Venus

by Jane Feather

  “I thank you both,” he said at the end of the scene. “I do not think that Nicholas will ever make an actor, I fear.” He sauntered across to the stage. “Mistress Wyat, on the other hand …” Pausing, he smiled up at her. She returned the smile with a somewhat vague and distracted air. It was an air with which he was familiar, and of which he approved. It denoted complete involvement in the part she had just been playing. “Do you wish to join the king’s company, mistress?”

  “Of all things,” she replied, with a fierce intensity. “May I?”

  “I see no reason why not. You will have to gain His Majesty’s approval, of course, but we will not seek that just yet.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Nicholas, accepting with considerable relief that his brief venture into the thespian arena was over, took snuff.

  Killigrew came up onto the stage. “A short spell in my Nursery at Moorfields first. There are skills and practices to be learned, and even a natural talent is the better for honing. Then I will put on The Rival Ladies here. It is one of the king’s favorites and provides ample scope for an actor to show to advantage all that she may have to show.” He and Nicholas exchanged a comprehensive glance at this. Polly looked between them in some bemusement.

  “I do not quite understand. What is your Nursery, Master Killigrew?”

  “A training school,” he replied. “I put on plays for the people in a theatre at Moorfields. It is not the most appreciative audience, but one that provides valuable experience for a novice. You will learn much—not least how to win distracted and possibly hostile playgoers.”

  “I would rather start here,” Polly said, indicating the theatre around her. “Why can I not learn here the skills and practices of which you speak?”

  “Because you would do so at the expense of the experienced actors. They do not care to perform with a tyro, my dear, however talented she may be, or however much she may feel she has nothing to learn.”

  Polly swallowed this unpalatable statement with a grimace. Nick, though he recognized the justice in the snub, and appreciated Killigrew’s need to establish mastery at the outset, felt a stab of sympathy for her discomfiture. “You will have but one chance to win the king’s approval, Polly. It is surely wiser to take that chance when you are properly prepared.”

  “Yes. I understand. I do beg your pardon, Master Killigrew, if I seemed of an overweening conceit.” Those great eyes were raised to his face, a tremulous smile hovered on her lips, and Thomas felt an overpowering remorse for his harshness.

  He smiled warmly. “No, no, my dear. I did not think that. It is quite natural for you to be impatient of delay. But you must trust me, you know.”

  “Oh, but I do!” she averred passionately, her hands clasped to her bosom. “I will do whatever you suggest. I am so grateful—”

  “That will do, Polly,” Nicholas put in hastily, sensing that Killigrew was about to slide into a hypnotized trance under the full force of that melting gaze and the impassioned plea of her penitence.

  Killigrew blinked, startled by this interpolation. Polly turned on Nicholas reproachfully. “I meant it! I was not playing. I am truly regretful if I seemed vain and importunate—except that I do not think I was being.”

  Nick’s lips twitched. “You are a most beguiling jade! You will become accustomed to her tricks, Killigrew. She is possessed of more wiles than a barrel-load of monkeys. You fall for them at your peril, I can promise you.”

  “I begin to see that,” Thomas murmured, stroking his chin. “It clearly behooves me to be on my guard.” He chuckled. “I am an old hand at this game, Mistress Wyat, so have a care before you lock swords with me.”

  “Why, sir, I would not be so impertinent as to hazard such a thing.” Polly sank into a deep obeisance, twitching her skirts to one side, bending her head so that the slender column of her neck was presented, bared as the honeyed ringlets fell forward. It was a posture of perfect submission, yet every line of her body radiated a coquettish impudence.

  Killigrew gave a shout of laughter. “Ah, Mistress Wyat, I foresee that in the stage curtsy you will excel. It is by far the most important pose for a female actor to master, and you appear greatly proficient already, even without the assistance of a corset. You have had an accomplished dancing master, I gather.”

  “Most accomplished,” agreed Polly, rising gracefully. She cast a covert glance at Nicholas, struggling with his mirth at the idea of a dancing master in the Dog tavern. “My governess was monstrous strict in matters of deportment, sir,” she continued blithely. “I shall always be grateful for her care.”

