The Countess and the King: A Novel of the Countess of Dorchester and King James II

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  “Go to your father, child,” he said indulgently. “Sedley, that girl is a prize. Clearly you’ve sired a lady-wit after your own model.”

  “I try to oblige, sir,” Father said, winking even as he bowed.

  The king nodded, his gaze absently sliding back to Nelly’s ankles in yellow stockings, close before him on the tall stool, even while he spoke to my father. “An excellent play, Sedley. Her Majesty in particular enjoyed the dances. Most amusing. Have we lost you to the playhouse forever now?”

  Father grimaced dramatically. “Faith, no,” he said. “There’s far too much work in it for me.”

  “A good thing, too,” the king said. “I’d hate to give you over to these wicked rascals. I’ve much more need of your wit at Whitehall than they do.”

  Everyone laughed politely. Somehow that seemed to mark the end of my father and me as entertainment, and as the king returned to his conversation with Nell, the rest of the company returned to their own convivial diversions as well. There is nothing like a group of players and their supporters for finding a reason for celebration in most anything or nothing, and a full house for Father’s play was more than reason enough for noisy, well-meant revelry. The sport continued long after the king had left (and Nell soon followed, in the carriage he’d sent back for her), and shifted to Rose’s Tavern in Russell Street, not far from Drury Lane.

  It was past midnight by the time Father and I stood at the door of the tavern, waiting for our coach to bear us home. Or rather, I sat dozing in an armchair near the door with Father’s coat across me, done in by too much of my syllabub-reward, while Father bandied with Master Long, the Rose’s keeper, who would laugh at most anything after Father had settled the large reckoning for our entire party. Despite the hour, the house was still bustling with company and servants rushing back and forth to the various rooms with ale, beer, and wine as well as dishes for late suppers.

  Once again the front door opened, and Mr. Long excused himself from Father to greet the newcomers, three gentlemen together. As soon as they stepped into the candlelight, Father realized he knew them as well, and hurried to join Mr. Long, bowing deeply. This was not surprising, for sometimes it seemed as if Father knew every man, high and low, in London, and sleepily I began to close my eyes again.

  “Wake, Katherine,” Father said, gently shaking my shoulder. “You must wake, and pay your respects.”

  I grumbled crossly and rolled my head, and reluctantly roused myself only enough to stand and make a fumbling, rumpled curtsy before the gentlemen.

  “Your Highness, my daughter, Katherine,” Father said with more pride than I certainly warranted at that moment. “Katherine, His Royal Highness the Duke of York.”

  The Duke of York was the king’s surviving brother, and since the queen was barren, he was the heir to the throne as well. He also served as the Lord Admiral of the King’s Navy, and was often away from London tending to the fleet and the war with the Dutch, which was why I’d never yet seen him in passing. Even in my fuddled state, I knew I must address him with respect, and swiftly I improved my curtsy with more grace and regard, so as not to shame Father.

  “So this is the lady that’s spurred so much talk this day,” the duke said, his voice soft and full of warm kindness. “Rise, sweetheart, if you please, so I might have a proper look at you by the lights.”

  I stood as I was bid, and turned my face toward the branch of candles overhead. I expected the duke to mirror his brother by being dark and melancholy and exceptionally tall. He was as tall as the king, yes, but there the resemblance came to an end. The Duke of York seemed to me as dazzling as Apollo himself, with skin bronzed and ruddy from the sun and a gold-blond periwig to match, his face shaven clean and his jaw as square and manly as could ever be imagined.

  And lah, his eyes! I’d never seen such eyes before, a blue so brilliant it was as if all the seas he ruled as admiral had been gathered into his gaze. I was so intrigued that I wondered if he were only a fancy and I dreamed still, or perhaps the wine in the syllabub had stolen my wits completely away. What other explanation could there be?

  “So you are the bold lady who trumpeted the truth to my brother?” he said, smiling down at me. “That you believed he was the more agreeable man compared to Buckhurst?”

