Venus

by Jane Feather

  It was young Tom who appeared. “You want me, m’lord?”

  “No. Polly, as it happens. Is she in the house?”

  “She was at dinnertime, m’lord,” responded the boy with a cheerful grin. “Shall I fetch ’er for ye?”

  “If you would be so kind,” said his lordship, dryly.

  Polly heard the summons and tried desperately to think of an excuse. She had the cellar to sweep, the pots to scrub …

  “’E’s waitin’ for ye,” Tom stated as she hesitated. “In ’is parlor.”

  “Oh, very well.” There seemed no help for it. Polly wiped her hands on her apron and went into the hall. This time she knocked on the parlor door.

  “Come in.” Nick looked up from the Bible he had again opened on the table and smiled at her. There was no response as she stood in the doorway, looking at her feet. “Why did you not come for your lesson?” he asked.

  She still did not look at him. “I did not think you would wish me to.”

  He sighed. “Why would I not, Polly?”

  “Common whores do not learn to read.”

  “Come inside and shut the door!” He waited until she had obeyed before saying more softly, “I know I was harsh, Polly, but you caught me at some considerable disadvantage. You must understand that I cannot avail myself of what you would offer while you remain under this roof, as a member of my household. Not only would it mortally offend Lady Margaret’s principles, and I will not insult her, but it would also make your position with the other servants quite untenable.”

  “I understand that,” Polly said, raising her eyes from the floor. “It is perfectly obvious. That is why I thought that if you lay with me, then I would have to go and live somewhere else.”

  “Conniving baggage!” Nick expostulated with soft ferocity. “So that was what you had in mind! I knew there had to be some ulterior motive.”

  lo his unutterable dismay, tears welled in the glowing hazel eyes, welled and fell slowly, pouring soundlessly down her cheeks as she stood and looked at him, making no attempt to wipe them away.

  “Oh, no, moppet, do not weep,” he exclaimed, moving from behind the table, taking her in his arms. “I did not mean to be unkind, sweetheart.” The tears stopped as abruptly as if he had closed a tap on an ale barrel. Nicholas stared down at the ravishing, tear-wet countenance. Suspicion grew, became certainty. Crocodile tears, if ever he had seen them. “God’s grace,” he muttered. “What web have I woven for myself?”

  Chapter 5

  The fire crackled, and the branched candelabra threw bright illumination on the table, catching the rich tones in the head bent over the big Bible. Her tongue peeped from between her lips, when they were not moving silently, making out the words on the page. It was most amazingly wonderful, Polly thought, how in a mere four weeks a confusing jumble of symbols could fall into a sensible pattern, unlocking a whole world.

  “They did seem to do a deal of begatting,” she commented, raising her head to look at her companion.

  Nick, sitting at his ease beside the fire, chuckled. “You have come across one of those passages, have you? They can continue for pages. Why do you not find another chapter?” He watched her over the rim of his wineglass as she turned the fine paper with delicate fingers. It remained a source of continual amazement to him that such a fine-boned, dainty creature should have emerged from that coarse and brutal environment. Everything she did, she did with a natural grace.

  “I cannot make this word out.” She frowned deeply, saying with some annoyance, “The letters do not make sense.”

  He came to stand behind her, looking at the recalcitrant collection or letters indicated by a slim but ink-stained forefinger. “The g-h is silent, moppet.”

  “Oh … Nigh!” Enlightenment brought heart-stopping radiance to the face now upturned to his. “But how very awkward to have letters that don’t mean anything.”

  “Isn’t it,” he agreed, pressing a fingertip on the end of her nose in one of the casually affectionate gestures that were now so natural for him to administer and for Polly to receive. “I gather you left the house without leave this afternoon.” An eyebrow lifted quizzically as he returned to his seat.

  Polly did not immediately respond, and he did not press her, concentrating on the business of setting a taper to his clay pipe. “So she told you,” Polly said finally, folding her hands on the table in front of her.

