Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (14 page)

Before Meriel could think of how to back away from this trouble, the duke had spurred into the road with pistol drawn. "Stand and deliver, my good man!" he yelled, then chuckled in Meriel's ear. " 'Tis easy. I know their rogue language."

The carriage halted, the horses shying. .

"Place your hands where I can see them, my man," Buck ordered the driver.

Meriel looked into the carriage, dimly lit by a side lantern. A naked slattern was scrambling away from a man whose breeches were about his ankles, though his manhood still stood proud.

"Fie on you, sir," the Duke of Buckingham said, laughing. "You owe me your purse for saving you from this poxy wench, else you'd be in the mercury baths within the week."

The man thus saved sputtered indignantly. "Villian! While I'm in the baths, you'll be dancing from Tyburn's tree. Let me go free, and I'll say no more as I do discern by your speech and dress that you are a gentleman with a lady. And that lady wears a coronet upon her head that outweighs my purse by many guineas. Rob her head, sir, and leave me to my pleasures."

"I thank you for your advice," Buck said, though now there was no humor in his tone. "But it is
your
head that is a target for my pistol. Toss over your purse. Carefully and
now\"

The word was so loud, Meriel was near deafened, and it caused her to jerk in his arms.

"Keep your nerve, Felice," his lordship whispered. "We'll laugh together later, as well as share other delights."

Rochester with Nell, their hoods low over their heads, spurred onto the road.

Faced with this double threat, the man in the carriage threw his purse, and Buck, leaning from his saddle, deftly caught it.

"Begone," Buck called to the driver as the girl jumped naked from the moving carriage. Her dress came flying after, her customer wanting no reminder of this evening's thwarted pleasure.

"Let the whore go, Buck," Nell said, in a low but commanding voice. "There is no sport in taking her hard-earned shillings."

"Aye, humor Madame Gwyn," Meriel whispered. And then thinking what Felice would say, added, "It would be more amusing to mix the honorable with roguery." She laughed and was happy to hear Buck and Rochester join in.

"Begone, whore," Buck called, as the terrified girl struggled into her only garment, a worn and grimy gown. Opening the purse he'd stolen, he threw her a shilling. "Catch a new customer, girl, or better buy some oranges and take them to the Theater Royal, where you can catch a king on a good night."

Meriel looked quickly at Nell, because this was a studied insult, since Nell had been an orange girl before becoming London's most famous comic actress and then going on to bed the king. The Duke of Buckingham might never forgive this spoiled bit of japery.

"Nay, girl," Nell said, throwing her a gold guinea from her own purse. "The king is fairly caught," she said in a proud, carrying voice that easily reached to the upper gallery most nights. "Go home to the honest cottagers you left. There is no fortune for you here, nothing but early death."

The girl scuttled away into the darkness, the guinea between her teeth.

Meriel knew that she would forever wonder if the girl took Nell's advice. But on that instant she liked Nell Gwyn exceeding well. Whatever else she was, she was kind of heart and had a rough honesty.

"A pretty couplet. Most sweet and warming," Buck said, but there was anger in his tone, "You seek the approval of the lowest commoner and deny mine."

Nell threw back her pretty head, red-gold streaked hair loosened by the ride streaming behind her. "Buck, I do remember recently when the commons ruled England, and if they do so again, it won't be my head on the block."

Buck's body went rigid against Meriel. "You speak treason."

"Fie, my lord. His Majesty has no more loyal whore. I merely speak history."

Before Cromwell's civil war could be fought again, the sound of a swift-approaching horse sent them spurring back behind the trees.

Somehow Meriel was not surprised to see that the lone rider was Giles, making swift passage, rustling the leaves about her in the warm May night. She saw his white face as a blur in the dark and shivered, imagining his fury and at the same time longing for him to rescue her. Yet she did not call out. These lords, who seemed to recognize no limits to their pleasure, could run him through or shoot him dead. Who was there to know? Indeed, that might be their ultimate game, to push against all decent limits until they crumbled.

Buck whispered in her ear, "Your husband will make himself the court jester yet, chasing after a wife in the dark." He chuckled.

