Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Buckingham scowled angrily at him. “Govern your tongue, you young whelp. I will not hear my Lady Shrewsbury maligned —particularly I hate the sound of her name in a mouth so foul as your own!”

The vizard-masks and beaus in the pit had begun to look up at them, for in the small confines of the theatre their voices carried and it sounded like a quarrel. Ladies and gentlemen in nearby boxes craned their necks, smiling a little in anticipation, and some of the actors were paying more attention to Killigrew and the Duke than to their own business.

Feeling all eyes begin to focus upon him, Harry grew bolder. “Your Grace is strangely fastidious concerning a lady who’s turned her tail to most of your acquaintance.”

Buckingham half rose, and then sat down again. “You impertinent knave—I’ll have you soundly beaten for this!”

Killigrew was indignant. “I’ll have your Grace to understand that I’m no mean fellow to be beaten by lackeys! I’m as worthy of your Grace’s sword as the next man!” It was a fine point of honour. And so saying he left the box, summoning his friend to go with him. “Tell his Grace I’ll meet him behind Montagu House in half an hour.”

The young man refused and began hauling at Harry’s sleeve, trying to reason with him. “Don’t be a fool, Harry! His Grace has been troubling no one! You’re drunk—come on, let’s leave.”

“Pox on you, then!” declared Killigrew. “If you’re an arrant coward, I’m not!”

With that he unbuckled his sword, lifted it high and brought it smashing down, case and all, upon the Duke’s head. He turned instantly and began to run as Buckingham sprang to his feet in white-faced fury and started after him. The two men scrambled along, climbing over seats, hitting off hats, stepping on feet. Women began to scream; the actors on the stage were shouting; and above in the balconies ’prentices and bullies and harlots crowded to the railing, stamping and beating their cudgels.

“Kill ’im, your Grace!”

“Whip ’im through the lungs!”

“Slit the bastard’s nose!”

Someone threw an orange and it smacked Killigrew square in the face. An excited woman grabbed at Buckingham’s wig and pulled it off. Killigrew was heading at furious speed for an exit, looking back with a horrified face to see the Duke gaining on him. Now Buckingham pulled out his naked sword, bellowing, “Stop, you coward!”

Killigrew sent men and women sprawling to the floor in his headlong flight and the Duke, following after, tramped across them. He might have escaped but someone stuck out an ankle to trip him. The next moment Buckingham was upon him and gave him a hearty kick in the ribs with his square-toed shoe.

“Get on your feet and fight, you poltroon!” roared the Duke.

“Please, your Grace! It was all in jest!”

Killigrew writhed about, trying to escape the Duke’s feet, which kicked viciously at him again and again, striking him in the stomach and the chest and about the shins. The theatre roared with excitement, urging him to trample out his guts, to slice his throat. Now Buckingham leaned over, wrenched Harry’s sword away and spat into his face.

“Bah! You snivelling coward, you don’t deserve to wear a sword!” He kicked him again and Killigrew coughed, doubling over. “Get on your knees and ask me for your life—or by God I’ll kill you like the yellow dog you are!”

Harry crawled to his knees. “Good your Grace,” he whined obediently, “spare my life.”

“Keep it then,” muttered Buckingham contemptuously. “If you think it’s any use to you!” and he kicked him again for good measure.

Harry got painfully to his feet and started out, limping, one hand pressed against his aching ribs. He was followed by derisive hoots and jeers as the scornful crowd hurled oranges and wooden cudgels, shoes and apple-cores after him. Harry Killigrew was the most disgraced man of the year.

Buckingham watched him go. Then someone handed him his wig and he took it, slapped the dust out and set it back on his head again. With Harry gone their cries of abuse changed to cheers for his Grace, and Buckingham, smiling and bowing politely, made his way back to his seat. He sat down between Rochester and Etherege, sweating and hot, but pleased in his triumph.

“By God, that’s a piece of business I’ve been intending to do for a long while!”

Rochester gave him an affectionate slap on the back. “His Majesty should be grateful enough to forgive you anything. There’s no man who wears a head needed a public beating so bad as Harry.”

LORD CARLTON HAD not been gone a month when Amber was appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber and moved into apartments at Whitehall. The suite consisted of twelve rooms, six on a floor, strung out straight along the river front and adjoining the King’s apartments, to which it had access by means of a narrow passage and staircase opening from an alcove in the drawing-room. Many such trap-stairs and passageways had been constructed during Mrs. Cromwell’s stay there, for her ease in spying upon her servants—the King often found them useful too.

