Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  Oh, how I hate you! thought Amber with sudden savagery. I hate you, I despite you! I wish you were dead!

  It was obvious too that Corinna, for all her smooth and charming manners, liked her visitor no better. She had lied when she had told Bruce that she did not believe he had continued to see her—and now the mere sight of this honey-haired amber-eyed woman filled her with loathing. She had almost come to believe that while both of them lived neither could ever be truly at peace. Their glances caught and for a moment they looked into each other's eyes: mortal enemies, two women in love with the same man.

  Amber, realizing that she must say something, now remarked with what casualness she could: "Almsbury tells me you'll be sailing soon."

  "As soon as possible, madame."

  "You'll be very glad to leave London, I suppose?"

  She had not come for simpering feminine compliments, insincere smiles and subtly disgusted cuts; now her tawny speckled eyes were hard and shining, ruthless as those of a cat watching its prey.

  Corinna returned her stare, not at all disconcerted or intimidated. "I shall, indeed, madame. Though perhaps not for the reason you suppose."

  "I don't know what you mean!"

  "I'm sorry. I thought you would."

  Amber's claws came out at that. You bitch, she thought. I'll pay you off for that. I know a way to make you sweat.

  "You're looking mighty smug it seems to me, madame—for a woman whose husband is unfaithful to her."

  Corinna's eyes widened incredulously. For a moment she was silent, then very quietly she said, "Why did you come here, madame?"

  Amber leaned forward in her chair, holding tightly to her gloves with both hands, eyes narrowed and voice low and intense. "I came to tell you something. I came to tell you that whatever you may think—he loves me still. He'll always love me!"

  Corinna's cool answer astonished her. "You may think so if you like, madame."

  Amber sprang up out of her chair. "I may think so if I like!" she jeered. Swiftly she crossed the few feet of floor between them and was standing beside her. "Don't be a fool! You won't believe me because you're afraid to! He never stopped seeing me at all!" Her excitement was mounting dangerously. "We've been meeting in secret—two or three times a week—at a lodging house in Magpie Yard! All the afternoons you thought he was hunting or at the theatre he was with me! All the nights you thought he was at Whitehall or at a tavern we were together!"

  She saw Corinna's face turn white and a little muscle twitched beside her left eye. There! thought Amber with a fierce surge of pleasure. She felt that one, I'll wager! This was what she had come for: to bait her, to prod her most sensitive emotions, to humiliate her with boasting of Bruce's infidelity. She wanted to see her cringe and shrink. She wanted to see a woman who looked as miserable, as badly beaten as she felt.

  "Now what d'you make of his fidelity to you!"

  Corinna was staring at her, a kind of repugnant horror on her face. "I don't think there's any shred of honourable feeling left in you!"

  Amber's mouth twisted into an ugly sneer; she did not realize how unpleasant she looked, but was past caring if she had. "Honour! What the devil is honour! A bogey-man to scare children! That's all it's good for these days! You can't think what a fool you've looked to all of us these past months—we've been laughing in our fists at you— Oh, never deceive yourself—he's laughed with the rest of us!"

  Corinna got to her feet. "Madame," she said coldly, "I have never known a woman of worse breeding. I can well believe that you came out of the streets—you act like it and you talk like it. I am only amazed you could have produced such a child as Bruce."

  Amber gasped, completely taken aback at that. Lord Carlton had never told her that his wife knew she was the boy's mother. And yet she did know and had never said a word to anyone, had not refused to have him about her, and seemed to love him as sincerely as if he had been her own.

  Good Lord! the woman was a greater fool even than she had thought!

  "So you did know that he's mine! Well, now you know me too, and I wonder how you like knowing that one day my son will be Lord Carlton—everything your husband has and is will belong, to my child, not to yours! How d'you like that, eh? Are you so damned virtuous and noble that it doesn't rankle in your flesh at all?"

  "You know very well that's impossible unless his legitimacy can be proved."

  She and Corinna stood very close, breathing each other's breath, staring into each other's eyes. Amber felt an overpowering desire to grab her by the hair, tear at her face, destroy her beauty and her very life. Something, she hardly knew what, held her in check.

