Lady Merry's Dashing Champion (35 page)

It was a dream at night, a wish in the day ... a mind picture come to full life that felt like a blow to her breast.

"You knew I would come to you," Giles called across the water, as the distance between them closed.

"It would take a witch's magic to know a man's changeable mind."

"Then I have misnamed my ship."

She looked, and there on the bow in fresh gilt letters were the words:
The Merry Mischief.
She swallowed, jolted by great emotions that became one question: what did this mean? Had the king told him of her birth? Had Agnes? Chiffinch, that dog!

Giles leapt upon her water stairs and rose up like the Greek god Poseidon from the river to stand very close to her, so close she could see the tiny lines beside his eyes that every sailor has. He was deeply tanned, and she saw his chest was even more finely muscled than when last she had occasion to see it. It took all the strength she had to stop her hands from touching him.

He was smiling at her and she forced her gaze away. She had learned as a young and helpless orphan child that showing any emotion only encouraged harm. And in truth, there was no need to look at him. She remembered all his faces... . Angry, sober, mirthful, pensive ... his morning and evening faces, in full sun and by candlelight.

"M'lord, you are very welcome to
my
house." She held her body rigid and yet she felt it arching toward him, surely only in her mind.

"We have much to say," Giles said, looking down at her, and his hand touched her arm with an urgent pressure.

"I think not, m'lord."

"You think wrong, Merry," he said, and his was the solid male voice of a peer of the realm, a sash-wearing Garter knight, the hero of the Battle of the Four Days. A voice to be obeyed.

Her coach arrived, swinging around her house from the street with a clatter of hooves and wheels on cobbles.

Giles picked up Meriel, who despite all her expressed determination felt herself melt into his shoulder as he strode up the path, and placed her firmly in the coach. He sat close beside her.

Though he was touching her, she regained command of herself, if only a little. "Leave me," she demanded, knowing it was too late to run or to call for a constable. She felt his every touch as a repeated blow. She had steeled herself to his absence. Now she was without any armor for his presence, his adored face, the flood of memories like a coastal storm pounding against her body, the floating away of resolve, though she fought to hold it close to her.

"Where were you driving?"

"Hyde Park."

"Ah, the Ring Road drive. We have grown mighty high in the world to take the tour of a morning."

The coach jolted forward, and she said nothing. How dare he make a joke of the king's patent of which he obviously had heard? She stiffened. "You had something more to say, sir?"

"Since you are not happy to see me, are you at least happy to see the ketch, raised from the grave, newly caulked, painted and rigged.... And renamed to better suit her?"

Meriel's lips trembled and she turned away so that he would not misinterpret it as any more than it was: a pleasant surprise at a just end for a ship that had accomplished so much against the Dutch, and a greater compliment than that paid her by the king. She caught at her breath lest it sound the words she really wanted to say, and made a formal reply. "M'lord earl, I am happy to see her rescued."

He turned her toward him and faced her as they entered the gate to the park. It began to rain on the roof, splattering them with sound.

"I should never have let you walk away. I knew it was you I loved on that instant, Merry. It's you I see and not Felice. You are different as—" He searched for a special way to say it, but Meriel interrupted.

"A countess and a serving maid?" She had to know if he were brought here by knowledge of her change in station.

He laughed. "As a countess
and
a serving maid, but a very special serving maid. Will you serve as my love for the rest of my days? And for heaven's sweet sake, if you no longer love me, tell me now before I die from waiting."

She surrendered to the lips that had been searching up and down her face all this while, and succumbed to the impulse to touch the muscles of his brown chest to see if indeed they were more sharply defined than she remembered. They were.

He kissed her as a drowning man comes up to kiss the air he must have or die, his hands moving and holding each part of her in turn as if to check that all was in its rightful place.

"You want me for your convenient mistress when you come to town. You want to be my keeper," Meriel whispered. She bit her lip, but still proud words issued. "I have no need of a keeper, having my own well-earned income and house."

He thrust her angrily away, but kept tight hold of her shoulders. "Why say you this? You will be mistress of Har-ringdon Hall and mate of
The Merry Mischief
after I make you my wife. I know now that I care naught for your station. Not even as I said it that night did I give a copper for it. I will petition the king this very day, take a bill to Parliament, anything ... but you will be my wife, or no other will be." He caught her to him, tighter. "Is His Majesty in residence, or gone to Windsor for the summer?" He scratched at a shadow of beard. "I've been busy raising the ship as a wedding present to you, and have cared nothing for court news."

