Yet still he guessed, either from tenderness for me or more likely from experience with all the other maids he’d undone.
“The worst is over, I vow,” he said, huffing and puffing as if he’d just run a league uphill. “Now look, Barbara. Look, and see what you’ve done to me.”
Slowly I opened my eyes. Driven by the same curiosity that had brought me this far, I slipped my hand between us to touch the place we were joined. I was soft and slick where I stretched around him, while he was hard, and sticky with my juices, in the most wondrous contrast imaginable. Pleasure shot through me as I touched myself, taking me so by surprise that I gasped and rose up with it, twisting like a cat.
“Ah, there, there, you hot little jade,” Philip said, gasping as well. “I knew you were born for this.”
And so, it would seem, I was. Whether from my own inclinations or because of my wanton Villiers blood, I found my rapture that first time with Philip, and ever after. With the destruction of my maiden’s gate, any shred of reserve vanished, and my wanton desires spilled out in a feverish rush. The more times I lay with him, the more I craved. I was delighted with my new knowledge, and why not? I now had a lover, a handsome, daring gentleman for my first prize, and to me that was worth a dozen virginities.
I likewise displayed a gift for the more adventurous amatory arts. Philip—for since I shared his bed, he now granted me leave to call him by his Christian name—meant it as a shining compliment, which I accepted as readily as the lessons he took care to teach me. In addition to instructing me in how best to please him, he showed me how to please myself as well, a skill few ladies ever do acquire. He showed me lewd books, Aretino’s Postures and L’escholle des Filles, and explained the use of lovers’ toys, like false phalluses that he’d bought in his travels in France and Italy. He taught me other practical things useful to a budding female libertine, too, such as to drink deeply of wine before I retired with my lover, so that I’d be sure to make a freshet of water in the chamber pot immediately afterward, and thereby safely purge myself of his seed. He also taught me the French pleasure, by which I took him in my mouth, and safely spat away his essences afterward.
Thus many ingenious hours were stolen and passed in this fashion, from that year into the next. I relished Philip’s company, and that of his friends as well, enjoying a leading role in their merry, wine-laden escapades. Scandal floated about me like a fine-wrought veil, enhancing without touching me. If my name was now often included among those gentlemen and ladies infamous for their exceeding wildness, I did not care. My wantonness only served to burnish my beauty further, and while I was content with one serious lover, so many other gentlemen clamored for my attentions as well that I did on occasion indulge with them. Philip pretended not to notice, nor did I think he really cared, as we were all cut from the same bolt of promiscuous cloth at that time. To my considerable amazement, my mother neither heard nor suspected any of this, or perhaps simply preferred not to. Thus I soon achieved my sixteenth birthday, as pleased with myself as any lady of that tender age ever born.
But being pleased, like pleasure itself, is a fleeting state, and before long the clouds of discord did gather around my love for Philip. While I was mostly constant to him, he would not so much as pretend faithfulness. He claimed it was man’s base nature to prefer variety, and made no apologies. His name was tied with other ladies, low and high, as well as with servants, milliners’ girls, and the penny-slatterns who let themselves be worked each night against the walls in Drury Lane.
I could not contain my jealousy, and both railed and wept my bitterness to him, even though I feared such scenes would do more to drive him from me than otherwise. I labored hard to contrive new fancies and games to amuse him and keep his love.
And in the summer of 1657, it was one such contrivance for Philip’s beguilement that did change my life, and send me on another path, from which there’d be neither recourse nor return.
Chapter Two
BISHOPSGATE, LONDON
July 1 6 5 7
The afternoon sun was warm, and Anne and I had thrown open the windows of her bedchamber to catch whatever breeze might waft past. Fat bumblebees drifted in and out, determined to taste the nectar of the blossoms—sweet William and gillyflowers—that Anne kept in pots on her sill to remind her of her family’s confiscated home and gardens in Scotland. The scent of the flowers was honey-sweet and heady with the warmth of the sun upon them, and the drone of bees made the afternoon drowsy and languid.
