Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (13 page)

The sprightly music began and they took hands and all moved forward, then back. Next they weaved round, first with the right hand and then with the left. For a moment Meriel forgot that she was dancing in Whitehall, masquerading as a countess. She might have been back on the Canterbury green with a maypole ribbon in her hand. The temptation to throw back her head and laugh was stifled when Rochester bent to her ear on her turn round him, whispering, "Midnight, same place."

Her heart began to pound in time to the music. What same place? What would Rochester do if Lady Felice did not appear?

Now the foursome became eight and they locked arms, marching down the chamber at a quick step. At the other end, the men changed places, and it was hands all around again, weaving in and out, almost skipping. It was a sight to make the maid Meriel laugh to herself to see elaborately dressed and coiffed courtiers larking about like country lads and lasses. As she took Buckingham's hand, he bent into her ear and licked it.
Midnight,
he mouthed into her face, as she twisted away.

Fear gripped her. All was beyond her control. She knew not what these nobles planned. The solution came to her when she noticed the long silver ribbons on one of her slippers were undone. Wait till she got her hands on that clumsy maid: She'd reward her handsomely for this way out of her dilemma!

As the eight became four again, Meriel flung into a turn and crumpled to the floor. She held her ankle and moaned, perhaps too loudly, for she noticed that Nell Gwyn had a little smile on her vivacious face.
Hey, well, she is a real actress.

Those dancers nearest stopped and stood looking down on Meriel as if she showed plague signs. A very good thing she wasn't mortally wounded.

Giles rushed in and knelt beside her, his mouth tender as she had never seen it. "Felice, what is it?"

"My ankle," she said, grimacing with what she hoped was the right amount of pain to convince him.

He scooped her easily from the floor and started for the Presence Chamber door, Meriel against his chest, his warm breath moving in her hair. Her heart beat faster for finding herself in his arms again. The music and dancing stopped as the king stood.

"My lord earl." It was the king's voice, and it was a command. "Take my lady Felice into the ladies' tiring room behind the Court Theater stage, so that she may rest and perhaps rejoin us later. I will send for a physician."

His Majesty motioned to the door porter, who pounded his staff and called, "Make way. Make way."

Giles had no choice but to obey. He followed the porter, his wife light in his arms, groaning softly. Every groan tore at his heart. He felt responsible for her pain, although he berated himself for the feeling. What was this new hold Felice had on him when he believed himself rid of every fond emotion? Obviously, he had not been thorough. But he would be more painstaking in the future, struggling to push down any further nonsense about a different Felice. Hadn't she proved by her visit to Chiffinch to be the same high whore?

He placed her carefully on a cushioned settee and checked her ankle. It was not swelling as yet. "Where is the damned physician?" he yelled at the porter.

"He has been summoned, your lordship."

A little doctor in a black medical robe much too long for him hurried through the door. He reached scarce to Giles's chest but carried an air of high consequence.

The doctor bowed low. "Josiah Wyndham, royal physician, your lordship, and as you know, I have treated Lady Felice before."

Giles frowned. "For what ill, doctor?"

"My deepest pardon, my lord earl, but the first thing I learned in my studies at the University of Padua, and later at Bologna and—"

Meriel interrupted his familiar speech. "Giles, I consulted the doctor when my scar was opened by a clumsy maid with a sharp comb and needed healing," she said, reaching up to touch behind her ear.

"Now 'tis a turned ankle, doctor, in addition to an open wound," Giles said. "All the more reason I insist that my lady must be abed in her apartments until I can remove her to the country."

Dr. Wyndham nodded, tapping his cheek in deep thought. "Rest is a cardinal remedy, Lord Warborough, but may I examine the ankle to determine if any bones are broken? A lady's ankle is a fragile thing."

Giles nodded, but watched, frowning.

Without looking upon the lady's naked flesh, the doctor felt along the ankle through the gown, a look of concentration on his face.

Meriel tried to stare a warning, but he didn't need it.

"My lord, I prescribe a cure-all salve, which I have with me, and a tight binding. Then your most excellent suggestion should follow: three days abed." He busily applied the salve and wrapped Mend's ankle in strips of clean linen.

