I’ve got to beat her! she was thinking. I’ve got to! It seemed that nothing else in her life had ever been so important.
And while Corinna hesitated the flame burned closer to the pin, melting the wax, and slowly it began to droop. Amber was breathing faster, her nostrils flared a little and her muscles held taut. There! It’s sliding out! I’ve got it! I’ve won!
“Fifty pounds!” called a masculine voice, as the pin fell from the candle onto the table.
The auctioneer was holding the cloth in his hands, grinning. “Sold, for fifty pound, to my Lord Carlton.”
For a moment Amber sat, unable to move, while every other head in the room turned curiously to watch him making his way through the crowd. Then, as though her neck operated on a creaky hinge, Amber forced herself to turn her head, and just as she did so she looked up into his face. His green eyes met hers for a moment and there was a faint smile on his mouth; he nodded at her, and went on. She saw other smiles too, all around her, mocking jeering faces that seemed to close in upon her, to swim and dance all about her head.
Oh, my God! she thought wretchedly. Why did he do that to me? Why did he do it?
Lord Carlton now stood beside his wife and she was getting to her feet; her waiting-woman had gone to take the piece of cloth and she held it in her arms, triumphantly. Chairs scraped and moved, gentlemen stepped aside as Bruce and Corinna walked out. The room was murmurous as a bee-hive, and not every smirk was covered with a polite fan.
“Lord!” said a nearby baroness. “How’ll we shift if it should become the fashion for a man to prefer his wife to his whore?”
Amber sat there, feeling as though she were imprisoned where she could neither see nor breathe, and that if she did not somehow break her way out she would explode. Lord and Lady Carlton were gone now and the auctioneer was measuring down another inch on his candle, but no one paid him any attention.
“What d’ye know!” cried Middleton, ruffling her fan and showing her teeth in a simulated smile. “Aren’t men the most provoking creatures?”
All of a sudden Amber ground her heel on the other woman’s toe. Middleton let out a yelp of pain and reached one hand down to massage her injured foot. Threateningly she glared back up at Amber, but Amber ignored her. She was sipping her tea, eyes cast into the bowl, and she did not so much as give a surreptitious glance around the room to see who was watching her, for she knew that they all were.
But later at home she was so sick that she vomited and went to bed and wished she would die. She contemplated suicide—or at least some spectacular try at suicide to rouse his sympathy and bring him back to her. But she was afraid that even that might not succeed. Something in the expression of his eyes, seen for just that moment as he passed, had convinced her at last that he was done with her. She knew—but she would not accept it.
Somehow, somehow, she told herself, I can win him back again. I know I can. I’ve got to! If only I can talk to him again I can make him see how foolish this is—
But now he did not even answer her notes. The messengers she sent came back empty-handed. She tried to meet him herself. Once she dressed in boy’s clothes and went to Almsbury House. She waited more than an hour in the rain at the door he was supposed to leave by, but did not see him. She had her informers posted everywhere, to let her know the moment he entered the Palace grounds, but apparently he never came to Whitehall any more. At last she sent him a challenge to a duel —the one infallible means she knew to make him see her again.
“For some months, sir,” it read, “I have suffered the embarrassment of being your cuckold. This has damaged the repute of my family, as well as of myself, and to repair the honour of my house I do hereby challenge your person to mine, by whatever arms you may choose, and do request your attendance at five of the clock tomorrow morning on the twenty-eighth day of May in Tothill Fields where the three great oaks stand by the river. Pray, sir, do me the favour of keeping our rendezvous a secret, and come to it unattended. Your humble servant, sir, Gerald, Duke of Ravenspur.”
Amber thought it had the ring of authenticity and sent Nan to an amanuensis to have it copied in a hand like Gerald’s, for though she knew it was unlikely Bruce had ever seen his writing, she intended to take no chances. If this failed—But it couldn’t fail! He had to come—no gentleman dared refuse a cartel.
But Nan protested. “If your husband had been going to fight ’im at all, he wouldn’t have waited till now.”
Amber would hear no objections. “Why not? Look how long it took the Earl of Shrewsbury to challenge Buckingham!”
Early the next morning while the Palace was still asleep, she set out on horseback, attended only by Big John Waterman. She wore a riding-habit of sage-green velvet embroidered in gold, and the brim of her Cavalier’s hat was loaded with garnet-coloured ostrich-plumes. Though she had scarcely slept at all excitement kept her from feeling or looking tired. They clattered down King Street and through the narrow dirty little village of Westminster into the green fields beyond, past the Horse Ferry and out to the three great oaks. There Amber dismounted and Big John went on with her horse; he was to keep out of sight and not to return until she gave him a signal.
It was just beginning to grow light and she stood there alone for several moments, surrounded by quiet familiar country sounds: the river washing its banks, the “tick-tick” of a stonechat, the unseen scurrying of many little creatures. All about her the fog moved gently, like breath blown on a cold morning. She watched a Polly Dishwasher dragging at a worm, cocking its head in bewilderment when the captive slipped away and disappeared into the earth again. She laughed nervously aloud at that and then started suddenly, glancing around her. Quickly she darted back behind the tree, out of sight, for he was riding toward her across the meadow.
She did not dare to peek for fear he would see her, wheel about and go back, but she could hear the sound of hoofs coming over the soggy ground and her heart sped with relief and apprehension. Now that he was here—what would he do? She had never had less confidence in her ability to coerce and charm him.
She could hear the horse, heaving and panting, and she heard him talking to it as he swung down and stood there beside it. Trying to screw up the courage to show herself she hesitated several moments longer. At last he gave a short impatient shout.
“Hey! Are you ready?”
Her throat was too dry and tight for her to answer, but she stepped out from behind the tree and confronted him. Her head was lowered a little, like a child who expects a beating, but her eyes darted up quickly to his face. He did not look very much surprised but gave her a faint one-sided smile.
“So it is you,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think your husband was an ardent duellist. Well—” He had been holding his cloak in his hand and now he swung it on again, turned and walked back to where his horse was grazing.
“Bruce!” She ran toward him. “You’re not going! Not yet! I’ve got to talk to you!” She reached for him, seizing his forearms, and he paused, looking down at her.
“What about? Everything there is to be said between us has been said a thousand times.”
There was no smile on his face now, but seriousness and the impatience and simmering anger she had come to recognize and to dread.
“No it hasn’t! I’ve got to tell you how sorry I am! I don’t know what happened to me that day—I must have been crazy! Oh, Bruce—you can’t do this to me! It’s killing me, I swear it is! Please, darling, please—I’ll do anything, anything in the world if only I can see you again!” Her voice was intense and passionate, pleading with wild desperation. She felt that she had to convince him somehow, or die.