Because of the warmth, and to be more at our ease, Anne and I had shed all our clothes save our cambric smocks, the fine linen our only vestige of modesty as we lay tumbled beside one another on her rumpled bedsheets. It was too hot to bother with more between such dear friends as we, and our conversation was not inclined to cool our passions, either.
“You let him love you in a boat upon the river?” Anne squealed at the thought. “Didn’t the waterman take notice?”
I shrugged, my shoulder bare where my smock had slipped, and sipped the sweetened lemon-water from my tumbler. “What should I care if he did? It was dark, far past midnight, and the light from the boat’s fore lantern wasn’t much. Besides, I’d taken care to spread my skirts over my thighs as I sat astride Philip, so there was little enough to view, save the delight in dear Philip’s face as I rode him to the rhythm of the waves around us.”
“Oh, Barbara, how wicked of you.” Anne laughed, and with both hands smoothed her unbound hair behind her ears, her way, I knew, of hiding her excitement. She’d had a lover or two and shed her own virgin-skin, though no gentlemen had lasted in her favor. Because her own adventures had been so pallid thus far, she did enjoy to hear me speak frankly of my own.
“But tell me, dear,” she continued now, “what would you have done if you’d capsized the boat?”
“What would we have done?” Absently I poked my finger at the lemon slices in my tumbler, making them bob and dance much as we’d done to the small hired boat. “Why, I would venture that Philip would have had to float and swim upon his back, while I rode upon him, until we reached the shore.”
“Or until you spent, and sank, done in by the waves of your passion.” She giggled and clapped her hands together, imagining the scene, I suppose, and applauding our inventiveness. “Oh, Barbara, how you will oblige His Lordship’s every letch!”
I leaned close, as if to confess a great secret, and lowered my voice. “It wasn’t his letch to have me in the boat, Anne,” I whispered with mock solemnity. “ ’Twas mine.”
Anne bubbled over with laughter and flopped back against the piled bolsters, her bare freckled legs sprawled before her.
“You are so fortunate,” she said with a sigh of longing, hugging her arms beneath her breasts. “To have a lover like His Lordship who is so willing to play at amusement.”
I twisted around to gaze upon her. She was a lovely lady, there in the sunlight, and I couldn’t help but think of how Philip himself would have delighted in such an intimate view of my dearest friend.
“He’s a most agreeable gentleman, you know,” I said, thinking.
“To you, he is,” she said with a sigh that rippled through her rounded breasts, scarce covered by fine linen and the long locks of her golden hair.
“He’d be so to you, too, if you weren’t so shy around him.” I sat up, cross-legged on the bed, and from my tumbler plucked a lemon slice, now dripping sweet. “He finds you charming, you know.”
“He does?” She propped her head upon her arm. “He’s said that to you?”
“Oh, often.” I took the lemon slice and trailed it lightly along my friend’s bare calf, leaving a sugary trail along her skin from her ankle to her plump, rosy knee. “Does that tickle?”
“Not at all,” she said, going very still as she watched me. “Then why hasn’t he ever said so to me?”
“Because he knows you’re my friend and would not wish to come between us.” On a whim, I bent and ran my tongue along the glistening tra
il, tasting the sugar and the lemon and Anne’s skin before I looked back up at her. “Of course, if you joined me one day, then that would be different.”
“Joined you?” Anne asked, though I knew she understood. “You and His Lordship?”
I nodded. “You could come with me when I visit him in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or we could arrange another place. That is, if you wished to.”
Her eyes widened. “Have you ever done that with him before?” she asked. “Invited another lady, that is?”
“Not another lady, no,” I said, and wrinkled my nose to show my distaste. “Philip did suggest an acquaintance of his, a lowborn, common woman, and I refused, fearing she’d be poxed. But with you to share, it would be . . . wondrous.”
I saw the desire in her eyes, the green color shading darker. “You would share His Lordship with me?”
“I would,” I said, and slipped the lemon slice into my mouth, tart and sweet upon my tongue. “Dear Anne! How much I’d like to watch him take you, too, and fetch you with the greatest joy imaginable.”
