“With your permission, Madame St. Clare, I shall decide who will rehearse and who will not. I’ve given your part to Beck Marshall—I don’t doubt you’ll be able to play the strumpet well enough without rehearsal.”

There was a concerted giggle at that. Amber shot Beck a quick glare and caught a smug look of mischief on her face. She was on the verge of bursting out that she would play her own part or none at all, when caution warned her. “But I know my lines! I know every one of ’em if I never rehearsed again! And the other’s but a small part!”

“Perhaps it is, madame, but those who are too much occupied elsewhere must learn to be content with small parts—or with no part at all.” He glanced around at the sparkling, smiling faces, on which malicious pleasure was but ill concealed. “And I advise all of you to keep that in mind—should another head be turned by attention from high places. Good-day.” He swung about and left the room.

Amber was furious that he should have dared to treat her like that, and consoled herself with the promise that one day she would be even with him. I’ll get his patent and run him out of the theatre, that’s what I’ll do! But for the benefit of the others she gave a shrug and a pout of her mouth.

“Pooh! Much I care! Who wants to be a player anyway?”

As the days began to pass, however, her disgrace was not alleviated by another request from the King. She continued to play small roles—and to wait for another invitation. No one let her forget that she had been sent for once and had expected to go again; the other women, even some of the actors, and the gallants who came back to the tiring-room, all knew about it and taunted her slyly. They seemed to have grown more insolent than ever. And Amber, though she tried to toss off the gibes with a laugh or counter them with some impertinence of her own, was sick at heart, disappointed and miserably unhappy. She felt that after all her bragging she would die of shame if he sent for her no more.

And though she had thought in her first high-flown confidence that she did not care whether or not she ever saw Rex again, she soon began to miss him. It was not quite a week after their quarrel that Beck told her he had given a diamond ring to Mrs. Norris of the rival playhouse and that she was saying he had offered to take her into keeping.

“Well, why tell me about it! It’s nothing to me if he gives diamond rings to every tawdry little whore in Whetstone Park!”

But it was all bravado.

She was learning that Rex Morgan was more important to her happiness than she had ever suspected he could be. Though she had not realized it before, she knew now that he had protected her from much that would otherwise have been unpleasant. The tiring-room fops, for example, would never have dared patronize and bait her as they were doing. Without him she felt that she had been plunged suddenly into a hard and bleak world which hated her and wished her nothing but misfortune. There was no kindness or sympathy in any of them—they enjoyed her failure, battened upon her humiliation, were amused by her not-well-concealed anger and frustration.

She began to wish again that she had never seen Lord Carlton and never come to London.

Nan, however, continued optimistic even when ten days had gone by. She could think of more reasons why the King had been too busy to see her than he could possibly have found himself. “Don’t be downcast, mam,” she would say. “Lord, it takes up one’s time—being a king.”

But Amber refused to be comforted. Slumped in a chair before the fireplace, she muttered petulantly: “Oh, nonsense, Nan! You know as well as I do if I’d pleased ’im he’d have sent long ago!”

Nan sat beside her on a stool, working on a piece of embroidered satin, pale green with a whole English gardenful of flowers on it, which she intended as a petticoat for Amber. Now she gave a little sigh and made no answer, for she was finally beginning to grow discouraged herself. But when, just a few minutes later, there was a knock at the door she leaped up and rushed across the room.

“There!” she cried triumphantly. “That must be him now!”

Amber, however, merely looked around over the back of her chair toward the door, expecting to see one of the gallants or perhaps Hart or Kynaston come to visit her. But as Nan threw open the door she saw that a young boy stood there, dressed in some unfamiliar livery, and she heard him ask:

“Madame St. Clare?”

“I’m Madame St. Clare!” She jumped up and ran across the room. “What is it?”

“I come from Mr. Progers, madame. My master presents his service to you and asks if you will wait upon him at his lodgings tonight at half-after-eleven?”

It was the royal summons!

“Yes!” cried Amber. “Yes, of course I will!”

She picked up a coin off the table and gave it to him, and when he was gone she turned to throw her arms about Nan. “Oh, Nan! He did like me! He did remember! Only think! Tonight I’m going to the Palace!”

