by Diane Haeger
By midnight, she had lost track of how many notable people to whom she had been introduced, and all the while he kept her hand carefully pressed upon his arm, leading her, guiding her. The evening whirled by with Nell in a cocoon of joy, laughing, dancing, and sharing a world with the king of England that only a short time before, in Newmarket, she could not have begun to imagine.
After they had danced until Nell’s feet ached, they took a stroll together through the grounds, past decades-old gardens with hedges and fountains, and vast lawns with dark woodlands beyond. They went then into a second wing of the palace and into an intimate little wood-paneled room beside the gallery where the music and laughter could still be heard. But here, the air was clear and more full of clever quips than raucous laughter. Around a table, seven or eight of the king’s friends were playing an intense game of cards. Upon their entrance, they all stood and bowed to him until he nodded. Then, without ceremony, they returned to their game.
“And here we have the real festivities,” said Charles. “And not just any card game, mind you. This is basset. Very competitive, indeed, with this wily group.”
“Life’s so much more of a thrill in that sort of company.” Nell smiled.
“Well, now,” exclaimed a barrel-chested man with pepper-gray hair and a thick Scottish accent. Having heard her, he looked up from the card-strewn table to assess her with a more critical eye. “Are ye no’ just a wee breath of fresh air, lass.”
The king’s smile bore a hint of pride. “Nell Gwynne, may I present the Duke of Lauderdale, John Maitland, one of my Privy Council, and a rather notorious and rakish old jackanapes, I’m afraid. His wife is clever and bold, and certainly his better half, which is why I keep him around.”
“I’ll consider myself warned,” Nell said, her friendly voice warming the air around them.
“Could an old friend invite Mrs. Gwynne to try her luck with us?”
“If she is not made to lose too dreadfully to an old schemer like you,” quipped the king.
With his approval, and beneath a very watchful eye, Nell sat with the others and quickly picked up the rules of the game. Before long, she was even winning a bit. She sank more easily into the chair and took a long swallow of French brandy from Lauderdale’s glass, then held up her cards as if she belonged there every bit as much as each of them. Lauderdale exchanged an approving glance with the king.
“So tell me, Mrs. Gwynne,” the Duke of York offhandedly asked as he lay down a card. “Which do you find more rewarding these days, performing for all of London or simply for our king?”
The double entendre was clear, and Nell felt the king tense beside her. Her smile was unfazed. She put down her own card with a flourish and met him head-on. “There’s no denyin’ I do love an audience, Your Grace. But there’s somethin’ to be said for the benefits of one very big—and important—standin’ ovation.”
Everyone at the table erupted in approving laughter, even the king, and Nell felt the tension slide away as they all realized that she had won another hand.
“So what is it like to have been dreadfully poor and now to find such overwhelming favor?” the king’s brother pressed indelicately, for the challenge of it.
“Very like taking the nasty cod liver oil your sort fancy, I should imagine. Not all that pleasin’ to the taste, but you can do it if you set your mind right properly to it.”
They looked down at her cards and were all amused that she had won yet again. “Do not tell us, Your Majesty, that she has never played this game.”
“Ah, Nell is, among other things, an amazingly quick study.”
“‘Amazing’ being the operative word,” laughed the Duke of Lauderdale. “Your Mrs. Gwynne most certainly is that!”
“Thank you for teachin’ me,” she said when it was over, and she had not, as the king commanded, lost too badly.
“It was a rare pleasure,” Lauderdale said, nodding to her in such a grand and courtly gesture that Nell felt delighted. Here with these people, on the arm of the king himself, she felt almost at ease.
As they strolled out into the moonlight of the little inner courtyard again, with its ordered French parterre, dotted with Greek stone statuary, Charles took her hand. Then he stopped her suddenly, and pressed a kiss onto each of her fingers, working the tip of his tongue over each gently rounded fingernail. “Spend the night with me, Nell. The whole night.”
She bit her bottom lip to stop a smile. “You mean like a proper mistress?”
“I mean like Nell Gwynne, the woman who has captured my heart. My friends love you, London loves you, and I have been entirely won over.”
“Your heart, you say?” she asked, with her usual wry smile.
“I did indeed,” replied the king.
Chapter 16
NONE EVER HAD SO STRANGE AN ART HIS PASSION TO CONVEY INTO A LIST’NING VIRGIN’S HEART AND STEAL HER SOUL AWAY.
—Sir Charles Sedley
AT the end of October, Nell was back on the stage in London and the king, she was told, had just returned from Windsor with the queen. During the first ten days of their separation, he had sent her a small token each day. Among them was an ivory-handled hair comb, a silver patch box, a bracelet, and a strand of pearls.
But as the days became weeks, once again he did not send for her.
Three weeks passed, and Nell sat in the tiring-room, surrounded by other actresses, having rouge applied to her cheeks. Everyone at the theater had clambered for details of what had occurred at Hampton Court after they had returned to the city, and if she was meant to be a new, proper mistress to His Majesty now. The truth was that she knew even less about their future than she did about who his other companions might be. It seemed to her a very delicate dance. Say too much and appear boastful, as Moll Davies had. Say nothing at all, appear uninterested, and end like Beck Marshall’s older sister, Anne, who had briefly, two years earlier, had her own royal affair.
