The Darling Strumpet (41 page)
Read The Darling Strumpet Online
Authors: Gillian Bagwell
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General
“Mistress Nelly.” His voice was so low she almost could not hear him. “That’s what they call you now, isn’t it? Now that you’re a fine rich lady. And I mean to take some of those riches, too, for you’ve robbed me of years of my life.”
Nell’s mind spun. She had to make a noise, to waken the household. Had to find a way to escape. She tried to lift her arms but they were trapped by her sides under the covers, held in place by Jack’s body on top of hers. He leaned close to her, and the reek of his breath brought back her nighttime terrors of all those years ago. She thought her heart would explode within her from fear.
“I’ve waited so long to pay you this visit,” Jack breathed in her ear. “So long. I’ve dreamed about it, Nell, and what I’ll do to you.” He reached down, and as his hand came back into Nell’s view she saw the glint of a knife blade in the moonlight, and the gleam of his eyes.
“I found His Majesty’s guard sleeping below, and he’ll never wake now. Then ever so quietly in by the pantry window. You really should speak to the cook about leaving it open so.” Jack caressed Nell’s cheek with the blade of his knife, then brought the tip to her throat. She felt the sting as the steel nipped her skin. Jack leaned closer.
“Don’t you wonder, Nell, if I’ve visited your little boys first?”
Nell gave a huge heave, and managed to throw him off balance for a moment. She cried out and almost succeeded in escaping, but he caught himself before he went over, and pushed her back down onto the bed, pressing his hand over her face so hard that she wondered if her neck would break.
“I think I’ll just let you wonder about that, you little whore. While I entertain myself with you for a bit.” He thrust himself against her as he brought the blade of the knife to her throat. “Haven’t you missed me, honey? Never fear, we’ve got all night.”
The next moments happened in a blur—an explosion of sounds in the shadowed dark. The door to the room flew open and Nell thanked God that John Cassells had somehow heard and come to her rescue. There was a brilliant flash and tremendous roar as his pistol discharged, a heavy thud as Jack fell to the floor, grunts as John heaved himself across the room and onto Jack and they rolled and struggled. Running footsteps in the hallway outside, the children’s cries of alarm, a cataclysmic sound of breaking glass, shouts from outside.
Nell freed herself from the bedclothes and ran to the window. In the moonlight she saw Jack sprawled on the cobblestones. He struggled to his feet and staggered away.
Rose’s scream made Nell turn back to the room, now crowded with her steward, Groundes; the two porters; four footmen; and two pages. Rose and Eleanor knelt next to where John lay on the floor, and in the flickering candlelight Nell could see that his shirt was dark with blood and blood was spreading across the carpet and floor.
“Fetch a doctor!” Nell shouted, and one of the porters turned and ran, as the others stooped to help John. His face was ghastly white, and blood bubbled at his lips as he tried to speak to Rose, who clutched him to her.
“Don’t speak, love, all will be well,” she crooned, rocking him, her hand trying to stanch the bleeding. But John shuddered and then lay still and silent in her arms, his pistol on the floor beside him. A trail of blood led to the window, and blood smeared the shattered window casement.
CHARLES HAD SURVEYED THE DAMAGE, STATIONED SOLDIERS AT Nell’s house, and offered his condolences and a generous lifelong pension to the inconsolable Rose and promised her that justice should be done, that Jack would be found and brought to punishment. But in the cold light of the afternoon, as night approached again, and Nell and Rose sat huddled by the fire in Nell’s room, none of it seemed to matter. John was dead, and Jack was out there somewhere. As long as he still lived and went free, Nell would always be in terror that he would return.
Bridget appeared to take away the remains of supper and spoke in a low voice to Nell.
“Madam, Harry Killigrew is below and requests most urgently that he might speak to you and Mrs. Cassells.”
Nell looked to Rose.
“Yes,” Rose said. “Ask him to come up.”
Harry, swathed in a dark cloak, threw his hat aside as he came into the room, and stooped swiftly to Rose.
