Winsor, Kathleen (139 page)

I'm
going now, she told herself. And that damned blockhead isn't going to stop me!

But
as she started toward a door he took hold of her arm. "Come over here and
meet Lady Carlton."

Amber
jerked away. "What do I want to know her for?"

"Amber,
for the love of God!" His voice, scarcely more than a whisper, was
pleading with her. "Look about you. Can't you see what they're
thinking?"

Amber's
eyes again flickered hastily around in time to catch a dozen pairs of eyes
which had been fixed upon her glance aside, eyes that glittered, set above
mouths that curled with amusement and contempt. Some of them did not even
trouble to look away but met her with bold scornful smiles; they were watching,
and waiting—

She
took a deep breath, linked her arm with Almsbury's and together they walked
toward where Lord and Lady Carlton stood in a group made up of the King,
Buckingham, Lady Shrewsbury, Lady Falmouth, Buckhurst, Sedley and Rochester. As
they approached, the small gathering seemed to grow quieter —as if expecting
something to happen from the mere fact of her presence. Almsbury presented Lady
Carlton to the Duchess of Ravenspur and both women, smiling politely, made
faint curtsies. Lady Carlton was friendly and gracious and obviously altogether
unaware that her husband might know this gorgeous half-naked woman. While the
men, including his Majesty, all turned their heads to look at her, their eyes
admiring her figure.

But
Amber was conscious of no one but Bruce.

For
an instant Lord Carlton's expression might have betrayed him—but no one was
looking—and then immediately it changed, he bowed to her as though they were
the merest acquaintances. Amber, as their eyes met, felt the world rock and
tremble beneath her. The conversation began again and had been going on for
several seconds before she was able to follow it: King Charles and Bruce were
discussing America, the tobacco plantations, the colonists' resentment of the
Navigation Laws, men the King knew who had gone to make their homes in the New
World. Corinna said little, but whenever she did speak Charles turned to her
with interest and unconcealed admiration. Her voice was light and soft,
completely feminine,
and the brief glances she gave Bruce revealed that here was that unheard-of
phenomenon in London society: a woman deeply in love with her husband.

Amber
wanted to reach out and rake her long nails across that tranquil lovely face.

When
the music began again she curtsied, very cool and aloof and with some delicate
suggestion of insult, to Corinna, nodded vaguely at Bruce and left them. After
that she defiantly began to pretend that she was enjoying herself and was not
at all embarrassed by her own nudity. She ate her supper attended by
half-a-score of gallants, drank too much champagne, danced every dance. But the
evening dragged with interminable slowness, and she thought wearily that it
would never end.

After
an hour or so the dancers began to disappear into the rooms beyond, where the
gaming-tables were set up. Amber, a nervous ache in her back and an agonizing
tiredness through every bone, excused herself and went into the dressing-room
which had been set aside for the ladies. There they might powder their faces or
touch up their lips, adjust a garter or sit down for a few minutes and
relax—impossible in the presence of men.

But
for a couple of maids, the room was empty when she walked into it and she stood
for a moment, completely off her guard, shoulders slumped and head buried in
her hands. Then all at once she heard steps behind her and Boynton's voice
cried gayly: "How now, your Grace? An attack of the vapours?"

Amber
gave her a quick glance of scorn and disgust and bent to smooth up her
stockings and tighten the garters. Boynton flung herself onto a couch with a
heavy relieved sigh, spreading her legs and stretching them out before her,
turning her neck from side to side to relieve the tension.

Giving
Amber an arch sidewise glance, she began to strip off her gloves.
"Well—what d'ye think of my Lady Carlton?"

Amber
shrugged, "She's well enough, I suppose."

Boynton
laughed loudly at that. "Well enough, indeed. The men all think she's the
prettiest woman here—if not the nakedest!"

"Oh,
shut up!" muttered Amber, and turned her back on her to look into one of
the mirrors, her hands pressed flat on the table-top. Did she really look so
tired, or was it only that her face had gotten a little shiny? She asked one of
the maids to bring her some powder.

Just
at that moment Lady Carlton appeared in the doorway. Amber saw her in the
mirror, her heart came to a sudden stop and then sped on again, almost
suffocating her. She took the box of powder and began to dust her nose.

"May
I come in?" asked Corinna.

"By
all means, your Ladyship!" cried Boynton, shooting Amber a glance of
malicious triumph. "We were just saying that since the Duchess of
Richmond's had the small-pox you're the greatest beauty to come to Court."

Corinna
laughed softly. "Why, thank you. How kind of you to say that." Her
eyes glanced uncertainly at Amber's back, as though she wished to speak to her
but did not quite know how to begin. Actually, she wanted to make some kind of
apology for her clumsiness earlier in the evening. London, she realized, was
not America, and here no doubt it was quite correct for a lady of the highest
rank to appear all but naked at a private party.

"Your
Grace," she ventured at last, "would it seem rude if I told you how
much I admire your gown?"

Amber
did not even glance at her, but continued busy with the hare's foot. "Not
if you meant it," she said tartly.

Corinna
looked at her, both puzzled and hurt by the rudeness, wondering what reply she
should or could make to that. Already she had been surprised and baffled to
discover the savage undercurrents that existed in the glossy polite stream of
Palace etiquette.

But
Boynton spoke up instantly. "But your own gown, Lady Carlton, is the
loveliest one here tonight! How
do
you get such clothes in America? The
cloth-of-silver, and that lace—it's exquisite!"

