Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (21 page)

The doctor reached into his roll of instruments and salves, withdrawing a small clay pot, cradling it against his chest as if it were precious, though he did not leave off his flow of words. "I have mixed my famous miracle salve, a certain cure for burns and swelling joints." He paused, clearing his throat once more with much puffing up of lips. "Mixed even more infallibly, I must say, for her ladyship's specific use, since it was discovered that she left it behind in her haste to ... er, accompany your lordship to your Norfolk estates." The doctor was by this time completely breathless, but showing a more contented face now that a difficult royal message had been well and truly delivered.

The earl had watched him closely for any sign of dissembling. But the doctor was by nature so fidgety Giles could not tell, making him an admirable choice for king's messenger.

"That was most kind of His Majesty, but as you see you may carry to him the good news that her ladyship is fully recovered. . .. And happy." He looked to Meriel for confirmation, and she gave it with a brilliant smile.

The doctor bowed to her, his hand spread upon his heart.

"As my lord says, good doctor, I am the happiest of women. As to fully recovered, I must beg your good offices. I have great need of your pot of salve. I have sorely missed it, and my face and burn have suffered its absence."

He held the small pot out to her. "Your ladyship's beauty shows no ill signs. Indeed, the country air has brought back all the roses of early youth. London air is no aid to the complexion."

"Yes, yes," Giles said somewhat impatiently. "You are welcome to rest here the night before your return."

"And may I examine my patient, my lord earl, so that I may give a true and medically considered opinion to the king?"

"Only in my presence, as is fitting, and after we sup. We will welcome your company at table, Doctor."

"Your lordship is most kind." Dr. Wyndham bowed his acceptance.

Giles ordered a porter to prepare a room for the doctor, and firmly escorted Meriel up the great hall's stairs to her rooms. "I have only one question," he said when they were alone on the stairs.

Meriel smiled up at him a little sadly, sensing the happiness of the last hours slipping away faster. "I suspect, my lord, that you have many more than one question. But I will answer the one you want to ask first."

"Are you witch that you know it?"

She smiled again, this time at his anger, since she knew it was born of deep confusion. "Because it would be my question. And no, I did not expect the doctor. Now I will answer your other questions, I am not eager to join the troupe of king's mistresses. Every word of love I have spoken to you in our bed and in our tree is whole, blessed truth, or the devil may have me for his plaything."

Giles scowled, his mouth tightening to stop any unmanly softening. "Do not tempt the devil, my lady." He took a deep breath and expelled it before he asked what he feared to know, "Then why did you visit Chiffinch on that last day in Whitehall if not to put a price on yourself and secure the king's favor?" As he said the words, his face reddened.

Meriel loosed his arm and grasped the banister. "You had me spied upon? Is all the world after me?"

"You ask me this after you disappeared with Rochester and Buck to Spring Gardens? And after I found you and the king in St. James Park with your heads together? What else am I to think?"

"That perhaps I was kidnapped by those courtiers and that I had the king's confidence in St. James Park."

He stared at her in disbelief, and she knew that Felice had won. There was no way she could finally and for all time overcome such a rough history and win back his full trust. Meriel could feel the wall between them, the one that had tumbled into fragments over these past hours of loving, being rebuilt stone by stone as they spoke.

"Try to find it in your heart to forgive me once more, Giles. Just once more," she whispered and ran up the stairs to her rooms. There was nothing further to say without exposing her sham and Felice's perfidy. Better to leave Giles with the memory of what little she had been able to give him. For a moment she felt virtuous for her tender sacrifice, the greatest any woman could make, though she doubted that the feeling would last for as long as she would need it.

She flung open the door to her room and quickly shut it again, leaning back against its solid wood, gathering some strength from it. When she opened her eyes, Agnes was standing apart from the other maids. She curtsied a low court curtsy, putting Meriel in memory of their long lessons in the Tower, which seemed years past, but was only little more than a fortnight.

"I am happy to see you, Agnes."

"I thank, your ladyship. With me are various gowns, pomanders and certain
necessaries
left behind at Whitehall."