“Then let us do it,” Anne said, giggling with anticipation. She rolled from the bed and scurried barefoot across the floor to her writing desk, and set a fresh sheet of paper beneath her pen. “We must invite him properly, Barbara. Tell me the words, and I’ll write them down.”
“Oh, yes, that’s very true,” I said eagerly. “He says there’s nothing that heightens pleasure like honest anticipation.”
“Then we must tempt him, Barbara, tempt him royally.” Inspired, Anne dipped her pen into the pot of ink. “How should we begin?”
“Let me consider,” I said, thinking what would intrigue Philip the most. “Write this, Anne: ‘My friend and I are just now abed together a-contriving how to have your company tomorrow afternoon.’ ”
“Perfection,” Anne said, her pen scratching swiftly over the page. “Gentlemen do love to picture ladies abed, as if we never do repair there every night to sleep.”
“No ladies sleep in Philip’s bed,” I said archly. “Here, write this next. ‘If you deserve this favor, then you will come and seek us at Ludgate Hill about three o’clock at Butler’s shop, where we will expect you.’ Mr. Butler won’t mind if we linger there a bit, and we can make our plans forward from there.”
“No one will suspect us, either,” Anne said. “We’ll look thoroughly innocent.”
“Hah, so long as they never know,” I said, laughing. “Now, here’s the last bit, to tease him. ‘But lest we should give you too much satisfaction at once, we will say no more. Expect the rest when you see—’ ”
“See what?” Anne asked, swinging her legs in the chair.
“Why, us, of course,” I said, and grinned, delighted with the notion of pleasing both my friend and my lover. “We’ll sign our names there, to tempt him more. Barbara Villiers and Lady Anne Hamilton. Hurry now, and we can send it directly by one of your servants. And if that won’t tempt and please Philip, then nothing will.”
Such a wonderful plan did keep me awake all that night. How could it not?
But when I arrived at the Duchess of Hamilton’s house the following afternoon to collect Anne, as we’d agreed, I was shown not to my friend’s chamber, as was usual, but to the front room. There in a black oak chair sat Anne’s mother, Her Grace, the most fearsome Dowager Duchess of Hamilton, a Gorgon waiting more to waylay me than to offer any hospitable greeting. She curled one hand like a griffin’s claw around the head of an ebony walking stick, and her gown, though of the first quality, was in the style of twenty years before. Her graying hair was likewise curled after the fashion of Henrietta Marie, the dead king’s queen, and her mouth set with immovable loathing against me.
“Miss Villiers,” she said as soon as I’d made my greeting. “It is my duty to tell you that you are no longer welcome in this house.”
I’d no answer to this, and so tried to begin afresh. “Please, Your Grace, if Lady Anne—”
“My daughter the Lady Anne is no longer in residence here, Miss Villiers,” she said, clipping her words with the northern accent that Anne had relentlessly worked to forget. “She has gone to Windsor, with no plans to return to London.”
I couldn’t keep from frowning at this; Anne had said nothing to me of going to Windsor. “You surprise me, Your Grace,” I said. “Lady Anne and I had arrangements together for this day, and I—”
“Oh, I know of your debauched arrangements, miss,” the duchess said, fair spitting at me like an angry old cat. “The footman my daughter entrusted with that foul missive recalled that he is employed by me, not her, and rightly brought it to me instead.”
I gasped with dismay, and forced my wits to scramble in retreat. “But that letter was never intended for your eyes, Your Grace. It was a thing of sport, a fantastical creation meant only for our amusement and nothing more, and I—”
“Silence!” The duchess struck her ebony walking stick against the floor to quiet me. “It was a despicable letter of assignation, Miss Villiers, in which you contrived to deliver my daughter into the hands of your pimp.”
“Lord Chesterfield is no pimp, Your Grace, nor—”
“He is your pimp, Miss Villiers,” the duchess repeated succinctly, “just as you are his whore. Good day, Miss Villiers, and rest assured that this door will never be opened to you again.”
I parted my lips to protest, and she stopped me short again, shaking her walking stick like a bludgeon toward me. “Go, Miss Villiers, away with you, before I have the footmen turn you out in the street like the vilest whore that you are.”
