Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (9 page)

Meriel drew back in alarm at the sudden fierce look that flared on his face. "I beg pardon, my lord, if I have said aught to offend. Your angry face does give my fault away."

He shrugged and tossed his scarlet-lined cape over one shoulder to offer his arm, which she took, albeit hesitantly. "Felice, you don't need to make polite conversation. We are well beyond that."

Stung by this changeling man so different than the one in her dream, Meriel could not stop her reply though she had no idea at all if this would have been Felice's. "Evidently well beyond polite conversation, my lord, since our talk together is neither polite, nor even conversation."

A look of anguish passed so swiftly across the visage he turned away from her that she could not be sure she had seen it, but it did make her contrite. "A face can be a burden, Giles." She had good reason to know this since her face, so like Felice's, had brought her all these troubles.

He began to walk toward the door that the majordomo had opened in anticipation, Meriel upon his arm. "A face will be what you make of it, Felice. Since you've used your beauty to become a court whore, you know this as few women are given to know it."

"Ah, Giles, it seems we come to an agreement at last, and face to face." She laughed because that is what Felice would do, though Meriel hated doing so.

He heard a hesitation, but he thought her laugh as pretty as the first birdsong of spring. "Yes, it seems we have come to agreement." He was close to amusement and wondered how he could laugh at the jest of a faithless wife, though he wondered even more if there was a hidden meaning. Felice had always been easier to read than she had been these last two days, exposing her unfaithfulness to the point of callous folly. It had been her uncaring that had sundered them so everlastingly. A woman with a small heart makes a man with a generous one bitter. And a bitter man does not trust love.

Ever. But now came this changed Felice, who was not so easy to read. Not easy at all.

They emerged upon the Royal Horseguards Parade into one of those perfect English late-May mornings: woolly white clouds floated in the pale blue sky above Whitehall, the trees waved tender green leaves in a gentle breeze, and on all the carefully raked paths men and women in morning costume strolled arm in arm. As Meriel watched, almost breathless and trying to contain her interest in what she was supposed to have seen countless times, a company of mar-velously scarlet-coated soldiers marched out from the direction of Westminster.

She almost stopped to watch their white-hosed legs swing in unison along the parade, until she saw Lady Judith walking with other ladies. Meriel was relieved to see a Lady Judith with careful posture and right good roses in her cheeks. The ladies curtsied low as Meriel and Giles passed. She buried her face in Giles's shoulder and gripped his arm, though she doubted a knight's wife would examine a countess too rudely on a public path.

"You must be ill!" Giles exclaimed, puzzled by her clinging to him. He had forgotten the sweet sensation of Felice's head on his shoulder, where once ... he stopped that thought before it took him where he had refused to go for these years past.

"Nay, a moment's dizziness is all. I have not yet broken my fast. Hurry, Giles. His Majesty's party is entering into St. James Park."

Giles hesitated, sniffing the air. "Mmm, I can smell the onions growing in the king's physic garden from here."

Meriel held her breath until she coughed daintily and slipped one of the doctor's mint lozenges into her mouth. They moved on quickly to join the crowd of lords and ladies trailing the king and a dozen of his floppy-eared dogs chasing about, nipping at heels. She tried not to smile when no one kicked out at the spaniels. Not even when they tore at hosen and scratched new boots. The dogs were the king's favorites and allowed great liberties, even whelping in the royal bed.

Giles saw her effort at a straight face, and smiled for her. "These walks are for the spaniels' exercise, I vow. I doubt His Majesty cares as much for the health of these courtiers."

"Yes, he does love his little dogs so. Perhaps because they ask for little and give much."

Giles lost his stride, and Meriel looked up into his face, knowing she had noticed something Felice would never have observed or understood. She shrugged and said in a tone of complete indifference, "Oh, la, at least that is what Buckingham says. Very witty, don't you think?"

"Very," Giles responded, grimly resuming his pace. What game was Felice playing now? What purpose to constantly confound him? She had taken as her own all the freedom a lady in this modern age and libertine court could want. True, he had matched her cuckold for cuckold. Though in truth he took only a man's release in it, no one would ever know he had anything but delight in other women. Especially not Felice.

