Venus

by Jane Feather

  On a glorious morning at the end of June, thoughts and images of a plague-ridden metropolis no longer sharply etched in mind and memory, Lord Kincaid and Mistress Wyat were riding through the fields skirting the park of Wilton House. Polly was atop a broad-backed piebald of sluggish disposition. Her own disposition left much to be desired.

  “I will not have my bridle held any longer!” Polly declared on a lamentably petulant note, plucking crossly at the leading rein, which her companion held loosely with his own. “You said you would teach me how to ride, not how to sit like a cabbage whilst you lead my horse.”

  “For as long as you sit like a cabbage, so shall I hold the leading rein,” Kincaid said equably, waiting for the explosion. It came with predictable force.

  “I do not sit like a cabbage—”

  “Your pardon, Polly,” he murmured. “I thought that was what I heard you say.”

  “You are detestable,” she said with feeling. “I can make this stupid animal go forward and left and right and stop. When will you allow me to do it alone?”

  “When I am satisfied that your seat is secure enough,” he responded coolly. “You do not wish to fall off, do you?”

  “I am not going to fall off,” Polly muttered. “It is so mortifying! There is to be a hawking expedition on the morrow, and I would wish to go. But I cannot when you lead me like a baby.”

  “’Tis your foolish pride that will prevent you,” Nick said, with a touch of acerbity. “There is no reason to be abashed simply because you were not bred to horsemanship from childhood. You will be a good horsewoman, I promise you. But for the moment you are learning, and I am teaching you. So do as you are bid and cease this shrewish railing, else I abandon the task.”

  Polly glowered at him from beneath the wide brim of her black beaver hat. “I do not need this leading rein. I will prove it to you.”

  “Indeed you shall,” Nick said soothingly. “By the end of the week, if we ride every day, you shall then show me exactly what you can do on your own.”

  Polly compressed her lips. She had no intention of waiting until the end of the week, and she had every intention of joining the hawking expedition on the morrow—without another hand on her bridle.

  They turned onto a broad ride running among majestic oaks, chestnuts, and copper beeches; the sun filtered through the leaves, dappling the mossy ground beneath the horses’ hooves with dancing will-o’-the-wisps. The sound of voices drifted through the sultry air along the path ahead.

  Polly pulled back on the piebald’s reins; the stolid animal came to a puzzled halt, tensing his neck against the contrary tug of the leading rein.

  “Now what is the matter?” Nick drew rein.

  “Can you not hear the voices? ’Tis Lady Castlemaine and Buckingham,” Polly whispered, trying to turn her mount, who became thoroughly confused by the conflicting instructions he was receiving from leading rein and bridle. “They are coming this way, and I will not be seen by them like this.” She tugged again at the rein Kincaid held. “Lady Castlemaine never loses an opportunity to say something belittling, and I’ll not put the weapon in her hand … Move, you stubborn, stupid animal!” Frantically, she urged the piebald to turn. Nick, grinning, provided the necessary encouragement with his own rein.

  “Perhaps we had better try a canter,” he said, still grinning, “If you’ve a mind to outdistance them.” He set his own mount to a trot, and Polly’s piebald reluctantly increased his speed. Nick did not ride his powerful chestnut during these hours of instruction, since Sulayman would have difficulty keeping his pace to the plodding of the animal his lordship had chosen for Polly, but even the calm mare he was riding today, once she got into her stride, threatened to outstrip the piebald lumbering into a reluctant canter on the mare’s flank.

  They broke through the trees into the open fields again. “Can we stop now?” Nick called over his shoulder, throwing her a teasing, glinting smile. “Have we removed ourselves far enough from the danger of mockery, or should we attempt a gallop?”

