The French Mistress

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “My brother’s bound to be my nursemaid,” she continued, “as well as my midwife and my cook. He’s written as much here: ‘For God’s sake have a care of your diet, and believe the plainer your diet is, the better health you will have.’ Ha, he’s ordering that because he does not approve of me having chocolate and biscuits for my breakfast.”

  Purposefully she sipped that same forbidden brew from the tiny porcelain cup in her fingers, widening her eyes to me through the fragrant steam like a naughty child who is willfully disobedient. With her hair in a single plait and no paint on her face, she looked much younger, or at least closer to her true age of twenty-five.

  “His Majesty wishes you well, Madame,” I said. “I would doubt he truly cares overmuch what you eat or drink, so long as it benefits you and the babe.”

  “Oh, he cares, Louise,” she said, looking back again to the letter. “He cares because he fears that chocolate and biscuits are too French, and therefore somehow grossly inferior to whatever it is that sturdy English goodwives use to greet the day.”

  I frowned, unsure of exactly what an English goodwife fed her family. “What do they eat? All I have heard is that the English dine exclusively upon roasts of beef and suet puddings, but His Majesty cannot mean for you to have that, not for breakfast.”

  “Not the roasted beef part, no,” she admitted. “But what does this say of his low regard for French food? ‘Above all, my dear Minette, have a care of strong broths and gravy in the morning, and avoid them all.’ Strong broths and gravy in the morning? Oh, my darling broody hen of a brother!”

  She began to laugh, but almost at once shifted into tears and pressed the letter to her heart, too overwhelmed by his love to do more.

  It was often this way when his letters arrived. They were filled with such brotherly devotion and concern for the well-being of his dear Minette (for that had always been his pet name for Madame) that she read them aloud to me, often sinking into a melancholy humor before she was done. Despite her tears, her brother’s words gave her courage, and more resolve than ever to push forward with the alliance.

  And what did I make of the English king’s letters? I was, of course, an audience by reason of my place, and not one by choice. The letters had not been written to me, nor had I any direct acquaintance with their author. They were peppered with little endearments and jests that had meaning only between the two royal siblings. But the more I heard of them, the more I came to feel as if I knew Madame’s brother myself. For a king, he wrote with surprising informality, his letters written as his thoughts came to him, without a secretary’s polishing. There was frank immediacy to his correspondence, an easy charm devoid of empty gallantry, and a wry wit that he didn’t mind turning shockingly in his own direction, especially on the infrequent occasions when his sister had gently chastised him over some slight fault or error of judgment.

  “If you were as well acquainted with a little fantastical gentleman called Cupid as I am,” he wrote when she’d dared to question his ever-varying taste in mistresses, “then you would neither wonder nor take ill any sudden changes which do happen in the affairs of his conducting.”

  A little fantastical gentleman called Cupid: how I liked that turn of phrase! If the letters to Madame reflected the man who’d written them (and I’d no reason to believe they didn’t), then surely I was beguiled, without so much as a smile exchanged between us.

  I was eighteen, and ripe for love as all girls that age are. At Court I was surrounded with love and intrigue of every kind, and each night I listened to the breathless, giggling whispers of my fellow maids as they recounted their amorous adventures. I’d yet to attract a suitor of my own, and it was impossible in that Court not to long for love. Was it any wonder, then, that my fancy was drawn to Madame’s brother, at once infinitely desirable, yet so distant and unattainable that my girlish dreams could run safely free and without consequence?

  I took to studying the many portraits of Charles Stuart that adorned Madame’s rooms, searching for more of the man in the letters. I saw a dark, handsome man in his prime, tall and lean, with melancholy dark eyes and a sensual mouth, a man who, in nearly every picture, looked as if he’d much rather be off doing something more exciting than posing. I liked that, especially after the rigidity that Louis imposed upon his Court. Whether he was a king or not, I secretly concluded that Charles’s company must be more deliciously enjoyable than that of any other gentleman I’d ever met.

