Venus (27 page)

“I suppose he is occupied with another of his painted dolls,” declared Polly, looking mischievously at Richard. “Perhaps I had better find him.”

Richard gazed into the middle, distance, observing casually, “My aunt did enjoy your company on Wednesday. She has expressed the desire to introduce you to others of her friends. You would find their discourse most edifying, I assure you.”

“It is not friendly in you to fail to see the jest,” Polly told him, somewhat aggrieved at this thinly veiled threat.
“Why
must you take me home, and not Nick?”

De Winter sighed. “Let us achieve a degree of privacy and I will explain. This is not the place for argument. If you have no objection, we will go by water. ’Tis a pleasant evening, and I have need of the air.”

For all that they had become fast friends, and she had been using his first name for several weeks now, Richard could on occasion be irritatingly dictatorial, Polly reflected with a grimace. She much preferred Nick’s methods of ensuring her compliance! However, she yielded to necessity without further objection, allowing De Winter to tuck her hand beneath his arm as he escorted her from the palace.

“Well?” she requested, once they had attained Whitehall Stairs. “Where is Nick?”

“Have a little patience, child,” her companion advised, gesturing to a wherryman on the lookout for passengers to bring his small riverboat up to the steps. “Let us enjoy the evening on the water.”

Polly compressed her lips, stepping into the wherry, managing her skirts with considerable dexterity as she sat down. De Winter took his place opposite her and instructed the wherryman to row to the Somerset Stairs. He smiled at Polly’s indignant expression but said nothing, gazing about him instead with every sign of pleasure in the fine spring evening, as he hummed a little tune.

In fact, Richard was nowhere near as easy in his mind as he appeared. How best to broach the upcoming subject to Polly was exercising him considerably. He must somehow ensure that she did not feel betrayed by Kincaid; must somehow convince her of the vital political purpose that lay behind their request; must somehow couch the imperative in terms of a request, he amended to himself.

The wherry scraped against the steps at Somerset Stairs. Richard paid the oarsman his sixpence before assisting Polly onto dry land. It was a short walk from the river to the Strand, and from thence to Drury Lane. Polly kept silence as they walked. She had the conviction that something of moment was about to take place, yet she did not know why she should have this belief, since there was nothing overt in Richard’s demeanor to encourage it. But intuition was a powerful persuader; and intuition was also telling her that she was not going to enjoy whatever this momentous happening would turn out to be. Why was Nicholas not here?

The answer to that question was revealed in short order once they had reached her lodging. Politely, Polly offered her guest a glass of sherry before she sat upon the window seat beneath the diamond-paned casement, and waited. De Winter walked around the parlor with a restlessness most unusual in this generally suave and impassive aristocrat.

“Why do you not make a clean breast, sir?” Polly prompted quietly. “I find myself growing apprehensive and would dearly like to make an end of this.”

Very well. He placed his sherry glass upon the side table. “You have heard talk both here and in Nick’s house about-the way matters of government are conducted—”

“Are
not
conducted,” Polly corrected with raised eyebrow.

“Exactly so.” He permitted himself a small smile. “You understand, then, where Nick and I stand in this?”

“That you consider the king ill advised,” Polly said. “That the Cabal under Buckingham’s leadership is to a large extent responsible for this, and you would bolster the position of the chancellor at this time, because he is a more reliable minister than the Earl of Arlington, for instance.”

“I will tell you now, Polly, that myself, Nick, Sir Peter, and Major Conway have pledged ourselves to circumvent Buckingham’s destructive influence.” He picked up his sherry glass again, sipping slowly, gathering his thoughts.

“To set yourselves up in opposition to Buckingham can only be dangerous.” Polly frowned uneasily. “You and Nick both said that only a fool would make an enemy of the duke.”

Richard nodded. “We do not make our opposition obvious, Polly.”

“So how would you do this thing?” she asked as the flicker of unease blossomed into flame, and she still did not know why.

“We need someone who has access to Buckingham’s intimate circle,” De Winter said, deciding that directness was his best policy. “Someone whose presence would be so accepted that conversation would go on around her without thought. Someone who could be in privy places where documents might be left lying around—”

“Her?” Polly managed to get the one word out, the word that penetrated her confusion with the blinding speed of a rapier thrust.

