The French Mistress (50 page)

Instead I draped myself with the brightest of my diamonds, composed my face into perfect serenity, and once again sailed forth, ready for battle.

 

 

“Go look in my coat,” Charles said, pushing himself up a little higher against the pillows. “There’s a little something for you in my pocket.”

“For me, sir?” I asked, rubbing my naked thigh against his in languorous invitation. We’d already shared one encounter this night, and at forty-four, Charles had reached the age for gentlemen that once was sufficient. But I also knew he’d prefer to believe that this was from choice rather than possibility, and thus I always took care to be as wantonly available as ever. “If it pleases you, sir, I’ll look for it later.”

“I think you should look now,” he said with cheerful anticipation, for he loved to give me things as much as I loved receiving them. He linked his hands behind his head to make himself more comfortable. “Besides, I like to watch your ass when you walk across the room.”

“You can do that anytime, sir,” I said, laughing. Obediently I slid from the bed, slipped my feet into my black silk mules, and crossed the room to where he’d tossed his coat. I made a show of it, knowing he was watching, letting the high red heels of my slippers slap lightly on my feet and the long strand of pearls (for another thing he liked was for me to wear my jewels to bed) swing back and forth across my bare breasts. He was a large man and his coat was even larger, and it was no quick task to search through his pockets—which, of course, was exactly his intention.

“It’s not a box,” he said by way of a hint. “It’s folded.”

“Folded, sir?” I asked, playing the game, but at once my heart began to beat faster. Folded meant paper, and there was only one paper I desired. At last I found what he’d hidden, the folds blunted by the heavy parchment, and I held it in my hands as if it were a far greater treasure than any jewel—which, if my guess were right, it was.

“Is it, sir?” I asked, not yet daring to open the page and read it for myself. “Is it?”

“It is, indeed,” he declared. “Go on, read it for yourself.”

With fingers all a-tremble with excitement, I hurried to the nearest candlestick and tipped toward the light the patent (for so it was) for my son’s ennoblement, and I read aloud the titles he’d been granted. “ ‘For Charles Lennox’—oh, sir, I do like that name!—‘Baron Settrington, Earl of March, Duke of Richmond.’ Oh, sir! However shall I thank you?”

“I expect you’ll find a way.” He grinned and patted the bed beside him. “But the boy deserves it, and so do you.”

At once I’d recognized the spite behind this particular title. Frances Stuart had been the single lady at Court to spurn Charles’s advances in favor of marrying the Duke of Richmond. When this gentleman had tragically drowned soon after, leaving no heir and Frances childless, his dukedomes had reverted to the Crown for disposal. That Charles now granted them to my son was doubtless intentional, a warning for whoever might cross the royal will. Not that I would let Frances’s sorrow spoil my own joy.

I hopped back into the bed, still clutching the precious patent, and showered him with so many kisses that he began to laugh.

“There now, don’t smother me!” he said, laughing still, though it was clear he was thoroughly enjoying my attentions. At last he held me still, there against his chest, and to my surprise his expression grew solemn, yet fair overflowing with tenderness.

“I mean it, Fubs,” he said softly. “You deserve whatever I give you, for all you have given and done for me, in every way. I cannot begin to tell you how much I missed you when you were away from me, or how much I regretted the circumstances.”

“It’s done, sir,” I said, lightly pressing my fingers to his lips to silence him. “Far better to look ahead than behind.”

He took my fingers, kissing each tip in succession as he held my hand. “Only if I know you’ll be here with me.”

“So long as you wish it of me, sir,” I whispered. “I will stay.”

“My dearest life,” he said, drawing my face close to his. “Then that will be forever.”

We kissed, a kiss of such rare devotion that I wish I could have preserved it to keep with me always. Instead it ended, as all kisses must; this time the blame lay with the stiff parchment of the patent letter held in my hand between us, and poking him in his ribs.

“Here now, take care of that,” he said as I quickly sat back on my heels. “I know you’ve felt I neglected our son, but I hope you’ll mark I didn’t even make him wait until his third birthday for the honors. I’ve raised Barbara’s last boy, Henry, today as well, and he’s eleven.”

