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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  But Lord Danby took the affair much more seriously, and addressed it with his usual thoroughness. He took testimony from both Tonge and Oates, and as the weeks wore on, their tales grew, naming more and more well-known names. When Lord Danby wrote to James that Oates had included James’s own confessor in his stories, James addressed the investigating council, who agreed that the “proof” Oates had offered was all forged, and ineptly at that. Satisfied, James followed Charles to Newmarket for the October races.

  I could not exactly tell whether James made his own plans for the fall to please me, or his duchess. Knowing Mary Beatrice had no patience for the bawdy excesses of Newmarket, he had arranged for her instead to travel to the Hague to visit his daughter Mary, the Princess of Orange. The visit was unofficial, with only a few of her closest ladies and their husbands for attendants. Mary Beatrice was delighted by this pleasure junket, as were both the prince and princess, and the three of them judged this to be a very kind display of regard from His Highness.

  Yet while his wife was away, James took me with him to Newmarket, where I was sure our presence together as much as announced to the rest of the Court that I was now his mistress. The evidence was as clear as a new day to anyone with half a wit for scandal. There could be no honorable explanation for a maid of honor to go traipsing off among the gentlemen to Newmarket, and even less for me to be tending so closely to my mistress’s husband while she was absent. I didn’t care. I was given lodgings of my own near the cottage that Charles had taken for Nell’s use, apart from Palace House but close enough to it for convenience, and I could not have been happier.

  No matter that I was with child; at that time, my pregnancy didn’t even seem quite real to me. Truly, I felt no different. Because of my height, my belly had yet to betray me, and my usual ruddy health carried me through. I hadn’t turned wan or sickly, as some women did when with child, nor was I stricken with morning vomits. The only change that I could see was that, now that I’d been caught, my passions had increased, and I’d become randy as a she-stoat in perpetual heat, much to James’s amusement, and his pleasure, too. I still could indulge in the suppers, the races, and the raucous parties that lasted through the night, relishing them all the more because I was at James’s side.

  Thus I sat at a table of inveterate carders late one evening at Nelly’s house, the only lady at the table with three gentlemen. James had gone with his brother Charles and several others to watch fighting cocks in the stable, a sport I’d little taste for, especially when compared to cards. The wine was flowing pretty freely and the play was as fierce as the stakes were high. Yet Dame Fortune smiled on me, and over and over my hands were the best. Though I wasn’t sure (it being vulgar and miserly to count whilst playing), I guessed my winnings to be at five hundred or so guineas. This was a sizable amount by any reckoning, more than sufficient to support a respectable household with a half dozen children for an entire year, and yet in the heat of the play, I regarded the growing pile of mother-of-pearl markers before me as only a sign of my luck and no more.

  “God’s blood, Mrs. Sedley, look at those cards,” said the gentleman across the table from me. “You’ve nearly ruined me.”

  Laurence Hyde, or Lory, as we all called him, was James’s brother-in-law through his first wife, and a great favorite of the king’s for being a clever and excellent diplomat. He was new-returned to England from a successful appointment in the Low Countries, where, if his play this night was any indication, he must never have gone near a table of cards.

  Now he sighed mournfully, holding out his open hands to demonstrate how empty I’d left them. “I’m as good as a pauper.”

  “You’re as bad as a liar, Lory Hyde,” I said cheerfully. “Everyone knows you’re rich as Croesus. I couldn’t ruin you if we played a week.”

  Still he showed me the most doleful face, made worse by the heavy pouches he had beneath his eyes from drink and gloomy enough that those who’d gathered around our table to watch laughed. “You’ve come damned close, madam. Permit me a final hand, so at least I’ll leave with a coin or two in my pocket for the linkboy.”

  Now, any sensible carder would have retreated with his or her winnings and retired to bed content. But I wasn’t sensible, and further, I’d spied James returned from the cockfights and watching me from along the wall. In all that crowd, his gaze was bound on me alone, a heady realization that made me flush with pleasure. I smiled at him across all the others, and he solemnly nodded back to me. I knew my boldness always amused him, and thus I was now determined to put on as a good show as I could.