  “She did.” Nick drew on his pipe, narrowing his eyes against the curl of smoke. The list of Polly’s infractions presented to him by his rigidly furious sister-in-law grew daily longer and increasingly tedious. “Could you perhaps see your way to telling me the occasion for it?”

  A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth at this exaggeratedly polite request. “Had I asked for leave, it would not have been granted,” she replied unarguably. “Then I would have been obliged to add disobedience to my offenses.”

  “It is there already,” he commented dryly. “But pray tell me where you went.” He threw her a shrewd look. “Unless you hold secrets?”

  A tinge of pink showed against her cheekbone. “There is no secret. I had a great desire to visit Drury Lane, to see the king’s playhouse, mayhap also—” She paused, then shrugged, seeming to make up her mind. “I thought, perhaps, to see Master Killigrew, to bring myself to his notice.”

  “You thought, in short, to take matters into your own hands, matters that we had agreed were best left in mine.” Nicholas spoke harshly, knowing that he must nip this impatient independence in the bud. “Perhaps you will tell me what I have done to earn your mistrust. Am I not fulfilling my side of the bargain? Permit me to tell you that you do not appear to be overly scrupulous in fulfilling yours.”

  Large tears welled in Polly’s eyes, falling down her cheeks to splash onto the table in front of her. “No!” Nick exclaimed, pushing back his chair with abrupt violence. “If those tears do not cease instantly, I shall ensure that they have cause to be genuine! You forget that I am become quite familiar with your tricks.”

  “It is a very useful accomplishment,” said Polly, aggrieved, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “Doubtless.” He resumed his seat, then yielded to his curiosity, although he had no desire to offer encouragement for her more dubious feats. “Just how do you achieve it?”

  “I think sad thoughts,” she told him. “You were scolding me in that horrid way, and it was all for nothing, anyway, since the playhouse was closed up and I did not see anyone—and I am most dreadfully hungry,” she finished on a plaintive note.

  “Why ever should you be hungry?” Nick took the scent of his wine, frowning at her.

  “For the reason that I have had no supper and am to have no breakfast,” she said tartly. “You do not entirely keep your promises, sir. I understood that Lady Margaret was to have no jurisdiction over me. My stomach tells me otherwise.”

  Nick let his breath out in a low whistle. “Why did you not tell me of this straightway?”

  “To have told you of the punishment, I would have had to tell you of the offense,” she said candidly. “If you did not know of it, I had thought it best kept to myself.”

  “With some wisdom.” He could not help smiling, recognizing the familiar pattern. She would exasperate him with her impatience and vociferous complaints about her present mode of existence, but then that enchanting ingenuousness disarmed him every time. “However, I am done scolding, so why do you not repair to the kitchen and fetch yourself some supper? Bring it back here.”

  “And theft will be added to my crimes,” Polly declared, although she was halfway across the parlor. She paused with her hand on the door latch. “I suppose, in such an instance, Lady Margaret could turn me out of doors with good cause.” Her voice was hopeful, her eyes speculative. “Then we would have to find an alternative arrangement.”

  “Yes. Newgate,” said Lord Kincaid amiably. “You will end your days where you began them.”

  Polly, always one to accept def
eat gracefully, dropped a mock curtsy of acknowledgment, her eyes mischievous.

  “Get you gone,” Nick said. “Or perhaps you are no longer hungry?” The query ensured her instant departure.

  Chuckling, Nick bent to mend the fire. Was she ready? His amusement died as he pondered the question, staring into the flames where the fresh log blazed. She was certainly ready for an introduction to Killigrew. In the last weeks she had proved herself an apt and indefatigable pupil at anything she could be convinced was necessary to the achievement of her ambition. The rough edges had been remarkably easy to smooth, aided by her innate talent for imitation and remarkably sharp powers of observation.

  He had told De Winter that in the teaching of her he would forge some chains, and he had done so. But was she ready for those other links that would bind her to him? Was she ready to accept the logical conclusion of the easy, trusting affection that he had fostered between them in the last month? He had sworn that when he made her his mistress, she would not feel she was entering into a bargain, would come to him out of her own passion. But he had been too busy either teaching her or refereeing between Margaret and her troublesome kitchen maid to spend much time on the gentle art of awakening the power of desire in that peerless breast. Perhaps it was time to bring the masquerade to a close and turn his attention to the forging of those other, stronger chains.

