“And suppose someone does take her Ladyship’s place?” she inquired softly.
“Someone will, I’ll pass my word for that. Old Rowley’s been governed by a woman since he first took suck from his wet-nurse. And this time, madame, the woman might be you. There’s no one in England just now with so happy an opportunity. Those gentlemen who are keeping company with the Duchess of Richmond these days are but washing the blackamoor. She’ll never please his Majesty long—that empty-headed giggling baggage. I’ll venture my neck on it. Now, I’m an old dog at this, madame, and understand these matters very well—and I’ve come to offer my services in your behalf.”
“Your Grace does me too much honour. I’m sure it’s more than I deserve.”
The Duke was suddenly brisk again. “We’ll dispense with the bowing and nodding. As you know, madame, if I like I can help you—in your turn, you may be of some use to me. My cousin made the mistake of thinking that all her business was done for her in bed and that it made no difference how she carried herself otherwise. That was a serious error, as no doubt she understands by now—if she has wit enough to see it. But that’s all water under the bridge and need not concern us. I admit to you freely, madame, I’ve made a lifelong study of his Majesty’s character and flatter myself I know it as well as any man who wears a head. If you will be guided by me I think that we might go near to molding England in our own design.”
Amber had no design for molding England and no wish to invent one. Politics, national or international, did not concern her except in so far as they affected the course of her personal wants or ambitions. Her intrigues did not extend—intentionally, at least, beyond the people she knew and the events she could observe. She was inclined to agree with Charles that his Grace had windmills in the head—but if it pleased the Duke to imagine himself engaged upon great projects she saw no reason to argue with him about it.
“Nothing could please me more, your Grace, than to be your friend and share your interests. Believe me for that—” She lifted her glass to him, and they drank together.
CHAPTER FIFTY–SEVEN
FRANCES STEWART WAS not long satisfied with her life in the country. She had always lived where there were many people, balls and supper-parties, hunting and plays, gossip and laughter and a continual rush of petty excitements. The country was quiet, days passed with monotonous similarity, and compared with the Palace her great house seemed lonely and deserted. There were no gallants to amuse her, flatter her, run to pick up a fan or help her down from horseback.
Her husband spent much of his time in the field and when he was home he was too often drunk. The steward managed the house—which she had never been trained to do anyway—and the idle hours bored her desperately, for no one had ever encouraged her to learn to be happy alone. She did not like being married, either, but of course she had not expected to like it.
She had married because it had seemed the only way that she could be an honest and respected woman—and that had been the wish of her life. No doubt the Duke really loved her and was grateful she had married him, but he seemed to her dull and uncouth compared with the well-bred gentlemen of Whitehall who had a thousand amusing tricks to make a lady laugh.
And love-making revolted her. She dreaded each night as it began to grow dark, and invented many small illnesses to keep him away. She had a horror of pregnancy which sometimes made her actually sick, and more than once she experienced all the symptoms without the actuality.
Constantly she thought of the Town and Court and the fine life she had had there—which she had not valued at a great price then but which now seemed to her the most pleasant and desirable existence on earth. She spent endless hours dreaming of the balls she had attended, the clothes she had worn, the men who had gathered around her wherever she went to fawn upon and compliment her; she lived over again and again each small remembered episode, feeding her loneliness on them.
But more than anything else, she thought of King Charles. She considered now that he was the handsomest and most fascinating man she had ever known, and she had found to her dismay that she was in love with him. She wondered why she had not been wise enough to know it sooner. How different her life might have been! For now that she had her respectability it seemed much less important than her mother had assured her it was. What else could a woman need—if she had the King’s protection?
She longed to return to London; but what if he was not ready to forgive her? What if he had forgotten he had ever loved her at all? She had heard of his most recent mistresses: the Countess of Northumberland, the Countess of Danforth, Mary Knight, Moll Davis, Nell Gwynne. Perhaps he had lost all interest in her by now. Frances remembered well enough that once people were out of his sight—no matter how well he might like them—he promptly forgot their existence.
She tried to take an interest in painting or in playing her guitar or in working a tapestry. But those things did not seem entertaining to her, done alone. She was thoroughly, wretchedly bored.
Finally she coaxed the Duke to return to London, and at first her hopes ran exuberantly high. Everyone came to her supper-parties and balls. She was as much courted and sought-out as she had been after her first triumphant appearance at Whitehall. She knew perfectly well that everyone now expected the King would soon relent and make her his mistress, and for the first time she was almost ready to accept that position with its advantages and hazards. But Charles, apparently, did not even know that she was in town.
That went on for four months.
At first Frances was surprised, then she became angry, and finally hurt and frightened. What if he intended never to forgive her? The mere thought terrified her, for she knew the Court too well not to understand that once they were convinced he had lost interest they would flock away, like daws leaving a plague-stricken city. With horror she faced the prospect of being forced to return to her life of idle seclusion in the country—the years seemed to spin out in an endless dreary prospect before her.
And then, not quite a year from the day she had eloped, Frances became seriously ill. At first the doctors thought it might be pregnancy or an ague or a severe attack of the vapours —but after a few days they knew for certain that it was small-pox. Immediately Dr. Fraser sent a note to the King. The resentment Charles had felt against her, his cynical conviction that she had deliberately played him for a fool, vanished in a flood of horror and pity.
Small-pox! Her beauty might be ruined! He thought of that even before he thought of the threat to her life—for it seemed to him that such beauty as Frances had was a thing almost sacred, and should be inviolable to the touch of God or man. To mar or destroy it would be vandalism, in his eyes almost a blasphemy. And she still meant more to him than he had been willing to admit these past months, for she had a kind of freshness and purity which he did not discover in many women he knew and which appealed strongly to the disillusion of his tired and bitter heart.
He would have gone immediately to visit her but the doctors advised against it for fear he might carry the infection and spread it to others. He wrote instead. But though he tried to make his letter sound confident and unworried it had a false flat sound to him, for he did not believe it himself. He had scant faith left in anything, certainly not in the duty of God to preserve a woman’s beauty for men’s eyes. He had found God a negligent debtor who cared little to keep His accounts straight. But he sent her his own best physicians and pestered them constantly for news of her.