by Diane Haeger
Now, her arm in his, the king had placed his other hand atop hers. She knew the small movement was to steady her. He must feel her trembling. Even her best acting could not entirely mask that. There were just so many people, bows, nods, and curtsies, and she had not yet had nearly enough practice. There would be no ribald jokes or comedy tonight. She must make the king proud; she must behave as if she had always been meant to be here.
That was what the Duke of Buckingham had advised her.
“Would you like a glass of champagne?” the king asked as they took command of the room, continuing to nod and chat as they strolled. The gold braid on his shoulders glinted in the candlelight and caught her eye as she turned to him. “I’d prefer three, to tell you the truth.”
Amused, he said beneath his breath, “At the moment, I suspect I could arrange for two without causing a commotion.”
“Then that’ll have to do,” she replied as they moved gracefully toward the dancing area.
Nell looked up into the king’s eyes and followed his lead. “You’re doing marvelously!” he whispered to her as they passed during the final measure. He bowed and she curtsied, and Nell realized only then that the entire court had stopped to watch them.
“She walks like one of the king’s dogs,” she then heard a woman snidely say.
“She does have rather a loping stride,” remarked another.
The king plucked another glass of champagne from a silver tray held by a page. “Here you are. The third glass. Never let it be said your king does not give you all that you hope for.”
“I’m hoping for quite a bit more of somethin’ else later,” she seductively murmured, just as a gentleman and lady she did not know approached His Majesty, along with their youthful daughter. By the color that rose on the girl’s cheeks as they neared, and the expression of near terror in her eyes, Nell assumed the girl was new at court. While he was not flirtatious with her, Nell felt a small spark of unease at the way he took the girl’s hand at the introduction, and held it just an instant too long.
While the king was distracted by the trio, Buckingham quietly advanced. “I told you he would send for you,” the duke said with studied calm. He was smiling kindly at her, wearing a coat of scarlet satin and a long blond periwig, yet standing formally, hands clasped behind his back. He seemed so different from the relaxed gentleman who sat affably drinking champagne and gossiping in her drawing room not a week ago.
“I shall ’ave to remember in the future to listen to you.”
“You look delicious enough to eat this evening, my dear. Always remember I told you that as well.”
Her smile was twisted. “Does everyone ’ere ’ave your way with words?”
“Not nearly enough to make it a challenge, I’m afraid. Which is what makes you such a delight.”
“Well, just now I’m nervous as a kitten caught in a chimney pipe.”
“His Majesty would never know it. And, if I may, a word of advice? Lock your fear away. The old crones, and the young jackals, for that matter, smell fear most distinctly. Once they’ve gotten the scent, they shan’t rest until you’ve been entirely done away with.”
“’Tis just what Lord Rochester said.”
“He’s not always tactful, but he is right.”
“Thank you, Your Grace. I fancy all the ’elp you’ll give me, if I’m to survive ’ere.”
“I’ve seen for myself how resourceful you are, and been charmed by it more than once. You would survive here on your own. But I expect you to thrive! You’ve only begun to get your footing. Consider me a steady hand to shore you up.”
She wanted to say that considering the sort of company he was known to keep, she did not seem at all like one a duke would fancy helping. But she bit back the words. She needed allies at court. She needed the great Duke of Buckingham.
He was spirited away a moment later by Lady Shrewsbury, her arm wound proprietarily through his. Then they began to dance an allemande right before the nose of the humiliated Duchess of Buckingham, who stood near the doors surrounded in a tight cluster by her supporters. Suddenly alone, Nell watched the king escort the young girl to whom he had just been introduced. They made their way, with great ceremony, out to dance. Court was a difficult place to exist when one could not stand in the light. She saw that boldly in the face of poor Mary Fairfax, now the unhappily married Duchess of Buckingham. And Nell felt it in the pit of her own stomach. But she pressed it away. Determination, she reminded herself. No one from a place like Coal Yard Alley should even be here. You have already come so very far…
The king reclaimed Nell after the dance, pressing an affectionate kiss onto her cheek, and winding her arm back through his, the other girl seemingly forgotten in a new round of introductions and laughter. A snide comment about the girl’s extreme youth nearly clawed its way over her tongue, but instead Nell accepted a fourth glass of champagne from one of the many royal pages who circled the crowded room. And then another.
There was a small entourage of courtiers around them, vying for the king’s favor, all listening intently so that they could laugh heartily at a joke he might tell. There was Arlington; his compliant wife, Isabella; John Maitland, the rough-tongued, burly Scotsman; and his dowdy wife, Elizabeth. The Earl of Rochester, whose poetry had stunned Nell, was at their head, and a pale, irritating Thomas Clifford did his best to laugh at everything.
No matter what he said, the group surrounding him, so as not to offend His Royal Majesty, nodded in total agreement. Nell was finishing her fifth glass of champagne when she heard the king ask, “Pray, tell me, is this room as warm as it feels, or am I the only one to notice?”
Everyone agreed that it was quite warm indeed within the confines so large a crowd.