  "Will you please leave my rooms, madame," said Corinna now, her lips so stiff with fury that though they shook they scarcely moved to form the words.

  All at once Amber laughed, a high hysterical laugh of fury and nervous repression. "Listen to her!" she cried. "Yes, I'll leave your rooms! I can't get away from you too soon!" With swift jerky movements she gathered up the muff and fan she had dropped and then turned once more to face Corinna, breathing hard, quivering in every muscle. She could no longer think but she began to say, half unconsciously, something she had long wanted to say to her.

  "You'll soon be lying-in, won't you? Think of me sometimes then— Or d'you imagine he'll be waiting by your bed like a patient dog till you're—"

  She saw Corinna's eyes close slowly, the irises rolling away. At that instant a man's harsh voice cracked through the room.

  "Amber!"

  She whirled and saw Bruce striding toward her, looking gigantic in his fury. She started a little as though about to run, but he seized her by the shoulder, spun her around and at the same instant his other hand lashed out and struck her across the face. For an instant she was completely blind and then she caught a flashing glimpse of his face above her, contorted, ugly—and she knew that he was angry enough to kill her.

  Her reaction was swift, partly through fear and her own violent instincts of self-preservation, partly because all control over her mind had been gone long before this. Wild as an animal she began to kick and scratch and pound at him with her fists, shrieking with rage, cursing him with every vile word she knew. Over and over again she screamed that she hated him. For the moment her lust for revenge was so powerful she would have killed him if she could—all the pain she had ever suffered because of him, all the jealous hatred she had for Corinna had seized hold of her and made her something evil, dangerous, demoniacal.

  After his first swift outburst of fury Bruce had instantly recovered himself. Now he was only trying to bring her to her senses, though the strength begot of her rage made it almost impossible for him to control her.

  "Amber!" he shouted, trying to break through her deafness and blindness. "Amber, for God's sake—be still!"

  One side of his face was raw and bleeding and long claw marks showed where she had raked her nails across his cheek. His wig and hat had fallen off, Amber's gown was ripped across one breast and her hair had come undone. Corinna stood watching them, motionless with horror, sick with dread and humiliation.

  Suddenly he seized Amber by the back of her hair and gave a violent jerk that snapped her neck so hard the vertebrae cracked. She let out an agonized scream and the next instant her fist smashed into the side of his face, bruising her knuckles and knocking his head backward. His eyes turned green and he seized her neck in both hands, his strong lean fingers began to close in. Her face darkened. Frantically she tore at his, hands, her tongue was forced out and her eyes seemed to burst from the sockets. She tried to scream.

  Corinna rushed toward them. "Bruce!" she cried. "Bruce! You're killing her!"

  He seemed not to hear but Corinna dragged his arms, hammered with her fists against him, and all at once he let go. Amber dropped like a sack. With a look of unutterable disgust on his face—disgust which seemed as much against himself as Amber—he turned away, holding up his hands, the fingers still bent, and he stared at them as though they did not belong to hi
m. Corinna was watching him, tenderly, with a pity that was almost maternal.

  "Bruce—" she said at last, her voice very soft. "Bruce— I think you must send for the midwife. The pains come often now—"

  He stared at her dully, slow realization spreading over his face. "You're having pains—Oh! Corinna!" There was a sound of almost agonized remorse in his voice. Suddenly he picked her up in his arms and walked into the other room to the bed. There he laid her down. The blood on his shirt and coat had smeared her gown and the side of her cheek. His hand reached down to wipe it away; then swiftly he turned and ran out of the room.

  For two or three minutes Amber lay senseless on the floor. As she began to regain consciousness it seemed to her that she lay in a warm, soft and comforting bed; she tried to pull the blankets about her. It was several moments longer before she was conscious enough to remember where she was and what had happened. Then she tired to sit up. The blood thumped heavily in her ears and eyes, her throat ached and she felt dazed and stupid. Very slowly she dragged herself to her feet and she was standing there, almost as though hung from a hook, her head drooping, when Bruce came into the room again. She looked up and he stopped for a moment beside her.

