A few weeks later the Queen Dowager died in France, and poor Henrietta-Anne, who had depended so much on her, and had been rarely separated from her for long, was heartbroken. Charles also grieved, though he and his mother had been at odds often enough. Henrietta had sustained a double loss, for her little son had died recently at the age of three years old, carried off by one of the rapid childish illnesses for which there seemed to be no cause and no cure. The English and the French Court were both in mourning, and it was not until the next year that her visit came about. Even so, it was a visit grudged by her husband and restricted in every way.
“But it is quite ridiculous,” the Queen said, speaking freely as she felt she could, since she and the King were supping quietly with Lennox and Frances in the Bowling Green Pavilion. “How can he possibly limit her visit to three days at Dover, after a sea voyage which may well be rough and fatiguing? It will but scarce give her the chance to recover from it. Why should he make such difficulties? You have told me more than once that he is not in love with her.”
“Which does not prevent the little monster from being jealous of her,” Charles explained. “If Minette were plain, or did not provoke love and admiration, he would care nothing. However, once she is here, I have little doubt but that her visit will be prolonged. Philippe can chafe on the other side of the Channel. Louis will not wish her to leave until she has accomplished his purpose. This visit will serve to link us together as united countries.”
The Queen divined that the last words were for Lennox’s edification. If there was some secret and devious business which brought Minette to England with Louis’ approval, Charles was resolved that nobody should know of it — not even the wife he trusted, and certainly not the cousin he disliked.
“Between us and the French there cannot be more than surface amity,” Lennox opined. “As nations we are hostile, not to each other’s faults but to our virtues.”
“Think you so?” Charles glanced at his cousin with some surprise. This could be a sapient observation.
“The French are light-hearted and witty and shrewd, and over here are deemed flippant and treacherous. We are tenacious and more serious — prone to admire others better than we admire ourselves. For this the French rate us as fools. ’Tis a blend that curdles. We are more akin to the Dutch with whom by cursed fate we are for ever warring.”
“There’s truth in it,” Charles agreed, “but mayhap that is half the trouble. We are too alike.”
“With the same sturdy ambition,” Lennox mused.
Charles, also musing, allowed that his despised cousin was not devoid of perception. These supper parties à quatre were boring to Charles, though when Frances and her husband were in residence at the Pavilion they occurred from time to time. He was sufficiently agreeable to oblige Catherine, who enjoyed their quiet informality. Frances, herself, was as amusing as ever; almost as beautiful as ever, but it was far from flattering to Charles, who had once so intensely desired her, to see the tenderness in her eyes as they rested on her husband. He had bedevilled her, thought Charles discontentedly, and had he, like Bottom in Will Shakespeare’s play, worn the head of an ass upon his shoulders, she would have thought it becoming to him.
“Although,” said Charles, “in order to satisfy the egregious Monsieur, Minette has to be entertained at Dover instead of London, there will be no lack of brilliance. We shall make a capital city of it while she is there.”
And so they did — or so Charles did, sparing neither thought nor money to dazzle and delight the little sister he had not seen for years, and who from an appealing young girl had blossomed into a chic young woman.
For her visit, which, as Charles had expected, was prolonged for nearly two weeks, Dover was en fête. The King, the Duke of York and Prince Rupert went out in a rowing-boat to board the Royal Charles, which had been sent with a splendid retinue to bring the King’s only living sister to England. Charles had barely set foot on deck before Henrietta was in his arms, and then the Duke of York was also embracing her. She had not changed — not in herself, thought Charles, and knew that she was the being dearest to him in all the world. How had he endured the long separation from her? But it should not happen again, he vowed. Henceforth he would see her several times a year, even if he had to leave England, which would be hazardous, as, with his hand removed from the helm, there would be so many plotting against him.
The Queen and the Duchess of York were waiting at Dover to greet Madame of France. The town was decorated with flags and banners and flowering arches. Music from many violins floated on the air, and a bevy of pretty girls dressed in white threw roses in the path of the illustrious guest. And there also was Frances, for whom Henrietta had often pined and whom she had done her best to lure back to France.
The young Duchess of Lennox and Richmond had travelled to Dover in state, in a coach drawn by six horses. She had had time to change her travelling garments and was now attired in one of her most ravishing gowns.
“The girl who refused to grow up,” Henrietta laughed as they embraced each other.
“But I have at last managed to do so, dearest ’Rietta,” Frances assured her.
They exchanged a long, searching gaze and Henrietta made a gesture of assent “So you have — and happily. Oh, how, long, long ago it seems we were young together. Chère Frances, do you still enjoy sugared almonds?”
“Just as much. I remembered, and brought a large box with me,” Frances told her.
It was the start of an idyllically happy visit. All manner of festivities had been arranged, though Henrietta would have been happy enough just to be with her brothers, and especially with Charles. She made a friend of Catherine with surprising ease and no longer wondered that her brother would not hear of divorcing a childless wife. Any moment she had to spare was given to Frances, who was bubbling over with the old irrepressible gaiety and who was so proud of her handsome husband. It was strange, Henrietta thought, that Charles still resented Lennox, since he was no longer in love with Frances.