They were walking fast because the king had long legs and he stretched them mightily on the paths in St. James Park. Most of the other walkers were falling behind so that the king and his dogs were ahead with Meriel and Giles staying hard by.

"Come up to us, Lord Giles and Lady Felice," the king called over his shoulder. "We are all amazed, my lady, for you have never kept our pace before."

"Your Majesty should decree that all your ladies wear no corsets, if you would have them keep your pace."

The king laughed. "Perhaps we should, Lady Felice. We will think on it most diligently."

Meriel curtsied and took the arm His Majesty offered. Giles dropped a pace or two behind, a hidden scowl marking a deep vertical line between his eyes.

She sensed that the king was enjoying her bold masquerade. Well, she wished Mm joy of it, for there was little enough for her. At any moment she could be exposed, and she never forgot that she was in constant danger.
Hey, well, if I am to hang or drown, a jest or two along the way will make it easier.

Charles Stuart pointed to several trees and groves as they walked, noting that his father had planted them. Meriel bowed her head and closed her eyes in quick prayer at the mention of the late Charles the First, who had been beheaded on a Banqueting House balcony by Cromwell and his regicides. The king saw her homage and his face softened for a moment, though he must know that his father, once reviled as a tyrant by the commons, was now revered as a saint.

Meriel thought she would not wish to pay such a price for popularity. Behind her back, she thrust her thumb between her first two fingers to form a cross and ward off evil if the devil was watching.
Hey, well, he usually is.

"My lord earl," the king said over his shoulder as they approached a pond teeming with ducks and swans. "The food for our cobs and signets has unfortunately been delayed with one of the cooks." He turned and pointed to a man in plain-clothes near half a furlong behind. "We would be obliged if you would fetch it to us."

Giles bowed. "A great pleasure, Your Majesty." With a sharp glance at Meriel, part distrust, part anger, he spun about and walked swiftly away.

"He suspects?" The king pursed his lips in thought, searching her face.

"Nay, how could he, Your Majesty? But he senses that I am not the same Felice."

Charles nodded. "We can see that, as well. There is a lively spirit about you. Lady Felice was always weary from too little sleep. For good reason, we fancy." He laughed, covering his mouth with a beringed soft kid glove. "Go to Chiffinch when you return to Whitehall, and without delay."

"I did not expect that you would be my messenger, sir."

"Who better, m'lady?"

Now Meriel covered her mouth. "Would anyone suspect the king of spying for the king?"

Charles laughed aloud, and the swans honked and flapped their wings before settling back into the water, too fat from the king's attentions to fly. "Chiffinch chose well, we say again. We will reward him. And, of course, you will better yourself if you succeed ... if you have not already."

She took his sensual meaning since he glanced in the direction Giles had gone, but refused to satisfy his curiosity, since all she had to report was a dream. "What of Lady Felice, Your Majesty? Must she die?" Meriel stared into his eyes, knowing it was impertinent to question an anointed sovereign. Yet she did not fear him, for she recognized a sweet melancholy that he kept well hidden, but not from her. She saw this sadness with no condescension. Even a countess would not dare remark it; most certainly not a nameless maid.

"We
have not condemned her. She condemned herself when she first sold England to the Dutch."

Meriel knew the subject of Lady Felice's death was forever closed to her, but she also knew that it would continue to haunt her mind. Her heart ached to think that she had been the instrument of a woman's death, traitor or no, perhaps a woman of her own blood, though she hardly knew how that could be. She determined to ask the king if he had learned of her parentage, but she had no chance.

"Ah, Lord Giles comes. He will think that we are seeking to bed his wife."

"And are you, sir? Lady Felice did not mention you as one of her ... her sporting friends, but..."

"Nay, we did not, finding that lady too much the bawd e'en for our appetites, although we might have, at some future time, upon a whim. Our manly need does betimes o'er-whelm our good taste."

Meriel sensed that the king spoke the self-mocking truth and, though sad of a fault, was also forgiving of it, as if the knowledge cleansed the act.