Giles nodded and drew a coin from his waistcoat, which he gave to the doctor.

Bowing, the doctor said, "I will call for a litter from my office for her ladyship."

Giles raised a hand to stop him. "Stay by her, and I will tell the porter to do so." He rushed from the room to give the necessary orders.

The earl was no more out the door than another opened, Rochester and Buckingham crowding in.

"My lords—" the little doctor began, but spoke no further when faced with a cocked pistol and lordly disdain.

At that, Meriel jumped to her feet, a mistake she quickly regretted, knowing she would be allowed few mistakes if she wished to live past two and twenty. She stepped easily on the foot bound with linen, oozing the doctor's miracle salve. Aye, indeed miraculous, since she was cured on the instant.

A mischievous lord pulling on either arm, she was suddenly racing through the marble halls of the palace to an exit.

There, Rochester and Buckingham laughing in high glee, they were joined by Nell Gwyn, who helped all to cloak and mask themselves. Grooms held two horses.

Scarcely containing himself, Rochester smirked. "Felice, what have you done to Giles? Is he trying to seduce his own wife?"

Buck roared. "He needn't try so hard, eh, John?"

Rochester laughed and made a drunken rhyme. "Our noble fine countess has got a good trick; she cuckholds her husband for the sake of his prick!"

Buck doubled over with laughter. "She cuckholds her husband, for the—■" He stopped, nearly choking on wine-fueled merriment.

"Felice," Rochester added, pleased with his success, "that was another merry trick you played on your lord. I knew you'd divine some way to escape his sudden interest."

Meriel winked and laughed as Felice most certainly would. But inside she was thinking,
'Od's life! What is the lady Felice facing now?

Grasping Meriel around her waist, the Duke of Buckingham plucked her from her feet and placed her sidesaddle in front of him. "Now, my pretty passion," Buck said, "we have planned a wondrous midnight caper to welcome you home. You will adore it after those dull days in the Norfolk countryside. Dam'all! And those unwanted attentions . . . despite John's verse, I do not believe them wanted ... they are so very far out of the mode. M'dear, did he think to make himself the jest of all Whitehall, demanding you dance with him?" His lordship licked her ear again, and a waft of wine enveloped her nose.

'Od's life! Did this duke have some particular liking for ladies' ears, as some men did for a dish of ram's testicles, thinking to increase their manly prowess? She turned her head, but that only exposed her other ear to a licking.

Buckingham whipped the horse and they were off at a canter.

"Buck!" yelled Rochester, reining alongside with Nell astride behind him, her skirts pulled between her legs and the ends tucked into her waist ties, her face alight with mischief. "Let us see what sport we find on the Ring Road in Hyde Park."

They were off at twice the speed, pounding along cobbled streets, empty but for the watch with his lantern calling the hour. They clattered into the park, Meriel's skirts flowing against the horse's flanks. She thought to be dead of a stabbing corset stave before Chiffinch worked any revenge. Instead of finding Giles come to her bed this night—she shivered at that thought—she was racing about London without an idea how she would escape two amorous and drunken lords intent upon tomfoolery. And probably more. But her thoughts returned to Giles and what he would think when he returned to the tiring room to find her gone. And what he would do.

Giles arrived with a litter and its bearers scarce minutes after Meriel disappeared. "Where is she?" he asked, his voice harsh. He knew immediately that he'd been a fool to trust Felice. He also knew that he wouldn't repeat that mistake in this lifetime.

The little doctor perched on the settee with his head in his hands. "My lord earl, I am most grievously—"

"Where did she go?" Giles said in a voice that would have brought a general to attention.

"I know not where, your lordship. My lords Buckingham and Rochester spirited her away, but a few minutes gone. They had a pistol—"

"Her ankle?" Giles said, his face demanding the truth.

"Better, your lordship," the doctor said, standing, and in his towering peruke nearly reaching Giles's chin.

Giles was away before the little doctor, obviously distressed, could tell a longer tale of his miraculous salve, and was quickly out the side door and to the palace entrance.

