The French Mistress (27 page)

“Cousins?” I repeated, letting his shocking judgment of the lady pass unremarked. “Lord Rochester told me once that he was her cousin as well. The lady has many connections.”

“Yes, and most of them have traipsed through her bed,” he said, waxing more philosophical than harsh. “But she’s done well for herself by the king. A slew of his handsome brats, as much gold and property as she could grasp in her pretty hands, and now a duchy.”

“She’s been made a duchess?” I asked in awe. That was the highest prize for a royal mistress, and seldom granted; as a reward for her devotion, Louise de la Vallière had been made a duchess by Louis and given the estate at Vaujours to accompany it.

“duchess of Cleveland, Countess of Southampton, Baroness Nonsuch, all for her own self, and none for her poor old cuckold husband,” he said cheerfully, as if we were discussing the heat of the day instead of the most wicked of scandals. “Which is only fair, since she’s the one who earned them. What whore likes to share with her pimp?”

“I would not know, Your Grace.” I blushed again to hear such frank language. Yet this was a path I was at least contemplating for myself. Would he speak of me with the same coarseness if I’d let the king have his way at Dover? Would the pleasure of being a royal favorite lessen the humiliation of being called a whore?

“No, that is true. You wouldn’t know,” he said, and laughed, clearly delighted with my response. “Forgive me, mademoiselle. I spend precious little time in the company of innocents. But as for Barbara—she should take care to enjoy her new titles, for I’d venture the king means them as a fond fare-thee-well.”

“You mean that he has tired of her?” I asked with curious surprise. He’d certainly still seemed enthralled with the newly minted Lady Cleveland at Dover. While he’d kissed me on the last afternoon, it had been common enough knowledge that he’d spent all his previous nights in her bed. Yet this had been the way with Louise de la Vallière, too; she’d been made a duchess shortly after His Majesty had shifted his amorous attentions to Madame du Montespan.

“He’s tired of her, and who can fault him?” the duke declared. “We’re all weary of her harping. She’s held sway over the royal cods for ten years, a righteous long time for any woman. But she’s vulnerable now. You’ll see. She’ll fall by Christmas, and be swept away like any other old leavings. If the proper rival should appear before the king, a lady with sufficient support within the Court to match her beauty, then Barbara could be toppled even sooner.”

He looked down at me in a most meaningful way. I understood, of course. I was an innocent, not an idiot. He thought I’d be that proper rival, with him there to guide me. But still I thought it better not to admit to recognizing his proposal just yet, and instead continued to play the lady who in fact I was.

“There’s more to the tale, too, mademoiselle,” he continued when I did not reply. “Our queen is barren as a stone. No one can deny it any longer.”

“I pity Her Majesty,” I said softly, and I did. Madame had said she was a good Catholic lady, faithful to a fault and woefully shy. How it must wound her to see her husband’s seed sown so freely, and with so much bastard issue, while her own womb remained empty.

“Pity her all you wish, but pity won’t change the facts,” the duke said with surpassing arrogance, showing he’d no pity at all for the hapless queen. “For the sake of all Britain, the king must secure his throne with a proper heir. Though it pains His Majesty to act, it’s apparent to everyone that he means to put this queen aside on grounds of her barrenness, and take another.”

“Why do you tell me this, Your Grace?” I asked, my heart racing within my breast at so dizzying a possibility. “These are the grand affairs of royalty, not lowly maids of honor. Even if His Majesty were cruelly to divorce Her Majesty, then he would be bound to wed another lady of equally exalted blood, a princess or grand duchess in her own right.”

“He might,” he said, making a little fillip with his fingers through the air before us, “or he might not. Considering the ill luck he’s had with a princess, there are those who believe he should look elsewhere for his breeding stock. Of course the lady must be of some rank, and with an unblemished past. We shouldn’t want any questions about the issue, you know.”

A virgin: that was what he meant by “an unblemished past,” and likewise I knew he meant me. But surely there must be virgins in England, other young ladies with noble families and reputation?

“It would make perfect sense that a new queen be French,” he continued, reading my thoughts as clearly as if I’d spoken aloud. “The king’s always been inclined that way, for his mother was French. And what better way to seal this new alliance I’ve been negotiating with your country than with a fair new queen?”

