The Darling Strumpet (42 page)

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Authors: Gillian Bagwell

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Romance, #General

BOOK: The Darling Strumpet
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“Mayhap she thinks there’s still a chance for her?” Sheppard laughed.
Not again, Nell thought. Not again.
 
 
 
NELL’S FIRST VIEW OF HORTENSE SOME DAYS LATER AT COURT DID nothing to allay her concerns. The newcomer, dressed in a gown of cloth of silver, was lushly voluptuous, with hair that fell in heavy black waves and flashing eyes that seemed to change from steely slate gray to ocean blue. Every man in her presence seemed enthralled.
After supper, Hortense took up a guitar and played her own accompaniment while performing a dance from Spain. Her heels clicked rapidly on the marble floor and she moved with a sinuous grace. It was easy enough for Nell to picture Hortense writhing in abandon in a rumpled bed, and from the look on Charles’s face, it was clear his mind ran deeply in the same thoughts.
Nell glanced around the company. The queen’s face was perhaps set a little more determinedly than usual. Barbara’s lips were pursed in contained fury, her eyes like fire. And Louise was looking like a fat baby who fears her sweet will be snatched from her hands. No mistaking, Nell thought, this Hortense blows an ill wind for all.
By May, it had become clear exactly how much trouble Hortense was. Louise, after weeks of tearful squalls and tantrums failed to draw Charles’s attention, departed to take the waters at Bath.
“I’ve heard it’s because the king has given her a dose of the pox,” Rochester said over supper at Nell’s, downing the remains of his wine and holding the empty glass up to the firelight. “These glasses of yours are really rather stunning, George. Far superior to anything we’ve had in England before.”
“Yes, they are,” Buckingham said shortly. “It could be true he’s Frenchified her—or maybe one can’t say that when the wench herself is French? But it could be that’s only a convenient excuse to take herself away from court so the king’s utter neglect of her is not so apparent.”
“That would fit,” Rochester agreed, pulling the wine bottle toward him. “And what about you, dear Nell? Is the Royal Charles docking in the famous Gwynn quim these nights?”
“Hell and death, Johnny,” Nell said. “Is there nothing you won’t ask?”
“Nothing,” Rochester agreed cheerfully. “Well?”
Rochester, Buckingham, and Dorset looked expectantly at her.
“He sups with me quite frequently. But he hasn’t shared my bed in some weeks.”
“Harry Killigrew is on as groom of the bedchamber this fortnight,” Dorset commented. “He tells me that the king retires to bed with all ceremony, then rises, puts on his clothes, and steals away to spend the night with Hortense.”
“Well, it’s certainly seized the public imagination,” Buckingham said. “Have you heard Waller’s satire? ‘Triple Combat,’ he calls it.” He dug in his pocket, drew forth a crumpled broadsheet, and read, to the delight of the others,
“Such killing looks! So thick the arrows fly!
That ’tis unsafe to be a stander-by.
Poets approaching to describe the fight,
Are by their wounds instructed how to write.
 
“It’s rather good, really,” he chuckled, looking up from the poem. “Here’s you, Nell, as Chloris:
“Her matchless form made all the English glad,
And foreign beauties less assurance had.”
 
“Fine for you to enjoy it,” Nell snorted. “It’s not you being held up for mockery for all the country to hear.”
“Don’t take it to heart,” Buckingham advised. “You know you have the love of the people, and they’d back you in any fight.”
“So true,” Rochester agreed. “The darling strumpet of the crowd.”
“Besides,” Buckingham said, “Louise is on the run. That’s where you want her, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“So laugh and make the best of it,” Buckingham said. “By this point you should know that Charles will always return to you no matter where he wanders. Take that shining new coach and four of yours out for a drive. You know the people calling out to you always cheers you up.”
What Buckingham said was true, Nell reflected that night as she sat at her dressing table brushing her hair. Charles might be bewitched by Hortense, and spending less time in her own bed just now, but his affection for her did not seem to have dimmed, and when he came to sup with her and the boys she still felt that he was securely attached to the little family that they were.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She was twenty-six, but younger at that than Barbara, Louise, and Hortense. Her skin was still fair and smooth, unblemished by wrinkles, and her body was still taut and slim beneath the fine linen of her nightgown. She did not doubt that Charles still took pleasure in sharing her bed, and did not doubt that he would return to her bed when his ardor for Hortense had cooled. It was so much better just to accept, she thought, than to allow herself to live in terror, as poor Louise did. But then Louise feared losing her power and influence, and Nell cared nothing for those, only for Charles’s love.
 
 
 
