The Perfect Royal Mistress

by Diane Haeger

  “One of the finest,” he softly flattered her.

  “And yet ’ere I am, a whore! A grand joke for your court to laugh at!”

  Charles wrapped his arm around her shoulder as she wept into the handkerchief now. “No one laughs at you.”

  “Meesus Gwynne?”

  “Oh, Nelly mocks everyone. That’s just the way she is. She has had a very different life than yours, and she has been forced by circumstance to manage it with humor rather than tears.”

  “I want ze life I was promised by Bucking’am! I am a noble girl. I must ’ave a noble title!”

  “An English title? I’m sorry, chérie, but you are French.”

  “Zen make me Engleesh!”

  He chuckled at something so preposterous, and wiped the tears from her cheeks. When she looked at him again, earnestly, openheartedly, her blue eyes were still liquid with tears.

  “What do you suppose King Louis would say to that?”

  Weary of English, she replied in French. “I believe he would say that if his good brother is happy, then your two countries are stronger together. Only tell me, Charles, would it please you if your lover were a duchess instead of a lowly girl with no title?”

  The truth was, it pleased him greatly to have a lowly lover with no title.

  Nell knew who she was, and never tried to be anything else. But his own life was not that simple. Louise was pregnant with a royal child; if she were to complain, if Louis XIV were angered, he might well put an abrupt end to his fiscal generosity. As a result of his secret promise to one day declare himself a Catholic, Charles had so far received the vast French reward of two million livres tournois. That could not be taken lightly.

  Chapter 32

  MADEMOISELLE DE KÉROUALLE HAS NOT BEEN DISAPPOINTED IN ANYTHING SHE PROPOSED…. SHE AMASSES TREASURE, AND MAKES HERSELF FEARED AND RESPECTED BY AS MANY AS SHE CAN. BUT SHE DID NOT FORESEE THAT SHE SHOULD FIND A YOUNG ACTRESS IN HER WAY, WHOM THE KING DOTES ON; AND SHE HAS IT NOT IN HER POWER TO WITHDRAW HIM FROM HER.

  —Marquise de Sévigné

  CHARLES could not have it both ways.

  As he readied the country to strike at the Dutch again with the full support of France, England’s own Parliament became hostile to the country’s king. The rumor of Charles’s Catholic sympathies had reached a crescendo. In response, Parliament delivered him an ultimatum. There would be no additional funds granted for the war effort unless His Majesty personally rescinded his Declaration of Indulgence, which he had sought in order to protect his Catholic family and friends. Furthermore, if the king meant to find victory over the Dutch, he would be forced to approve the Test Act, a bill barring anyone but avowed Anglicans from holding public office. This would affect not only Arlington and Clifford, excluding them from his Privy Council, but it would change the life of his own brother James; the Duke of York would be forced to resign his post as Lord High Admiral if he would not, along with the rest of prominent England, renounce the Catholic faith.

  Charles, who, for what felt like one shining moment, had believed he had regained something of his father’s own grand ability to rule, was trapped between his ambitions for England, and his loyalty to those he loved. As the battle with Holland began on the high seas, one by one, like leaves from an autumn tree, members of his most trusted circle peeled away from his court rather than renounce their faith. Arlington was first. Then Clifford. And, in the end, the Duke of York gave up his post and prepared to retire to the countryside.

  “I do not wish you to leave.”

  “You have the power to put things right, you know,” James said as the brothers stood together for the last time, against the limestone balustrade facing down into the king’s vast privy gardens along the banks of the Thames. “Minette’s dying wish, and that which she fought for in France, was that England would return to her Catholic roots.”

  “I took the throne a Protestant ruler, and there I shall remain to steer the course.”

  “Then you do so without a brother, at least formally, by your side.”

  “The loss shall devastate me. But I fear you shall get your Catholic country soon enough.”

  “If the queen remains barren?”

  “Aye, that.” Charles looked at James; so much of their father staring back at him, in the lines and curves of his brother’s face. “You are my rightful heir, Jamie. Whatever that comes to mean for this country.”

