second in line for the throne after the young dauphin, and he and Madame were duly honored and announced as such with fanfares. The company was expected to rise and curtsy or bow. As I soon learned (the first of many such lessons), this was England, and matters here were arranged differently.

Madame had scarce appeared in the arched doorway of the great hall before her brother himself came up the steps to greet her. At once she left me to fling her arms round his shoulders, much as they’d embraced earlier on the sloop, and effortlessly he swept her from her feet and into his arms. She’d grown so thin that she likely felt light as swan’s down to him, and I wondered how great a difference he saw in her since she had left for France.

“Minette, Minette,” he exclaimed, using his pet name for her, “I was near to sending the dogs up to search you out. At least the time you spent before your glass was put to good purpose. How fine you look! I vow there’s nothing like a French tailor for rigging out a lady to best effect.”

She laughed, her head tipped back with girlish delight. “You’re always full of pretty rubbish, Charles,” she said, and as he set her back down, she gave his arm a playful swat. “That never changes, does it?”

“No,” he said, his grin wicked beneath his narrow black mustache. “Why should it?”

“It won’t, which is more to the point, brother, you being who you are,” she teased in return. “I’ll grant that you’re looking so handsome yourself that likely all the ladies believe your palaver. But I’ve never thought you’d be one to follow the fashion, and take to wearing a wig like all the other dancing masters.”

He made a long, doleful face. “It’s good that you’ll be here for my birthday, Minette, so you might be reminded of how many years your poor old brother’s been on this earth. Then you’ll not be surprised at how many gray hairs this wig masks.”

“Oh, hush, age means nothing to a man,” she scoffed. “You’ll never be anyone’s notion of a poor, old man, and you know it, too.”

Silently I agreed with her. I knew from Madame that the king’s fortieth birthday would fall during our stay at Dover, and though that would make him more than double my age, to me that seemed impossible. In his dark gray coat, he was still tall and straight and as lean as any man half his years. His face did carry more lines than that of a callow youth, but those same lines only made his visage more provocative to me for all the worldly experiences they represented. On the left breast of his coat, over his heart, was embroidered the badge of the Order of St. George and the Garter, the highest order to be had in England, and this badge was all the mark of royalty upon his person. Louis chose to proclaim his kingship by dressing richly, with diamonds on the buckles of his shoes and rubies on his fingers, but such was Charles’s confidence in who he was that he could dress for comfort and ease rather than display, and still be recognized as the monarch in any group of men.

Or so at least he seemed to my dazzled eyes, standing so close that, if I’d dared, I could have reached out my hand and touched his, and the knowledge made me shiver with wonder.

“Come now, let me show you to the table,” he was saying as he slipped his arm around Madame’s narrow waist to lead her into the room. “There’s nothing like sea air to give a man an appetite.”

Madame nodded happily, then turned back toward me. “Mademoiselle de Keroualle will join me.”

Suddenly I found myself once again with the king’s attention full upon me. It was as if everything else in that vast room around him vanished, and all I saw was his smile and the bemused expression in his dark eyes.

“I would like nothing better,” he said, smiling warmly at me. “This way, mademoiselle.”

Thus I found myself in a place I’d never dreamed I’d be, sitting and dining and sipping wine (and French wine at that, to my surprise) with the grandest and most noble folk of this land. The great hall of the keep was thick with courtiers, those sitting to dine and many more standing to watch. I was acutely aware of the honor I’d been granted, and humbled by it, too. Though I was at the same table as Madame and the king, I was farther down and beyond their hearing, amongst well-bred strangers who showed little interest in me.

I’d thought I spoke English passably well, but to be here amongst so many true English gentlemen and ladies, all of them speaking at once and on top of one another, made me realize I’d sorely overestimated my skills. My ignorance, my inexperience, and my natural shyness combined to swallow up whatever confidence my gown had granted me, and fearful of blundering, I sat wide-eyed, and said not a word. I was assiduously cutting the beef on my plate into tiny pieces—not for convenience in eating it, but to occupy myself—when the gentleman beside me rose and shifted his seat with another, and when I looked up, I smiled with grateful relief.