  The door opened to admit Polly, bearing a platter laden with bread, cheese, and a hefty wedge of pigeon pie. She whisked herself into the parlor, glancing guiltily over her shoulder as she closed the door. “There was no one in the kitchen, so I was able to take whatever pleased me,” she confided, coming quite unselfconsciously to sit on the floor before the fire, where he still knelt. She broke into the bread with eager fingers, laughing up at him. “There was fat mutton and watery broth for supper.” Her nose wrinkled. “I have done well, I think.”

  Nicholas regarded her platter with a degree of astonishment. Obviously she had not exaggerated her hunger. “If you really intend to consume such a quantity, you had best have something to help it down.” He got up and went over to the side table to pour wine.

  Polly accepted the glass with a smile of thanks and took a hearty bite of bread and cheese. “I have forgotten. Is it a marquis who comes after a duke?”

  “Do not talk with your mouth full, moppet,” he reproved automatically, sitting in the elbow chair beside the fire. “Aye, ’tis a duke, a marquis, an earl, a viscount, a baron.”

  Polly conscientiously swallowed her mouthful. “And you are a baron, and Lord De Winter is a viscount.”

  “Correct,” he said with a smile. “Humble members of the peerage. Can you remember who is secretary of state?”

  Polly took a sip of wine. “The Earl of Arlington.” She became aware of his hand playing in her hair and, without undue thought, shuffled backward until she was leaning against his knees. “And the Earl of Arlington and the Earl of Clarendon are at outs, and the king prefers Arlington to Clarendon … I have it right, I think.” She bit into the wedge of pigeon pie, savoring it with great concentration.

  Nick allowed his fingers to drift over the nape of her neck, beneath the luxuriant fall of honeyed hair. Her neck bent responsively beneath the caress, and he smiled in quiet satisfaction, scribbling a fingernail into the delicate groove at the base of her scalp.

  “Tell me some more about Master Killigrew and Sir William Davenant,” Polly demanded. “If Master Killigrew manages the king’s company and Sir William the Duke of York’s company, then they must be some sort of rivals?” Suddenly, without knowing why she did, unless it had something to do with the strange, prickly warmth spreading through her body, emanating from those wonderfully busy fingers on her neck, she looked over her shoulder at him, and suffered a slight shock. “Why are you smiling in that manner?”

  “In what manner?” he asked softly.

  Polly frowned in strange confusion. There was a glow in the emerald eyes, an intensity to his expression that set up a tingling response in her own. “It is a little hard to describe. I do not think anyone has ever smiled at me like that before.”

  “Mayhap no one has seen before what I see now,” he said, moving a thumb beneath her chin to tilt her face as he brushed a pastry crumb from her lips with his forefinger and bent his head to bring his mouth to hers.

  Polly had endured the assault of many a kiss over the last few years, on one occasion even from this man who was now so gently, so sweetly taking her mouth with his own, the tip of his tongue tantalizing her closed lips, the sensitive corners, so that the warmth bathed her like liquid sunshine and her toes curled in delight.

  Very slowly, he raised his head, smiling down at the flushed surprised beauty of her. Then the hammering of the door knocker shattered the moment of quiet in which a wealth of meaning lay as yet unsaid but on the verge of articulation.

  Nick got to his feet with an exclamation. Apart from the inopportune nature of such an interruption, it was late for passing visitors and the house had been locked up an hour since; he was coatless, wore only doublet and hose as befitted a man beside his own hearth; his sword was abovestairs. He stood listening as the knocker sounded again. Such ah imperative nighttime summons could have fell intent at a time when one could never be certain who one’s friends were, when lies and whispers abounded, conspiracies thrived, and a man could find himself in the Tower on a single word of an enemy who had the king’s ear.

  “Hell and the devil, boy, what kept you?” a loud voice, unfamiliar to Polly, boomed from the hall as young Tom finally managed to draw the bolts on the door.