  “And Monmouth? You know there is growing sentiment that he should succeed you.”

  “My son knows he will die a duke, not a king, and I pray God he accepts that.”

  “But will your subjects accept it?”

  Charles gazed across the gardens to a small lake where a collection of white swans slid across the smooth surface of the water. Laughter filtered up from a collection of courtly ladies, elegantly dressed, their hair smoothed with scented pomade that caught in the air as they strolled past. “My son will not challenge me,” he finally declared. “Monmouth loves me, and he is loyal. I would stake my life on that.”

  “And so how goes things in your own house, then?” James asked with just a hint of sarcasm, to chase away the dark nature of what they had been discussing. “What glorious scenes have I missed these past weeks while I was off in my final service to the Crown?”

  “Louise still despises Nell, of course.”

  “Of course. And our dear Nell?”

  “She has taken to calling Louise Weeping Willow.”

  “Not to her face!”

  “You know Nell.”

  James stifled a laugh. “What happened to Squintabella?”

  “That as well. But, between you and me, Louise does so invite every last bit of it.”

  “Sounds like tolerably good fun.”

  “Not to Louise,” he sighed. “Oh, James. Truthfully, what am I to do?”

  “You poor old grass widow. Two gorgeous women doing battle over you, and that doesn’t even include your still-besotted wife!”

  “You really think this is humorous, don’t you?”

  “Sensationally so. I did warn you, after all.”

  “If I were to dispose of Louise, and I do say if, so great an insult would very well make receiving my payments from the French next to impossible, and you know how in need of money I am to keep the country.”

  “The country, or your women?”

  Charles rolled his eyes. “Wait until you are king.”

  “I’m only your brother.”

  “You are my heir. Monmouth knows I shall never acknowledge him as legitimate.”

  “And yet there might well be forces at work, Charles, stronger even than you in the matter,” said the king’s brother.

  “I shall protect your right to succeed me, James, if there is no legitimate issue.”

  “You rarely see the queen, much less make arrangements to try to alter that.”

  “My bed these days is quite busy enough. And on poor Catherine, I’m afraid I’ve given up hope,” he sighed. “She has barred me from taking those affections with her, as I once tried very diligently to do.”

  James paused a moment before he took the subject back to where he wished it. “So you have thought about it then, forgoing your Louise?”

  “On almost a daily basis, I am afraid. I should have remembered how fleeting the lure of beauty can be when it is juxtaposed against weeping and pleading.”

  “Assuredly, you shall forget again the next time a beautiful young woman catches your eye. And Mademoiselle de Kéroualle has used the tactic to a T. She certainly has achieved more here than I ever would have given her credit for.”

  “I can safely say I have learned my lesson in that particular regard.”

  “Tell me that again the next time,” James laughed. “I only wonder who she shall be.”

  Everything at court was changing. At last, even Nell Gwynne.

  In those first tentative years, with her poverty so newly abandoned, she had been grateful for any attention the king would show her. But now Nell un
derstood that Charles needed her as much as she needed him. Her place in his life was secure, and accepting every slight dealt her without comment was no longer necessary.

  Nell truly could be herself now without risking loss of favor.

  If she was going to have to coexist in this odd triangle with the Carwell woman, as everyone still secretly called her, she was going to do it on her own terms. Over the months that followed the birth of Louise’s child, a son that she, too, not surprisingly, had named Charles, and into the autumn of 1672, they were regularly forced to endure each other’s company: at the theater, at court events, at the races in Newmarket. Nell tolerated each meeting with humor, Louise with tears. Both hoped to unseat the other. But only Nell realized it was unlikely. The king would give neither of them up, and he wished the two women in his life to forge some sort of alliance.

  “Why d’you tolerate it?” Helena Gwynne asked one afternoon at her house at Windsor.

  Nell sat at her dressing table cluttered with jars of cream, a silver patch box, and flagons of perfume, and slipped a pearl earring into the hole in her ear. She was preparing for dinner at Windsor Castle. She and Louise de Kéroualle were to be Charles’s only guests; the three of them were to dine together beneath a packed gallery of onlookers who were important enough to witness the daily royal meal.