Her heart sang the words in her ears.
He doesn 't know. He loves me... Meriel St. Thomas.

The rain stopped and the sun came out hot and the Ring Road steamed under the horses' feet. They were clasped so tightly, very close to losing all caution, that they didn't notice a carriage slowing next to them.

Nell Gwyn stuck her red head out in greeting. "I recognize your coachman and give you good day, m'lady Bas-ford . .. and, ah, m'lord ofWarborough. This rain seems not to have dampened your full enjoyment of the park."

The king's head thrust out beside hers. "Is that Earl Giles?

"A good day to you, Your Majesty, Mistress Nellie," Giles said, his face turned in question to Meriel. "I asked about Canterbury for your parentage, but could find nothing. Now Nellie calls you Lady Basford? Merry, is it true?"

Meriel nodded. "Chiffinch found the midwife. It's a long story."

He shook his head, believing the unbelievable. "That is what Felice meant at the end. She knew, and she wanted you dead for it. I think the first time when you looked at your mother's picture in the upper gallery at Harringdon you must have—" He grinned and his wide shoulders relaxed, a secret deciphered.

"'Od's fish!" the king called. "Our two heroes of the Thames together. We would warn you to beware the crowd of women ahead, likely to descend on you if you show yourselves."

"A crowd about of a morning, sir?" Meriel asked.

Nell laughed. "Aye, every wife, mistress and masked whore in London. Our good Dr. Wyndham presents lectures to women on a subject many seem eager to know more about."

Meriel smiled at memory of the little doctor. "I do hear that he knows how to keep nature and age at a distance for both men and women."

Nell grinned. "Now we hear he advises women how to keep a man with his Infallible Truth Drops. Given a draught, but once of the new moon at exactly midnight, a man will believe whatever a woman tells him and laugh at the knowing until the draught is renewed at the next new moon. I go to claim my bottle."

His Majesty laughed. "We will buy one to give to our ministers."

The royal carriage pulled away down the Ring Road, the sound of both Nell's and the king's laughter trailing behind it.

"You have no need of Truth Drops, Merry. I think I always knew everything about you that I needed to know ... your wit, your beauty, your courage ... the heart and stomach of a queen ... remember?" Giles whispered the words in her ear and she shivered with longing as they swept through her, promising more later.

Hey, well, there is one little surprise growing in my belly that he does not know, which I will tell him... . Perhaps at the next new moon.

The English and Dutch fought three naval wars from 1652 to 1674, mostly for foreign trade dominance, Merry and Giles's adventure is set during the second of these wars, fought from 1665 to 1667, ending with the Dutch towing away the English flagship
Royal Charles.

Once on a trip to Holland, I saw the elaborately carved gilt stern from the ship hanging on a wall of the Rijksmu-seum in Amsterdam, never dreaming that one day it would play a part in a novel I'd written.

Although Meriel St. Thomas is a fictional character, there really were women spies during that time, the most noted being Aphra Behn, who went on to become a major Restoration playwright and a close friend of Nell Gwyn, the great comedic actress.

It seems strange to us today that Giles and Merry could not easily marry when they were so much in love, but social norms of the time were very rigid. A servant girl marrying a peer would have been illegal at worst, and at best, both would have been ostracized, their children with them.

The societal idea prevalent at the time was "the great chain of being," which stated that everyone was born to a place in the chain and could not move up, the greatest example being Charles II, who loved his mistress Nell Gwyn for seventeen years. Because she was a commoner, both Parliament and the court kept him from giving her a title or recognition. And Charles was the king of England! Giles would have had even less chance.

Those readers who have followed this Restoration romance series from
Lady Anne's Dangerous Man
to
Lady Katherne's Wild Ride
and now
Lady Merry's Dashing Champion
have seen another and rather mysterious love affair flourish: mine with King Charles. The more I learned of Charles Stuart, the more I adored him. Believe me, it's a strange sensation to imagine a long-dead ruler to the point when it seems you're channeling his personality.

Finally, I want to acknowledge Ellen Edwards for being the once-in-a-lifetime editor every author dreams of having.

And as always, I want to thank my husband, Gene, who, when I open the door and exit my writing room, always asks, "How many pages today?" And no matter what my answer, says, "Good work!"