  Unwittingly Madame fed this fascination of mine each time she praised her brother, or recounted some small amusing anecdote about him. I even listened to the stories of his rampant infidelities, and the countless women, highborn and low, who were said to pass through his bed. I was undaunted, even if the stories painted Charles as an English libertine-sultan with a harem of lolling beauties.

  Louis had mistresses, too. Truly, what monarch didn’t? For Louis, love was another war to be waged and won, with his mistresses only more trophies to display at Versailles as beautiful tribute of his conquests. He was even more brutally unsentimental with the less celebrated women he claimed for easing himself; we’d all heard his oft-repeated judgment of one such hapless lady, how he’d used her like a post-horse, mounted once, ridden hard, and never seen again.

  But Madame’s brother sounded different. To judge from her stories, Charles relished and delighted in his women, and treated love as a dance meant to please both partners.

  Like so many innocents (and other women who should have known better), I believed Charles simply had yet to find a lasting love, a love that was worthy of him. I didn’t quite dare to believe I might be that one, but each time Madame spoke of her brother, I let my too-idle fancy imagine myself in his company. I listened, and remembered, and just as she did, I prayed for the day when my life might cross with that of the King of England.

  I’d not yet found the rich husband who had been my main purpose in coming to Court, but by the end of the year, I did have two other successes to my credit. Louis took note of my devotion to Madame, and rewarded me accordingly. After the fashion of Court, the reward was not granted directly to me, but to those I’d wished to favor.

  Thus my old patron, the Duc de Beaufort, was made leader of a French expedition to help defend the distant island of Candia, currently under siege by the Turks. Though seemingly of little use to France, the king held this campaign in high regard, both because he had been begged by the Doge of Venice for aid (for there were few things that Louis enjoyed more than having another king or leader indebted to him), and because, as a dutiful Catholic ruler, he wished to defend a Christian stronghold against the infidel Turks, much as his ancestors had done long ago during the crusades to the Holy Land.

  The command was a plum post for the duc, and he was pleased to see his early belief in me so swiftly rewarded. But there was more. My brother, Sebastien, was likewise granted a place in the campaign on the duc’s staff, a most desired position of honor for one so young. My parents were duly impressed by my influence, and though they still wished for me to produce a suitable husband, they were proud that I’d achieved so much in so little time.

  So was I. It was my first taste of patronage, received and given, and it would not be the last.

  Chapter Five

  PALAIS-ROYAL, PARIS

  February 1669

  “So you, then, are Lord Rochester.” Wrapped in furs against the midwinter cold, Madame was sitting close to the fire in her parlor, with the rest of us attendants gathered around her and as close to the fire’s warmth as we, too, could be. She glanced from the newly opened letter of introduction in her hand to the gentleman standing before her.

  Nearly every Englishman of rank visiting Paris came to call upon the English duchesse d’Orleans; it would be uncivil (and impolitic) not to. Madame in turn was famous for her hospitality, and for a company that was generally less restrained and more entertaining than that to be found at the Louvre or Versailles. On account of her kind nature (as well as her desire to please
her brother), no Englishman was turned away, though there were doubtless ones to whom she wished she could bar her door. She adored her nephew James, Duke of Monmouth, an early by-blow of her brother’s now grown to handsome, if somewhat foolish, maturity, and I’d heard that there had once been some sort of careless flirtation (for though only five years separated them, they were by blood aunt and nephew) between them that had raised Monsieur’s ire at the time. But Madame did not trust Ralph Montagu, the English ambassador to France, any more than she did the Duke of Buckingham. Now that the Earl of Rochester stood at her door, we’d all soon see where he would rank in Madame’s estimation.

  “I welcome you to Paris, my lord,” she said, holding out her small-boned hand for him to kiss, “both as a fellow Englishman and as a dear friend of my brother.”

  A friend of the king, I thought, and eagerly I leaned to one side to look past the stiffened curls of the lady-in-waiting who blocked my view.

