The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  Yet I will not lie and claim that the challenge of it did not tempt me. When the duke gazed at me as he just had, my heart quickened at a pace that no other gentleman had been able to inspire. To tame such a dragon by my cleverness would be an accomplishment indeed.

  Besides, I’d a taste for apples myself.

  THOUGH MOST AT COURT REGARDED Sir Carr Scroope as little more than a bad jest in the form of a misshapen man, Lord Rochester seized upon him as the ripest target for his satire. I don’t know what there was about the lowly baronet that inspired other gentlemen so negatively. Father had sputtered a wealth of epithets when I’d told him what Sir Carr had said to me, though Father was too kind a poet to write them down for circulation among his friends. The Duke of Buckingham had shown no such consideration when he’d written that Sir Carr was so vastly ugly that:

  He dare not stir abroad for fear he meet

  Curses of teeming women in the street.

  The least could happen from this hideous sight

  Is that they should miscarry from the fright.

  But Lord Rochester had been more richly inspired by Sir Carr’s ill usage of me, and his own verse was more finely wrought, and more scathing. He’d seized upon the lovesick song that Sir Carr had written to Carey Frazier (the same one he’d recited to me at the playhouse) and turned it into something quite different.

  I swive as well as others do,

  I’m young, not yet deformed,

  My tender heart, sincere, and true,

  Deserves not to be scorned.

  Why Phyllis then, why will you swive,

  With forty lovers more?

  Can I (said she) with Nature strive,

  Alas I am, alas I am a whore.

  As can be imagined, I laughed long and heartily over this little pasquinade, and even read it aloud with Lord Rochester before a small party at Locket’s tavern late one night. Copies were passed about the Court with lightning swiftness, until there were a great many others beside me who could recite Phyllis’s part. I couldn’t resist adding a few cleverly satiric and cutting lines of my own to the public circus as well, demonstrating the woefulness of Sir Carr’s so-called poetry. My part in all this made me much celebrated, and everyone was wonderfully amused by the earl’s cleverness at Sir Carr’s expense—except, of course, Lord Carr himself, who challenged me directly one evening while I waited for my coach at the palace gate.

  “You are the cause of the outrage against me, Miss Sedley,” he said, his outsized nostrils flaring and his fists clenched at his sides as he charged up the steps toward me. “You hide behind Lord Rochester and urge him on to say villainous things of me, whilst I know it is all your evil, vengeful doing!”

  The other ladies with me shrieked and scattered as if we’d been charged by a mad dog—which, in a way, I supposed we had been. Bravely I held my ground, though inside I was quaking as much as the others who’d fled. If I were willing to unleash Lord Rochester to wage slanderous battles on my behalf, then I’d have to be ready to answer if one of His Lordship’s salvos blew back into my own face. What use was being a cowardly wit?

  “Consider who was the first to slander, Sir Carr,” I said, struggling to contain my fear. Instead I tried to draw myself into the very picture of a wounded lady, though in truth I doubt I succeeded. “Before Her Highness and a score of others, you used words no gentleman should to a lady.”

  “I’ll not deny it,” Sir Carr sputtered on the step below me, “for every word I used against you was well deserved, and here’s more for your trouble. Harpy! Shrew! Damnable, cursed jade!”

  To my endless relief, two of the guards from the palace came running forward to my aid, drawn by Sir Carr’s intemperate shouts. He heard them, and quickly stepped away from me before they’d joined us.

  “This is not done between us, Miss Sedley,” he said, practically spitting out the words as he turned away. “It is not done.”

  Shaken, I made my way home. I found Father reading before his fire in his library, and indignantly I told him what had happened, expecting sympathy. I received none.

  “What else can you hope for, Katherine?” he asked me after I’d told him of Sir Carr’s fury. “He is only a man. A disagreeable and ugly man, to be sure, but a mortal like the rest of us. He has a right to be angry at what has been written of him.”

  “But he began it!” I protested.

