Royal Harlot

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Quite naturally, such unpleasantness put the king in the foulest of humors, his customary good nature turning dark and disgruntled. The pleasure he’d had in his birthday celebration—and in the picture I’d given him—was soon forgotten. He resented Parliament’s refusal, and he rankled at how Clarendon continued to treat him like an overbearing governor treats an obstreperous pupil. Not even I could coax him from his unhappiness, and the summer stretched before us as long indeed.

  Worse was to come, as it always seems to do. My Wilson, that most excellent spy, was the first to alert me of the whispers around the court. A group of gentlemen, led by my own duplicitous cousin Buckingham, had decided upon a plan to cheer the king and likewise promote their own causes. They’d plotted to replace me in the king’s bed with a more malleable candidate of their own, the luscious Frances Stuart.

  As can be imagined, I railed soundly against the ungrateful scoundrels who’d schemed against me in such a fashion. I could scarce believe that these gentlemen whose acquaintance I’d fostered would toss me over with such ease, or that they believed the king would show so little loyalty or regard toward me, especially now that I was once again swollen with his child.

  But soon my temper cooled, and I began to plan my defense. I’d no intention of stepping quietly aside and relinquishing my power to another. Instead I would show the court my resolve as well as my cunning as I dealt with this sponsored rival, and prove I’d still a place not only in Charles’s bed but in his life, and his heart.

  It was a gamble, yes, but in this game I knew I held all the winning cards.

  I watched the house of cards grow and grow, each layer of the triangular tower built at the risk of toppling all those beneath it to the floor of my parlor.

  “If you add another, my dear,” I said, “then it’s sure to fall beneath its own weight.”

  “No, no, it won’t,” said Frances Stuart in a breathless whisper, afraid to scatter her precious tower by a breath of her own wind. “I’ve done this endless times, my lady, and I know just how to place the cards.”

  “Indeed,” I murmured, thoroughly bored. I’d cultivated Frances all this summer, and the girl was so simpleminded that it had been easy enough to win her trust. Several times I’d even had her company in my bed—a not uncommon diversion among those of us at court who occasionally wearied of gentlemen—where she’d shown a placid aptitude for such games.

  The real trial for me was determining how to survive the tedium of Frances’s confidence once it was mine. Even I had to admit that she was as pretty a girl as had ever come to court, with her golden blond hair, straight dark brows, and tiny bud of a mouth, and having been raised at the French court, she had a rare gift for dressing herself handsomely.

  But in her manner she was more like a child of ten than a maid of honor of fifteen. Her attempts at conversation were full of pointless exclamations and other foolishness, and she delighted in conjurers’ tricks and card houses like this one. It was most telling that the gentleman whose company she best enjoyed was Monmouth, simply because he could walk on his hands like a juggler to amuse her.

  Yet there was no doubt that Charles was infatuated with her empty-headed self. He would treat her like a doll, feeding her sweetmeats and kissing her with great fondness in full sight of everyone else. She accepted his attentions as docile as a sheep, until he tried to press home his advantage. Surely this was the most foolish part of her entire foolish self: she clung to her virginity like it was made of purest gold, and refused outright every offer Charles made to her. I was certain that if she’d finally granted him the last favor, he would have been done with her within a week. But because she kept him dandling like this, he continued his fascination with what was forbidden.

  Not, of course, that I’d encourage her to let him take her. I hadn’t tolerated her all this time to turn him over to my rival so easily as that.

  “There now, my lady,” she said, placing another pair of cards with the utmost care. “There, there, see how it stands!”

  “Yes, I see,” I said, and didn’t bother to cover my yawn of indifference. I slumped down lower on the cushions of my daybed, striving to find a more comfortable position. I was in the dwindling weeks of this pregnancy, and on warm days such as this one it was more and more difficult to remain awake late in the afternoon, even if I didn’t have Frances’s company as a soporific. “How marvelous.”