Suddenly she paused, made a stiff little bow and said: “Madame St. Clare? My master presents his service to you and asks if you will wait upon him tonight at his lodgings.” And then she spun around and danced off across the room, laughing joyously. But in the midst of a whirl she stopped, her face serious again. “What shall I wear!” And chattering excitedly the two women ran into the bedroom. The clock on the mantel pointed to nine.

This time she was more sure than ever that he liked her.

Some of her earlier awe and self-consciousness was gone and they laughed and talked like old friends; she thought him the most fascinating man she had met since Lord Carlton. When she left he said, as he had the time before, “Good-night, my dear, and God bless you,” gave her a playful slap on the buttocks, and another bagful of coins.

Tempest and Jeremiah were waiting for her at the Holbein Gate and they set off swiftly for home, rattling and clanging through the night.

But the coach had no sooner turned into the Strand than a party of horsemen rushed at them from out of the shadows. Before Amber knew what was happening Tempest had been hauled down from his perch and Jeremiah knocked to the ground. The horses began to rear and neigh with excitement. Amber was looking around her, wondering what she should do, when the door was flung open. A masked man leaned in, seized her by the wrist and began dragging her toward him. Amber screamed and started to struggle, though she knew well enough what little good that could do.

He gave her a rough shake. “Stop that! I won’t hurt you-just hand me that bagful of coins his Majesty gave you! Quick!”

Amber was kicking at him and trying to tear his fingers loose from her wrist. But now as she leaned over to bite his hand he gave her a violent shove that knocked her across the coach and half onto the floor and she could see the gleam of moonlight on his levelled pistol. “Give me that bag, madame, or I’ll shoot you! I have no time for playful tricks!”

Amber continued to hesitate, expecting to be rescued somehow, but as she heard the sound of the pistol cocking she took the bag from her muff and tossed it at him. He caught it, gave her a bow and backed away. But just before the door shut she heard a woman’s triumphant laugh and a voice cried: “Many thanks, madame! Her Ladyship appreciates your charity! I promise you the money will be laid out in a good cause!” The door slammed and there was a sound of prancing horses’ hoofs as they wheeled about and then started off again at a gallop—riding back down King Street toward the Palace.

Amber lay for a moment without moving, dumfounded. That voice! she thought. I’ve heard it somewhere before! And then suddenly she remembered: It was the same laugh, the same aggressive, high-pitched feminine voice she had heard that night outside the Royal Saracen-it was Barbara Palmer!


That was the last of Amber’s visits to Whitehall.

The King, it was well known, liked to live in peace and quiet, and a jealous woman’s sharp venomous tongue could make that impossible. Fortunately for her though, gossip spread that Charles had said he liked Madame St. Clare well enough—but not to the point of sacrificing his ease for her. And that was all that saved her. As it was they kept at her for several days, stinging and biting like malicious insects, but at last they grew tired of baiting her and found another victim.

By the time a fortnight had passed her life had settled back to normal. Everyone but Amber had forgotten that the King had ever sent for her.

But she did not forget or intend to forget. She nursed her new grievance against Barbara Palmer as carefully as she had the old. Someday, she promised herself, I’ll make her sorry she ever was born. I’ll find a way to get even with her if it’s the last thing I do on earth! She spent much time and found much pleasure in imagining her revenge, but those images, like everything else she could not see or touch, slid gradually into some back compartment of her mind to be saved and brought out again when she had a use for them.

She had been entertaining, one night, a dozen young men and women whom she had invited to supper and they had just gone home, leaving the tables littered with dishes, the floors covered with nut-shells and fruit-peelings and a torn deck of cards. There were wine-bottles and glasses, with only a sticky sediment in the bottoms, the air was thick with tobacco smoke, and the furniture had all been pushed out of place.

While Nan began to pile up dishes and pick up nut-shells Amber went to stand with her back to the fireplace, raising her skirts to warm her buttocks. It was mid-December and the ground was covered with snow, the first in three years, and even the Thames was frozen over. For a while they talked idly about who had said what, whether a certain lady was now having an affair with a certain gentleman or with another, or with both, and discussed at some length the gowns and coiffures and figures of the women who had been present, to the detriment of each.