Dark Angels (12 page)

“We need to outdo ourselves this evening,” Alice said excitedly.

“Alice Verney, are you mad?” interrupted Fletcher. “As your dancing master, I forbid it. Bragge, I forbid you to have anything more to do with her if she so much as glances at the great cow.”

“You were magnificent. I had no idea you could lie like that,” Alice said, and she and Barbara both laughed.

“It’s our last day, pets,” said Fletcher, taking them by the arm so that they were on each side of him.

Barbara’s face changed. Alice saw it, looked away in irritation. Gracen would have been beside herself to go to France. Caro would have given diamond earrings. But Barbara drooped. The cause was doubtless one John Sidney. Too bad. The deed was done.

I
T WAS AFTERNOON
of the last day.

“We’re so jealous,” murmured Gracen. She’d survived her escapade, the mother of the maids never suspecting anything near the truth. The only evidence it had happened was that she was as sweet as island sugar to Alice.

Touching the ribbon tied tight around her neck, Alice said nothing, but then she had no need to. Every day of this visit, the princess and her ladies had worn something unique—starting with the vibrant green stockings—something that set them apart, and every day the English ladies of court had grown more excited to see what would be next. Today, the last day of their visit, Princesse Henriette’s ladies wore ribbons of black tied tight around their necks. It was charming and symbolic—the princess mourned leaving her brothers and England, but in a way none of her household could prove or protest.

“Blast!”

It was Prince Rupert. Ladies immediately began to fan themselves with their elaborate, spreading hand fans and to giggle at his language.

“Beg pardon,” he called to them.

They were watching the men play at bowls. The gentlemen’s long jackets were off, the loose sleeves of their shirts pushed up, held with women’s garters Monmouth had collected like medieval tournament trophies from among the more daring of the women. The day was sweet, a breeze teasing skirts and wigs, the sun shining and warm. The men’s admiring audience, Princesse Henriette, Queen Catherine, the other great ladies, sat in chairs or on footstools, and everyone else thronged around them, sitting on rugs, lying against cushions piled everywhere, fat cushions with tassels at their corners. The orchestra performed from atop a castle parapet.

The men played in a specially designed area of the garden of the warden of the castle, where grass was thick, green as an emerald, cut to precise and even height. They rolled heavy lead balls at a jack, an earthenware ball of white. The object was to come as close to the jack as possible and to keep anyone else from coming near. The king rolled a ball close to the jack, and at Monmouth’s turn, he edged a ball away from King Charles’s. Princesse Henriette rose to her feet to clap. Alice saw two of the princess’s ladies-in-waiting put their heads together and whisper, clearly about the princess. Were they gathering evidence to present to Monsieur? And what would the accusation be? Your wife had too much fun, smiled, and laughed, and actually enjoyed herself? It was easy to forget what awaited them in France sitting here, where formality was dismissed for frivolity, where the princess had put down her guard, so loving, so affectionate were King Charles and the Duke of York, and the court followed suit. Every day had been one of diversion arranged to the princess’s taste. She must be amused, must be delighted. No wonder she glowed, her face softened, and she seemed as young as one of the maids of honor. But tomorrow they left this paradise, went back to the cage Monsieur and his lover had constructed bar by bar. Trust no one, thought Alice. That must be her litany beginning tomorrow.

Scoring a point, Prince Rupert whooped like a boy. The Englishmen were playing the French. Alice turned her head idly and saw Monmouth’s duchess slip from the queen’s side to walk toward an ancient oak, one of the few to survive the war. Lieutenant Saylor stood under it. When had he returned? thought Alice. And where had he gone? The duchess began to speak to him quite earnestly. Fletcher said they were lovers. Alice looked around. Did anyone else notice? She saw Monmouth, on the bowling green, look up, see them, and his face became unreadable. Spoiled as he’d become, he was still her friend. Alice stood, picked her way through pillows and cushions and lolling bodies, walked over to the spreading oak.

“Do look at that.” Richard’s sister Louisa nudged his other sister, nodded her head toward Alice.