  “’Tis not funny,” Polly expostulated, bouncing in the saddle as her horse slowed abruptly, throwing up his head with a disgusted snort. “She would regale everyone this evening with the story, and I cannot abide the snickers.” Her voice automatically took on the exact inflections of Lady Castlemaine’s. “Why, my dear Mistress Wyat, how I admire your courage to take up horsemanship in this way.” A trill, in perfect imitation of the countess, accompanied the statement, as she continued in the same voice, “I am too full of conceit, I fear, to expose myself by attempting to learn something in the company of those who cannot imagine what it would be like to be a novice. One is so inelegant, initially—”

  “That’ll do, Polly,” Nick interrupted, although he was laughing. “Why should you imagine that people will mock you?”

  “Have you not noticed, sir, how the female court follows where the countess leads in such matters?” Polly asked with asperity. “For some reason, ever since I arrived here, it has pleased my lady to make game of me when she can. I do not understand what I could have done to offend her.”

  Nick looked curiously at his companion. Had she really no understanding of the nature and workings of feminine jealousy? Surely she had to realize that a woman who commanded the admiration, bordering in some cases on besottedness, of practically every man who crossed her path was going to fall foul of her own sex. The Countess of Castlemaine was not alone in fearing that in these close quarters the beautiful young actor would attract the more than friendly eye of the king. At the moment, King Charles treated this young female member of his theatre company with an easy familiarity, akin to that shown her by Killigrew and De Winter. She responded with the natural unselfconsciousness that she exhibited to those others, and it was not hard to see that the king, accustomed to the flatterers and the overawed, was pleased with her, and found her company amusing. But Nicholas had the shrewd suspicion that it would go no further than that. King Charles was far too busy juggling the competing claims of Frances Stewart and Lady Castlemaine to add to his seraglio one who would infuriate them both.

  “The men do not make game of you,” Nicholas said now, watching her. “Perhaps therein lies your answer.”

  Polly frowned. “Lady Castlemaine could not possibly be jealous of me. She is the wife of an earl and the king’s mistress, while I am nothing. True, she does not know exactly how much of nothing I am, but unless she wished to be your mistress also, I cannot imagine why she should be envious.” She offered him that mischievous, heart-stopping smile, and chuckled. “Of course, I could hardly blame her for wishing such a thing. You are a great deal more handsome than either the king or the Earl of Castlemaine. But I should tell you that I will not permit it. Should you succumb to blandishment, sir, you will take damaged goods to another’s bed.”

  “Why, you ferocious shrew!” exclaimed Nicholas. “I had not thought you bloodthirsty!”

  “Merely careful of mine own, my lord,” she said sweetly. Then the laughter died from her eyes. “Methinks His Grace of Buckingham follows my Lady Castlemaine’s lead. Since he arrived from his country estate two days ago, he has had barely a word for me, civil or otherwise. I have done as you said and behaved as if that last meeting had not occurred, but he has not forgotten it. I know it.” She shivered in the warm summer air. “Have you marked the way he looks at me sometimes?”

  Nicholas had, indeed, noticed the covert and still covetous gaze of His Grace resting upon Mistress Wyat, and it had certainly occurred to him that Buckingham had possibly not left the field. However, he could see no immediate cause for alarm. “I cannot imagine what he could do to harm you here,” he said. “There are too many eyes upon him. Nay, he will have forgotten his annoyance by the autumn, FU lay odds, if you continue to treat him with a purely social courtesy. He will find other fish to fry.”

  Polly shrugged in apparent acceptance of this reassurance. But she could not feel completely easy. Nick had arrived just over a week ago, and until Buckingham
’s appearance, this country sojourn had proved delightful, apart from the needling of the king’s mistress and her ilk, and Nick’s infuriating intransigence over the matter of the leading rein. There was a constant round of entertainments—masques and dances, tennis matches, hunting and hawking—and she found herself taking inordinate pleasure in them all. Master Killigrew would occasionally put on an impromptu play for His Majesty’s entertainment; then Polly was required to earn her place at court, but she did not find the earning at all arduous; much less so than on the stage at Drury Lane. And Nick, for all that he treated her with fashionable casualness when they were in public, never forwent an opportunity to be alone with her, as now.

