The French Mistress

by Susan Holloway Scott

  She was no longer in her prime, of course, being nearly thirty years in age, and half of that lived hard from chasing pleasure. She’d born a slew of bastards to the king, too, and childbearing will leave its mark on even the strongest of women. But it mattered not: the Countess of Castlemaine remained as voluptuous as any pagan goddess. She was as tall for a woman as the king was for a man, with thick dark hair, pale skin, and heavy-lidded blue eyes that betrayed her wanton’s soul. Her dress was sumptuous, more fit for a queen than for a mistress, with a true ransom of jewels scattered over her hair and person. Yet even if she’d been garbed in penitent sackcloth, she would still have drawn the lustful gaze of every man in the room by the sheer potency of her beauty, and I doubted even Madame du Montespan could rival her.

  “She’s very beautiful, my lord,” I said, unable to keep the wistfulness from my voice. A king as rare as this one would naturally have such a glorious woman as his mistress.

  “She’s also in a righteous stew,” Monmouth said. “After worrying my father for a month, he’d finally granted her the honor to be among the party to go fetch my aunt from France. But my aunt didn’t wait, and sailed on her own, and so deprived Lady Castlemaine of being the first to welcome her.”

  I frowned. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I do not believe that would have pleased Madame.”

  “But it would have pleased Lady Castlemaine, and that’s all that matters to her,” he said. “And to those around her, too. When she’s in one of her furies, she’s as shrill as any harpy. No one dares cross her.”

  “Surely His Majesty does,” I protested, thinking how no one challenged Louis’s will.

  “My father prefers peace to war, mademoiselle, particularly in his bed,” he said wryly. “Mark that ring on her little finger. That’s new. I heard it cost him over three hundred guineas to quell that particular tantrum last month.”

  With considerable interest I studied the ring in question, an enormous table diamond cut wide and flat to display its size. I remembered how Madame had said I’d no need of jewels, but I’d have been quite willing to accept a ring such as this one.

  “He may dawdle with other women like Nelly Gwyn, but Lady Castlemaine always remains,” he continued. “Yet who could fault my father? There’s no other lady like her.”

  “Nelly Gwyn’s the actress, isn’t she?” I asked, recalling her name from Madame’s mention. It was the first time I’d heard Mrs. Gwyn’s name here in England, though unfortunately far from the last. “Is she here, too?”

  “Nelly here?” He laughed, I suppose at the unwitting absurdity of what I’d asked. “Unlikely, mademoiselle. Nell Gwyn’s a common, lowborn player, an amusing little creature who cheers my father with her antics, but she has no place among us here.”

  I smiled politely. I chose not to venture that, according to Madame, the duke’s own mother had likewise been common and lowborn, a Welsh tavern wench named Lucy Walter, and that only the king’s kindness had raised James Croft from bastardy to his present lofty peerage as the Duke of Monmouth: for I’d learned early that certain observations, however pertinent, are better kept to one’s self.

  I did not wonder that Lady Castlemaine was here, while Charles Stuart’s wife, Her Majesty Queen Catherine of Braganza, a most neglected lady, was not. Nor was I surprised to learn that the king seemed to dip and dally with as many other women as he pleased, as free as a honeybee who visits every lovely flower in the garden. The modes and mores of the Court were not the same as for common folk, who must obey their consciences and make their confessions. I’d spent my last two years in a household where my mistress was wed to a man who pined for his male lover, while she in turn sighed after her husband’s brother, even as both the brother and the male lover plundered her own circle of ladies as if it were their private brothel, and my mistress accepted the gallant attentions of her brother’s baseborn son. How, indeed, could the mistresses of Charles Stuart compare to that nest of writhing, duplicitous serpents?

  “Ah, at last we’re to have the dancing,” Lord Monmouth said, thumping his fist enthusiastically on the table along with the other gentlemen around us, a heathenish, drumming din. They drank deeply, these Englishmen, and without regard for how swiftly their manners deteriorated as the wine seized their wits.