“I know the king has put out a watch for the murderer, but if you give the word, Rose, my friends and I can work in other ways.”
“What do you mean?” Nell asked.
“Better not to ask,” Harry said, glancing at her. “Rose knows. Would you have it so, darling?”
Rose lifted her head, and Nell had never seen a look of such black intensity in her eyes.
“Yes,” Rose whispered. “Find him, Harry. Find him.”
“’Fore God, Rose,” Nell gasped, when Harry had gone. “What was that about?”
“The Mohocks,” Rose said. “The Ballers. Have you not heard of them?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that the Ballers are a crew of dissolute gents who gather at Mrs. Bennett’s to watch her strumpets dance naked,” Nell said. “And Sam Pepys told me how people cleared the paths at Vauxhall when Harry and his mates were there, so drunk and swaggering they were.”
“Yes,” Rose said. “But they do more than that when occasion offers. When justice needs to be meted out and the law cannot come at the miscreants, the Mohocks have their ways of finding them out, and seeing that vengeance is done.”
Nell felt the hair rise on the back of her neck at the thought of Harry and his friends asking quiet questions in the right quarters, giving coin for information, calling in favors owed, and closing in on Jack, wherever he might be hiding, with no mercy in their hearts.
Two days later Harry reappeared at the house once dark had fallen. He nodded at Rose in response to the question in her eyes.
“Aye, we found him. We made it clear to him before he died that we knew not only of this crime, but of what he had done to you, Nell, long past. And took from him the weapon he used against you.” He brought a leather bag from beneath his cloak, and Nell could see that it was steeped in blood. “Would you see? His cock and stones.”
Nell’s gorge rose and she clapped a napkin to her mouth to prevent herself from vomiting.
“No,” she gasped. “Merciful God, no.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
J
ACK’S INVASION OF THE HOUSE AND JOHN’S DEATH THREW NELL’S household into grief and confusion. Rose sobbed in her room for hours at a time. The children had loved and admired John, who had seemed the very epitome of dashing manhood, and were fretful and frightened. And no wonder, Nell thought. If you cannot feel that you are safe in your own bed, where is there hope of safety? She was determined to spare them the terrors of her own childhood, and despaired that brutality and bloodshed had come so vividly into their lives. The servants were jumpy. Meals were late, errands were forgotten, and the other tasks of keeping the household running were performed erratically or not at all. And Eleanor, whose presence had been no more than an occasional annoyance to Nell, was drinking heavily, erupting into rages at whoever crossed her path, and causing constant turmoil.
ACK’S INVASION OF THE HOUSE AND JOHN’S DEATH THREW NELL’S household into grief and confusion. Rose sobbed in her room for hours at a time. The children had loved and admired John, who had seemed the very epitome of dashing manhood, and were fretful and frightened. And no wonder, Nell thought. If you cannot feel that you are safe in your own bed, where is there hope of safety? She was determined to spare them the terrors of her own childhood, and despaired that brutality and bloodshed had come so vividly into their lives. The servants were jumpy. Meals were late, errands were forgotten, and the other tasks of keeping the household running were performed erratically or not at all. And Eleanor, whose presence had been no more than an occasional annoyance to Nell, was drinking heavily, erupting into rages at whoever crossed her path, and causing constant turmoil.
This, Nell thought, was the final straw.
The little donkey, Louise, stood in the drawing room. She raised her tail and let fall a mushy turd onto the Turkey carpet.
“But how did she get in?” Nell demanded again. The stable boy knelt with a pan and shovel to clean up the mess, ducking his head to avoid Nell’s eyes. Bridget stepped forward, her hands working in her apron.
“It was your mother, madam. She said she was trying to cheer little Jemmy up as he was feeling so poorly, and she thought he’d brighten to have the creature’s company.”
Nell was so stunned she couldn’t speak. Eleanor had been the cause of little domestic flurries and skirmishes since her arrival, but this raised things to a new level. Dicky One-Shank stumped toward them and silently took the donkey’s bridle. Nell shook her head in disbelief as the donkey was led away in disgrace, then turned back to Bridget.
