Royal Harlot (6 page)

“He is your pimp, Miss Villiers,” the duchess repeated succinctly, “just as you are his whore. Good day, Miss Villiers, and rest assured that this door will never be opened to you again.”

I parted my lips to protest, and she stopped me short again, shaking her walking stick like a bludgeon toward me. “Go, Miss Villiers, away with you, before I have the footmen turn you out in the street like the vilest whore that you are.”

Seeing no reason for lingering, I departed in sorrow for my mother’s house. I was sick over the loss of my dear friend, for having Anne banished to Windsor made her as remote and unapproachable to me as if she’d been sent to a prison in Rome. Moreover, I’d much anticipated our dalliance with Philip, now never to occur, and the praise I’d receive from him for the novelty. It seemed most unkind to me that Anne should be made to suffer so grievously for the simple misfortune of being my friend and Philip’s acquaintance.

But while I’d been happy to avoid Her Grace’s walking stick, my welcome at home was no less menacing. I’d but stepped into the hall when my own lady mother confronted me with a poker from the hearth in her hand, brandishing it over her head while sparks fair flew from her eyes at the sight of me.

“You shame me, daughter, how you shame me!” She shoved me into the parlor, closing the door after us so the servants would not hear. “I’ve just this hour had word from the Duchess of Hamilton of the filthy tricks you tried to play with her daughter.”

“The letter was meant as a jest, madam,” I said, trying my tactic with a different foe. “It was never intended for other eyes than our own.”

“Surely you take me for a pretty fool, Barbara, if you think I should believe that rubbish.” She tossed the poker clattering beside the hearth with obvious disgust. “I have tried to look away, and hoped that your untrammeled behavior would in time settle itself. I prayed that some decent gentleman would offer for your hand, and make you his wife, and guide you safely through these troubled times of ours. But now you have openly ruined yourself and your prospects with a wastrel like Chesterfield, and I can neither hope nor pray any longer. And with
Chesterfield
, Barbara! Chesterfield, bah.”

“He’s the
Earl
of Chesterfield!”

“He’s a libertine, a drunkard, a gambler, and a duelist,” she continued in relentless litany. “He’ll never marry you.”

“He
loves
me!”

“Chesterfield loves no one but his own pleasures,” she said scornfully. “One day His Majesty will return to claim his throne, and where will you be when he does? Will you be ready to take your place as a jewel in his court, a respected lady, or will you be no more than a pox-riddled slattern, of use to no one?”

“Her Grace cursed me as a whore, too,” I said, my voice rising to match hers. “Yet you would bid me do the same, to barter my body to a man for the sake of a fortune. At least I have pleased myself with His Lordship’s company, which is far more than I could ever do with the sorry males you would thrust upon me!”

She regarded me so coldly that, even in my temper, I feared she might turn me out-of-doors forever. “You’re not a whore, Barbara, for a good whore would demand fair payment for what you give for free.”

I tried to answer her heartlessness with a stony look of my own, my hands squared upon my hips. “Do you speak from experience, madam? Is that why you settled upon my uncle, that he gave fair payment for what little comfort you could offer him?”

She struck me hard across my cheek with the flat of her hand, so hard that I saw wheeling stars before my eyes, and her furious face did seem to spin before me. But I didn’t stumble, or cry out, no matter that the tears smarted behind my lids. I would not give her that satisfaction.

“Because you are my daughter, I’ll not treat you as you deserve,” she said, her breath coming in rapid puffs of rage. “Because you are your father’s dear child, I will give you another chance to save yourself, and your Christian soul. But, Barbara, I vow by all that’s sacred, if you continue in this manner your life will be marked with nothing but wildness and infamy.”

I knew better than to answer her and have my ears boxed for my trouble, but in my heart I countered her boldly. Somehow, I vowed, I would find my place on the world’s bright stage. I would have love, and pleasure, and have all the pretty baubles of wealth and position: a house grander than hers, a richer title, jewels and gowns and carriages.

Such a prediction from her, and such a promise to myself: and yet how strange to think that, in time, both would come true.