“Well, then,” he said. “A moonlight stroll should invigorate us all!”
As she strolled outside into the night along with the others, Nell began to feel the full effects of the champagne. The air seemed to her suddenly unbearably still. She bit back an erupting giggle at Elizabeth Maitland’s irritatingly high, nasal drone. The aroma of Isabella’s heady ambergris perfume was cloying, and she had never noticed how much Lady Maitland’s footfalls reminded her of a waddling duck. Her head was spinning, and the conversations behind her took on a comic, unreal tone. The cagelike corset she was wearing seemed to be cutting the life out of her. She moved away from the group, down the steep incline behind the palace toward the stand of full, leafy trees, and the flowing river beyond, all of it lit in a silvery glow of moonlight. She heard the king call out to her. The champagne made her long to cast off the gown, the petticoats and jewels, the pretensions and conventions into which she struggled every moment of every day here to fit.
“Oddsfish!” She heard the king’s deep voice. “Where the devil is she going?” But her own laughter was louder, mingling with the throb of her heart as she ran steadily nearer the water. “Nell, really!” Again the king’s voice, deeper now, censorious. “Do cease this!”
“Mrs. Gwynne! I daresay, what on earth is she doing?” The irritatingly high voice of Elizabeth Maitland broke through her heart’s deep pounding.
“Careful, sweetheart! You’re very likely to—”
And that was the last thing she remembered before she slid on a slick patch of moss, tumbling headlong into a wave of cold water. Entirely submerged for a moment, and fully clothed, she felt the weight of the gown and the jewels as an anchor. Then, as she bobbed to the surface, Nell’s senses reemerged. Along with them came the sobering realization of what she had just done…and right before Charles’s most valued courtiers and their wives! For a moment, she did not want to come out of the water. Censure waited along the shore, along with disapproval, two things she almost could not bear, for how hard she had struggled against them. As she moved, drenched and dripping, nearer the collected, horrified guests, from the corner of her eye she could see two other figures approach, both adjusting their clothing and hair. It was the Duke of Buckingham and the Countess of Shrews
bury. Both figures were lit well by the light of the full moon above them.
“How absolutely marvelous!” Buckingham called out loudly on the tone of a carefree laugh. “An evening swim in this dreadful heat! Nell you are a positive innovator of frivolity!”
There was grumbling from the others as he and his mistress drew steadily nearer, both properly reassembled now.
“It wouldn’t at all do to undress with our ladies, but we can certainly enjoy a swim in our clothes!” he laughed. Then, without missing a beat, Buckingham cast off his shoes, dashed down to the water’s edge, and plunged headlong beside her.
Nell stood, still ankle deep in water, dumbstruck.
“Come, everyone! The water’s grand, and we have Nell to thank for the notion!”
The countess was the first to follow, only removing her shoes before she plunged headlong into the river. Next, to Nell’s great surprise, Isabella, Arlington’s wife, began to giggle and remove her shoes. “Mrs. Gwynne,” she called out. “You do certainly know how to brighten a banquet!”
Once she had been joined by enough of the others to dare, Nell glanced back up at the king, whose frown, to her relief, had now softened. His expression, in the moonlight and shadows, was something more of cautious surprise. It was better, she thought, to have him believe that she was a grand innovator rather than to reveal the truth to him. There was nothing at all innovative in her burst of insecurity, driven by too much heat and champagne. She certainly owed the duke a debt, and it was one she would not forget to repay. Nell began to splash about and to laugh genuinely, her own special infectious laugh, that in the beginning so endeared her to the king. It was that part of herself she had neglected these past few days, trying to be so like the rest of them. “Come, Your Majesty!” she dared to call out to him, as if it had been her plan all along. “Join us!”
To her absolute shock, a moment later, he did.
Suddenly, the king of England was chuckling, head back joyously, and wiping a hand across his face. “Ah, Nell! You do make me laugh!”
“Your Majesty is a fortunate man,” Buckingham called out as they all splashed beneath the brightly shining silvery moon, to the sound of music and bristling trees.
He lay beside her before dawn, twisting and turning beneath the crimson-and-gold damask coverlet, his face awash in sweat and rousing the collection of spaniels asleep at their feet. Nell rolled onto her side in a spray of pillows, and saw his face twisted into an expression of agony.
“No! No, I won’t! Stop, YOU MUST STOP!”
A moment later, Charles shot upright, calling out. Nell wrapped her arms around him. “You’ve ’ad a dream! ’Tis all,” she crooned as she held him. “’Twas only a dream.”
“God’s blood, but it seemed so real…,” he muttered, rousing slowly from his dream-soaked sleep.
“I was right ’ere with you the entire time. I promise.” She could see that her reassuring smile was a balm on the raw past that tormented him, and finally he drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and fell back against the pillows with her.
“Will you tell me about the dream?”
She saw him consider whether he could reveal things from his past that so defined who he was.
“It is always the same one. I see myself there among the spectators, watching. But my hands are tied.”