“Was she drunk? Come, I’ll not be angry.” Bridget met her eyes, and Nell saw sympathy there.
“Aye, deep cut, madam, and flying the flag of defiance.”
“FLING HER OUT,” ROSE SAID WHEN NELL SOUGHT HER ADVICE. “YOU’VE done more for her than she had any call to expect, and none could blame you.”
“I can’t just put her onto the streets,” Nell objected.
Rose shrugged. “Then move her somewhere else. We’ve all enough trouble without her making more.”
Rose’s practicality helped make up Nell’s mind, and she felt a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders once she had settled her mother in a house in Chelsea. It was far enough away that Eleanor could not easily make inconvenient scenes, yet close enough to salve her conscience. She could still make visits with the boys, limiting the time she spent with her mother to what was bearable.
She little needed the additional pressure of her mother’s disagreeable nature, she thought. The year had gone from bad to worse, quite apart from the goings-on in her household. The spring and autumn meetings of Parliament had been fraught with dissension, with the members urging Charles to enforce penal laws against Catholics and to make war on France. He had lost patience in November, and once more prorogued Parliament, so the Earl of Shaftesbury’s Green Ribbon Club met and plotted in the coffeehouses.
And Jemmy was sick again. Nell sat by the side of the bed, consumed with worry. He was sleeping now, and the flush of the fever seemed to have broken. He didn’t lack for care—at the first sign of his illness she had dispatched a coach to fetch the king’s surgeons, and she had hired a nurse to sit with him, though she rarely left the room herself. What was wrong with him? It was not that any particular illness he had was serious in itself, but that he seemed perpetually delicate. His little cheeks worked and his dark eyelashes twitched as he dreamed. Nell laid a hand on his forehead and was relieved to find that it felt cool. His fever had broken. Be safe, my angel child, she thought. You are my life and happiness.
THE WITS HAD GATHERED FOR SUPPER AT NELL’S HOUSE ON A CHILL December night, and the main topic of conversation was the advent in London the previous day of the famous Hortense Mancini, Duchess of Mazarin.
“I saw her arrival at St. James’s Palace,” Buckingham said. “Astride a black stallion and dressed in men’s traveling clothes, cloak and boots, and spattered with the mud of the road, with only a manservant to accompany her. Looked like a messenger.”
“Ah,” said Rochester, with a wicked glint in his eyes, “but the message she brings, beneath that rough apparel, is carnality itself.”
“Still as handsome as ever, is she?” Dorset asked, leaning forward eagerly, wineglass in hand.
“Still the Roman Eagle.” Buckingham nodded. “Fierce and proud, and daring any man to tame her.”
Nell looked around the table with annoyance. Every man there seemed inflamed at the thought of Hortense.
“She left her husband, didn’t she?” she asked, trying to flounder onto more solid ground.
“That she did,” crowed Fleetwood Sheppard. “Mad bugger he is, too. Practically kept her behind bars, I’ve heard, so jealous he was.”
“And she’s been eight years on the run,” Rochester drawled. “Ranging over France and Italy, putting in with whatever lover and provider she can find.”
“But her latest bit of luck has run out,” Dorset explained to Nell. “The Duke de Savoy died, and his widow sent the pulchritudinous Hortense packing.”
Nell strove to keep her voice even. “And what does she want here?”
The men exchanged leering glances.
“Not much mystery there,” Rochester said. “The story is she’s come to visit the Duchess of York, who’s some kin to her. I’m sorry, Nell, but I’d lay all I have that what she’s really after is a place in the royal bed, at least long enough to get herself a child and some cash from our Charlie.”
“He knows her, then?” Nell asked, her stomach churning.
“Knows her?” Buckingham laughed. “He wanted to marry her sixteen years ago, when she was just a girl. But her uncle Mazarin didn’t like his prospects, for at the time he was penniless, without a crown or a kingdom.”
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