And will you look at me now! thought Amber, as she surveyed her new surroundings. What a long way I’ve come!

Sometimes she wondered in idle amusement what Aunt Sarah and Uncle Matt and all her seven cousins would think if they could see her—titled, rich, with a coach-and-eight, satin and velvet gowns by the score, a collection of emeralds to rival Castlemaine’s pearls, bowed to by lords and earls as she passed along the Palace corridors. This, she knew, was to be truly great. But she thought she knew also what Uncle Matt, at least, would think about it. He would say that she was a harlot and a disgrace to the family. But then, Uncle Matt always had been an old dunderhead.

Amber hoped at first that she was rid of both her husband and her mother-in-law, but it was not long after the signing of the peace treaty that Lucilla returned to London, dragging Gerald in her wake. He paid a formal call upon Amber while she was still at Almsbury House, asked her politely how she did, and after a few minutes took his leave. His encounter with Bruce Carlton had scared him enough; he had no wish to interfere with the King. For he knew by now why Charles had created him an earl and married him to a rich woman. If he was humiliated he saw no solution but pretended nonchalance, no remedy but to employ himself in a course of dissipations. He was content to pursue his own life and leave her alone.

But his mother was not. She came to visit Amber the day after she had moved into Whitehall.

Amber waved her into a chair and went on with what she had been doing—directing some workmen in the hanging of her pictures and mirrors. She knew that Lucilla was watching her with a most critical eye on her figure—for she was now in the eighth month of her pregnancy. But she paid little attention to the woman’s chatter and merely nodded occasionally or made some absent-minded remark.

“Lord,” said Lucilla, “to see how captious the world has grown! Everyone, absolutely everyone, my dear, is under suspicion nowadays, don’t you agree? Gossip, gossip, gossip. One hears it on every hand!”

“Um,” said Amber. “Oh, yes, of course. I think we’d better hang this one here, just beside the window. It needs to catch the light from that side—” She had already had several things sent down from Lime Park and she remembered what she had learned from Radclyffe about the most effective place for each.

“Of course Gerry doesn’t believe a word of it.” Amber paid no attention at all to that and she repeated, louder this time, “Of course Gerry doesn’t believe a word of it!”

“What?” said Amber, glancing around over her shoulder. “A word of what? No—a little to the left. Now, down a bit—There, that’s fine. What were you saying, madame?”

“I said, my dear, that Gerry thinks it’s all a horrid lie, and he says he’ll challenge the rascal who started it if once he can catch him.”

“By all means,” agreed Amber, standing back and squinting one eye to see that the painting was where she wanted it. “A gentleman’s nothing here at Whitehall till he’s had his clap and writ his play and killed his man... . Yes, that’s right. When you’re done with that you can go.”

Convinced by now that she would never get rid of Lucilla until she had heard her out, she went to sit down in a chair and scooped up Monsieur le Chien to lay him across her lap. She had been on her feet for several hours and was tired. She wanted to be let alone. But now her mother-in-law leaned forward with the hot-eyed, excited eagerness of a woman, who had unsavoury gossip to tell.

“You’re rather young, my dear,” said Lucilla, “and perhaps you don’t understand the way of the world so well as a more experienced woman. But to tell you the truth on it, there’s a deal of unpleasant talk regarding your appointment at Court.”

Amber was amused and one corner of her mouth curled slightly. “I didn’t think there’d ever yet been an appointment at Court that didn’t cause a deal of unpleasant talk.”

“But this, of course, is different. They’re saying—Well, I may as well speak frankly. They’re saying that you’re more in his Majesty’s favour than a decent woman should be. They’re saying, madame, that that’s the King’s child you’re carrying!” She watched Amber with hard unforgiving eyes, as though she expected her to blush and falter, protest and weep.

“Well,” said Amber, “since Gerald doesn’t believe it, why concern yourself?”

“Why concern myself? Good God, madame, you shock me! Is that the kind of talk you’re willing to have go on about you? I’m sure no decent woman would have such things said about her!” She was growing breathless. “And I don’t believe that you would either, madame, if you were a decent woman! But I don’t think you are—I think it’s true! I think you were with child by his Majesty and knew it when you married my son! Do you know what you’ve done, madame? You’ve made my good honest boy appear a fool in the eyes of the world—you’ve spoiled the honourable name of the Stanhopes—you’ve—”