  “I did, Your Highness,” I said, feeling a good deal more shy now before him than I had earlier at the playhouse. “Father asked me to judge between them, and I did.”

  “But how brave of you to speak your judgment!”

  “It was the truth, Your Highness,” I said. “That made it easy to say.”

  “Nonsense,” he said soundly. “The truth can be the most difficult thing in the world to say. I like brave women. Sedley, why have you not brought this charming dear creature to us before?”

  “She is only ten, Your Highness,” Father said, and I heard an unexpected warning in his voice, even if His Highness did not. “Far too young for the intrigues of Court.”

  “Not at all,” the duke said. “If she knows truth from falsehood, why, then she’s more advanced than most of the pretty fools at Whitehall.” He loomed over me, his voice coaxing. “I’ve two daughters of my own, you know. The Lady Mary and the Lady Anne. You could play with them as often as you pleased if you were at Court. The duchess would watch over you as if you were her own.”

  I caught my breath. To be welcomed into the duke’s household as easily as this, to join the heady world of Court so soon—

  “If you please, Your Highness.” Father came to slip his arm around my shoulder as if to keep me safe, an uncommon gesture for him. “Katherine is my only child, and as a father I must beg to keep her with me a little longer.”

  I knew better than to whine or plead, but my disappointment was sharp. Father had always said he wouldn’t let me go to Court until I was older, but to be able to attach myself to the family of the Duke of York would have been a rare opportunity indeed.

  “You are certain?” the duke asked. “My daughters would be pleased by Katherine’s company.”

  Father shook his head and opened his hands, as if to say the decision could somehow not be helped, though faith, I could not see why.

  The duke sighed, and shrugged. “Ah, well, you are her father, Sedley. It’s your choice. But if in time you have a change of heart—”

  “In time, Your Highness, I will be most honored, and so shall my daughter.” He smiled graciously, and made his familiar elegant bow. “How could we not, with the favor of a lord as esteemed as you are?”

  But in our coach, Father was uncharacteristically silent, staring from the window into the night streets.

  “Did His Highness truly mean to offer me a place in his household?” I asked wistfully.

  “Oh, he meant it,” Father said. “The duke is not a man given to empty words. If he wanted you to live with the young ladies at their palace in Richmond, then it would have been done.”

  Sadly I considered the prize offered by the handsome duke, a prize I’d now perhaps lost forever. “I could have gone, Father. I’m almost ten, old enough to—”

  “No, you’re not, Kattypillar,” he said gently. “Not for that.”

  “But I could—”

  “In time, Katherine,” he said, and I knew there’d be no more arguing. “In time.”

  Chapter Four

  GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON

  March 1671

  It is said that the habits established in youth are the hardest to break as the years pass, and certainly that was the case with me. My father’s indulgence gave me much freedom and little guidance, and like the fledging bird that tries to fly too soon to flutter unformed wings, my first attempts to act beyond my tender years were often not sweet. I told unseemly jests, I swore when I lost at cards, I laughed too loudly, and my ever-sharpening wit was much more suited to one of Father’s libertine friends than a brash, ungainly girl of thirteen.

  Yet precisely at the time in my young life when I needed to be more restrained by my father, he o
ffered even less than before. His stock as a royal favorite rose again, and not long after his play’s performance, he was included along with Lords Buckingham and Buckhurst as a member in the king’s autumn progress, and I was left behind in London. Ostensibly this leisurely royal journey was a chance for the king to view the eastern counties of his kingdom and meet with his noble supporters. In reality, it was only an excuse for the gentlemen to continue their usual amusements, save in different locations. By day they attended the race meetings at Newmarket, they hunted the hare and they hawked, and they coursed at a furious pace with the royal greyhounds (the young Duke of Monmouth was known to keep a particularly well-bred pack) across the wide countryside. By night it was the usual fare: hard drinking, gambling for high stakes, and dallying with low women.

