Venus (31 page)

“Aye,” Nick said, “’tis time. But I would speak with you in private first … You will excuse us, gentlemen?”

It was command, couched as polite request, and achieved the immediate departure of their guests. Richard paused in the doorway. “You have simply to perform, Polly. Y’are an actor of rare genius. Do not forget that.” The door closed behind him, and Polly smiled tremulously.

“’Tis unlike Richard to pay me compliments.”

“He speaks only the truth,” Nick said, turning toward her with quiet purpose. “Now, you are to listen to me. Your acting ability is not in question; your ability to hear and remember what is important is not in question; your ability to deceive such a one as Buckingham is not yet proven. You must remember that he and his friends are far from stupid, and you must remember above all else that they are very powerful.” The emerald eyes held hers steadily, his voice was level, but Polly was in no doubt as to the utter seriousness of his words.

“I will not forget.”

“And you will not forget this last thing I shall say. The very minute that you become uneasy, that you sense someone … anyone … might be looking at you with suspicion,
you will leave. Instantly! Is that quite understood, Polly?”

“And if I decide that the goal will be better achieved by my staying and allaying those suspicions in whatever manner seems necessary …?” She returned his look with her own, straight and candid.

“Nay, Polly, you will not. In such a circumstance, the goal will be sacrificed.”

Polly shook her head. “That is a decision that I will make, Nicholas. You would have me involved in this, and I agreed to be so, of my own free will. How the game is played must now be up to me.”

“And if I say that, if you take that stand, I will call a halt to the plan?”

“I would deny you the right to do so.”

There was no anger in their words, no real sense of confrontation. It was simply the establishment of new ground.

“I will be careful, love,” Polly said in soft reassurance, seeing his unease, feeling his discomfort as she took the reins into her own hands.

Nicholas looked at her for long minutes, then yielded. She was the chief player in the game. It was only reasonable that she should play by her own rules. “I will be waiting here for you,” he said. “John Coachman will take you, and he will wait to bring you home.”

The duke’s mansion on the Strand was ablaze with light. Great flaming torches, set in metal sconces on either side of the imposing front door, threw illumination onto the flagway before the house. A linkboy ran to the carriage door as it drew up, holding up his torch as Polly descended, bending her head low as she stepped through the carriage door to avoid disturbing the high-piled artistry of her coiffure, carefully managing the weight of her skirts and train, which settled around her as she stood on the flagway, taking a moment to compose herself.

A liveried footman stood bowing in the opened door as
the linkboy lit the way. Polly passed through into a huge tiled hallway, where chandeliers swung from a domed ceiling and gilded moldings adorned the walls and doorways. A wide staircase curved upward, its steps shallow, its banisters elaborately carved. There was more grandeur here than in Whitehall Palace itself, Polly reflected. The immense wealth of the mansion’s owner was declared from every corner.

The strains of lute and viol wafted down the stairs, a voice raised in laughter, the sound of hands clapping. Polly followed the footman up the staircase. At the head of the stairs, double doors stood open onto a salon, richly decorated and furnished. A group of musicians played at one end. Four men standing with their backs to the door were huddled over a long, low table, their laughter rising on a lubricious note. A cluster of women, painted and powdered, stood before the fire, fans fluttering, voices, light and artificial, drifting in the warm, scented air as they responded to the sallies of their male companions. Lady Castlemaine was one of their number, Polly noted, recognizing the others also as faces she had seen at court, but she could not put names to them all.

“Mistress Polly Wyat,” intoned the footman, and the four men around the table straightened. The Duke of Buckingham, in peacock satin with gold lacing, his powdered periwig sweeping his shoulders, turned instantly to the door. The thin lips flickered in a smile as he came over.

“Why, Mistress Wyat, I had begun to despair of you.” He made a magnificent leg, showing off his embroidered stockings and the high-heeled shoes where diamonds glinted, set into the heels and the gold buckles.

“Am I late, my lord duke?” Polly swept into her curtsy, a stage curtsy from which not a nuance was missing. “I am desolated to have offered such discourtesy. Your invitation did not specify a time.”

