Guarding the Countess

by Lily Reynard

  Despite her disapproval, Mall unbent enough to give Antonia's shoulder a quick squeeze.

  Mercifully, she remained silent as she laced Antonia's jeweled bodice as if its boned circumference might hold together her breaking heart.

  Antonia stared at her image in the mirror, at the scarred face made beautiful again because Kit loved her, and tried not to think of anything.

  As Mall brushed out her hair, Antonia wiped her face with a rag soaked in perfumed oil, then reached for the jar of orris-root powder to veil the tear-tracks.

  Rouge followed, then kohl to conceal her red-rimmed eyes, and a sprinkling of star-shaped patches to conceal the worst of her pockmarks.

  Then, armored in satin and gold lacing, she went downstairs to make good on her promise to the king.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part—

  Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;

  And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

  That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

  — Michael Drayton, "The Parting," (1563–1631)

  Antonia came slowly downstairs, taking each step as if she wore anklets of lead. Reaching the bottom of the grand staircase, she glanced out the window.

  With a shock, she noticed how high the sun stood. It was much later that she had thought, insulated as she had been from the outside world by her bed-curtains.

  At this time yesterday, she had been standing in the dark, stinking interior of Newgate Prison, watching the jailer unlock the heavy doors that separated her from Kit.

  Ruthlessly, she pushed the memory aside. She could not yield to grief...not yet, anyway. There was still this ordeal to survive.

  She raised her chin, arranged her heavy skirts with a practiced flick of her wrists, and went to meet her fate.

  Chelmsford awaited her in the Blue Parlor, site of so many small pleasures these past two months.

  As she entered, she caught him feeding Sweetheart a slice of raisin cake.

  He jumped guiltily as Jemmy announced her, and whirled around.

  "My lady, he said, hastily bowing and letting the piece of cake drop to the patterned Turkey carpet.

  "My lord Chelmsford." She felt as distanced from events as if she were play-acting.

  "My lord king has given me reason to believe...that is, I heard that I might have the, er, joyful expectation, um, of making you...my wife!" Chelmsford stumbled to a close.

  She inclined her head. "His Majesty did not mislead you, my lord. After much consideration, I have decided to set aside my widowed estate, and consider it an honor to agree to your suit."

  Chelmsford grinned ear-to-ear. "Oh my lady, you have made me the happiest man in all England this day!"

  Antonia curved her lips in a dutiful smile. Whatever happened, he would not shatter her heart the way that Kit had, she told herself. It was bleak comfort.

  "I shall have my lawyers draw up the proper contracts in short order, my lord."

  "Please...if we are to be married, call me Edward!"

  He stepped close, his eyes shining. Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips. Then, shyly, he leaned forward, and gave her a swift, chaste kiss on her mouth.

  It was not unpleasant, but Antonia was relieved when he stepped back and did not press further.

  "Indeed, if we are to be man and wife...Edward...you shall call me Antonia," she said, out of courtesy.

  Only her mother and Kit presently called her by her Christian name. She pushed down a pang at granting Chelmsford—Edward—the same privilege.

  Then Sweetheart, greedy-guts that he was, squawked at being deprived of the remainder of his treat.

  He launched himself from his perch, and landed squarely in the nest of Chelmsford's periwig.

  Startled, the young man reached up, grabbing at the parrot, and received a sharp nip.

  Chelmsford yelped and stuck his bleeding thumb in his mouth. His periwig, already askew, began to slide off his head.

  Sweetheart, still clinging to his precarious perch, flapped wildly and tried to keep his place, which only accelerated the wig's descent. It tumbled down Chelmsford's back in a mass of tangled hair and beating wings, ending up in a heap on the floor.

  "Gadzooks!" came Sweetheart's muffled voice from beneath the pile of ringlets on the floor.

  His black beak emerged, then his eyes, peering indignantly up at the two humans towering over him.

  Antonia tried to stifle a giggle, and failed. Laughter poured out of her, undammed by the upheavals of the past day.

  Chelmsford froze, took his thumb out of his mouth, and stared at her.

