The Perfect Royal Mistress

by Diane Haeger

  “I don’t like Charles Hart. And I do like you.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know I’d fancy getting the better of that rapscallion. And, I don’t know it for certain, but I believe you are the one to help me do it. If I’m right, we both win.”

  “And if you’re wrong, we’ll both be out of the King’s Theater on our very common arses.”

  “That you can be so witty after…” He took a breath. “Well. It tells me all I need to know.”

  Richard Bell pushed past a collection of stage props and painted pictorial scenery after Nell had gone, pausing at the empty stage upon which Charles Hart was sitting, hunched over, head in his hands. “Something wrong, sir?”

  “Foolish, foolish!” He was murmuring the word. He did not look up.

  “The girl, sir?”

  “She was still a maid. Blast! How was I to know?”

  The obvious response was that a woman’s virtue should not be made an easy target of conjecture. But a confrontation with someone so much more powerful did not now suit his plan. His was a grander game of resourcefulness and opportunity. “She is but an orange seller, Mr. Hart.”

  “And Mary Meggs’ll have my hide for knowing it! She’s lost three girls this past fortnight, and you will never convince her they weren’t all my fault!”

  Richard Bell stepped closer. “Why not give Mrs. Gwynne a small part, as an apology. Nothing grand, mind you, just something in the background. A crowd scene along with me, perhaps.”

  Charles Hart looked up. “The girl is no actress!”

  “She has agreed to work on my lines with me for the performance tomorrow morning herself, playing Morgana. Mrs. Knepp once again wants my head on a platter for, she says, trying to upstage her in the second act, and she won’t rehearse with me. Why not watch from the side, and make up your mind about Nell then?”

  “A more colossal waste of both our mornings could not likely be had.”

  “And yet you might appease your conscience.”

  “I’ve little conscience left about me, Bell. In this life, my concern has become self-preservation only.”

  And a good dose of self-aggrandizement, thought Richard Bell. But he wisely chose not to say it. Something told him from the beginning that Nell Gwynne was worth holding his tongue.

  Rose Gwynne’s hand went to her mouth. “What in blue blazes happened to you?”

  Nell slumped against the warped door. It was not supposed to have been like that. Her life was meant to be different. Somehow, suddenly now, she felt herself on the same path as her sister. “’Tis all right.”

  “The devil it is!” Rose moved across the room and put the back of her hand gently to Nell’s cheek.

  “You and Ma manage it. Why should I not learn as well?”

  “Because you’re different, Nelly. You are the ’ope of the Gwynne’s!”

  “I’m no one’s ’ope.”

  “You’ve ’eld out for so long.”

  “’Tis what ’appens sooner or later, right?”

  “I expect so.”

  “And you make somethin’ of it, if you’re pretty enough. Ma used to say that to us. I can’t remember much else she ever said, much I’d want to remember.”

  “If you’re pretty or very clever. That’s what she used to say,” Rose answered. “Ma used to say men always fancy the clever ones, and ’tis no tellin’ what a pretty, clever girl can achieve.”

  Chapter 4

  A PRINCE OF MANY VIRTUES, AND MANY GREAT IMPERFECTIONS.

  —John Evelyn on King Charles II

  HE swam with powerful strokes through the calm waters of his private canal at Whitehall Palace. Behind him, fighting one another to keep up, was a length of aides and courtiers who fancied not the swimming so much as the bragging rights. Keeping pace with the energetic and athletic king of England was a necessity to retaining one’s place. Aware of it, and amused by it, Charles plunged beneath the surface again. Some days it was just good to be king.