  Nicholas, having no idea how far Polly’s inventiveness would take her if she were allowed free rein, decided that matters were drawing too close to the brink of danger for comfort. The one thing that was abundantly clear was that she was enjoying every wicked minute, and he could almost hear Killigrew’s mental calculations as he tried to fit her into some recognizable social background.

  “It grows late, Thomas,” he said. “And we have taken up enough of your time for one day.” He held out a hand. “I am most grateful.”

  “On the contrary.” Killigrew took the proffered hand. “I should thank you.”

  And no one should thank Polly, Polly thought; but it was only a passing grievance; her elation ran too high for niggardly remonstrance, and if these two wished to congratulate themselves on whatever she had to offer, they had her permission. She would indulge in a little self-congratulation and the heady knowledge of success. She had leaped the void of hopelessness.

  Once outside, Nicholas tucked her arm beneath his, remarking casually, “You are going to be well served, I fear, when required to execute the steps of a coranto. Your fictitious dancing master will appear to have been not so accomplished after all.”

  “Oh, indeed, I trust not, sir,” Polly returned, her lips curved impishly as she looked up at him, her face framed in the fur hood of her cloak. “I had made sure you would be a most accomplished dancer! Do not tell me you are not. I had thought such skill necessary for all courtiers.”

  “So I am to teach you to dance now, is that it? I had never thought to be awarded the title ‘dancing master’ … or ‘monstrous strict governess,’ for that matter,” mused Kincaid. “It has a most undignified ring. But I daresay I will undertake that task, as I have undertaken all the rest.” He gazed at her upturned face, thinking of all that he had taught her, of the wondrous flair she possessed, in one field at least, for taking those lessons and making their execution her own specialty. It was no longer unusual, when it came to love-making, for him to yield the initiative to the creative impulses of this gay and zestful elf.

  Polly’s gaze sparkled under the darkening sky, where the evening star glimmered, and she skipped—a joyous involuntary expression—on her high heels as the winter wind probed with icy fingers. “I am going to be an actor. I am!”

  “It would seem so,” Nick agreed, as calmly as if he were not in a white heat for her, as if his blood were not pounding in his ears, his loins aching, as if the touch of her fingers on his sleeve, the knowledge of the shape of her beside him, had not set up a chain of impassioned responses that seemed as if they must find physical expression if he were not to ignite with the wanting.

  The electric quality of sensual excitement scintillated, and Polly caught her breath, engulfed almost without warning. Her fingers curled around his arm, her body pressed closer to his, her face lifted, lips parted invitingly, eyes glowing, luminous with needy passion.

  “God’s grace!” Nick stopped abruptly in the frosty lane and stood looking down at her. “Never have I felt such a wanting. I am consumed with desire for you.”

  “Now,” she whispered, insistent, through suddenly parched lips, moving against him, heedless of the darkening street, the ice-tipped wind, the roll of carriage wheels behind her.

  Nick dragged himself back from the edge of a madness that would have had him, there and then, yield to the demand she made, to the impulses of his own
body. “Make haste!” he said, curt with the effort necessary to manage both of them until they could attain privacy. “’Tis but a few yards now.” His fingers circled her wrist, his stride lengthened, and Polly tripped on her high heels as she stumbled to match his pace.

  The door of the lodging was bolted against the encroaching night, and he hammered vigorously upon the knocker. Goodman Benson opened it, his face creased with anxiety. “Is summat, amiss, m’lord?”

  “Not in the least, Benson,” returned his lordship. “But ’tis cold as charity, and we’ve need of the fire.” Striding past the landlord, still holding Polly tightly, he made for the stairs. “God be praised!” Sighing with relief, he kicked the parlor door shut behind them and swung Polly into his arms.

  It was a kiss that seemed to devour her, an embrace that would swallow her. She strained against him, desperate to become one with him, her mouth opened beneath his, receiving eagerly the deep penetration of his tongue as the hard shaft of his arousal pressed through damask and velvet against her thigh. His gloved hands pushed beneath her cloak to span her narrow back, holding her against him. With an urgent movement, her mouth still locked with his, she unhooked her cloak, throwing it off with a shrug of her shoulders. Her breasts were crushed against the silken brocade of his coat; with another impatient movement, she pulled the neck of her gown lower so that her bosom was bared. Her head fell back on a sigh of abandonment as he released her mouth and bent instead to capture the hard, thrusting nipples, his hands forming a support against which she leant, bent backward, her hair falling almost to the floor, her lower body still pressed to his.