  “You provoked him for your own amusement,” Father said mildly. “If you jab a dog’s rump long enough with a stick, you have no grounds for protest when he jumps up to bite you.”

  “But Lord Rochester wrote the song, not I!”

  Father sighed, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. “The stick did not poke the dog of its own volition, Katherine. You should know by now that my acquaintance is much given to mischief of this sort, as is Lord Buckingham, and yet they almost never suffer for it. Once, long ago, Lord Middlesex and I were involved together in a foolish public prank that we believed to be extraordinarily entertaining, though I doubt the crowd who witnessed our drunken idiocy on the Cock’s balcony agreed.”

  Of course I’d heard of this escapade from Father’s past, not from him, but from others. He might dismiss it now as a foolish prank, but it remained powerfully notorious, and had involved Father and his friends standing roaring drunk and naked on the balcony of a Bow Street tavern. Father had delivered a blasphemous parody of a Puritan sermon, followed by a lewd pantomime, and when the outraged crowd that had gathered in the street below had begun hurling stones at them, Father and his friends had answered by pissing a golden rain upon them.

  “I should hardly equate a poem with what you did,” I said wryly. “Nor did I speak it naked in Bow Street.”

  He grimaced. “I should hope not, Katherine. That would be a bit strong for any lady. But the point of this tale is that for our folly, I was punished with a week in gaol and a fine of one thousand marks, while Lord Buckhurst was not charged at all.”

  “That’s hardly fair,” I said, shocked by the sum. “A thousand marks is a prodigious fine for a frolic.”

  “I believe the judge called it ‘profane actions committed against the public decency and misdemeanors against the king.’ ” He smiled at the memory. “Buckhurst was equally guilty, but he was heir to a peerage, and I was only a baronet. Thus I was punished, and he was not.”

  “It’s still not fair.”

  “It will not change.” He shook his head, not with the bitterness that I felt, but with his usual benign resignation. “One can see insults everywhere and go about with a drawn sword like a madman, but hot tempers and duels accomplish little. Far better to keep one’s frustrations to one’s self, and present a pleasing smile to the world instead. I know that lessons don’t sit well with you, Katherine, but that is one worth heeding, especially if you wish to continue at Court.”

  It was an old iniquity, one I must have realized in the cradle, though knowing it was so didn’t make it any easier to accept. Yet instead of making me more resigned, like Father, his tale only inspired me to rise higher myself. If I could only become a peeress, then I’d be as safe as Lord Middlesex had been.

  “You know I do not like lessons, Father,” I said crossly, fussing with my bracelets. “I never have.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t enjoy learning that one, either. But here is another for you, Daughter, that no matter how many times I’ve tried to teach it to you, you refuse to hear.”

  His expression surprised me by its seriousness, and so did the tender way he covered my hand with his own.

  “Do not make enemies for the sport of it,” he said softly, “whether they’re His Majesty or Sir Carr Scroope or even the lowest maidservant who fans your bedchamber coals in the morning. It’s a dangerous habit to fall into, and one best avoided.”

  “It’s wicked hard to avoid.” More likely it was nigh impossible, I thought glumly, remembering how sweet the laughter of others had been when Lord Rochester and I had recited our little satire.

&n
bsp; Father grunted, knowing me all too well. “I know it’s hard, especially for a lady as clever as you. But there are people everywhere eager to see you falter and fall. It’s the way of the Court. The fewer enemies you acquire and the more friends you can hold, the easier your life will be. It’s as simple as that.”

  Sitting so peaceably beside the fire with him, far removed from the temptation of fame and admiration, it was easy to see the wisdom of his advice.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” I said contritely. “I won’t do it again.”

  “I’ll pray that you mean that, my dear Kattypillar,” he said. “I’ll pray that you do.”

  Yet he smiled sadly, as much as admitting he’d pray in vain. It grieved me that he’d so little faith in me, loving him as I did, yet I could scarcely fault him for it. How could I? He was my father, and knew me all too well. As much as he might wish otherwise, he doubted I could do as I promised.

