CHAPTER FORTY–NINE
EVEN AFTER AMBER was married she continued to remain at Almsbury House, for she hoped soon to be given an appointment at Court and live there.
As for her husband, she suggested that he take lodgings in Covent Garden, and because he had been henpecked from the cradle he did so, though against his better judgment. For despite the fact that it was permissible, even correct form, for husbands and wives to hate each other, to keep mistresses and take lovers, to bicker and quarrel in public and circulate the grossest slander about each other—it was not permissible to occupy separate homes or to sleep in separate beds. Amber was amused to discover that she had started a scandal which swept all the fashionable end of town.
Her husband was named Gerald Stanhope, and the title conveyed upon him by the King was Earl of Danforth. He was just twenty-two, a year younger than she, and to Amber he seemed an arrant fool. Timid and non-assertive, weak and thin, he lived in a habitual froth of worry as to what “Mother” was going to think about everything he or his wife did. Mother, he said, would not approve of them occupying separate lodgings, and finally he brought the news that Mother was coming up to London for a visit.
“Have you room for her in your apartments?” asked Amber.
She sat at her dressing-table having her hair arranged by a Frenchman newly arrived from Paris, over whose services the ladies were clawing one another. In one hand she held a silver-backed mirror, surveying her profile, admiring the lines of her straight forehead and dainty tilted nose, the pouting curves of her mouth and small round chin.
I’m handsomer than Frances Stewart any day, she thought, rather defiantly. But still I’m glad she’s gone and disgraced and will never be back to trouble us more.
Gerald looked unhappy, pale and ineffectual. Travel on the Continent had not polished him; a moderately good education had not given him mental poise; the customary indulgence in whoring and drinking had certainly not made him sophisticated. He seemed still like a confused uncertain lonesome boy and this new turn his life had taken only made him feel more lost than ever.
These people—his wife and the other women and men who frequented Whitehall—were all so brazenly confident, so selfish in their preoccupations, so cruelly unconcerned for the hurts or hopes of another human. He longed for the quiet and peace and sense of security he had had at home. This world of palaces and taverns, theatres and bawdy-houses, scared and baffled him. He almost dreaded to have his mother come, to have her meet his wife, and yet the news that she was coming had relieved him considerably. Mother was not afraid of anyone.
He took out his comb and began to run it through his flaxen periwig. His clothes, at least, were now as fine and fashionable as any that money could buy, though his unprepossessing physique and spindly legs did not set them off to advantage.
“Pas du tout, madame,” said Gerald. All the wits and pretended wits sprinkled their conversation with French phrases as a lady sprinkled her face with black taffeta patches. Gerald did likewise, for it gave him a sense of being in the mode. “As you know, I have a mere three rooms. There’s no place to put her there.” He was living at the Cheval d’Or, a lodging-house popular with the gallants because the landlady had a pretty and obliging daughter.
“Well, where do you propose to put her then? I don’t like that curl, Durand. Pray, do it again.” She was still surveying herself, front face now, observing her teeth, her skin, the smooth red paint on her lips.
Gerald gave a Parisian shrug of his thin shoulders. “Eh bien —I thought she might stay here.”
Amber set the mirror down with a slam, though it lighted on a pile of ribbons and was saved. “Oh, you did! Well, she won’t! D’ye think Lord Almsbury’s running a lodging-house? You’d best send her a letter and tell her to stay where she is. What the devil does she want to come to London for anyway?” She gave a shake of her right wrist to hear the bracelets clink.
“Why, I suppose she wants to see her old acquaintances she hasn’t seen in many years. And also, madame, I may as well speak frankly, she wonders why we keep separate lodgings.”
Because he was afraid of what she might say to that he turned and went across the room, taking a long-stemmed pipe out of the capacious pocket of his coat and filling it with tobacco, using a match-stick from the fireplace to light it.
“Good Lord! Write and tell her you’re of age now and married and able to manage your own affairs!” And then, seeing that he was smoking, she cried: “Get out of here with that filthy thing! D’ye think I want my rooms to stink? Go down and order the coach—I’ll be with you presently. Or go on alone, if you prefer.”
Gerald left hastily, obviously relieved, but Amber sat scowling into the mirror while Monsieur Durand, who was not supposed to make use of his ears, continued to work with passionate intensity upon the curl she had criticized.
“Lord!” muttered Amber crossly at last. “What a dull, insipid thing a husband is!”
Durand smiled unctuously, gave a final twirl of his comb and stepped back to survey her head. Then, satisfied, he took up a tiny vial, filled it with water and slipping in a golden rose tucked it among her curls. “It’s true they’ve grown out of the fashion, madame. I find a lady of quality would no more wear one of ’em on her heart than she’d wear a bouquet of carnations.”
“Why is it only the fools who marry?” she demanded, but went on talking without waiting for an answer. “Well, thank you, Durand, for coming to me. And here’s something for your good work.” She picked up three guineas from the table and dropped them into his hand.
His eyes began to glisten and he bowed again and again. “Oh, merci, madame, merci! It is indeed a pleasure to serve one so generous—and so beautiful. Pray call upon me at any time—and I come though I disappoint Majesty itself!”
“Thanks, Durand. Tell me—what d’you think of this gown? My dressmaker is a Frenchwoman. Has she done well by me, do you think?” She turned slowly about before him while Durand clasped his hands and kissed his fingers.
“C’est exquise, madame! Vraie Parisienne, madame! Exquise!”
Amber gave a little laugh and took up her fan and gloves. “What a flattering rogue you are! Nan, let him out—”
She left the room, beckoning Tansy to follow her, and he carried the long train of her gown in his hands so that it would not be soiled before she got to the ball. Durand was worth the three guineas she had given him—preposterous as the price was—not so much for the work of his clever fingers as for the prestige of having him. It had taken some scheming, but she had gotten him away from Castlemaine for that night, and every woman at the ball would know it.
A week later Amber was in the nursery—where she spent an hour or two every morning—playing trick-track with Bruce. Susanna, in a white linen-and-lace gown with a tiny apron and a starched lace cap that perched far back over her long glossy blonde hair, sat on the floor beside them. Already she was beginning to dominate the nursery and had her heel firmly on the necks of the Almsbury children, but her own brother was a more recalcitrant subject and refused the yoke of the little tyrant.
Amber loved the hours she spent in the nursery, for they were the one sure tie that bound her to Lord Carlton. These children were his children too, his blood was in their veins, they moved and spoke and had their being because of him. Their love for her was, in a sense, his—their kisses his. They were the memories of things past, all that she had for the present, and they offered her hope of the future.