The Perfect Royal Mistress (40 page)

Nell realized that evening that she had not seen Jeddy since her labor had begun, and it was unlike her not to be lurking around a corner watching. After dark fell, Nell became concerned, sending Rose, as well as her maid, Bridget Long, and her steward, Jimmy Burnett, to hunt for the little girl.

“She doesn’t want to come in,” Rose finally announced, a hint of exasperation tingeing her voice, an hour later when they had located the child. “She believes you’re dead.”

Nell sat up. “Well, let ’er come and see for ’erself that I’m not!”

“She’s afraid.”

“Gracious, of what? I’m perfectly fine! I’ve just ’ad a baby, is all.”

“’Tis somethin’, I think, to do with where she came from. Somethin’ to do with ’er own ma, perhaps.”

“Oh, pox take it!” she exclaimed with a sigh. Nell’s thoughts wound back over the past weeks, to little moments with the girl that should have been clues, but she had been so taken up with her own fears, and with impending childbirth, that she had not seen them. “Well, if she’ll not come in ’ere, you tell ’er I’ll just ’ave to come out there.”

“Nelly, you can’t! You’re not to get up yet!”

“Well, I’ll not ’ave my girl thinkin’ I’m dead or dyin’.”

And she did think of her in that way, as her girl. Jeddy had been the first child to bring out maternal feeling in her. The first to make her believe she might make an acceptable mother. The first to make her believe that history did not always bear repeating.

When Jeddy was brought into the room a few minutes later, it was reluctantly. She clung to the doorjamb, wide eyes full of fear and hesitation, even as Nell smiled over at her. “I’m sorry I worried you with all the wailin’ and such. But I wanted you to see that I really am perfectly fine.” Jeddy’s eyes began to glisten with tears. Nell’s encouraging smile fell. “Now you listen; I’ve always been plain with you, and I’ve been good to you, too. ’Twill not change now. ’Twas painful bearin’ my son, and you might’ve ’eard sounds to that effect. But I didn’t die, and I’m not goin’ to anytime soon! Now close that door and come closer to me.”

Nell waited for the little girl to comply. Timid though she was, in all the past months Nell had never seen her like this. Once Jeddy was beside the bed, in her little blue silk dress and bare feet, Nell took her hand. “’Twas your own ma, wasn’t it?”

Jeddy nodded her head; the unshed tears that glistened so brightly in her eyes fell slowly now onto her cheeks. Then, in a soft, almost imperceptible voice, she said, “On da boat. She sick. No water. No food. Dey toss her into da water, and I don’t cry. I don’t say nothin’ ’cause we jes’ keeps goin’.”

“God’s death…,” Nell murmured. She had never believed the horror of anyone’s childhood could exceed her own. She had no idea at all what to say, how to help heal a wound in a little girl’s heart that had been bleeding for as long as she probably could remember.

“I’m sorrier, Jeddy, than I can say. I know I can’t change the past, not what they did to your family. But what I can do is be your family now, and you can be a part of mine.”

“I’s a blackamoor, ma’am,” she said, her child’s voice made brittle as an old woman’s by the life she already had lived.

“I know perfectly well what you are. And
I
was raised in a bawdy house. But it doesn’t change who we are now with each other.”

When the child could not answer that, Nell instructed her to fetch the small silver jewelry casket she kept on her dressing table and to bring it to her directly. Jeddy complied, and stood at the side of the bed watching as Nell withdrew a short, slim rope of pearls that Lord Buckhurst had given her in Newmarket. She placed them behind the little girl’s neck, clasped the hook, then smiled. It seemed important to do this.

“The king gave you money, and now I’ve given you something as well. These are very fine pearls, Jeddy, as fine as you are. Your life’ll never be what it was with your ma. But I want you to ’ave them, and wear them, to ’elp remind you that you’ve a good life now with us.”

Jeddy nodded to her in response but did not speak. Nell watched her tentatively finger the fine strand of pearls at her neck with just the smallest hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. And that would have to do, for now. It had taken her a lifetime to heal the raw wound of her own childhood, and, while she was not there yet, Nell knew this was a beginning.

Two weeks later, Nell lay awake in her bed late in the afternoon. Physically, she felt invigorated now, her body healing, but her mind was a torrent of fears and worries when Rose came personally to tell her that she had guests. They were collected in the drawing room beside the entrance hall. She sat up and raked her loose hair back from her face.

“I knew you’d not be asleep.”

“Sleep seems impossible just now.”

“I suspect they knew that.”

“Lord Buckhurst again?”

“Along with his new shadows, Buckingham, Hyde, Rochester, and Savile, come to help you, they say.”