  At first, she feared she had given him mortal insult, but after a moment, he, too, began to chuckle, which rapidly built to guffaws.

  Her sides aching in the confines of her stays, Antonia finally collapsed on the sofa, and Edward followed her, still emitting short bursts of laughter whenever his gaze crossed to the periwig sitting in the middle of the parlor.

  He put a tentative arm around her, and reached into his jacket pocket, withdrawing something that gleamed gold and red.

  He took her hand and slipped cool metal onto her finger. Antonia looked down and saw that she now wore a ring set with a large cabochon ruby incised with a gilded coat-of-arms.

  "It belonged to my mother," he said. "And now, it will belong to my wife."

  * * *

  Chelmsford left shortly thereafter.

  Antonia heard him whistling in the hall as he departed. She sat in the parlor alone for a little while, Sweetheart sitting comfortably on her knee as she stroked his feathers.

  Finally, she sighed, and summoned Jemmy to the parlor with a request to speak with Mr. Fitzgeorge.

  All the servants probably knew by now that Kit had spent the night in her rooms, but Jemmy, bless him, gave no sign that he had heard anything, good or ill.

  Antonia replaced Sweetheart on his perch, where he occupied himself by chewing on a string of large wooden beads, and waited for Kit to arrive.

  He strode into the room, looking as pale and strained as she. He stopped short as he saw her formal dress, and bowed.

  "So, it's done?" he asked harshly.

  She saw his gaze drop to her left hand, where the heavy ruby ring shone like heart's blood.

  Antonia nodded, biting her lip. Her earlier numbness vanished, and raw pain threatened to overwhelm her. She fought it down.

  I won't weep! Not until this is over!

  "I have been thinking," she said, unable to meet his eyes, "that you might wish to open a fencing academy. I would be willing to invest—"

  "So, you're pensioning me off? Your faithful servant, his duties done?" He tried to cloak his bitterness with a jesting tone. "I'm sorry I failed you, Antonia. But..." He took a deep breath, and her lacerated heart was wounded further as she saw how he humbled himself. "Please don't send me away."

  She looked at him miserably. "What I said before still holds true, Kit. It would be a torment too great to bear and a temptation too great to resist if we live under the same roof."

  "I can't bear to think of you in another mans bed!" he growled

  Antonia looked away, at a loss for words.

  Her eye lit on one of the items that Jemmy had fetched for her, and she picked it up, grateful to change the subject.

  She offered her late husband's rapier to Kit on upturned palms.

  "I want you to have this. I know you will use it well and honorably."

  He reached for it, then stopped. "Anton—my lady, I can't accept this."

  "If it is still in my possession when I wed, it will become Lord Chelmsford's property." As will I. She tried to smile, and failed. "And he cannot wield it half as well as you."

  "I hope I keep it with the honor such a gift deserves." He accepted the sword from her, carefully avoiding an accidental touch, his blue eyes dark with pain. "When—when do you want me gone, my lady?"

  "It must be soon, I fear, to spare Chelmsford's pride. But
I won't toss you and Margaret out tonight, nor force you into the gutter. I will make inquiries on your behalf whether a suitable house lies available in the city, and as your patroness, I will pay for your first year's rent."

  "That's very generous." He was studying the blade he held with grim intensity.

  "In return, I'll have a contract drawn up that entitles me to a certain percentage of the profits from your academy," she continued. "And when Margaret comes of age, and if you wish it, send her to me and I will teach her how to run a household."

  "That's most generous, but what of you? Will you be safe?"

  "I will have no more suitors now that I’m betrothed to Lord Chelmsford. No marriage can stand if the bride is already pre-contracted to another," Antonia said. "So, you see, I have no further use for a bodyguard." She smoothed her skirts with shaking hands. "I only wish things could have been different."

  "Such irony," he replied. "You've just given me everything, yet I find the price has robbed me of all pleasure in it."

  Antonia reached for his hand, one last time. "Farewell, Kit, and Godspeed."

