Chase Family Collection: Limited Christmas Edition

by Lauren Royal

  The Presence Chamber was stunning, with great tapestries on the walls and a gilded ceiling. The king and queen sat under a canopy fashioned of cloth-of-gold. After the tedious ceremony of presentation, Chrystabel wandered off and Rose decided to look for Gabriel. But she’d barely scanned the chamber when Baron Fortescue appeared and made a bow. “My dear Lady Rose, I’m most honored to see you wearing my bracelet.”

  He was dressed in mulberry satin with bunched loops of aqua ribbons. Rose had always admired men of fashion, but it seemed to her that lately the fashions had turned rather frivolous. And she remembered Lord Fortescue better now, most specifically that he was, as Lily had put it, a sloppy kisser.

  She didn’t wish to hurt him, but she certainly didn’t want to encourage him. “The bracelet matched my gown,” she told him. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure. I hear, dear lady, that you’ve learned the secrets of I Sonetti.” He grinned, displaying buck teeth. “I’m hoping you’ll be willing to share them.”

  Was that why he’d given her the bracelet? She was tempted to tear it off, but there was no reason, after all, to ruin such a pretty thing. “If I know any secrets,” she told him archly, “I plan to share them with only my husband.”

  To her consternation, his grin widened. “I entertain fond hopes of being that man.”

  “You what?”

  “Will you marry me, dear Rose?”

  Good God, he was proposing! A month earlier she’d despaired of ever receiving a proposal, and now she’d had two in a week. But better she live all her days as a spinster than bind herself to Lord Fortescue and his sloppy kisses. “Please accept my apologies,” she said, “but my heart belongs to another.”

  Though he sighed, he didn’t look surprised. “Best wishes, then, my lady.”

  No sooner had Lord Fortescue taken his leave than Lord Somerville made his way over. He raised her hand and kissed it reverently. “I hope you received my flowers.”

  “They’re beautiful, my lord. I thank you.” If she remembered correctly, his kisses had been unexciting but not off-putting. And his suit was adorned with gold braid rather than ribbons. Perhaps he would ask her to dance. She had always dearly loved to dance.

  “I hear you’ve a copy of I Sonetti,” he said instead.

  If she had his flowers here, she’d be tempted to dump them on his head. “I plan to share it with only my husband.”

  “Well, then, dear Lady Rose, I must ask you to do me the honor of becoming my wife.”

  Rose’s first instinct was to scream in frustration, but in all honesty there was nothing wrong with the man except that she couldn’t imagine marrying him. “It would truly be an honor,” she assured him, “but I’m afraid my heart belongs to another.”

  “I see.” He swept her a courtly bow. “Your servant, my lady. The duke is a lucky man.”

  In the next hour, Gabriel failed to appear and four more gentlemen proposed to Rose. Two of them were more than acceptable, men she knew she’d have jumped at the opportunity to wed a year ago. But suddenly she couldn’t stomach the thought of marrying any of them.

  And not all the men were after her hand in marriage. Some were simply interested in the book. Rose had warned off three of that type already when two more approached as a team. “We hear you have a copy of I Sonetti,” one of them started, a lascivious gleam in his eye.

  They both crowded close—so close Rose could tell one of them truly needed a bath. “We were wondering—” the second man began.

  “Leave her alone,” Nell Gwyn interrupted, shoving herself between them.

  The first one turned on her. “Bloody hell, Nelly, we were only—”

  “Hoping to share her, you beasts.” Raising her dainty hands, she pushed on both their chests. “Go on. Be gone.”

  Rose blew out a breath as she watched them walk away.

  “Is it true?” Nell asked the moment they were out of earshot.

  “What?”

  “That you’ve a copy of I Sonetti. It’s all the buzz.”

  “Yes, it’s true.” Rose sighed. “But I cannot imagine why everyone finds it so blasted interesting.”

  “The ladies, they just want to see it, to hear the words. But the gentlemen…well, if you’re not looking for a tumble or two, you’d best stay in company and be watchful.”

  From what Rose had seen, there was nothing gentlemanly about the base creatures. “Surely not all men are so single-minded.”

