The Perfect Royal Mistress (6 page)

He watched her with interest from behind the side curtain, the length of velvet tightly in his hand as she stood in the shadows, gazing up at the king.
New blood,
he thought with a smile. But he would need to tread cautiously. His reputation would likely precede him.

“Mr. Hart!” a voice called. “Five minutes until you’re onstage, sir!”

“Thank you, Bell,” he replied, using his best verbal flourish, the one that had made him a star.

By the end of November, Nell had developed a regular following of customers. They bought her fruit, tipped her handsomely, and engaged her in the witty banter at which she excelled well above the other girls. They found her funny without being boorish, flirtatious without being crude, and the men loved it. One of her most ardent customers, one who always bought the quince pies, was Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst.

Buckhurst was kind, handsome and, since her very first day, an exceedingly generous tipper, often giving her more on the side than what he paid for her fare. “If it isn’t lovely Nell!” he called out to her early one Saturday afternoon as people were clambering around her for seats.

As always, it was a pushing, shoving maelstrom for places on the pit benches.

Nell spun around, knowing the voice now. He seemed, she thought, a friend. “Your Lordship’s usual?”

“Am I really so predictable?” he sighed dramatically.

“Afraid so.”

“Have I nothing then at all of the mystery to challenge you?”

Her robust laugh was as distinctive as it was endearing. “Certainly a fine, high manner, Lord Buckhurst. But mystery, with you, I’m afraid, is in short supply.”

“Oh, you wound me!” He pressed his hands to his chest in a gesture befitting one of the actors they were about to see onstage.

“An orange girl could do no such thing to a man of consequence.”

“She could if her name was Nell Gwynne!” he parried as she simultaneously sold one orange each to two plain-faced women standing before her, hands extended. “And trust me, Nell, I am worth far less consequence than it may seem.”

“Lord Buckhurst!” one of the women sniffed. “Pray, do not tell me a man of your stature would tarry with an orange wench!”

Buckhurst glanced at Nell. He was wearing his endearing grin. “I’d not dream of it, Lady Penelope. But then there is little I would
dream
of telling you. Our conversations have always been something more of a
nightmare
.”

Nell put a hand before her mouth, but not before a laugh burst past it. She felt a hand press firmly onto her shoulder. The face that met hers, when she turned around, was long and thin with a square jaw and patrician nose. “If old Moll’s most popular orange seller has an orange left, I should like to buy it,” he said to her in a deeply cultured voice.

“Indeed I do, sir.”

After he took the orange, he handed her coins, which amounted to an excessively large tip. “I thank you, sir. ’Tis right generous of you.”

“Worry not. I always get what I pay for, Nell.”

When he had gone, Lord Buckhurst asked her, “Have you any idea who that was?”

“Not a clue. Should I?”

“Charles Hart is the star of this theater, and one of its principal managers. And, if I may say, he has clearly taken a fancy to
you.
”

“Oh, everyone fancies me, Lord Buckhurst. The same way they do a pup in the street. I get a moment’s notice for a clever tongue and a smile, then no more.”

“Well, in all my time at this theater, I have never seen the great Charles Hart come out from behind the vaunted curtain, and certainly never as directly for an orange from one of you.”

“Maybe he was hungry,” she smiled slyly. “I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

“And I would not discount it, lovely Nell.” He drew up her hand and, for the first time since she had met him, his expression became serious. “Take care with Mr. Hart, Nell. He can be a dangerous man.”

“He seemed perfectly charmin’ to me.”

“He’s an actor, the finest one in London. Boasts to everyone that he is a grandnephew of William Shakespeare. Mark me, he sought you out for something more than a piece of fruit.”

“If you’re right,” she laughed, “we have only to wait and see what that is.”

Before she left the theater that afternoon, Nell received a message, brought by the girl, still in rouge and lip paint, who had delivered the epilogue. It was from Charles Hart. Nell read the brief words with difficulty; she could barely read, and could not write at all. Still, the message was clear. Mr. Hart wished her to join him in his private tiring-room.

There was something he wished to ask her.

The king sat at the head of a long, polished table, with the Duke of Buckingham. The Earl of Arlington, who Buckingham openly despised, sat across from him, fingering a silver snuffbox. Thomas Clifford, Buckingham’s new protégé, slouched, while John Maitland, the barrel-chested Scottish Duke of Lauderdale, whispered to the Duke of York at the table’s other end.

As England’s Lord High Admiral, it was the King’s brother, James, Duke of York, who was spearheading a new effort to locate revenue for England. All of the councillors, with the exception of the gout-ridden, cantankerous lord chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon, were young and enthusiastic for the continuation of the yearlong war with the Dutch. In spite of the enormous cost of sea battles, the potential in victory was too seductive to be denied. “We simply haven’t enough money to continue on! It takes money to make war! We have barely enough to man our harbors as it is!” Clarendon declared, slamming a liver-spotted hand onto the polished oak table. The earl was alone against the younger council members. Their sighs and rolled eyes were a reminder to the king of that.