NELL HAD INCREASINGLY COME TO LOVE THE NEWLY FASHIONABLE games of basset but found that she feared them as well. The stakes were frequently enormous, which increased both her exhilaration, her sense that anything might happen with the turn of a card, and her terror for the same reason. Anything might happen. With the turn of a card. She had grown less cautious with her betting, and the previous night she had won five hundred pounds and had scarce been able to sleep for the excitement of it. It had been her first venture as
talliere
, or banker, though she had previously been urged that she ought to bank, as that position had a greater chance of winning than the punters, or those who only bet upon their hands.
On this night the table was the presentation of Charles’s harem—or his current stable, as Barbara had departed for France. To Nell’s left sat Louise, in a sea of carnation ribbons, and to her right, her dark eyes ablaze, was Hortense. An eager crowd watched, while Charles was across the room in conversation with his chief minister, Lord Danby, and the new French ambassador, Honoré de Courtin.
Luck had sat with Nell throughout the evening, and she had taken hand after hand, so that now she was six hundred pounds to the good. Six hundred pounds. Stacks of gold coins lay before her. She pushed aside the thought of where she would stand had the cards not been in her favor so many times.
“Your turn to act as
talliere
, Mrs. Nelly,” Hortense said. “I take it you shall pass again?”
“No,” Nell said. “I think I’ll take my turn now. I’m feeling lucky tonight.”
“Ah! Then we shall have to be careful,” Louise simpered.
Nell dealt Hortense and Louise their hands of thirteen cards, and after consideration and consultation with onlookers, they laid their bets. Nell turned up the
fasse
—the first card. It was the queen of hearts, and there was laughter.
“Are you sure you’re not a fortune-telling Romany, Nell?” Rochester laughed.
“Not sure at all, Johnny,” she winked. “But it’s a good card to start, ain’t it?” It was, as she was entitled to collect the stakes that the players had laid on any other queens, and as it happened Louise had the queen of diamonds and Hortense the queen of spades. Louise sucked in her breath and gave a histrionic little moue as Nell scooped up their money.
“Dear me, a hundred pounds already,” Nell smiled. “Sure you don’t want to take back some of your rhino, Louise?”
Louise flashed a poisonous little smile and shook her head tightly.
“Right,” said Nell. “Then onward.” She dealt two more cards before her and won money on the first, but Louise won on the second and hastily gathered her winnings, murmuring, “The pay,
s’il vous plaît
.” One of Hortense’s cards had won, but she left her money where it was.
“On to the
paroli
,” Hortense smiled, crooking a corner of each of her cards to indicate that she would let her bets ride. “And the
masse
.” With that, she doubled her wagers.
Nell turned up the next pair of cards. She took money from both Louise and Hortense again on the first card, but Hortense won with one of the cards on which she had doubled her bet, the ace of spades. She scooped her winnings from the ace toward her. Her hand hovered above the king of spades, with its hundred pounds in gold, but instead of collecting her winnings, she crooked another corner of the card, gave Nell an enigmatic smile, and said,
“Sept-et-le-va.”
There was a gasp from the bystanders. If the next card dealt favored Hortense, she would earn seven times what she had staked.
“Very well.” Nell dealt two more cards, a ten and the king of clubs. The crowd cried out in disbelief. Hortense had won, and Nell now owed her seven hundred pounds on the king of spades. Louise hemmed and stalled, and finally laid down another fifty pounds.
“Well?” Nell smiled at Hortense. “Happy with your winnings?”
“Yes,” Hortense said slowly. “But yet I am in a gamesome mood, somehow.” She crooked a third corner of the king.
“Quinze-et-le-va.”
Nell’s stomach went cold. If Hortense should win the next hand, her card would be worth fifteen hundred pounds. She turned over the next pair of cards. The room exhaled. No king had come up. But Hortense now crooked a fourth corner of the king of spades.
“Trente-et-le-va.”
Nell did not know exactly how much in gold was stacked beside her, but it was nowhere near the three thousand pounds she would owe if Hortense should win again. Waves of panic rose at the back of her mind, and she wanted to run.
Rochester leaned over Nell’s shoulder and whispered to her. “You can stop, you know. Pull your money off the table and make an end of it.”
Nell glanced around. She thought she saw mocking behind Louise’s smile, as though Louise had heard Rochester’s words, could see into the terror that gripped Nell’s stomach. Louise, who from the day of her arrival had managed to cry and wheedle and manipulate far more money out of Charles than Nell had ever received. Did Louise know that? Surely she did, and disdained Nell for it. And Hortense? She, too, had won gifts and support from Charles as soon as she had appeared at court. Nell’s gut twisted cold with fear, but she smiled up at Rochester and whispered back.
“She can’t possibly win again, Johnny.”
She dealt again and blinked. The king of clubs. She could scarce believe it. Hortense had won once more. There were shocked murmurs.
“Unholy bad luck,” someone muttered.
Nell held her breath. Surely now Hortense would act with reason, take what she had won. Hortense surveyed the table. Slowly, she pulled her stakes off her cards one by one, and Nell began to breathe again. But Hortense left her bet on the black king and smiled at Nell from beneath her eyelashes.
“Soixante-et-le-va.”
In all the games Nell had observed or in which she had played, she had never seen anyone push to this final level of risk. Sixty times the original bet now lay at stake. If Hortense lost, she would owe Nell six thousand pounds. And if she won, Nell would owe her that much.
Nell’s head swam. Six thousand pounds. More than her annual allowance from Charles. Enough to buy and furnish a grand house, to build a theater, to equip and feed an army, to pay off a ship’s company for a two-year voyage, to keep her safe and sound for the rest of her life, come to that, if the need arose.
“Nell.” Rochester’s whisper was urgent in her ear.
Nell’s heart pounded. It was madness. But there was no way out. Not without the humiliation of exposing herself as the impoverished orphan among the king’s mistresses.
She turned over her card. There was a groan from around the table. The king of hearts. She had lost. She felt the blood drain from her face. She had a sudden flash of memory—her own bare feet, cold and numb as she made her way down Cheapside on a winter’s morning long ago. Not Hortense or Louise or any of them had known that feeling, had ever lacked for a meal. Who did she think she was, playing such games, gambling as much as her soul was worth, with them? She steadied herself, willing her voice not to shake as she met Hortense’s eyes. Nell could feel Charles’s eyes on her, too, but she dared not look at him, dared not expose her shame and fear.
“I’ll have to—I haven’t the—I’ll make it good.”
“Of course,” Hortense said carelessly. “Of course. When quite convenient.”

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