Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

He spoke swiftly, giving her no chance to interrupt, and obviously was in a hurry to get out before she started to cry. But he had not taken three steps when she ran to throw herself before him.

“Bruce! Aren’t you even going to kiss me?’

He hesitated for only an instant and then his arms went about her with a rough eagerness which suggested some reluctance within himself to leave her. Amber clung to him, her fingers clutching his arms as though she could hold him there by sheer force of superior strength, her mouth avidly against his, and already her face was wet with tears.

“Oh, Bruce! Don’t go! Please don’t go—please don’t leave me—! Please—please don’t leave me—”

But at last his fingers took hold of her wrists and slowly he forced her away. “Amber, darling—” His voice had a sound of pleading urgency. “I’ll come back one day—I’ll see you again—”

She gave a sudden cry, like a lonely desperate animal, and then she began to struggle with him, reaching out to grab hold of his arms, terrified. All at once he seized both her wrists, his mouth caught at hers again for an instant, and before she could quite realize what had happened he was gone through the room and out the door and it slammed behind him.

Stunned, she stood for a moment staring at the closed door. And then she ran to it, her hand going out to grab the knob.

“Bruce!”

But she did not quite reach it. Instead she stopped, brought up short by some hopelessness inside herself, and though for a moment her eyes continued to watch the door, at last she slumped slowly to her knees and her head dropped into her hands.

THE DUKE OF YORK leaned gloomily against the fireplace. His hands were in the pockets of his breeches, his good-looking face was sulky, and he stared down at the floor. Across the room Charles was bent over a table, peering intently into a pewter pan set on an oil-lamp, in which boiled and bubbled a hundred different herbs. Now, carefully, he took up a spoon and measured in three heaping spoonfuls of dried ground angelica, stirring as he did so.

The brothers were in his Majesty’s laboratory, surrounded on all sides by crucibles and alembics, retorts and matrasses. There were glass and earthenware jars full of powders, pastes, many-coloured liquids, oil of prima materia. Egg-shaped vessels of every size and substance lined the shelves. Piles of books bound in old leather, stamped with gold, stood on the floor or on the tables. Chemistry—which had not yet secured its divorce from the medieval witch-woman, alchemy—was one of the King’s chief interests. Even when he had had to beg a meal he had not been able to resist paying money out of his meagre store for almost every new nostrum recommended him by a passing quack.

“How the devil,” said Charles now, stirring the mixture but not looking around, “did you let her get you into such a mess?”

York gave a heavy sigh. “I wish I knew. She isn’t even pretty. She’s as ugly as an old bawd. Eyes that pop and a shape like this—” His hands described an ungainly female form.

Charles smiled. “Perhaps that’s what fooled you. It’s my observation a pretty woman seldom thinks it’s necessary to be clever. Anne Hyde is clever—don’t you agree?” He seemed amused.

James shifted his weight, scowling. “I don’t know what fooled me. I must have been out of my mind. Signing that damned marriage-contract!”

“And in your own blood. A picturesque touch, James, that one. Well—you’ve signed it and you’ve had her and she’s pregnant. Now what?”

“Now nothing. I hope I never see her again.”

“A contract of marriage is as binding as a ceremony, James, you know that. Whether you like it or not, you’re married to her. And that child she carries is yours and will bear your name.”

James heaved himself away from the fireplace, walked across the room and glanced at the concoction his brother had stirred up. “Ugh!” said the Duke. “How it stinks!”

“It does, I agree,” admitted Charles. “But the fellow who sold me the recipe says it’s the most sovereign thing for an ague ever discovered—and London and the ague, you know, are synonymous. This winter I don’t doubt you’ll be glad enough to borrow a dose of it from me.”

Restless, discontented, angry, James turned and walked away. After a moment he once more took up the subject of his marriage. “I’m not so sure,” he said slowly, “you’re right about that, sir. The brat may not be mine after all.”

“Now what’ve you been hearing?”

Suddenly James came back to him; his face was serious and growing excited. “Berkeley came to me two days ago and told me that Anne has lain with him. Killigrew and Jermyn have sworn the same thing since.”

For a long moment Charles looked at his brother, searching his face. “And you believed them?”