  “You ’ave security now with the children, and two amazing ’ouses, ’ere in Windsor and in London, that makes me wonder why you would let that ol’ Frenchy ’ave ’alf of your man?”

  “Because I love him. Pure and simple, Ma. And, of course, I want to be the only one, but in this life, I’ll settle ’appily indeed for bein’ the last one.”

  “’Tain’t proper, that’s all.”

  Nell glanced at her. “You’re a fine one to go on about what’s proper!”

  When Helena looked away, chastised, Nell turned from the mirror and caught her mother’s fleshy arm. It was doughy and warm beneath her fingers, and these past months it had become slightly reassuring. “I know you mean well, Ma, I do. But Charlie is my life. ’E’s given me more than I ever could ’ave dreamed, and ’e’s provided for our children and even the rest of my family. From me, at least, ’e’ll ’ave whatever ’e pleases. ’Tis just the way things are.”

  But there was more than a mother’s concern in Helena’s declaration.

  While Nell now had a palatial home on Pall Mall with a staff of ten servants, her own French coach, and six horses to lead it, a recent announcement from the palace lay between them. Louise de Kéroualle, by the grace of His Majesty, Charles II, and her own unrelenting manipulation, was now Duchess of Portsmouth. The Weeping Willow had won her battle to receive an English title. And Nell was still simply Mrs. Gwynne, the actress. Louise had won this round, all of London knew it, Helena knew it. But Nell had no intention of allowing her to win the war.

  Nell wore her best new dress, sewn of scarlet silk, with bolstered confidence. At her throat was a string of rubies. The jewels were from her birthday, a gift from His Majesty. Beside her eye was a single black patch. The lace hem of her skirts met the heels of her new silver shoes and brushed along the polished parquet floor. Nowadays, she entered Windsor Castle lavishly, straight-backed, with guards before her, and servants behind. She headed toward the Great Banqueting Hall.

  Her heart was racing, knowing what lay ahead. Knowing that Louise de Kéroualle lived here and that she did not. They can smell your fear…Those were Lord Buck’s words of long ago, and her own sentiment now. Her rival would never know her fear. God help her, she would smile and laugh and give them all her very best jests before that ever happened.

  As she moved into the banquet hall Lady Shrewsbury, Lady Ashley, and the Duchess of Lauderdale lowered their heads respectfully to her as she passed. Flowers well past first bloom bent now on tired, overpainted stalks, Nell thought.

  Across the room, she saw the new French Ambassador, de Ruvigny. Nell’s eyes met his. Sharp features, steel-gray eyes, silver hair, and a tiny bud of a mouth. He acknowledged her with a stiff nod, then averted his gaze. They would, all of them, wait in the gallery and be allowed to watch from a distance while she dined privately with the king and Carwell. Nell began to smile as she crossed the floor of the vast and empty banquet room, the lit candles casting everything in a creamy golden glow. It was very like the moments just before the curtain went up, she decided. The same fear. The same uncertainty. But she had won them over there, and she would win now. The curtain went up. She felt the same old moment of fear. Then the confidence returned, full force.

  Charles and Louise already sat at the end of the table when Nell entered the room. Their hands were clasped, heads pressed together as if in some deeply private moment. As she drew near, Nell could see that Charles was coaxing Louise, bidding her to remain calm—to remain at all. She felt empowered. When she was close enough, she curtsied deeply before Louise, more deeply than was necessary. The gesture held a hint of mocking. “Your Grace,” Nell said to Louise, her voice tinged with sarcasm.

  Louise looked up at her. “Why, Nelly, I do believe tonight in zat dress you look fine enough to be a queen,” she pressed, knowing how superior to the cockney girl the king had made her.

  Cut me, will you? I think not. “Aye Carwell, and you look just whore enough to be a duchess.”

  Louise shot the king a brutal stare as Charles erupted with laughter, followed by the rest of the court, who had been watching from the gallery above. Nell nodded up to them, as if taking an understated curtain call.