  The guests who’d been standing were shuffled farther to the sides of the hall to make space, and the fiddlers put aside the softer tunes they’d been playing during the meal and began to play their instruments in earnest with a more vigorous fare. The king led his sister to the floor to applause and cheers, and together they took their place at the head of a set that included the Duke and duchess of York, Lord Arlington and Lady Castlemaine (an unholy alliance, as I soon learned), and several other couples whose names I did not know.

  In Paris we always danced in the stately, graceful manner that Louis himself preferred: a bourée, a sarabande, a loure grave, where every step and gesture was rehearsed and refined to perfection. In England, however, such formality did not appear to be the fashion. This first dance was as shockingly wild and untrammeled as those to be found among French peasants at harvesttime, and so exuberant that I feared for my frail lady. How she kept pace with her long-legged brother, I cannot say, what with the pair of them laughing and ruddy and jubilant in each other’s company.

  But before I could consider this overmuch, the duke seized my hand without any preamble, and pulled me to my feet.

  “We’ve sat here long enough, mademoiselle,” he declared, his face mottled with too much cheer, “and Jack Pudding’s my favorite. Come dance with me, if you please.”

  Truly, there was no permission to be granted, for His Grace was already hauling me through the crowd toward the floor to join the next set.

  “Please, Your Grace,” I said breathlessly, “what is Jack Pudding?”

  “Why, this tune, of course,” he said, squaring himself opposite me with his chin raised high. “Named for the kind of rascals who swallow prodigious amounts of black puddings for wagers. Here now, ready yourself.”

  He took my hands in his and bent low as the music—his favorite tune—signaled the proper beginning of the dance.

  “But, Your Grace,” I protested, “I do not know this dance!”

  “You’ll learn,” he said. “Follow me.”

  I followed as he bid with the most miserable results, stumbling this way and lurching that, and trying to mimic the steps of the other dancers as best I could. This, then, was destined to be the first unfortunate sight the English Court would have of me, jerked about like a puppet on strings, and I would have wept if I hadn’t been laboring so desperately to show some scrap of grace.

  At last the dance ended and my suffering with it, and as I bowed my head and made my final curtsy before the duke, my only thought was of how quickly I could retreat back to my chair and shamefaced obscurity. Yet I was shocked to find Lord Monmouth had vanished, and in his place stood His Majesty himself.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said, offering his hand as elegantly as his son had not, “would you dance?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, as breathless from the honor as from my recent exertion. I rose, and as if this scene was all by some greater design, the musicians now began to play a dance I knew, and knew well, a French piece with less of this English huffing and galloping and more opportunity for light conversation between partners. The first few bars we danced in silence, which gave me a chance to recover my senses and my wind so that I could concentrate on making a pretty show of my limbs for His Majesty’s appreciation. Likewise, I was all too aware that every eye in the hall had turned toward us to watch. Kings were like that: every motion they made or word they spoke was studied, discussed, remembered, and recalled, and so, too, were any others honored by their notice.

  So it now was with me. By the end of this dance, everyone in Dover would know my face and my name, and how I’d come to be here in Madame’s party. I was grateful that His Majesty danced well, too, and made my own performance the easier. He m
oved with a manly grace and confidence, deftly marking his steps in perfect time and using his tall, well-made body to reflect my own, as the best partners will: doubtless a result of his French blood.

  “You dance with exquisite grace, mademoiselle, as is only to be expected,” he said as we came together in the dance. “You possess much charm to match your beauty. I can understand entirely why you are such a favorite of my sister’s.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, recalling how in England that was how the king was properly addressed, and I silently thanked Madame for teaching me that nicety. “I am honored by your notice.”

  “The honor, my dear, is mine.” He smiled, ever ready to charm. To my surprise, he shifted to speaking French, both to make himself more agreeable to me and, I suspect, to render our conversation less easy to overhear. “I like a lady who’s not so jaded that she’s forgotten how to blush.”