“He is fond of you now,” Henrietta said, “as Louis is fond of me. We are the best of friends, but nothing more, though when I first married Philippe he fell in love with me, and regretted he had not married me himself. It is good, is it not, that this can happen with men, that they can be fond and kind when their passion has waned?”
“Charles’ latest love is Nell Gwyn,” the actress,” Frances told her. “And although she is dreadfully vulgar, it is impossible not to like her. I believe even the Queen has a secret weakness for her.”
‘‘Dear, graceless Charles, his infidelities must be a matter of course to her by now, and you, Frances, must be one of the very few who have ever resisted him.”
“I was waiting to meet Lennox — unconsciously waiting. I must have known, I think, that he was somewhere in the world, and that he was for me.”
Henrietta looked at her speculatively. “And of course there was Cobham Hall, this wonderful home,” she mused. “It was a home you grieved for years ago at Colombes, when you heard that yours had been destroyed.”
During that interlude at Dover, Frances was the brightest of all those collected there. Lennox smiled to see her on the day they all drove over to Canterbury which chanced to be the King’s fortieth birthday, as also the anniversary of his Restoration to the Throne. There a giant maypole had been set up, and Frances, her bright hair dislodged from its pins and streaming on her shoulders, danced around it with all the younger members of the Court. A play was acted by the London players, who had been summoned to Canterbury by the King. There were bonfires and a great feast.
Yet that night, when they all drove back to Dover, so weary they could scarce keep their eyes open, Charles and Henrietta were alone together in his closet at Dover Castle and it was there that he signed the secret treaty which was to link England with France, and in time to come was to set Protestant England against the Catholic Stuarts. Henrietta believed that she was doing a service to both countries, and Charles, in
an hour of weakness, could refuse her nothing.
“This visit,” Frances confided to her husband, “for all the joy of it, was not brought about solely to give pleasure, nor merely to emphasise that an English Princess is also Madame of France. There was something beneath it which we may never know. One day ’Rietta hinted at it. She and Charles have spent hours together behind locked doors.”
“Louis has a tortuous mind,” Lennox said. “It would be in keeping for him to use the Duchess as his secret agent for some political device, but Charles, with all his vagaries, is sagacious where diplomacy is concerned, and has steered his way past many a pitfall.”
“The visit has been partly spoilt for the Queen,” Frances regretted. “If only the King had not shown so plainly that he is captivated by that Breton girl — Louise de Kéroualle — who came over in attendance on ’Rietta. She says — ’Rietta I mean — that Charles’ infidelities must by now be a matter of course to the Queen, but they never will be. Every fresh fancy is a fresh affront to her,”
“Surely she need not disturb herself over this Breton beauty. She won’t be staying here.”
“No — though the King wishes it could be otherwise. But ’Rietta told him she was responsible to Louise’s mother, and must take her back to France.”
It was sad indeed when the visit drew to a close. By that time everyone, it seemed, was in love with Madame. The Duke of Buckingham publicly avowed that he adored her and would be ready to kidnap her, and his poor, ignored wife had a hard task to conceal her humiliation. Prince Rupert, in a much more sober fashion, wished that it were in his power to prevent her leaving England. Before the sorrowful leave-taking he made Henrietta promise that if ever she had reason to be frightened or troubled she would send for him.
“He was always against my marriage,” Henrietta told Frances on their last evening together, when for a brief while they were alone. “And now of course he knows I am wretchedly unhappy, and says that at a word from me he will carry me off in a ship to this New England of which he thinks so much — to this wonderful New Yorke which is named for James. Frances, it is as though he has a presentiment, as though he has some strange fear for me.”
“Oh no! That’s too fanciful,” Frances declared. “It is only because we all hate to part from you, and because Monsieur is, as Charles says, such a little monster. But you do say, ’Rietta, that Louis is in favour of a separation, and then you can return to England with your two little girls and be happy here.”
“How wonderful that would be,” Henrietta said wistfully. “I love France. I wanted to live there — but now I think I could have been even happier in England.”
“Come back to us,” Frances begged. “Come and live with me for a while at Cobham. Oh, ’Rietta, you would love it there — so simple and peaceful, and you would soon be so much stronger.”
For they were all secretly worried by Henrietta’s persistent, short cough, by the bright spots of colour in her cheeks and her excessive thinness.
When the King with his brother and Buckingham and Prince Rupert had taken Minette back to the waiting ship, the Court returned to London. Charles was sunk in gloom and the Queen on the verge of tears, so swiftly had the beloved Minette become part of her life.
“But she will never again stay away for so long,” Catherine told Frances. “For if necessary James or Rupert would cross to France to fetch her.”
Frances had never been more thankful for her own happiness, for a husband who adored her and understood her. It was Lennox who comforted her in her shocked grief when, within a week of returning to Paris, Henrietta was seized with a mysterious illness and in twenty-four hours was dead. Then it did indeed seem as though Prince Rupert, so loth to see her leave England, had foreseen some such tragedy.