  Father’s absences continued in the following year, when he likewise followed the Court to Dover for a month of revelry with the king’s youngest sister, Henriette. Soon after, he was appointed part of the diplomatic mission led by the Duke of Buckingham that traveled to Paris and Versailles for a lengthy visit at the palace of Louis XIV in honor of the signing of a new treaty between the two countries.

  Because I was not a true member of the Court, I wasn’t included on any of these journeys, which was, as I look back to it, likely just as well. Tales of scandalous behavior made their way to London, including one particular night in Newmarket when Father and Lord Buckhurst had drunk so much that they decided it would be a fine thing to run noisily up and down the town’s streets in a complete state of nature, a sight that, truly, I’d rather not have witnessed.

  Still and all, I was unhappy at being left behind in London with only servants to watch over me, rootless and lonely. I’d become accustomed to the excitement of life with my jovial father, and I missed it almost as much as I missed him. Each time he returned, we fell into the same old ways about London, and because I was older, he also began to take me to balls and other entertainments at the palace. Yet even that wasn’t enough to occupy me entirely. By my thirteenth birthday in December, with the new year of 1671 before me, I’d begun to find friends of my own.

  Now, it might well be asked how a young lady of that age would acquire her own acquaintances in a city so vast as London. Some of my new friends were in positions similar to my own, with parents who were too occupied as courtiers or in following their own pleasures to supervise their children with any diligence. Others came from families whose fortunes had yet to recover from the wars, and thus led a haphazard existence on the edges of fashionable London. Yet others were more dubious still, young persons well beneath me in rank that I’d met while in Father’s company in playhouses, taverns, or at Nell’s grand new house, bought for her by the king.

  Most were older than I, too. On account of my worldly manner and having reached my full height, I was often now taken for an age beyond my true one, sometimes even sixteen, when many girls were wed, the same age that was proclaimed by Lord Rochester and other libertines at Court to be the perfect apogee for a woman’s beauty.

  Alas, no matter my age, I’d not much of that particular quality. Venus thus far had quite ignored me. In my size, I followed more my Rivers blood than my Sedley. I remained as thin and angular as a weedy, underfed apprentice, and though my mantua-maker did strive to correct nature’s deficiencies with buckram and sheep’s wool, my bosom was sadly more bone than breast, and nothing to inspire a gentleman. I was the same height as Father now, he small and round for a man, and I tall and thin for a lady. The sight of us together often occasioned foolish jests about how opposite we were. No wonder, then, that I found it endlessly flattering to be mistaken for older, and saw little reason to correct the error.

  But however I met my new companions, they were as pleased with me as I was with them, perhaps even more so. Why shouldn’t they be? I was amusing and bold, yes, but more important, I’d a large, richly appointed house at my disposal and it contained not a hint of a disapproving elder.

  All of which is a roundabout explanation of how, on one of the first spring days of May, I came to be walking in St. James’s Park with one of these very companions. Jane Holcomb was one of my dearest friends at the time, a distant niece of the Earl of Abercorn. She was the most beautiful of my acquaintances as well, tall and elegantly formed, with wide blue eyes and a lovely smile that she often employed to hide her lack of any real cleverness. If she had no wit to the point of silliness, then I had no beauty, so between us we did well enough.

  The sun was pleasingly warm, filtering through the new green leaves that had just begun to appear in the top branches of the trees. The canal shone bright as new-polished silver, and the light breezes were as gentle as a caress. People of every rank filled the park, parading across the paths and lawns to enjoy both the day and each other, and Jane and I were no different. Happy to be finally rid of our winter cloaks, we wore bright new gowns and broad-brimmed lace hats as if it were summer already, and I took care to bid my watchful footman (he accompanied me at Father’s insistence, not my own) to keep a respectful distance, so as not to distract from our fashionable appearance.

  “Those two ensigns are watching us,” Jane whispered, raising her ribbon-trimmed muff to shield her words. “There, those two.”

  “What do we care if they watch us?” I made a sweeping show of scattering a handful of bread crumbs into the canal for the ducks, who cackled and quacked in a furious frenzy. “That is why we’re here, isn’t it?”

  Jane frowned, perplexed. “I thought we’d come to feed the ducks.”

