After a moment Bruce, without glancing around, said, “This manuscript of Carew—how did you get hold of it?” And then when he got no answer he turned and saw her.
Timidly Amber smiled and made him a little curtsy. “Good even, my lord.”
“Well—” Bruce tossed the manuscript onto a table just behind him. “I would never have taken you for a book-collector.” His eyes narrowed. “How the devil did you get here?”
She ran toward him. “I had to see you, Bruce! Please don’t be angry with me! Tell me what’s happened! Why have you been avoiding me?”
He frowned slightly, but did not look away. “I didn’t know any other way to do it—without a quarrel.”
“Without a quarrel! I’ve heard you say that a hundred times! You, who made your living fighting!”
He smiled. “Not with women.”
“Oh, I promise you, Bruce, I didn’t come to quarrel! But you’ve got to tell me what happened! One day you came to see me and we were happy together—and the next you’d scarce speak! Why?” She spread her hands in a gesture of pleading.
“You must know, Amber. Why pretend you don’t?”
“Almsbury told me, but I wouldn’t believe him. I still can’t believe it. You, of all men, being led by the nose by your wife!”
He sat down on the top of the table near which they were standing and braced one foot on a chair. “Corinna isn’t the kind of woman who leads a man by the nose. I decided myself—for a reason I don’t think I can explain to you.”
“Why not?” she demanded, half insulted at that. “My understanding’s as good as another’s, I’ll warrant you! Oh, but you must tell me, Bruce. I’ve got to know! I have a right to know!”
He took a deep breath. “Well—I suppose you heard that Castlemaine showed Corinna the lampoon—but she said she’d known we were lovers long before that. She’s gone through a kind of agony these last weeks we don’t know anything about. Adultery may seem no serious matter to us, but it is to her. She’s innocent, and what’s more, she loves me—I don’t want to hurt her any more than I have.”
“But what about me?” she cried. “I love you as much as she does! My God, I think I know a thing or two about agony myself! Or doesn’t it mean anything to you if I’m hurt?”
“Of course it does, Amber, but there’s a difference.”
“What!”
“Corinna’s my wife and we’ll live together the rest of our lives. In a few months I’ll be leaving England and I won’t come back again—I’m done travelling. Your life is here and mine is in America—after I go this time we’ll never see each other again.”
“Never—see each other again?” Her speckled tawny eyes stared at him, her lips half-parted over the words. “Never—” She had said that to Almsbury only an hour before, but it sounded different to her now, coming from him. Suddenly she seemed to realize exactly what it would mean. “Never, Bruce! Oh, darling, you can’t do this to me! I need you as much as she does—I love you as much as she does! If all the rest of your life belongs to her you can give me a little of it now—She’d never even know, and if she didn’t know she couldn’t be hurt! You can’t be here in London all these next six months and never see me—I’d die if you did that to me! Oh, Bruce, you can’t do it! You can’t!”
She threw herself against him, pounding her fists softly on his chest, sobbing with quiet, desperate, mournful little sobs. For a long while he sat, his arms hanging at his sides, not touching her; and then at last he drew her close against him between his legs, his mouth crushing down on hers with a kind of angry hunger. “Oh, you little bitch,” he muttered. “Someday I’ll forget you—someday I’ll—”
He rented apartments in a lodging-house in Magpie Yard, just about a mile from the Palace within the old settled district which had been missed by the Fire. They had two large rooms, furnished handsomely in the pompous heavy style of seventy years before. There were bulbous-legged tables, immense boxlike chairs, enormous chests, a high-backed settle next the fireplace and worn tapestry on the walls. The oak bed was of majestic proportions with carved pillars and head-board, and it was hung with dark-red velvet which, though faded by the years, showed a richer, truer colour deep in the folds. Diamond-paned windows looked down three stories into a brick-paved courtyard on one side and the noisy busy street on the other.
They met there two or three times a week, usually in the afternoons but sometimes at night. Amber had promised him that Corinna would never know they were still seeing each other and, like a little girl put on her good behaviour, she took the most elaborate precautions to insure perfect secrecy. If they met in the afternoon she left Whitehall in her own clothes and coach, went to a tavern where she changed and sent Nan out by the front door in a mask and the garments she had been wearing—while she left in her own disguise by some other exit. At night she took a barge or a hackney, but then Big John was always with her.
She went to a great deal more trouble than was really necessary to conceal herself, for she enjoyed it.
One time she would come in a black wig, calf-high skirt, rolled-up sleeves, a woollen cloak to protect her from the cold, with a trayful of dried rosemary and lavender and sweet-briar balanced on one hip. Another time she was a sober citizen’s wife in plain black gown with a deep white-linen collar and cap which covered her hair—but she did not like that and stuffed it into a chest, taking out something gayer to wear home. Again she dressed as a boy in a snug-fitting velvet suit and flaxen periwig and she went strutting through the streets with a sword at one hip, hat cocked over her eyes, a short velvet cloak flung up across her chin.
Her disguises amused both of them and he would turn her about to look at her, laughing while she mimicked the speech and manners of whomever she was supposed to be.
She was convincing in her roles, for though she sometimes passed people she knew on the street none of them ever recognized her. Once a couple of gallants stopped to talk to her and offered her a guinea to step into the nearest tavern with them. Another time she narrowly missed the King himself as he came along the river walking with Buckingham and Arlington. All three gentlemen turned their heads to look after the masked lady who was lifting her skirts to get into a barge, and one of them whistled. It must have been either the Duke or Charles himself—for certainly Arlington would never have whistled at a woman though she were walking down Cheapside stark naked.
Sometimes Bruce brought their son with him and occasionally she brought Susanna. They had many gay suppers together, often calling in a street fiddler or two to play for them while they ate, and the children thought it an exciting adventure. Bruce explained to the little boy, as well as he could, why he must never mention those meetings to Corinna; and Susanna could not betray them by some innocent remark for she never saw anyone who might guess what she was talking about but the King—and Charles was not the man to meddle in his mistress’s love-affairs.
Once, when there were just the three of them, Bruce brought Susanna a picture-book so that she could amuse herself while they were in the bedroom. Afterward, while Amber was dressing, Susanna was admitted and stood by her father’s chair thumbing through the book and asking him one question after another—she was not quite five and curious about everything. Pointing to one picture she asked:
“Why does the devil have horns, Daddy?”
“Because the devil is a cuckold, darling.”
Amber, just stepping into her three petticoats, each one of them starched crisp as tissue-paper, gave him a quick look at that. His eyes slid over to her, amused, and they exchanged smiles, enjoying the private joke. But Susanna persisted.