"Thank
you, madame. My dressmaker is a Frenchwoman and she sends to Paris for the
materials. Why, really," she added with a little laugh, "we aren't
such savages in America. Everyone seems surprised I don't wear a leather dress
and moccasins."

Amber
picked up her fan and gloves, turned around again and looked Corinna straight
in the eye. "As for that, madame, you may find it's us who are the
savages!"

With
that she swept out of the room, but not before she had heard Boynton say
gleefully, "Pray, my lady, you must excuse her. She's had a mighty bad
shock tonight." All of them were thinking, Amber knew, that she was
jealous because King Charles had been paying her Ladyship such marked
attention.

"Oh,"
murmured Corinna's sympathetic voice, "I'm sorry—"

Amber
found Bruce at the raffling-table—for he never remained long in a ball-room
when the cards were being dealt or the dice were running—and so absorbed in the
play that he did not see her until she had been standing across from him for
several moments. Self-consciously she had put on her most becoming expression,
lower lip softly pouting, brows slightly raised to tilt the corners of her eyes.

The
instant he looked at her she knew it and glanced over swiftly, a half-smile on
her mouth. But his mouth did not answer and his green eyes looked at her
seriously for a moment, then lightened and slid down her body with a kind of
lazy insolence. Slowly they returned to her face and one eyebrow lifted almost
imperceptibly. At that instant she felt like the commonest kind of drab,
displaying herself for any man to see and appraise and—worst of all—to reject.

Ready
to cry with rage and humiliation she turned swiftly and walked away.

When
she blundered into Lord Buckhurst and he suggested that they find some private
room she went with him, as much to get away where she could not be seen as for
anything else. But she stayed for more than two hours and got a morbid kind of
satisfaction from thinking that Bruce would probably know what she was about.
She had been lucklessly trying for nine years to arouse his jealousy, but still
she was not convinced it would never be possible.

They
returned to the drawing-room after eleven to find the gambling still going on
and a group gathered about the King and his Royal Highness—James was playing a
guitar and Charles was singing, in his magnificent bass voice, a rollicking
Cavalier song of the Civil War days. The first person she saw, even before they
got to the bottom of the stairs, was Almsbury, and he came toward her with a
look of worry on his face. But he said nothing and he and Buckhurst exchanged
polite bows. His Lordship went off then and left her with the Earl.

"Ye
gods, Amber, I've been looking everywhere for you! I thought you'd gone—"

All
at once Amber found herself ready to burst into tears. "Almsbury! Oh,
Almsbury,
please
take me home! Haven't I stayed long enough!"

They
went outside then and got into the coach and there Amber began to cry with
furious abandon, sobbing almost hysterically. It was several moments before she
could even speak and then she wailed miserably: "Oh, Almsbury! He didn't
even smile at me! He just looked at me like—like—Oh, God! I wish I was dead!"

Almsbury
held her close against him, his mouth pressed to her cheek. "What else
could he do, sweetheart? His wife was there!"

"What
difference does that make! Why should
he
be the only man in London to
care what his wife thinks! Oh, he hates me, I know he does! And I hate him
too!" She blew her nose. "Oh, I wish I
did
hate him!"

She
saw Lord and Lady Carlton the next day riding in the Ring. Amber knew that he
disliked intensely the monotonous circling round and round, nodding and smiling
to the same people two dozen times and more, but evidently he had come for
Corinna's entertainment, since the ladies always enjoyed that pastime. The
following day they sat in adjacent boxes at the Duke's Theatre, and the day
after that they were in the Chapel at Whitehall. It was the first time she had
ever seen him in a church. Each time both Lord and Lady Carlton bowed and
smiled at her, and his Lordship seemed no better acquainted with her than his
wife was.

Amber
alternated between fury and despondent misery.

How
can
he have forgotten me? she frantically asked herself. He
acts as if he'd
never seen me before. No, he doesn't, either! No man who'd never seen me before
would look the way he does! If his wife had any wit at all she'd begin to
suspect he knows me only too well— But she won't of course! Amber thought
petulantly. I swear she's the greatest dunce in nature!

But
despite his seeming indifference she could not believe it possible that he had
been able to forget all they had meant to each other, for happiness and sorrow,
over the nine years past. He could not have forgotten the things she remembered
so well. That first day in Marygreen, those early happy weeks in London, the
terrible morning when Rex Morgan had died, the days of the Plague— He could not
have forgotten that she had borne him two children. He could not have forgotten
the pleasures they had shared, the laughter and quarrels, all the agony and
ecstasy of being violently in love. Those were the things that could never
fade—nothing could ever erase them. No other woman could ever be to him exactly
what she had been.

Oh,
he can't forget! she cried to herself, lonely and despairing. He can't! He
can't! He'll come to me as soon as he can, I know he will. He'll come tonight.
But he did not.

Five
days after she had seen him at Arlington House, he and Almsbury came to her
rooms late one afternoon as she was dressing to go out for supper. She had been
thinking of him, both angry and excited at once, wishing passionately that he
would come—and yet she was surprised when he and Almsbury walked into the room
together.

"Why—your
Lordship!"

Both
men bowed, sweeping off their hats.

"Madame."

Then,
quickly recovering herself, Amber shooed the maids and other attendants out of
the room. But she did not rush toward him as she had thought she would. Now
that he was there she merely stood and looked at him, almost painfully
self-conscious, and did not know what to do, or what she dared to do. She
waited for him.