The King’s grief was agonizing, and, hating Philippe as he did, knowing of his many cruelties and perversions and the threats he had hurled at Henrietta before she left France, he declared that she had been the victim of some subtle poison. But there was no proof of this, no real doubt but that his Minette, as the doctors insisted, had died of a chill and a sudden colic.
Frances was ill through much weeping, and when Lennox took her down to Cobham it seemed as though the old house received her with love and pity. Here at least she could be at peace, wandering in the great park, remembering Henrietta as she had been only a few weeks ago — so happy and so in love with life.
“Nobody will be able to comfort the King,” Frances said pityingly. “They will all try, but nobody will mean anything to him, not even the Queen, for from the moment they met at Colombes years ago, ’Rietta was more precious to him than all the world. Other women could come and go, but she was always with him. Separation makes no difference when there is such love as that.”
“Even death cannot separate two who love,” Lennox said.
Frances looked at him with wonder. In their different ways they were both hedonists and these were strange words for him to speak.
“Do you really believe that?”
“Yes, if it is a great love — of the soul as much as the body. It would be so if I died…we should be together still.”
Frances shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “I cannot think of love as — as anything unearthly. Only as you and I feel for each other, as though life was only complete when we met and loved.”
Twenty-Three
The sense of partnership deepened with the months and years. Those who had thought they knew Frances well, and at the time of her elopement and marriage had opined that the foolhardy pair would soon separate, since Frances was too volatile for stability and Lennox too self-indulgent and lacking in charm to hold her, were constrained to admit that they had been wrongly judged.
Frances was as entertaining and vital as ever. She still adored masques, masquerades, ballets and the play. But when not required by the Queen, she could, it was observed, abandon all such pursuits at a moment’s notice in order to travel down to Cobham. The grounds as well as the house were a constant preoccupation to Lennox as well as to herself, and his interests were not confined to flower growing and the planning of individual gardens which were Frances’ delight.
With Roger Payne, his steward, Lennox decided which fields should be set aside for pasturage and crop sowing. He bought cattle for breeding purposes and at one time contemplated bringing over from the Near East a particular species of small horse which he thought might be bred in England and become so popular that the enterprise might make him a fortune.
Frances was enthusiastic until it was discovered that, however well cared for, the horses seemed unable to adapt themselves to the English climate and died within a few months.
This was not the only failure, for Lennox was enterprising, but failures only served to cement the link which bound Frances to him. They were shared failures, since neither took any important step without consulting the other.
Two or three times a year Lennox’s duties as Lord High Admiral took him to Scotland, and then Frances had her mother to stay with her, and sometimes her brother Walter, who was destined for the Navy, when he left school. To Frances’ pleasure there was an especial affection between Lennox and Walter. Sophie, now married, was also fond of her brother-in-law, and it was a great pity, Frances though, that there should be no affection between herself and Lennox’s sister.
“You might get on well enough if you met each other,” Mistress Stuart said. “Why not make the effort and accompany Lennox to Scotland the next time he makes the journey?”
“You know what a bad traveller I am,” Frances reminded her. “The roads between here and London are rough enough, and on the coach journey to Dover it was terrible. By the time I got there I was quite dazed by the pain in my head. It worries my lord when he sees me prostrate.”
“You were subject to grievous headaches even when you were a child,” Mistress Stuart allowed. “Being full of spirit, it surprises one that you are not more robust.”
“Since
the smallpox my headaches have been worse, Maman. The doctor thinks the trouble I sometimes have with my eyes intensifies them. Oh, it’s nothing to worry about. I am not like to lose my sight, but it would make that long journey to Scotland a torture, and Lennox will not hear of it, more especially as at the end of it I should have but a cold welcome from her ladyship. It may be natural that she should resent me, for if we have a son hers will be dispossessed. At present he is the heir apparent both to Cobham and to the Scottish estate.”
“How I wish that you had prospect of a family,” Mistress Stuart said, “for you would be dispossessed were you to be left a widow. One has to consider these possibilities, Frances,” she insisted as her daughter made a gesture of repudiation. “Life at the best is uncertain, as we have had good cause to realise of late. When I consider my dear mistress, and Madame whom she so adored, gone within a few months of one another…”
“When I think of the future, I pray, yes, really pray, Maman — on my knees in the chapel here — that I may be the first to go. But if it should be my fate to outlive my dearest lord, and without even a child of his for comfort, then I should not be dispossessed. However much Lady O’Brien might resent it, I should have the right to live at Cobham for the rest of my days.”
Mistress Stuart sighed with relief. “I am glad to hear it. It is but sense even in the case of a young husband to make early provision for his wife. Yours, fortunately, knows his duty.”
“He would be more like to exceed than to ignore it,” Frances said proudly.
“Well, I am sure that if God willed you to be left, you would be far happier here than anywhere else, for you absent yourself from Court on every excuse.”
“The Queen reproaches me for it,” Frances owned, “but I plan to be there again in a few days. My lord will join me when he returns from Scotland. But, oh dear, I am out of the humour for Court life. It is bad enough to see the King thrown into such melancholy for dearest ’Rietta, but ’tis even worse to see him consoled by this Breton girl. How could Louis have sent her over. Men are truly wicked. Had he no thought for the Queen?”
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