Venus (40 page)

“Here!” Polly picked up the soap from the floor beside the tub, grabbed his questing hand, and slapped the precious cake into it. “I would not leave it in the water; t’would melt.”

“Such habits of thrift as you have,” he said in wonderment. “Kneel up and let me wash your back.”

“I am not ready to wash my back yet,” Polly objected. “I am still enjoying the hot water. It is beneficial for aches and bruises.”

“On which subject, if those aches and bruises are not going to prevent your riding, what is?” Finding one warm wet breast beneath the water, he lifted it clear, soaping the ivory mound with an air of great concentration.

“I refuse to ride that sluggard ever again, with or without a leading rein,” she told him. “So I will not ride.”

“I had not envisaged your riding the piebald again,” Nick said, transferring his attention to the other breast. “I, too, was in error.”

“Oh.” Polly could find nothing more to say for a moment, particularly when Nick had taken her nipple between thumb and forefinger, and was rolling it in the way that set butterflies of delight aflutter in her belly.

“Tiny is yours,” Nick said softly, tipping her chin with his unoccupied hand. “I gift you each to the other.”

“Oh,” Polly said again, at the mercy of such a welter of emotions that she was quite unable to express herself.

Nick kissed her, and there she could find expression, her lips melting against his, her tongue flirting with his in sensual promise. Drawing back, he smiled down at her face, flushed with the warmth of the bathwater and his kissing. “Am I forgiven for causing your fall, moppet?”

“You would buy your pardon, sir?” Her eyes glowed; she reached up with wet hands to clasp his face, pulling it down to hers for renewed thanks. “In the face of such a birthday gift, who could be so mean-spirited as to deny pardon for any offense that stopped short of murder?”

Nick frowned. “Birthday gift, Polly? What mean you?”

She shrugged casually. “Why, ’twas my birthday on Wednesday.”

Nick sat back on his heels, regarding her gravely. “Why would you say nothing of it earlier?”

She shrugged again. “It has never been a day of note. I do not regard it.” A tiny smile touched her lips as she remembered. “Well, one year it was. It was my fifth birthday, as I recall. Prue had made me a rag doll.” She laughed, quite unaware of the effect this revelation was having on Nicholas. “I kept that doll until it fell apart, then I had a scrap of the material that I talked to as if ’twere still Annie. But Prue threw it away eventually, when it became so dirty that she would not give it houseroom. It must have been very dirty,” Polly reflected. “Prue was not overly scrupulous about such things.”

“That was the only birthday present you have received?” He spoke slowly, as if to be sure that he was understood.

“Why, yes, I think so,” she responded. “I would have remembered, I expect, if there had been others.”

“Yes, I imagine you would,” Nick said, swallowing the lump in his throat. There was no point in expressing his feelings at this gulf of deprivation. It would hardly benefit Polly to be made aware of a loss that she did not consider in the least. However, he was resolved that never again would her birthday pass unremarked. “So you have attained the great age of eighteen.” A finger ran over her lips, gently teasing. “I must learn to treat you with the respect due such maturity; or, at least, endeavor to do so.”

“I do not think I should care for that at all.” Polly caught the teasing finger between her teeth, nipping with a degree of seriousness. “Respect sounds very dull. Except that I could wish you had shown me a little before pulling Tiny up short like that. I would not else have fallen.”

“Stop worrying that bone. I had thought it buried.”

“Indeed, it is.”

“Then kneel up and let me wash your back. I have a certain cure for bruises of both pride and flesh …”

“Y
ou have recovered from this morning’s mishap, I trust, Mistress Wyat.” Buckingham took snuff, smiling blandly at Polly. They were in one of the small drawing rooms that evening where card tables had been set up; voices rose around them in laughter and occasional exclamation.