  “To feed the ducks,” I explained patiently, “and to be seen by gentlemen. That’s what we ladies do, Janie.”

  “Very well, Katherine,” she said, “because they are coming here to us.”

  They were an excellent pair of young gentlemen, perhaps eighteen at most, with glossy polished boots, swords at their waists, and curled plumes in their gold-laced hats. There is something so delightsome about a gentleman-soldier, from the bright silken sash of his regiment to the whiff of valor that make them irresistible to ladies, or at any rate to ladies as young and as impressionable as Jane and I were. The taller fellow made us a neat bow by way of catching our interest, and I caught my breath, feigning that I’d only just noticed him. He was the more handsome of the pair, with a fine sparkish air, and I was determined that he should be mine.

  “Forgive me, ladies,” he said most gallantly with his friend grinning beside him, “but I am new arrived to the city and in need of some advice.”

  I smiled archly, striving to attract him by subtlety, while Jane giggled beside me.

  “I am sure ladies such as yourselves will know the answer,” he continued, appealing entirely to fair Jane while seeming not to see me, though we stood side by side. “Can you tell me if the water in the canal is wet?”

  Jane only giggled all the more at this idle foolishness, which was likely what the ensign desired.

  “No, sir, it is not,” I said, determined to be noticed, too. “That water is not wet. That is His Majesty’s own canal, and by royal decree the water within burns as hot as the devil’s own flames.”

  Startled by my reply, he looked at me for the first time, and I blushed.

  “ ’Od’s blood!” he exclaimed, and flashed a quick glance to his friend. “Is that so, mistress?”

  “It is, sir,” I said, grinning wickedly. “Like the most licking flames of hell around the fat ass of a sinner.”

  “Indeed!” he said, astonished, and laughed.

  I laughed with him, to show I knew my speech was daring nonsense, and offered him my most languishing look (well practiced in my looking glass).

  After that, it seemed most natural to invite both the ensigns to join Jane and me in our coach, and repair back to Queen Street for further conversation and light refreshment. We four sat in the back parlor with the doors to the garden thrown open and ate buttered bread and jam and shared two bottles of Father’s French sillery that I ordered brought up from the cellar. With our humor mu
ch and merrily improved, Thomas (for so my soldier was called) proposed a game of ombre, and I quickly brought out the cards. Our stakes were just as swiftly agreed, with kisses for forfeits. I was a good hand at cards, having been well trained by Father’s friends, but it took all my considerable skill to play worse than Jane so I might be the first to lose.

  “Come, Mistress Katherine,” Thomas said with mock severity, turning in his chair to face me and patting his thigh as if to summon me. “Time to cover your losses.”

  My heart racing with eager anticipation, I went to stand between his legs. It would be most pleasing to be kissed by him, for he was very comely, and the sulky disappointment on Jane’s face (for all that she was my friend) was extra spice.

  “Mind you, I’ll cover my losses and no more,” I teased him as I bent to offer my lips, “for the only rogue who’ll cover me will be the one I wed.”

  “Such empty oaths are made to break,” he said, and before I realized it he’d seized me around the waist and hauled me across his thighs. I’d hoped he would do this, and after a slight show of maidenly resistance, I gave myself over to his attentions. From the corner of my eye I could see that Jane, too, had succumbed to her gallant, the two kissing with furious passion.

  True, I was only thirteen, and not half so worldly as I believed, but having been a witness for so long to the behavior of my father and his friends, I was now eager for my own share of experience. Already I’d learned that while men often were first attracted to prettier faces than mine, there were ways to make them forget my deficiencies. I opened my lips as a signal to Thomas that I’d welcome a deeper kiss, and he happily obliged with an ardor I matched. Even through my petticoats, I relished the feel of his well-muscled thighs beneath me and his arm around my waist, holding me there with perfect, delicious ease. I was as eager to pay back my debt as he was in claiming it, and when he dared to creep his hand beneath my kerchief to the negligible prize of my breast, I only sighed with delight.