“I can’t say a word until you tell me what you mean, Roger,” I said, yawning. “ ‘Have you heard this, have you heard this!’ You might as well be the watch, roaring out the hour.”
“It’s your old acquaintance Chesterfield,” he said, tipping the paper toward the window to read. “He can never keep his name clear of speculation and gossip, can he?”
That made me sit upright. “What has happened to him?” I demanded anxiously. “Is he hurt? Have they harmed him in the Tower?”
“Oh, no, nothing of that kind.” Roger was clearly enjoying tormenting me this way, even as he scowled down at the paper with righteous disapproval. “Chesterfield’s long since been released from the Tower, anyway.”
“He has? When? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
His glance was as cold as the snow on the sill of the windows. “Because it’s not seemly for you to know of that gentleman’s activities, Barbara, much less to care.”
“But you can’t just tell me half, Roger,” I cried. “That’s barbarously unfair of you.”
He gave a great heaving sigh, as if this were the hardest demand ever put upon him. “Very well. Because there are so many others crowded into the Tower these days, the courts released Chesterfield on his own surety. He had to pledge ten thousand pounds and swear that he’d not engage in further treasonous activities.”
“At least he’s free,” I said with no small relief. “It’s very hard for him to be locked away like some vile criminal.”
Despite Roger’s best efforts to stay stern as a judge, he couldn’t help but smirk. “But you see, that’s exactly what he’s become. He’s wanted for murder.”
“Murder?” I repeated, shocked afresh. “Philip a murderer?”
“Oh, come, Barbara, you know the man far better than that. He’d scarce given his pledge before he’d found trouble again. He challenged some poor young fellow—a Francis Wooley, it says here—to a duel over the sale of a horse. They met at dawn in some field in Kensington.”
But I knew exactly which field, behind the house of a certain tolerant Mr. Colby, who accepted a few coins from Philip in exchange for taking no notice of dueling on his land. Oh, I knew: just as I knew how Philip could no more refuse a chance to clash swords on a misty dawn morning than he could turn his cheek away from the kiss of a pretty lady. I’d long ago lost count of the number of challenges he’d fought, just as I had of his dalliances.
“And Philip killed the other man?” I asked, sickened, though I already knew the answer.
“He did,” Roger said with inappropriate relish. “This Wooley was an inexperienced, pious young gentleman, no match at all for a practiced duelist. Chesterfield wounded him first in the hand, then took further advantage to run his blade clean through Wooley’s heart. Wooley’s father—a reverend doctor and a court preacher, mind you, and the old king’s chaplain as well—was stricken to discover his son’s body facedown in the grass, his prayer book still in the pocket of his coat.”
“And Philip?” I asked faintly.
“Fled to France, they say, as good as banished,” Roger said. “If he sets foot once again on English soil, Reverend Dr. Wooley has vowed to have him seized, tried, and hanged for murder. Chesterfield’s ruined now. Not even his connections to the king will be able to gain him a pardon, not given those circumstances. Besides, you know how the king hates dueling.”
“Such a waste,” I murmured unhappily. “Such a waste of a life.”
“I’ll choose to believe you’re lamenting young Wooley, Barbara, and not His Lordship.” He tossed the newssheet and it fluttered onto the bed. “You can read it for yourself, if you please.”
Numbed by such grievous news, I stared at the paper and left it untouched, drawing the coverlet higher over my shoulders instead. “I see no reason to read it, no.”
“That’s the wisest thing you’ve said in months.” He began to leave, then paused at the door, as if the notion had only then struck him. “Have your maidservant pack your belongings, Barbara. So long as the river stays free of ice, we’ll return to London the day after tomorrow.”
He shut the door with a self-pleased thump, leaving me to sink down against the pillows. I closed my eyes, too stricken now even to weep. It is one thing to be a young fool in love, and quite another to be forgotten and left behind simply for being a young fool. There was no other way for me to consider this last careless action of Philip’s, and both my heart and my pride felt the pain of it. France would be full of beautiful, obliging ladies. I would soon enough be but a fading memory to Philip, if I wasn’t already.