  A soft moan escaped her as he nibbled and nuzzled her breasts, bringing that strange tugging deep in her belly, that liquid fullness in her loins so that she moved restlessly against him. The hilt of his sword obtruded with bruising pressure, but she barely noticed it as her flesh, heated under the living flame of passion, yearned for union. Her fingers twined in the auburn head glistening against the white skin of her breast; she spoke his name in urgent plea.

  He raised his head to look deep into her eyes, where golden lights flickered in the green-brown depths, gazing up at him in suspended wonder. He laid a hand on her breast, against the jolting of her heart. Then the instant of patience vanished under the spiral of need; with a fine disregard for the delicate material of gown and kirtle, he pulled them from her body, his hands, rough in their vehemence, rending the thin cotton of her smock. Then she was naked, her breath coming in little gasps as she writhed in the hands and beneath the mouth that explored and possessed her, opened her and probed her, bringing the most sweet and piercing pleasure until she was lost in sensate rapture, trembling before him, held in thrall, body and soul, to him who possessed as he worshiped her body with his own.

  Nick thought he would drown in her softness, in the fragrance of her skin. Her body’s unashamed acknowledgment of the pleasure he was bringing her delighted him and aroused him more powerfully than he would ever have believed possible. He could not take his lips from her as he branded every inch of her with his kiss, tasted of the eternal richness of her womanhood, felt her shuddering release again, and yet again.

  With fumbling impatience, he divested himself of his own clothes, maintaining contact with her body even as he did so, a stroking finger, a brush of his lips, the quick dart of his ambrosia-sipping tongue, while she stood as if robbed of the power of movement or of will until he, too, was naked. Then, with a whispering sigh, she dropped to her knees, offering her own gift as she caressed him with her mouth, enclosed him in her small hand, returned the homage he had paid to her.

  When the need for total union became finally invincible, he lowered her to the rug before the fireplace, smoothing a hand over the indentation of her waist, the soft curve of hip, as she lay bathed in the fire glow reflected in the emerald luster of the eyes that consumed her. Then he drew her beneath him, her thighs parting eagerly at the nudge of his knee, the tender, sensitized entrance to her body closing with joy around the throbbing monolith. He pressed deep inside her, lost in his own joy, sinking, plunging into her core, and she rose to meet him with a cry both wanton and wild under the suffusion of excitement that burst upon her, ripped through her, tearing her soul from her body, banishing all sense of self, of place, of purpose. Her hands gripped the corded muscles of his upper arms as she felt his body jarring, shuddering, heard her name on his lips; then they were caught in the wondrous flood of surcease, tumbled, drowned, to be tossed upon the shore of satiation while the tide ebbed.

  Nick looked down at her as she lay clasped in his arms, the golden lashes fanned upon the damask cheeks kissed pink with his loving. Of all the wild cards he could have been dealt in the game he had intended to play, the onslaught of love was a rogue he could never have guessed. And the devil of it was that he could not help but thank the dealer—for all that it bode fair to play havoc with the game.

  Chapter 11

  The piercing wails rending the air as Nicholas sauntered into Thomas Killigrew’s playhouse at Moorfields a week later sounded as anguished as if they were wrenched by the rack. However, experience having taught him that the vigor of Polly’s protests tended to bear little relation to the severity of their cause, he made no effort to hasten his step as he strolled down a narrow passageway in the direction of the tiring room, from whence emanated the pitiable cries.

  Sounds of hammering and laughing voices came from the stage to his right. A lad, clutching a piece of planking taller than himself, scurried past at an imperative bellow from the scene-setters on stage. Nicholas pushed open the door to the tiring room, where he stood, for the moment unnoticed by its three occupants, surveying the scene.

  “Half an inch more, Lizzie.” Thomas Killigrew, perched on the edge of a tiring table, instructed the flushed and flustered tirewoman, who was struggling to tighten the laces of a bone corset behind a furiously complaining Polly.