  The Earl of Rochester was younger than I’d expected, of an age with me, yet already he had that worldly confidence and ease that seemed to be a mark of Charles’s courtiers. Unlike most of the other young English lords, however, he was much better dressed, in a long dark green coat, fawn-colored boots, and a striking red waistcoat that must have come from the needle of a Parisian tailor. He was tall and dashing in his figure as well, and I’d venture he’d be skilled with the elegant sword he wore slung from a yellow sash at his waist.

  Yet though he was a handsome fellow, almost prettily so, there was a cloudiness to his eyes and cheeks that hinted at a surfeit of debauchery, and put me on my guard. The English Court was said to be a wild, licentious place, and surely this earl, however young, already bore the look of having participated too freely in its pleasures.

  With a dancer’s grace, he now bowed low over his leg, sweeping his wide-brimmed plumed hat to one side as he kissed the back of Madame’s hand. “I am your most humble of servants, Madame. You honor me with your generosity and your kindness.”

  He spoke perfect French, without a hint of the thudding accent of most other Englishmen. I was impressed, and so was Madame.

  “According to His Majesty my brother,” she said, “we should be the ones honored by your presence, Lord Rochester.”

  With a sigh, she withdrew her hand from his, showing a reluctance that would have fanned Monsieur’s omnipresent jealousy, if he’d been there to see it. Then she raised her brother’s letter of introduction and began to read aloud from it.

  “ ‘Lord Rochester has chosen to take a little journey to Paris,’ ” she began, “ ‘and would not kiss your hands without a letter from me.’ Well, then, you had your letter, and you had your kiss, didn’t you?”

  “I did, Madame,” he said with a bemused half-smile that surely charmed every lady in the room. “And a most rapturous experience it was, I can assure you.”

  “You’re a rogue,” Madame said, laughing, and without a hint of true reprobation as she returned to her reading. “ ‘ Pray use him’—meaning you, my lord—‘as one I have a very good opinion of. You will find him not to want wit, and know that he did behave himself, in all the Dutch war, as well as any body, as a volunteer.’ It would seem we should congratulate you as a hero, my lord.”

  “For the glory of England, Madame,” he said. “Less a hero than a survivor.”

  There was an unconscious melancholy to his words that made me realize that while he had survived to be called a hero, a good many others—including others dear to him—had not been so fortunate. A sobering realization, that, yet also one that won him even more indulgence from us ladies, for his heartfelt modesty.

  “So how does my brother?” Madame asked softly, easing the awkwardness. “Did you leave him well?”

  “Oh, most fantastically well, Madame,” he replied, his good humor restored. “I confess that this little journey of mine was of His Majesty’s invention and not my own, but he did wish me Godspeed with a few days at Newmarket for the races.”

  Later we’d learn that the king’s “invention” for the earl to leave England had been proposed as a kind of pardon, an alternative to him being imprisoned in the Tower of London. The earl’s crime had been a grievous one, a drunken brawl to blows at the Dutch ambassador’s table and in the presence of the king, yet Charles had mercifully (if impulsively) forgiven him: a tale that showed the peril of judging a gentleman on first appearance, especially one so charming as the earl.

  “Oh, Newmarket,” Madame said, her gaze rising toward the heavens. “How my brother does love his races! Tell me, did his horses win?”

  “They almost always do,” the earl said, “especially the ones he rides himself.”

  She made an anxious little exclamation. “Don’t tell me that, I beg you! I cannot fathom why, after all my brother has suffered and survived, he would risk his very neck by playing the jockey on the back of some wretched nag!”

  “Forgive me, Madame, I never intended to cause you distress,” the earl said swiftly. “You know His Majesty is an excellent rider, as sure and strong as any Arab upon his desert barb.”

  “You’re forgiven, Lord Rochester.” Impatiently she waved away the ladies who hovered about her, wishing her to be more calm. “It’s not you who vex me, but the rash behavior of my brother.”

