Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  "But what about me?" she cried. "I love you as much as she does! My God, I think I know a thing or two about agony myself! Or doesn't it mean anything to you if I'm hurt?"

  "Of course it does, Amber, but there's a difference."

  "What!"

  "Corinna's my wife and we'll live together the rest of our lives. In a few months I'll be leaving England and I won't come back again—I'm done travelling. Your life is here and mine is in America—after I go this time we'll never see each other again."

  "Never—see each other again?" Her speckled tawny eyes stared at him, her lips half-parted over the words. "Never—" She had said that to Almsbury only an hour before, but it sounded different to her now, coming from him. Suddenly she seemed to realize exactly what it would mean. "Never, Bruce! Oh, darling, you can't do this to me! I need you as much as she does—I love you as much as she does! If all the rest of your life belongs to her you can give me a little of it now—She'd never even know, and if she didn't know she couldn't be hurt! You can't be here in London all these next six months and never see me—I'd die if you did that to me! Oh, Bruce, you can't do it! You can't!"

  She threw herself against him, pounding her fists softly on his chest, sobbing with quiet, desperate, mournful little sobs. For a long while he sat, his arms hanging at his sides, not touching her; and then at last he drew her close against him between his legs, his mouth crushing down on hers with a kind of angry hunger. "Oh, you little bitch," he muttered. "Someday I'll forget you—someday I'll—"

  He rented apartments in a lodging-house in Magpie Yard, just about a mile from the Palace within the old settled district which had been missed by the Fire. They had two large rooms, furnished handsomely in the pompous heavy style of seventy years before. There were bulbous-legged tables, immense boxlike chairs, enormous chests, a high-backed settle next the fireplace and worn tapestry on the walls. The oak bed was of majestic proportions with carved pillars and head-board, and it was hung with dark-red velvet which, though faded with the years, showed a richer, truer colour deep in the folds. Diamond-paned windows looked down three stories into a brick-paved courtyard on one side and the noisy busy street on the other.

  They met there two or three times a week, usually in the afternoons but sometimes at night. Amber had promised him that Corinna would never know they were still seeing each other and, like a little girl put on her good behaviour, she took the most elaborate precautions to insure perfect secrecy. If they met in the afternoon she left Whitehall in her own clothes and coach, went to a tavern where she changed and sent Nan out by the front door in a mask and the garments she had been wearing—while she left in her own disguise by some other exit. At night she took a barge or a hackney, but then Big John was always with her.

  She went to a great more trouble than was really necessary to conceal herself, for she enjoyed it.

  One time she would come back in a black wig, calf-high skirt, rolled-up sleeves, a woolen cloak to protect her from the cold, with a trayful of dried rosemary and lavender and sweet-briar balanced on one hip. Another time she was a sober citizen's wife in plain black gown with a deep white-linen collar and cap which covered her hair—but she did not like that and stuffed it into a chest, taking out something gayer to wear home. Again she dressed as a boy in a snug-fitting velvet suit and flaxen periwig and she went strutting through the streets with a sword at one hip, hat cocked over her eyes, a short velvet cloak flung up across her chin.

  Her disguises amused both of them and he would turn her about to look at her, laughing while she mimicked the speech and manners of whomever she was supposed to be.

  She was convincing in her roles, for though she sometimes passed people she knew on the street none of them ever recognized her. Once a couple of gallants stopped to talk to her and offered her a guinea to step into the nearest tavern with them. Another time she narrowly missed the King himself as he came along the river walking with Buckingham and Arlington. All three gentlemen turned their heads to look after the masked lady who was lifting her skirts to get into a barge, and one of them whistled. It must have been either the Duke or Charles himself—for certainly Arlington would never have whistled at a woman though she were walking down Cheapside stark naked.

  Sometimes Bruce brought their son with him and occasionally she brought Susanna. They had many gay suppers together, often calling in a street fiddler or two to play for them while they ate, and the children thought it an exciting adventure. Bruce explained to the little boy, as well as he could, why he must never mention those meetings to Corinna; and Susanna could not betray them by some innocent remark for she never saw anyone who might guess what she was talking about but the King—and Charles was not the man to meddle in his mis-stress's love-affairs.

