Dark Angels

by Karleen Koen

  “The queen sent word to ask how you do. She says she holds a position for you.”

  As maid of honor? To romp once more with Kit and Luce and whatever mindless four and tens they’d added to the mix? No. Her time as a maid of honor was over.

  “Call upon her to thank her, Father, but I cannot be maid of honor again. Tell her as soon as I am well, I will make my obedience to her.”

  He sat on the bed. “You are everything to me. Don’t die, Alice.”

  Did he think he could command death? Poor fool. Ah, her head ached, and her body. She wasn’t afraid to die. She hadn’t been afraid when she walked into the river. If death desired her, he could have her. But until he took her, she had things to do. “Ask John Sidney to call, please, Father.”

  “Sidney? Why?”

  She had to sleep, had to close her eyes to the flame that was flickering somewhere deep and low inside her. The coming month was her birth month. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. A girl needed to wash her face with May’s hawthorn dew to make herself beautiful for her beloved. The court would dance around the Maypole, and she was the best dancer. And then there was Richard. That was something to live for, wasn’t it?

  “IT’S JOHN SIDNEY, Mistress Verney,” Poll announced.

  Alice sat in her bed, a Portuguese shawl about her shoulders. She considered Sidney as he approached. His face was pinched, far too thin. He was as thin these days as she was. Mourning Barbara. Someone that fine, that rare, needed a long time getting over.

  “How kind of you to call on me. I feared you might not.”

  “You were her dearest friend, and at the end you showed it. She would have wished me to see to you.”

  “I have a favor to ask of you. Will you write Captain Saylor of the duke’s death?”

  She had surprised him. “Yes. Of course.”

  “I did not give you your due. She loved you so. I ought to have loved you, too. It would be my happiest wish if you might—someday—forgive me.” She saw in his face that he couldn’t do that, but the dreaded words, forgive me, were out, and her heart felt easier for it. Perhaps now she’d be able to say them other places, to other people. Sidney bowed stiffly to her and left the chamber.

  “Who else is waiting?”

  “Some of the maids of honor,” answered Poll.

  “Go and fetch them.”

  But it was her father who appeared. “That’s enough for this day. You need to rest, Alice.”

  “I go tomorrow to the banqueting hall. I don’t care if you have to carry me on a litter, Father. Carry me in even if I’m raving, and make certain I wear Mother’s diamonds.”

  “You’ll thwart Colefax to the end, will you?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her forehead. “I always wished you were more like your mother.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “No.”

  Neither of them minded anymore.

  THE NEWS OF the death reached Richard in Paris before John’s letter did. The English duke had been too well-known. Richard walked into the cathedral of Notre Dame, sat in a pew, all around him the vast dark cavern of the nave, hundreds of candles glimmering for souls, stone statues waiting for supplicants’ prayers, arches above him soaring to their privet’s point, priests and nuns in dark robes gliding over the cold stone floors. Walter was on his mind. And Henri Ange. Richard roamed the streets of Paris half expecting to see him. He composed the letter to Alice in his mind, but later, when he went to write it, he ended penning only three words—folding parchment and dripping hot wax, red as heart’s blood, to seal it. There was news, too, of Renée. Her climb continued, and the French crowed; she was their invaluable link to the king of England, a replacement for Princesse Henriette. They saw Richard’s retreat as a practical thing. King Louis’s minister Colbert had called upon Richard personally, thanking him in the name of the king, assuring him his sacrifice would be rewarded, telling him that the position of colonel in the French army was his. My honor does not require rewarding, Richard had replied. Colbert had smiled the cold smile he was known for. To refuse would insult my king. Never let it be said that I am impolite, Richard had answered.

  THE CEREMONY FOR Balmoral was spectacular. Everyone who was anyone in the kingdom was there, as well as the people of London, who crowded outside the cathedral in silent respect. Alice had to be carried in on a litter, and her bearers were Lord Mulgrave, the Duke of Monmouth, Prince Rupert, and her father. The sight was impressive and set off a wave of whispers from one courtier to another. Boys whose voices rivaled angels sang hymns. The Archbishop of Canterbury preached a sermon. Various other bishops read prayers. Afterward, as many courtiers came to speak to her as they did the new duke. She would have laughed aloud if it hadn’t hurt so much to laugh. But the fever powders from Tamworth had arrived, and one was inside her now, making its miracles, and while she would not accompany Balmoral to his final destination, she had done what she could, grieving over him publicly as if he were her beloved husband and her lord. Now she went home to rest. To wait for word from Richard. There must be word, or she would die.

  But when it came, it enraged her. She ripped past the heart-red seal, her eagerness making her hands shake as much as her illness. “Wait for me,” she read, incredulous at his brevity. That was all? He did not write love or devotion? Did not ask for her hand in marriage? She crushed the letter into a wad and threw it away, and her kitten flew off the bed to pounce on it.

  THE FIRST DAY of May arrived. The court danced around a Maypole erected in the privy garden until lanterns had to be summoned to light the darkness, and then they danced some more. But Alice took fever powders and refused visitors, which was so unlike her that the rumor grew that she was truly ill unto dying, and it was said to be because of her devotion to Balmoral; what a pity she’d not been the duchess. It made Colefax clench his teeth, which were already shut tight at the reading of the will. Alice stayed in her chamber or had herself carried into her father’s garden to sit in the sun. She took Jerusalem’s powders and dreamed feverish dreams and wondered what next to do.