  “Some may approach you with flowery words, but they are men. Inflamed most easily.”

  “Then perhaps I should carry a bucket of water.”

  Nell laughed.

  “Do you know,” Rose said, “you are one of few at court who hasn’t asked to see I Sonetti. Don’t you want to view the engravings and read the scandalous translated words?”

  “I’ve no need of such things,” Nell assured her blithely.

  “Most ladies seem to think they’d enjoy sharing the book with their men.”

  “Not I.” Nell leaned closer. “Charles”—she dropped her voice to a confidential murmur—“is a very catholic lover.”

  Rose frowned. “I thought you were both Protestant.”

  Nell’s lips curved into a fond half smile. “I mean that he’s not very imaginative. His tastes run to the simple. However, he more than makes up for that with his prodigious appetite and enthusiasm.”

  Rose felt her eyes widening. “Oh,” was all she could find to say.

  “Besides, I’ve seen those pictures—one would have to be a contortionist to attempt half the poses.”

  Rose couldn’t agree more. Despite her sisters’ amused reactions, the engravings still made her a little nervous. In fact, this whole conversation made her nervous. “Will there be gaming tonight?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “Of course. And tomorrow night, there will be a masked ball.”

  “Gemini! Whatever shall I wear?”

  “Not everyone wears a costume. Just a mask will do, although I suspect you’ll find some of the outfits amusing.”

  Rose’s mind turned to the clothes she and Mum had brought and what she could possibly create from them. Maybe if she concealed her identity well enough, she’d have an evening free from being questioned about I Sonetti. She watched absently as a beautiful woman walked in and made her curtsy before the king.

  Or rather, her bow.

  Rose blinked. “Whoever is that?” she asked, staring. Though the tall woman was dressed in silks and satins, the sumptuous turquoise apparel wasn’t a lady’s. “It’s a Cavalier’s suit she wears! She must think the masked ball is today instead of tomorrow.”

  “I think not.” Nell chuckled. “Have you never met Hortense Mancini, the Duchess Mazarin?”

  “That’s the duchess?” Rose had never seen a woman dressed like a man, but the effect was stunning. A jeweled sword dangled from her belt, and a dark little Moorish boy dressed to match trotted beside her, completing the bizarre picture.

  “Are you not jealous of her?” Rose asked candidly, knowing the Duchess Mazarin was yet another of the king’s mistresses.

  Nell gave a good-natured shrug. “She has Charles’s attention for the moment, but when all is said and done, he will always come searching for my bed. For I love him, and I don’t believe the lovely Hortense has it in her to love anyone. She has a brilliant mind, but beneath it she’s colder than the Thames in January.”

  Rose slanted a glance to Louise de Kéroualle, who was watching Hortense and glowering. “It seems the Duchess of Portsmouth doesn’t share your lack of concern.”

  “She has something to fret about,” Nell said with a saucy grin. Taking Rose by the arm, she started toward the Duchess Mazarin. “Louise is a passing fancy for Charles as well, and the coming of Hortense may well mean the end of her reign. Even a king can spread himself only so thin,” she added with a laugh.

  “Why does Charles like either of them?” Rose wondered aloud.

  “He’s a man,” Nell told her with a
nother shrug. “His head is turned by a pretty face. Louise is a beauty, and as for Hortense, you must agree she’s gorgeous.”

  Drawing closer to the duchess’s rare loveliness, Rose could only nod. Waist-length raven hair framed Hortense’s perfect face. Her flawless Mediterranean skin set off large violet eyes that seemed to change color as she moved.

  Nell lowered her voice. “Charles fancied himself in love with her years ago, while she was but fifteen and he still in exile on the Continent. He proposed to her twice. But she thought his prospects poor, and more importantly, so did her guardian, the Cardinal Mazarin. If either had foreseen that Charles would someday regain his crown, today she’d be a queen. Instead, she’s forced to live off her keepers.”

  They drew up before the duchess just as she sent her little Moorish boy off to fetch refreshment. As the child trotted away obediently, Nell swept Hortense a theatrical curtsy. “Your grace, may I present Lady Rose Ashcroft, the Earl of Trentingham’s daughter. Lady Rose, this is Hortense, the Duchess Mazarin.”

