But for a couple of maids, the room was empty when she walked into it and she stood for a moment, completely off her guard, shoulders slumped and head buried in her hands. Then all at once she heard steps behind her and Boynton’s voice cried gayly: “How now, your Grace? An attack of the vapours?”

Amber gave her a quick glance of scorn and disgust and bent to smooth up her stockings and tighten the garters. Boynton flung herself onto a couch with a heavy relieved sigh, spreading her legs and stretching them out before her, turning her neck from side to side to relieve the tension.

Giving Amber an arch sidewise glance, she began to strip off her gloves. “Well—what d’ye think of my Lady Carlton?”

Amber shrugged. “She’s well enough, I suppose.”

Boynton laughed loudly at that. “Well enough, indeed. The men all think she’s the prettiest woman here—if not the nakedest!”

“Oh, shut up!” muttered Amber, and turned her back on her to look into one of the mirrors, her hands pressed flat on the table-top. Did she really look so tired, or was it only that her face had gotten a little shiny? She asked one of the maids to bring her some powder.

Just at that moment Lady Carlton appeared in the doorway. Amber saw her in the mirror, her heart came to a sudden stop and then sped on again, almost suffocating her. She took the box of powder and began to dust her nose.

“May I come in?” asked Corinna.

“By all means, your Ladyship!” cried Boynton, shooting Amber a glance of malicious triumph. “We were just saying that since the Duchess of Richmond’s had the small-pox you’re the greatest beauty to come to Court.”

Corinna laughed softly. “Why, thank you. How kind of you to say that.” Her eyes glanced uncertainly at Amber’s back, as though she wished to speak to her but did not quite know how to begin. Actually, she wanted to make some kind of apology for her clumsiness earlier in the evening. London, she realized, was not America, and here no doubt it was quite correct for a lady of the highest rank to appear all but naked at a private party.

“Your Grace,” she ventured at last, “would it seem rude if I told you how much I admire your gown?”

Amber did not even glance at her, but continued busy with the hare’s-foot. “Not if you meant it,” she said tartly.

Corinna looked at her, both puzzled and hurt by the rudeness, wondering what reply she should or could make to that. Already she had been surprised and baffled to discover the savage under-currents that existed in the glossy polite stream of Palace etiquette.

But Boynton spoke up instantly. “But your own gown, Lady Carlton, is the loveliest one here tonight! How do you get such clothes in America? The cloth-of-silver, and that lace—it’s exquisite!”

“Thank you, madame. My dressmaker is a Frenchwoman and she sends to Paris for the materials. Why, really,” she added with a little laugh, “we aren’t such savages in America. Everyone seems surprised I don’t wear a leather dress and moccasins.”

Amber picked up her fan and gloves, turned around again and looked Corinna straight in the eye. “As for that, madame, you may find it’s us who are the savages!”

With that she swept out of the room, but not before she had heard Boynton say gleefully, “Pray, my lady, you must excuse her. She’s had a mighty bad shock tonight.” All of them were thinking, Amber knew, that she was jealous because King Charles had been paying her Ladyship such marked attention.

“Oh,” murmured Corinna’s sympathetic voice, “I’m sorry—”

Amber found Bruce at the raffling-table—for he never remained long in a ball-room when the cards were being dealt or the dice were running—and so absorbed in the play that he did not see her until she had been standing across from him for several moments. Self-consciously she had put on her most becoming expression, lower lip softly pouting, brows slightly raised to tilt the corners of her eyes.

The instant he looked at her she knew it and glanced over swiftly, a half-smile on her mouth. But his mouth did not answer and his green eyes looked at her seriously for a moment, then lightened and slid down her body with a kind of lazy insolence. Slowly they returned to her face and one eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly. At that instant she felt like the commonest kind of drab, displaying herself for any man to see and appraise and—worst of all—to reject.

Ready to cry with rage and humiliation she turned swiftly and walked away.

When she blundered into Lord Buckhurst and he suggested that they find some private room she went with him, as much to get away where she could not be seen as for anything else. But she stayed for more than two hours and got a morbid kind of satisfaction from thinking that Bruce would probably know what she was about. She had been lucklessly trying for nine years to arouse his jealousy, but still she was not convinced it would never be possible.