  "Get out of here," he said. He spoke softly, between his teeth. "Get out."

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  For the next several days Amber scarcely left her bedroom in Ravenspur House. Visitors were turned away and she did not go once to the Palace. Someone started a rumor that she had been poisoned by Lady Carlton and was dying. Others said she was recovering from an abortion. Someone else insisted she was suffering from the effects of her latest perversion. Amber would not have cared no matter what they said— but when Charles sent to inquire she told him she had a severe attack of ague.

  Most of the time she merely lay on the bed, her face unpainted and her hair in tangled snarls. There were dirty circles about her eyes and her skin was sallow; she had been eating too little and drinking too much. Her tongue felt thick and leathery and had a nasty taste. She thought she might as well be dead.

  She had known in the past dark bitter moments of loneliness, self-distrust, desolation—but this was something more. Whatever she had hoped for the future, whatever she held dear in the present had been lost that day at Almsbury House. In only a few minutes she had destroyed everything, and the destruction had been complete; there seemed nothing left on which to build. Even her energy, the intense vitality which had never failed, now seemed dissipated.

  When Buckingham tried to interest her in his latest plot he found her, to his annoyance and surprise, indifferent almost to apathy. To get any response at all he had to offer twice what he had intended. But with his usual early enthusiasm he was prepared to squander all that remained of his fortune for this most dark and fantastic of all his schemes. It was his intention to poison Baron Arlington.

  Amber heard him explain the plan with mounting if half-reluctant admiration. At the end she gave a mock shudder. "Lord, but your Grace is an ingenious murderer! Then how d'you plan to rid yourself of me?"

  Buckingham smiled blandly. "Get rid of you, madame? I protest. Why should I? You're far too useful to me."

  "Of course," she agreed. "I doubt not you'd rather see my head stuck on a pole over London Bridge than your own."

  "Bah! His Majesty wouldn't put you to trial if you murdered his own brother. He's far too tender of any woman he's ever laid with. But don't trouble yourself, madame—I'm no such clumsy contriver as to endanger either of us."

  Amber did not argue with him on that point, but she knew well enough why he could not manage the business without her—he wanted a scapegoat should anything go wrong. And she was, furthermore, the one woman then at Court most likely to be able to wheedle the King into thinking or pretending to think that his Lordship had died from natural causes. If she failed, then it was she who must suffer the consequences.

  But Amber did not expect to fail. Almost by the time he had told her what his plan was she had another of her own. The Duke's scheme was a challenge to which her own ingenuity could not but rise and she began to shed some of her paralyzing torpor. She thought she could see a way to deceive the Duke, outwit the Baron, and make herself a great sum of money at very little risk.

  Buckingham delivered to her the twenty-five hundred pounds he had promised—the other half to be paid when the Baron lay safe in his grave—and Amber sent for Shadrac New-bold to come get it. She did not intend to chance having his Grace steal it back. Then she went to keep the appointment she had made with Arlington.

  It was near midnight when she left the Palace in a clothes-hamper borne by two porters, covered with her own soiled smocks and petticoats which were supposedly being carried to her laundress. A moment later Nan came out the same door. She was dressed in the clothes and jewels Amber had had on earlier that day and she wore a wig the colour of Amber's hair; her face was covered with a vizard. A man who had been loitering about that entrance since nightfall looked after the hamper as if undecided whether he should follow it or not— but when Nan appeared, climbed into Amber's great coach and went off, he whistled to signal his own coach and followed her instead.

  Nan took a leisurely roundabout course across town to Camomile Street, giggling as she watched the Duke's spy try to keep at a discreet distance without losing sight of her. He waited outside a lodging-house for her for three hours and when she had gone inquired of the landlady who lived there. On being told that the apartment was taken by Mr. Harris, a young actor of the Duke's Theatre, he went to make his report to Buckingham, who sat picking his teeth with a gold toothpick and meditatively sucking air through them, amused that the Duchess should be consorting with such low creatures after all the trouble she had taken to rise above them.

