Amber’s eyes again flickered hastily around in time to catch a dozen pairs of eyes which had been fixed upon her glance aside, eyes that glittered, set above mouths that curled with amusement and contempt. Some of them did not even trouble to look away but met her with bold scornful smiles; they were watching, and waiting—
She took a deep breath, linked her arm with Almsbury’s and together they walked toward where Lord and Lady Carlton stood in a group made up of the King, Buckingham, Lady Shrewsbury; Lady Falmouth, Buckhurst, Sedley and Rochester. As they approached, the small gathering seemed to grow quieter —as if expecting something to happen from the mere fact of her presence. Almsbury presented Lady Carlton to the Duchess of Ravenspur and both women, smiling politely, made faint curtsies. Lady Carlton was friendly and gracious and obviously altogether unaware that her husband might know this gorgeous half-naked woman. While the men, including his Majesty, all turned their heads to look at her, their eyes admiring her figure.
But Amber was conscious of no one but Bruce.
For an instant Lord Carlton’s expression might have betrayed him—but no one was looking—and then immediately it changed, he bowed to her as though they were the merest acquaintances. Amber, as their eyes met, felt the world rock and tremble beneath her. The conversation began again and had been going on for several seconds before she was able to follow it: King Charles and Bruce were discussing America, the tobacco plantations, the colonists’ resentment of the Navigation Laws, men the King knew who had gone to make their homes in the New World. Corinna said little, but whenever she did speak Charles turned to her with interest and unconcealed admiration. Her voice was light and soft, completely feminine, and the brief glances she gave Bruce revealed that here was that unheard-of phenomenon in London society: a woman deeply in love with her husband.
Amber wanted to reach out and rake her long nails across that tranquil lovely face.
When the music began again she curtsied, very cool and aloof and with some delicate suggestion of insult, to Corinna, nodded vaguely at Bruce and left them. After that she defiantly began to pretend that she was enjoying herself and was not at all embarrassed by her own nudity. She ate her supper attended by half-a-score of gallants, drank too much champagne, danced every dance. But the evening dragged with interminable slowness, and she thought wearily that it would never end.
After an hour or so the dancers began to disappear into the rooms beyond, where the gaming-tables were set up. Amber, a nervous ache in her back and an agonizing tiredness through every bone, excused herself and went into the dressing-room which had been set aside for the ladies. There they might powder their faces or touch up their lips, adjust a garter or sit down for a few minutes and relax—impossible in the presence of men.
But for a couple of maids, the room was empty when she walked into it and she stood for a moment, completely off her guard, shoulders slumped and head buried in her hands. Then all at once she heard steps behind her and Boynton’s voice cried gayly: “How now, your Grace? An attack of the vapours?”
Amber gave her a quick glance of scorn and disgust and bent to smooth up her stockings and tighten the garters. Boynton flung herself onto a couch with a heavy relieved sigh, spreading her legs and stretching them out before her, turning her neck from side to side to relieve the tension.
Giving Amber an arch sidewise glance, she began to strip off her gloves. “Well—what d’ye think of my Lady Carlton?”
Amber shrugged. “She’s well enough, I suppose.”
Boynton laughed loudly at that. “Well enough, indeed. The men all think she’s the prettiest woman here—if not the nakedest!”
“Oh, shut up!” muttered Amber, and turned her back on her to look into one of the mirrors, her hands pressed flat on the table-top. Did she really look so tired, or was it only that her face had gotten a little shiny? She asked one of the maids to bring her some powder.
Just at that moment Lady Carlton appeared in the doorway. Amber saw her in the mirror, her heart came to a sudden stop and then sped on again, almost suffocating her. She took the box of powder and began to dust her nose.
“May I come in?” asked Corinna.
“By all means, your Ladyship!” cried Boynton, shooting Amber a glance of malicious triumph. “We were just saying that since the Duchess of Richmond’s had the small-pox you’re the greatest beauty to come to Court.”
Corinna laughed softly. “Why, thank you. How kind of you to say that.” Her eyes glanced uncertainly at Amber’s back, as though she wished to speak to her but did not quite know how to begin. Actually, she wanted to make some kind of apology for her clumsiness earlier in the evening. London, she realized, was not America, and here no doubt it was quite correct for a lady of the highest rank to appear all but naked at a private party.
“Your Grace,” she ventured at last, “would it seem rude if I told you how much I admire your gown?”
Amber did not even glance at her, but continued busy with the hare’s-foot. “Not if you meant it,” she said tartly.
Corinna looked at her, both puzzled and hurt by the rudeness, wondering what reply she should or could make to that. Already she had been surprised and baffled to discover the savage under-currents that existed in the glossy polite stream of Palace etiquette.
But Boynton spoke up instantly. “But your own gown, Lady Carlton, is the loveliest one here tonight! How do you get such clothes in America? The cloth-of-silver, and that lace—it’s exquisite!”
“Thank you, madame. My dressmaker is a Frenchwoman and she sends to Paris for the materials. Why, really,” she added with a little laugh, “we aren’t such savages in America. Everyone seems surprised I don’t wear a leather dress and moccasins.”
Amber picked up her fan and gloves, turned around again and looked Corinna straight in the eye. “As for that, madame, you may find it’s us who are the savages!”
With that she swept out of the room, but not before she had heard Boynton say gleefully, “Pray, my lady, you must excuse her. She’s had a mighty bad shock tonight.” All of them were thinking, Amber knew, that she was jealous because King Charles had been paying her Ladyship such marked attention.
“Oh,” murmured Corinna’s sympathetic voice, “I’m sorry—”
Amber found Bruce at the raffling-table—for he never remained long in a ball-room when the cards were being dealt or the dice were running—and so absorbed in the play that he did not see her until she had been standing across from him for several moments. Self-consciously she had put on her most becoming expression, lower lip softly pouting, brows slightly raised to tilt the corners of her eyes.
The instant he looked at her she knew it and glanced over swiftly, a half-smile on her mouth. But his mouth did not answer and his green eyes looked at her seriously for a moment, then lightened and slid down her body with a kind of lazy insolence. Slowly they returned to her face and one eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. At that instant she felt like the commonest kind of drab, displaying herself for any man to see and appraise and—worst of all—to reject.
Ready to cry with rage and humiliation she turned swiftly and walked away.
When she blundered into Lord Buckhurst and he suggested that they find some private room she went with him, as much to get away where she could not be seen as for anything else. But she stayed for more than two hours and got a morbid kind of satisfaction from thinking that Bruce would probably know what she was about. She had been lucklessly trying for nine years to arouse his jealousy, but still she was not convinced it would never be possible.
They returned to the drawing-room after eleven to find the gambling still going on and a group gathered about the King and his Royal Highness—James was playing a guitar and Charles was singing, in his magnificent bass voice, a rollicking Cavalier song of the Civil War days. The first person she saw, even before they got to the bottom of the stairs, was Almsbury, and he came toward her with a look of worry on his face. But he said nothing and he and Buckhurst exchanged polite bows. His Lordship went off then and left her with the Earl.