Polly looked at her interlocuter, and for a moment was deprived of the power of speech. The duke was regarding her with a look of contemptuous amusement, radiating menace. The cheerful buzz around her seemed to fade under the inescapable conviction that this man was going to hurt her. Without thought, her eyes darted in a desperate search for Nicholas, needing the certainty of his presence as shield.

The duke’s smile grew blander as he absorbed her confusion. “I appear to have said something to upset you,” he murmured. “’Twas but a polite inquiry.”

Polly licked her lips and found her voice. “I do beg your pardon, my lord duke. My mind was elsewhere. I am quite recovered, thank you. It was a most minor mishap.”

“Your … uh … protector seemed not to consider it minor.”

“I do not know what you mean, sir.” Why did she feel as if she were dancing at the end of a string being manipulated
by those long, beringed fingers? Her gaze raked the room again, wildly searching for Nicholas.

“Why, I mean simply that Kincaid appeared monstrous disturbed,” replied the duke casually. “Most flatteringly concerned for your safety.”

“I cannot imagine why that should surprise you, Duke.” From somewhere came the strength to resist the creeping paralysis produced by those drooping, hooded eyes and the soft tones where some as yet undefined threat lurked, barely masked.

He gave a little laugh. “Oh, it did not surprise me in the least, bud. Not in the least.” He watched her as she struggled to make sense of this. “Love is a most demanding master,” he murmured.

Involuntarily, she gasped, her eyes widening in shock. “It is, of course, not at all a fashionable emotion,” continued the soft voice dripping its honey-coated menace. “But we shall keep it as our little secret, shall we?” Seeing Polly for the moment incapable of response, he offered a mocking bow and sauntered over to a table where an intense game of three-handed Gleeke was in progress.

Polly stood for a minute trying to shake herself free of the enveloping dread. What was going on? What had he seen? What did he mean? She must find Nicholas.

Gathering up her skirts, she hastened from the room, then stopped. What was the point in describing that exchange to Nicholas? It could not possibly mean anything. Why should it matter that Buckingham now knew that Polly and Nick were not simply two individuals involved to their mutual benefit in a perfectly ordinary liaison? Her own association with the duke was over, so nothing was lost by his knowledge. What did matter was that she had betrayed her fear even as she had confirmed his words with her shocked silence.

With determination, she returned to the card room, taking her place with a laughing group around the shuffleboard.

• • •

“Something appears to have pleased you mightily, duke,” observed Lady Castlemaine, her eyes gleaming through the slits in her black silk mask.

“Perhaps I, also, should adopt the fashion of the vizard,” drawled His Grace. “I’d not have my every thought broadcast upon my countenance.”

“Only broadcast to those who have the code and can therefore read,” responded her ladyship. “You are uncommon satisfied by something. Confess it.”

The duke smiled and reposed himself elegantly upon the scroll-ended chaise longue beside her. He straightened an imaginary wrinkle in his aquamarine hose, turning his calf for further inspection, thus offering his companion the opportunity to admire the fine shape of his leg.

“Has Lord Kincaid’s little actor at last come to appreciate your manifold attractions?” hazarded Lady Castlemaine, her baleful gaze wandering to where the subject under discussion sat at the shuffleboard. Polly wore no vizard, her own having been removed by the king himself, on the grounds that beauty such as hers had no right to be concealed beneath a mask. Such a statement had done little to improve Lady Castlemaine’s disposition, and her mouth thinned spitefully.

Buckingham read her expression correctly, despite the mask. He chuckled. “Do not let your ill will show, my dear. Malice is not a pretty emotion. Its manifestation wreaks havoc with the complexion; such hard lines as it produces.”

Lady Castlemaine managed a wan smile. “I am indebted to you, my lord duke, for your advice. I will make certain to heed it. But, pray, will you not answer me? Does your present complacence have aught to do with the actor?”

“Well,” the duke murmured, “I think you could say that I have justification for feeling satisfaction.” His eyes rested on Polly, and he nodded pleasantly to himself. “I have found both the currency and the price, my lady.”