  While at night … Well, Polly smiled to herself. What went on behind the closed door of his bedchamber in the west wing of the house was no one’s concern but theirs. If his lordship’s man found Mistress Wyat tucked up in his lordship’s bed of a morning, he was too discreet and well trained to betray a flicker of surprise. Polly secretly thought it ridiculous that she was obliged to keep pretense of using her own apartment, keeping her clothes in there, performing her toilet in absurd privacy. It seemed a most profligate waste of space, she felt, to have two rooms when only one was necessary. But such thrifty and practical considerations were bred in the crowded city slums, not in the lofty mansions of the rich.

  Kincaid, although he accepted the Earl of Pembroke’s hospitality at Wilton House, stabled his horses at an inn in the village, seeing no reason why they should be a charge upon his host, who was already put to great expense by the king’s gracing him with his presence.

  Polly was glad of this arrangement, since it ensured that the mortification of her riding instruction was kept between themselves and the stable lads at the inn. At her insistence, they rode off the beaten track, where encounters like the one they had just narrowly avoided would be unlikely. However, as they clattered into the stable yard at the inn and she accepted Kincaid’s hand to dismount, she was firmly resolved that she had had her last ride in that manner. The piebald seemed as happy to be rid of her as she was to be of him, clopping off to his stable with the relieved air of one who had performed a tedious duty and could now look forward to his reward.

  Polly strolled casually over to the stable block, her long, extravagantly pleated riding skirt caught up over one arm. Outside one box, she stopped, peering into the gloomy interior, where a fly buzzed monotonously, and the rich aroma of horseflesh, hay, and manure filled her nostrils. The inhabitant of the box came over to the door at an inviting click. “Good morrow, Tiny,” Polly murmured, stroking the dainty creature’s velvety nose, reaching ’round to run her hand over the sinewy neck, which arched in pleasure as the mare whickered and nuzzled into her palm. “I did not bring anything this day,” Polly apologized. “But tomorrow I will.”

  “You commune with that animal as if she were possessed of tongues,” Nick said, a laugh in his voice as he came up behind her.

  “So she is, of her own kind,” Polly returned serenely. “We understand each other, do we not, Tiny?”

  The mare rolled thick, pink lips against her hand in answer and pawed her stable floor, liquid brown eyes glowing. “See?” said Polly. “How could she be clearer?”

  “With difficulty.” Nick smiled, reaching in to stroke the horse. “Next to Sulayman, she is my favorite.”

  “May I ride her?” Polly asked directly, shooting him a sideways glance.

  Nicholas nodded immediately. “She will suit you very well when you are able to handle her. But she is a spirited filly. It will take an experienced pair of light hands to achieve mastery. Her mouth is too delicate for a curb, and her spirit will not take kindly to the whip.”

  “And you think my hands are sufficiently light?”

  “If you will but listen to your instructor, and do as you are bid, they will be so,” he teased, twining around his finger a stray curl that had escaped her hat.

  “I think you are overcautious, my lord,” Polly declared.

  “Impossible, when you consider what it is over which I exercise such caution,” he answered solemnly, although his eyes glinted with humor. “I would not have a bruise mar that ivory skin.”

  “I am not unaccustomed to bruises,” Polly pointed out.

  “But not with me,” he said, the gravity now genuine.

  Polly inclined her head in smiling acceptance. “Nay, not with you. But I meant only that I am not so delicate that a tumble will spell disaster. If I am prepared to risk it, why are you not?”

  “Because I am not.” The pronouncement effectively closing the discussion, Nicholas turned to leave. “Do you return to the house with me, or will you stay and commune further with Tiny?”

  “There is no need to be vexed.” Polly walked beside him across the yard, out into the main street of the little village clustering at the gate of Wilton park.

  “I have told you before that my patience is not inexhaustible. You are persistent as a wasp at the honeycomb.”

  “Then I will cease my buzzing,” Polly declared cheerfully. “Shall you dress up for the masquerade tonight? I have it in mind to play a May Day milkmaid, with petticoats all tucked up and curls atumble. Think you t’will be pretty?”