“Your Grace,” I said to the Duke of Monmouth, an old acquaintance from the Palais-Royal. “Good evening.”

“Good evening to you, too, mademoiselle.” He smiled warmly, choosing to speak French instead of English for my sake; having spent considerable time in Paris in the care of his grandmother, the late Dowager Queen of England, he was as comfortable in that tongue as his own. “You seem as if you’re still at sea.”

I blushed, and sighed. “Is it so very obvious?”

“I fear so,” he said. “But in an entirely charming way. Besides, there’s nothing I like better than rescuing pretty ladies in distress.”

“Do you mean that?” I asked. Though there was a strong resemblance between him and his father the king, the duke was near to my own age, and not nearly so daunting.

“I do, with all my heart.” He motioned for the footman to fill his glass with more wine, then rested his elbow on the table and his cheek on his hand, the better to regard me and my amply displayed bosom. “Pray tell me how I might help you, mademoiselle, and I vow I’ll do my best to oblige.”

I leaned closer to him, lowering my voice to be sure that those around us might not overhear. “Then tell me of the people here at this Court. Tell me which will be kind to Madame, and which she should fear and be wary of crossing, so that I might help her.”

“What, Henriette?” he asked, strangely mystified by my request.

I nodded eagerly. “Yes, Your Grace. She would hold your opinion in high regard.”

That made him brighten and smile anew. “She does?”

“Well, yes.” That wasn’t entirely true, but enough so that it wasn’t a complete lie, either. Madame did like Monmouth—all of us in her household did—and his gallantries toward her made her happy, but she liked him in the way that she liked her little spaniels. He was pleasant and attentive, and with his curling dark hair and velvet dark eyes, he was very pretty to gaze upon. But he was also too easily impressed and led by others who wished to use him for their own gain, and was not clever in the ways a gentleman at Court must be if they hoped to prosper. I’d only to recall how he’d swallowed the Abbé Prignani’s foolishness in its entirety. None of us was surprised that his duchess, a dour Scots heiress, preferred to stay far away in her native land, and devote herself to their children. As it was, Madame (or I) would never confide anything to Lord Monmouth of a serious nature or importance, for fear he’d be unable to contain a secret within himself for more than a quarter hour at best. Yet I wasn’t above employing his weakness myself, and I’d no doubt that before the meal was done, he’d freely tell me all he knew of the company.

“Surely, Your Grace, in your position here, you can advise me,” I continued, smiling as winningly as I could. “I only wish to serve Her Highness.”

“Ha, who doesn’t?” He glanced down the table to where Madame sat, and sighed gallantly. “I would help you if I could, mademoiselle. Truly. But to be honest, I do not believe Madame has a single enemy in all the world. She is a most perfect angel among women, and rare even among princesses. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Foolish fellow, I thought. Everyone at the French Court had enemies; poor Madame’s greatest foe was her own husband. I could scarce believe the English Court was any different.

Yet I smiled again, determined to try another stratagem. “Then tell me whom I should know, Your Grace. I’ve only this short time here in England with Madame to learn my way. Which ladies are considered good and wise company? Which gentlemen are no gentlemen at all, and should be avoided by a young lady such as myself ?”

“That I can do,” he said so cheerfully that I felt the pinch of guilt. “Of course you already know my father.”

“Who does not, Your Grace?” I asked, even as I thought of how different the father was from the son.

“He’s difficult to overlook, that’s true, though I suppose that’s how it should be since it’s his Court.” He let his gaze wander idly around the room. “That stout gentleman there, with the frizzed hair and starched white lappets beneath his chins. That’s the Dutch ambassador. He’s beside himself with worry, asking questions and peering about and wondering if my aunt has come to make some sort of pact between France and England that will leave his country begging at the kitchen door, hat in hand. Who would conceive of such an empty-headed folly? Sweet Henriette as a diplomat? Only a Dutchman, I say, and one of those for you to avoid.”

I nodded thoughtfully, as if taking his advice. I was, too, in a way. Doubtless the king was likewise pointing the ambassador out to Madame, though with a different message for her from that which Lord Monmouth had offered to me. Clearly the duke had not been trusted with the real purpose for Madame’s visit, and a wise decision, too, by whoever had made it.

