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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  “I thought you’d agree,” Father said, smiling at my response. He settled his hat lower over his brow to shade his eyes against the slanting afternoon sun. “And what better place to tell you all the latest news from Euston Hall? Surely there can be no greater foolishness in all of the Maker’s Creation than what was contrived for His Majesty and the French mademoiselle.”

  I gasped and caught at his sleeve. “Oh, you must tell me at once!”

  Father had returned only that morning, riding into town with the king himself. If anyone knew what had occurred at Euston Hall—the country seat of Lord Arlington, situated near the racecourses at Newmarket, and offered to His Majesty as a place of assignation—then it would be Father, and in the most luscious detail, too. “Tell me everything.”

  He laughed at my eagerness. “We’ve all afternoon, Kattypillar,” he said easily, lolling back against the leather cushions. “I’m not about to spill everything before we’ve even reached the river. To be honest, I’d rather hear of how you passed your days than how many false tears a French harlot wept.”

  “Mademoiselle always weeps.” Louise de Keroualle was already renowned for her tears, so much so that Nell mockingly called her “The Weeping Willow.” “That’s nothing new. You’ll have to tell me more than that.”

  “Oh, I will,” he promised. “But you must go first.”

  I sighed wearily, certain my idle little amusements could scarce compare with a royal deflowering. But dutifully I began, telling how this friend’s bitch had a new litter of pups and that one had lost twenty guineas in a wager over the number of China oranges piled in a particular basket, and I was chattering still when at last the coach stopped not far from the Somerset Steps. It had been a long time since I’d had Father’s complete attention, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. He could be an excellent listener when he chose, offering the exact degree of exclamations, agreements, and questions to make a conversation sail along, which was doubtless one of the reasons he’d had such success at Court.

  With my hand in the crook of his arm, we made the short, pleasing walk to the river, past the pale stone facade of Somerset House (once the dower house to the king’s mother, Queen Henriette Marie), through the formal gardens, and down the steps to the water. The Folly was tied close to the steps, there at the bend in the river.

  Given its very nature, the Folly was an odd sort of dining-house, low and flat and built of wood that had been gaudily painted. The windows were wide and without glass, but with shutters that were lashed open to catch the breezes from the river. Every table had an excellent view of the water, with a small stage for performers in the center. On this day, there were four fiddlers playing spritely jigs and other airs that blended agreeably with the voices and laughter of the patrons.

  We were not the only ones who’d decided to take dinner here today, and the house was crowded, for all that the Folly was known as a costly place. The keeper recognized Father at once, however, and we were swiftly shown to a private table near a window. Father bespoke us wine and, to start, a dish of the eels for which the Folly was known.

  I drew my chair closer to the window, leaning my arms on the sill to better see the water. All variety of craft plied the river before us, from low skiffs with a single waterman at the oars to the rich barges and yachts of noblemen, with gaily colored pennants flying from their masts.

  “Look there, Father, at that boat,” I exclaimed, pointing. “That man has a huge white dog sitting with him, proud in the stern as if he were the lord mayor himself.”

  “Katherine.” To my surprise, Father reached across the table to take my hand from the sill, covering it with his own. “Know that I love you, Daughter. Whatever else, that will always be true.”

  I stared at him, pleased but wary, for pronouncements like that were not his usual custom.

  “What manner of palaver is that, Father?” I asked with a small nervous laugh. “Faith, you sound as deadly solemn as one of Mr. Dryden’s wooden heroes.”

  “Pray not that!” he exclaimed. Yet still he regarded me with great fondness, his expression so soft and doting I felt tears sting my eyes. “It is the truth, Katherine, that is all, and I fear I’ve not spoken it enough to you, as a father should to his only daughter.”

  “You do,” I said, my words failing to explain what I felt for him at that moment. “You—you do.”

  “Then I am glad,” he said softly, “and honored. Ahh, here are the eels.”