It was colder under the shade of the oak. The bells in it jingled. The smell of ocean was strong. Neither of them saw Alice. They were quarreling, or at least the duchess was.

“—abandon me the way you intend—”

“Do excuse me,” said Alice. “Everyone is watching.”

The Duchess of Monmouth turned in a whirl of skirts to face Alice, furious as a cat. “Who do you imagine you are?” she exclaimed, and before Alice could answer, she shoved past her, strode off. But she walked right into Richard’s sisters, who were strolling together toward the tree. They surrounded the young duchess at once with chatter and laughter and themselves, bearing her back to the seated ladies as if nothing in the world were the matter and life was just grand. Richard, on the other hand, was dismayed and embarrassed.

“You’re as red as a rose petal. Oh, dear, I do believe I’ve dropped my earring. Will you help me find it, Lieutenant?”

She said it to give him time to recover—and because it amused her—leisurely fanning herself, while Richard crawled on the ground at her feet, searching. She glanced back at the crowd of courtiers. Yes. Alice Verney and Lieutenant Richard Saylor under the old oak tree wasn’t nearly as interesting as the Duchess of Monmouth and the lieutenant had been. Richard knelt on one knee, staring up at her.

“I regret to say I can’t find it.”

There was a moment of heart-stopping silence as she looked down at him, as she thought, over the sensation of falling that was making her heart beat fast—as it had done the first time she saw him on the yacht—His eyes are the clearest shade of blue I’ve ever seen. Richard tilted his head to one side, wondering why she stared at him so. “You look exactly like one of my father’s hounds,” she said. “Do get up.”

She turned. Cole was walking toward the oak, and with him was his uncle, the Duke of Balmoral. Alice’s hands flew to her heart. She sank into a curtsy deep enough for a king, watching the elderly duke as he advanced, one arm on Cole’s for support. Cole was pleased with himself, Alice could see. He thought to worm himself back into her affections with this gesture, little knowing he brought the noose with which she would hang all his ambitions. Her eyes went to the duke. He has aged even more in these two years, she thought. He was slight and thin, and the hand he gave her to help her rise was bony, its skin dry, leathery; yet there was some strength to it. His face seemed to be made of a hundred seams coming together at the mouth and nose and eyes. She had forgotten how old he was—his youth the time of cavaliers and court masques, his middle age the war, his old age the Restoration. It frightened her a little, all that lined and marked and bent him.

“How long has it been, my dear?” he asked her.

“Two years, Your Grace.”

“France becomes you.”

Alice found herself blushing.

“It does me good to see you,” he said. “I wished to do my duty and say Godspeed to the princess. Her father, the king, was a man of great integrity. Colefax tells me you have decided to renew your acquaintance as friends….”

Alice found Cole’s eyes. They had decided no such thing. You avoid me as if I carried the plague, he had complained to her. Yes, a plague of lovesickness that might make her ill still. I practice pretty speeches but never have the chance to say them. What might pretty speeches win you? she’d asked. Restoration of your regard. And she’d run away from him since, from the confusion in her.

“And I am glad for it, Mistress Verney, for I always thought him a fool to lose you.”

Now it was Colefax’s turn to become red.

“Will you do me the honor to escort me to the princess, so that I may make my apologies for missing so many days of her visit?”

Proudly Alice stepped forward, and he leaned on her as they walked toward where Princesse Henriette sat. Alice had to walk very slowly, and he breathed unevenly, laboriously, as if the walking took all his strength. Can I do this? Marry a man so old? she thought. Fear pushed up in her.

Leaving him with the princess, she moved around people until she was between Barbara and John Sidney. She plopped herself down, whispered in Barbara’s ear, “I could not leave without a final gesture. Keep your eye on the great cow’s left cheek.”

Barbara put her hands to her mouth to smother laughter.

“What is so amusing?” asked John. After two weeks, he was having to make an effort to be gracious to Alice.

“Secrets. Silliness.” Alice leaned back on her elbows and regarded him through slitted eyes.