  Once, when there were just the three of them, Bruce brought Susanna a picture-book so that she could amuse herself while they were in the bedroom. Afterward, while Amber was dressing, Susanna was admitted and stood by her father's chair thumbing through the book and asking him one question after another—she was not quite five and curious about everything. Pointing to one picture she asked:

  "Why does the devil have horns Daddy?"

  "Because the devil is a cuckold, darling."

  Amber, just stepping into her three petticoats, each one of them starched crisp as tissue-paper, gave him a quick look at that. His eyes slid over to her, amused, and they exchanged smiles, enjoying the private joke. But Susanna persisted.

  "What's a cuckold, Daddy?"

  "A cuckold? Why, a cuckold is—Ask your mother, Susanna; she understands those things better than I do."

  Susanna turned to her immediately. "Mother, what's a—"

  Amber bent over to tie her garters. "Hush, you saucy little chatterbox! Where's your doll?"

  About the first of March Amber moved into Ravenspur House, though it was not quite finished. It still had a look of raw newness. The brick was bright-coloured, for the London smoke had not had time to darken and mellow it. The grass in the terraces was sparse; the transplanted limes and sweet chestnuts, the hornbeam and sycamore were only half-grown; the hedges of yew and roses were yet too young to be trained or decoratively clipped. Nevertheless it was a great and impressive house and to know that it belonged to her filled Amber with passionate pride.

  She took Bruce through it one day and showed him the bathroom—one of the very few in all London—with its black-marble walls and floors, green-satin hangings, gilt stools and chairs and sunken tub almost large enough to swim in. With a flourish she pointed out that every accessory in the house was silver, from chamber-pots to candle-snuffers. She told him that the mirrors, of which there were several hundred, each framed in silver, had all been smuggled from Venice. She showed him her fabulous collection of gold and silver plate displayed, as was customary, on several great sideboards about the dining-room.

  "What do you think of it?" Her voice almost crowed, her eyes sparkled with triumph. "I'll warrant you there's nothing like that in America!"

  "No," he agreed. "There isn't."

  "And there never will be, either!"

  He shrugged, but did not argue about it. After a while, to her surprise, he said: "You're very rich, aren't you?"

  "Oh, furiously! I can have anything!" She did not add that she could have anything—on credit.

  "Do you know what condition your investments are in? Newbold tells me he has a difficult time to make you leave any money at all with him to put out at interest for you. Don't you think it might be wise to have two or three thousand pound, at least, where you couldn't touch it?"

  She was astonished, and scornful. "Why should I? I can't trouble myself with those matters. Anyway—there'll always be more money where this came from, I warrant you."

  "But my dear, you won't always be young."

  She stared at him, a look of horrified and resentful surprise on her face. For though the passing years filled her with terror and her twenty-sixth birthday was but two weeks away, she had never let herself
think that he might know she was growing older. In her own mind she would never be more than sixteen to Bruce Carlton. Now she sat, thoughtful and quiet, till they arrived back at the Palace, and once alone she rushed to a mirror.

  She studied herself for several minutes, giving her skin and hair and teeth the most ruthless scrutiny, and finally she convinced herself that she had not yet begun to deteriorate. Her skin was as smooth and creamy, her hair as luxuriant and ripe in colour, her figure as fine as the first day she had seen him in Marygreen. There was, however, a change of which she was only vaguely conscious.

  Then her face had been untouched by vivid experiences, now it gave unmistakable evidence of rich and full and violent living. The same eagerness and passion showed in her eyes and seemed, if anything, to have heightened. Whatever the years between had been they had served neither to destroy her confidence nor to moderate her enthusiasm; there was in her something indestructible.

  Nan came into the room and found her mistress staring at herself with almost morbid intensity. "Nan!" she cried, the instant the door opened. "Am I beginning to decay?"

  Nan looked at her, flabbergasted. "Beginning to decay? You?" She ran over to Amber and bent down to peer at her. "Lord, your Grace, you've never been handsomer in your life! You must be running distracted to say a thing like that!"