  Nicholas smiled and relaxed, saying easily, “Charles can never be convinced that he is not on a parade ground.”

  “Is your master at home, lad?” It was Richard’s voice this time. “Be good enough to tell him that he has visitors. Sir Peter Appleby, Major Conway, and myself.”

  “I had better go abovestairs,” Polly said, unsure whether her dismay at the prospect had more to do with the abrupt cessation of that wonderful new activity to which Nick had just introduced her, or to abandoning her unfinished pigeon pie.

  Nicholas shook his head. “Nay, I would have you stay. You may demonstrate the fruits of my labors of the last weeks.” He strode to the parlor door, flinging it wide. “Richard, Charles, Peter, you are well come indeed. Come you in and feel the fire. There’s wine here. But Tom shall fetch you ale if ye’d prefer.”

  “Ale, forsooth,” boomed the major’s parade ground voice. “Lord, but I’m as dry as lenten pease.”

  Three men, wrapped in thick cloaks, strode into the parlor, bringing a waft of the cold January night with them in their wind-reddened cheeks and tossed hat plumes.

  Polly, unsure what Nick meant by a demonstration of the fruits of his labors, had got to her feet and now stood to one side of the fire, neat and demure in her gray kirtle with its lace collar, hands clasped in front of her.

  “Why, good even, Polly,” greeted Richard, smiling.

  “Good even, Lord De Winter.” She curtsied gracefully, remembering what Nick had told her of the correct depth to be accorded different social ranks. It was not a kitchen maid’s bob, but the carefully executed obeisance of a young lady.

  Nicholas smiled. “Polly, allow me to make known to you Sir Peter Appleby and Major Charles Conway. Gentlemen … Mistress Polly Wyat.”

  Now Polly realized what he had meant about the fruits of his labor. He had introduced her to his friends as if she were not his kitchen maid, and clearly she was expected to play the part designated, as he had coached her. “I bid you welcome, gentlemen.” She offered another beautifully executed curtsy, this one meeting with responding bows. “May I pour you wine, Sir Peter? Lord De Winter?” Smiling graciously, she moved to the side table. “Tom will bring ale for Major Conway directly.”

  She was playing hostess as if she were born and bred to it, Richard observed, exchanging an appreciative smile with Nick. Polly, busy with her guests’ cloaks and the pouring of wine, did not n
otice that the cheery bonhomie of the major, and the more restrained courtesies of Sir Peter, concealed a sharp observation that took in every facet of her face, form, and deportment.

  Cloaks doffed, refreshment in hand, the visitors took chairs. Polly wondered if it would be appropriate for her to finish her supper, still on the tray before the fire.

  Nick, seeing her speculative gaze fixed on the pigeon pie, couldn’t help chuckling. “I am certain no one will mind if you finish your supper, Polly.”

  “Indeed not, mistress. Desolated to have interrupted you,” boomed the major. “Shockin’ time to pay a call, I know, but we were passin’ the door and just thought to see if Nick was by his fireside. Pray forgive us.”

  Polly murmured some suitable response and wondered whether to resume her position on the floor. The only available seat was a stool by the table, away from the fire and the circle of visitors. Ladies probably did not sit on the floor when consuming pigeon pie, but it was quite clear to everyone from the tray’s present position that that was where she had been sitting. She glanced at Nick, who had relit his pipe and was seated in his chair watching her cogitations with huge amusement.

  He gave her a small nod, pointing to the floor at his feet. Relieved, she settled down, leaning naturally against his knees, and resumed her interrupted meal while the conversation went on over her head. It was clearly a familiar subject for the four men, she reflected, since they began talking with no preliminaries.

  “It seems inconceivable that the Commons will vote such a monstrous sum, even to finance a war,” commented Richard. “Two and half millions! It is quite unprecedented.”

  “Aye, but a commercial war with the Dutch could bring in rich booty,” replied Sir Peter. “Expectations are high, even though Admiral Allin’s attack on their merchant fleet at Cadiz was disappointing.”