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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  Thus, in April 1672, I was a most unwilling witness to the “wedding” of my father to Mrs. Ayscough at our family’s church in Southfleet, Kent. I alone seemed to care that Father’s wife still lived, and that this service was a travesty. By law it was bigamy, punishable by death to both parties, though I suppose because Father was still in so much favor with His Majesty, the law did not pertain to him. Yet even the lady’s barrister brother-in-law seemed well content with the match, and the rest of the small party gathered there cheered and wished them happiness as if they were lawfully wed. My father beamed, his round face wreathed with rosy joy, and his new lady blushed as she modestly rested her hands on the rounded belly of their coming child, another reason for this shamming false service. Even the spring sun came from the clouds to shine on them as they stepped from the church and into a carriage gaily decked with ribbons and greenery.

  Hanging back, I could feel no such balmy content, and hurled aside the daffodils I’d been forced to carry. My gloomy dread was justified, too. Soon after this wedding, Father decided that our old house in Great Queen Street was too near to my mother’s family for comfort, and likely it was, considering his illicit new arrangement with a so-called wife. With great fanfare and bustle, we removed to a grander house in Bloomsbury Square overlooking the piazza, a more fashionable address where our neighbors included many peers and other persons of note.

  Other changes to our situation were less agreeable. Lady Sedley (for so I must ever after call her, even though she urged me to call her “Mother”; I refused, for the sake of my true mother’s memory) took full control of our household and my father’s affairs.

  The transformation was immediate, and unpleasant. She released most of our familiar old servants for being lazy and indifferent, and replaced them with others of her choosing. She set Father on a new regimen of economy, where he and I both must account for our every expenditure, which she would tally herself in a book like some mean clerk. She judged him too portly for his health, and insisted he forgo the taverns and eating-houses in favor of eating every dinner and supper at home, where she could supervise each morsel that passed his lips. She took possession of the keys to Father’s cellar, and limited the wine that was served at table. The fine old hours that Father and I had kept, tumbling into our beds after midnight and rising at noon, were declared a heathen habit, and forbidden. If I did lie abed too late to suit her, she’d come in herself, beating a kettle with a spoon to rouse me in the most loathsome manner possible.

  Worst of all, she determined to reform me, and make of me a modest young maid fit for marriage. She forbade me to swear, to sing bawdy songs, to wager at cards. She took away my romances and plays and replaced them with sermons and dry tracts on housekeeping. My old friends were banned from our house, and I could not use the coach or leave the house without her permission. Worst of all, I was no longer allowed to accompany Father to Court, for fear I’d be further polluted by the lascivious company to be found there.

  To my dismay, Father agreed to every one of these odious measures, even applauding them as wise and timely. I could not fathom how, in the name of love, he so willingly agreed to be gelded by this woman, and it saddened me no end to see his bright spirit broken and bent to her yoke.

  I was not so obliging. Her endless petty laws didn’t make me more obedient, but only more cunning in my circumvention. I learned how to bribe her servants, slip through windows, and falsify my accounts. I lied to her so often and with such ease that she could never be sure of what I said. I exhausted her with my recklessness, especially as she came closer to the time she’d bear her bastard. Because she foolishly hoped to win my favor (which I would never grant), she kept her complaints about me from Father, which only made me bolder yet.

  But as resourceful as I’d become, I still was shocked by Father’s actions when at last she was brought to bed in July 1672. The bastard was a boy, the son that every gentleman so longs for as a replica of himself. Father proved this by giving the babe his own name, Charles, at the christening, and just as his so-called wife was addressed as Lady Sedley, so now this brat was granted the right to the family name as well.

  Most appalling of all, Father chose to treat the bastard as his lawful heir, and rewrote his will in the babe’s favor. There was, I suppose, much precedent for this around us, for even the king was said to be considering making the base-born Lord Monmouth his rightful heir because the queen was barren. Yet that was of no comfort to me. Like a jewel in a shop window that has not been sold in a timely manner, my value as some unknown gentleman’s wife was instantly reduced in the market. To be sure, I was still considered a prize heiress, only not quite so grand as before, and the sting of this humiliation added further to my dislike of Lady Sedley. How, really, could it not?