  I lowered my chin and grinned like a demon at Mr. Hyde, and spread my hands lovingly over my markers, as a miser would show his fondness for his hoard.

  “You wish another hand, Mr. Hyde?” I asked, as if still considering, which of course I wasn’t. “Are you so convinced your luck will turn?”

  “It will,” he said firmly. “You know the fickleness of chance, Mrs. Sedley. One moment all is sunshine, the next thunderous clouds and the bloody fires of hell itself. Play me again, and I’m certain I’ll win.”

  I laughed. For all that Mr. Hyde was a diplomat of repute, he was equally famous for swearing hard as a tinker and sharp as a cutler, which must have sat very ill among the priggish Dutch.

  “Then you shall prove your worth, sir.” I shoved the pile of pearly markers into the center of the table. “One card for each of us, and the highest takes all.”

  Those around us exclaimed in amazement, yet I held fast, my heart racing with giddy excitement at being the centerpiece of so much attention. I knew Mr. Hyde would not disappoint me, and he didn’t. Gentlemen never refused such an offer from a lady. He smiled slowly, and waved for a fresh deck.

  Doubtless drawn by the growing crowd at the table, Nell herself pushed through to stand by my chair.

  “Here now, what mischief is this?” she said, her coppery curls bouncing as she leaned over the table, and her breasts bouncing, too, in their usual fashion. She might have left the playhouse behind, but she still treated her life as another kind of stage where all her friends became players with her, whether we wished it or not. “What are you about, Mrs. Sedley? You know I keep a most respectable house.”

  That made everyone laugh again. There wasn’t much that was respectable about Nell, as she knew perfectly and happily well, and that disrespectability was why evenings at her house were so popular with Charles and the rest of us.

  “I’d never slander the good name of your house, Mrs. Gwyn,” I declared. “But if Mr. Hyde wishes to force his luck, then I’ve no choice but to oblige him.”

  “No choice, hah,” Nell scoffed, gently shoving my arm for emphasis. “No one knows how to play against a gentleman better’n you, Mrs. Sedley.”

  “Save you, madam,” I said, and winked, which made her tip back her head and laugh uproariously.

  “Go on, then, go on,” she said. “But if she wins, Lory, I’ll make certain you pay up what she’s due.”

  The dealer shuffled the cards, squared them, and set the deck on the table between us. Mr. Hyde nodded for me to choose first, and without hesitation I cut the deck for my card, holding it facedown on the table as he, too, drew his card. There we both sat, our cards waiting beneath our palms and our gazes steady across the table.

  At last with a flourish I turned my card for all to see. “A black queen!” I crowed, sure I’d won. “Where’s your luck now, sir?”

  He sighed and shrugged as if already admitting defeat and slowly turned his own card: a scarlet ace to trump my swarthy queen.

  “You dog!” I cried as the crowd around us erupted. I shoved my chair back and rose, throwing my losing card back on the table. With both hands I shoved the entire pile of markers toward Mr. Hyde, my deep lace cuffs fluttering back over my arms.

  “There now, sir, it’s yours,” I said with dramatic resignation worthy of Medea herself. “Take it all, and rejoice in your good fortune. I’ll not have it said that I don’t lose as well as I
win. But a pox on my ill luck, and a filthy pox on that black-clad queen who played me false.”

  Nell reached down to pluck up the discarded card, surveying it with a dreadful scowl.

  “Why, I do not believe that’s a queen at all,” she said, sniffing as if smelling something foul. “Look’ee, Katherine, look’ee close. I vow there’s a fishy, Friday taint to her.”

  I understood her meaning at once and seized upon it with her as a true conspirator, likewise scowling at the card in her hand. “How wicked clever you are, Nell! Why did I not see it before? The jade has a wimple, not a crown, and a sooty habit in place of royal robes.”