I looked away from him, my thoughts in turmoil. It was one thing to be considered as a royal mistress, and quite another to be mentioned as a future queen.

Ah, no wonder my head fair spun!

But though I knew the duke had the ear of the king, I could scarce believe he’d be trusted with this particular errand. Why should he wish to link himself to my lowly star, except for what he could selfishly gain for himself ? I remembered how Madame had not trusted him, and how that should be warning enough for me to do the same. I reminded myself to recall the duke’s reputation for bold and extravagant behavior, how he plunged in whole where more cautious gentlemen would dip but a toe. I thought of the more circumspect ministers I’d met in Dover, Lord Arlington and Sir Thomas Clifford, and how the king had trusted them with the enormity of the Secret Treaty, while Lord Buckingham was being made to be the unwitting puppet of this second, empty treaty. If I were to ally myself with one faction over another, I’d be far wiser to trust those gentlemen rather than this mercurial duke.

Yet despite what I’d learned at Court, I was still young, still impressionable, and to my misfortune, all too willing to be flattered when this grandest of prizes was dangled before me. With a willful abandon that matched Lord Buckingham’s own, I eagerly swept aside every objection my cautious conscience raised and embraced this ridiculous scheme. There was no doubt that the king needed an heir, and a young wife with a fertile womb. Lord Arlington and Sir Thomas were more staid, true, but they were comparative newcomers to the king’s confidence, while Lord Buckingham had been his closest friend from boyhood. It would be entirely natural that His Majesty would trust him now with so delicate an arrangement. I’d only to look at the French Court to see how a king would play his courtiers and ministers against one another by way of keeping power to himself.

What seduced me most of all was the idea of becoming Charles’s wife and queen. It wasn’t only the power and wealth that beckoned, though to be sure that was a glittering temptation. No, the true reward would be the man himself, and I’d joyfully become his wife, his consort, his guiding star.

I’d be his most precious jewel, just as he’d said. I would give him delight in his bed and bring cheer to his heart, and be the most loyal subject in his entire kingdom. I’d bring respectability and decorum to his Court (which did sorely need it), and I would help to guide him to the True Church, as he’d already sworn to do in the Secret Treaty. I would love him with boundless devotion, which he of course would return to me many times over. In my girlish enthusiasm, I never doubted that I could succeed where no other woman had, and win his exclusive fidelity. I’d only to recall the fondness with which he’d gazed at me on the wall at Dover Castle, and how our single kiss must have been a pledge for our joined futures.

In short, I dreamed, and I dreamed high and sweet. As I walked beside Lord Buckingham, I was like another of the ancient race of lotus eaters—a people who, having once tasted that rare flower, forgot every common care and responsibility in favor of unending bliss.

“You are quiet, mademoiselle,” the duke said, rousing me at last from my delicious reverie. “I trust I haven’t bored you with my talk.”

“Oh, no, Your Grace, not at all!” I exclaimed, and belatedly I realized he was teasing me, his face smug and faintly mocking. “That is, you speak of many interesting things, and it is much for me to consider.”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure it is,” he said expansively, and gave a little pat to my fingers as they rested on his arm. “But you’ll have time enough for considering. There are many steps to be taken before anything can be made widely known, and for the present it will be best to keep what I’ve told you to your heart alone. No tattling to your little friends, eh?”

“Of course not, Your Grace,” I said quickly, eager to appear obliging. I’d been keeping secrets since my first day in Madame’s household, and I wasn’t about to begin spilling them now, especially one that might involve me. “You may trust my confidence entirely.”

But despite my declaration, he was frowning, his thoughts elsewhere, and his hand over mine tightened painfully. “You’ve not heard from Arlington in this regard, have you?”

“Lord Arlington?” I repeated, surprised both by his question and the change in his manner. “No, Your Grace.”

“What of Clifford?” I heard suspicion in his voice bubble up from nowhere, giving an unsavory edge to his words, and his grasp clenched clawlike over my poor fingers. “Has he written to you? Or that rascal Montagu. I know he’s here. I’ve seen him sniffing about your skirts.”