  Nicholas felt a flash of suspicion at this instant docility. He looked down at her, saw only the wide hazel eyes full of ingenuous question, her lips parted in a soft smile. He dismissed the suspicion as unworthy. Polly always capitulated with grace. “I can think of few costumes more delightful, moppet; particularly on you. But then, it matters little what you wear, as well you know. You enchant, regardless; hence my Lady Castlemaine’s distemper.”

  “Well, I am determined not to allow her to trouble me anymore,” Polly said, reaching up to adjust the starched folds of her cravat. “If the ladies will not talk with me, then I shall devote my attention to the gentlemen with good conscience. Mayhap His Grace of Buckingham will accord me more than a cold nod.” Brave words, she thought, but she must try to overcome these surely fanciful fears that every time she felt the duke’s eyes upon her, he was contemplating the price that he had promised to find.

  She was as good as her word that evening. Sue had entered with enthusiasm into the idea of a May Day milkmaid, and the two girls spent the afternoon adapting a daintily flowered cambric petticoat that Polly would wear over her smock, without gown or kirtle. The gardens yielded pinks, marigolds, and daisies, which Susan’s nimble fingers entwined in the loose ringlets tumbling about the milkmaid’s shoulders.

  “’Tis not a costume one would wear gladly in winter,” Polly said with a chuckle, surveying herself in the glass. “I must go barefoot if I’m to play the part with accuracy.”

  “You would go barefoot before the king?” Sue, in the process of pinning up the skirt of the petticoat to reveal the shapely curve of calf and the neat turn of ankle, looked up, stunned at the idea of such brazen immodesty.

  “I hardly think it is any the more indecent than appearing before the king in smock and petticoat,” Polly said tranquilly, adjusting the neck of her smock with a critical frown. “Besides, His Majesty is hardly unfamiliar with the female form in various states of undress.”

  Sue giggled, in spite of her shocked disapproval at this irreverence. “Lor’, Polly, ye shouldn’t say such things.”

  “’Tis but the truth,” her companion returned unarguably. “I am going to my lord’s apartments to show myself before appearing below. If there is anything amiss, he will tell me so.”

  Her chamber, while it was smaller and less luxuriously appointed than Kincaid’s, as befitted the anomalous position in the court hierarchy of an accredited mistress with no husband’s status to define her own, adjoined his lordship’s. Polly had exclaimed at this convenience, until Kincaid had pointed out dryly that the Earl of Pembroke’s steward would be apprised of all relevant facts appertaining to his master’s guests, and would make disposition accordingly. Such tactful dispsition had converted a dressing room to Polly’s bedchamber, enabling h
er to enter Kincaid’s apartments through the connecting door. She did so now, with no more than a light tap to herald her arrival.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, sir. I did not realize you had a visitor. Shall I come back later?” She smiled at De Winter, resplendent in crimson satin embroidered with turquoise peacocks, sitting by the window sipping a glass of canary.

  Nicholas, engaged in inserting a diamond pin in the heavy fall of lace at his throat, said easily, “Not a bit of it, sweetheart. We talk no secrets.” He turned to examine her, and a smile spread slowly across his face. “What a bewitching jade you are. What think you, Richard?”

  “That the knives will be sharpened to a fine keenness,” De Winter said with open amusement. “You have courage, I will say that for you, Polly. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst your fair rivals when you appear in such fashion.”

  “Well, I do not care for that,” Polly declared stoutly. “If I were to put ashes in my hair and clothe myself in sackcloth, it would not alter Lady Castlemaine’s disposition toward me, so why should I care?”

  “Why indeed,” Richard agreed easily. “’Tis such an ingeniously simple costume.” He laughed in rich enjoyment. “I’ll lay odds ’tis that that’ll cause the most grief. Imagine how galling to have spent hours and fortunes and positive buckets of paint and mountains of powder, only to be outdone by a milkmaid in petticoat, smock, and a few flowers.”

  “If you are not to wear shoes, you had best have a care where you put your feet,” Nick said, rising and smoothing down his coat. “And what have you to say about mine own dress, mistress?” He cocked an eyebrow at her, turning slowly for her inspection.