“That was remiss of me,” he murmured, kissing her hand. “In my eagerness to dispatch the invitation, I must have forgot such a trifling point.” The heavy lids drooped even
lower. “I am devastated at the thought that my poor gift did not find favor, madame.”

“On the contrary, Your Grace, it was exquisite. But far too valuable a present for me to accept.” She met his meager smile with one as blandly polite and unexpressive.

Buckingham inclined his head. “’Twas but a trinket, madame. I had thought it pretty enough to please you.”

“I am not in the habit of accepting … trinkets … of any value from those with whom I am but slightly acquainted,” Polly said carefully, still smiling.

Buckingham pursed his lips. “Then I will keep the brooch until such time as we are become better acquainted, Mistress Wyat.”

“A pleasing suggestion, sir.” Polly could feel the sweat breaking out upon her body under the strain of this loaded exchange. How long could she keep it up? Her gaze shifted with apparent naturalness to look around the room, reminding the duke of the presence of other company and his duties as host.

“I am delighted you agreed to grace my little revels,” Buckingham said, turning back to the room. “You will be acquainted with some of my guests … but not all,” he added delicately, regarding her through his hooded eyes as she took in what had been occupying the gentlemen around the table. The girl spread upon it was quite naked.

“Is she not a little chilly?” Polly asked carelessly.

Villiers chuckled appreciatively. “A few guineas can be amazingly warming, my dear madame, for such a one as she.”

A brazen hussy of Covent Garden breeding, thought Polly. If Nicholas, Lord Kincaid, had not entered her life,
she
could have been earning her bread in such a manner … She banished the distracting thought; it only led to that other question, the one she must not dwell upon.

“I see my Lord Arlington,” she said now, as if the matter of whores displayed upon tables was of no further interest. “Talking with Lady Castlemaine. I would have speech with
him, sir. He was so kind as to send me a letter of compliment after the performance this afternoon, and I must thank him.”

Buckingham bowed his acquiescence and escorted her to her goal. She accepted a glass of canary from a footman and set out to play the coquette.

The duke rarely left her side, and it was clear to Polly, from the speculative looks sent her way from all and sundry, that the company had deduced the meaning of her presence at this private gathering. Carefully, she ensured that not just the duke was the object of her coquetry, even while her eyes, when they met those of His Grace, told him otherwise.

“George, a game of macao, dear fellow. You owe me my revenge!” The laughing invitation came from a newcomer, John Maitland, Earl of Lauderdale, one of the Cabal.

“Aye,” agreed Arlington. “’Tis the devil’s own luck ye have with the cards, George. Ye took a thousand guineas off me last time.”

Buckingham laughed, nicking open his snuffbox to take a leisurely pinch. “’Tis like taking toffee from a babe, but if ye’ve a mind to be trounced again, then by all means let us repair to the card room.” He turned to Polly beside him. “I’d have ye with me, bud, if y’are willing. Such beauty can only bring a man good fortune.”

The public endearment sealed the matter for all, as did the proprietorial hand cupping her elbow. If Mistress Wyat was not already gracing Buckingham’s bed, she soon would be, and her acceptance in this group was now assured.

Assured for as long as she made no slips, Polly thought, accompanying the men into the card room leading off the main salon.

“Nay, sir, I’ll stand at your shoulder,” she said, laughing, as he directed a footman to draw up a chair for her beside his own at the round table, gleaming mahogany under the candlelight. “’Tis the place of luck, is it not?”

Buckingham raised her fingers to his lips, saying with soft meaning, “I trust my luck will hold beyond the cards.”

Polly allowed an elusive smile to play across her lips, before raising her fan, concealing all but her eyes. Sweat trickled
down her back under the strain of keeping her revulsion hidden.

“What think you of the king’s hints about his marriage to Lucy Walter, George?” The question came from Arlington, and it brought Polly to prickly awareness. Lucy Walter was said to be the mother of the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth, the king’s sixteen-year-old son.

Buckingham shrugged, gesturing to the boy who stood on his other side holding a heavy leather purse. He took out a hundred guineas and laid them upon the table. “I’ll see you, Henry.” He watched as Arlington laid his cards upon the table, then chuckled, exposing his own hand. “My twenty to your nineteen, Henry … No, I think the king is playing a lost cause here. If he claims marriage to the Walter woman, he must produce evidence, witnesses, documents. If he had them to produce, he would have done so by now.”