  After tormenting them sufficiently with his superior skill, he moved toward the mossy bank, beneath a branching oak, and stepped out of the water. His Medici skin was naturally tanned and glimmering in the midday sunlight. The others shook, shivered, and grumbled as Charles stepped toward a waiting blanket and a fresh pair of velvet slippers lined with down. Then, without turning to acknowledge them, Charles moved up the embankment and began to walk with long-legged strides as each man scrambled for his own place nearest him. None of them, not even Buckingham, would ever fully know his painful, twisted course to the Crown. To flee his father’s murderers, Charles had been forced to seek safety in France, until troops could be amassed to help him win back England. There was no other way. To accomplish his escape, Charles was forced to send all of his faithful courtiers away. All but one made their way toward Scotland, and were captured and killed. Alone, vulnerable, and entirely impoverished, Charles had been forced to depend upon the loyalty of a simple country family, one that disguised him and helped to spirit him out of England. He had been aided by Richard Penderel, a brave Royalist, and his small party of supporters. Charles was exhausted by hunger and pain when the group headed down the steep edge of an embankment to the sandy shore where there was only hope of swimming to safety. “I cannot swim, Your Majesty!” came the voice of one of the Royalist followers, the simple man who had risked his family’s safety, and his own, to help the king escape. Charles had led his guide through the water that day, and toward the safety of the other shore. The opulent life of excess and entitlement he now lived remained startling to him in contrast to that dark memory, and a dozen others like it. They were never gone, nor buried beneath comfort, privilege, and debauchery.

  Charles never forgot the loyalty of the Penderel family. When his throne was restored, he saw to it that they were made comfortable for the rest of their lives.

  “Come on, the lot of you stragglers,” he called out now, the dark memories put away. “I’ll not keep Mr. Wren waiting! I am told this great young architect has a plan for rebuilding London!”

  Ahead of them, sitting beneath a bristling evergreen, dressed in volumes of pale blue and gold brocade, was the most recent object of his attentions, Frances Stuart. He had hoped to find her here. Beside her, on a tufted stool, built just noticeably higher, Lady Castlemaine sat. She was now the object of his greatest regret. He paused for a moment between two huge urns, the gateway to a small flight of stone steps. Then he approached the two women with utmost caution. Barbara never did anything without a purpose. By her presence, she meant to say that she knew precisely what was transpiring. Buckingham came ahead of the others, meeting the king’s stride, then, seeing the women, he leaned over to whisper, with a clever smile, “Did Your Majesty ever consider monogamy?”

  “I did once, actually. But I’ve since recovered from it quite nicely.”

  Both women rose, then fell to deep curtsies.

  “Pray, Lady Castlemaine, tell us in what sort of conversation might you be engaging so young and impressionable a girl as Lady Stuart here?”

  “Anything Lady Stuart could glean from my many years at court would be time well spent on her part, Your Majesty. The details are unimportant.”

  “Did someone not once say that the devil is in the details?”

  “Your Majesty knows I have always been devoted to you.”

  “In deed, if not always in your words.”

  “One would never be wise to say any but the most glowing things of Your Majesty.”

  “Since when was wisdom one of my Lady Castlemaine’s great assets?”

  “Since spending eight long years at Your Majesty’s side and, if I may say so, surviving.”

  A soft murmur of amusement ruffled the air behind him, and irritated Charles. He did not like to be outshone in front of his court, and certainly not by such a fading star as Barbara Palmer. Charles turned to the girl who had become his obsession. “Lady Stuart, you would be wise to take with a very fine grain of salt every utt
erance of the lady before you.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Frances Stuart blushed and then curtsied again. Charles saw that she had decided wisely not to enter a fray of such long and tangled standing.

  Looking from one woman to the next, Charles suddenly began to laugh. Having Barbara so well entrenched at court was murder on his love life, and she knew it. As he nodded to each woman and then proceeded away, Buckingham leaned over once again. “Perhaps some things are worth trying twice in a lifetime, Your Majesty.”

  “For the right woman, George, I think I actually might.”

  “Something must to be done about that old fool! We are at a crucial juncture, and Clarendon could ruin it all,” Buckingham spat as he sat with Lady Castlemaine, well concealed in a grotto draped and curtained off by wisteria and thick ivy. It was far out beyond the privy garden, and past the grove of lemon trees where the former king used to stroll and the present king rarely dared to tread for the ghosts hidden there. “If he has his way, the king will be surrendering to the Dutch before a fortnight and England will be the laughingstock of the world! He will ruin everything we have worked so hard for!”

  Lady Castlemaine agreed.

