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

by Holloway Scott, Susan

  “Temptation,” he said again, with such relish I blushed with pleasure. “You gave me an apple once, after my horse had near trampled you.”

  “As bold as Eve in the Garden, sir,” I said breathlessly. “That was what you said I was.”

  “That apple was among the sweetest I’d ever eaten,” he said, remembering. “Sweet, and full of juice on my tongue. A lady like you would be welcome in my household.”

  Juice on his tongue, hah! That was worthy of Lord Rochester. For a gentleman who claimed to have no gift for wordplay, the duke was doing admirably well.

  But still I shook my head, reaching up to smooth a stray lock of my hair behind my ear. “What Father says, sir, is that the positions are most often given to ladies without fortunes, and from pride he has never wished me among them.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, dismissing my father’s objections with a single word. “To be a member of a royal household is an honor. One of Her Highness’s ladies is leaving us soon, and her place will be open.”

  I knew this already. One of the duchess’s maids of honor, Anne Howard, daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, was leaving to wed Sir Gabriel Silvius, who’d been granted an appointment under the Prince of Orange—one of those rare appointments so desired by John Churchill.

  But to appear too eager was never wise, and instead of leaping at the offer, I only shook my head with sad resignation. “My father will never agree, sir.”

  Gently, almost tenderly, he turned my face up toward his. I could not look away even if I’d wished it, and I wondered if he could feel how my blood quickened at his touch.

  “That is only your father’s wish,” he said, lightly stroking his thumbs over my cheeks. “What is yours?”

  “My wish, sir?” I smiled again and licked my lips. With the slightest motion, I turned my cheek and pressed it against his hand, as if to beg for his caress. “Why, to serve you, sir, as any loyal subject would.”

  “ ‘To serve me.’ ” He chuckled. “You are a clever creature, aren’t you?”

  “I am, sir,” I said, my voice low and trembling with anticipation. “I am.”

  He kissed me then, as I’d known from the first that he would. He was demanding, full of fire, and he pressed me hard against the wall so I might feel exactly how much he desired me. I did not succumb there, of course, though doubtless he would have been happy enough to have unbuttoned his breeches and taken me at once, there in the hall. Such things often happened in the palace. Instead I deftly slipped free as soon as I could with a pretty, breathless show of resistance, enough to make him smile as he let me return to the ball. Seduction was better played in several acts, and we both knew it.

  But that single kiss had excited me mightily. I’d tasted the power of royalty in it, and of a man who was accustomed to having whatever he wanted. Yet I’d power, too, because what he wanted was me, exactly as I was and without any regard for my fortune. Was there any more heady realization than that?

  THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF ORANGE left London the next morning, with the king and the duke sailing with them on the Thames to Erith. The farewells were poignant, with the princess still inconsolable at leaving England and her family. Her departure cast a shadow over the Court, made darker still by concern for her sister the Lady Anne and the deaths from the disease of several of her favorite ladies, including the princess’s much-loved governess, Lady Frances Villiers. Smallpox struck without regard for youth or rank, and a party of doctors hovered at Anne’s bedside. Because Princess Mary had never been afflicted herself, she’d been forbidden a last farewell with her sister, which had made their separation all the more onerous.

  Yet worse lay ahead. As soon as the Lady Anne was declared recovered, she visited the nursery to welcome her new half brother, kissing and holding him as any proud older sister might. Within days, the tiny Duke of Cambridge showed the first ruddy eruptions of the smallpox, and by week’s end, he, too, perished. His Highness grieved deeply, as can be imagined of a father for his son. Yet he also was old enough himself to understand, if not accept, the fragility of infant life, and had traveled the melancholy path of loss too many times before. Likewise he realized that his wife was still very young and in the first flower of her fertility, and likely able to bear him many more sons.

  But his duchess was devastated, her sorrow so deep that she closed herself away in her bedchamber and refused any company beyond her confessor and several other priests. Those closest to her feared for her very wits, while others in the palace feared more practically that she and the duke were somehow cursed, and would no more produce a live child than Queen Catherine had with the king.

