The King's Mistress (33 page)

John reminded Charles that he and Jane had not yet heard the conclusion of the story of his escape, and Hyde had heard none of it, so Charles took up the tale over Christmas pudding and port wine.

“When at length we had reached Shoreham, and found that indeed the boat was there, Wilmot and I came into the boat in the wee hours and lay there waiting until the tide should turn. About seven o’clock of the morning, it being high water, we went out of the port.”

“What was the date?” Jane asked, wondering what she had been doing on that day.

“The fifteenth of October. The same day, though I didn’t know it at the time, that the Earl of Derby was executed. Six weeks after the Battle of Worcester.”

“Six weeks.” Edward Hyde shook his shaggy grey head.

“Only a few days before Jane and I set out from Bentley,” John said.

“Even once we were on board, our adventures were not quite at an end,” Charles said. “The master of the boat was bound for Poole laden with sea coal, and because he would not have it seen from Shoreham that he did not go his intended voyage, we stood all the day towards the Isle of Wight.”

“No closer to France than when you set out,” Queen Mary murmured, pouring more wine.

“The master came to me,” Charles said, “and asked me to persuade his men to get him to set us on shore in France. Which I did, telling them that we were merchants that had some misfortunes and were a little in debt, that we had some money owing us at Rouen in France, and were afraid of being arrested in England.”

“How very true, did they but know it,” Wilmot interjected, smiling.

“I told them that if they would persuade the master to give us a trip over to Dieppe, they would oblige us very much, and gave them twenty shillings to drink.”

“Always a sound investment, a shilling for drink,” Taaffe laughed.

“The master pretended difficulty, but at last yielded,” Charles said. “So about five o’clock in the afternoon we stood directly over for the coast of France, and the next morning, a little before day, we saw the coast.”

He mopped his brow in exaggerated relief, and the company laughed.

“But”—he held up a cautionary finger—“there we espied a vessel, which by her nimble working I suspected to be an Ostend privateer.”

“Dear God, and pirates, too!” Hyde marvelled. “Better than a play!”

“I told my lord Wilmot my opinion of that ship and proposed our going ashore in the little cock boat, for fear they might plunder us and possibly carry us away and set us on shore in England.”

“I think I would have jumped overboard and drowned,” Wilmot said, “rather than face that!”

“So the master set us on shore, and as it turned out, the vessel which had so affrighted us proved afterwards only a French sloop. We went up into the little town of Fécamp, and stayed there all that day to provide horses. The next day we got to Rouen to an inn, one of the best of the town, in the fish market, where they made some difficulty to receive us, taking us by our clothes to be thieves.”

Jane laughed at the picture conjured in her mind of the suspicious innkeeper, searching the room lest the King of England should have made off with a chamber pot.

“We stayed at Rouen one day,” Charles said, “to provide ourselves better clothes and give notice to the queen my mother of my being safely landed. After which, setting out in a hired coach, I was met by my mother short of Paris, and by her conducted hither. And now imagine how frighted I would have been had I but known this: Colonel Gunther, who got us the boat, had not gone out of Shoreham but two hours—and we had scarce set sail—but soldiers came thither to search for a tall black-haired man, six feet two inches high.”

“To have it come to so close a pass after all you had been through since Worcester,” said Hyde. “Surely the Lord has preserved Your Majesty with a great purpose in mind, and will bring about your restoration.”

A
FTER DINNER THERE WERE
C
HRISTMAS GAMES AND SONGS, MUSIC
, and a little dancing. But there was a sense of forced jollity that made Jane desperately sad. She was glad of John’s presence, but she was homesick for the rest of her family. She had resolved to guard her heart, and Dr Cosin’s exhortation to sin no more hovered at the back of her mind. But tonight she was lonely and despairing and yearned for the comfort of Charles’s arms. He sat next to her, smilingly watching Minette beam as she opened a little box of nuts and sweetmeats.

“Charles,” Jane murmured to him. “I long to be alone with you.”

She had not spoken to him with such yearning in her heart and voice since they had parted at Trent, and the eyes he turned on her were bright with returned desire.

“And I with you,” he murmured. He glanced around at the laughing faces, absorbed in their gaming, and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Come. Follow me in half a minute.”