I trembled with uncertainty, trying to pull free.

“Answer me,” he ordered sharply, jerking me back.“What does Montagu want from you? What has he told you of the king remarrying?”

“Not a word, Your Grace, I swear!” I cried. I was privy to many secrets with those other gentlemen, but not one involving a second wife for the king. “If you please, Your Grace, you are hurting my hand.”

He mumbled an oath, but instantly released my hand, staring at his fingers as if they’d acted without his knowledge. He sighed, and lifted his hat long enough to smooth his wig beneath it. Then, finally, he looked back to me, his expression as cheerfully composed as if nothing untoward had happened at all.

“I’m sure you understand the reasons for delicacy in this matter, mademoiselle,” he said softly. “Arlington, Clifford, Montagu: they all believe they know the king’s mind, but they don’t, not as I do. I ask you, who has been trusted with this treaty? Which of us has King Louis fawning and nibbling from his hand? Which minister’s the master of them all, eh?”

I knew what he didn’t, and that the real master of them all was, of course, His Majesty their king. But I also knew better than to acknowledge more than I should, and so once again I feigned a meek humility to hide my secrets.

“I am honored by your confidence, Lord Buckingham,” I said, and curtsied for good measure. “I vow that I will keep your secret, no matter who may ask me.”

“Do that,” he said, and smiled. “The world is full of simple fools, mademoiselle, those who prefer to wait for what they are given. But then there are those who bravely seize whatever fate may offer, and claim it as their own.”

Did he mean to advise me by that tidy little epigram, or was he only referring to himself ? I’d no answer, but to my relief he did not seem to expect one. I’d yet to learn that this was often the case with the duke; he was so serenely confident of his own innate superiority that he went through his life without requiring the approval of others or even their comment.

Now that I had done what he desired, he seemed almost to have forgotten me. He swung away from me, humming a scrap of a song as he sauntered a few steps closer to the water, then stopped. With his hands at his waist and his legs angled apart, he resembled some sort of roguish buccaneer captain on the quarterdeck of his pirate vessel, surveying the wide-open sea instead of this royal conceit of canal.

“What is this body of water, mademoiselle?” he asked over his shoulder. “What river?”

“That’s His Majesty’s Grand Canal, Your Grace,” I said, cautiously coming to stand beside him. The summer sun was low in the sky now, turning the water’s surface a brilliant, shimmering red. “The gondolas and the miniature galleon as well as the boathouses at the head of the canal were gifts to His Most Christian Majesty from the Doge of Venice.”

“All from the doge?” he said, gazing out over the water. “Hell.”

That was hardly the proper reaction to so artfully constructed a vista, and His Majesty would have been most vexed to hear it, but by now I’d decided there was very little that was proper about the duke.

“Yes, Your Grace, the Doge of Venice.” Like every other courtier, I felt a certain national pride in Versailles as representing the very best of French craft and art (which was to say the very best in all the world), and I was eager for the duke to appreciate it, too. “It is a masterpiece of engineering and design. Its surface covers over forty-four hectares, or over a hundred of your English acres, and its shore is more than four miles around.”

“His Majesty has a canal, too,” the duke said. “It lies in St. James’s Park outside of Whitehall Palace, in London. I’ve never measured it myself, but I’d venture its breadth to be thirty feet and its length perhaps a hundred at best.”

“I’m sure it is very pretty, Your Grace,” I said.

“It has ducks,” he said flatly. “And a single damned gondola, a gift from that same damned doge. What the devil is a doge, anyway?”

I wasn’t sure if his question was asked for the sake of pure rhetoric or not. Yet because I didn’t wish to appear rude, as if I’d not been attending his observations, I answered him as best I could.

“I believe that the doge is the chief magistrate and leader of the Republic of Venice, Your Grace,” I said. “A most ancient and venerable office.”

“If Charles saw this,” he said, “it would break his heart.”

“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” I said softly, and I was. I’d not forgotten the melancholy that shadowed the English king’s handsome face, and I’d no wish to see it sadder still for the sake of an oversized garden folly. “I’m sure that wasn’t the intention of His Most Christian Majesty when he had it built.”