One night when she and Amber were tucked snugly in bed, one great feather-mattress beneath them and another on top, Amber asked casually if she intended to marry his Grace. Frances’s reply amazed her. “There’s nothing else I can do, now,” she said. “If the Duke hadn’t been so kind as to propose I don’t know what would have become of me.”

“What would have become of you! Why, Frances, what nonsense! Every man at Court is mad in love with you and you know it!”

“Maybe they are,” admitted Frances, “but not one of ’em has ever made me an honest proposal. The truth of it is I’ve ruined my good name by allowing his Majesty so many liberties —without ever letting him take that one which might have been to my benefit.”

“Well,” drawled Amber idly, though actually she had a strong curiosity on the subject, “then why didn’t you? No doubt you could ’ve been a duchess without the trouble of marrying —and a mighty rich woman as well.”

“What!” cried Frances. “Be the King’s whore? Oh, no—not I! I’ll leave that to other ladies. It’s bad enough a woman has to lay with her husband—I’d rather die than lay with some man who wasn’t! Lord! It gives me the vapours to think of it!”

Amber smiled in the close darkness, very much amused and not a little surprised. So that was what Frances’s much vaunted virtue amounted to—not morality at all, but repugnance. She was not chaste, but squeamish.

“But don’t you like the King? There’s no finer man at Court—It isn’t only because he’s King that the ladies all fall in love with him.”

“Oh, yes, of course I like him! But I just can’t—I just couldn’t—Oh, I don’t know! Why do men always have to think about things like that? I know I’ve got to get married one day—I’m nineteen now and my mother says I’m a disgrace to the family—But, Lord! to think of getting in bed with a man and letting him—Oh! I know I’ll die! I’ll never be able to bear it!”

Ye gods! thought Amber, completely nonplussed. She must be cracked in the head. But she felt a little sorry for her too, a kind of contemptuous pity. What did the poor creature think life was about, anyway?

Their friendship was soon over. For Frances was jealous as a wife of the King’s love-affairs, and Barbara had not let her remain long in ignorance when rumours began to spread that the King was secretly visiting Lady Radclyffe at Almsbury House. But Amber thought her position assured and was glad enough to dispense with Frances, whom she had always considered to be silly and boring. She had grown very tired of paying her compliments and pretending to be interested in what happened to her. And Charles, who always showed a quick rush of infatuation at the beginning of any new affair, would not let her be neglected now. At his insistence she was invited everywhere and treated with the same surface respect which Castlemaine had once commanded and Stewart still did. Even the ladies were forced to become her sycophants, and before long Amber began to think that nothing was beyond her.

She was walking along the Stone Gallery early one morning when she saw Chancellor Clarendon coming in her direction. The hall-way was chill and damp and cold and all the numerous men and women who hurried along it were wrapped in heavy woollen or velvet cloaks, their arms folded in great fur muffs. From one end to the other the gallery was a mass of black-hooded figures, for the Court was still in mourning for the Dowager Queen of Portugal—Amber was glad that since she must wear black the other ladies could not bloom publicly in bright colours and jewellery.

Clarendon came toward her with his head down, glaring at the floor, preoccupied with his gout and the innumerable problems which a ruined England expected him to solve. He did not see Amber any more than he saw anyone else and would have gone on by but she put herself in his path.

“Good morning, Chancellor.”

He looked up, nodded his head brusquely and then, as she made him a low curtsy, was forced to pause and bow. “Your servant, madame.”

“What a lucky chance this is! Not ten minutes since I heard something of the greatest importance—something you should know about, Chancellor.”

He scowled unconsciously for he was worried about a great many things, not the least of which was his own precarious position. “I should be glad of any information, madame, which would better enable me to serve the King, my master.” But his eyes looked at her disapprovingly and he was plainly eager to be on his way.

But Amber, full of the self-importance of her early and easy triumph at Court, was determined to succeed with him where every other mistress of the King had failed. She wanted to parade him like a trophy, wear him like a jewel no one else had been rich enough to buy—even though she agreed with everyone else that his political days were numbered.

