Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Her disguises amused both of them and he would turn her about to look at her, laughing while she mimicked the speech and manners of whomever she was supposed to be.

She was convincing in her roles, for though she sometimes passed people she knew on the street none of them ever recognized her. Once a couple of gallants stopped to talk to her and offered her a guinea to step into the nearest tavern with them. Another time she narrowly missed the King himself as he came along the river walking with Buckingham and Arlington. All three gentlemen turned their heads to look after the masked lady who was lifting her skirts to get into a barge, and one of them whistled. It must have been either the Duke or Charles himself—for certainly Arlington would never have whistled at a woman though she were walking down Cheapside stark naked.

Sometimes Bruce brought their son with him and occasionally she brought Susanna. They had many gay suppers together, often calling in a street fiddler or two to play for them while they ate, and the children thought it an exciting adventure. Bruce explained to the little boy, as well as he could, why he must never mention those meetings to Corinna; and Susanna could not betray them by some innocent remark for she never saw anyone who might guess what she was talking about but the King—and Charles was not the man to meddle in his mistress’s love-affairs.

Once, when there were just the three of them, Bruce brought Susanna a picture-book so that she could amuse herself while they were in the bedroom. Afterward, while Amber was dressing, Susanna was admitted and stood by her father’s chair thumbing through the book and asking him one question after another—she was not quite five and curious about everything. Pointing to one picture she asked:

“Why does the devil have horns, Daddy?”

“Because the devil is a cuckold, darling.”

Amber, just stepping into her three petticoats, each one of them starched crisp as tissue-paper, gave him a quick look at that. His eyes slid over to her, amused, and they exchanged smiles, enjoying the private joke. But Susanna persisted.

“What’s a cuckold, Daddy?”

“A cuckold? Why, a cuckold is—Ask your mother, Susanna; she understands those things better than I do.”

Susanna turned to her immediately. “Mother, what’s a—”

Amber bent over to tie her garters. “Hush, you saucy little chatterbox! Where’s your doll?”

About the first of March Amber moved into Ravenspur House, though it was not quite finished. It still had a look of raw newness. The brick was bright-coloured, for the London smoke had not had time to darken and mellow it. The grass in the terraces was sparse; the transplanted limes and sweet chestnuts, the hornbeam and sycamore were only half-grown; the hedges of yew and roses were yet too young to be trained or decoratively clipped. Nevertheless it was a great and impressive house and to know that it belonged to her filled Amber with passionate pride.

She took Bruce through it one day and showed him the bathroom—one of the very few in all London—with its black-marble walls and floors, green-satin hangings, gilt stools and chairs and sunken tub almost large enough to swim in. With a flourish she pointed out that every, accessory in the house was silver, from chamber-pots to candle-snuffers. She told him that the mirrors, of which there were several hundred, each framed in silver, had all been smuggled from Venice. She showed him her fabulous collection of gold and silver plate displayed, as was customary, on several great sideboards about the dining-room.

“What do you think of it?” Her voice almost crowed, her eyes sparkled with triumph. “I’ll warrant you there’s nothing like that in America!”

“No,” he agreed. “There isn’t.”

“And there never will be, either!”

He shrugged, but did not argue about it. After a while, to her surprise, he said: “You’re very rich, aren’t you?”

“Oh, furiously! I can have anything!” She did not add that she could have anything—on credit.

“Do you know what condition your investments are in? Newbold tells me he has a difficult time to make you leave any money at all with him to put out at interest for you. Don’t you think it might be wise to have two or three thousand pound, at least, where you couldn’t touch it?”

She was astonished, and scornful. “Why should I! I can’t trouble myself with those matters. Anyway—there’ll always be more money where this came from, I warrant you.”

“But my dear, you won’t always be young.”

She stared at him, a look of horrified and resentful surprise on her face. For though the passing years filled her with terror and her twenty-sixth birthday was but two weeks away, she had never let herself think that he might know she was growing older. In her own mind she would never be more than sixteen to Bruce Carlton. Now she sat, thoughtful and quiet, till they arrived back at the Palace, and once alone she rushed to a mirror.