  But my little daughter, Anne, was not so jaded, toddling over to stand closer to watch the tower grow with shining eyes.

  “More?” she asked with real hope. “More?”

  Frances pressed her finger across her lips to silence Anne, and slowly added another row to the tower.

  “There, Lady Anne,” she exclaimed in a proud whisper. “There is more.”

  But my delighted daughter failed to comprehend the impermanence of towers made from playing cards, and without a thought for the consequences clapped her pudgy hands together with applause. That was all the breeze that was necessary to destroy the delicate structure, and the whole careful tower collapsed in a shuffle of cards across the tea table and the floor.

  Anne’s face crumpled with horror. “Oh, no!” she wailed. “All gone!”

  “We can build another, Lady Anne,” Frances said, dropping to her hands and knees to crawl beneath the table to retrieve the scattered cards. “I promise. I’ll make one that’s even taller.”

  But Anne was inconsolable, her eyes squeezed shut and her arms held out from her sides as her wailing increased so quickly that I put my hands over my ears and called for the nursery maid to take her away.

  “You didn’t have to send her off,” Frances said sadly as Anne was carried back to the nursery, her indignant cries still echoing in my parlor. “She would have stopped once I’d begun another house.”

  “I’m not sure I would have survived so long as that,” I said wearily. “Besides, she needed tending.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Frances said, methodically turning the cards in her hand so they all faced the same direction. “As you wish.”

  “As I do,” I said idly, glancing down at the cards in her hands. “Have you ever noticed how much the kings on pasteboard cards look like His Majesty?”

  Almost guiltily, she stared down at the cards as if seeing them for the first time. The printed kings in red and black ink did in fact strongly resemble Charles, complete with the curling dark mustache; I’d remarked it from the first time I’d met him.

  “How—how curious,” she said. “I did not notice.”

  Silly, empty-headed goose! “Then perhaps you haven’t noticed, either, how much your beauty pleases the king.”

  She blushed furiously. “I wouldn’t know, my lady, not as you.”

  “Well, you should,” I said. “He kisses you and fondles you before us all often enough.”

  “Yes, my lady.” She drew in her small pink mouth even more tightly. “He says he likes it.”

  “Do you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, yes, my lady.”

  “Yes.” I smiled and tipped my head back, my eyes heavy-lidded as I studied her, the skittery innocent. It amused me to speak so plainly to her like this. Ah, what mischief I’d already tasted with Lord Chesterfield when I’d been her age!

  “You are wise to guard yourself further, Miss Stuart,” I said softly, crossing my ankles in white satin mules with high red heels. “As pleasant as it is to kiss His Majesty, it’s a hundred times better to lie with him. A thousand times. And once you begin, you will never, ever wish to stop.”

  “My resolve is never to lie with him and risk shame and ruin. I’ve pledged my honor before God.” She swallowed, a single convulsive clutching of her slender white throat. “You are kind to warn me, my lady.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m most kind,” I said, laughing softly at that. “At least I am to those I like.”

  She smiled uncertainly and glanced back toward the door. “I do believe I hear Lady Anne weeping still, my lady. If you wish, I could go to h
er, and calm her, and see if—oh, Your Majesty!”

  She dropped into a deep curtsey as Charles joined us, several of his small dogs trotting along with him. He often came by my rooms at this time of day, after he’d played tennis and before he returned to his more formal duties at the council table, to visit both me and the babes. If he’d heard that Frances was here as well, then I suspected he’d have made an even greater effort to come a-calling. Perhaps he had; he certainly didn’t seem surprised to see her with me. He smiled down at her, his desire almost laughably apparent, then remembered to come to me first where I lay on the daybed, bending to kiss me while the long curls of his periwig fell on either side of my face.

  “How good of you to come see me, sir,” I said, and laughed softly to show I understood him all too well. Two of his dogs had begun sniffing and licking the third one’s bottom, the plumed tails wagging happily on all three: as proper a metaphor for this little scene as ever could be imagined. “You’ve just missed Lady Anne.”