Instantly I was alert to any hint of favoritism, of Lady Cleveland’s boy receiving more than my Charles. “What will he be, sir?”

“Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Northumberland,” he said, reaching out to pull me back with him under the coverlet. “But mind you, none of it’s legal until both you and Barbara have the patents signed and sealed by Danby. Within the next fortnight or so will likely be soon enough.”

But I knew better than to wait so long, not where the future of my son was concerned. The last thing I wished was for Lady Cleveland to have her son’s patent sealed before mine, and thus ever after my Dukes of Richmond bound by precedence to follow after her Dukes of Northumberland. As soon as Charles left my bed for his own that night, I immediately dressed and had myself driven to Lord Danby’s house. It was well past midnight, but as I’d guessed, Danby was still awake and working at his desk in a flannel cap and a gray wool dressing gown over his shirt and breeches: another gentleman who seldom slept.

“Is all well at the palace, Your Grace?” he asked with alarm as soon as I was shown in by a sleepy-eyed footman.

“Perfectly fine,” I said, holding out my precious patent. “But I knew you were leaving for Bristol at dawn to visit your wife’s family, and I’d no wish to leave this until you returned.”

He took the patent, and laughed. “Meaning you’d no wish to let Her Grace the duchess of Cleveland possibly surpass you.”

I smiled, content in my triumph, though I did rather wish I could see Lady Cleveland’s face when she learned my son would forever have precedence of rank over hers. “I’m a good mother, Danby. No one will say otherwise of me.”

“No one would dare, Your Grace.” He solemnized the patent with his signature as first minister, and prepared the wax for the privy seal. I looked at that wax as it melted, and considered how much its glossy red seal would bring to my son’s life. My son, His Grace, Lord Richmond. I’d have to practice saying it without the awe I now felt.

The patent also meant that because my son was now recognized as Charles Lennox, gentleman, without the bastardy of being merely Charles de Keroualle, my duchy in France could now be his as well. That blotch of molten wax, now being impressed with the great seal of England, had made my son three times a duke in the space of a few seconds: a considerable inheritance of honors for a gentleman not yet three years in age!

“Thank you,” I said softly as I took the signed and sealed patent from Danby’s hands. “I’ll leave you to prepare for your journey tomorrow.”

He made a wry, unhappy face. His wife was widely known as a bullying shrew, and I could imagine well enough why he’d not anticipate a visit with her family.

“A word or two before you take your leave, Your Grace, if you please,” he said. “Perhaps it’s wise we speak here before I go from London.”

He gestured for me to sit, and intrigued, I did. My midnight conversations were seldom of politics.

“You have heard that the Duke of York has given his interest more fully to Buckingham and Arlington?” he asked. “The two have been observed much at St. James’s, and now are boasting of their new alliance.”

“Alliance, ha,” I scoffed, more with disgust than anything else. Even in a political world that thrived on selfish opportunism, Buckingham, Shaftesbury, and Arlington stood above all others, or perhaps crawled lower. Like sunflowers in the sun, each turned his face toward whichever cause or party seemed at that instant the one with the greatest potential for personal gain and profit. Most currently they seemed determined on any course that ran counter to Danby’s.

Through this untidy sea Danby had in turn continued his best to steer the government toward an Anglican England and Crown, financial stability, and dissolving ties with Catholic France while strengthening them with the Protestant Dutch. He labored hard within Parliament, hoping to persuade them to vote funds to the king that would be sufficient to free him from the constant, binding need of supplementary payments from France—supplements that he told me he despised as much as if they’d been pulled from his own pockets.

With goals for France so contrary to Danby’s own, why, then, was I now sitting beside his desk? Because I knew what the others did not: that very much against his personal will, Danby had been obliged by Charles to conduct the most secret negotiations to continue relations with France, and retain the French subsidies with them. And, of course, it was my task (as assigned by both Charles and by de Ruvigny and Louis) to offer the necessary encouragement to see that he did.