Meriel heard the emphasis and waved away the other maids. "I will rest now and call you when I dress for supper. Agnes may stay by to bring me gossip from Whitehall."

The door closed somewhat louder than necessary on what appeared to be jealous servants, who did not like the intrusion of a fancy court maid into their provincial domain. Meriel drew Agnes close: "Chiffmch?" It was an entire question.

"Aye, your ladyship," Agnes whispered in return. "I am come with orders and documents for you to cipher, and then to deliver to the Dutch."

Meriel heard and understood, but could not resist an accusation. "And you are here to ensure that I do your master's bidding."

Agnes bobbed a shorter curtsy. "As well as make certain of the doctor's loyalties, although he proved a perfect excuse to follow you when you were ... abducted by your ... husband."

"You have many talents, Agnes, dissembling being the chiefest."

"I thank your ladyship. If I may say so, you are gifted in your own right far above my poor talents."

"You may say so," Meriel said, tempted to smile. Somewhat more wearily she added, "So the time is come?"

"Yes, we intercepted a message for Felice that said the Dutch fleet under Cornelis de Witt will pass offshore some time tomorrow on its way to the Thames, and a possible attack on our capital warships anchored in the Pool of London. You must away tonight." She thrust her hand into a slit in her skirt and drew out a pocket of parchments tied around her waist. "You will meet their fleet with the proper dispatches to draw them away. If they think we are prepared for them as these messages reveal, then they may turn back north or return to Holland." Agnes handed the parchments to Meriel. "You will recipher messages from their agents—

Chiffmch wrote what to say—telling the Hollanders that the chain across the Thames has been strengthened, many fire ships readied and soldiers and cannon line the banks all the way to London."

"Is this true?"

Agnes frowned. "I trust to God it is by now, your ladyship. Sir Edward Cheatham, Samuel Pepys and others in the Admiralty are working furiously, but there is little money and the sailors are still in revolt from want of pay, even proclaiming they will not fight."

"Giles could lead them!" Meriel bit her lip for giving away so much. Agnes would know her feelings for Giles now, if she hadn't guessed.

"I do not doubt it, my lady." The words were soft and it was a comfort to Meriel that Agnes—that someone in the world—knew her true heart.

Meriel closed her eyes the better to take all Agnes's words into her memory and retain them, slowly repeating them in a low voice. One question remained. "What if I am unable to fool the Dutch?"

"If Lady Felice's own husband accepted you, there is no reason for the Dutch not to be completely taken in. Try to get them to give you ciphered instructions to return to their London agents, and the means to get you there ... not knowing that we have gathered them all up to the Tower. To their loss of comfort as with all traitors," Agnes added, grim faced.

Meriel shivered, remembering the bloody Tower, the night screams, the pungent scent of fear. She thrust the memory from her. "What if the Hollanders do not believe these dispatches or are so close to battle they do not want to stop?"

"Then, Countess, you will have to make good use of any other talents you may have."

"Even Daniel had help in the lion's den."

Agnes's smiled, though it quickly waned. "The Lord of blessed name will be your only help, too, if you are discovered. Guard your life with your tongue. Do not mistake the Dutch for complete fools. They are strong, good seamen and have a score to settle with us for burning two ships at the port of Vlies and pillaging the town of Terschelling on the Dutch coast. Yet tomorrow you will be the first subject of King Charles in this battle."

Meriel rolled her eyes. "Hey, well, remind me to appreciate my opportunities."

Agnes curtsied, a formal court curtsy again, ignoring Meriel's irony. "I salute you, my lady, and hold you in great esteem."

Meriel's lungs craved air. She walked to the window and opened it, looking down in the gathering dusk on the orderly garden below, seeing Giles as he had climbed from the pool into the morning sunlight, wet clothes outlining the muscles of his body. She stopped herself before she thought longer on that body as it had been in the oak tree, though she had to dig her fingernails into her palm to halt the memory.