She studied herself for several minutes, giving her skin and hair and teeth the most ruthless scrutiny, and finally she convinced herself that she had not yet begun to deteriorate. Her skin was as smooth and creamy, her hair as luxuriant and ripe in colour, her figure as fine as the first day she had seen him in Marygreen. There was, however, a change of which she was only vaguely conscious.

Then her face had been untouched by vivid experiences, now it gave unmistakable evidence of rich and full and violent living. The same eagerness and passion showed in her eyes and seemed, if anything, to have heightened. Whatever the years between had been they had served neither to destroy her confidence nor to moderate her enthusiasm; there was in her something indestructible.

Nan came into the room and found her mistress staring at herself with almost morbid intensity. “Nan!” she cried, the instant the door opened. “Am I beginning to decay?”

Nan looked at her, flabbergasted. “Beginning to decay? You?” She ran over to Amber and bent down to peer at her. “Lord, your Grace, you’ve never been handsomer in your life! You must be running distracted to say a thing like that!”

Amber looked up at her uncertainly, then back into the mirror again. Slowly her fingers reached up to touch her face. Of course I’m not! she thought. He didn’t mean that I was growing old. He didn’t say that. He only said that someday—

Someday—that was what she dreaded. She tossed the mirror down, got to her feet and walked swiftly across the room to begin changing her clothes for supper. But the thought that one day she would grow old, that her beauty—so flawless now—would perish at last, invaded her mind more and more insistently. She pushed it back but still it crept in, an insidious determined foe to her happiness ...

The first party that Amber gave at Ravenspur House cost her almost five thousand pounds. She invited several hundred guests and all of them came, as well as several dozen more who had not been asked, but who got in despite the guards stationed in front.

The food was deliciously prepared and served by a great horde of liveried footmen, all of them young and personable. There was champagne and burgundy in great silver tubs, and in spite of his Majesty’s presence several gentlemen drank too much. Music and shouts and laughter filled the house, reaching into every corner. While some of the guests danced others gathered around the card-tables or knelt in excited circles about a pair of rolling dice.

King Charles and Queen Catherine were there, as well as the town’s reigning courtesans. Jacob Hall and Moll Davis performed and—more privately—some of Madame Bennet’s naked dancing-girls. But the coup of the evening was when a harlot, who for some months had been attracting attention about town and amusing the Court by her credible imitation of Lady Castlemaine, arrived late wearing an exact replica of Barbara’s own gown. Amber had found out, by bribing one of the Lady’s serving-women, what she would wear, and had hired Madame Rouviere to duplicate the gown. Furious and humiliated, Barbara appealed to the King to punish the outrage, or at least send the creature away—but he was as much amused as he had been by the practical joke Nell Gwynne had played upon Moll Davis.

Barbara Palmer, Lord and Lady Carlton, and some few others left rather early, but everyone else stayed on.

At three in the morning breakfast was served, a breakfast as lavish as the supper had been, and at six the last stragglers were engaged in a pillow-fight. Two excitable young gallants fell into dispute, pulled out their swords and might have killed each other in the drawing-room—Charles was gone by then—but Amber put a stop to that and all their friends accompanied them to Marylebone Fields to settle the issue. And finally, exhausted but happy, Amber went upstairs to her gold-and-green-and-black bedroom to sleep.

Everyone seemed agreed there had not been such a successful party in months.

AT FIRST AMBER was perfectly content to meet Bruce in secret. Having come so close to losing him she was grateful for the furtive hours, determined to savour to the full each moment they had together. For now she realized that he never would come back again and she saw the time running out—days, then weeks, then months, and her life seemed to be going with it.

But slowly a resentment began to grow. When he had said it she had believed implicitly that he really meant he would see her no more if Corinna found out. And yet he had broken one promise to his wife—why not others? And never, in the ten years she had known him, had he seemed so genuinely and deeply in love with her. It did not occur to her that she might be responsible for that herself—for she had never made so few demands, or been so unfailingly cheerful, without arguments or complaint. And so gradually she persuaded herself that she was of such great importance to him that no matter what happened he would never give her up. Consequently, she grew more dissatisfied with her lot.