  “Then let me speak of something else, I beg you,” he said earnestly, and for the first time he looked as young as he must be. He might be able to coax a pardon from the king, but even he knew there’d be little forgiveness for upsetting the pregnant duchesse d’Orleans. “Of how the rebuilding of the city progresses, or the new plays this season, or—”

  “Thank you, Lord Rochester, but my brother writes to me of all that,” she said, then smiled winningly. “Tell me something of his Court, if you please, some scandalous scrap that he’d not tell me himself.”

  He raised one brow, his smile bemused as he considered a score of possibilities, no doubt each less suitable for polite ladies’ ears than the one before. Yet as his smile grew, each of us polite ladies waited with eager, breathless anticipation, for who among us could resist news of a new scandal?

  He tossed his hat lightly in his hand, making us wait, then leaned toward Madame. “Have you heard of Lady Castlemaine’s latest gambit for attention?”

  “I’ve not.” Madame tipped her head to one side, indicating she was surprised, but most interested. This was scandalous, and most daring of Lord Rochester to mention. A thoroughly notorious lady, the Countess of Castlemaine had long been His Majesty’s mistress, and had borne him many bastard children. “What has the sly creature done now?”

  “She is my cousin, you know, through the Villiers, so she’s few secrets from me,” he said, teasing out his gossip. “Or from anyone else, for that matter.”

  “Indeed not!” exclaimed Madame, and when she laughed, we all laughed, too. The scandals of Louis’s Court were far too near for Madame to find much amusement in them, but the mischief at her brother’s Court was another matter. There’d been a time when such frank talk of wicked folk would have shocked me, but no longer.

  The earl leaned forward, as if in confidence. “They say that as the lady’s corporal charms fade, she has resorted instead to flaunting her eternal soul for attention. She’s begun private instruction with a priest, with the goal of converting to the Romish Church.”

  “But that is old tattle, my lord!” Madame scoffed, and rapped her knuckles on the arm of her chair to signify her disappointment. “I’ve heard that long ago, from Lord de Croissy. I suppose I should rejoice at another soul returned to the True Church, but that lady has proved herself so faithless in everything else that I cannot entirely believe her conversion.”

  “You are not alone, Madame,” he said, and sighed for dramatic effect. “The French ambassador is famously knowledgeable, and famously willing to pay his sources, too. If I must compete with Lord de Croissy for fresh news for you, Madame, then I know I must fail. Unless you’ve not heard of the latest scheme of His Grace the Duke of
Buckingham?”

  “Buckingham?” Madame repeated, and though she smiled still, I sensed her instant uneasiness at the mention of His Grace. “What of Buckingham?”

  “Not so much of him, Madame, as from him,” he said. “Having observed His Majesty’s interest in Lord Roos’s divorce, Lord Buckingham has seized the opportunity, and is once again strongly pressing for the king to separate himself from the barren queen, and remarry.”

  “My brother would never treat Her Majesty so unjustly.” Whether she did so consciously or not, Madame’s hand crept over the small mound of her belly as if to protect the babe within. “It is hardly the poor queen’s fault if she’s not been blessed.”

  The earl smiled with wry sympathy, for to him this was just more idle gossip and speculation, and no more. “Buckingham would say that the security of the succession must come first, Madame. Last year he’d believed he’d even found a suitably virgin beauty in Lady Frances Stewart, before she confounded them all and eloped with the Duke of Richmond. Quite the merry scandal that was, and I don’t know who was made more angry by it, His Majesty or His Grace.”

  But Madame didn’t care to hear of the elopement of Lady Frances, not when compared to the sorry treatment Buckingham proposed for the queen.

  “It will not happen, Lord Rochester,” she said firmly, reminding me (and likely everyone else) that she’d been born a king’s daughter. “For my brother to put Her Majesty aside simply because Lord Buckingham wishes it, and sees some path to personal gain for himself—that is against the laws of not only England, but of God.”