  Tears threatened to overwhelm her, and she hurried out of the parlor.

  She made it as far as the entrance hall. Then, like a serving maid, she sank down on the bottom step of the grand staircase, and wept for a long time.

  * * *

  "Chelmsford! She chose Chelmsford?" Dizzy with rage, Julian let his control slip.

  All these long weeks of courting the silly wench, certain that he had dazzled her...his carefully-timed suggestions to the king...and she had chosen that green-goney!

  Anne flinched as he raised his hand. She shrank away. "I—I heard the king favored the marquess."

  Julian took a deep breath, ran a finger through his curls, and forced himself to smile at his sister. "Well, my lord Chelmsford is an abler suitor than I would have warranted. I shall be the first to offer him my congratulations."

  "But, Julian!" wailed Anne. "What of my dowry? I'll remain a spinster forever. Or be forced to marry a nobody." She gave her brother a narrow-eyed look. "I could have sworn that Lady Cranbourne was infatuated with you. What happened?"

  "Who among us truly knows the depths of a woman's heart?" Julian responded blandly.

  "Perhaps, having risen from the shop to the peerage, my Lady Cranbourne desires to be a marchioness." Anne scowled.

  He studied his sister for a long moment, quelling the desire to slap her for her insolence. "Speaking of marchionesses, I thought you had hooked Chelmsford."

  "Until she came to Court," Anne said, spitefully. "I even befriended her, as you ordered, and look what she did! It has to be her money, because she's hideous. All those pockmarks!"

  Julian sighed. "And to think, your former sweetheart will be getting a fencing-master's leavings. I was hoping that the revelation would discourage my rivals."

  "That poem," said Anne, her eyes widening. "You were responsible for that?"

  He nodded.

  Anne laughed with malicious pleasure. "Oh, you should have seen her, Julian! She looked as if she wanted the earth to swallow her whole."

  Julian shrugged. "I was hoping she might consent to marry me to redeem her reputation. But it seems she outwitted me."

  In the distance, a church bell rang the hour, and he recalled that he had agreed to meet with one of the king's petitioners.

  An offer to put in a good word with His Majesty should be worth at least a hundred pounds, he thought, enough to stave off the most insistent of his creditors.

  "I have an appointment." He reached out to chuck Anne under her chin. "Cheer up, sister mine. I've given some thought on how to improve this sad state of affairs, and I am persuaded that a conversation with Lady Cranbourne may resolve some of our difficulties, at least."

  She gave him a grateful look. "Please hurry, Julian. If I'm to be a bride, I don't want to be a withered one!"

  He strolled out of his apartments with affected nonchalance, his mind spinning furiously.

  Who turned Lady Cranbourne's mind against me? Was it Chelmsford? Or Kit?

  No matter now. She was betrothed, and therefore untouchable. Only Chelmsford's repudiation could free her...or his death.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Most wicked sir, whom to call brother would even infect my mouth.

  — William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Sc. i

  For one endless week following her betrothal to Chelmsford, Antonia eclipsed even Castlemaine as the most notorious woman at Court.

  That she had gone personally to free her imprisoned lover from Newgate only added spice to her fall from lofty virtue.

  Reeling from the loss of her cherished reputation, she vacillated between regret for her foolishness in falling in love with a man she could never marry, and happiness at having loved him at least once.

  Memories of that joy sustained her now, even as the courtiers at Whitehall derived much amusement from her supposed hypocrisy.

  More cruel verses appeared, skewering Kit as "The Puritan's man-mistress," and her as "The sober-garbed wanton."

  Antonia kept her head high, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the insults and crude jests that wounded her like spikes. All the while, she wished fervently for the next scandal to divert the Court's attention away from her.

  In private, she took an odd pleasure in the soreness between her legs and the small bruises on her arms and thighs where he had gripped tightly in the height of passion.

  Often, she awoke in her lonely bed, feeling the echo of Kit's mouth on hers.

  Did He also awaken a sense of loss when morning came and he realized anew that she was no longer in his arms?