Two grooms in their lord's livery were playing dice against the wall. Giles collared both on their knees. "Where did your masters go?" His command was not to be denied.

The groom in Buckingham's livery sulked. "The duke does not consult me as to his comings and goings."

Giles tightened his grip, and the groom's face reddened. "If you do not wish to end in the Clink as party to wife kidnapping, speak all you know and speak it quickly."

The Earl of Rochester's groom spoke for him. "I heard my lord say"—he coughed, trying to get his breath past his tightening neck cloth—"they would make a great jape on the Ring." Then he hesitated.

The groom's face bulged as Giles tightened his hold. "Tell all!"

The two grooms looked at each other, and the duke's groom added, "And then to Spring Gardens, my lord. I beg you do not inform—"

Giles dropped them and they sprawled on the ground, scrambled immediately to their feet and, leaving their ivory dice behind, fled.

Giles was already racing for the royal stables, yelling for a stable boy to saddle his horse well before he entered the stalls. While his horse was readied, he called for pen and ink, wrote a short note, giving the boy a penny to deliver it to his majordomo. "Run like the wind, boy," he said, flinging himself into the saddle. Within minutes, he was pounding toward Hyde Park.

Not this time would he forgive her. Felice was finished at court if he had to hold her prisoner at Harringdon Hall until she delivered a son. She would give him an heir and then he would not care what she did, where she went or whom she loved, but he would see her banned from court. He had that power. He berated himself for believing her injured for an instant. What had made him not see so transparent a trick? What had induced him to believe that she had changed, or was changing? Even the knowledge that she treated with the king's procurer had not completely dampened his wonder at the new Felice he'd seen or, rather, sensed. And it was a lie. vShe was a lie!

"Never again, Felice. Never again!" He yelled the words into the streets, slamming them against houses and into the trees that lined the Ring as he passed through the great entrance into Hyde Park. And then there was only the sound of hooves, pounding the packed road that by day held the carriages of London's nobility and by night served as London's dark, airy starlit brothel with every known vice for sale in its shadowy glades.

From behind some trees at a turning well inside the park, Meriel asked, "Buck, what do you plan?" She used Felice's indifferent voice, drowning Nell's excited laughter.

"While you were moldering in that ancient country manor of yours, we were planning a wonderful new game, Felice."

"Aye," Rochester said, "and, my love, you will adore it."

Meriel did not like the sound of these lords. One called her
his passion
and another
his love.
She feared that both were only too true, for the real Felice was an equal to Castle-maine in her need for male service. Yet as a spy, Meriel was in too deep to back away from this trouble without giving herself away.

"Do tell me, what is this game called?" Meriel asked, allowing Felice's aristocratic voice some excitement. Concentrating on being Felice kept Meriel from succumbing to the unclean odor coming from the duke. And to her own fear. At least for the moment. The arm about her waist was not loosening, thus she doubted if her protests would raise more than reminiscences of other such games and thence questions she might not be able to answer. Best these lords stay well occupied with present sport.

"I name this game rogues-all-round," Nell Gwyn answered for them. "It seems you high courtiers do tire of your station and love to act like common road rogues, though you are the poorest rogues ever I beheld. Now for a real highwayman, you'd want Gentleman Johnny. Once on Bagshot Heath he stopped my carriage and took my jewels, but when he learned my name, he returned them for a kiss, and rode away laughing. I called him back and gave him ten guineas and another kiss." She threw back her head and laughed softly.

"Say you so, Nell?" Buck answered, taking up the challenge. "I don't trust a thief who trades money for a kiss when he could take both." He adjusted his mask and then Meriel's.

"The devil, Buck," Nell whispered urgently. "I'll have nothing to do with robbery of some poor slut angling for her penny bread behind a bush. Or even a pretty-arsed Molly Boy. Though I would not mind lifting the fat purse of a bishop, taken from the poor box."

Rochester laughed softly. "Our Nellie has a sweet sensibility, Buck. Best we humor her."

A slow-moving carriage came around the turn.

Buckingham leaned into Meriel's ear, as she relaxed to think that Nell had put a halt to this madness. "What say you, Felice, shall we show these pale ninnies real roguery?"