Nell came into the room in a dressing gown of Burgundian lace, silk ties at her wrists and neck where the collar folded out beneath her chin like a flower. Her hair was long down her back, and pulled from her face with a little silver comb. She looked angelic, but she felt quite terrified. It had been one thing in the beginning to seduce the king and hold him in the bedchamber with her bawdy humor and slim girl’s body. But between the Chiffinches’ lessons and now a child, it all was becoming quite another thing.

“If we’re goin’ to work together, I can’t think of you all as lords and dukes, or I’ll not learn a thing. From now on, in my merry band,” she pronounced, looking first at Rochester, “you shall be Roddy. Buckhurst, you must be Sackville from now on, as there can only be one Charles. Hyde, I shall call ‘Lory,’ since Lawrence is so conventional…but you, great duke, to me shall always be Lord Buck.”

It was a secret society, away from the contrivances of court, and they all were seemingly pleased with the new monikers. Buckhurst rocked back on his heels then nodded to each the others. “Are you ready to go to work?” Buckhurst asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Nell replied.

All afternoon, they sat together conducting her education in the things that were quite beyond the Chiffinches’ ability to teach. These four alone could help her in perfecting the art of courtly conversation. While Buckingham and Savile spoke to her of politics and familiarized her with events of the day so that she would make no great gaffe, the fine art of clever banter was left to Rochester and Buckhurst. Since she was such an incredibly fast study, they would help refine her comedic retorts from what she could freely use in the theater to what even the queen might find amusing. Although the afternoon was long and the lessons tedious, in the end Nell was able to mimic each of them for inflection, as well as create short, clever replies that would keep her from danger in conversation.

“You are indeed a marvelous student,” Rochester said at last.

“I would not have believed it if I had not seen it myself,” Savile concurred.

“I am duly impressed,” said Buckingham.

“But will His Majesty be impressed?” she asked them all, a hint of vulnerability bleeding through the affable tone.

“It is not the king about whom you must worry. He adores you as you are,” Buckhurst replied. “As do the four of us. But now you have a bit of knowledge, which is a weapon against the worst of them at court.”

As Buckhurst, Savile, Hyde, and Rochester, one by one, kissed her on the cheek, and said their good-byes at the open front door, this time it was the Duke of Buckingham who lingered. Nell never quite knew what to expect from any of these men. The sun was setting beyond the brick wall and iron gate, a fiery crimson slashed across the sky. Nell waved to them and watched the coaches pull away. When she turned around, Buckingham placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Is there somethin’ you want?” Startled by his nearness, she regretted the question the moment it left her lips.

“Indeed there is, and I have reason to believe it’s what you wish, as well, since at last we find ourselves alone.” He pulled at a tendril of her hair, fingering it sensually. Nell tensed as he released her hair and ran his fingers down along the slim column of her neck. “Dear girl, the king and I have shared our bad fortunes and good, alike, and since he is not anywhere near here—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Nell slapped him so hard across the face that his head made a little snap back, and his hat tumbled to the floor. “By God, you’ll not share me! I owe Your Grace a great many things, but I’ll never owe you that! I’ve only just ’ad your best friend’s child!”

“That was weeks ago, Nell, a lifetime in this king’s world. You don’t honestly believe he is spending his nights alone in Dover.” He rubbed his cheek for a moment, and then stooped to pick up his fallen hat.

“No matter where ’e is, I know not why I would eat mutton when spring lamb awaits!”

“Depending on what the king finds in Dover, you may well be waiting a long time.”

“I’ll take my chances.” She opened the front door wider to him, and held on to it to stop herself from trembling. “’Is Majesty is the only one who’ll ’ave any part of me, and if you
ever
try to touch me again, I swear to tell ’im everythin’.”

The Duke of Buckingham swept through the doorway and tapped the hat back onto his head.

“Love really
is
blind, if that is indeed what you call it.” He did not wait for her reply.

Chapter 24

S
ECRET GUILT BY SILENCE IS BETRAYED.

—John Dryden

T
HE
king held Nell to him, feeling an unexpected surge of something very like guilt. In the beginning, he had not expected to love her so much, nor to miss her desperately when they were parted. Beyond the ivy-covered brick wall surrounding the small garden at the house on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, coaches and carts clacked over the cobblestones. Horses whinnied as they passed. The sunset was golden and ruby red above the little collection of orange trees he had planted there for her as a reminder of how it had begun between them.

“He’s a beautiful boy, sweetheart,” Charles murmured as he held her. Having her in his arms again felt like falling very fast into something dark and warmly welcoming. The urge to commit to her alone, and for the rest of his life, was strong—but he could not do that to her. He could not betray her with a lie like that.

“Rose thinks ’e looks like you.”

“Oddsfish, but he is a poor dear child, as I’m an ugly specimen, indeed.”

“
I
think you’re the ’andsomest man in the world, Charlie.” Her tone was not solicitous; she was simply speaking a fact. “Though you’re not to let that go to your ’ead any more than you absolutely must.”