  Needless to say, his notice only made my blush deepen, until to my misery I could feel the heat not only on my cheeks, but along my throat and across the pale expanse of my breasts revealed by my deeply cut bodice.

  “Forgive me, sir, but I cannot help it,” I said mournfully. “If I could forget, I would.”

  “Don’t,” he said, and as we turned to face each other again, I saw from the blatant interest in his dark eyes that he meant this not as flattery, but as truth. He did indeed like my blushes, though the reason was not quite so mystifying as I believed. In my innocence, I was as yet unaware that what to me was only a symbol of my embarrassment or shyness could also be perceived as a banner of amorous arousal, a banner that the worldly king was quick to read, and approve. “I wonder that my cousin Louis would part with you at all, even for so short a time.”

  I smiled ruefully. “I doubt that His Majesty has so much as noticed my absence, sir. I am not to his taste.”

  “Not to his taste?” he repeated. With his black brows raised with proper incredulity, he appraised me from my face to my toes and back again, and clearly found much to admire. “If that is so, mademoiselle, then I fear my cousin’s taste is sadly misinformed.”

  I smiled as I turned away, as part of the dance. I saw that Lord Monmouth had left me for Madame, who seemed equally enchanted with the trade, so much so that I wondered if it had been arranged between them.

  Nor would I find fault, either, and I was smiling still as I turned back toward the king. “His Majesty believes his taste—which is to say French taste—is without peer in the Christian world. I fear he would not agree with you, sir.”

  He chuckled. “My cousin and I often do not agree.”

  I drew my lips together in a moue of concern. “But I fear your cousin will not endure contradiction, sir. He expects to be obeyed in everything.”

  “So do I, mademoiselle,” the king said easily. “But given the nature of my subjects and my country, I also understand the impossibility inherent in such complete obedience, and thus content myself with obedience in most things, rather than all.”

  I smiled, not believing a word of this amusing foolishness. He was a king, and without question he was obeyed. “You would prefer a concession, then, sir, to a conquest?”

  “A conquest implies force, mademoiselle,” he replied. “I prefer the possibilities to be found in a concession freely given.”

  I blushed again, and held my gaze steady with his. I was a virgin, yes, but I was also French, and from birth even virtuous French ladies understand the language of flirtation. I was well aware of the other meaning to our conversation, running like a dangerous undercurrent beneath the placid surface of a river, just as I understood the significance of such banter with the King of England.

  The King of England.

  This charming foolishness, with this man, excited and pleased me to a rare degree. How could it not? With his sister’s encouragement, I’d let myself dream of him carelessly, for my own idle pleasure, for so long that I’d almost ceased to think of him as real. Yet here he was now before me, clearly made of very real flesh and blood and desire, too, and likewise I knew that if I ventured too far and risked too much, I’d be as irrevocably sucked beyond my depth as if in fact I’d plunged into that river hazard.

  “You toy with your words, sir,” I said, striving to keep my tone as light as any confection. “Do you prefer a concession freely given, or fairly won?”

  The music brought us together, so close that our joined hands rose and my bare wrist did press against his where the ruffled cuff of his shirt fell back. I was startled by the unexpected intimacy of it, the warmth of his skin and the blood that beat at his pulse pressed so close against mine, and startled more that he purposefully held the pose longer than the dance required, so I’d not miss that he, too, had felt the sudden rush of heat between us.

  “My sister warned me away from you, mademoiselle,” he said in a rough whisper as our faces drew closer, only inches apart. “She claimed you were too young and gently bred for me, and too near to the convent for my Court.”

  “Madame is kind to watch over me, sir.”

  “By your choice, mademoiselle, or hers?”

  “Mine,” I said, my whisper scarce more than a sigh. “Sir.”