  Amber looked up at her uncertainly, then back into the mirror again. Slowly her fingers reached up to touch her face. Of course I'm not! she thought. He didn't mean that I was growing old. He didn't say that. He only said that someday—

  Someday—that was what she dreaded. She tossed the mirror down, got to her feet and walked swiftly across the room to begin changing her clothes for supper. But the thought that one day she would grow old, that her beauty—so flawless now —would perish at last, invaded her mind more and more insistently. She pushed it back but still it crept in, an insidious determined foe to her happiness...

  The first party that Amber gave at Ravenspur House cost her almost five thousand pounds. She invited several hundred guests and all of them came, as well as several dozen more who had not been asked, but who got in despite the guards stationed in front.

  The food was deliciously prepared and served by a great horde of liveried footmen, all of them young and personable. There was champagne and burgundy in great silver tubs, and in spite of his Majesty's presence several gentlemen drank too much. Music and shouts and laughter filled the house, reaching into every corner. While some of the guests danced others gathered around the card-tables or knelt in excited circles about a pair of rolling dice.

  King Charles and Queen Catherine were there, as well as the town's reigning courtesans. Jacob Hill and Moll Davis performed and—more privately—some of Madame Bennet's naked dancing-girls. But the coup of the evening was when a harlot, who for some months had been attracting attention about town and amusing the Court by her credible imitation of Lady Castlemaine, arrived late wearing an exact replica of Barbara's own gown. Amber had found out, by bribing one of the Lady's serving-women, what she would wear, and had hired Madame Rouvière to duplicate the gown. Furious and humiliated, Barbara appealed to the King to punish the outrage, or at least send the creature away—but he was as much amused as he had been by the practical joke Nell Gwynne had played upon Moll Davis.

  Barbara Palmer, Lord and Lady Carlton, and some few others left rather early, but everyone else stayed on.

  At three in the morning breakfast was served, a breakfast as lavish as the supper had been, and at six the last stragglers were engaged in a pillow-fight. Two excitable young gallants fell into dispute, pulled out their swords and might have killed each other in the drawing-room—Charles was gone by then— but Amber put a stop to that and all their friends accompanied them to Marylebone Fields to settle the issue. And finally, exhausted but happy, Amber went upstairs to her gold-and-green-and-black bedroom to sleep.

  Everyone seemed agreed there had not been such a successful party in months.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  At first Amber was perfectly content to meet Bruce in secret. Having come so close to losing him she was grateful for the furtive hours, determined to savour to the full each moment they had together. For now she realized that he never would come back again and she saw the time running out—days, then weeks, then months, and her life seemed to be going with it.

  But slowly a resentment began to grow. When he had said it she had believed implicitly that he really meant he would see her no more if Corinna found out. And yet he had broken one promise to his wife—why not others? And never, in the ten years she had known him, had he seemed so genuinely and deeply in love with her. It did not occur to her that she might be responsible for that herself—for she had never made so few demands, or been so unfailingly cheerful, without arguments or complaint. And so gradually she persuaded herself that she was of such great importance to him that no matter what happened he would never give her up. Consequently, she grew more dissatisfied with her lot.

  What am I to him? she would ask herself sourly. Something between a whore and a wife—a kind of fish with feathers. I'll be damned if he can continue to use me at this rate! I'll let him know I'm no farmer's niece now! I'm the Duchess of Ravenspur, a great lady, a person of quality—I won't be treated like a wench, visited on the sly and never mentioned in polite company!

  But the first time she hinted her indignation, his answer was definite. "This arrangement was your idea, Amber, not mine. If it no longer suits you—say so, and we'll stop meeting." The look in his eyes frightened her into silence—for a while.

  Still she thought that there would always be a way to get what she wanted, and she grew more rebellious and defiant. By the middle of May her patience, which had been dragging thin these past five months, was worn through. As she went to meet him one day, bouncing and jogging along in a hackney, she had reached a peak of reckless and unreasonable irritability. Corinna was expecting her child in another month and so they could have no more than six or seven weeks at the longest left in England. She knew well enough that she had no business poking the hornet's nest now.