“As it happens, Chancellor, I’m giving a supper at Almsbury House this Friday evening. His Majesty will be there, of course, and all the others—If you and her Ladyship would care to come—”

He bowed stiffly, angry that he had wasted so much valuable time. The gout in his foot stabbed him painfully. “I’m sorry, madame, but I have no leisure for frivolous amusements these days. The country has need of some men of serious purpose. Thank you, and good-day.” He walked off, followed by his two secretaries, both of them loaded down with papers, and left Amber staring open-mouthed after him.

And then she heard a sudden hearty shout of feminine laughter behind her and spun around to face Lady Castlemaine. “God’s eyeballs!” cried Barbara, still laughing. “But that was a sight to see! What did you expect him to do? Make you an assignation?”

Amber was furious that her humiliation should have been seen by Barbara Palmer, of all people, though there had been onlookers enough that the news would be all over the Palace before nightfall. “That formal old fop!” she muttered. “He’ll be lucky if he lasts out the year at Court!”

“Yes,” agreed Barbara., “and so will you. I’ve been watching women like you come and go for seven years now—but I’m still here.”

Amber stared at her insolently. “Still here, but mightily out of request, they say.”

Barbara had fallen so far since the days when she had been violently jealous of her, and she had herself risen so high, that now they were face to face she hated her less than she had thought she did. Now she could afford to be scornful and even condescending.

Barbara lifted her brows. “Out of request? Well, now—I don’t know what the devil you call out of request! At least he thinks well enough of me to have paid off my debts not many days since to the tune of thirty thousand pound.”

“You mean he bribed you, don’t you—to get rid of that brat you were starting?”

Barbara smiled. “Well? Even so—that’s a mighty good price for an abortion, don’t you agree?”

At that moment Frances Stewart passed them, going along the corridor in fluttering blue-silk robes with a black-velvet cloak flung over her shoulders, her feet in gilt sandals and all her bright brown hair caught into a gold filet and streaming loose down her back. She had been sitting for her portrait to Rotier—a portrait commissioned by the King who intended to use her image as Britannia on the new coins. Frances did not pause but nodded coolly to Amber and barely glanced at Castlemaine. She suspected that they were talking about her.

“There,” said Barbara, as Frances went on, followed by three waiting-women and a little blackamoor, “goes the punk who could put all our noses out of joint. A duchy in exchange for a maidenhead. That seems a fair enough bargain to me. I assure you mine didn’t go as high—”

“Nor mine,” said Amber, still watching Frances as she swept off down the hall, taking every eye with her as she went. “Though I doubt if he’d value it so high once he had it.”

“Oh, he might—for the novelty of it.”

“What d’you suppose makes her so stubborn?” asked Amber, curious to hear what Barbara would say.

“Don’t you know?” Laughter and malice glittered in Barbara’s eyes.

“Well—I’ve got at least one mighty good idea—”

At that moment the King with his courtiers and dogs rounded a corner and came suddenly upon them; his deep voice boomed with laughter. “Ods-fish, what’s this! My two handsomest countesses in conversation? Whose reputation are you spoiling now?”

The brief camaraderie was gone; the two women were once more intense rivals, each passionately determined to outdo the other. “We were wishing, your Majesty,” said Amber, “that the war would end so we could get the fashions from Paris again.”

Charles laughed, slipped a casual arm about both their waists, and they walked slowly along the gallery. “If this war is inconveniencing the ladies, then I promise you I’ll negotiate a peace.”

When they came to her Majesty’s apartments Charles glanced at Buckingham, the Duke stepped forward to offer Barbara his arm—and Amber went in with the King. To both women it seemed a more significant triumph than it was. Barbara, however, had her revenge when Stewart appeared—beautiful as ever in spite of the plain black mourning into which she had changed —and was immediately taken off into a corner by the King.


It was not long before Amber found herself pregnant.

She had no enthusiasm for spoiling her figure, even temporarily, but she understood that unless she gave him a child she would have nothing at all to hold him by once the exciting newness was gone from her bed. For though he might lose interest in their mothers, Charles was never indifferent to children he believed his. When she told him, at the end of February, he was sympathetic and tender, apparently pleased—as though he was hearing the happy news for the first time. And Amber thought that her place at Court was now fixed as the stars.