  As Charles met with Christopher Wren, Buckingham plied the king’s mistress with brandy from a silver flask in their hidden refuge. “Nostalgia does have such a damnable way with our sovereign.” He began brushing her neck with kisses as his fingers snaked down beneath the fabric of her bodice.

  “But I suspect, between the two of us, we can do battle with his nostalgia. Either through the king’s loyalty, or his prick.”

  George laughed, running his other hand up her bare thigh, happy to find no pantaloons. “You are a wicked she-devil, and it is the thing I adore most about you.”

  “The very most thing?”

  “Well, perhaps the second thing.”

  As he moved on top of her, as he had done a dozen times before, Barbara pressed him aside. She lowered her skirts and petticoats, and moved to the edge of the bench. Then she took a long swallow of the brandy, draining his flask before giving it back to him. “We’re better accomplices now than lovers, George.”

  “I believe we are up to the task of both.”

  “Alas, it should not be a task, yet it is.”

  “Lady Castlemaine,” he said indignantly. “You have no plans of using me to your own ends somehow, do you?”

  She leaned forward then. “I have plans to help you be rid of Clarendon, and seeing you made chancellor of England in his stead. Shall I not use you in that particular way?”

  Buckingham groaned and fell back against the iron bench and the lattice above it. He had come to her side when called, and he had expected his usual reward. Barbara could be vicious, he thought, self-centered, lethal, but always effective. He struggled now to put his ardor away; finding the means to vanquish the chancellor would be worth the sacrifice. She was right, after all. Clarendon did have the element of nostalgia with which to play his hand. But Buckingham would trump him in that, as he always did. There was no one at court more ambitious, or more clever. Buckingham leaned back, crossed his hands behind his head, and exhaled deeply. “What exactly do you suggest we do?”

  “We are bound to have a small setback or two against the Dutch. They are, after all, an undeniably powerful force.” She smiled with the devilment of a fully ripening plan. “And when we do suffer that defeat for our unpreparedness, which is all too likely, I am sad to say, the king shall be made to see the need to be rid of the old goat for his poor advice.”

  “Made to see it by you and I, do I presume?”

  “You know as well as I that Charles never has liked taking responsibility for things in life. Enduring his father’s murder, escaping assassins of his own, and living all those years in exiled poverty have wrought a man who is driven to make up for that by avoiding any and all critical thought for pleasure’s sake. He needs the two of us.”

  Now Buckingham grinned. How perfectly her ambition met his own! As long as she was on his side, he would not show her who possessed the ultimate power. “Clarendon really is all that stands in the way of my having total influence over the king.”

  “Clarendon…and me.” Lady Castlemaine laughed.

  Chapter 5

  FATE NOW FOR HER DID ITS WHOLE FORCE ENGAGE AND FROM THE PIT SHE MOUNTED TO THE STAGE; THERE IN FULL LUSTRE DID HER GLORIES SHINE, AND LONG ECLIPS’D SPREAD FOR THEIR LIGHT DIVINE.

  —The Earl of Rochester

  SHE knew he was standing there, watching. Nell could feel his eyes upon her from behind the heavy stage curtain, lecherous, imposing. Richard had told her Hart would come to observe them rehearsing, and so he had. For the first time since considering Richard Bell’s plan for her, Nell smiled. It had never occurred to her, watching her mother with men, that there might be another element to be harvested from sex. Power. And seeking power was certainly better than tolerating the shame. Guilt was a powerful weapon she could use; it would empower her and wound him. With great determination, Nell smiled more broadly, and prepared to manipulate Charles Hart into offering up something to her—though this time it would be a thing of her own choosing. Looking to Richard, she spoke the next line for a laugh. “Well, then, shall I see you again?”

  “When I have a mind to it. Come, I’ll lead you to your coach for once,” Richard responded with flair.

  “And I shall let you for once.”

  “Oh, Mr. Hart! Nell here was just helping me with my lines,” Richard said, pretending only just to have seen him standing there. “But, I confess, she outacts the lot of us. Did you get to hear her?”

  Hart was scowling. “I heard her.”