La, I did enjoy the privileges of my power!

“I would not worry over any alliance with the Duke of York,” I continued. “While brave and bluff to a fault, he is not the best-liked gentleman in the kingdom.”

Danby’s nod was more of a bow, likely more concession to my rank than to my wisdom; like most other men, he found it difficult to heed advice from a woman. “I have heard that they will introduce a motion to Parliament for my impeachment, Your Grace.”

I raised a single brow with surprise. “Pray, on what possible grounds?”

He sighed. “I do not know. But if they are determined to be rid of me, they will find reason.”

“Don’t worry overmuch, my lord.” I rose, tucking the patent into my muff. “His Majesty is loyal to those who are loyal to him. They wish to be rid of me as well, yet still I remain.”

He bowed me toward the door, his dressing gown flapping around his spindly legs like a lady’s petticoats.

“Forgive me for speaking plainly, Your Grace,” he said sourly, “but I should venture your place with the king is a good deal more secure than mine could ever be.”

I smiled, and answered nothing. In all games of chance, the most useful cards are the ones that are kept unknown.

Soon after, in the summer of 1675, a bill calling for Danby’s impeachment was in fact introduced in Parliament, on preposterous charges worth nothing. With little support, the bill withered and died, as was right, yet still the members continued to buzz and sting at one another like angry wasps, and not even Charles’s appearance one night was able to calm them in their differences. When the bickering became too great by the beginning of autumn, Charles simply prorogued the session yet again, and left it that way, uncalled and unwanted and far away from London.

It all made perfect sense to him, and to me, though not at all to the angry nameless scribes who haunted the coffeehouses. The most popular ballad of the season, called “The Royal-Buss; or, The Prorogation,” might have lacked Lord Rochester’s artfulness, but none of his venom.

I ignored it, as I did all the others. And as soon as the Court returned from its now-annual summer at Windsor, the meetings to negotiate another secret treaty between France and England began in earnest in the most private of my rooms. Just as Madame had done before me, I made everything as easy for the gentlemen as I could.

For my efforts, Louis sent me a letter of thanks written in his own hand. With it came the gift of a pair of earrings set with diamonds and rubies from the best goldsmith in Paris. Their value, over £18,000, made them the most sizable single gift sent by France to England that year. I was enchanted; Louis anticipated my tastes in jewels so well.

As 1675 came to its end, I believed myself truly not only recovered, but returned. Abbé Prignani’s long-ago fortune for me had in fact come true. I was prized by two kings, a duchess in my own right, and mother to a duke. I was in fact in such a proud fettle that I dared to jest to Charles (and only Charles) that I was like a phoenix born again, though rising ready not from ashes, but from a tub of mercury vapors. He laughed, as I knew he would, and it seemed I’d finally put my doubts behind me.

Until, that is, the arrival of Hortense de Mancini.

 

 

Dutifully I stood in the gallery of St. James’s Palace, with the thirteen-year-old Lady Mary on one side of me and Charles and his brother James, the Duke of York, on the other. The day was gray, with flurries of snow drifting into the courtyard, and biting with the deep-winter cold of January. His Grace’s young and very pregnant wife, Mary Beatrice, had invited me to remain with her in their quarters beside the fire, but I’d judged it better to come out with the others.

I’d good reason, too. The duchesse de Mancini, Her Grace’s cousin and the Yorks’ current guest at St. James’s, was presenting a demonstration of her dueling skills. The duchesse’s opponent—or rather, her partner, for this duel was only pretend—was her African manservant, Mustapha. Mustapha looked painfully cold, his golden hoops quivering beneath the woolen scarf he’d wrapped beneath his bright yellow turban.

But I guessed the duchesse herself was never cold. She was older than I, taller than I, and far less pretty than I, with a full mouth and many teeth, flashing dark eyes, and masses of black hair that she made no effort to control, letting them flow as wild as Medusa’s locks. She bore a strong resemblance to the ancient ladies shown on antique coins, with a strong nose and stronger brow.