“I’ll tell you what the Dutchman does believe, mademoiselle,” he said, leaning closer as if in confidence. “He believes that my father is planning to put aside his wife the queen on account of her barrenness, and that Madame is to offer Louis’s suggestions for her successor.
That
is what he believes, and fears, for if Louis were to suggest a new queen, she’d surely be Catholic, wouldn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t know, Your Grace,” I said, and truly I didn’t. I had heard this plan before, from the Earl of Rochester among others, and I shared Madame’s view that so fine a gentleman as the king would never treat his queen with so little respect. She was his wife before God, a union that could not be blithely dissolved by mortal man, not even a royal mortal. And yet even to consider that His Majesty might miraculously be free to wed again, a single bachelor in search of a fecund wife, made my foolish young heart giddy with a hope that had no foundation in either reason or logic.

Foolish, yes, but not so foolish that I’d confess it to the duke.

“I’ll heed your warnings, Your Grace,” I said, and wisely said no more. “If you please, who else should I mark?”

“The gentleman with the black plaster across the bridge of his nose is Lord Arlington,” he said. “He claims the plaster’s to hide an old scar from the war, but I ask you, can any scar be uglier than that black stripe across his face?”

I laughed, as any young lady would, especially since I knew that this was the limit of the duke’s wit, poor man.

“Arlington’s secretary of state, one of the gentlemen on my father’s privy council,” he continued, swelling with pride because I’d laughed. “Father trusts him implicitly, for being so clever. The man’s traveled all about the Continent, and they say he speaks a half dozen languages, and can deceive in every one of them. His wife’s Dutch, yet he intrigues with your King Louis. So there you are.”

“He must be very clever, to keep so much in balance,” I said. The only other privy councilor I’d met was Lord Buckingham, and he was clever, too, but in ways that made no sense. At least he’d not be here. The only one of Monsieur’s demands that had been accepted by Louis and Charles was that Buckingham not be in attendance here in Dover; though it had happened nearly a decade before, Monsieur had not forgotten Buckingham’s foolish attempts to seduce Madame before their marriage. Despite Lord Arlington’s stripe of black plaster, he looked far too intelligent to make the same blunders that Buckingham had, and though it seemed he shared Madame’s interests, it sounded as if she would be wise to be wary around him.

“Arlington is very clever, if also very pleased with his own cleverness,” Lord Monmouth was saying. “He doesn’t like talking to me. Most likely he’ll find things to say to you, though, you being French and all. But take care what you say in return to him, for everything goes back to my father. The fellow beside him, the one with a face like a pug: that’s Sir Thomas Clifford, another of the privy councilors. He’s the one giving the Dutchman fits, on account of being a Papist.”

“That does not surprise me,” I said solemnly. Of course I knew how England’s Christians had been led astray by a former king and into the wrongful ignorance of Protestantism, but this was the first time I’d encountered the prejudice for myself. “The Dutch are sworn Protestants, and hate anything to do with the True Church.”

“So do most Englishmen.” He screwed his face up with concern as he stared pointedly at my little crucifix, recognizing it as a symbol of my faith. “Forgive me, Mademoiselle, but so long as you’re on English soil, you won’t find much kindness for talk of the ‘True Church.’ Though most will guess you to be Romish, on account of being French, you’ll do better to keep your own counsel where your faith’s concerned.”

That was far more useful advice than I’d expected from Lord Monmouth, and I was grateful for it. If Lord Arlington and Sir Thomas were trusted advisers to the king, then I wondered if they’d be party to the discussions Madame was here to conduct on behalf of Louis. I’d venture so, considering that they both seemed to be sympathetic to Rome and France.

I considered this a long while, giving only half an ear to Lord Monmouth as he prattled on about others in the company of less import, about whose horses had won which races at the last meets and whose wife was deep in an amorous affair with which of her husband’s best friends. Then Lord Monmouth said something that caught my ear as swiftly as an angler’s baited hook will catch a prime fish, and pulled my interest back to him.