  But who ever heard of treating a mistress so scurvily! she asked herself. Why should I have to sneak about to meet him like a common pick-purse? Oh, a pox on him and his infernal secrecy!

  She was dressed like a country-girl, perhaps come in from Knightsbridge or Islington or Chelsea to sell vegetables, and out of sentiment she had chosen a costume very much like the one she had been wearing the day of the Heathstone May Fair. It consisted of a green wool skirt pinned up over a short red-and-white-striped cotton petticoat, a black stomacher laced tight across her ribs, and a full-sleeved white blouse. Her legs were bare, she wore neat black shoes and a straw bongrace tilted far back on her head. With her hair falling loose and no paint on her face she looked surprisingly as she had ten years ago.

  The day was warm for the sun had come out suddenly after a morning of early summer rain, and she had lowered the glass window. Rattling along King Street she came to Charing Cross where the Strand met Pall Mall, and as the coach drew to a stop she stuck out her head to look for him. The open space was filled with children and animals, beggars and vendors and citizens; it was busy, noisy, and—as London would always be to her—exciting.

  She saw him immediately, standing several feet away with his back turned, buying a little basket of the first red cherries from an old fruit-woman, while a dirty little urchin pulled at his coat, begging a penny. Bruce had not taken to disguises with the same gusto she had but always wore his own well-cut unostentatious suits. This one had green breeches, gartered at the knee, and a handsome knee-length black coat with very broad gold-embroidered cuffs set on sleeves that came just below the elbow. His hat was three-cornered and both suit and hat were in the newest fashion.

  Her face lost its petulant frown at the sight of him, and she leant forward, waving her arm and crying: "Hey, there!"

  Half-a-dozen men looked around, grinning, to ask if she called them. She
made them an impudent teasing grimace. Bruce turned, paid the old cherry-woman, tossed a coin to the little beggar, and after giving the driver his directions got into the coach. He handed her the basket of cherries and, as the hackney gave a lurch and started off, sat down suddenly. With quick admiration his eyes went over her, from her head down to her fragile ankles, demurely crossed.

  "You make as pretty a country-wench as the first day I saw you."

  "Do I so?" Amber basked under his smile, beginning to eat the cherries and giving a fistful to him. "It's been ten years, Bruce—since that day in Marygreen. I can't believe it, can you?"

  "I should think it would seem like many more than ten years to you."

  "Why?" Suddenly her eyes widened and she turned to him. "Do I look so much more than ten years older?"

  "Of course you don't, darling. What are you, twenty-six?"

  "Yes. Do I look it?" There was something almost pathetic in her eagerness.

  He laughed. "Six-and-twenty! My God, what an age! Do you know how old I am? Thirty-nine. How do you imagine I get around without a cane?"

  Amber made a face, sorting over the cherries. "But it's different with men."

  "Only because women think so."

  But she preferred to discuss something more agreeable. "I hope we're going to have something to eat. I didn't have dinner today—Madame Rouvière was fitting my gown for his Majesty's birthday." It was the custom for the Court to dress up on that occasion. "Oh, wait till you see it!" She rolled her eyes, intimating that he would be thunder-struck at the spectacle.

  He smiled. "Don't tell me—I know. It's transparent from the waist down."

  "Oh, you villain! It is not! It's very discreet—as discreet as anything of Corinna's, I'll warrant you!"

  But, as always, she knew that it had been a mistake to mention his wife. His face closed, the smile faded, and both of them fell silent.

  Riding there beside him, jogging about uncomfortably on the hard springless seat, Amber wondered what he was thinking, and all her grievances against him rushed back. But she stole a glance at him from the corners of her eyes, saw his handsome profile, the nervous flickering of jaw muscles beneath the smooth brown skin, and she longed to reach out and touch him, to tell him how deeply, how hopelessly, how eternally she loved him. At that moment the coach turned into the courtyard of the lodging-house and as it stopped he got swiftly out and reached a hand in to help her.