“You,” affirmed Richard quietly.

“But … but how should I gain access to—” Then she saw Buckingham’s cynical, dissolute countenance bent upon her, the eyes afire with that lusting hunger; and she knew.

She sprang to her feet in a swish of satin petticoats and lace-edged gown. “You say Nick would have me do this? He knows that I cannot abide Buckingham.”

“Which is why I am deputed to present the case, Polly,” Richard said quietly. “Nick would not ask this of you himself. It is not a lover’s request, you must understand, but the request of a political faction of which Nick is a leading member. We have need of your services. England has need of your services, Mistress Wyat. Will you deny them?”

“I have little interest in politics,” Polly muttered, pacing the chamber. “Why should I sacrifice myself in this way? If it were necessary for Nick himself, then … then, maybe, I could—No, not maybe,” she added with a flash of impatience. “Of course I would … but—”

“This
is
for Nick,” De Winter interrupted. “He has pledged himself to this cause. The specter of civil war still hangs over the land, Polly. If the king sets himself up against the people, as his father did before him, then the specter will take substance. Buckingham does not see this danger. He cares only for the acquisition of power—power he will hold by ruling the king. You say you have no interest in politics. But surely you cannot view such a prospect with equanimity

“Nay.” Polly crossed her arms, hugging her breasts as if she were cold. “Of course I cannot. But is there no other way, Richard?”

“Villiers wants you,” Richard said bluntly. “That fact gives you the passport into his intimate circle. He will not suspect you of spying because he will see only what he thinks is there—a female actor with her bread to earn and one way in which to earn it. Such liaisons are common enough, and he is not known for his lack of generosity in these matters.”

Polly shuddered. “I do not see myself as a member of the duke’s harem, my Lord De Winter.”

Richard chewed his lip thoughtfully. It was not as if he had not expected resistance. “Why must you be a member of his harem?” he asked, apparently casual. “Are you not special
enough to hold your own place? And in the holding, you will provide us with the eyes and ears we must have.”

Polly poured herself a glass of sherry, belatedly offering the decanter to Richard. He accepted with a slight inclination of his head, refilled his glass, and waited for the result of her cogitations.

“Special,” she murmured after a few minutes, seeming to savor the word with the idea that had dropped suddenly into her head. There was one way to become special for George Villiers—the rich, ungovernable, never-thwarted duke.

“Think you that perhaps His Grace might be piqued to good purpose, Richard?” Her eyes glowed suddenly, lit with a speculation based on relief as she saw a way around this untenable dilemma.

“Pray continue,” he invited, unable to resist that infectious smile. “I am open to any modification.”

“Well …” She tapped pearly teeth with a slender forefinger. “His Grace is accustomed to his own way, is he not?” A nod answered her. “Suppose he should find me elusive? Sometimes offering, sometimes withdrawing, but always willing for the pursuit?”

“If he wants you badly enough, you will snare him with such tactics,” De Winter declared.

“And he wants me badly enough,” Polly stated quietly, quite without vanity or artifice. It was hardly a fact that gave her satisfaction, but in this instance, it could be put to good use. “I can play that part, Richard. I will spin a web that will intrigue him, that will ensure that he is constantly desirous of my company, always waiting for the moment of surrender—a moment that he is convinced is not far away. If I can achieve entry into his intimate circles with such tactics, that will suffice, will it not? I have only to be accepted as a presence.”

“I see no reason why it should not work,” Richard said thoughtfully, recognizing with relief that he was no longer engaged in the recruitment of an unwilling accomplice, but in shared planning with a partner. “We are interested only in
whatever impressions, whispers, plans, you can bring us, not in the methods you use to garner them.”

“And Nick?” Polly asked, her enthusiasm fading abruptly. When had the idea first come to him and his friends? she wondered dully.
Since
it had become clear that Buckingham had his eye upon her? And whose idea had it been? “Will it be important to him, do you think, that I can manage to extract the information without surrendering to the duke? Or does he view such a matter with indifference?”

“I do not think you need me to supply you with the answer to that,” Richard said gently. “He will be here soon. Why do you not ask him yourself? If you really need to know his answer.”