  The serving maid set the dish on the table and we fell upon them with hearty delight; not that we truly were so ravenous, but because the rare tenderness of that last moment had been almost too much for either of us to bear.

  But we’d scarcely begun before the keeper came to our table. He bowed before Father, and whispered something to him that I was clearly not meant to hear. Immediately Father rose, crumpling his napkin at his place on the table.

  “What has happened?” I asked with concern. “What is wrong?”

  “Nothing at all,” he said, and smiled in a fashion that did little to reassure me. “I’ll be away only a short while.”

  I watched him hurry off with the keeper, my pleasure in the dish of eels gone. I wondered if Father had received some grievous news from the palace, or had been summoned by a royal messenger, as had happened before. That would explain his haste; no one dawdled with a request from the king. Sipping my wine, I disconsolately stared out at the river, and as I sat alone for a quarter hour or so, I hoped that I’d not be abandoned entirely.

  “Katherine,” Father called with sweet eagerness, and I turned swiftly, smiling with relief.

  And in that same instant, my smile stopped cold, and so did my breath.

  Father was not alone. At his side was a woman, his hand linked as familiarly to hers as it had been with mine such a short time before. This lady was small of stature, yet agreeably round in her figure, and near to the same age as my father. She was dressed in a blue moiré jacket and petticoat trimmed in Flemish lace, a quiet, modest taste that was several years behind the fashion. She’d light brown hair and blue eyes and a small pink mouth, and under other circumstances, I would have declared her a comely, respectable lady. She did in fact appear as a barrister’s sister from the City, not another lighthearted actress. But because my father held her hand, I could think of nothing more beyond that and what that little sign of affection would mean to me.

  “Katherine, this is Mrs. Ayscough,” he said. “You know I’ve spoken of her to you before. Ann, this is my daughter, Katherine.”

  He needn’t have bothered with his introductions. I’d already guessed who she was.

  She smiled warmly and held her hand out to me. “Katherine, I am so happy to meet you at last,” she said. “Your father speaks of you constantly, you know. But I vow, sir, you’ve not done her justice. Your Katherine is far more pretty than I’d been led to expect.”

  “Are you disappointed, madam?” I said, my bitterness welling over. “Were you expecting a loathsome mongrel bitch, fit only to be kicked? Is that what you wished for me?”

  “Katherine!” Father said sharply. “Be agreeable, I beg you, and mind what you say.”

  “Why should I, Father, when agreeability seems to have been entirely forgotten by you?” If I’d been carved from wood, I could not have felt more stiff and awkward as I did then; though if I’d truly been fashioned of wood, then at least I would not have suffered the pain that I did. “Why did you bring her here? Wasn’t this to be a day for us together?”

  “And would I have been able to make you attend me if I’d told you my purpose?” His face was flushed with anger and embarrassment, as, no doubt, was mine. “This lady has become most dear to me, Katherine, and I’ll thank you to regard her with the respect she deserves.”

  “Respect, Father?” I rose, not from regard, but because I was preparing to escape this miserable conversation. “Why should I show her any more respect than I have for the rest of your whores?”

  Father r
aised his hand—the hand not holding Mrs. Ayscough’s— and for one awful instant I feared he would strike me. He meant to, I knew; I could see it in his eyes, though he’d never once struck me before. But at the last, it was the table that bore his anger, as he thumped his fist hard onto its edge before me.

  “You will apologize, Daughter,” he demanded, and I realized that it was the first time that he’d not called me “Daughter” as an endearment. “You will apologize at once for—”

  “That’s not necessary, Charles,” Mrs. Ayscough said with a gentleness that served only to vex me all the more. “The girl’s distraught, that is all. She did not intend it.”

  “But I did,” I said, adding a quick shake of my head to prove my seriousness. “Do you not know my father is already wed, madam? Has he told you that? My mother is not dead, and she is still my father’s wife. Thus you are his whore.”