  Thus I squandered the better part of a year of my young life, as good as a prisoner in the home where I’d been born. Also like a prisoner, I dreamed and planned and plotted my eventual escape.

  And when at last my opportunity came, I was ready to seize it as my own, and flee.

  Chapter Six

  ST. JAMES’S PARK, LONDON

  October 1673

  Surely there are few things more tormenting to a young lady of fifteen than to be within sight and hearing of pleasant company, yet still denied to join it.

  So it was for me on a cool afternoon in October. My stepmother, Lady Sedley, was determined to take her young son, Charles, to St. James’s Park to let him toddle across the grass and gawk and coo at the deer. Although of course she would take a nursemaid for the baby, her own lady’s maid, and a footman as attendants (for she never would scrimp on herself), she still requested me to join her. I’d no wish to hear her prattle for the afternoon, but the chance to walk in the park was too tempting to miss.

  We embarked after dinner with enough coverlets, cloths, biscuits, caps, and clouts to support a regiment of infants, but Lady Sedley would fuss as if her son were wrought of spun glass, rather than being a small model of Father, stout and ruddy in his petticoats. We left our coach at the street, and walked into the park and toward the animals, with little Charles babbling and waving in happy anticipation. Not only were there ducks of every variety on the canal, but also fancy goats and deer on the grass, so tame they’d come close from curiosity, then dance nimbly away, a pretty sight indeed.

  Lady Sedley chose a spot for the footman to spread our coverlet, and set her precious bundle on the grass. Immediately he put his unsteady legs to the test, lurching and lumbering against his leading strings as he made his way across the uneven grass toward the nearest deer. To no one’s surprise but his own, the deer was frighted by this small and noisy apparition, and took care to keep its distance. The baby wailed with frustration, Lady Sedley and the nurse rushed to comfort him, and as soon as he’d been petted and soothed into silence, he’d spy another beast nearby, and the whole foolishness began again.

  As can be imagined, I wanted none of this. Instead I sat on the coverlet, my skirts arranged as prettily as I could make them, and pretended not to watch the gentlemen who in turn were ogling me as they strolled the paths. We were not far from the Horseguards’ Parade, and the delicious, robust spectacle of broad shoulders and scarlet coats. As much as I longed to walk among them, and if I were fortunate perhaps engage in amusing flirtation, I knew that if I dared, Lady Sedley would at once send her footman to fetch me back. I felt as if I were bound by my own pair of leading strings, to keep me from venturing too far.

  I sighed with frustration, and made myself look instead toward the facade of Whitehall Palace for less distraction. Yet even that pile of brick and turrets could offer me no peace. One glance at the square, pillared front of the Banqueting House, and memories of all the balls and other entertainments I’d attended there filled my thoughts. Ah, ah, what I’d give to be included in those revels again!

  “Katherine!” Short of breath, Lady Sedley came slowly toward me; she’d yet to regain her former girth, though her babe was more than a y
ear old, and smugly I knew my own slenderness irritated her in comparison. “Katherine, I wish you to go buy me an apple. They are at their peak at this season, you know. There’s a costard monger selling them there, on the edge of the parade.”

  I lolled indolently back on the coverlet, taking my time in obliging her. “You know, my lady, that the man has most likely filched them from the Royal Orchards in the far end of Hyde Park. Do you truly wish me to purchase for you property stolen from His Majesty?”

  “Katherine, please.” Lady Sedley sighed impatiently, one hand pressed to her side. “It is only an apple. I don’t know why you must turn even the most simple request from me into a disagreement.”

  “I wasn’t disagreeing, my lady,” I said, stretching languidly before at last I stood. “I only wished you to realize the risk of your desires, and the consequences you might face.”

  “How kind.” She drew two coins from her purse and handed them to me. “Take care you choose one without any bruises, and pray don’t dawdle.”

