The Perfect Royal Mistress (56 page)

M
ETHINKS
, I
SEE THE WANTON HOURS FLEE
, A
ND, AS THEY PASS, TURN BACK AND LAUGH AT ME.

—The Duke of Buckingham

C
LOAKED
in folds of black velvet, her hair covered with a wide black hat, Nell moved past the guard and into the apartments set aside for the great Duke of Buckingham in the Tower of London. What she found was a man she would not have known. In the time since she had seen him at court, the proud man so full of confidence had disappeared. In his place was a fragile, slightly stooped man, his blue eyes faded, with deep shadows ringing beneath them. He was old. Wrinkled. The skin once smooth and shiny, now was lined like parchment, and his armpits were wet with stains. The days of duels and clever mistresses were well behind him. His days out of favor had not been kind to the duke.

“My Lord Buck,” she curtsied deeply, theatrically. The little private joke between them made him smile, remembering how far their friendship had come.

“So the mountain has come to Muhammad in the form of a beautiful red-haired angel.”

She moved toward him. He stood, and they embraced.

“’Ow exactly
do
you find yourself in the Tower so often?”

“A tongue too clever for my own good, apparently.”

“That only works well when you’ve masses of red ’air and a neatly turned ankle.”

“So I have seen.”

She kissed his cheek, then helped him sit.

“So, then, has His Majesty sent you?”

“In a manner of speakin’. But you must read the letter I ’ave brought you.”

“You asked if you could come?”

“But ’e did not deny me. ’E misses you.”

“I miss how we once were. How we
all
were.”

“The Tower makes men sentimental, does it?”

“Only old men, I’m afraid. Ones who now see mortality more clearly than their ambitions.”

She patted his knee and smiled. “You’re not old, Lord Buck. Just more realistic.”

He looked away for a moment, then back at her before he was seized by a fit of coughing. Nell poured him a glass of ruby wine from a pitcher on a table near the window and brought it to him. Then they sat together as he drank it.

“Do you remember our first encounter?” he asked, his voice tired and full of nostalgia.

“’Ow could I forget? You called me a jade.”

“And
you
called
me
a coxcomb. I didn’t even believe you knew what that was.”

“I was right to do it. And
you
were right. I didn’t.”

“You changed his life, you know.”

“’E changed mine.”

“But to alter the path of a king, my dear. No other woman ever has endured what you have from Charlie, nor remained so entirely by his side.”

“No other woman ever loved ’im as I do, nor ever will.”

“I suspect you’re right about that.” He suddenly sighed. “I’ve nowhere to go, even if I do get out of here. Alas, Anna Maria has thrown me out of my own house.”

“Snakebites, they say, are lethal,” Nell smiled.

“I suppose I deserve what I get after the fate I sealed for my own poor wife.”

“You really were full of the devil back then.”

“Certainly full of my own sense of power and glory. Such a fleeting thing; I had no idea there could ever be anyone more powerful or clever with the king than I.”

Nell reached over to cover his hand with her own. “You know you can stay with me for as long as you like. So long as you buy yourself a new periwig and some shoes so you don’t stink up the place as you’re doing now.”

George laughed. It was a thin, hollow sound. “Are you planning to arrange my release?”

“Are you planning to behave?”

“It’s not at all likely.”

“Then we should tell them to keep your cell at the ready!”

She had woven herself so cleverly into all of their lives that there were very few at court who did not depend upon her in some way, George thought. Only her enemies would keep themselves excluded, and Nell had precious few of those. He had heard that it amazed everyone how the queen now occasionally went to Nell for advice about the king, and it amazed them even more to learn that Nell freely gave it. Few had been told, but he also knew about the royal hospital in Chelsea that Nell had urged the king to build for old or injured soldiers, like her father. She had a heart, it seemed, as deep and full as her laugh.

“Once I was foolish enough to think I could control you, bend you to my will,” he said on a tired chuckle. “Now I do believe you control us all.”

“I’m a king’s mistress, Lord Buck. Only ever that.”

“To my mind, the perfect royal mistress,” the Duke of Buckingham amended.

Empty gin bottles collecting beneath her bed had given Helena’s sealed bedchamber the reeking stench of alcohol. Nell had not seen it coming, and she cursed herself for her blindness. She had not wanted to see it, but, of course, that was no excuse. It was too late, no matter what. Nell stood in the center of the room looking at the pile of glass. Her housemaid, Bridget Long, stood behind her in the doorway, holding onto the jamb.” I’m sorry, Mrs. Nelly, if I should not have told you. I just didn’t know what to do with all of them.”

“’Tis not your fault. You ’adn’t any choice,” Nell replied, feeling the scrape of her words coming up over her throat as if they were hot coals.