  With a wordless growl, Father lunged toward me, sending a chair between us crashing to the floor, and I scuttled backward from his path. The others around us craned their necks to watch, and I could see the keeper hurrying toward us with a pair of large menservants.

  “No, Charles, please don’t!” Mrs. Ayscough pleaded, seizing my father by the arm to hold him back. “She only needs time to accept it!”

  But I’d no wish to accept anything, not from either of them. My sight blurred with tears, I bowed my head and ran through the room, stumbling my way around the other tables and chairs and astonished diners.

  Mrs. Ayscough must have made a move to follow after me, though all I heard was Father’s reply.

  “Leave her, Ann,” he thundered. “As she is now, she can go straight to the devil for all I care.”

  Sobbing, I pushed my way past the keeper’s wife and the servant holding the door. On trembling legs, I staggered up the steps to the small landing overlooking the river. With my hands clutching tight to the wooden rail, I retched up everything that was in my belly and perhaps beyond. Finally exhausted, I sank to my knees and buried my face in my hands in abject misery.

  Straight to the devil. First I’d lost my mother’s love to a church I didn’t understand. Now my father, too, had forsaken me. For five golden years, I’d been Father’s favorite, and now—now I wasn’t.

  I was nothing.

  FOR THE NEXT THREE DAYS, I stayed with my friend Mary Holcomb, crowded into the lodgings she shared over a tavern with her widowed mother. I could not bring myself to see Father at home, or risk finding him again with Mrs. Ayscough. He must have felt the same regarding me, for though I sent a message regarding my whereabouts to my maidservant so the household would not worry or search for me, I received nary a word from Father in return. If I’d the tiniest hope that he’d come seek me out to apologize, which I did not, then with his silence that hope was dashed. Clearly he’d put his new whore before me, and the sooner I hardened myself to the wretched truth, then the less his scorn could hurt me. That was what I told myself, over and over again, but try as I did to believe it, I could not. The image of him so tenderly shepherding Mrs. Ayscough would not leave me, nor would the wound the sight of it had caused me.

  Finally I crept home, carefully choosing to return in the early afternoon when Father would surely be out to dine. Yet I’d scarcely placed one weary foot on the stair when I heard him call my name from his library.

  “Katherine?” he called again, and before I could run up the stairs and escape, he’d come into the hall.

  He wore a quilted cap in place of his wig and a quilted scarlet silk dressing gown over his shirt and breeches, as he often did whilst working among his papers.

  “Katherine,” he said. “I would like to speak with you in my chamber.”

  Though his expression was stern, not angry (and the best I could expect), I hesitated still, my hand on the stair’s rail.

  He held my gaze evenly. “If you please, Katherine. I will not keep you long.”

  He said nothing of how I’d been away, nothing of how I wore the same clothes that I’d worn to the Folly, nothing of concern or that he’d missed me. But he likewise said nothing of Mrs. Ayscough, and with that as a slender comfort, I slowly stepped from the stairs and walked before him into his library.

  I had always liked this room, reflecting as it did my father’s tastes. The shelves overflowing with books, the leather armchair drawn close before the fire, the desk with the draft of another play stacked to one side, the carved bust of Aristotle between the windows and the bronze clock fashioned like a crouching panther on the chimneypiece—all of these belongings were so of a piece with Father that I felt my throat tighten.

  “You will sit?” he asked, motioning toward the chair across from his.

  I shook my head. I still wore my cloak, my hands folded tightly within.

  “Very well, Katherine.” He dropped heavily into the armchair. “If that is how you wish it, then so it shall be. But mark that it’s by your desire, not mine.”

  He sighed, tapping his thumb on the carved arm of the chair as the panther clock ticked and the fire in the hearth below crackled and popped. This was not right; we seldom were lost for words between us.

  At last he began. “I will not insist that you apologize to Mrs. Ayscough, because she, in her mercy, has forgiven you. God knows that was not my decision.”

  “No,” I said. “I should guess it wasn’t.”

