Samuel shook his head. “By heaven, I hope so! I hate to see her unhappy. Sometimes I wonder if we’re not making a mistake to insist that she marry Joseph. After all, there are suitable matches enough for her in London if she—”
“Nonsense, Samuel! Who ever heard of a girl choosing her own husband! She’s too young to know what she wants. And Joseph is a fine young man; he’ll make her mighty happy.” That settled it. And Amber thought that she had managed everything with great cleverness—Jemima was no source of worry to her now. Silly girl! she thought scornfully. She should have known better than to cross swords with me!
Scarcely six weeks had gone by since Bruce’s arrival in London when she told him that she was sure she was pregnant, and explained why she believed the child must be his. “I hope it’ll be a girl,” she said. “Bruce is so handsome—I know she’d be a beauty. What do you think we should name her?”
“I think that’s up to Samuel, don’t you?”
“Pish—why should it be? Anyway, he’ll ask me. So you tell me what name you’d like—please, Bruce, I want to know.”
He seemed to give it a few moments’ serious consideration—but the smile that lurked about his mouth showed what he was thinking. “Susanna’s a pretty name,” he said at last.
“You don’t know anyone named Susanna, do you?”
“No. You asked me for a name that I liked, and I told you one. I had no ulterior motives.”
“But you’ve named your share of bastards, I doubt not,” she said. “What about that wench—Leah, or what d’ye call her? Almsbury said you’d had two brats by her.”
By now Bruce had been back long enough and she had seen him so often that the jealousies and worries that beset her when he was away had begun to encroach upon the pleasure she found in being with him. She had begun to feel more discontented over what she was missing than grateful for what she had.
His voice answered her quietly. “Leah died a year ago, in childbirth.”
She looked up at him swiftly, saw that he was serious and a little angry. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she lied. But she turned to another subject. “I wonder where you’ll be when Susanna’s born?”
“Somewhere giving the Dutch hell, I hope. We’ll declare war on them as soon as Parliament votes the money for it. While we’re waiting I’ll try what I can do to keep the peace the way his Majesty wants it kept.” England and Holland had been at war everywhere but in the home seas for almost a year, and during the past two months the fight had blazed into the open; it needed only to be declared, but Charles had to wait on further preparation and Parliamentary grants.
They were lying on the bed, half-dressed. Bruce had his periwig off and his own hair had been cut short so that now it was no more than two or three inches long, and combed back from his forehead in a wave. Amber rolled over onto her stomach and reached for a bunch of purple Lisbon grapes in a bowl on the table.
“Heigh ho! I suppose it’s a dull day for you when there isn’t a town to burn or a dozen Dutchmen to kill!”
He laughed, pulled a small cluster of grapes from the bunch she held, and began to toss them into his mouth. “Your portrait’s somewhat bloodthirsty.”
She gave a sigh. “Oh, Bruce! If only you’d listen to me!” And then all at once she bounced up and knelt facing him, determined that he should listen to her. Somehow he had always managed to stop her before—but not this time. This time he was going to hear her out. “Go off to the wars if you must, Bruce! But when it’s over sell your ships and stay here in London. With your hundred thousand and my sixty-six we’d be so rich we could buy the Royal Exchange for a summer pavilion. We could have the biggest finest house in London—and everyone who was anybody at all would come to our balls and suppers. We’d have a dozen coaches and a thousand servants and a yacht to sail to France in if we took the notion. We’d go to Court and you’d be a great man—Chancellor, or whatever you wanted, and I’d be a Lady of the Bedchamber. There wouldn’t be anyone in England finer than us! Oh, Bruce, darling—don’t you see? We’d be the happiest people in the world!”
She was so passionately convinced herself that she was positive she could convince him; and his answer was a painful disappointment.
“It would be fine,” he. said. “For a woman.”
“Oh!” she cried furiously. “You men! What do you want then!”
“I’ll tell you, Amber.” He sat up and looked at her. “I want something more than spending the next twenty-five years standing on a ladder with one man’s heels on my fingers and mine on the man’s beneath. I want to do something besides plot and scheme and intrigue with knaves and fools to get a reputation with men I despise. I want a little more than going from the theatre to a cock-fight to Hyde Park to Pall Mall and back over the same round the next day. Playing cards and poaching after anything that goes by in petticoats and a mask and serving my turn as the King’s pimp—” He made a gesture of disgust. “And finally dying of women and drink.”
“I suppose you think living in America will keep you from dying of women and drink!”
“Maybe not. But one thing I know—When I die it won’t be from boredom.”
“Oh, won’t it! I don’t doubt it’s mighty exciting over there with blackamoors and pirates and Newgate-birds and every other kind of ragamuffin!”
“It’s more civilized than you imagine—there are also a great many men of good family who left England during the Commonwealth, remember. And who are still leaving—for the same reason I am. It isn’t that I’m going there because I think the men and women in America are better or different from what they are in England; they’re the same. It’s because America is a country that’s still young and full of promise, the way England hasn’t been for a thousand years. It’s a country that’s waiting to be made by the men who’ll dare to make it—and I intend getting there while I can help make it my way. In the Civil Wars my father lost everything that had belonged to our family for seven centuries. I want my children to have something they can’t lose, ever.”
“Well, then, why trouble yourself to fight for England—since you love her so little!”
“Amber, Amber,” he said softly. “My dear, someday I hope you’ll know a great many things you don’t know now.”
“And someday I hope you’ll sink in.your damned ocean!”
“No doubt I’m too great a villain to drown.”
She jumped off the bed in a fury, but suddenly she stopped, turned and looked at him as he lay leaning on his elbow and watching her. And then she came back and sat down again, covering his hand with both of hers.
“Oh, Bruce, you know I don’t mean that! But I love you so —I’d die for you—and you don’t seem to need me at all, the way I need you! I’m nothing but your whore—I want to be your wife, really your wife! I want to go where you go, and share your troubles and plan with you for what you want, and bear your children—I want to be part of you! Oh, please, darling! Take me to America with you! I don’t care what it’s like, I swear I don’t! I’ll live in anything! I’ll do anything! I’ll help you cut down trees and plant tobacco and cook your meals—Oh, Bruce! I’ll do anything, if only you’ll take me with you!”
For a moment he continued to stare at her, his eyes glittering, but just when she thought she had convinced him he shook his head and got up. “It would never work out that way, Amber. It’s not your kind of life and in a few weeks or months you’d get tired of it, and then you’d hate me for bringing you.”
She ran after him, throwing herself before him, grabbing frantically at the happiness that seemed just to elude her fingers but which she was sure she could catch. “No, I wouldn’t, Bruce! I swear it! I promise you! I’d love anything if you were there!”