Seeing no reason for lingering, I departed in sorrow for my mother’s house. I was sick over the loss of my dear friend, for having Anne banished to Windsor made her as remote and unapproachable to me as if she’d been sent to a prison in Rome. Moreover, I’d much anticipated our dalliance with Philip, now never to occur, and the praise I’d receive from him for the novelty. It seemed most unkind to me that Anne should be made to suffer so grievously for the simple misfortune of being my friend and Philip’s acquaintance.
But while I’d been happy to avoid Her Grace’s walking stick, my welcome at home was no less menacing. I’d but stepped into the hall when my own lady mother confronted me with a poker from the hearth in her hand, brandishing it over her head while sparks fair flew from her eyes at the sight of me.
“You shame me, daughter, how you shame me!” She shoved me into the parlor, closing the door after us so the servants would not hear. “I’ve just this hour had word from the Duchess of Hamilton of the filthy tricks you tried to play with her daughter.”
“The letter was meant as a jest, madam,” I said, trying my tactic with a different foe. “It was never intended for other eyes than our own.”
“Surely you take me for a pretty fool, Barbara, if you think I should believe that rubbish.” She tossed the poker clattering beside the hearth with obvious disgust. “I have tried to look away, and hoped that your untrammeled behavior would in time settle itself. I prayed that some decent gentleman would offer for your hand, and make you his wife, and guide you safely through these troubled times of ours. But now you have openly ruined yourself and your prospects with a wastrel like Chesterfield, and I can neither hope nor pray any longer. And with Chesterfield, Barbara! Chesterfield, bah.”
“He’s the Earl of Chesterfield!”
“He’s a libertine, a drunkard, a gambler, and a duelist,” she continued in relentless litany. “He’ll never marry you.”
“He loves me!”
“Chesterfield loves no one but his own pleasures,” she said scornfully. “One day His Majesty will return to claim his throne, and where will you be when he does? Will you be ready to take your place as a jewel in his court, a respected lady, or will you be no more than a pox-riddled slattern, of use to no one?”
“Her Grace cursed me as a whore, too,” I said, my voice rising to match hers. “Yet you would bid me do the same, to barter my body to a man for the sake of a fortune. At least I have ple
ased myself with His Lordship’s company, which is far more than I could ever do with the sorry males you would thrust upon me!”
She regarded me so coldly that, even in my temper, I feared she might turn me out-of-doors forever. “You’re not a whore, Barbara, for a good whore would demand fair payment for what you give for free.”
I tried to answer her heartlessness with a stony look of my own, my hands squared upon my hips. “Do you speak from experience, madam? Is that why you settled upon my uncle, that he gave fair payment for what little comfort you could offer him?”
She struck me hard across my cheek with the flat of her hand, so hard that I saw wheeling stars before my eyes, and her furious face did seem to spin before me. But I didn’t stumble, or cry out, no matter that the tears smarted behind my lids. I would not give her that satisfaction.
“Because you are my daughter, I’ll not treat you as you deserve,” she said, her breath coming in rapid puffs of rage. “Because you are your father’s dear child, I will give you another chance to save yourself, and your Christian soul. But, Barbara, I vow by all that’s sacred, if you continue in this manner your life will be marked with nothing but wildness and infamy.”
I knew better than to answer her and have my ears boxed for my trouble, but in my heart I countered her boldly. Somehow, I vowed, I would find my place on the world’s bright stage. I would have love, and pleasure, and have all the pretty baubles of wealth and position: a house grander than hers, a richer title, jewels and gowns and carriages.
Such a prediction from her, and such a promise to myself: and yet how strange to think that, in time, both would come true.
I never learned if that thwarted frolic disappointed Philip (for of course I told him of it, fool that I was) so much that he drew back from me, or if, more likely, he acted simply in the pattern of such gentlemen and his fading interest with me was as natural to him as the changing of the seasons. For though I tried every amorous fancy I knew to keep him bound to me, his letters and poesies became less frequent, and worse, he began to invent a score of petty reasons for us not to meet.
Royal Harlot Page 4