Winsor, Kathleen (116 page)

His
arms went around her and they stood close together, thighs pressed hard, bodies
straining. When he took his mouth from hers she looked up, wondering, and found
him staring across the room. Slowly he released her and slowly she turned.
There was Gerald, standing just inside the door, his face white and his jaw
fallen.

"Oh!"
cried Amber, and her eyes blazed with sudden fury. "What d'you
mean—sneaking in here like this! Spying on me! You damned impertinent
dog!"

With
a sudden unexpected movement she picked up a silver patch-box from the
dressing-table and hurled it at him, but her aim was bad and it struck the
door-jamb. Gerald jumped. Bruce merely stood quietly and looked at him,
surprise in his eyes at first and then a kind of pity as he saw how bewildered
and unhappy and scared the boy was.

Amber
rushed at him in a shrieking fury, her clenched fists raised. "How dare
you sneak into my rooms this way! I'll have your ears cut off for this!"
He moved aside as she struck at him and the blow landed on his shoulder.

He
was all but stammering, his face had turned grey, and there was a sick look on
his face. "For God's sake, madame— I had no idea—I didn't know—"

"Don't
lie to me, you baboon! I'll show you—"

"Amber!"
It was Brace's voice. "Give him a chance to speak, why don't you? This is
obviously a mistake."

Gerald
shot him a look of gratitude, but he was clearly somewhat afraid of the woman
who stood before him, glowering with rage. "My mother was still in the
hall-way. And when I came out she—well—she told me to go back in."

Amber
started to speak again and then she turned and glanced at Brace, to see what he
thought about it. His expression was perfectly serious but his eyes glittered
with amusement, even while he had a very obvious sympathy for the unhappy young
husband whose duty it now was to challenge him to duel. Honour offered no
alternative. And yet it was ridiculous to think of Gerald Stanhope, small and
undeveloped with scarcely the courage of an adolescent girl, fighting a man who
was not only eight inches taller than he but an accomplished swordsman as well.

Bruce
stepped forward, made him an easy bow from the
waist, and said politely,
"Sir, I regret that you have so much reason to suspect my motives
regarding your wife. I offer you my profoundest apologies and hope that you
will believe no worse of me than you can help."

Gerald
looked as relieved as a criminal who sees the sheriff come flying with a
reprieve just as the noose is being fastened about his neck. He bowed in
return. "I assure you, sir, that I am enough
a man of the
world to know that appearances are often deceiving. I accept your apology, sir,
and hope that we may meet again under more congenial circumstances. And now,
madame, if you'll show me the way, I'll go by your back-staircase—"

Amber
stared at him in astonishment. God in heaven! Wasn't the poor fool even going
to fight? And was he going now, to leave his wife's lover in undisputed
possession? Her anger drained away and contempt took its place. She pulled up
the bodice of her smock and made him a curtsy.

"This
way, sir."

She
crossed the room and opened a door which led down a dark little stair-well.
Just before going out Gerald bowed again, very jauntily, first to her and then
to Bruce—but Amber could see that the muscles about his mouth quivered
nervously. She closed the door behind him and turned to face Bruce; there was a
contemptuous smile on her lips which she expected would also be on his.

He
was smiling, but in his eyes was a strange expression. What was it? Disapproval
of her, pity for the man who had just left, mockery of all three of them? It
alarmed her, and for an instant she felt cold and lost and alone. But as she
watched, the expression flickered and changed and he made a gesture with one
hand, shrugged his shoulders and started toward her.

"Well,"
he said, "he wears a pair of horns as well as any man in Europe."

London
had grown as hysterical as a girl with the green-sickness. Her life these last
years had been too full of excitement and tragedy, too turbulent and too
convulsive, and now she was uneasy, nervous, in
a constant state of worry and
fear. No prospect was too dismal, no possibility too remote—anything might
happen, and probably would.

The
new year had opened despondently, with thousands of homeless men and women and
children living in tiny tar-roofed shacks that had been thrown up on the sites
of their former homes. Or they were crowded together in the few streets within
the walls which had been spared by the Fire, and forced to pay exorbitant
rents. In a winter of unusual coldness and severity sea-coal was so expensive
that many could not afford it at all. Most of them believed, not unreasonably,
that London
would never be rebuilt and they had no faith in the present, saw no hope for
the future.

An
evil star seemed to be ascendant over England.

The
national debt had never been greater, though the government was near
bankruptcy. The War, begun so hopefully, was now unpopular, for it had not been
successful and was connected in the public mind with the unprecedented
disasters of the past two years. The seamen of the Royal Navy were in mutiny
and men lay starving in the yard of the naval office. Parliament had refused to
vote the money to set out a fleet that year and merchants would not be coerced
again into supplying the ships without cash-in-hand. Hence the Council had
decided—though against the judgment of Charles and Albemarle and Prince
Rupert—to lay up the fleet for that year and trust to peace negotiations
already under way.