  With his chin lowered, he looked up at me from beneath his dark brows, an unspoken warning that I’d do well to heed. “She is a part of my life now, Katherine. I love her as I have never loved another woman, and she has honored and blessed me by returning that love.”

  “Did you never love Mama?” I asked sadly. “Not even when you wed her?”

  He winced. “We were too young to know what true love was, pet. I have explained that to you before. Your mother and I were pushed together by those who wished to see us settled, and in our innocence we obliged and did as we were bid. What affection there was between us was not binding, nor long-lasting.”

  “You are still wed to her,” I insisted. “She is your wife.”

  “My wife by law, but not by heart,” he said firmly. “The ties that men contrive can never be so strong as those wrought by love alone.”

  “Then what of me, Father?” My voice rose plaintively. “If you would so easily disavow my mother, then will you cast me aside, too, as a careless by-blow, a bastard of no consequence?”

  “You are my daughter, Katherine,” he said firmly. “You may try me and test me, but before God, I will always love you.”

  I looked down, more troubled than I could express. He had likewise once sworn before God to cherish my mother, to no lasting purpose. I’d long since guessed that he’d had more of a hand in that poor lady’s departure from our lives than he’d admitted to me, and here, I thought unhappily, was the proof.

  “What I wish beyond all things is for you to find a gentleman who will love you as you deserve,” he continued, unaware of my thoughts. “I’d hoped you would have found him by now, to begin your own life properly.”

  “Why should I wish a husband for that?” I protested, and I didn’t, especially not one chosen from the wretched creatures Father had urged upon me. “Once you promised me the freedom to love as I chose—”

  “And I still do,” he said, as if he were making perfect sense instead of twisting everything around to suit his own desires. “I wish you to love the man you wed.”

  “As his wife,” I said, thinking of the ill treatment afforded most every wife around me, including his own of my mother. “Where’s the freedom in that?”

  “But you see, Katherine, that’s exactly where I believe Mrs. Ayscough will be of benefit to you.” He leaned forward with an unsettling eagerness. “She’s a good woman, a fine woman, if you’ll but give her a chance. She can guide you in a way I can’t, with a woman’s wisdom, to learn your proper place—”

  “Faith, Father, that is better than any play,” I said bitterly. “That you should have your whore counsel
your daughter in how to be a proper wife!”

  I saw him struggle with his temper, yet finally rein it in, another way he’d changed. “Do not be so flippant with me, Katherine. It does not become you.”

  “Oh, yes, and who taught me to be so?” I cried, overwhelmed by the unfairness of what he said. “Who once thought I was the most amusing daughter possible? Who would praise me for telling the truth?”

  “Katherine, please—”

  “No, Father, please listen to me,” I said, my voice breaking like my heart. “Or have I become so inconvenient that I’ll be sent away to some distant convent, too, to leave you free to live exactly as you please?”

  Abruptly he rose from his chair, and I felt fiercely satisfied, knowing I’d goaded him so far. But instead of confronting me, he turned away and went to stand before the window with his back to me. The only sign of displeasure he allowed me to see were his hands, furiously clasping and unclasping behind his back. The carnelian stone of his ring caught the light from the window as he did, red as the blood we shared.

  “This is decided, Katherine,” he said, curt and oddly distant. “Nothing you say now will change me. You can choose to play the harpy, and make matters difficult for all of us, or you can see reason and agree that this is best for you as well, and welcome Mrs. Ayscough as she deserves.”

  I could think of a thousand other things that Mrs. Ayscough deserved. But Father was right. I’d no recourse. He was by law my master until I gave myself over to a husband, and he could control every detail of my life and my fortune for me. My only choice now was as he said, to be a shrill harpy or an obedient lamb.

  I chose the harpy.

  But exactly as Father had warned, my refusal to embrace Mrs. Ayscough as a false mother did not change his mind. There are few things in the world more fearsome, nor more stubborn, than a libertine who has reformed for the sake of a virtuous woman, and that was exactly what Father had become.