“Of course I believed them!” declared James hotly. “They’re my nearest friends! Why wouldn’t I believe them?”

“Berkeley and Jermyn and Harry Killigrew. The three greatest liars in England. And why do you suppose they told you that? Because they knew it was what you wanted to hear. It is, isn’t it?” Charles’s dark eyes narrowed slightly, his face shrewd. He understood his brother perfectly, much better in fact than James understood himself.

James did not answer him for a long moment but at last he said softly, half-ashamed, “Yes. I suppose it is. But why the devil should I think Anne Hyde is more virtuous than another woman? They all have a price—”

“And hers was marriage.” The King set the pan off the flame and turned down the lamp. Then he took his doublet from where it had hung over a chair-back and slipped into it. “Look here, James—I’m no better pleased than you are with this business—The daughter of a commoner, even if he is my Chancellor, is no suitable wife for the heir to the English throne. But it would raise a damned peculiar smell all over Europe if you got her with child and refused to marry her. If she’d been anyone but the Chancellor’s daughter we might have found a way around it. As it is I think there’s only one course for you: Marry her immediately and with as good a grace as you can.”

“That isn’t what the Chancellor wants. He’s locked her in her rooms and says he’d rather have her thrown into the Tower and beheaded than disgrace the Stuarts by marrying one of them.”

“Edward Hyde was a good servant to my father and he’s been a good servant to me. I don’t doubt he’s angry with her, but one thing you may be sure of—it’s not only the Stuarts he’s worried about. He knows well enough that if his daughter marries you he’ll have a thousand new enemies. Jealousy doesn’t breed love.”

“If you say it’s best, Sire, I’ll marry her—but what about Mam?” He gave Charles a sudden desperate look that was almost comical.

Charles laughed, but put an arm about his brother’s shoulders. “Mam will most likely have a fit of the mother that will go near to killing her.” “A fit of the mother” was the common term for hysteria. “She’s always hated Hyde—and her family pride is almost as great a passion with her as her religion. But I’ll protect you, Jamie—” He grinned. “I’ll threaten to hold off her pension.”

They walked out together, James still thoughtful and morose, Charles good-humoured as usual. He snapped his fingers at a pair of little spaniels asleep in a square of sunshine and they scrambled to their feet and tore yapping out of the room, scuttling between his legs, turning to prance on their hind legs to look up at him.

James’s marriage to Anne Hyde created a considerable excitement. The Chancellor was furious; Anne wept incessantly; and the Duke still thought he might find a way out. With the help of Sir Charles Berkeley he stole the blood-signed contract and burned it, and Berkeley offered to marry her himself and give the child his name. The courtiers were in a quandary, not knowing whether they should pay their respects to the new Duchess or avoid her altogether, and only Charles seemed perfectly at ease.

And then the Duke of Gloucester, who had fallen ill of small-pox but had been thought to be out of danger, died suddenly. Charles had loved him well, as he did all his family, and he had seemed a young man of great promise, eager and charming and intelligent. It was unbelievable that now he lay dead, still and solemn and never to move again. There had been nine children in the family. Two had died on the day of birth, two others had lived only a short while, and now there remained only Charles and James, Mary who was Princess of Orange, and Henrietta Anne, the youngest, still with her mother in France.

But even the death of Henry could not halt the festivities for long. And though the Court managed to show a decent face of sorrow in the presence of Charles or James, the balls and the suppers, the flirtations and the gambling went on as before, wildly, madly, as though it would never be possible to get enough of pleasure and excitement.

The great houses along the Strand, from Fleet Street to Charing Cross, were opened all day and far into the night. Their walls resounded with noisy laughter and the tinkle of glasses, music and chatter, the swish of silken skirts and the tap of high-heeled shoes. Great gilt coaches rattled down the streets, stood lined up outside theatres and taverns, went rambling through the woods of St. James’s Park and along Pall Mall. Duels were fought in Marrowbone Fields and at Knightsbridge over a lady’s dropped fan or a careless word spoken in jest. Across the card-tables thousands of pounds changed hands nightly, and lords and ladies sat on the floor, watching with breathless apprehension a pair of rolling dice.