  And so, God help me, did I.

  Chapter Eleven

  PETER LELY’S STUDIO, LONG ACRE, LONDON

  June 1676

  “So which would you have me wear, Master Lely?” I looked at the assortment of loose-fitting gowns and cloaks in rich cloth hanging on pegs before me. An open casket on the floor held a fool’s fortune of false pearls and brooches of glass rubies and sapphires set in brass gold, all waiting to become part of my new costume. “Faith, I do not know where to begin!”

  Master Lely lifted one bright swath of cloud out from its peg, then another, as he critically considered which color would suit me best. As the principal painter to the king, Peter Lely was by far the most desired artist for portraits of fashion in London, and when Father had finally badgered me into agreeing to sit for one, there’d been no question who would paint it. I’d already been here once to the Dutchman’s studio, to sit for drawings as he decided on a pose.

  Things had not gone well at first. I was too ill at ease to sit with any natural grace, and so unsure of how I could possibly be presented as a beauty that I’d been stiff and miserable while Master Lely’s chalk had moved swiftly over his page. But gradually he had calmed me by remarking on the qualities of my person that I secretly liked myself—my dark eyes and my gracefully shaped arms and hands—instead of the practiced, empty flattery that always put me on my guard. By the time I left, I’d decided I could trust him neither to mock me, nor to make me look like a sad twin to a true beauty like Lady Portsmouth.

  Now, here again in his studio, that trust continued, even as he lifted down a brilliant salmon-colored silk gown.

  “What of this, Mrs. Sedley?” he asked, holding it beneath my chin. “It’s a cheery color.”

  “Perhaps too cheery for me,” I said, skittishly turning away. One did not sit for Master Lely in one’s ordinary dress, but let him compose fanciful costumes from these pieces in his collection. The most pious lady in the Court might be painted in the same contrived gown as the most notorious, with no ill reflection on either. But I’d seen that salmon-colored silk before in a portrait of one of the great Court beauties, and I didn’t wish the unfortunate comparisons that were sure to be made between us. Instead I seized upon a deep bronze-colored gown with little notched tabs for sleeves like an antique doublet, with a slate blue cape with a gold fringe tied to one shoulder.

  “I like this one,” I said. “If I’m to be shown in the woods, then this seems more fitting.”

  Master Lely hesitated. “I have used that arrangement only once before, Mrs. Sedley. It might not please Sir Charles to have you wear the same.”

  I grinned at his reticence. “What, was it some great whore?”

  He gave a careful little shift to his shoulders, expressing everything and nothing; clearly diplomacy was another art he practiced well. “It was worn by the actress Mrs. Gwyn.”

  “Nell wore it first?” My grin widened. “Then I shall be honored to wear the same, and so should my father.”

  Thus I came to be painted in the same attire as Nelly, even to the same brooch clasping the cape to my shoulder. When I climbed onto the small stage to pose on a bench (later to be transformed by Master Lely’s art into a mossy bower), I thought of her clad in the same costume, and was at my ease. The conceit of it amused me no end, and my delight must have showed in my face. Driven by inspiration, Master Lely’s brush now flew happily across the canvas, and by the time he declared our session to be over for the day, he had roughed in the outline of my figure and already made a good start to my face.

  I was still in my costume, admiring the painter’s work, when one of his assistants came hurrying in to announce the arrival of Lord Middlesex. The earl followed directly after him, sauntering in as if Master Lely’s studio were only one more of his many properties, using his tall walking stick not for support, but as if to stake his claim to whatever he chose.

  “Katherine, my dear,” he said, smiling at me with what seemed genuine pleasure. “I didn’t expect to find you here playing masquerade with old Lely.”

  Master Lely bowed, unperturbed at being called old. “Sir Charles has honored me by asking for a portrait of his daughter. Mrs. Sedley has just completed her first sitting with me.”