  “I was making card castles for her, sir,” Frances said eagerly, as if to explain her own reasons for being in my rooms. “But they fell—they always do—and then she would not stop weeping, and Her Ladyship had to send her away with her maid.”

  “Poor little duck,” Charles said with genuine fondness for our daughter. “She doesn’t yet understand that whatever is raised to giddy height must in time inevitably fall.”

  “A woeful, sorry truth indeed for all young ladies to learn, sir,” I murmured with the exact degree of melancholy. At once Charles caught my meaning, and laughed, while Frances, unsurprisingly, did not.

  “It’s in the set of the cards, my lady,” she said earnestly. “If I don’t set them properly, then they will always collapse beneath any stress or force.”

  “Ah, so that’s the secret,” I said. “To lavish the greatest care on the erection of the tower, or risk suffering the devastation of an untoward collapse.”

  That made the king laugh even harder, while Frances only stared wide-eyed and unaware.

  “Yes, my lady,” she said uneasily, for my words had made only the most obvious sense to her. “If you wish, my lady, I could go to the nursery, and if Lady Anne is recovered, I could bring her back to us.”

  “You needn’t go, my dear,” Charles protested. “We like your company.”

  “Oh, let her flee if she wishes,” I said with a languid wave of my hand. “She’s built enough towers for one day. Come, Frances, a kiss before you leave.”

  It was common for ladies at court to kiss one another’s cheeks in parting, and my friendship with Frances was sufficient that she thought nothing of my request for such a salute. Dutifully she came forward and bent over me, her lips pursed. I slipped my hand into her hair to cradle the back of her head, and guided her lips not to my cheek but to my own mouth. I kissed her, coaxing those tight little lips to soften and relax and part for me, and dipped my tongue within to touch hers, fleeting gentle, before I drew back. Her eyes were startled, but not alarmed. Her breathing quickened, and lightly I patted her cheek to calm her.

  “Watch yourself, my dear, and come back to me tomorrow whenever you are free,” I said. She’d been sweet to kiss and obligingly docile; no wonder the gentlemen all fought for the privilege. “Now go, we won’t keep you longer.”

  “What of my kiss, eh?” Charles demanded, and I heard the roughness in his voice that showed he’d enjoyed my little indulgence exactly as I’d hoped. “I won’t let you go until you grant one to me.”

  Without hesitation, Frances stepped forward to where he was sitting and let him kiss her, too. She might claim to enjoy his attention, but she stood still and stiff as a piece of wooden figure while he did his best to rouse her to a passion. At last he broke away, and she curtseyed.

  “Good day, sir,” she said. “Good day, my lady.”

  She backed from the room as was exactly proper, neither hurrying nor lingering as she closed the door after herself, and her steps in the hall were equally measured, and remarkable for it. It was not that she was so cold, I think, but stupidly innocent, or rather innocently stupid.

  “Are you in the habit of doing that?” Charles asked, scarce waiting until the door was shut.

  “Doing what, sir?” I asked, my arm languidly over my head as I lay back against the daybed’s cushions.

  “Kissing her,” he said, the two words crackling between us.

  “Oh, that.” I yawned, feigning indifference. “She’s quite sweet that way. But then, you should know, yes?”

  “For God’s sake, Barbara, have you any notion of what that does to me, watching you with her like that?”

  I smiled wickedly. “Tell me, sir. I’d like to hear.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees. “Have you dallied further with her? Is that her trick—that she prefers Sapphic love to men?”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t tell,” I teased. “Lovers’ secrets.”

  “Barbara,” he said impatiently. “You know I don’t care where you venture, so long as you don’t shout it about the town.”