  Out of regard for this loss, the Court was more somber than usual as we celebrated the holidays from Christmas through Twelfth Night, with the new year of 1678 in the middle. My birthday, coming as it did four days before Christmas, was always bound close to the holidays for me, but this year I received a gift that was so remarkable, so unexpected, that everything else in a season of feasting and excess paled and faded by comparison.

  “What is it, Katherine?” Father asked, frowning as he set down his knife beside his plate. Supper had grown increasingly important to him as he’d settled more fully into domestic life with Mrs. Sedley, and there were very few acceptable reasons for a servant to interrupt us when we were at table at Bloomsbury Square. A packet from the palace, however, delivered by a royal messenger, was one of them. When that same packet was brought to me, not Father, his indignation at the interruption swiftly changed to concern. “What has happened?”

  I broke the seal and quickly read the sheets within. It didn’t take long; it was easy enough to comprehend, and more than enough to make my heart race with excitement.

  “Please, Katherine, answer your father,” Lady Sedley said. “Else you’ll ruin his supper entirely.”

  “She already has,” Father said. “Katherine, now, if you please.”

  “I have been granted a place in the household of Their Highnesses Duke and Duchess of York,” I said slowly, reading the words once again to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. “I am to be maid of honor to the duchess.”

  “Maid of honor!” exclaimed Father with disbelief. “How can this be? I never applied on your behalf, or asked after the place. How can you have received it?”

  “I do not know, Father,” I said, which was not entirely true, of course. I passed the letter across the table to him. “You may see for yourself.”

  He pursed his lips as he read, his gaze darting across the words.

  “You’re twenty years old, Katherine,” Lady Sedley said. “Isn’t that too advanced to be a maid of honor? Most of them are little lasses of twelve or thirteen.”

  Father sighed. “There are some who are older. The only requirement is that she not be wed, the assumption being that an unmarried lady remains a maid.”

  Lady Sedley ventured only a disgusted snort, a wordless estimation of my maidenly virginity.

  “It’s exactly as you say, Katherine, though it makes little sense to me,” Father said, shaking his head over the paper. “I’d heard there were several places falling open, but they’re usually so coveted that I cannot imagine one being simply given away. Perhaps the appointment to the duchess comes on account of being turned down by the queen.”

  “Faith, but that’s flattering!” I exclaimed. “We didn’t want you to sully Whitehall, but perhaps you’ll do with the next in line. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate not to be asked to empty chamber pots for little Lady Anne.”

  “What else am I to make of it?” Father refolded the letters, mindful of the heavy seal that made them official, and handed them back to me. “If you’ve no explanation, then neither do I.”

  I took the letters from him, closing my hands reverently around them as if they were some lucky talisman. Though Father had always said what he wished most for me was happiness, it pained me still not to be entirely honest about this post. Fearing his certain disapproval, I’d never confessed to him how I
’d met the duke at the queen’s birthday ball, nor that we’d kissed, nor, most of all, how much the duke wished me to trade my father’s protection for his. Though I hadn’t sought this place as a maid of honor, I wasn’t entirely surprised that it had fallen my way, either, not after the interest that His Highness had shown in me.

  “Will you allow me to accept, then?” I asked, holding my breath. “Do you give your leave?”

  “Could I stop you, Katherine?” Father asked, and as his gaze met mine across the table, I could not tell if he’d guessed the truth. “You’re not a child any longer. You’ve made your share of missteps, but still and all, you’ve survived well enough. No husband, yet no bastards, either. Besides, if you’ve decided to cast the rest of your lot with the Yorks, then you’ll do it with my permission or without.”

  “That’s a fine answer from a father to his only daughter,” Lady Sedley said, once again scandalized, but Father ignored her.