  The days passed slowly. She was in her bedchamber with Poll and Fletcher, who talked himself past the servants and brought a violin and gossip. Courtiers were taking bets that Renée had finally yielded. The bet was not upon that, but rather upon what position the event might have been consummated. York had not walked forward to receive Communion at Easter. The court buzzed that the heir to the throne had turned Catholic. The actress Nellie Gwynn was again with child. The newly married Knollys and his bride quarreled. All the time Fletcher talked, he watched Alice’s face.

  “It’s said you’re dying from devotion to the duke. The queen is most distraught.”

  “Then I’ll call upon her someday soon and quarrel with Kit and Luce and show I am my old self.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “John Sidney looks wretched.”

  “Yes. He mourns with every breath he takes.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll never forgive myself, Fletcher.”

  “Never is a long time.”

  “Don’t be flip.”

  “Oh, I’m a believer in the adage ‘The less one lives, the less one sins.’ Why don’t you come to court?”

  “As almost widow of the duke? As the oldest maid of honor?”

  “As an eligible young woman any man with sense would snatch up in a moment. I’m told Mulgrave calls every day to see how you do. Does the wind blow in that direction?”

  “The wind doesn’t blow at all. I’m going to match him with Louisa Saylor.”

  “Why?”

  “It amuses me.”

  “To fling away suitors? That will make three.”

  “I did not fling away Colefax, and Balmoral’s death can hardly count as my doing.”

  “Is it true His Grace left you an estate and all the furnishings in his Whitehall apartments? They say the new duke was overcome with a nosebleed when he heard it.”

 
; “If he had the nosebleed, it’s because he’s climbed too high. You’re making my head hurt. Play some music.”

  “Do you remember how to dance?”

  “Play something, and let us see.”

  The music soon had her feet tapping, and then she was up, turning and tiptoeing at first carefully, then losing herself in the thing she loved. She pulled Poll out into the middle of her bedchamber and danced around her. She saw Perryman in the doorway and beckoned him forward as a partner. When he moved, Richard stood behind him.

  She stopped where she was.

  Richard stepped into the bedchamber. “You’re so thin. They told me you were dying.” He wasn’t caressing. There was no smile on his face. He looked tired and strained, not the lover at all.

  “Is that why you deigned to visit? Because you thought I was dying?”

  Fletcher and Poll and Perryman were silent. Were they witnessing a lovers’ meeting or a final rupture?

  “Damn it, I am absent without permission from General Turenne! Are you well or not?”

  “Not! Your note made me so!”

  Suddenly he smiled.

  She refused to be dazzled. “It would serve you right if I were married three times over! I could be, you know. What if I am dying?”

  “I’d ape John and taste every drop I might and sleep at your feet until the final closing of your eyes and then carry your memory in my heart until the day I died.” He had moved forward as he spoke, had a hand on her arm. “What’s this in your sleeve?”

  “A letter. A short one.”

  “Will you quarrel on my deathbed?”

  “Yes!”

  Richard stared down at her. Fletcher put his hand to his heart. The intensity betwen the two was palpable; he half expected lightning to strike and thunder to sound.

  “The only person you will ever marry is me. I love you.” Richard stepped closer, reached his other hand to cup the back of her head.

  Alice shivered. “Yes, I will quarrel on your deathbed to talk you from it because if you were to die first, I could not bear it.”

  “Sweetheart.” Richard put his mouth on hers, and they held each other in an embrace so passionate, so white-hot with love, with longing, that later Fletcher would swear he smelled smoke and heard a distant rumble. Richard kissed Alice’s eyes, her nose, her lips, again and again, hard, not the way one ought to kiss an invalid. Alice kissed back with all the furious joy struggling in her.

  “Yes, I wait,” she whispered to him. “Yes,” she said as she bit his full mouth. Yes, yes, yes. Home. I am home at last, she thought. He was her beloved.

  “My heart left my body when I heard you were still ill.”

  “I mend.”

  “You’d best, because I must return at once to France to avoid disgrace. There’s to be a war, Alice—”

  “What’s all this now?” Sir Thomas stood in the doorway, surveying the scene with eyes that were not warm. “Unhand my daughter at once, sir!”

  Richard kept his eyes upon Alice, his smile as wide as the chamber around them, his eyes scalding in their promises.

  “Our bed,” he said to her, “will be green.”

  AND LATER, WHEN he recited the verses of Solomon on their wedding night, she understood. When love and truth and duty united, possibility had no end. A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts. My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. Behold, thou art fair, my beloved.

  ALSO BY KARLEEN KOEN

  Through a Glass Darkly

  Now Face to Face

  Copyright © 2006 by Karleen Koen

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Koen, Karleen

  Dark angels : a novel / Karleen Koen.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Charles II, King of England, 1630–1685—Fiction. 2. Catherine, of Braganza, Queen, consort of Charles II, King of England, 1638–1705—Fiction. 3. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—Charles II, 1660–1685—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—Kings and rulers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3561.0334D37 2006

  813'.54—dc22 2005030734

  eISBN-13: 978-0-307-35194-4

  eISBN-10: 0-307-35194-7

  v1.0

  Table of Contents

  C OVER P AGE

  T ITLE P AGE

  D EDICATION

  E PIGRAPH

  A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A UTHOR’S N OTE

  P ART I

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  P ART II

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  A LSO BY K ARLEEN K OEN

  C OPYRIGHT