At least my imprisonment at Dorney Court was done, and I’d finally return to London. There was some solace to be found in that, if in nothing else.
And though I’d no way of knowing it then, within the week my fortunes would shift again, and I’d soon embark on the single greatest adventure—and the most passionate love—of my life.
I was nineteen years old, and I was ready.
Philip’s hasty departure from England was not the only reason for Roger and me to return to London. A new election was pending to mark the dissolution of the much-despised Rump Parliament, and Roger was in the forefront of those toiling earnestly to secure a new Parliament favoring the king. He was even planning to run for a seat himself, representing the borough of New Windsor, near Dorney Court. To win such an election, he needed to become better known in political circles in London.
Thus, as soon as we’d settled back into our lodgings, we began to host a series of small gatherings in the evenings for gentlemen that Roger wished to impress, as well as their ladies on occasion. I won’t so much as call these evenings entertainments, as they were for the most part deadly dull, with solemn gentlemen in deep conversation with one another, while the few ladies only wished to speak of their children. We often served a cold supper for these hard talkers to nibble upon, a light collation of meats and fowl, and though we offered wine, too, no one ever dared drink to excess, or even to amusement. Like jockeys on a racecourse, they were jostling with one another to improve their place and rank for the ribbon at the finish, that glorious moment when Charles would return to power.
I tried my best to leaven these evenings with my own natural merriment, but to little avail, nor did Roger wish me to be too spirited. Somberness was the order of these days, and the evenings, too, and in small rebellion I began to call Roger Monsieur, after the French, because it vexed him so. And if I dallied once or thrice with old friends from my days with Philip, well, so be it. For the short time they took, I could feel wanted and forget my troubles in an amiable if fleeting embrace. I was lonely and forlorn, and such encounters meant little to me of lasting significance or value.
The best I could say about this time was that Roger loosened the strings on his purse and let me have a new blue quilted petticoat, and a French lace collar to freshen the neck of my best bodice. God knows this was little enough, and scarce worthy of a lady’s maid, let alone the Palais Royal, but still I presented a pleasing enough figure to make the somber gentlemen ogle me when they thought I wouldn’t notice.
Into one of these dull evenings came Sir Alan Broderick. I’d not seen him since Dorney Court, and welcomed him at the door as cousins should, with a kiss. This time his face was ruddy with the winter night, not drink, the skin of his cheek cold and tight beneath my lips and his breath frozen into a rim of frost along the edges of his gingery mustache.
“How good of you to join us, Sir Alan,” I said, making sure the servant took his cloak and hat. “Come by the fire where it’s warm. My husband will be glad to see you after so—”
“I’ve come to see you, madam, not your husband.” He looked past me into the front room, gauging who else might be within. “Is there some chamber where we might speak unheard?”
“Of course,” I said without hesitation, and led him into the small closet that I used for writing letters and reading. There was no fireplace—when I sat at the desk in the winter months, I often brough
t a tin box of coals to set beneath my feet, under my petticoat—and scarce room to turn about, but no one would think to disturb us here. I lit the candlesticks while he stamped and flapped his arms to warm himself, more like a stocky small horse than a man. I motioned for him to take the armchair, and sat myself on the small stool before the window.
“I’m glad I’ve found you home,” he said as he dropped heavily into the chair, his sword’s scabbard thumping against the carved wooden arm. “Do you recall when we last met, madam? When you offered to serve the king’s cause however you could?”
I nodded eagerly. “I do recall it, yes,” I said, “and my offer still stands, a hundred times over.”
“I am glad to hear it.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. “We need you at once, Mistress Palmer, as soon as you can be spared by your husband.”
Briskly I waved my hand, dismissing any objections that Roger would dare to have. “I give myself entirely over to you, Sir Alan, and I’m sure Monsieur will likewise agree.”
“Monsieur?” he asked uncertainly.
“My husband, Mr. Palmer,” I said, unable quite to keep the scorn from my voice. “It is a small endearment I keep for him.”