“The Dutch have wealth beyond the needs of three countries,” argued Buckingham.

“That has never meant it is ours for the taking!”

Clarendon was a stubborn old man, with a shock of snowy hair and a rugged, somber face. He was tolerated, not only because his daughter was married to the king’s brother, but because he had been a great supporter of Charles’s father. But the times were slowly shifting.

“It will be ours if we are victorious,” Clifford observed in support of Buckingham.

The Duke of York leaned back in his chair and put a hand on his chin. “There
is
another way.”

Arlington rolled his eyes. He, like the others, knew what would come next. The views of the king’s secretly Catholic brother were well known to this intimate council. An alliance with Catholic France was his standard proposal. Accepting money from the French would mean an end to the Dutch hostilities, and a respectable sum for England in the bargain.

“Your Majesty could still accept Louis XIV’s generous terms. Then the Dutch would become inconsequential. After all, why have you sold our sister to his brother, if not ultimately for a treaty with France?”

“Keep Minette out of it,” Charles interjected, stiffening. “We are talking about war.”

“The terms with France are still too high,” Buckingham put in. “If there were even a hint that His Majesty meant to convert England to a Catholic country, there would be anarchy the likes we have not known since—” He bit off his words, but the reference lay raw still between men who had survived the dark days of Oliver Cromwell, watched a king’s murder, and had worked for the Restoration of his son, who now reigned.

“Since my father was brutally butchered right outside these walls, you meant to say? His death will not be in vain, by God! I will rule as he ruled, bravely and boldly!”

“The country is glad to have Your Majesty,” Arlington amended, purposely seconding Buckingham. “We rejoiced openly in your Restoration. But England is a staunchly Protestant country.”

“I have it on sound authority that not everyone is so staunch,” James said quietly.

“This is taking us too far afield from the point,” Buckingham interjected. “England requires money, and ahead lies two distinct paths toward realizing that. One will require continued sacrifice at sea, but earn great wealth in our certain victory. The other, while asking less sacrifice, calls for an intolerable spiritual compromise.”

“And a dangerous deception to my subjects,” the king added. “We need a sound victory if we are ever to rebuild London.”

“Mark me,” said Clarendon. “You shall
all
rue the day that you continued on with this.”

The king looked at Clarendon, his father’s trusted adviser, trying to recall what he had seen as worthy in the advice of a fearful old man. His gaze then slid to Buckingham and Clifford.

“We need money. The Dutch have more than enough,” decreed the king. “Any treaty with France contains the provision that I declare myself a converted Catholic king. And, at the moment, that is a price even I am not willing to pay.”

“Why not make Louis a counterproposal?” offered James. “Protect our harbors from attack, then wait and see.”

Clarendon stood, then hunched over, his knuckles meeting the oak table. “You know perfectly well we cannot afford the cost of manning docked ships! The city cries for rebuilding, and there are still the effects of the last plague with which to be reckoned. It would be a foolish waste of money, Your Majesty, one which your father, the king, would never have allowed!”

The king settled his eyes first on the broad-shouldered Clarendon, then on his brother. “At least we must man our unused ships that are still in the harbor. Keep them at the ready. As they are, we are vulnerable should the Dutch decide to retaliate.”

“Keeping them at the ready will cost more than we have,” Clarendon grumbled. “You must propose a truce with the Dutch and put an end to all of this, no matter our circumstance, if you have a prayer of rebuilding London!”

“James, are you prepared to continue on as Lord High Admiral, leading us at sea in spite of our difference of opinion on this?”

“My duty is to serve my king.”

Charles arched a brow. “And your duty to your God?”

“I shall pray that the will of one shall follow the path of the other.”

“And George, what of England if the prayer goes unanswered?” asked the king.

“Then we are all doomed, a devastation throughout the world the likes we have never seen before.” Buckingham’s glance slid from one privy councillor to the next. “But, of course, that will not happen.”

The king’s gaze followed Buckingham’s. The silence stretched out for what felt an eternity. “My father trusted you implicitly, and I am prepared to trust you, Clarendon,” he finally said. “For the time being, until the French respond to our counterproposal, we take no further aggression toward the Dutch, and we will patrol our harbors but keep the ships unmanned so that we can begin to help the people build shelter.”

“Rob Peter to pay Paul?” said Lauderdale beneath his breath.

“Mark me, it will be a grievous mistake,” said Buckingham, who turned his head and gave a little grunt of disapproval which no one but the king heard.