“The king is here! He’s here!” Richard cried out.
Her heart began to pound, almost as it had before her very first performance. It was sudden and unexpected. She had missed him so desperately, but she dare not admit that to him. Emotion was weakness, and she could not be weak with the king if she meant to win some substantial part in his life. There should be not a spark of jealousy in her behavior. “Is the queen with him?” she quietly asked.
“No—”
“Hello, Nell.”
It was not the voice she expected just then cutting between Richard and herself. Still, she knew it before she turned around. The sense of dread at the haughty tone turned her skin to gooseflesh.
“Hello, Moll,” she said in reply.
Richard stayed glued to the spot near the door as Nell stood, and the two actresses faced each other, just before the play was to begin. The sound of laughter and the commotion out in the theater filled the awkward silence.
“I thought I should come back and extend my regards since you’re back on the stage. I’d ’eard you’d gone off with Lord Buckhurst.”
“Ancient ’istory, I’m afraid.”
“Well, I am ’ere, of course, makin’ new ’istory with ’Is Majesty,” she said boastfully. “I tell you, Nell, I so needed an afternoon out with our daughter. She’s growin’ so fast, you can’t rightly imagine.”
Reference to a child. It was a direct hit, and Nell felt it deep in the center of her chest, not far off from her heart. “Congratulations,” she forced herself to say. She was a better actress than Moll Davies would ever be.
“Thank you then, Nell. ’Twas a long and difficult pregnancy, and not without its, shall we say, complications, for ’Is Majesty and I. But,” she added, honing her gaze, “I’m pleased to report that now everythin’ is back to normal.”
One beat, then two. Nell felt fury rise up—not at the king’s infidelity, that was to be expected. She understood it. She forced herself to accept it. But this woman’s flaunting of it at her intentionally was too much. “Well, I do ’ope that
you get everythin’ you deserve and more,” Nell said.
“Oh, believe me, I intend to.” The angry sparks between them now were hot enough to ignite a fire, yet still they smiled as if they were the very best of friends.
After Moll left, Nell flung an oak-handled hairbrush at the door, barely missing Beck Marshall, who was just coming around the corner to tell Nell she was due onstage. Richard led Nell gently toward the door. “Lie down with dogs, you get fleas,” he said.
“Moll Davies is no companion of mine!”
“Seems to me you lie down in the same places.”
“’Tis not like that between us! Unlike that cow, Moll Davies, I actually love ’im!”
“Love? Is that what you’ve had to tell yourself in order to bed such a notorious lecher?”
Nell slapped him hard across the face, and the crack of flesh stilled things in the room for a moment. “I thought you were my friend, Richard.”
“I have always been your friend. Certainly the only one bold enough to tell you the truth.”
“You’re only jealous!”
“Yes, Nell, I suppose I am at that.”
So it was out between them. Nell had always known it somewhere deep down, but it was an entirely different thing to have it admitted to, as it was now. And then, in the next moment, the truth became a great barrier. They stood looking at each other as the activity slowly rose back to a crescendo around them.” I’m sorry,” Nell said awkwardly.
“It’s my own fault. I always knew what would happen.”
“I do love you dearly, Richard.” She held out a hand to touch his face, but he stepped back.
“As a friend?”
“As a friend.”
“Nell! It’s time!” Beck Marshall called to her, holding on to the doorjamb as she stood in the doorway. Nell was still looking into the face of tender kindness and patience, wishing so dearly that she felt differently about him.
“Well,” he said to her, and exhaled when she did not respond. “You’d better go. Another brilliant performance awaits.”
“You’re right, I should go,” she replied. She was ashamed that she could not force herself to say more to her first real friend in the theater, a man who had rescued her not once, but twice.
She thought about Richard, not Charles, as she ran through the motions, and her lines, as she made her curtsies, and received the adoring crowd. The king had a grand bouquet of blue hyacinths delivered to her in a crystal vase when the play was over, but he did not come to her himself. She knew why, of course. So did Richard Bell. Moll Davies had cleverly recovered that place in his world. It really was a more intricate game than she had bargained for, suitable for only the very best players. And just now, Nell felt as if she would never quite know all of the rules.
The king sat in the first row of chairs in his vaulted chapel facing the river at Whitehall. Beside him was the queen in a dress of gray wool and ivory lace. Beside her was the Duke of York, who sat stone-faced as a psalm was read, echoing across the ancient stones and the soaring, arched ceiling above them. Beside the king was the Duke of Buckingham, but his mind was miles from this place and this moment. Carefully, Buckingham watched the king’s brother for open signs of his ever-growing Catholic loyalties, something he might use as a weapon when the moment came.
Like a skein of yarn, it could all unravel, and he must be prepared. With the potential for Monmouth to one day be legitimatized as true heir, the Duke of York could conceivably be displaced. Monmouth needed an adviser if that were to happen. York had Arlington, Buckingham’s rival. Monmouth was desperate and, thus, more malleable. A grateful Monmouth—or, if not that, perhaps a fertile new queen—he could control. A zealous Duke of York, led by the fervor of his faith, he never would.