I caught the hint of hesitation in his expression, or perhaps it was only a trick of the shifting candlelight. “As you say, madam. His generosity and your bravery are to be much applauded.”
I clapped my hands together before my face. “There now. That’s all the applauding I require. Tell me the nature of my task, Sir Alan. Pray tell me at once.”
He smiled, pleased, I think, by my boldness. “I’ve a small number of letters of the most urgent variety that need to be taken to Brussels, and a parcel of specie as well.”
“To Brussels? To His Majesty?”
“Hush, hush, not so loudly, I beg you,” cautioned Sir Alan, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “But yes, to His Majesty, and to the lord chancellor.”
I sat back in my chair, stunned by such a fortunate opportunity. I would be able to leave this dull world of parliamentary politicking. I would instead have adventure and excitement such as I’d sorely missed.
I would finally be in the company of His Majesty King Charles II, and my thoughts flashed back once again to that first image I’d seen of him, the engraved portrait that likely still hung in my mother’s bedchamber.
But Sir Alan misread my anticipation. “Forgive me, Mistress Palmer,” he said, rising to rest a calming hand upon my arm. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t, Sir Alan, not at all,” I exclaimed, excitement making me breathless. “In truth, I cannot wait to leave, and begin—”
Without warning the door flew open, Roger’s hand still upon the latch. Clearly from the fierceness in his expression he’d intended to catch me in some manner of misadventure with a gentleman, and the swiftness with which he was forced to change that face when he realized it was Sir Alan almost made me laugh aloud.
“Good day, Palmer.” Sir Alan straightened, jerking his hand from my arm with the kind of haste that showed he’d felt guilt where no guilt was necessary. “I was just, ah, addressing your lady.”
How amusing that Sir Alan’s conscience should be so lacking in ease, while mine was completely at peace.
“Sir Alan has come with an urgent request, Roger,” I said. “He needs a courier to take letters and gold to His Majesty in Brussels, and he has asked me to go.”
“He has?” Roger asked uncertainly, his gaze shifting from Sir Alan to me and back again.
I smiled up at him as pleasingly as I could. “Sir Alan has honored me, yes. Of course I’m sure he would have asked you to go first, except that you’re far too occupied with the coming election.”
Sir Alan nodded vigorously. “I remembered that Mistress Palmer had offered last summer. We were at Dorney Court, and it was hot as blazes. You were there, too, Palmer. You had no objections then.”
Sir Alan still sounded like a boy who’d been caught filching meat pies from the cook, when all he’d done was touch my arm. Ah, what fools men can be!
“Quite true, Sir Alan. You do recall that, too, don’t you, Roger?” I prompted, coaxing his ruffled male plumage to smooth. “We all agreed that a lady wouldn’t be suspected, that I could pass more freely than any gentleman, and that because I’ve already had the smallpox, I’d not be at risk again from the outbreak in Brussels.”
“I recall,” Roger said slowly—too slowly for my tastes. I couldn’t bear it if he now forbid me outright to go, not when I was this close. It was not that I wouldn’t dare disobey him, for I had before, and would again. But if he refused to let me go, then Sir Alan would respect his wishes and find another courier.
“It’s for the sake of His Majesty, Roger,” I said, and finally played the trump card that he’d so often waved before me. “And recall, too, that I’ll be able to remind His Majesty directly of all the sacrifices that you and your family have made for the Royalist cause.”
He lowered his chin into the white linen wings of his collar and puffed out his cheeks, letting the air escape slowly through his lips. It was the face he always made when he was considering deeply, and one that reminded me of the Four Winds that are often drawn in the corner of maps and charts.
Finally he glanced back at Sir Alan. “Tell me, Sir Alan,” he said, “have you already arranged Mistress Palmer’s passage to Antwerp, or shall I?”
The next two days passed in a frenzy of preparation. I quizzed Sir Alan for as many details as he’d confide of the journey and the people I might meet while abroad. I spent little time in packing my belongings: I was only to stay in Brussels long enough to deliver my packages to the king and lord chancellor and then return home to London, and besides, I would do better not to be burdened with excessive trunks and traveling boxes.