  “How dare you!” Louise grumbled as Nell, with great dramatic flourish and fluffing of her skirts, sat in the chair allotted to her. The ruby necklace glittered at her throat. Servants began to lay great silver platters before them.

  “It was but a jest, chérie. If you would come to know Nell, surely you would see that.”

  “I would rather do battle with a porcupine,” Louise answered in French. More laughter rose up from the onlookers, which only made matters worse. “Zat woman gets away wis everything!”

  Charles responded in French. “I would like you to try. The reason for this meal together is to make a display of the unity in my household.”

  “Impossible.”

  Nell took a swallow of wine, then let her wide-eyed gaze wander the gallery. “A blessing, indeed, that Her Majesty finds herself at Hampton Court presently,” she could not stop herself from saying. “Or this table would be crowded indeed.”

  Charles looked over at Nell and gave a snort of laughter again, which caused Louise to bolt from her chair in a huff, then cross her hands over her chest. “I weel not ’ave zees!”

  “Zees?” Nell mimicked, eyes wide, her lashes fluttering. “And they say I have trouble speaking the king’s English.”

  Louise stomped her foot, Charles fell into a new fit of laughter, and Louise stormed out of the banquet room to an uproar from those in the gallery. “Not all performances are best offered up on a public stage, Charlie.”

  Charles glanced up, along with Nell, and nodded to the courtiers collected above them as though it had all been a great humorous jest. He was still laughing. “I really did hope the two of you could learn to get along,” he said.

  “Should you go after her?”

  “I suspect I should. But I’m not going to.” The king took up her hand and kissed it adoringly. “You absolutely enchant me, you know. You always have.”

  “Are you enchanted enough to grant me one little wish then?”

  “So long as it’s not the same wish my Lady Portsmouth doubtless has about now, for me to cast you off one for the other.”

  “The truth is that as much as I enjoyed this little performance of ours, I do find myself ’earin’ the call of the real stage, Charlie. After Richard died, it was the furthest thing from my mind, but now—”

  His smile fell. He leaned forward so only she could hear. “It’s out of the question, Nell. I need you near me all the time. Who the devil would there be to cheer me? Especially now, with the
country at war, and all this confounded animosity about Catholics rising to a fever pitch. And if that were not enough, the constant money problems Parliament taunts me with, having me plead for every guinea!”

  She leaned back in her chair more comfortably. “Well, I’ve got an answer for that as well, you know.”

  “I’m almost afraid to hear it.”

  “It’s simple enough. Send the French back to France, set me on the stage again, and lock up your codpiece!”

  Charles pealed with a new burst of laughter, not just at the words, but at the clever way she managed to say something that would have angered him coming from anyone else. “I’m afraid I cannot give you back the stage, my sweetheart. You are far too important to me here. But what I will give you is enough of Sherwood Forest, the land and all the deeds, to add to your worth, as you can ride around before breakfast. How will that do?”

  Nell smiled demurely. “Your Majesty’s generosity is boundless,” she replied. A title would certainly have been better, she thought, if only so she might fully match wits with Carwell. But Nell wisely chose not to say that. After all, she had been out of her league before, and, clever or not, in that regard, nothing had changed. She was still and always would be an orange girl dressed up like a lady.

  The February cold crawled across London with deadly fingers. Outside the air was frigid, and icicles hung from the eaves. There was ice on the rooftops, and the Thames had frozen over when the court returned from Windsor. Everything was bare and gray. But in the center of her apartments at Whitehall, Louise stood warm and resplendent in folds of warm ermine and forest-green silk, surveying placement of two new French chairs near the fireplace hearth in her private reception hall. The walls had been changed from the brick and mortar of Henry VIII to smooth plaster.

  Around her, the massive room was a hive of construction and activity. Workmen were mounting rich damask on the walls and removing the ancient tapestries on their heavy iron poles. Everything was to be changed, altered, or discarded. She waved a fan before her face and sighed. She was still waiting for the king. He was late again. Always late.