I never learned if that thwarted frolic disappointed Philip (for of course I told him of it, fool that I was) so much that he drew back from me, or if, more likely, he acted simply in the pattern of such gentlemen and his fading interest with me was as natural to him as the changing of the seasons. For though I tried every amorous fancy I knew to keep him bound to me, his letters and poesies became less frequent, and worse, he began to invent a score of petty reasons for us not to meet.

He first removed himself to Tunbridge Wells, away from London and from me, and then retreated farther to his estate of Bretby, in the Peak District. I seldom knew exactly where he was, let alone in whose arms he chose to dally. To my misery, I heard his name linked with many others, including Lady Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, a lady far my superior in rank and fortune, if not beauty. Yet my poor heart was so wounded that my pride swallowed that indignity, too, for the sake of but hearing his dear name.

When at last he returned to London, matters were no more improved between us. On the few occasions when he would summon me, I would fain run to his faithless embrace, and forgive him every other transgression. His skill at lovemaking could still make me so weak with trembling delight that it clouded every other thought and common sense. Again and again I suffered these humiliations for what I perceived was his love, with no lasting proof to show for it other than a handful of empty words—a hard lesson for any woman, most especially for one of my still-tender years, yet one I would not forget.

I’ve often considered what would have become of me if Cromwell’s war had not claimed my father, and I’d been blessed with his love, and that of my mother, as she must have been then, before she’d been hardened and drained by misfortune. If as a child I’d seen around me real love, lasting love as warm as a chimney corner, then would I have been better able to recognize the falseness in Philip’s protestations, and tell true love from feigned? If my heart had not been so parched and needy for love of any kind, would I have lapped so desperately at the well-practiced affection he offered?

Is it any wonder, then, that I also missed my friend Anne, whose mother had kept fast her promise to withhold my company from her daughter. I’d not seen Anne since that last summer afternoon, nor did I receive letters from her. Her banishment had been complete. Further, I’d heard she was soon to be married to Lord Carnegie, and would be as good as buried to me forever in the cold Scottish country.

In this sorry fashion, my days did pass until the autumn of 1657, and a fresh scandal for my inconstant lover brought him more trouble than even he could dodge. Having drawn a new lady’s name for a Valentine, he amused himself by sending her a specially made gift, a chamber pot fitted with a looking-glass in the bottom, and a lewd verse to her private charms that would thus be revealed, painted along the rim in French.

But the lady was neither entertained nor seduced—as, alas, I surely would have been—by such a witty token. She soon found a champion in Captain John Whaley, the member of Parliament for Nottingham and Shoreham, and a staunch friend to Cromwell himself. The duel was short, with Philip dispatching Whaley with brisk efficiency and leaving him with a grievous wound. This news roused Cromwell’s vengeful temper, and he sent Philip to imprisonment in the Tower, vowing that if Whaley died, then Philip’s own life would be forfeited.

Even resourceful Philip could discover no way to conduct his affairs of passion while imprisoned in a guarded tower of stone and iron, and while I worried over his eventual fate, I was also spared imagining him with his other loves. This was no small relief. I found jealousy difficult to bear, and had let it gnaw away at me like a plague.

Besides, there were other matters to draw the attention of even the most halfhearted Royalists in London. Groveling Parliament had offered Cromwell the crown, but to the relief and surprise of the true king’s supporters, Cromwell had declined it. While some viewed this as a sign of the Lord Protector’s humility, among my friends it was seen as proof that not even Cromwell or his Puritan God dared interfere with Charles II’s right to the English throne, and there was much giddy talk about a joyful future.

Perhaps because I’d never known England with a king instead of a protector, I was more skeptical than this. Every breath of rebellion that the Royalists had mustered in my lifetime had been quickly smothered, and I couldn’t see that this would be any different. The young Royalist gentlemen of my acquaintance were charming and amusing, yes, but more given to sitting about with their drink and boasting vaguely of what they wished to do against Cromwell’s army than actually accomplishing anything. It was only brave talk, and little more. As quick as Philip’s sword might be in a duel, I’d no wish to see his skill pitted against the grim, somber soldiers who paraded and drilled each day in St. James’s Park.