“Yes…well…if you will excuse me, Mistress Bragge, Mistress Verney.”

Barbara leaned back on her elbows, too. “You’ve chased him off.”

“I don’t think it possible.”

“Why don’t you care for him?”

“I can’t abide the idea of your marrying someone with those legs. Only think of your children.”

Fletcher, sitting to the other side of Barbara, laughed. “I’m going to cut my hair,” he announced.

“No,” said both Barbara and Alice. There was something dapper and crisp about Fletcher, a small man with large eyes and luxurious, long, curling hair as beautiful as a woman’s.

“It’s the fashion to wear a wig. There isn’t a Frenchman here with his own hair on his shoulders. I cannot be behind fashion, Alice. Not a man in Monsieur’s household was without a wig. I wonder what they plot out there, on the ship.”

“They were so handsome,” said Barbara, as if handsomeness erased evil.

“They resemble angels, but one evening in their company finished me,” said Fletcher.

Angels, thought Alice. The new man in Monsieur’s household, the one from Italy, was named Henri Ange, or in English Henry Angel. Queen Catherine made a gesture, and Barbara rose to go to her, leaving Alice and Fletcher behind.

“I don’t like the idea of your going back to them,” said Fletcher to Alice.

“Barbara will be with me.”

“Well, I don’t like the idea of that, either. She’s much more…” He paused.

Alice tapped him on the head with her fan. “Delicate? Sensitive? Kind?”

“Almost too tender for this world.”

“It will do her good to see the French court, to learn French ways.”

“Planning her marriage, are we?”

“She can do better than John Sidney.”

“The question, my dear Alice, is does she wish to. What’s happening?”

The men on the bowling green had abandoned it. Women were rising from their rugs and cushions, from their chairs, greatly excited.

“We’re to play,” Gracen called to Alice.

Women crowded around Princesse Henriette and Queen Catherine, begging to be allowed to be the first to play, and Alice left Fletcher, took her place among them. Last afternoon, she thought. Roses in the garden sent thin celadon-colored arms fat with blossoms upward to the sun. Their heady smell was as strong as perfume. Amid the music of violins in the orchestra, silver bells rang, high, clear, thin as the air that carried their single note. Chosen women took their places, their gowns melon and moonlight, apricot and old gold, apple and amber, Princesse Henriette like a beacon among them in white, the deep green of the grass, the azure of the sky, making every color, every hue, vibrant and alive. It was as if the bowling green had become a stage, and nymphs and sprites and fairies played to an enchanted audience.

His wig off, King Charles leaned back among the cushions and pillows on a rug and picked up his favorite spaniel, his eyes lingering on the French beauty Renée de Keroualle. Between glances, he examined the spaniel in his lap. “Will you look at this. Mimi has a sore patch on her back again. I wonder which of the other little devils is biting her?”

“Storm to the south.” His cousin Prince Rupert nodded to the edge of the green. King Charles saw that his mistress had not been included among the queen’s players. She was marching toward where they sat.

“I want to play.” Plump and sloe-eyed, the Duchess of Cleveland was sullen, and there was nothing subtle about her when she was sullen.

“And so you shall, in a little while when this game is over. Come now and sit beside me, and I’ll whisper the finer points of the game to you,” said King Charles.

“You just want to fondle me.”

“What else do I pay you for, sweet?”

She laughed and sat beside him. Queen Catherine bowled her turn, and a heavy lead bowl traveled solidly to settle near the king’s rug.

“You’ve got to try to hit the jack, my dear,” called King Charles, “not me.”

“She was aiming for the duchess,” said Prince Rupert.

“Ass,” Cleveland said to him.

“It wouldn’t have hurt you if it had hit you. It would take a cannonball, fired at close range.”

“Charles, make him stop.”

“Don’t quarrel, children. It makes the king fretful. Where are the rest of the dogs, Rupert? They all want to see the lovely ladies play, don’t they, Mimi?” King Charles stroked his spaniel’s head, while she, eyes on him, cocked her head to one side, alert and adoring. “Go and fetch my dogs, Rupert.”