  “Take care what you say, ladies, I beg you,” warned poor Mr. Hyde, pointedly trying to dissuade us from finishing the jest on account of his master the duke behind him. Mr. Hyde was most loyal that way, while I—I’d other intentions.

  “Here now, all of you, bear witness,” I said gleefully, taking the card from Nell to hold it high, turning this way and that so no one would miss it. “Here I’ve been betrayed not by a goodly Protestant queen, but by a lurking, black-clad Romish nun!”

  Most laughed with Nell and with me, but others did not, for fear of offending James and the other Catholics in the room. With the card still raised brazenly in my hand, I turned toward where James had been standing earlier to watch me. To my disappointment, the place was now empty. But as I began to lower my arm, James was suddenly there beside me, taking me by the arm.

  “Come,” he said curtly, already pulling me with him from the room. His voice was terse, his expression set, even rigid. I’d truly no choice then but to join him, leaving behind an audience that was both scandalized and titillated.

  With no further word, he grimly drew me through the hall and past more startled revelers, into the small passage that led from the back chamber to the yard beyond. He shoved the door shut after us, but there was no bolt nor lock on the door to keep others out if they tried to follow, and the threat of discovery only added to my excitement now. There were no candles in here, with the only light coming from the quarter-moon through the window behind him, but enough to show his expression still grimly taut.

  He drew me sharply around to face him, pushing me back against the wall as at last he released my arm. I looked up at him through my lashes, my heart racing so fast in my breast that my voice was quick and breathy.

  “What is it you wished to say to me in such privacy, sir?” I said, fair taunting him. “What can you not say before the others?”

  “You risk too much, Katherine,” he said, the words clipped and curt. The tension in his body was palpable as he struggled to keep control of himself. “You know you do.”

  I’d learned much about control from him. I shrugged my shoulders, a luxurious undulation against the rough plaster wall behind me, and tipped my head backward to display the pale curve of my throat to him.

  “It’s my own money, sir,” I said. “I’ve taken nothing from you. If I choose to wager against Lory on the turn of a single card, then—”

  “That’s not my meaning,” he said roughly, pressing closer against me so that I felt his heated breath on my forehead. “You know that.”

  “Ahhh,” I said, exhaling in a long sigh of acknowledgment. I still held my losing card in my hand, and I now raised it between us, tapping the pasteboard lightly against the corner of my wide mouth. “Did you mean this, sir?”

  His glance flicked down to the card with the black-clad queen, then at once to my mouth. As he looked, I licked across my parted lips, my tongue wet with invitation.

  “You’re a bold, wanton lady, Katherine,” he said, his voice shaking, and in it I heard the first tremble of desire fraying his careful restraint. “You mock me, even as you madden me with temptation. You dare, Katherine. You dare.”

  “Then dare with me, sir,” I said, my voice husky with my longing. I trailed the stiffened edge of the card along his square-cut jaw, another teasing kind of caress. “You know you wish to as much as I. Dare with me.”

  James groaned, an anguished, tormented rumble drawn from deep within his chest, and then fell upon me like a man famished, kissing me with an ardor that was so fierce as to be desperate. He shoved aside my skirts as I helped him unbutton his breeches, lust making us both clumsy. He pushed me back against the wall, and in the next instant he’d found my mark, entering me with such vigor that I cried out with the dizzying pleasure of it. We were both of a height to enjoy this manner of sport, and by the time we’d reached our release, my hair had half fallen down over my shoulders and the silk of my gown was snagged by the plaster behind me. I’d wrapped one of my long legs around his waist, I’d been that eager for his possession, and he’d buried his hands beneath my skirts to fondle my charms.

  Yet lovemaking was often like this with him, and I relished it. Once James decided to succumb to my temptation, he could not claim me fast enough, fair devouring me as if I were some forbidden sweetmeat. Perhaps I was, too: a wanton, forthright, Protestant sweetmeat, forbidden by his confessor and every other priest around him, and likely all the more desirable for being proscribed.

  “You’re mine, Katherine,” he whispered hoarsely into my tousled hair, his greedy hands still laying claim to my most intimate charms. “You see what comes of daring me. You’re mine, and I cannot give you up.”