Oh, it would be pleasing to have that handsome young king to rule us in Whitehall Palace—I still would study the picture of him in my mother’s chamber, fascinated by his regal mien—but in my head I thought of his triumphant return to London as no more than an idle fancy, like wishing for a songbird’s feathered wings so I might fly high and soar over the spire of St. Paul’s.

Yet one evening that autumn, while Philip was still held in the Tower, I was made to realize that such dreams could yet become real.

I had gone to a gathering at Lady Sillsbury’s house on the Strand. It was an old pile of a place, two hundred years old or so, a reminder of the last time that government and religion had warred and claimed each other’s property, in the reign of the eighth King Henry. I’d heard the house had first been built for a flock of papist nuns who haunted it still, reason enough for Cromwell to let the equally ancient Lady Sillsbury keep it. More likely the house was merely too worn and out of fashion for Cromwell’s ambitious generals to bother with, but its rambling wings and black-timbered walls reminded me of the country of my childhood.

I soon wearied of the music we’d been invited to hear, an Italian singer with a quivering belly and a rumbling voice, and the merriment of the company did not suit my loneliness without Philip to leaven it first. Instead I left the singing and found my way to a rambling balcony off the parlor. The house’s green lawns spilled down to a private landing on the Thames, where the boats that had brought guests were tied up and waiting, the clay pipes of the watermen tiny glowing pin-pricks in the dusk. Mists rose in gauzy tangles from the river’s surface, as they do in that season of the year, yet the slivered new moon still hung fresh and bright in the darkening sky.

Heedless of the cooling evening air, I stood and gazed upon this pretty scene, finding some small, rare peace in its tranquility. When I heard another’s footfalls behind me, I didn’t turn, I was so loath for interruption.

“A beautiful evening, is it not?” the gentleman asked.

I’d no choice now but to answer, else seem ill-mannered. “It’s the river that makes it so. Without the Thames, London would be a drab and cheerless place.”

“That will never happen, Miss Villiers,” he said, “so long as you are in London.”

There was an awkward earnestness to this unimaginative compliment that caught my ear and at last made me turn to face its giver.

“Prettily said, if untrue,” I said, deflecting the compliment neatly back to him. “Mr. Palmer, isn’t it?”

“Roger Palmer, your servant.” He swept me a courteous bow, but not before I glimpsed the uneasiness that was close to real fear in his face.

“Miss Villiers, yours.” Was I really so very daunting? I wondered with amusement. He gave the appearance of a man with little to fear, a gentleman by his dress and manner. He was pleasant enough, if not handsome, with a slash of dark brows that sat atop his long nose, dark eyes, and a thin, thoughtful mouth.

“I know who you are,” he said. “Everyone knows you.”

This was true, if bluntly stated, and I smiled to put him at his ease. I felt I should know him, too, for he was close to my own age and did seem familiar, but among the dashing male peacocks in our circle, he’d slipped to the back, unnoticed.

“You didn’t care for the music either, Mr. Palmer?” I asked, languidly opening my fan. Regardless of whether he was handsome or no, an unfamiliar face always meant a new audience. “Did you find that plump Italian rascal as tedious as I?”

“I confess my thoughts were elsewhere,” he said. “I don’t often attend such entertainments as this, you see.”

I raised one brow in play, considering him over the curve of my fan. “You’re not one of Cromwell’s dour men in disguise, are you, sir?”

“Don’t slander me like that, madam!” he exclaimed, with real fire in his dark eyes. “I’ve dedicated my life toward the return of the rightful king to his throne. My father served the last two kings until their deaths, and though old in years, he lives still and burns with the hope that he can serve their son and grandson as well. I will do my best to make that happen, Miss Villiers, no matter the risks or cost. To see Charles crowned here in London—ah, I’d die content.”

“Hush, hush, sir, and be calm,” I said softly. “I spoke but in jest. How could you follow Cromwell yet be among these people as well? We’re all Royalists, sir, else we’d not be here.”

“Perhaps not,” he said, looking away from me and off to the river, though I doubt that was what he saw in his mind’s eye. “But there are degrees of loyalty, Miss Villiers. To listen to the trills of some Roman popinjay and sigh over the lack of a court is not the same as risking one’s very life for the king’s cause.”