  “Lady Rose. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” The duchess’s accent was melodious, an intriguing mixture of her native Italian and the many years she’d spent in France. “I’ve been told,” she added, raising one arched black brow, “that you’re in possession of a rare copy of I Sonetti.”

  “You’ve heard correctly,” Rose admitted, unsurprised. Why should this stranger be the only soul at court who didn’t know?

  “Then you speak Italian?”

  “Among other languages.” After saying that without thinking, Rose glanced quickly around and was relieved to see that Gabriel still hadn’t appeared.

  “An intellectual!” Hortense exclaimed with such enthusiasm Rose half expected her to clap her hands. “You must come to my salon, then.”

  “Your salon?”

  “A weekly gathering of great minds in my apartments at St. James’s Palace. We discuss all manner of subjects. Philosophy, religion, history, music, art, ancient and modern literature…”

  It sounded like something Violet would love, but Rose didn’t share her sister’s passion for scholarly debate. Not to mention she suspected the Duke of Bridgewater would find it a bore. Still, it wouldn’t do to snub a duchess. “Perhaps someday I’ll join you,” she said.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Hortense said as her little Moor returned with a cup of steaming coffee. “Why, thank you, Mustapha.” She patted him on the head, prompting a smile. His teeth looked very large and white in his dark face as he reclaimed his post by her side.

  As she sipped, Hortense’s gaze strayed to Louise de Kéroualle. “Look at her,” she said to Nell with a roll of her amazing eyes. “She’s wearing black again.”

  Rose looked, too. Louise’s gown was exquisite, but clearly meant to convey grief. “Why black?”

  Nell snorted as only Nell could snort. “That hoity-toity French duchess sets up to be of superior quality. If you listen to her, everyone of rank in France is her cousin. The moment some grand lord or lady over there dies, she orders a new mourning gown.”

  “Who died?” Rose asked.

  “Doubtless some minor prince.” Nell set one of her small hands upon a curvy hip. “I wonder, I do, if Louise is of such high station, why is she such a whore? I was born to be a whore, so I hold that I’ve done quite well for myself. But she was reared to be a lady—don’t you think she should blush in shame?”

  Hortense laughed at that, and her laughter was no feminine tinkle. It did her outfit rather proud.

  Rose glanced again at Louise. “Does the Duchess of Portsmouth have a black eye?”

  Nell nodded. “An unfortunate accident, she calls it. But I overheard two ladies saying she’d done it deliberately, to make her pale skin darker like the Duchess Mazarin.”

  To judge from her braying laughter, the Duchess Mazarin thought that a fine jest.

  “Lady Rose.”

  Rose turned to see the Duke of Bridgewater. “Your grace! I was wondering if you’d attend tonight.”

  “You look as though you’ve been having a fine time without me.”

  His tone implied he was less than thrilled to find her socializing with two of Charles’s mistresses. And now that she thought on it, Rose was a bit scandalized herself. But the truth was she felt more comfortable with these women than she did with most of the people here at court.

  Gabriel was the exception, though. Other than proving a tad more amorous than she’d prefer, he’d been the perfect gentleman. “I’m glad you came,” she told him, meaning it.

  He drew her a safe distance away. “Where are your earrings?”

  She knew she should have worn them. “I adore them, your grace, but they didn’t match my gown.”

  “Well, then, these should match whatever you choose to wear.” He fished a tiny silk pouch from his pocket. “A token of my esteem, my lady.”

  Rose drew open the drawstring and poured a pair of diamond drops into her hand. The stones winked in the torchlight. “Your grace! They are beautiful!”

  She should have known he would come up with something to outshine all those other men.

  “I’m pleased that you like them,” he said, moving close to fasten them on her ears. “Would you care to dance?”

  Forty-Eight

  “ROSSLYN.” KIT looked up from the sketch he was making of Rose and quickly flipped it over. “What brings you here tonight?”