But
at Court they did not trouble themselves very much with these problems. For
despite the desperate state of government finances there was more wealth in the
hands of private individuals than ever before—a person of enterprise and some
capital might invest his money in stocks and soon increase it many times. And
they were not afraid of the Dutch for most of them knew that England had made a
secret treaty with France to keep the Dutch fleet from sailing. The French were
not and never had been interested in the war, nor did Louis's ambitions point
across the Channel. Let the ignorant people fret and mumble if they
liked—ladies and gentlemen had other matters of which to think. They were far
more concerned in Buckingham's escapade and the gossip that Frances Stewart was
pregnant, a rumour which circulated exactly one month after her runaway
marriage.

Late
in April came the shocking news that the Dutch were out with twenty-four ships,
sailing along the coast.

The
people were frantic. Terror and resentment and suspicion ran through them like
a flame. What had gone wrong with the peace negotiations? Someone had betrayed
them, sold them over to the enemy. Every night they expected to hear the
rolling of drums, to wake to the screams of men and women dying by the sword,
to the glare of fire, the blasting of guns— but though the Dutch continued to
ride the coast, tantalizingly, they came no nearer.

Amber
was not greatly concerned about any of it—the War, the threatening Dutch,
Buckingham's plight, or Stewart's baby. She had one interest and only one, Lord
Carlton.

King
Charles had granted him
20,000
acres more. Large tracts were necessary because tobacco exhausted the soil
within three years and it was cheaper to clear new land than to fertilize the
old. He had kept a fleet of six ships, for it was the common practice of both
merchant and planter to underestimate each crop, with the result that ships
were usually scarce. His were consequently in much demand and he had sent a great
shipment to France the previous October. Though this was against the law,
smuggling was common practice and necessary if the planters were to survive,
for Virginia was producing in two years as much tobacco as England used in
three.

Bruce
now spent his days buying provisions, both for himself and for neighbours who
had commissioned him to do so. Ordinarily it was necessary to trust such
matters to a merchant who might send unsatisfactory goods, or profit at the
colonists' expense.

His
home in Virginia was still only partly constructed because he had been too busy
the year before clearing land and planting the tobacco crop. Furthermore, it
was difficult to hire skilled workmen, for most of those who went to America
expected to make a fortune in five or six years and could not readily be
induced to work at their old trades. He was going to take back with him several
dozen more indentured servants to complete the building and to work on the
land. He was buying glass and bricks and nails—all of which were scarce in
America—and, as most emigrants did, was taking with him many English plants and
flowers for the garden.

He
had a passionate enthusiasm for Virginia and his life there.

He
described to her the forests with their oak and pine and blossoming
laurel—great masses of dogwood, violet, roses, honeysuckle. He told her that
fish were so plentiful a man could lean over and scoop a frying-pan full from a
running stream. There were shad and sturgeon, oysters a foot long, turtle and
crab and tortoise. He told her about the birds that came in September, clouds
of them that blackened the sky, to feed on the wild-celery and oats that grew
along the river banks. And there were swan, goose, duck, plover, and turkeys
which weighed as much as seventy pounds. There had never been such a prodigal
land.

Wild
horses roamed the forests and catching them was one of the chief sports of the
country. Brilliant birds fluttered everywhere—tawny and crimson parakeets,
others with yellow heads and green wings. Animals were abundant and mink such a
nuisance that traps had to be set for them. Knowing that she admired the fur,
he had brought her skins enough to line a cloak and a robe and to make a great
muff.

Corinna,
his wife, had stayed in Jamaica the year before, but she had named their home
from the description he had given her: they called it Summerhill. In a couple
of years, Bruce said, they intended to visit England and France and would buy
most of their furniture then. Corinna had left England in 1655 and had not seen
it since; and like all English who went abroad to live she longed to return to
her homeland, if only for a visit.

Amber
wanted to hear about these things and pestered him with a thousand questions,
but when he answered she was invariably hurt and angry and jealous. "Ye
gods! I'm sure I can't think how you must pass your time in a place like that!
Or do
you
work
all day long?" Work was no occupation for a gentleman, and
the way she said the word it sounded as if she was accusing him of something
unworthy.

One
hot bright-skied afternoon in late May they were drifting along the Thames
toward Chelsea, some three and a half miles up-river from Almsbury House. She
had bought a new barge, a great handsome gilt one filled with gold-embroidered
green-velvet cushions, and she had coaxed him to take the maiden trip with her.
Amber was stretched out in the shade of the awning, her hair wreathed in white
roses, the thin silk of her green gown falling along her legs, and she held a
large green fan to shield one side of her face against the sun. The bargemen in
their gold-and-green livery were resting, talking among themselves. The barge was
a long one and they were not close enough to overhear what Bruce and Amber
said.

There
were many other little boats on the river carrying sweethearts, families,
groups of young men or women on pleasure-cruises and picnics. The first warm
spring days brought out everyone who could find leisure to escape—for London
and the country were still almost one and every Londoner had an Englishman's
rural heart.

He
sat facing her and now he grinned, shutting one eye against the sun. "I'll
admit," he said, "that I don't spend the morning in bed reading
billets-doux or the afternoon at a play or the evening in taverns. But we have
our diversions. We all live on rivers and travel isn't difficult. We hunt and
drink and dance and gamble just as you do here. Most of the planters are
gentlemen and they bring their habits and customs with them, along with their
furniture and ancestral portraits. An Englishman away from home, you know,
clings to the old ways as fiercely as if his life depended upon it."