He slipped from the room and Jane followed shortly, finding him waiting in the shadows of the corridor. He pulled her to him and kissed her, and fire roared to life within her.

“Oh, Charles,” she whispered. “I have ached for you so.”

Inside his bedchamber, Charles turned the key in the lock, swept Jane into his arms, and carried her to the bed. He pulled the bed curtains closed, and they were in their own warm and cosy little world, the dim glow of the single candle in its wall bracket the only light.

“My darling,” Charles murmured, his hands caressing her, and he kissed her deeply. He threw off his clothes as Jane kicked her shoes to the floor and fumbled at the fastenings of her gown.

Have a care,
a voice whispered at the back of Jane’s mind.
What if you get with child again?
But it was too late. She felt she would die if she had to wait another minute for the feel of his hands on her skin, and she trembled as he took her naked into his arms, his fingers whispering across her belly and descending to the soft nest between her thighs. He groaned as he entered her, and Jane cried out, in ecstasy both at the feel of him inside her and at her joy at being reunited with him at last.

After they had made love, Jane nestled against Charles’s chest. She felt she had never been happier to be anywhere in the world than she was at that moment.

“What are we to do?” she whispered. “I cannot stay forever in your mother’s apartments, hoping to be able to escape to you without their notice.”

“No,” Charles said, but a shiver of fear went up Jane’s spine as he offered no further thoughts. He turned away and sighed. A curtain seemed to have dropped between them.

“Charles?” she whispered.

“Jane, Jane. Nothing would make me happier than to keep you with me. But I cannot. I live under my mother’s roof here. After the first day she told me that if I wanted to take my meals with her, I must pay for them. Not out of unkindness, but because she is scarcely able to feed herself and my sister. And France is dangerous. This Fronde, this rebellion, is like to break out again at any time, and I will have no means to protect you.”

“Then what am I to do?” Jane cried.

Charles pulled her into his arms and held her close, rocking her, and sighed so profoundly that Jane thought he was about to weep.

“Dear God, what have I done?” he breathed. “I have ruined your life as I have ruined so many others.”

“No,” Jane said. “I gladly did what I could, and would do it again. But I am not safe in England, and yet you tell me I cannot stay here.”

“My sister Mary,” Charles said. “I am sure that she would be overjoyed to have you as a lady-in-waiting. Her court is a sad place since the death of her husband, and she will be happy to have another face from home.”

“But I speak no Dutch!” Jane cried.

“Nor does she,” Charles snorted. “Believe me, you shall do very well with English and with some French. The Hague is full of Englishmen. Your brother will be welcome, too, and you will live safely and comfortably, which is far more than I could promise you here.”

Dark fear and loneliness welled within Jane’s soul.

“But will I see you?”

“Yes, yes,” Charles said. “It is not so far, and I will come to see you as soon as ever I can.”

T
WELFTH NIGHT HAD PASSED
, C
HRISTMAS WAS OVER, AND THE DAY
had come when Jane and John would travel to The Hague. Jane had cried herself to sleep the previous night, desolate at the thought of being parted from Charles, not knowing when they would meet again. But they still had an hour or two, and they were walking in the garden of the Tuileries, though the snow lay a foot deep on the ground and the bare branches of the trees sparkled with frost.

Their breath made little clouds in the frigid air, and Jane clung to Charles’s arm, not wanting to let go of him a moment before she had to. She was trying not to cry, not wanting to ruin their last precious time with each other, but at the thought of all the hindrances that might prevent their being together anytime soon, the tears began to flow. Charles glanced down at her and dug a handkerchief from his sleeve.

“Here.” He gave her the handkerchief, and she scrubbed at her eyes and blew her nose, knowing that the weeping must make her look a fright.

“My Jane.” Charles tilted her face up to his and bent to kiss her. “Why do you cry so?”

“Because I’m afraid you’ll forget me.”

“How could I forget you?” he asked gently, stroking a curl from her forehead. “You gave me my life. You are my life; I’ve told you that.”

“Yet you send me away.”

