“Well, then! You can’t get out—but what’s there to keep us from getting in?”
He climbed in—followed by Rochester and Sedley—and settled himself between the two women, sliding an arm about each. Sedley stuck his head out the window. “Drive on! St. James’s Park!” As they rolled off, Rochester gave an impertinent wave of his hand to the crowd. There was a breeze blowing up and it now began to rain, suddenly and very hard.
Amber came home in a gale of good humour and high spirits. Tossing off her rain-spattered cloak and muff in the entrance hall she ran into the library and, though she had been gone almost four hours, she found Radclyffe sitting just where she had left him, still writing. He looked up.
“Well, madame. Did you have a pleasant drive?”
“Oh, wonderful, your Lordship! It’s a fine day out!” She walked toward him, begining to pull off her gloves. “We drove through St. James’s Park—and who d’ye think I saw?”
“Truthfully, I don’t know.”
“His Majesty! He was walking in the rain with his gentlemen and they all looked like wet spaniels with their periwigs soaking and draggled!” She laughed delightedly. “But of course he was wearing his hat and looked as spruce as you please. He stopped the coach—and what d’you think he said?”
Radclyffe smiled slightly, as at a naive child recounting some silly simple adventure to which it attached undue importance. “I have no idea.”
“He asked after you and wanted to know why he hadn’t seen you at Court. He’s coming to visit you soon to see your paintings, he says—but Henry Bennet will make the arrangements first. And”—here she paused a little to give emphasis to the next piece of news—“he’s asking us to a small dance in her Majesty’s Drawing-Room tonight!”
She looked at him as she talked, but she was obviously not thinking about him; she was scarcely even conscious of him. More important matters occupied her mind: what gown she should wear, which jewels and fan, how she should arrange her hair. At least he could not refuse an invitation from the King—and if her plans succeeded she would soon be able to cast him off altogether, send him back to Lime Park to live with his books and statues and paintings, and so trouble her no more.
CHAPTER FORTY–TWO
THE TWO WOMEN—one auburn-haired and violet-eyed, the other tawny as a leopard, and both of them in stark black—stared at each other across the card-table.
All the Court was in mourning for a woman none of them had ever seen, the Queen of Portugal. But in spite of her mother’s recent death Catherine’s rooms were crowded with courtiers and ladies, the gaming-tables were piled with gold, and a young French boy wandered among them, softly strumming a guitar and singing love-songs of his native Normandy. An idle amused crowd had gathered about the table where the Countess of Castlemaine and the Countess of Radclyffe sat, eyeing each other like a pair of hostile cats.
The King had just strolled up behind Amber, declining with a gesture of his hand the chair which Buckingham offered him beside her, and on her other side Sir Charles Sedley lounged with both hands on his hips. Barbara was surrounded by her satellites, Henry Jermyn and Bab May and Henry Brouncker—who remained faithful to her even when she seemed to be going down the wind, for they were dependent upon her. Across the room, pretending to carry on a conversation with another elderly gentleman about gardening, stood the Earl of Radclyffe. Everyone, including his wife, seemed to have forgotten that he was there.
Amber, however, knew very well that he had been trying for the past two hours to attract her attention so that he might summon her home, and she had painstakingly ignored and avoided him. A week had passed since the King had invited them to Court again, and during that time Amber had grown increasingly confident of her own future, and steadily more contemptuous of the Earl. Charles’s frank admiration, Barbara’s jealousy, the obsequiousness of the courtiers—prophetic as a weather-vane—had her intoxicated.
“Your luck’s good tonight, madame!” snapped Barbara, pushing a pile of guineas across the table. “Almost too good!”
Amber gave her a smug, superior smile, with lips curled faintly and eyes slanting at the corners. She knew that Charles was looking down at her, that almost everyone at the table was watching her. All this attention was a heady wine, making her feel vastly important, a match for anyone.
“Whatever do you mean by that, madame?”
“You know damned well what I mean!” muttered Barbara, half under her breath.
She was hot and excited, trying desperately to control her temper for fear of being made to look a fool. It was bad enough that Charles in his forthright, casual way had let everyone know he intended laying with this upstart wench from the theatres. But to make matters even worse that miserable wretch, Buckingham, had taken it into his maggoty head to sponsor her himself—and if she dared so much as murmur a protest he reminded her that it was only by his good nature she remained in England at all.
Oh, damn those letters! Damn Buckingham! Damn everything! I’d like to claw that bitch’s hair off her scalp! I’ll learn her she can’t use me at this rate!
“Here!” she cried. “I’ll raffle you for the whole of it!”
Amber gave a delicate lift of her eyebrows. The more furiously excited Barbara grew, the cooler she seemed. Now she looked up and exchanged smiles with Charles, a smile that took him into her camp, and he grinned lazily—a willing prisoner.
She gave a careless shrug. “Why not? Your throw first, madame.”
Barbara ground her teeth and gave Charles a glare that might once have warned him. Now he was frankly amused. She swept three ivory dice off the table and flung them into a dice-box, while all around them conversation stopped and the lords and ladies leaned forward to watch. Barbara gave the box a defiant vigorous shake and with a dramatic flourish she tossed the dice out onto the table where they tumbled along the polished surface and slid at last to a stop. Two sixes and a four.
Someone gave a low whistle and a murmur ran through the bystanders as Barbara looked up with a triumphant smile, her eyes glittering. “There, madame! Try if you can better that!”
And since the object of the game was to throw three alike—else the highest pair took the stakes—even Amber was forced to recognize that her chances could not be very good.
Frantically she stabbed about for a way to save herself. I’ve got to do something—I can’t let her beat me in front of all these people! I’ve got to do something—something—something—
And then she felt the pressure of Buckingham’s knee and a light movement in her lap. Suddenly she found herself cold and clear-headed again, no longer desperate, and with a quick automatic gesture she picked the dice-box up from the table in one hand and the dice in the other. So quickly that it scarce seemed to happen she dropped the box into her lap and the one she recovered was the one just put there by Buckingham. Without looking she knew what it was: a false box painted inside to look like an honest one—and she tossed the dice in. The hours of practice she had had in Whitefriars and since now stood her in good stead—for the dice came forth like loyal soldiers: a five, a five, and another five. There was a gasp all around the room while Amber pretended astonishment at her own good fortune. The beet-faced Brouncker leaned down to whisper in Barbara’s ear.
And suddenly she sprang to her feet. “Very clever, madame!” she cried. “But I’m not one to be so easily put upon! There’s been some scurvy trick here—I’ll pass my word for that!” she added, addressing herself to the audience in general, and his Majesty in particular.