“Your father’s death?”
“His barbaric execution. I call out to him, I plead with the guards, with the executioner. But it always ends the same as it did. And his blood is always covering me, until I am drenched, and I cannot see. Then I wake up.”
Nell reached over to the side table and poured him a glass of wine from the crystal pitcher there. “Where were you that day?” she asked as he drank it in one long swallow.
“I was already forced into exile in France by my father’s own men. They were men who had betrayed the Crown and him to support Cromwell. For my own good, they said. It was the last place I wanted to be. I wanted to help my father. I was the eldest. I should have been able to help him…We tried so hard to avoid the inevitable…God, the helplessness of that. I was powerless to change things.”
He touched her, and the bed moved with the shifting of his weight. Nell melted against him. He held her face in his hands and pressed an urgent kiss onto her mouth. “Stay with me. I want you to be with me everywhere. I need you to be by my side,” he declared.
“’Twould surely make ’em talk.”
“I do not give a whit about gossip, Nell. You bring me too much joy and too much peace.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and ran her fingers through her unruly hair, trying to tame it. It was a nervous gesture to avoid the absolute power he had over her, especially like this, when he was vulnerable. “I’ll not give up the theater again, even for you. I can’t do it.”
“But I want to care for you. I will see that you and your sister never want for money.”
“’Twas a hard-won lesson, Charlie, but I’ll not ’ave that arrangement with a man again.”
“I’m not any man.”
“Nor shall I ever be just any woman.”
“All of my life I have been heir to a throne, a king’s son, then a king. People have always told me what they thought I wanted to hear. You have never done that.”
“I fancy the truth,” she said. “It’s easier to recall what I’ve said that way.”
“Then I shall be with you when you trod the boards so brilliantly, so long as you are with me here in return. I should have said this long ago, and I’m a fool for not saying it…”
“Shh.” She pressed a finger against his lips. “Say not what you’re not ready to say.”
“But I want to say it. With all my heart, I want to tell you that I love you, Nell. I love you, in fact, quite madly.”
“In that case, Your Majesty”—she smiled up at him—“speak on!”
“I need a loan, George.”
The king’s declaration hung between them for a moment, heavy and awkward as they strolled together through the royal aviary in St. James’s Park. It was full of exotic birds from all over the world in tall, impressive cages, all squawking and chirping.
“So the mighty comes to the meek?” asked the Duke of Buckingham with a particularly unattractive smirk. He could see very quickly that the king was not amused by his response.
It had been a difficult year, wherein Charles had been forced to go before Parliament and plead his case for money in order to try to begin rebuilding the decimated naval fleet so that he might once again strike out at the Dutch to reclaim his country’s deeply wounded honor. But his own Parliament had been less than enthusiastic about granting his request in any meaningful way. They informed him instead that they had little faith he would not spend the money for his own increasingly grand and ostentatious lifestyle.
“You know perfectly well the royal coffers are drained. I’ve used every avenue I could think of to move funds around, but I need to find some creative way to see to a stipend for Nell.”
“Perhaps if you hadn’t bought that unspeakably garish house for Lady Castlemaine—”
“Don’t be impertinent, you wretched friend! I need a loan, and that is all! Lord knows, I’ve seen to it that the Crown pays you plenty! Besides, I can either ask, or simply take it, if I must, when you are housed again in the Tower!”
After three previous forays into the prison for arguments that had gone too far, George knew the threat was anything but empty. “How much do you need?”
“Well, I’ve given her what I can, but she needs a full and proper staff, gowns, shoes, a woman to dress her hair. I’ve sent to Paris for her own wardrobe mistress. Then she will need more dancing lessons, reading and writing lessons, and comportment—”
“And yet, one might be moved to ask, is Your Majesty not trying to change the very things that attracted you to her in the first place?”
“Nonsense! I have no wish to change Nell!” he declared as they paused before a massive cage. “You know how d
ifficult it is to exist in our world. I simply desire to make the transition easier.”
“Until your next great distraction comes along?”
Charles’s face hardened.
“You are very close to the line, George. I would watch myself if I were you.”
“If Your Majesty were me, a gem like Nell would never have given you so much as a second look. Fortunately, you are far more clever, and certainly more handsome than I.”
The flattery worked, as always, and a moment later Charles softened. “I care for her, George, and I mean to give her the life she’s never had. That is all I mean to do.”
“Of course, you can have the money, whatever you need. I’m only suggesting you take care. We both know there will be others one day.”
“I’m not so certain.”
“And was that the lovely daughter of Lord Kildare I saw coming out of your bedchamber yesterday afternoon, finally conquered?”
“That is lust, George, a very different thing from what I have with Nell.”
“Be careful of your heart, Charles. Nell Gwynne may not always be so understanding of that, or willing to tolerate it.”
“I have told her the truth about me, and she loves me, George, truly loves me, and she takes me as I am. Not even Frances offered me that. My own, in return, is a commodity I have not considered surrendering to anyone since Minette.”