  “All I ask, my dear,” he continued, “is that you keep to your own church and far from their priests, and don’t let yourself be persuaded to join them at their masses. Her Highness has suffered much these last months, and the household you’re entering is not a happy place at present. I trust you’ll do what you can to lighten their sorrows, and be as agreeable as your nature will permit.”

  I nodded eagerly, though my thoughts ran toward the duke rather than the duchess, and the exact manner in which I meant to cheer him.

  Father sighed again as he glanced down at the now-cold fish on his plate, and forlornly motioned for the servant to take it away and fetch a fresher dish.

  “It’s an ill wind that blows no one good, Katherine,” he said with doleful resignation. “If anyone is to prosper amidst the misfortunes of the Yorks, it might as well be you.”

  From Father, this was the same as any ordinary blessing. With tears of joy in my eyes, I smiled my thanks with the precious letters still clutched tight in my hands, and began to plan exactly how I’d turn that wind to my own advantage.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON

  January 1678

  I began as a maid of honor to the duchess soon after Twelfth Night. Unlike most others new to the post, who arrive in London for the first time from distant counties, it was not so great a change for me, nor was there much to dazzle or amaze me about my new station. I’d been free about Whitehall Palace for more than half my life, and I was as familiar with its twisting halls and galleries, chambers and closets, as any courtier three times my years. Likewise where most newcomers to Court were faced with the dizzying task of learning scores of new faces, names, and titles, I already knew most every personage who frequented the palace, and those few who I might not know well enough to greet, I did recognize with ease. I knew who among the peers and other grand folk never to counter, and who could be counted on to oblige for a favor, who would laugh at a sly jest and who would take instant and lasting offense.

  I knew the lesser people, too, the servants and others without whom the grandeur of the place and its rituals would never exist. Before I’d brought so much as a single chest to my new lodgings, I’d already arranged which laundress would wash my linen and which footman would reliably provide the wood for my fire.

  I’d also known enough to make sure I wasn’t given lodgings on one of the inner halls, with rooms that had no windows or opened over the stables, and because I wasn’t afraid to mention my acquaintance with His Highness, I received small but pleasing rooms overlooking the river. Unlike the other maids of honor, I was not forced to share a chamber with a group of giggling, coltish girls, either, though I wasn’t certain whether this was to oblige my wishes, or to keep my wicked, experienced self safely away from the true innocents. While I hadn’t shared a bedchamber with anyone since I’d left my governess behind in the nursery, I still laughed aloud at the bedstead I’d been given, a narrow little cot fit for the most chaste of virginal maids. Not that it mattered one way or the next. If my affairs progressed with the swiftness I suspected they would, then my time in these first lodgings would be brief, anyway.

  My duties as maid of honor were hardly taxing. As I had before, I sat in Her Highness’s presence, I made conversation, I followed her about her day and to entertainments in the evenings. I suppose if I’d become a confidante of the duchess, or one of her sweet-faced pets, I might have been given more to do by way of small personal errands and tasks, or even invited to sit up with her in her privy chambers to gossip.

  But whatever impression the duchess had of me was formed long ago, and would not change. She regarded me with distant tolerance, as if I were an unavoidable inconvenience that could not be helped. She never spoke a sharp word to me, even though on many occasions she must have sorely longed to; she was much too well-bred for that. Yet I did wonder if she ever questioned how I’d come to be among her ladies, an ungainly, cawing magpie among her other golden swans.

  Besides, during the winter when I first began to live in the duke’s household, Her Highness was still grieving the loss of her most recent little prince. She was listless and melancholy, and wanted only the comfort that came from her confessor and other long-robed priests. Some of the older ladies of the bedchamber, intimate with her monthly courses, whispered that the duchess was with child again, which would be the best possible remedy for her sorrows.

  But for now, the short winter days were dark and dreary for us ladies attached to Her Highness. If she were unwilling to attend some frolic or performance given by the king, then we could not go, either. Patience had never been my strongest quality, and I rankled under what seemed like captivity. What was the use of the lavish new gowns I’d had made for myself if no one were to see them? Why bother with choosing which jewels to wear or how to have my hair dressed if my day was spent sitting amongst other ladies?