  Having expanded with joy and love, she was finding it impossible to hide from the world her true heart. Her accustomed armor of sobriety and chastity felt confining now instead of safe.

  The truth was, she did not want to think of propriety, or her upcoming marriage. She only wanted, quite desperately, to bed Kit just one more time, to imprint on her memory how it felt, to see if the passion that had lit her night like a blazing comet could be reproduced.

  Towards Chelmsford, who called upon her daily with presents—a book, a pair of gloves, a haunch of fresh venison from his estates—she felt affection, but like a candle in sunlight, it was a pale thing when compared to love.

  She was twenty-three years old, long past being a virgin. And she had just discovered that she had a carnal nature, at least when it came to Kit, who knew how to use hands and mouth and prick to make a wanton out of her.

  Here at the Court, where wickedness flourished and no one seemed to deny the urges of the flesh, was she foolish to cling to the virtue she had lost in eyes of the world, to keep herself chaste because she was the betrothed bride of a youth she did not love?

  * * *

  Kit spent his remaining days at Cranbourne House stewing in the gall of his own inadequacy. He scarcely saw Antonia, who was caught up in the whirl of events surrounding her betrothal to Lord Chelmsford. That was a mercy of sorts, though he already found himself missing her fiercely.

  He was supposed to have been her protector, but in the end, she had sacrificed her freedom for his.

  What kind of man was he, to swallow that kind of failure, then meekly allow himself to be pensioned off?

  A man with a child to feed and clothe.

  He had already gambled away Margaret's chance to grow up in privileged circumstances as the acknowledged niece of a nobleman. He couldn't let his pride deprive her of a secure living as well, even if accepting Antonia's patronage for his new salle d'armes ate at him like the vitriol the smiths used for etching metal.

  And so, a week after Antonia's betrothal was announced, Kit found himself deep in a warren of streets and courts that comprised a respectable London neighborhood, heavy-hearted but determined to do right for Margaret this time.

  Mall Jenkins had recommended a Mrs. Chidley to him, and as a result, Kit found himself following the stout widow upstairs in a vacant house.
It was well-built of timber and plaster.

  Then he caught a whiff of smoke from a nearby hearth, and felt his skin crawl with memories of the fire that had taken his wife. A wooden house would be vulnerable...but in a city constructed primarily of oak and elm, what choice had he?

  He shook off his uneasiness, and examined his surroundings with a critical eye.

  The ground floor was a shop, already rented to a grocer who specialized in imported dried fruits and spices.

  Of greatest interest to Kit was the house's second story, which consisted of a single large chamber that had once been a workshop and which would serve admirably for his salle d'armes.

  The third floor, directly under the slanted roof, consisted of a parlor and two bedrooms, furnished with a battered but serviceable table and benches, and two wooden bedsteads.

  There was a small coal grate in the parlor to provide warmth in the winter, and stout wooden shutters on each window. Antonia had generously promised to send a cart with bed-linens, coverlets, pillows, and rugs, as well as earthenware dishes and cups.

  "My man died in the plague and I'm but a poor widow now." Mrs. Chidley puffed her way up the steep stairs, her monologue interrupted by her pauses for breath. "Having to rent out his rooms to strangers as come off the street."

  "Plague?" His uneasiness returned.

  "Not to worry, good sir, not to worry!" Mrs. Chidley assured him, heaving herself to the landing at the top of the staircase. "For I scrubbed the house top-to-bottom with vinegar and lye-soap after the cross came off the door."

  Reassured, Kit looked around the chamber, already envisioning the lessons he could give in this space. "Will you be living here, as well?"

  "Me? Why no, sir, I've moved in with my sister and her children, so I'll not be disturbing you here. Unless," she added hopefully, tugging at her wrinkled apron in a futile attempt to smooth it down, "you don't mind being disturbed? Seeing how you're a widower yourself, and I'm a right fine cook, if I may say so—"

  A fierce pang ripped through Kit's chest, and it was a moment before he could reply.

  "I fear my attentions are otherwise engaged," he said, as gently as he could. "But it would please me to rent your house."