  “Hah,” I said, my eyes narrowed at that bit of nonsense. Only recently poor Harry Jermyn had been temporarily banished from Whitehall on some trumpery that I was certain had more to do with his attentions toward me than any real sin. “Then pray tell why you’ve sent gentlemen from court simply because they dared to speak to me?”

  “Only if they’ve crossed me in other ways, or have slandered you,” he countered, his gaze falling lower, to my breasts. “You well know I have no boundaries to my loyalty to you, just as you do mine. Have you taken the girl into your bed?”

  I crossed my ankles anew, letting my smock slip higher over my bare legs. Because it was warm, and I’d grown so large, I wore only the lightest lawn bed-gown over my smock. I wasn’t shy about the great swell of my belly through the linen, or how the nipples of my heavy breasts jutted forward, already dark and ripe for the greedy lips of my coming child. I knew from my earlier babes that Charles was fascinated by the fertile luxuriance of my changed body, undeniable proof of his own potent virility.

  “You’ll never have her,” I said softly, arching my back restlessly against the pillows. “She’s a papist, you know, and she’s pledged God to remain chaste as a nun in a convent until she weds. All of Buckingham’s schemes won’t change that.”

  “A pox on Buckingham’s ambition.” He made a small scoffing sound of disgust. “I’d rather the girl were old and fat and willing.”

  I laughed. “To her, you’re only one more unclean adulterer, doomed to burn in hell for your many sins.”

  He rose, coming to stand over me. “So are you.”

  “So I am,” I admitted, “but she trusts me because I’m not equipped to prick her saintly maidenhead.”

  I reached out and touched the pleated front of his breeches, finding his cock as hard as I’d expected it to be.

  “So which heated you more, sir?” I sat upright on the daybed, leaning toward him. I stroked his cock gently, the way he liked, and I looked up at him from beneath my lashes. “Kissing the girl yourself, or watching me kiss her?”

  He groaned, pressing his cock into my palm as he filled his hands with my breasts. “You know me too well, Barbara.”

  “We know one another that way,” I said, raising my face to him so he could kiss me.

  But he was done with kissing. “Turn around,” he said, breathing hard. “Now.”

  I smiled with lustful anticipation as I did as I was bid. We’d used the daybed like this before, and though the midwife had urged me to cease such play so close to my time, I was too heated for caution. He caught me by the hips, and I sighed with joy as he entered me.

  “No other woman can replace you, Barbara,” he muttered fiercely into the back of my hair as he moved over me. “None.”

  I set my tea-dish down hard with a clatter of porcelain on the table. “You are certain of this, Aunt?”

  “I would not tell you if it were otherwise, Barbara.�
�� My namesake, Aunt Barbara, Countess of Suffolk, reached out herself to blot her napkin on the tea I’d spilled. “Take a care of my table, if you please.”

  “What I’ll take a care of, madam, is our wretched cousin Buckingham.” I pushed myself from my chair and began to pace the length of my aunt’s parlor. “When is his infernal entertainment?”

  “A fortnight from yesterday, at Wallingford House,” she said. “Barbara, for the sake of your child, I beg you to calm yourself, and—”

  “To think that he would dare invite the king and the queen and that simpleminded Frances without me,” I railed furiously. “He should have included me because we are kin, and because of my place with the king, and because I’m a Lady of the Bedchamber! Any of those reasons would have been enough, and yet he has seen fit to ignore them all, and ignore me.”

  “Perhaps he is mindful of your state,” she suggested. “More so than you are yourself, it would seem. You couldn’t attend even if he had invited you. You’re perilously close to your time.”

  “I should go and drop the babe in the middle of Buckingham’s drawing room floor,” I said, shaking my fist in the general direction of my cousin George’s house. “That would make the king forget his precious little Stuart.”

  “Barbara, please, sit,” my aunt begged. “Sit.”

  I stopped, my hands on my hips, as determined as ever that Buckingham and his party would not succeed.

  “Well, much good their entertainment will do them,” I declared. “For all that, I’ll be more merry than they.”