  Again and again I thought of how the duke had told me how weary he’d become of female weeping, and how he wished for my merriment to leaven his humor. So why, then, had he gone to the trouble of bringing me into his household, only to abandon me here and let my merriment turn dusty dry from disuse?

  Surprisingly I learned the answers from my father. Politics increasingly occupied Father, a more productive outlet for his energies than his old familiar debaucheries. He was thirty-seven now, of an age for more serious pursuits, and his friend Lord Dorset (my same nemesis Lord Middlesex, now raised higher by his father’s death and styled the sixth Earl of Dorset and first Earl of Middlesex) was already cutting a prominent figure within the government. Father heeded what Lord Dorset told him as well as what he himself heard in the Commons, and in turn relayed it all to me. I was grateful. The only lady among the duchess’s attendants who cared a whit for more than ribbons and puppies was Mrs. Jennings (newly married to John, but in secret, so she could retain her place as a maid of honor), and as can be imagined, we kept from each other’s paths.

  According to Father, the duke was among those actively seeking a fresh war with France. While the king remained determinedly neutral and disinclined toward waging war, His Highness was devoting every hour and energy to convincing the gentlemen in Parliament to agree with him and vote more funds to enlarge the army.

  “To me that seems a wise thing for His Highness to do,” I said thoughtfully as we walked together through the long gallery of the palace. “To show support for the Prince of Orange and the Dutch surely will show he’s a kindness for Protestants. His daughter the princess must be pleased, too, to have her father embrace her husband’s cause.”

  “That’s entirely what you’re meant to believe,” Father said. He’d met me here after playing several brisk games of tennis with His Majesty on the palace court, and despite the January chill, he’d refused to put his coat on just yet and his white linen shirt was wet with the sweat of his exertions, and a light steam rose from his shoulders in the cool air. “It’s false as can be, however. Even Barillon is disgusted by it. The duke must believe us all empty-headed asses to swallow such a ludic
rous tale.”

  “Then what is the truth?” I asked curiously.

  “Something a great deal more ominous, I fear,” Father said, glancing over his shoulder to make certain we were sufficiently far from others so as not to be overheard. “Clearly His Highness wants to increase the might of the army so that he can employ it not upon the Dutch, but to enforce the desires of his Romish beliefs here at home. Whoever controls the army controls the country, and controls which faith will be practiced, and the wishes of the people be damned. He learned that lesson from Cromwell. We all did.”

  “The king would never permit that!” I said, shocked, and unable to reconcile this power-mad duke with the one who’d kissed me.

  “The king is inattentive where his brother is concerned,” Father said. “It saddens me to say it, for I have always believed His Majesty is a good man at heart. If only he were stronger! But he can be too lenient with the duke, and ignore his brother’s true intentions.”

  “I’ve never heard you speak so strongly against Catholics, Father,” I said slowly, thinking of my long-gone mother still shut away in her convent in Ghent. “Faith, you sound like Lady Sedley, seeing Jesuits in the chimney pots.”

  He stopped before a window, the pale winter sun that shone through the leading casting a pattern of wavering diamonds across his face. “It’s not Catholics I fear, Katherine. Don’t think that for an instant. It’s the duke himself that concerns me, and what he will do with the power he desires. Do the ladies ever speak of these matters in your quarters? Does the duchess discuss her husband’s affairs, as most wives do?”

  I shook my head. “Parliament might not exist for all the heed the other ladies take of it. As for Her Highness, she has always believed that she was sent here on a holy mission to return England to Rome, beginning with the duke, but that is nothing new.”

  “No,” Father said. “But over time, if a man hears the same message whispered in his ear each night, he begins to accept it as his own. It’s no coincidence that the king’s leaning toward France strengthened once he took a French whore to his bed.”