The countess closed her fan, tapping the ivory sticks against the palm of her hand. “Will you say no more, sir?”

“If I may count upon your assistance,” the duke replied, “you shall be a party to the entire plan.”

“Gladly,” the lady agreed. “I will render whatever assistance I may.”

“I shall need you to plant a few seeds in the king’s ear,” Buckingham explained, his voice low, a smile on his lips, his eyes still upon Mistress Wyat. “Easily done in the privacy of the bed curtains.”

“On what subject?”

“Why, treason, my dear, and my Lord Kincaid.”

“You talk in riddles.” Barbara momentarily forgot the need for caution, and her voice rose above an undertone. “What has Kincaid to do with treason?”

Buckingham shrugged, smiled. “I am sure I can find a connection if I look hard enough, madame; sufficient to impeach him and lodge him in the Tower.”

“But how would such a manufacture assist your cause with the actor? She does not appear to hold him in ill will, for all that they do not live in each other’s pockets.”

“Ahhh, now there is the nub,” the duke said, his smile broadening. “The facade they present for public consumption is precisely that—a facade presenting the complacent protector and the kept woman with an eye to the main chance. In fact, matters run much deeper.” He shook his head in mock wonder. “So beautifully they play it, too. But I tell you, Barbara, if aught were to be amiss with my Lord Kincaid, I’ll lay any odds you choose to name that his mistress will make whatever sacrifice demanded of her to buy his safety.”

“And you will name the price,” said Lady Castlemaine, her eyes brightening as comprehension dawned. “’Twill be a high one, I imagine.”

“By the time I have finished with the little whore, she will never want to show that glorious countenance at court again.” The vicious words, spoken in a soft, pleasant tone, fell from smiling lips. Barbara Palmer shivered in sudden chill. “She will know herself for what she is—a slut whose place is on her back in Mother Wilkinson’s brothel.”

Indeed, reflected Barbara with a renewed shiver, one did not refuse the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham with
impunity. The wench would suffer well for such presumption; for imagining that a creature coming from nowhere, with a little talent and a moderately pretty face, could dare to play fast and loose with the most powerful man in the land.

“When do you begin?” she asked, taking a cheese tartlet from a tray presented by a bowing page.

“There is no time like the present.” Buckingham waved the tray away and took snuff. “You will begin to make little murmurs about Kincaid, which I will follow up with graver doubts. By the time we are returned to Whitehall, the crop should be ripe for harvesting.”

It was not until after Christmas, however, that the metropolis was considered sufficiently plague-free for the court’s return. Polly did what she could to overcome her fear of Buckingham, to regain her pleasure in the sojourn in Wiltshire. Her efforts were assisted by the duke, who seemed to lose interest in her altogether, and eventually she was lulled into a sense of security, able to believe that he had enjoyed tormenting her in revenge for her rejection of his advances, but had now found other interests.

He had, indeed, found other, related interests, and the quiet work of discrediting Nicholas, Lord Kincaid, went on behind the scenes, and in the privacy of the king’s bed.

The twelve days of Christmas at the court of King Charles II surpassed Polly’s wildest dreams of that pleasure-oriented celebration.

Christmas at the Dog tavern had, in latter years, been celebrated with less than Puritan severity, certainly, but Polly had been kept far too hard at work to glean much amusement from the mummers and the musicians; the mistletoe hung upon the rafters had merely served to add to her burdens. There had been Christmas fare, and she had eaten her fill of goose and mince pies, but nothing in that experience had led her to expect the magnificence of this Christmas.

Day after day, the junketings continued to the music of viol and drum; tables groaned beneath the boar’s head, the
pheasants, the sturgeons and carps, the venison pasties, cheesecakes and sugar plums, nuts and fruit Faces remained flushed with the canary and sack, the punch and best October ale that flowed from earliest morning until the last reveler had sought his sodden slumber. And each night, the festivities were directed by the man who meant Christmas—the Lord of Misrule.