The room, which was not a very large one, was packed full of ladies with their lap-dogs and blackamoors and waiting-women, as well as several gallants who stood among them. Feminine voices and high little shrieks of laughter babbled through the room like a spring freshet dashing headlong toward the river. China tea-dishes clinked and taffeta skirts whistled softly.
The raffle had been under way for an hour or more when the Duchess of Ravenspur arrived. Her entrance was spectacular, made with the sense of showmanship and ostentation which proclaimed her still more actress than great lady. Like a wind she swept upon them, nodding here and smiling there, well aware of the sudden lull she had caused, the murmurs that followed after her. She was, as always, splendidly dressed. Her gown was cloth-of-gold, her hooded cloak emerald velvet lined in sables and there was a spray of emeralds pinned to her great sable muff. The blackamoor carrying her train wore a suit of emerald velvet and his skull was bound in a golden turban.
Amber was pleased by their interest, malicious as it was, for only jealousy and envy ever got a woman such attentions from her own sex she thought. Next to a man’s admiration she valued a woman’s envy. Someone quickly placed a chair for her beside Mrs. Middleton, and as she took it Jane’s face clouded with the resentful troubled expression of a pretty woman forced into comparison with one far handsomer.
Amber saw at a glance Middleton’s ambitious costume, too expensive for her husband’s modest estate, the pearls that had been given her by one lover, the ear-drops by another, the gown in which she had been seen more times than was fashionable and which should have been on her waiting-woman’s back several weeks since.
“My dear!” she cried. “How fine you look! I vow and swear, that gown! Where’d you ever get it?”
“How kind of you to say so, madame, when of course you outshine me by far!”
“Not at all,” protested Amber. “You’re too modest, with every man at Court adying to be your servant!”
The fencing-match of compliments ended when a young Negro brought Amber a bowl of tea which she took and began to sip while her slanted eyes moved about the room—looking for him. He was not here either, though she would have sworn that was Almsbury’s coach in the street. They were preparing now to auction off a length of Indian calico—the expensive flowered cotton which the ladies liked to have made into morning-gowns, because of its extreme rarity. The auctioneer measured down an inch of candle and stuck a pin into it, the candle was lighted, and the bidding began. Middleton gave Amber a nudge and smiled at her slyly from over the top of her bowl, glancing off across the room.
“Well! Who d’ye think I see?”
Amber’s heart stopped completely and then began to pound.
“Who!”
But even as she spoke her eyes followed Middleton’s and she saw Corinna sitting just a few feet away, but half-turned so that only the curve of her cheek and the long black arc of her lashes was visible. Her cloak fell slantwise, concealing the grotesque bulge of pregnancy, and as she moved her head to speak to someone her full profile appeared, serene and lovely. Amber was seized with a fury of murderous hatred.
“They say,” Middleton was drawling, “that his Lordship is mad in love with her. But it’s no wonder, is it?—she’s such a beauty.”
Amber dragged her eyes away from Corinna, who either did not know that she was in the room or pretended not to know it, and gave Middleton a savage glare. The bidding was idle and the customers inattentive for, as at the theatre, they were more interested in themselves than in what they had ostensibly come for. Without much success the auctioneer tried to whip up some competition; the calico was a beautiful piece, printed in soft shades of rose and blue and violet, but the highest bid so far was only five pounds.
Amber was leaning across the woman on her left to talk to a couple of young men and the three of them were busily murmuring and laughing together over the newest scandal.
The night before Charles had gone with Rochester to the Russia House, a brothel in Moor Fields, and while the King’s attentions were occupied his Lordship had stolen his money and left. When he was ready to pay his fee and go Charles found himself penniless and was only saved from a severe beating when someone chanced to recognize him. Rochester had gone to take the country air and, no doubt, to polish a new set of lampoons which would soon flood the Court.
“D’you think it’s true?” Henry Jermyn wanted to know. “I saw his Majesty this morning and he looked as spruce as you please.”
“He always does,” the other reminded him. “It’s his Majesty’s great good fortune that his dissipations don’t show in his face—at least not yet.”
“We’ll never know if it’s true or not,” said Amber. “For he won’t tolerate being reminded the next morning of what he did the night before.”
“Your Grace should know.”
“They say he’s mightily taken with Nell Gwynne these days,” said Jermyn, and he watched Amber carefully as he spoke. “Chiffinch tells me he goes to see her two or three times a week, now her belly’s got so big she can’t hop in and out of hackneys.”
Amber knew that already, and in fact Charles had not visited her at night for several weeks. Ordinarily she might have been worried about it, but she had been too much concerned over Bruce to give it very much thought. He had neglected her before, and she knew that he would do so again, for the King liked variety in his love-affairs and no one woman could satisfy him for long. It was a habit he had contracted early in life and which he had never wanted or tried to change. But it made her angry to have others know and remind her that she was less a favourite than she had been on her first coming to Court.
She might have thought of something flippant to say in retort, but at that moment she caught the end of the auctioneer’s sentence: “—if no one else wishes to bid, this length of cloth goes to my Lady Carlton for the sum of six pound—” His eyes went over the room. “Is there another bid? No? Then—”
“Seven pound!”
Amber’s voice rang through the room, loud and clear and defiant; she was half startled herself to hear it. For certainly she had no use for that calico—pretty as it was; it was printed in colours she never wore and would not have considered wearing. But Corinna had bid for it, wanted it—and must not have it.
Corinna did not turn her head to look at Amber, but for several seconds she sat quietly, as if surprised or embarrassed. The auctioneer was setting up a lively chatter, sensing that these two ladies were rivals who might be persuaded to bid against each other. Amber, fully expecting that Corinna would retire meekly and let her have the cloth, was astonished when her voice, soft but determined, spoke again.
“Eight pound.”
Damn her! thought Amber. I’ll get it now if it costs me my last farthing!
The flame was burning close to the pin. In just a few moments the pin would fall out and whoever had made the last bid took the prize. Amber waited until the auctioneer was once more announcing that the cloth went to Lady Carlton and then she interrupted him.
“Twenty pound!”
The room had grown quiet now and at last they were taking an interest in the auction, for the Duchess of Ravenspur’s affair with Lord Carlton was known to all of them. They understood why she was so anxious to get the cloth, and they hoped to see her beaten and embarrassed. Their sympathy for Corinna was not great, but their resentment against Amber was. She had got too much, been too successful, and now even her sycophants and pretended friends hoped secretly for her unhappiness. No defeat of hers could be too small to give them satisfaction.
Corinna hesitated, wondering if it was not absurd to haggle with a woman who had neither the breeding nor the manners to appreciate that both of them were being made conspicuous in the worst possible way. Amber had no such misgivings. She sat tensely forward in her chair, her eyes wide and shining with excitement, fists clenched inside her muff.