  “Yes, my lady,” I said, and sauntered away, tossing the coins lightly in my gloved palm.

  It felt good to stretch those leading strings, if only for a few minutes. The wind had increased since we’d come to the park, with gusts tugging and tossing my petticoats around my legs. As I walked, I held my hand flat on the crown of my hat to keep it from lifting away; the hat was new, black beaver with a red plume and a wide brim that caught the breezes like a sail. I accepted the first apple the old man drew from his basket, and when he winked at me, I winked slyly in return, to make him cackle with delight. But as soon as I paid him and took the apple, a stray gust tore my new hat from my head, and sent it rolling and bouncing like a black cartwheel across the parade.

  With no thought beyond retrieving my hat, I raced after it with the apple clutched in my fingers. My hair began to pull free from its pins and blew across my face, and as I ran I ducked my head to shake the hair away from my eyes. I did not see the horses and riders coming toward me, or realize that I’d run directly into their path, until the first horse reared before me as the rider drew up short. I staggered backward in fear and confusion, and as my heel caught in my petticoat, I tumbled backward and sat ingloriously in the dust.

  The first rider had already dismounted and was hurrying toward me as I struggled to work my heel free from the hem of my petticoat without tearing it.

  “Damned infernal shoe,” I muttered, painfully aware of the spectacle I’d made of myself. “Damned, damned, damned infernal shoe!”

  “Are you hurt?” the gentleman said with concern, bending down beside me. “If I’ve harmed you—”

  “No, no, sir. I am entirely fine,” I said, finally losing patience and ripping the petticoat’s hem to free my heel. “It’s not your fault at all that I caught my wretched shoe—oh, oh!”

  At last I looked up, and realized to my horror that I was sprawled in the dust of the Horseguards’ Parade with His Royal Highness the Duke of York standing over me.

  At once I began to scramble to my feet to make a proper curtsy, but he rested his hand on my arm to still me.

  “Be easy, be easy,” he said gently. “Better to make sure you’re unharmed.”

  He smiled, and I smiled in return. He was as I remembered, his face lean and brown from a life out of doors, his eyes a rare brilliant blue with small lines radiating from them like rays from the sun. His smile was unbalanced, his lip curling upward almost as if sneering, though I knew he wasn’t. Yet I liked the unexpected air it gave to his expression, a spark of danger that to me, who’d never known real danger in my life, was fascinating. He wasn’t anything like the callow boys my own age. He was older than Father, true, but I sensed a restless vitality about him even as he crouched beside me; it had been no mean feat of strength or horsemanship to draw his mount up as swiftly as he had. He wore a dark blue coat with narrow gold braid, yellow breeches, and tall, polished boots with spurs, such as any other gentleman of breeding might wear for riding, and there was nothing to mark him outwardly as a royal prince—except, of course, the way that the others around us were curtsying or bowing with their hats in their hands.

  “It was entirely my fault, Your Royal Highness,” I said, full of contrition. “I lost my hat to the wind, and I was chasing it without heed to where I was going.”

  “It’s never the lady’s fault.” The duke motioned to one of the men who’d been riding with him, who at once went off after my wayward hat. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

  “Only my petticoat,” I confessed, “and that’s easily mended.”

  “Oh, yes, the petticoat.” He looked down at my feet, or more accurately, at my ankles and the good deal of my calves that were still exposed. True, they would have been difficult to overlook, clad in bright emerald with orange embroidery; I always wore fancy stockings in the hopes that they’d distract from the thinness of my legs. Apparently the ruse worked with the duke, for he seemed to study them with open fascination.

  Suddenly I recalled the old scandal of how he’d first noticed Arabella Churchill: an indifferent rider, she’d insisted on going hunting with the Court, and been thrown at the first fence. Knocked senseless with her skirts tossed high, she unwittingly offered the duke a heady glimpse of her thighs and beyond, enough to beguile him into her bed. The story was enough to make me blush now, though not enough to make me adjust my own skirts quite yet.