  “And? We could use a girl like her in the troupe. She’s got a natural instinct for comedy.”

  There was a long pause. “Very well. See the wardrobe mistress. You can try a place in the crowd scenes.”

  Nell glanced at Richard. Another awkward moment slipped by. “You wish to give me a part in the production?”

  “Let’s say I’ve been made to see the value in giving you a try.”

  “Well, what I want is a proper apology.”

  “What have I to regret to you?”

  “You were wrong to behave like a stag in season.”

  “A rather vulgar way to put it.”

  “I’ve no patience for dressin’ things up, Mr. ’Art. With Nell Gwynne, what you see is what you get.”

  “Exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  “Well, I accept your apology, such as it is, but I’ll not take a place in the crowd. I’ll be playin’ Lady Wealthy to your Mr. Wellbred, thank you very much indeed.”

  “Lady Wealthy? You?” He barked out a laugh. “That is a lead role!”

  “And I made her the comedian she should be! I saw you laugh in spite of yourself!”

  Hart glanced back at Richard Bell, who merely shrugged his shoulders, as if to say he had indeed enjoyed Nell’s interpretation of a character who, played each afternoon by Rebecca Marshall, called Beck, never garnered more than a few tepid chuckles.

  “There’s simply too much at stake to risk making an orange girl into a leading player.”

  “What will you gain if she is a success? She does have that spark, sir. And if another of Mr. Dryden’s plays should fail—”

  “I’d wager what you’d lose is a playwright to the duke’s house,” Nell interjected.

  “Is this blackmail?”

  “Not if it’s workin’.”

  He was getting angry. “What would you call it then?”

  “Compensation for a girl’s stolen virtue,” Richard put in.

  “Rather easy virtue, if you ask me.” Hart’s face was tense. He looked like a man backed into a very uncomfortable corner. And he was. “Oh, very well. You may have a more substantial role. But not Lady Wealthy. This afternoon, you will go on as the niece. Then, if you don’t mangle the part too horribly, we shall see.”

  “But sir, she doesn’t even know that role!”

  “Then
that’ll be a challenge for her, won’t it?”

  “How much does it pay?”

  “Now that really is too much!”

  “Well, Mr. Hart, you cannot expect her to do something else for you for nothing. You won’t want it to get around that she is being given some other means of compensation, or the rest of the actresses that you’ve—”

  “I take your meaning, Bell. Twenty shillings and not a penny more.”

  “Thirty,” Nell said, smiling broadly up at him.

  “You haven’t even been onstage!”

  “I performed well enough for you, didn’t I?”

  “Vulgar as any other doxy!”

  “But ’alf again as clever!”

  Richard laughed, and Charles Hart even did battle with his own bitten smile. “Thirty shillings, and if you foul this up, you shall be pleading with Mary Meggs for your old job back before sunrise tomorrow.”

  The next afternoon, she stood behind the heavy red velvet side curtain, filled with fear. Beyond the rhythm of her heart pounding, there was ribald laughter and jeers from the capacity audience who sat stuffed into the pit.

  Nell had been fitted into a costume of layered, emerald-green velvet and flouncing ivory lace. She was to play the daughter of a countess. That, of course, was to be the joke, with her thick accent and streetwise manner. Having stood outside the theater with her basket, then worked the tumultuous pit, Nell understood the remarkable chance before her. Waiting for her cue, she saw the faces of the men at the Cock & Pye in her mind, how she made them laugh with her bold humor, a wink, or a curtsy. She felt her knees stop knocking. Just be yourself, she thought. You ain’t a well-brought-up lady, and that you’ll never be. The best you can ’ope is to make ’em laugh.

  She glanced out at the players already onstage and getting a tepid response. The worst of the audience out in that sea beyond the lamplights waited for just the right moment to toss overripe fruit at the characters they disliked the most. There was no going back. The candles at the foot of the stage flared so brightly that she could see no one, not a single face beyond them. She could only sense them there, judging her, waiting. Whispers. A muffled cough. Then frightening silence. Smiling her brightest smile, she skipped onto the stage.