  “Then don’t,” I whispered in return, and kissed his rough cheek with true fondness. “Don’t ever part with me, sir, and I’ll vow to be with you always.”

  I closed my eyes, too overcome for the humble truths of sight, and rested my cheek against his broad shoulder. It frightened me, how much I’d come to need him. With other men, I’d yearned so for love that I’d tried to mold myself into whatever form they wished. I’d tried, and to my considerable misery, I’d failed, and been cast away as unworthy. But James loved me for what I was, and how I was, and the more outspoken and true to my own willful and rebellious spirit I became, the more he seemed to love it, and me. I who had never belonged to any man was now the treasure of a royal prince, and I couldn’t conceive of any whispered words more dear than to hear him call me his.

  “I will come to you tonight,” he said as at last we separated. “Warn your servants, and be ready for me.”

  I nodded, hastily smoothing my petticoats and trying to jab my hairpins back into some semblance of their former place, enough at least to satisfy the loose company of Newmarket. He was doing the same, stuffing his shirt back into his breeches and fastening his buttons. Last of all, he bent to retrieve the playing card I’d dropped on the floor.

  “You are wicked, Katherine,” he said with a sigh, the card in his fingers. “Nor would I ever want you otherwise, may all the Gods and blessed saints in heaven forgive me for it.”

  I grinned, and looped my arms around his shoulders. “Return to your rightful church, sir,” I said softly between kisses, “and you won’t have nearly so many saints to worry over.”

  “And there you are, Katherine, exactly as I said, my temptation incarnate.” But this time he smiled, and to my delight, he pressed his lips to the black queen before tucking her away into his coat as a souvenir.

  He opened the door and slipped away first, to return to the others as if he’d never been away, while I waited a few moments before I followed. But as soon as I crept from the shadows, my cheeks still flushed as I blinked at the brightness of the candlelight, I saw Nell. She stood alone before me with her plump arms, covered with bracelets, crossed over her chest and a thoughtful expression upon her round face.

  “So that is it, eh?” she asked, surprisingly philosophical, or perhaps not so surprising at all. “Little Sid’s Kid an’ the duke. Lah, who’d have guessed such a pretty coupling as that?”

  Who would, indeed?

  Yet by the time we all returned to London with Charles the following week, there was little left to be guessed, with everything spelled out with perfect conviction by every wagging tongue at Court. I had only been back in town and in my lodgings at St. Jame
s’s for a single day before Father summoned me to call upon him in Bloomsbury Square.

  I should have known he’d have heard the gossip himself by then; he’d always prided himself on having the freshest tattle of the Court, and mine was very fresh indeed. Even without that certainty, the dry, precise tone of his invitation should have warned me that he was not in the best humor. Instead I was so wrapped in my own oblivious bliss that I was sure Father would want only to share the joy of my new situation and wish me the same happiness in it that he always had heretofore.

  Alas, I was sorrowfully mistaken. I recognized that the instant I was shown into Father’s library, where he stood waiting before his desk, as stiff and unyielding as a sentry at his post.

  “Good day, Father,” I said, coming forward with my arms outstretched to embrace him, as was our usual custom. “I trust you are well?”

  “Tolerably,” he said curtly, “considering the grievous news I have been forced to bear.”

  When he made no move to return my affection, I let my arms drop to my sides and my intended embrace withered away unwanted. “What news is this, Father?”

  “What news, you ask?” he repeated, each word as cold and brittle as a shard of ice. “Why, only that my dear daughter has decided that common whoring is more to her tastes than any respectable occupation, and that she has so little regard for her own honor and worth that she would lift her skirts and spread her legs wide for a Stuart cock to fill her.”

  I winced and flushed with shame, not for what I’d done with James, for I felt no shame in that, but for the pain I’d brought to my poor father.

  “I’m sorry,” I began helplessly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, yes, Katherine, I am sure that you are,” he said, “now that your name is as common as water in the Thames, and as riddled with filth, too.”