“Did you know?” she asked Rose the next day. Their mother had not returned home the night before. They sat in the kitchen as the cook, standing behind them, peeled apples silently and put them into a kettle on the fire.

Rose looked away. “I didn’t want you to turn ’er out.”

“But if I’d known—”

“You would’ve turned ’er out.”

“And I might’ve ’elped ’er!”

“I think she’d gone beyond that, Nelly. ’Twas all so twisted up among the three of us.”

“She still shouldn’t ’ave chosen the gin!” Nell shook her head, her anger bold and vicious. All of the old hurt resurfaced; Helena Gwynne had abandoned her daughters yet again.

“Some people fail in spite of tryin’. I don’t believe she meant to ’urt us.”

“She’s been ’urtin’ us our whole lives Rose!”

“Don’t you think she knew that, Nelly?”

The king sent out his own Yeomen of the Guard to search for Helena Gwynne. Days passed; three, then four. The old hurt battered Nell. They waited. Rose and Nell paced the silent corridors of the Pall Mall house. They wrung their hands, embraced each other, sat in Helena’s room, and said prayers for their mother’s safe return. She had made them both love her again, damn her foul soul. “I never should ’ave believed ’er,” Nell wept one night against Charles’s shoulder, as they lay together in her grand bed, and he pulled her tightly against him.

“You have a good heart that cannot help but care, in spite of how you have been tested.”

“A ’eart only the better to be fooled by.”

“No one fools you, Nelly. You’re the smartest woman I know.”

“I’m not sure ’tis sayin’ much, ’avin’ seen my competition, in that regard.”

He kissed her then and the love inside her flared, still such a brilliant flame. Even after all this time, it was still like that between them.

It was another three days before two of the king’s guard came to her front door and were shown into the large room to the left of the entrance hall. Charles held her shoulders very tightly as he stood behind her. At first, looking at them, and knowing, she was not certain she felt anything. Something so unlikely, so new and fragile, had formed between mother and daughter in the past several years. Like the first leaf on a tree after a long winter, it had sat vulnerable, growing slowly. Now, in an instant, it was swept away in a swirling cloud of fire, and the dust of
if only.
Nell felt her knees buckle.

They had found Helena Gwynne in the river.

She had fallen in drunk, they said, and was drowned.

After the funeral, Charles took Nell to Greenwich to give her a change of scenery, and a break from all of the sadness that lingered for her in London. The early evening air was cooled by a soft breeze, and the scent of honeysuckle was everywhere. Lit by torches, Charles, Catherine, Nell, Louise, and a dozen courtiers strolled amid tall trees, and hip-height ferns that softened their path. The king’s musicians followed, and stationed themselves upon the wide green lawn where the forest began. They played beneath the bright, silvery light of the full summer moon and sent away the sweet sound of the brook nearby.

Taking her hand as they boarded his royal barge, the little laces on her dress ruffling in the breeze as the rest of the court followed, Charles asked, “So tell me, darling Nell, how would you feel about being called Your Ladyship?”

“I’d feel someone confused me with Carwell or Castlemaine.”

“You are to become Countess of Greenwich. Countess of all that surrounds you here.”

After all these years, she thought. She knew how hard Danby had fought him on this. He despised her, she knew, because she was not Louise de Kéroualle. “I’ve no idea what to say.”

He took his hand from one of the oars and put it atop hers. “Say you’ll grow accustomed to it, and I shall tell you that there are other plans, as well.”

She looked at him, his once-smooth face now etched with lines, the large black eyes more sunken. There was only a hint of his youthful beauty now, and yet still he was possessed of that same charm she had seen that first day outside the King’s Theater. “Plans?”

“I have made arrangement for Jamie to go to Paris to further his education.”

She thought of their younger son, blond, wide-eyed, so connected still to his mother in a way that helped her to mend so many old wounds. “Paris alone? But ’e’s just a little boy, Charlie!”

“He’s the son of a king first, Nell. Charles, as the oldest, and already Earl of Burford, shall find his way in life clearly marked for him. Jamie needs the same chance. I want that for him. I want both of our boys to have brilliant lives. Besides, he’ll have a staff to attend him.”

“But ’e won’t ’ave
me
!”

He tightened his hand upon hers, then lifted it and very gently kissed the inside of her wrist. “I need you here, Nell. But Jamie has his entire life ahead of him, and I mean to see to it that he has every advantage this world, and his father, can offer him that. I’m sorry all this has taken me so long.” His voice broke. Then he looked off into the distance at the blaze of orange sun setting over the trees on the horizon. “I’ve been a fool about so many things. No matter what, I always,
always
knew you loved me, Nelly. In that regard, there was no one else even close.”

She touched the ruby necklace at her throat, another priceless gift from him. “You know, I’d ’ave to say I agree with that,” she said with a broad, happy smile.