But Amber could not think or care about anything else. Once more the old passionate and painful longing, which ebbed when she knew she could not even hope to see him, had revived. Now she remembered with aching clarity all the small separate things about him: The odd green-grey colour of his eyes, the wave in his dark hair and the slight point where it grew off his forehead, the smooth texture of his sun-burnt skin, the warm timbre of his voice which gave her a real sense of physical pleasure. She remembered the lusty masculine smell of sweat on his clothes, the feeling of his hands touching her breasts, the taste of his mouth when they kissed. She remembered everything.
But still she was tormented, for those piecemeal memories could not make a whole. Somehow, he eluded her. Did he really exist, somewhere in that vastness of space outside England, or was he only a being she had imagined, built out’ of her dreams and hopes? She would throw her arms about Susanna in a passion of despair and yearning—but she could not reassure herself that way.
Yet in spite of her violent desire to see him again she had stoutly made up her mind that this time she would conduct herself with dignity and decorum. She must be a little aloof, let him make the first advances, let him come first to see her. Every woman knew that was the way to prick up a man’s interest. I’ve always made myself his servant, she chided, but this time it’s going to be different. After all, I’m a person of honour now, a duchess—and he’s but a baron. Anyway—why shouldn’t he come to me first!
She knew that his wife would be along but she did not trouble herself too much about that. For certainly Lord Carlton was not the man to be uxorious. That was well enough for the citizens, who had no better breeding, but a gentleman would no more fawn upon his wife than he would appear in public without his sword or wearing a gnarled periwig.
Lord and Lady Almsbury were back in London in July to put their house in order, hire new servants and prepare for the entertainment of their eagerly expected guests. The Earl came to see Amber and, determined to show him how nonchalant she was at the prospect of seeing Bruce, she chattered away furiously about her own affairs—her title, her great house abuilding in St. James’s Square, the people she had invited to supper for that Sunday. From time to time she asked him what he did in the country and then hurried on without letting him answer—for everyone knew there was nothing to do in the country but ride and drink and visit tenants. Almsbury sat and listened to her talk, watched her vivacious display of mannerisms and hectic charm, smiled and nodded his head—and never mentioned Bruce at all.
Amber’s conversation began to slow down. She grew perplexed and quieter, and finally—realizing that he was teasing her—she became angry. “Well!” she said at last. “What’s the news!”
“News? Why, let me think now. My black mare—the one you used to ride, remember?—foaled last week and—”
“Blast you, Almsbury! Why should you use me at this rate, I’d like to know! Tell me—what have you heard? When will he get here? Is she still coming?”
“I don’t know any more than I did last time I wrote to you—August or September. And, yes, she is coming. Why? You’re not afraid of her?”
Amber shot him a dark venomous glare. “Afraid of her!” she repeated contemptuously. “Almsbury, I swear you’ve a droll wit! Why should I be afraid of her, pray?” She paused a moment and then superciliously informed him: “I’ve got an image of her—that Corinna!”
“Have you?” he asked politely.
“Yes, I have! I know just what she’s like! A plain meek creature who wears all her gowns five years out of the style and thinks herself fit for nothing but to be her husband’s housekeeper and breed up his brats!” The portrait was a reasonably accurate one of Almsbury’s own wife. “A great show she’ll make here in London!”
“You may be right,” he admitted.
“May be right!” she cried indignantly. “What else could she be like—brought up over there in that wilderness with a pack of heathen Indians—”
At that instant a weird and raucous voice began to screech. “Thieves, God damn you! Thieves, by God! Make haste!”
Involuntarily both Amber and the Earl leaped to their feet, Amber overturning the spaniel which had settled on her skirts for a nap. “It’s my parrot!” she cried. “He’s caught a thief in there!” And she dashed toward the drawing-room with Almsbury beside her and Monsieur le Chien yapping excitedly at their heels. They flung open the door and burst in, to find that it was only the King who had strolled in unannounced and picked out an orange from a bowl of fruit. He was laughing heartily as he watched the parrot prancing on his perch and teetering back and forth, squawking frantically. It was not the first time the bird, trained to apprehend intruders, had mistaken his man.
Almsbury left then and a few days later he went back to Barberry Hill to hunt, while Emily stayed in town to welcome the guests should they arrive unexpectedly. Amber had no opportunity to discuss Corinna with him again.
For the past year she had been going three or four times a week to watch the progress on Ravenspur House.
Planned in the new style without those courtyards which had evolved from the enclosing castle-walls, it was a perfectly symmetrical four-and-a-half-storied cherry-brick building with windows made of several hundred small square glass panes. It fronted on Pall Mall, which was lined with elm trees, and the gardens in back were adjacent to St. James’s Square—now become merely a sordid receptacle for refuse, dead cats and dogs, the garbage and offal carted from the great houses and dumped there.
Neither Captain Wynne nor his patron had overlooked any possibility for making the house the newest and most sumptuous in London. Coloured paint on wood-work was no longer the mode, and so instead there were several rooms decorated with large panels of allegorical figures, mostly from Greek or Roman mythology. The floors in every important room were parquet, all laid in intricate designs. Glass chandeliers, looking like great diamond ear-drops, were very uncommon, but Ravenspur House had several; all others, including the sconces, were of silver. She had one room panelled in fragrant pale-orange Javanese mahogany. The letter C, entwined with crowns and cupids, was a recurring motif everywhere—to Amber that C meant Carlton, as well as Charles.
Anything she might have forgotten to put in her bedchamber at Whitehall she intended to have in this one. The gigantic bed —the biggest in all England—was to be covered with gold brocade and decorated with swags of gold cord and fringe. Each of its four posters was surmounted by a bouquet of black-and-emerald ostrich-feathers with a bordering of aigrettes. Every other piece of furniture was to be coated with gold-leaf and all cushions on chairs and couches were of emerald velvet or satin. The ceiling was a solid mass of mirrors; the walls had alternating panels of mirrors and gold brocade; Persian carpets of velvet and cloth-of-gold, pearl-embroidered, scattered the floor. Furnishings of other rooms were to be of a similar raucous splendour.
One hot day late in August Amber was there talking to Captain Wynne and looking at the house—she wanted to move in soon and had been urging him to hurry the work on it, while he protested that it could be done only at the cost of inferior craftsmanship. The summer heat and haze still lay upon London, but fall was fast coming on; already the willow trees hung in golden strips. And all about them were the dry and dead leaves, sifting to the ground.
As Amber talked her attention was distracted by Susanna who ran about, laughing gleefully as she evaded the clumsy pursuing footsteps and grasping hands of her nurse. She was five years old now, old enough to wear grown-up dresses, and Amber clothed her beautifully, from her innumerable silk and taffeta gowns to each pair of tiny shoes and miniature gloves. Two-year-old Charles Stanhope, the future Duke of Ravenspur, gave every indication that one day he would be at least as big as his father and, also like the King, he had a droll precocious seriousness. His nurse was holding him in her arms and he looked at the house with as much seeming interest and solemnity as if he realized the role he was expected one day to play there.