  “Hah, I guessed as much.” He turned his cheek toward me, bending down for me to kiss him. I did so from long habit as one of Father’s dearest friends rather than from my own affection. I do not know why I’d never warmed to him the same as I had to Lord Rochester; he’d always been pleasant enough to me. But I’d often wondered if it came from having long ago glimpsed him intimately tangled with Nell, and the uneasiness the sight had provoked in my childish innocence. He and Nell had parted bitterly after that, and the open resentment he still bore toward her did not recommend him to me, either.

  He was smiling at me now, fortunately unaware of my thoughts. “I like how you dress the ladies, Lely,” he said, studying my costume. “Cunning disarray, yes?”

  Master Lely nodded. “It’s meant to be more romantic than cunning, my lord, to show the ladies to their best advantage.”

  “It does do that,” he said with unexpected approval. “You should always dress like this, Katherine. It becomes you. And consider how much you’d save your poor father’s pocket!”

  He laughed, but to have his gaze lingering so long on my form was making me uneasy. The costume might look well when painted, but in reality there was little to it. While Master Lely might call it romantic, in truth it was more undress than otherwise. The loose-fitting gown had been pinned behind to fit my narrow figure, while beneath it I wore only a billowing smock without stays. My bosom might not be as richly endowed as other ladies’, but what there was of it was wantonly displayed, and I self-consciously tugged it higher.

  “It is one thing to dress like this for Master Lely, my lord,” I said, “but entirely another to traipse about trailing enough satin for a ship’s sail.”

  “I never said it would be convenient,” Lord Middlesex said, chuckling. “Only beguiling.”

  “Only because you, my lord, are not made to dress the same.” I kicked the satin puddled around my feet by way of demonstration. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Her Highness is expecting me at St. James’s, and by your leave I must shift into more appropriate clothes.”

  “Ah, I am bound for the palace as well.” He waved his hand, the lace on his cuff ruffling around his wrist. “It shall be my pleasure and my honor to take you there with me, Katherine.”

  “You’re most kind, my lord, but I must refuse,” I said quickly. “My own carriage and people are waiting for me.”

  “Then we’ll send them away,” he said with lordly disdain. “The streets around the palaces are crowded enough without us adding two coaches where one will do. You’ll come with me, Katherine, and that’s an end to it.”

  It was, too. I couldn’t think of a way to excuse myself from Lord Middlesex’s offer without offending him and likely angering Father as well. As little as I wished for more of His Lordship’s company, I could make myself bear it for the short drive to th
e palace. With a grudging sigh, I went off to change, dragging my overlong skirts with me, while Lord Middlesex concluded whatever business had brought him to Master Lely’s studio in the first place.

  I’d grant that Lord Middlesex’s carriage was a good deal more elegant than Father’s. It was smaller in the new French style, and sensibly made more for navigating narrow London streets than broad country highways. With the body of the carriage studded with polished brass nail heads and the red-spoked wheels lavishly trimmed in gold, I’d no doubt that we would receive a much better reception when we passed through the palace gates.

  But as soon as we both climbed inside I realized that the fashionably smaller carriage would also mean that I’d be squeezed snug beside Lord Middlesex. His Lordship was a large man, grown larger still over the years since I’d first met him, and while I tried to shrink my smaller self into the corner of the seat, his hamlike thigh still pressed unavoidably against my leg and his brocade-covered arm pressed into mine. The sensation of over-closeness only increased when His Lordship complained of the sun in his eyes, and ordered the footman to unlash and lower the leather shades over the carriage’s windows.

  “Is Her Ladyship well?” I asked, knowing I’d be expected to make conversation.

  “She’s well as can be,” he said blandly, “and perfectly content with her daughters in Essex.”

  I couldn’t help but raise my brows at that. His wife, Mary, had once been among the most flirtatious and seductive ladies of the Court and had always been a close friend to Lady Cleveland; I doubted very much she’d ever be content set aside alone in the country with only two young daughters for company.

  Clearly her husband, however, would rather discuss me. “I wonder that a young lady like yourself has waited so long to be painted by Lely.”