“They could be found,” observed Lauderdale, sipping his claret, frowning as he examined his cards.

Polly kept very still, praying that the sudden tension in her body would not be transmitted to the seated figure so close to her. This was what she was here to hear.

“But think what a trouble,” drawled Villiers. “One can never be sure that a bought witness will stay bought, or that a document one happens to … to discover—” An elegant beringed hand passed through the air in graceful explanation”—will stand up to informed scrutiny.”

“So ye’ll not encourage His Majesty in this?” inquired Arlington.

Again Buckingham shrugged. “I’ve no objection to York’s succeeding to the throne. Monmouth’s a callow lad, overindulged and a trifle empty-headed.”

“Vain and ambitious into the bargain,” chuckled Lauderdale. “’Twould not suit your purposes, George, I’ll be bound, to have such a one on the throne.”

Buckingham’s lips moved in the semblance of a smile, and his eyelids drooped heavily. “I cannot imagine what you
could mean, John. Why should it be a matter of moment to me who succeeds His Majesty?”

A laugh rippled around the table, and the conversation turned to gossip.

Polly drew her lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve and surreptitiously wiped her clammy palms. She had done what she had come here to do, established her position in this circle, and heard something of importance to Nick and the others. Surely she could make her escape now, for this time at least. But how to extricate herself gracefully?

She yawned delicately behind her fan. “La, my lord duke, but ’tis monstrous fatigued I am grown. I must ask you to excuse me. ’Tis to be hoped I have brought you sufficient luck for one night.” She smiled over her fan, yawned again.

The duke’s expression was not encouraging. His eyes hardened. “Why, bud, ’tis early yet.”

“But you forget, sir, I am a working woman and must be at the theatre at ten of the morning.”

Buckingham pushed back his chair, rising fluidly. Polly, taking this to mean that he would escort her from the room, curtsied to the men at the table. “I bid you good night, sirs,” she said, and moved away toward the salon.

“Come now, you would not be so unkind as to run away, madame,” the duke protested softly as they entered the still-crowded salon.

“Run away from what, duke?” inquired Polly sweetly. “I have enjoyed myself most wonderfully, but, indeed, I must seek my bed if I am to satisfy Master Killigrew tomorrow.”

His fingers circled her wrist, lightly, yet Polly felt her skin jump with alarm. “You would not have me disappoint my audience, would you, sir?”

“But you disappoint me,” he said gently, still holding her wrist.

It was time for the withdrawal. “Then I am sorry for it, sir, but I was not aware I was under an obligation.” She met his gaze directly and saw the flash of puzzlement cross that generally impassive countenance, a flicker of uncertainty
lurking in the eyes. The duke had thought the game and its rules understood. Now he was not so sure.

Then he released her wrist, bowed deeply, and said, “I am desolated at your departure, madame, but I realize I have no claims, much as I would wish for them.”

“They have to be earned, sir,” she said. It could not be much plainer. If he went about it the right way, he could have what he wished for. It was up to him to discover the right way.

The duke bowed again. “Then I shall endeavor to do so, bud.” He beckoned to a footman. “Summon a chair for Mistress Wyat.”

“There is no need, sir. My coachman awaits.”

If that surprised him, it did not show on his face. “Then permit me to escort you to your carriage.”

He saw her into the elegant, well-kept interior of Kincaid’s coach and stood upon the flagway, staring after the conveyance. This one was not going to be easily or cheaply bought. She had clearly a very firm idea of her own worth, and would not sell herself for less. Well, His Grace of Buckingham could respect that. He must set about wooing her. It was a novel game, and there was no reason why he should not take pleasure in it. With a little smile, he turned back to the house.

“Standing staring out of the window is not going to hasten her return, Nick,” remarked De Winter.

“Aye, I am aware.” Nick turned from the window, reaching for his wineglass on the sideboard. “But I cannot rest, Richard.”

“She’ll not come to harm,” Richard reassured. “’Tis a gathering; Buckingham cannot compel anything from her in such a situation. If she finds she cannot perform the part, then she may leave at any time she pleases. While nothing will be gained, by the same token, nothing is lost.”