To Meriel, the laughter sounded forced. "La, Buck, if Giles is going to continue so tiresome, perhaps we should return to Whitehall."

Lord Rochester took a long drink from a bottle in his saddlebag. "George Villiers, if we let husbands dictate our sport, we will be mightily inconvenienced." He offered the bottle to Buck, who matched him draught for draught.

With a laugh, Buck clasped Meriel tighter. "John Wilmot, Giles is such a fool. We'll lose him easily. He makes for Spring Gardens, at the Fort Millbank river crossing. We'll take the closer Westminster stairs and get to the gardens first." The idea delighted him so that she could feel him shaking with laughter. "What a tale to tell the court! While the Earl of Warborough beat the gooseberry bushes looking for his lost wife, I had her on her back almost within his sight."

His laughter beat upon Meriel's ears as she leaned into the pommel, hoping to put some few inches between the duke's body and hers. There was no doubt now as to his intent.

All four set off in seeming high good humor in another direction, soon coming to the Thames. Leaving the horses with an idle boy at Westminster, they hired watermen to row them to the Kensington side. It was low tide and the river had shrunk to one-third its size. Thus, the boatmen had to carry all through the mud to the stairs, where Meriel nearly slipped on green slime, but came at last to the Spring Gardens entrance. Lanterns and flares were everywhere, making her midnight surroundings into the dusk of eventide, not light but not dark.

Nell complained immediately of hunger and thirst, and after Meriel suffered an interminable kiss from the Duke of Buckingham, who made liberal use of his tongue in any opening he found, the two nobles were off in the direction of string music to find food and drink.

Nell walked about rubbing her arse. "I don't find our companions at all amusing tonight, my lady. They are too drunk, and Rock is intent upon some coarse mischief."

Meriel did not think that Felice and Nell had been friends. Felice was too haughty, though not above using her acquaintance with Nell to gain admittance to the men's tiring room at the Theater Royal. Still, Meriel doubted anyone used Nell without her knowing it, or for longer than she wished. Or without comic retaliation. She was as full of intelligence as she was of fun.

Meriel rubbed her own arse. "Why don't we play a trick on two lords who so overreach themselves?"

"A trick for a trick," Nell said, smiling. "You have more of wit than I knew. I think we should surely do it."

Giles realized that he'd lost the two lords and Felice somewhere in the park. When he reached the fort, he stabled his horse with instructions to return it to the royal mews, crossed to Spring Gardens and walked swiftly into one of the gravel paths, which divided the formal squares of plantings and fountains. Ordinarily, Giles loved walking in these gardens of a May springtime morn, when all blazed with jonquils, gillyflowers and borders of berry and rosebushes. But this was the middle of the night, and its darker walks and arbors were used for other purposes also known to nature.

He strode purposefully with one hand clenched into a fist, the other on his rapier hilt, vowing silently to find Felice wherever she was. And if he had to fight Buck for her and break the king's no-dueling law, he'd do that, too. Better the Tower for killing a duke than any further disgrace to his ancient name or to his manhood. He refused to include a thrust to his heart, or the memory of skin like silk, or the rhythmic rising of her bosom as she talked, so that he could not attend her words. He clenched his fist so tight that pain stopped him and he stood very still.

He wanted her again as a man wants a woman for the first time.

Strollers passed him by. He was unaware of their questioning stares, while he struggled against a truth he despised. He was falling in love with his wife again, or with this changed creature that was Felice. The scent of her, where he had held her close in the dance, was on him and might never leave him. He groaned and hoped no one heard.

Hand in hand, Meriel and Nell raced down one of the dark paths, their long court gowns draped over their other arms, past some fully occupied arbors until they found an empty one. Meriel collapsed onto the bench, and Nell, laughing, sat down beside her.

"They will spend half the night looking for us," Nell whispered, a chuckle in her voice. "That should cool their cods!"

Meriel leaned back. She was exhausted, not so much from the long day of walking, scheming, dancing, and the long bouncing ride through Hyde Park, but an exhaustion of pretense. It was so much more difficult to be someone she wasn't, all the day and night long, than she had ever imagined, especially with Lord Giles. She ached as his name swept through her, but her corset would not allow her to breathe in and out too deeply.