Polly sat down under a wash of fatigue. She did not think she needed to ask Nick the question, but she still wished he had had the courage to involve her in this conspiracy himself. In her naïveté, she thought that it would have come easier from him.

Richard looked at her, compassion in his eyes. Maturity was a painful process, and the school in which Polly must grow was harder than many. Somehow she had managed to scramble unsullied through a life that should have destroyed all illusions. Then she had met Nicholas Kincaid—a man who, loving her, would foster her illusions rather than destroy them. Now she must face a harsh reality where even love failed as shield, where love asked more of her than she could easily give.

“You need your bed,” he said after a while. “It has been an evening to try the strength of Atlas. Get you gone, now. I will remain until Nick returns.”

She smiled wearily, rising to her feet. “’Tis kind in you, Richard, but I’ll not trespass further on your time. I am not uncomfortable with my own company.”

“Maybe not, but I’ll stay nevertheless.” He spoke now with familiar briskness. “You’ve had no supper. I’ll ask Goodwife Benson to prepare ye a caudle. Get you to bed.”

“I do not need a nursemaid, Richard,” she protested. He merely smiled and pulled the bell rope. With a defeated
shrug, Polly went into the bedchamber to struggle alone with the ribbons, buttons, and laces of her complicated attire. The days of smock, petticoat, and kirtle were long gone, and she swore with Dog tavern vigor as she wrestled with the recalcitrant knots of her corset.

“I told you you have need of a lady’s maid.”

Polly whirled, pink-cheeked with her exertions, to the suddenly opened door of the bedchamber. “Nick! I did not hear you come in.”

“You were cursing like a Billingsgate fishwife,” he observed, shrugging out of his coat, crossing the room in his shirt sleeves toward her. “You could not possibly have heard anything but the sounds of your own voice.” Setting his hands upon her shoulders, he spun her around and tackled the laces with experienced fingers.

“Ahh! My thanks.” Polly breathed a sigh of relief, rubbing the life back into the constricted flesh beneath her smock. “I do not know why I ever consented to wear that instrument of torture!” She kicked the offending garment across the room.

“I think you do know why,” he said with quiet gravity. “Do you also know exactly why you have consented to this other matter—one considerably more distasteful than the wearing of a corset? I would have you certain sure of your own mind.”

“What did Richard tell you?” She walked over to the window and stood gazing out into the evening gloom, for the moment unwilling to look at him.

“Only that you had consented to participate in our plan; that you were fatigued and he had sent you to bed; and that since you had had no supper, he had bidden the goodwife prepare you a peppermint caudle.”

Polly could not help smiling at what she knew had to be a faithful rendition of Richard’s farewell speech to Nicholas. She could almost hear his voice delivering it.

There was a knock at the door. The goodwife bustled in with the bowl of spiced gruel mixed with wine. “This’ll put the heart in you,” she announced cheerfully, setting the
bowl on the tiring table. She examined Polly shrewdly. “Ye look as if ye need it, too, m’dear. They’re workin’ ye too hard, I’ll be bound.” An accusatory glance at Kincaid accompanied this statement. “Every afternoon on that stage. It’s not right, m’lord. Indeed, ’tis not. Barely a child, she is.”

Nicholas scratched his head, murmuring something vaguely conciliatory that seemed to satisfy the landlady, who gathered up Polly’s discarded clothes, taking them away with her. “If you had a maid, the goodwife would not be obliged to care for your wardrobe,” Nicholas observed, turning back the cover on the bed. “Get between the sheets, now. I do not think I can face further accusations of neglect and exploitation.”

“You do not neglect me, love. Or exploit me,” she said softly, clambering into bed. “I do only what I choose to do.”

“Is that truly so?” He handed her the peppermint caudle, then sat upon the bed beside her.

“Yes. But I could wish you had asked me yourself to engage in this spying.” Polly kept her eyes on the gently steaming mixture on her knees, stirring it thoughtfully with a pewter spoon. “It was cowardly to ask Richard to do it.”

Nick winced. “It was not through cowardice, moppet. I did not wish you to feel pressured. Perhaps it was conceit on my part, but I had thought you might find it harder to refuse me than Richard.”