Control at court—power—was everything.
After the service, Buckingham stepped into stride with the king beneath a truncated stone archway that faced a little inner courtyard. It was always a contest among the privy councillors to see who would get there first. Their shoe heels clicked in time on the ancient tile walkway. Everyone else, including the queen, walked behind them much more slowly, chattering in low tones. “Did you see it?” George carefully asked the king. He saw the troubled expression, the heavy frown, in response.
“So my brother made the sign of the cross. What of it?”
“He’s a Catholic heir in a Protestant country,” the duke countered, his voice urgent, low.
“Zounds, man! I well know it! But what would you have me do about it?”
“The people have already been through too much! I tell you, if they knew—”
“I love Monmouth with every fiber of my being, but I’ll not recognize a bastard child in my brother’s stead!”
“But if he is your legitimate son—”
“You know very well that he is not.”
“Come on, Charles, this is me! I was there with the two of you! I saw you with Lucy myself, calling yourselves husband and wife.”
Their eyes met. The king’s were hard, full of opposition. “Youthful zeal, not fact!”
“All it would take would be confirmation from you. No one else was there to say it didn’t happen, and poor Lucy Walter is dead now. Your brother would be reduced from the succession, thus the Catholic threat to Protestant England would be vanquished. And you would have the heir you have always needed.”
“Catherine is the only woman I have ever married.”
They broke off from the others then and walked alone through a long stone gallery, which held the night’s cold in spite of the warm autumn air beyond. “Then, if you won’t name Monmouth, for the love of God, divorce Catherine, and get a wife who can give you proper heir! Your involvement in Lord Roos’s petition for divorce has opened the way wide for yourself. You cannot tell me you didn’t know it would when you interceded.”
It was true the bill had just passed through the House of Lords, allowing the legally divorced Lord Roos the ability to remarry, and Charles had allowed himself to consider what it might be like, in spite of all his earlier promises.
“Why do you want this so desperately?”
“Since we were children,” Buckingham began, “I have only ever had your best interest at heart. I love you enough to remind you of your duty to leave a proper legacy.”
“And what of your own legacy, George? Where is that in all of this?”
“My future has always been wrapped up with your own, Charles. I am, you well know, a faithful servant.” He nodded in a courtly gesture that was awkward between two old friends.
Charles put his hand on George’s shoulder, trying to bridge the chasm his friend had created by constantly harping on this objectionable point. “I shall speak with him, all right?” he said gently. “But there must be some sort of tolerance in England for the Catholics. I am not without understanding as to their passion for God.”
“You cannot mean to put their passion over the wishes of your Protestant country?”
Charles looked back at the group, which lingered now a few steps behind them, near a marble statue of Henry VII. The truth was, as king, he walked a fine line religiously and politically. The Dutch wars had been such a disaster that he felt the need for absolute caution in all circumstances that might risk the good of England.
“I am, above all things, desirous of security for England, and I am not certain I can maintain that if the Dutch and the French remain such staunch allies against me. That is a dangerous and very delicate position to be in. Can you imagine what would happen if my Catholic brother was removed from the line of succession? If I openly berate my brother for his faith, and King Louis hears of it, it could well backfire in the French allying ever more strongly with the Dutch against me.”
“Trying to be all things to all people is difficult work.”
“George, trust me, you will never know.” An affable smile broke then across the king’s face. “Come, old friend. Ride with me out to Enfield Chase. That will clear my head for the excursion to
the theater later this afternoon.”
“Joining Your Majesty in that shall be my pleasure,” Buckingham smiled.
As the coach turned, nearing the grand stone Holbein Gate, Nell felt her mouth go very dry. Her heart was racing. The great iron gates were lit by huge flambeaux and the coach paused only briefly, the royal crest on its door being the route to access. It felt as if her whole life was at stake in this evening; the welfare of Rose, Jeddy, and herself depended on it. What the king liked about her was her humor and simplicity. She must remember that with every smile and every carefree laugh, even though she felt far more deeply for him, felt much more than the need to find security. She loved him. She knew that. But it was too soon for him to know it.
“I’m glad you agreed to come,” he said with a note of hesitation as she stood in the little entry alcove to his private bedchamber after her performance that afternoon. Near the hearth, a pup roused from a dream, squealed, then dropped off to sleep once again.
Nell pressed her hands onto her hips. “Did you honestly think I’d refuse?”
“All I know for certain is that I have been distracted since last we met.”
“’Ave you, now?”
“Well, I have been keenly aware that through circumstances of my own foolish making, I have not paid attention to you in nearly the way I wished.”
“And you mean to change that, do you?”
“Oh, indeed I do.” He kissed her, his mouth lingering.
He pulled her close, and she shivered at the way he so quickly possessed all of her. Nell drew him closer and wrapped her arms around his broad back as he pulled her down with him onto the bed. There was nothing like this in all the world, she thought now as she always did. Touching him, being touched, that was all.