She tried not to long for this life and the man ... in his garden, sensible, sweet scented, with interludes of wild loving. That way led to melancholy and eventual madness, not to the courage she would need and need in abundance.

Then she set to work on the messages Chiffinch had intercepted from the Hollander's London agents. She rewrote them into the Dutch musical cipher with all the military detail Chiffinch had given her for the supposedly superior English defenses.

Meriel descended for supper at eight of the giant pendulum clock that stood just inside the open library doors. She was gowned as a countess, perhaps for the last tune, in bright
blue satin looped to reveal a pearl-colored petticoat with matching hose and shoes.

Giles and the doctor, both wearing fine satin suits all the mode, waited by the fire with wine in crested crystal glasses. The two men bowed in response to her deep curtsy.

The library's paneling gleamed from beeswax. The linen on the table was crisply white, and the silver shined as if no hand had ever touched it. It was a room of no disorder, a room for which Giles had overseen the preparation, she was certain. His way of controlling the part of his world that yielded to control. She understood why he had needed to make the effort.

"My lord husband, good doctor, please be seated. I thank you for your greeting." She bowed her head so that Giles could not see the suspicious glint of tears in her eyes.

A servant held her chair, and she was seated. Wine was poured. A rich oniony broth was served.

Giles motioned to her bowl. "Since you have a new delight in this vegetable."

The doctor covered his mouth to erase a smile.

"I thank you, Giles. I hope you don't mind."

" 'Tis my great favorite, as well," Giles said, taking an enthusiastic spoonful.

After this exchange, they fell to silent eating while the doctor desperately made conversation about the healing nature of onions, to fill the emptiness the host and hostess did not seem inclined to satisfy, and commenting further, in as many ways as mud and ruts could be described, on the muddy roads that had delayed his trip from London.

The second course was of light meats, including boned pheasant laid out in a symmetrical pattern so that all could choose as they liked. The third course was of fruits and sweets with cottager farm cheeses circling a large platter.

"Merry, are you not hungry?" Giles asked Meriel, who had eaten little.

Hey, well, the lump in my throat is too large to admit solid food!

Meriel noted that he had not called her Merry since their return from the oak forest, and she could not stop the pleasure she felt at hearing that name on his lips again. "I did dine fully during our
pique-nique,
if you recall."

"You did not seem to indulge in
eating
overmuch."

She thought the real subject of their talk ill disguised from the doctor. She dared risk those dangerous waters, needing to signal Giles that her memory was as good as his. "Indulgence is a matter of appetite, my lord, and my appetite was most fully satisfied this day." There, that should give Mm Ml knowledge of what she had taken away from their forest romp!

"Aye, but you did have much of...
exercise,
which should have renewed your hunger." Giles's voice was laden with other meaning, and it would have delighted her any other night but this one.

The doctor was following this exchange with interest, his gaze going back and forth between them. He made a feeble attempt to join in what seemed raillery. "My lord, would that there were magic drops that husbands could give wives to get at their real meaning," he said, looking to Giles. "Or the same for a wife," he floundered, looking to Meriel.

She knew that she could not continue this conversation that had no other place to end but in her bed or a furious argument, either of which would take too much time with Agnes waiting. "Much of exercise," she said, looking at Giles and assuming her Felice voice. "No more than that to which I am accustomed."

Giles's voice grew predictably harsh. "I doubt it not."

Because Meriel was drowning in shame and sorrow, she answered his anger with anger. "Strange, m'lord, since you seem to doubt so much of late."

His eyes flicked toward her, and their dark depths reflected her own emptiness. Meriel wished she could recall the words she had said in necessity and a little anger because she had needed to put a distance between them. But it was too late. She knew she had already squandered the best of this last hour with Giles.

The doctor stood before his host rose, a breach of etiquette that went unnoticed. "Perhaps your lordship will allow me to examine her ladyship now before I retire."

Giles waved a hand in agreement, his face set with no expression.

The doctor gave her ankle a cursory glance, but examined her scar more closely. "It is healing well. Use the salve morning and night, your ladyship, to double its value."