They returned to the drawing-room after eleven to find the gambling still going on and a group gathered about the King and his Royal Highness—James was playing a guitar and Charles was singing, in his magnificent bass voice, a rollicking Cavalier song of the Civil War days. The first person she saw, even before they got to the bottom of the stairs, was Almsbury, and he came toward her with a look of worry on his face. But he said nothing and he and Buckhurst exchanged polite bows. His Lordship went off then and left her with the Earl.

“Ye gods, Amber, I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I thought you’d gone—”

All at once Amber found herself ready to burst into tears. “Almsbury! Oh, Almsbury, please take me home! Haven’t I stayed long enough!”

They went outside then and got into the coach and there Amber began to cry with furious abandon, sobbing almost hysterically. It was several moments before she could even speak and then she wailed miserably: “Oh, Almsbury! He didn’t even smile at me! He just looked at me like—like—Oh, God! I wish I was dead!”

Almsbury held her close against him, his mouth pressed to her cheek. “What else could he do, sweetheart? His wife was there!”

“What difference does that make! Why should he be the only man in London to care what his wife thinks! Oh, he hates me, I know he does! And I hate him too!” She blew her nose. “Oh, I wish I did hate him!”


She saw Lord and Lady Carlton the next day riding in the Ring. Amber knew that he disliked intensely the monotonous circling round and round, nodding and smiling to the same people two dozen times and more, but evidently he had come for Corinna’s entertainment, since the ladies always enjoyed that pastime. The following day they sat in adjacent boxes at the Duke’s Theatre, and the day after that they were in the Chapel at Whitehall. It was the first time she had ever seen him in a church. Each time both Lord and Lady Carlton bowed and smiled at her, and his Lordship seemed no better acquainted with her than his wife was.

Amber alternated between fury and despondent misery.

How can he have forgotten me? she frantically asked herself. He acts as if he’s never seen me before. No, he doesn’t, either! No man who’d never seen me before would look the way he does! If his wife had any wit at all she’d begin to suspect he knows me only too well—But she won’t of course! Amber thought petulantly. I swear she’s the greatest dunce in nature!

But despite his seeming indifference she could not believe it possible that he had been able to forget all they had meant to each other, for happiness and sorrow, over the nine years past. He could not have forgotten the things she remembered so well. That first day in Marygreen, those early happy weeks in London, the terrible morning when Rex Morgan had died, the days of the Plague—He could not have forgotten that she had borne him two children. He could not have forgotten the pleasures they had shared, the laughter and quarrels, all the agony and ecstasy of being violently in love. Those were the things that could never fade—nothing could ever erase them. No other woman could ever be to him exactly what she had been.

Oh, he can’t forget! she cried to herself, lonely and despairing. He can’t! He can’t! He’ll come to me as soon as he can, I know he will. He’ll come tonight. But he did not.

Five days after she had seen him at Arlington House, he and Almsbury came to her rooms late one afternoon as she was dressing to go out for supper. She had been thinking of him, both angry and excited at once, wishing passionately that he would come—and yet she was surprised when he and Almsbury walked into the room together.

“Why—your Lordship!”

Both men bowed, sweeping off their hats.

“Madame.”

Then, quickly recovering herself, Amber shooed the maids and other attendants out of the room. But she did not rush toward him as she had thought she would. Now that he was there she merely stood and looked at him, almost painfully self-conscious, and did not know what to do, or what she dared to do. She waited for him.

“I wonder if I might see Susanna?”

“Why—yes—yes, of course.”

She walked to the door and called to someone in the next room. She turned back to face him. “Susanna’s grown like anything. She’s—she’s much bigger than when you left.” She was scarcely aware of what she said. Oh, my darling! she thought wildly. Is that all you’re going to do—after two years? Just stand there—looking as if you scarce know me at all?

But the next moment the door was pushed open and Susanna stood in it, dressed in a grown-up, green-taffeta gown with the tiny skirt tucked up over a pink petticoat, and her golden glossy hair caught back at one side with a pink bow. She looked at her mother first and then, somewhat bewildered, at the two men, wondering what was wanted of her.