  “It is impossible!” Polly yelped, gripping the back of a chair until her knuckles whitened. “I cannot breathe. You would suffocate me.”

  “Nonsense,” retorted the impervious Master Killigrew. “A little discomfort is inevitable until you become accustomed to it.”

  “I will never become accustomed!” She squirmed, twisting her head over her shoulder, peering at Lizzie’s busy fingers. “Oh, Nicholas!” Her eye fell on the spectator in the door. “Tell Thomas that he cannot do this. My bones are breaking!” This last emerged on a long-drawn-out wail as Lizzie finally secured the laces.

  “Ah, Nicholas, you are well come, indeed.” Killigrew, pushing himself away from his perch, greeted the new arrival with visible relief. “Perhaps you can better explain the realities to Polly.”

  Nicholas regarded the fulminating figure of his mistress. Only the linen of her smock protected her skin from the bone stays, which prevented any curve of her spine, any slump of her shoulders, and lifted her breasts to swell invitingly over the smock’s, low-cut bodice edged with a teasing scrap of Venetian lace.

  “You must wear it,” he said. “What you wear beneath your gown is more important than anything you may put atop.”

  “As I have been saying,” interpolated Killigrew. “The corset governs your form, controls the way you move. Without it, your gowns will not sit right, and you will not be able to perform any stage movements correctly. It is particularly vital with the curtsy. Surely you would not wish to spoil the effect of what you already do so well?”

  “I will not be able to do anything at all if my ribs are broken and I have no breath,” she said, still mutinous, holding her narrowed waist.

  Nicholas crossed the room, turned her around, assessing the fit with an expert eye informed by intimate knowledge of the shape beneath smock and corset. “It is a little tight, Killigrew,” he pronounced. “It could be loosened somewhat—at least for the first time.” Without waiting for agreement, he released the laces himself, not by much, but sufficiently to afford the sufferer considerable relief in contrast.

&nb
sp; “I find it hard to believe that you have not been obliged toI find it hard to believe that you have not been obliged to wear such a garment before,” observed Killigrew. “If you had a governess with strict notions of deportment.”

  “My aunt died of tight lacing—when she was with child,” Polly embellished shamelessly. “So my mother would not countenance it. Besides, my parents were of a Puritan turn of mind and did not encourage vanity.”

  That disposed of that, reflected Lord Kincaid, with some admiration. However, when they were private, it would perhaps be wise to advise such a consummate inventor of the truth that there were dangers inherent in gilding the lily. For the moment he contented himself with a change of subject.

  “Do you still intend presenting Flora’s Vagaries today sennight, Thomas?”

  “If Polly will be so good as to be accommodating,” replied Thomas, with a caustic edge. “I do not ask for much.”

  “Nay, only that I should be squashed like a preserved quince,” Polly retorted.

  Killigrew raised his eyes heavenward. Nicholas said appeasingly, “Put on the gown, sweetheart. You will then see the point in the corset.”

  Polly could not resist his coaxing smile or the softness of his tone. Having already realized that she was going to be compelled to yield, it seemed niggardly to continue with her waspishness. She offered him a tiny smile, part apology, part complicity, before turning readily to Lizzie, who was shaking out the folds of an embroidered petticoat. The brocaded satin gown that followed it was richer and more voluminous by far than any she had yet worn, and was encumbered by a long train.

  She stood for many minutes surveying her image in the glass, not with vanity but with the air of one looking for information. The first thing she realized was that the corset, while restricting in one way, paradoxically freed her in other ways. She had no need to think of her posture, of whether her décolletage was appropriately displayed, of whether her skirts fell in a graceful sweep. The undergarment ensured all of those things. She stepped over to a low chair, feeling the swish and weight of the train behind her. Sitting on the chair with any grace was not going to be easy, she decided. She must somehow bring the train to heel if it was not to knock over the chair as she swung round; somehow kick her voluminous skirts forward if she was not to tread on and tear them; more important, somehow ensure that she did not miss the chair altogether as it became lost beneath her gown. And all these maneuvers must take place simultaneously.