Yet the bodice, jacket, and petticoat that I was to wear needed to be altered to conceal my contraband. We couldn’t turn to a tailor or seamstress, because no one beyond our small household could know of my plans. Instead my maidservant Wilson—who was accomplished with her needle, whilst I was not, neither by talent nor inclination—and I contrived a thin linen pocket between my stays and my smock for safekeeping the letters. Then Wilson opened the hems of my quilted petticoat and one by one stuffed inside the gold coins that Sir Alan had brought, taking care to keep them flat within the narrow quilted channels. She stitched the hems closed again with waxed linen thread for extra strength, for it would hardly do to have those stitches snap beneath the weight of the gold and scatter coins with every step I took. For the same reason, Wilson also added stouter tapes to tie the petticoat around my waist to help keep the skirts in place.
When she was finally done, the petticoat had become such a weighty garment that I hoped I’d not have to walk far while wearing it. I was glad that Wilson was traveling with me, not only for her companionship, but for her assistance in dressing in this formidable attire. As for what might happen if I were by accident to topple over the side of the boat carrying me across the Channel—ah, surely I’d plummet straight to the bottom of the sea and stay there, with only the fishes for company.
It was decided by Sir Alan that I’d not risk sailing directly from London, but would be met by a small boat on the coast that would carry me directly to Antwerp. Roger insisted upon taking me himself to this lonely beach near the mouth of the Thames, not far from South-end, giving us a long day’s ride in a hired coach for dismal conversation. Wilson, of course, rode outside beside the driver, and despite the foul weather, I envied her.
“No matter what happens, Barbara,” Roger said for what seemed like the hundredth time, “you must keep to the tale that Sir Alan’s fashioned for you. Your very life could depend upon it.”
I sighed, propping my feet upon the opposite seat beside Roger. The day had been cold and windy enough to rattle the coach’s windows, and though I’d refilled my foot warmer with fresh coals when we’d last stopped to change horses, the heat had long ago
faded away to nothingness.
“I should hate to think that my life depended upon that sorry concoction of Sir Alan’s,” I said as I crossed my ankles, the weight of the coins in my petticoats heavy across my shins. “I doubt that even the dullest port officiary would believe that long-winded blather.”
“Sir Alan has far more experience in these matters than do you, Barbara,” Roger said sternly. “The explanations he has provided for you to give if questioned make perfect sense to me.”
“But not to me,” I said, idly spinning my fur-lined muff around my wrists, “and I’m the one expected to say them. To pose as another lady whose husband’s too ill to travel as I must rush to Antwerp to attend my dying aunt—oh, pish, Roger, that’s far too complicated for anyone to believe. The best lies are always the most simple. Even you must realize that.”
“I don’t lie as a habit, Barbara, so no, I didn’t realize it,” he said, as tediously righteous as any Puritan preacher. “I believe that being prepared with good reasons if you’re stopped only makes reasonable sense.”
“Only to Monsieur,” I said rebelliously.
“Barbara, enough,” he said sharply. “You know how that displeases me.”
I sighed. “Very well, then. Such storytelling makes sense only to a man.”
I recrossed my ankles again so that my skirts slipped farther up my legs, and lightly prodded my husband’s thigh with the toe of my shoe, the better to make my point. “The truth is, Roger, that for a young woman, reasonable beauty always trumps reasonable sense. So long as I go about my journey as if I’ve every right to be wherever I am, no guard, watchman, or soldier will question me, except to prolong the chance to have my attention to himself.”
Roger grunted, not really conceding, and looked down at my foot resting against his leg. “Are you wearing scarlet stockings?”
“Yes,” I said. “They caught my eye at the mercer’s last week. They’re very merry, aren’t they?”
From the look on his face, I knew I’d won my argument, though I was clever enough not to gloat. I pointed my toe and made little circles in the air to better display not only my red thread stockings but also the plump yellow ribbon rosettes I’d added over the tongues of my shoes. And if Roger—or any other gentleman—took notice of my ankles, too, well, wasn’t that the real reason for bright stockings and ribboned shoes?
Royal Harlot Page 10