His Majesty greeted Giles, who bowed and handed over a large cloth bag of food scraps from the royal kitchens. "We thank you, Lady Felice, for a most delightful conversation."

Dismissed, and with a bow and a curtsy as the rest of the king's party arrived, Giles and Meriel backed away and then began their return to the palace.

Giles set his face toward Whitehall and did not speak. His mind was all awhirl. What now? Had Felice set her cap so high as the king? And had Charles turned to Felice for his comfort, with his chief mistress, Barbara Castlemaine, heavy with a babe, her fifth by Giles's reckoning? He had no desire to be made cuckold again, even by the king he served and would die for, and he would not stay at the palace to witness this further disgrace, pretending not to see as Castle-maine's husband did. The man, though created an earl, was an object of pity and laughter. Damned if he would ever submit himself to either!

"I will ask the king's leave to go to Harringdon Hall two days hence, for how long I cannot say."

Meriel was startled because the words came as if bitten from a rotten haunch of meat and spit out upon the path. Giles was furious. Felice still had the power to make him unhappy. No, not Felice the countess. It was Meriel, the serving maid, who had reached inside that unyielding body and squeezed his heart. And God forgive her, she was gladdened to know it.

As keeper of the privy closet and of the king's jewels and unofficial purveyor of women for His Majesty, Chiffinch's office was near the top of the outside stairs that led to the king's private closet and bedroom. Meriel climbed the dark stairs, lit by one lantern, and Chiffinch answered her knock. She found him pissing in his fireplace. Born low or high, a fireplace was every man's pisspot. What was it with a man and fire that he had to try to quench it?

"Sit down, my lady," Chiffinch said, pointing to a large leather chair. Thankfully, he pointed with his finger.

Averting her eyes as he arranged his breeches, she sat. It was not that she was so dainty as to go all to vapors at the sight of a prick; there was simply no more she wanted to know of this man. His face was the one she'd see forever when recalling the unspeakable pain of the fiery poker sizzling on her skin.

From a bowl, Meriel picked a fig still fresh from the queen's tree. Surely, it was not required of her to starve for England!

Chiffinch moved the bowl beyond her reach, which explained his bulging paunch. "Galling news from the north,"

he said, sitting very much too near her, before his writing table.

She moved a few inches away. "Your pleasure is not part of our bargain, spymaster," she said, licking fig juice from her fingers.

"Have a care, I am a high servant of the king."

"You bring him women for his pleasure up these back stairs, and it is said you take your own pleasure before they leave."

"The palace is full of gossip, my lady. What I do is not your concern. You have but one man to bring to your bed if you wish to keep him from suspicion. Pretend to be reformed, to have found a renewed love for your husband. A man aroused is not a man who questions or notices change. Then as soon as we are ready for our next move, you can make a quarrel. Get to your enticement, m'lady, or find yourself swimming with the river rats or jigging at the end of a rope."

She clutched the chair arms, holding herself straight, though not doubting him. "I cannot. Giles has said he leaves for Norfolk in two days, if the king permits."

"Then I will ask His Majesty to deny
him
leave, or busy him with our capital ships at Chatham until the Dutch fleet is on its way south. Then you must go to Harringdon Hall___Alone."

"Why must I go alone?"

"Surely you cannot have the earl in residence when you go to sea to meet the Dutch fleet. He might attempt to stop you."

"Do you really mean to send me to the enemy?"

Chiffinch puffed up his cheeks, wrinkled like a grandfather's although he had no kindly eyes. "You are a vain, prating woman to think you should know more than I need to tell you." Lifting his wig and scratching his newly shaved head, he took a deep breath: "Aye, perhaps you do need to know, since you must play a more sincere part than any actress at the Theater Royal. If you will stop your questions of me, I will tell you a little more."

"You will tell me all, sir, if you want no mishaps. I will not suffer discovery and death by the Dutch because you fear to trust me. You have no other choice, as I do not. We are in the same bed, sir, to put it into words a whoremonger would understand."

Chiffinch raised his eyebrows very high, his face reddening. "Where does a serving maid learn to challenge her betters with such words?"