Nell leaned back, as well, thrusting her legs in front of her, though she was so petite they swung clear of the ground. "Something has changed you, my lady Felice."

Meriel was immediately on her guard. "How changed?"

"That is what I am trying to discover. You joined me in freeing the whore though you pretended it as part of the jape. I knew it and I think Buck knew it, as well. He will not like it that you—"

"Are changed, as you say. Hey, well, then he will have to live with his dislike!" She knew this last was what Felice would say, but it was also pure Meriel, and comforting. She wondered if she could trust Nell with the truth, then she wondered if the king had already confided the secret and Nell played her own game. 'Od's life! Spying was like a Tudor maze, and she was trapped in the middle without an idea how to reach open ground.

Meriel's wondering was soon over.

"His Majesty asked me to pass this message to you during the dancing, but I had no opportunity."

"Yes, Nell," Meriel said, one of her questions answered.

"You are to go to Chiffinch this night without fail, as it is time for you to act. ... Something about word finally come down from the north. I know not what the message means, and I don't want to know. If I am asked, I can deny all knowledge, though I am an excellent liar, learning that part early in the alleys off Drury Lane."

"My thanks, Nell. I didn't know—"

"If I had the king's confidence? He knows I would never betray him. And he tells no more than needs be."

"Then I must get away from this place as soon as I know where our lords are, so that I can go in the opposite direction," Meriel answered. "They are both so taken with their idea of cuckholding Lord Giles under his very nose that they would never give me leave."

"Aye," Nell said, "Rochester will make a poem about tonight and hang it on your door. Tomorrow all will know. He says he is bent on outrunning impotence, yet I think, in some strange way, he seeks it."

"It makes him cruel."

"Aye, he may seek that, too, and I don't doubt he knows it."

Meriel and Nell waited some minutes before they heard their names being called, as Buckingham and Rochester searched the gardens for them. Then they heard cursing and heavy boots racing down the gravel path, coming closer.

Meriel opened her mouth to bid Nell a good night before slipping away.

From behind, a hard hand clamped across her lips before she could speak. An arm surrounded her upper body in a crushing hold. Terrified, she began to claw at the hand on her mouth.

Giles bent to her ear and said, "Quiet, Felice. This is the end of your career as chief court whore. My pardon, Nell, but we must take our leave."

"I see that, my lord, although I challenge your lady's position, when all know that I am chief whore at Whitehall."

"Madame, I would give you the better title of friend, if you delay your companions."

"Gladly, sir. They deserve a trick and will have it. Two drunken lords will not exceed my gifts as an actress."

Meriel had ceased struggling once she heard Giles's voice. If he would only allow her to speak, she would tell him that she must return to the palace, though she couldn't tell him why. Yet would she say how relieved she was to see him and be saved from Buck's tongue. And probably the rest of him.

She felt no softening in Giles. He thought her a lying, cheating wife, and she could not blame him. With his strong arms tight about her, she could summon no strength to fight him. Nor will.

He didn't remove his hand but lifted her bodily and, carrying her under one arm like a sack of oats to a barn, walked swiftly toward the rear of the Spring Gardens, scarcely keeping his anger under control.

Straining to catch her breath, but having it bumped out of her at every step, Meriel said, "Gi-iles . .. put... me ... do-w n. I am no lamb, sir, to be truss-ed and tied—"

Giles didn't flinch, keeping his ears closed to her pleas.

He couldn't trust her, not for one moment, though his hands burned where they touched her.

"Sir, what do you with that lady?"

Giles glared at the gentleman who stood in his path and questioned him. "I take my wife away from this place, sir. She has not my permission to be here."

The man bowed and stepped aside. "My pardon, sir. A husband may do as it pleases him."

"Did you hear that, Felice?" Giles questioned, his voice harsh again as they neared the exit. "Prepare to hear that daily until you give me what you owe me."

Giles carried her from Spring Gardens through the rear gate to a small grove of elm saplings, where he put her none too gently on her feet. "You will remain silent, or you will force me to silence you."