  The earl wandered the drawing room of Kit’s building-in-progress, touching a panel here, eyeing the level there. “Just seeing how you’re coming along.” He squinted up at the half-painted ceiling. “You’ve pulled it off, Martyn, haven’t you? I knew you could do it.”

  Kit glanced overhead at the fat, smiling cherubs the Duchess of Cleveland had requested, thinking, not for the first time, that they didn’t really fit her. The king’s longtime mistress was known to be anything but cherubic. “Something wrong up there?”

  “Not at all. It’s stunning, in fact.” Rosslyn lowered his pale blue gaze to meet Kit’s. “Mind if I look around?”

  “As you wish.”

  Kit lit a second candle and handed it to the man, then followed closely behind. Not that he had anything to hide. But the last of his men had just left, and he always checked everything one final time before leaving himself.

  During the past few days he’d been over every inch of the apartments time and again. Nothing seemed out of place. The materials were up to standard, and there was no sign of sabotage, fire or otherwise. Apart from some understandable grumbling when Kit kept them long hours, no one on the job seemed unhappy. No one had sighted Harold Washburn, either.

  Apparently the man hadn’t set the fire at Whitehall—or, at the very least, he’d heeded Kit’s warning and was keeping clear now.

  “Very nice.” In the master bedchamber, Rosslyn nodded at a carved mantelpiece. “Gibbons’s work, I presume?”

  “Yes.”

  “You always have insisted on the best.” His walking stick tapped as he continued his rambling inspection. “Winning the post of Deputy Surveyor would be best of all, wouldn’t it?”

  Kit followed the man into the dining room, watching the long tails of his lavender surcoat flap behind him. “It’s only an interim goal. I won’t be satisfied until the Surveyor General post is mine.”

  Rosslyn turned to face him. “I’ll alert Mr. Wren that you’re angling to take his place.”

  “Sir Christopher Wren,” Kit reminded him. “But I doubt he’ll find that a revelation.”

  The earl waved an elegant hand. “I was jesting. Can you not take a jest?”

  In long years of schooling together, Kit couldn’t remember Rosslyn—Lord Gaylord Craig at the time—jesting even once. “Sorry,” he said. “I suppose I’m a bit serious these days.”

  “Understandable, my friend.” Rosslyn smiled. “Well, I expect I had better get back to court. Excellent job here, Martyn.” Still tapping, he retraced his steps to the entrance. “Excellent job, indeed.”
>
  As Rosslyn walked out, Kit was only half surprised to see Rose’s mother walk in. “Lady Trentingham. I didn’t know you’d come to Hampton Court.”

  “Good evening, Kit.” She watched Rosslyn’s retreating back, then turned to Kit in a swish of yellow skirts. “A friend of yours, is he?”

  “An old schoolfellow. Now my rival for the post I’m seeking. He came to check out the competition.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be working very hard to win the post. From what I’ve seen, he spends all his time at court.”

  Kit shrugged. “An earl doesn’t have to prove himself the way a common man does.” He could be bitter about that, but he’d long ago decided not to waste his time raging over life’s inequities. Better to spend one’s energies overcoming them. “How did you get in here?” he asked. “The only way is through the privy gardens.”

  He hadn’t thought to ask the same of Rosslyn.

  Her brown eyes lit with intrigue. “I had the most lovely conversation with the guard at the gate. It seems he is lonely and desirous of a wife. Since by all appearances he’s a perfectly nice man, I promised to send Rose’s maid Harriet over to meet him after I complete my business here. Lovely girl, Harriet.”

  “I’m sure she is.” The privy garden was supposed to be private to the king. Kit wondered if he should alert Charles that his guard was so easily bribed. “And what is your business?”

  “Oh, I just wanted to see how you were faring. My husband, naturally, is anxious for you to get back to work on his greenhouse.”

  “Naturally.”

  “So how are you faring?”

  “Without my presence here the project has fallen slightly behind schedule, but not so far that the time cannot be made up.” The bonuses he’d promised would ensure it. “Everything seems to be in order.”

  “Seems?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “This nagging voice in my head keeps insisting something is wrong.” Something he was missing. No matter that his countless inspections proved otherwise, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should reject what was on the surface.

  “Hmm. And with Rose?”