  Amber, meanwhile was carried to an obscure little courtyard in one of the festering alleys of Westminster. The porters had some difficulty getting their burden up to the dirty little third-floor tenement lodging, and Amber alternately held her breath and cursed as she felt the hamper tip, slide, thump on each step. But at last they set her down and went out. Hearing the door close she knocked up the top of the hamper, flung off the covering linen and drew a deep breath. She was just climbing out when Arlington entered from an adjoining chamber—his black cloak swept almost to the floor, his hat was pulled low over his eyes and he held a vizard in one hand.

  "The time's short, my lord," said Amber, untangling a petticoat from about her shoulders and neck and throwing it aside. "I've got some information of great value—I'll give it you for five thousand pound."

  Arlington's expression did not alter. "That's very civil of you, madame. But five thousand is a considerable sum. I don't think I can—"

  Impatiently Amber interrupted him. "I'm no mercer, my lord, to let you run on tick. My payment must be cash. But maybe we can strike up a bargain. I'll tell you part of what I know now and if you pay me tomorrow I'll take care the plot miscarries. If you don't—" Lightly she shrugged, and the implication was that some very unpleasant misfortune would befall him.

  "That sounds a reasonable piece of thinking for a woman."

  "Someone intends to murder your Lordship—I know when and how. If you pay me I can spoil the plot—"

  Arlington remained imperturbable. He had more enemies than he knew, and he knew a great many—but this seemed to him transparent.

  "I think I can spoil the plot myself, madame, and save five thousand pound."

  "How!"

  "If I made an accusation—"

  "You don't dare, and you know it!"

  She was right, for if he so much as hinted his suspicions to the King, Buckingham would be upon him and drag it out into the open. And the Duke was still too powerful, had too much interest outside Court in quarters where the King desperately needed what support he could get. If Arlington were to accuse him of plotting his murder the Duke could ruin him politically even quicker than he could end his life by poison. Perhaps that, after all, was what he wanted—perhaps that
was why he had brought her into the plot. Arlington regarded this as another instance of a woman meddling to make his life more difficult—and expensive.

  "For all I know," he said, "this may be only a plot of yours to get money. I don't think anyone would dare poison his Majesty's Secretary of State."

  The bluff did not impress Amber. She smiled at him. "But if someone does dare, my lord, next week or next month you'll be as dead as herring—"

  "Suppose I give you the money. How do I know you won't let the plot—if there is one—go through anyway?"

  "You must trust me for that, sir."

  The Baron was now looking very ill-tempered. He knew that she had caught him, and could see no way to save both his life and his money. For he dared not take the chance. Buckingham was, he knew, at certain times and in certain moods capable of engineering his murder without a qualm. Or if not Buckingham, some lesser enemy— But blast this woman! Why should she get five thousand pound from him! The King's wenches came by their money at scant trouble to themselves— but it would take him months of hard work to replace that much. He had never felt such a bitter dislike of all females, but most particularly of the Duchess of Ravenspur.

  "I'll see the money is delivered into your hands tomorrow. Good-night, madame. And thank you."

  "By no means, my lord. Your life is too valuable to England. Thank you."

  Buckingham's plot was simple. The next day he brought to her a handsome fifteen-year-old boy from the Baron's household, John Newmarch, whom Amber was to persuade to poison his master for the sake of King and country. When Arlinton was dead Buckingham intended to give the boy one hundred pounds, have him declared dead of small-pox, and send him abroad to live. But the Duke had told him nothing of all this—only that the Duchess of Ravenspur had seen and admired him and wanted to make his acquaintance. With the precocious sophistication induced by the Court John came eagerly, convinced he knew what she wanted. He was wrong.

  Amber plied her charms and John Newmarch agreed to the plan. But having received Arlington's five thousand, she gave him only a harmless sleeping-potion to stir into the Baron's sack-posset. Buckingham stopped her the next morning as she was on her way to the Queen's apartments, and he looked both anxious and angry.