  He released me then, letting me step backward as the dance required. Within my breast my heart raced like a frightened rabbit as I struggled to recall my wits. For nearly two years, I’d lived in a place that was overrun with lust and love, longing and desire, but this was the first time I’d felt any of it for myself, and like a novice tippler’s first sip of wine, it had gone directly to my head.

  Three steps to the left, slide, turn, three steps to the right. I ordered myself to concentrate on who I was, not what I felt. My cheeks might still be girlishly round, but I was a woman grown of twenty years, and it was time I presented myself like one.

  “ ‘Such is our good pleasure that it be done,’ ” I said, bringing the conversation back to the safer topic of the French king when the dance returned me once again to the king. “That’s what His Majesty your cousin says, and at once he is obeyed. ‘Such is our good pleasure that it be done.’ ”

  But the king was the king, and as such not so easily directed as I’d presumed.

  “Good pleasure, ha,” he said as the dance ended. “That may suit for my cousin, but for me, mademoiselle, my good pleasure will come from being with you.”

  Still holding both my hands firmly in his, he drew me closer and kissed me on each cheek, the whiskers of his mustache grazing over my skin. I started with surprise, my eyes wide and my mouth gaping, but he only smiled, and as he bowed, I realized that the other gentlemen on the floor were saluting their partners in the same fashion, and that the twin kisses were no more than the accepted conclusion of the dance. Belatedly I made him my own curtsy, and when I rose, the king was smiling still, though no longer at me.

  “I’ve come to claim my dance, sir,” Lady Castlemaine said, “and you with it.”

  Now I saw the flaws that age and sin had brought to her beauty, how the paint settled in the lines on her face and how her famous blue-violet eyes were at their core as hard as glass. She smiled wantonly at the king, and slipped her hand inside his coat to fondle him with shocking familiarity, while he only laughed.

  “You’ve left me quite alone,” she said, pouting slyly. “I’ve had no company at all.”

  “You’re never alone, Barbara.” The king pulled her roving hand from beneath his clothes and brought it briefly to his lips. As if to remind him of the price of her loneliness, she cocked her little finger, making the new diamond ring quicken and spark from the light of a score of candles.

  “Pray, who is this pretty, sulky child?” she asked, sufficiently confident in his attentions that she could now deign to notice me. “I wonder that her mama lets her keep so late from her cot.”

  “This is Mademoiselle de Keroualle, Barbara,” the King said, and this time his smile was for me, not her. “She is one of my Minette’s attendants from France. Mademoiselle, the Countess of Castlemaine.”

>   “My lady, I am honored,” I murmured, showing her the respect her rank demanded, if not her history.

  She studied me with rare frankness, the way one woman will to measure the worth of a potential rival. Then she smiled, slowly, as if to say she’d judged me no competition worth her bother.

  “Sweet,” she said, a single dismissive word. She looped her arm into the king’s to lead him away, but also to make her possession clear. “Come, sir. Your rightful place is at the head of the set, not here.”

  She could not have been more obvious in her disdain for me had she spat at my feet. Yet the king did not notice, or leastwise pretended not to, and I recalled what Lord Monmouth had told me of His Majesty’s preference for peace where Lady Castlemaine was concerned. Certainly he chose the easier (and more seductive) course now, curling his arm around her waist so that she might sway her full voluptuary’s hip into his as they left me. Or perhaps he’d decided to honor his sister’s request, and not toy with me further.

  Nor was I left alone. I’d been noticed and admired by His Majesty, and my place here was secured. In ten minutes’ time, my value had risen immeasurably. Now a flock of the same gentlemen who’d ignored my presence in their midst earlier was clustered about me, begging the honor of a dance.

  Yet still I gazed after the king, and the long black curls that flowed over his broad velvet-covered shoulders. He was every bit the perfect gentleman I’d conceived him to be, and if I’d not been surrounded by so many others, I might well have sighed aloud, so deep was my pining for what I could not possess.