“Not forever. My friends here and in England are hard at work to bring me back to the throne, and when I can protect you and provide for you, as I cannot here, we can be together again. Remember how you wept when we parted at Trent, fearing we would never meet again? Yet here we are.”

The feel of his body against hers comforted her, and she tried to imprint the feel in her memory, that she could recall him to her when they were parted. He kissed her, deeply and passionately, and all her worries were swept away. He did love her.

“My Jane,” he murmured into her hair. “I swear on my life, it shall not be long before we are together again.”

J
ANE AND
J
OHN ARRIVED AT THE COURT OF
C
HARLES’S SISTER
Mary of Orange at The Hague on a bitterly cold January day when sleet made it difficult to see the road ahead. They staggered into the Stadtholder’s Palace numb with the cold, and Lady Stanhope, Mary’s chief lady-in-waiting, greeted them and led Jane to the apartments of Mary’s attendants. Mary’s court was a far cry from the impoverished camp of exiles huddling around Charles in Paris. The ladies were gathered in a room bright with colourful painted wall panelling and ceiling and warmed by a fire roaring beneath a heavy marble mantelpiece.

“Come, warm yourself, you must be freezing,” Lady Stanhope said. She was about forty years old, Jane guessed, much older than the other ladies, and though she exuded a sense of authority and a certain primness, her smile was welcoming.

A fair-haired young woman in sea-foam green helped Jane to take off her wool cloak and scarf, which were dusted with snowflakes.

“I’m Dorothy,” she said, with a shy smile.

“And I’m Kate Killigrew,” said a pretty girl with bouncing russet curls and a faint sprinkle of freckles across her cheeks.

As Jane joined Mary’s ladies for hot chocolate and food before the fire, she was relieved to discover that they were all English. They had heard of her part in Charles’s escape and begged her to tell them the story, and she favoured them with a short version of her odyssey.

“We shall make arrangements tomorrow to have some clothes made for you,” Lady Stanhope said, rising to leave. “The Princess Royal—that is how our mistress prefers to be styled, not by her Dutch title—wishes you to know that she values extremely the assistance you provided for her brother, and that you shall want for nothing.”

After weeks of living in worn clothes filthy from her own sweat and the dirt of the road, and the few things she had been lent or given in Paris, the thought of new clothes sounded like heaven to Jane.

“Have you something to wear at supper?” Lady Stanhope asked. “Ah, yes, very nice,” she said as Jane pulled forth the plum-coloured silk she had received from Mademoiselle d’Épernon. “Of course someone can lend you anything else you need until your wardrobe is complete.”

W
HEN JANE HAD RESTED, BATHED, AND CHANGED HER CLOTHES
, Lady Stanhope took her and John to the apartments of the Princess Royal to be introduced. Mary of Orange was tall and slender, and dark-haired like Charles, with hazel eyes and a nose that was perhaps just a bit too long for her face. She raised Jane from her curtsy and kissed her cheeks, and smiled radiantly at John as he bowed over her hand.

“Welcome!” she cried. “It gives me much pleasure to be able to repay in some small measure the dangers you underwent on behalf of my dear brother. Everyone here has been anticipating your arrival, and will be most eager to hear your adventures.”

T
HE SMALL COMPANY GATHERED IN
M
ARY’S LAVISH APARTMENTS
that evening did indeed appear to be delighted to meet John and Jane, and crowded around them.

“Her Majesty Elizabeth, the Queen of Bohemia, my aunt,” Mary said, presenting an imposing-looking lady of about sixty in whom Jane saw a strong family likeness to Charles. “And her daughter, the Princess Louise Hollandine of the Palatine.”

Louise was fair, and somewhat resembled the Duke of York. Noting that both she and her mother were in black mourning dress, Jane recalled that Charles had told her that Queen Elizabeth’s daughter Henrietta Maria had died in September and her son Philip the year before. The Princess Mary, too, was in black, for the death of her husband the previous November.

The rest of the guests presented the appearance of England in little. John and Jane greeted their cousin Edward Broughton, a sturdy man of about John’s age who had been captain of the King’s Lifeguard and had escaped from his imprisonment after the Battle of Worcester.

“Jane!” he cried, kissing her cheek, and then embracing John. “When did we last meet?”