  “You’re Sedley’s girl, aren’t you?” he asked. “The one who speaks plain?”

  I grinned, pleased at being recalled after so long a time. “I am, Your Highness, though no longer the child you once met.”

  “Not at all,” he agreed, gruff with approval. “What of that apple, eh? Did you bring it to tempt me, like Eve in the Garden?”

  I’d forgotten Lady Sedley’s apple entirely, somehow still in my hand. Now I held it up to him, hoping it hadn’t in truth been stolen from the Royal Orchard.

  “Better that it be Eve’s tempting fruit, Your Highness,” I said, “than Hermes’ discordant apple.”

  He frowned, and to my mortification I realized my clever classical jest had gone beyond him.

  “Temptation’s always better,” he said, taking the sure course.

  “Always, Your Highness,” I said, nodding with eager relief. “That is, so long as one does not immediately succumb.”

  “True enough,” he said. “There’s no temptation without tempting, yes?”

  He laughed heartily as if this leaden remark were the greatest of witticisms, which it most definitely wasn’t. But he was the Duke of York, and I was so flattered he’d taken any notice of me that I would have forgiven him far worse than that.

  The man who’d been sent for my hat appeared with it, bowing as he held it out to me. I thanked him, and scrambled to my feet to accept it. The duke insisted on helping me rise, which made me blush again.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” I said, and held the apple up to him. I hadn’t realized before how much taller he was than I; no wonder I’d long ago likened him to the sun, rising high above me. “For you, in gratitude.”

  “Or temptation.” He smiled as he took the apple. “Do not be so shy, Miss Sedley. We should like to see more of you at Court.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” I said, and at last I curtsied. “I am honored.”

  “As I am tempted. Good day, Miss Sedley.” He smiled one last time, and returned to his horse, held by a servant. He swung up into the saddle with perfect manly grace and ease, and gathered his reins in one hand. With his gaze still intent upon me, he bit into the apple, spraying sweet juice and flecks of skin across his jaw.

  The significance of that juicy bite was not lost upon me.

  “What was that about, Katherine?” Lady Sedley demanded as soon as I returned to her. “What did His Highness say to you?”

  “Nothing of importance, my lady,” I said, purposefully vague. “I stumbled and fell, and His Highness asked after my welfare.”

  “That was gallant of him,
” she said, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “It was,” I said. “I gave him your apple by way of thanks.”

  Her mouth opened with a silent gasp of disappointment, though I think in truth my little adventure had made her forget entirely about the fruit. At least that night at supper, she could speak of nothing else to Father without mentioning that she’d been the one who’d sent me off on her errand.

  “She fell at His Highness’s very feet, Charles,” she said. “There on the Horseguards’ Parade, for all the world to see. She fell at his feet! There can be no other way to describe it.”

  “The other, more accurate way to describe it would be to say I sat down on my ass,” I said, idly pushing my spoon in circles through my soup. “That’s what happened.”

  Fortunately Father laughed, for sometimes not even Lady Sedley could tamp down his old taste for bawdry. “You did, did you? And what did His Highness make of that?”

  Lady Sedley answered before I could. “What the duke made of it was a great deal of conversation.”

  I glanced at her askance. I couldn’t tell if she was scandalized by my accidental encounter with the duke, or impressed by it.

  “If the duke made a great deal of conversation with Katherine,” Father observed dryly, “then it was a great deal more than he has ever made before in his entire life. The man has not a drop of wit in his entire being.”

  “It’s true, Father,” I said. “I was holding an apple, and I made a jest about it being the Apple of Discord from the Judgment of Paris, and His Highness clearly had no notion of what I meant. Instead he could not proceed beyond Eve in the Garden, and that apple, and temptation. It was very dull.”

  Father laughed again, waving his spoon in my direction for emphasis. “No classical allusions for the Duke of York, if you please. It taxes his limited facilities, and pains his head. His Majesty, yes, for he is a wicked clever man, but not the duke. I am in perfect wonder that he’d even venture to jest about Adam and Eve.”