Venus (5 page)

Margaret sipped her chocolate, torn between the desire to hear all that the maid had to tell her and the knowledge that listening to servants’ gossip was bad for household discipline. “And where is the girl now?” she asked, with an assumption of casualness.

There was an instant’s silence as Susan bent to poke the fire. “No one’s seen her, m’lady.” She hesitated, then continued boldly, “But Tom says that his lordship carried her into his bedchamber.” Susan kept her back to the bed, afraid that if there was an explosion of wrath, she might receive the overspill. Her statement could be considered insolent in its forwardness, and Lady Margaret corrected insolence with a supple hazel stick.

“I will rise,” announced her ladyship, sending Susan bustling to the armoire.

Since it would never occur to Lady Margaret to show herself outside her chamber in even the most respectable undress, it was an hour later before she deemed herself ready. Her graying hair, free of curl, was confined beneath a lace coif. A wide lace collar adorned the kirtle of black saye that she wore beneath a sober gray silk day gown. Not a touch of color lightened the Puritan severity; the unimpeachable lace was her only decoration.

Eyes followed her measured progress down the corridor to her brother-in-law’s chamber, but the owners kept themselves well hidden in doorways, or apparently busy with some domestic task that had brought them into the upper regions of the house. The house itself seemed to hold its breath as her ladyship rapped sharply on the oaken door.

This imperative demand for entrance brought Polly awake in the same instant that Nicholas pushed aside the bed curtains, irritably bidding the knocker enter. As his sister-in-law rustled in, his eyes fell on the occupant of the truckle bed; memory returned. He groaned inwardly. Margaret’s eyes held the fanatical light of battle, and he had fallen asleep before he had time to concoct either explanation or a plan of action.

“I did not believe it possible,” Margaret said, an extended forefinger shaking in accusation, her eyes blazing with righteous fury. “That you would bring a whore into this house—”

“I am no whore!” Polly protested indignantly before she had time to consider whether a discreet silence might be wiser. “You do not have the right—”

“Quiet!” thundered Nicholas, pressing a hand to his temples. The effects of mulled white wine, whatever potion had been intended to render him unconscious, and too little sleep were now combined to produce an appallingly dry mouth and a splitting headache. “Before you accuse, sister, you might wait for an explanation. You do not see the girl in my bed, do you?”

Margaret turned her full attention to the occupant of the truckle bed. Her mouth opened on a slight gasp. The girl’s beauty was undiminished by her tumbled hair, sleep-filled eyes, and clearly indignant expression. Such beauty, in Margaret’s opinion, could only be the devil’s gift, sent to lead the unwary into temptation. The wench was bold-eyed, too, meeting Margaret’s scrutiny, unflinching. It was not a reaction to which that lady was accustomed. Lowered eyes were the rule in her household when meeting the inspection of the mistress. She was dirty, too;
hex
smock begrimed, black beneath her fingernails, her hair bedraggled, dark with dirt.

The Lady Margaret made rapid assessment, concluding that whether the girl be trull or no, her brother-in-law had not enjoyed her favors—not yet, at least. He tended to the fastidious.

“She’s but a child, Margaret,” Nicholas said in soothing accents, gauging his sister’s reaction with a degree of accuracy. “An orphan. I found her last night in some danger of her life, through no fault of her own, and bethought me that you said Bridget was in need of a kitchen maid. You would not be so uncharitable as to deny her houseroom.” It was a shrewd stroke. The Puritan, while she could be narrow and hard, could not permit herself to be thought uncharitable, although the charity she would offer would not necessarily be of a kind that suited the recipient.

“But I do not wish to be a kitchen maid,” Polly expostulated. “I wish an introduction to—”

“Do you remember what we agreed?” Nicholas interrupted swiftly. If Margaret got wind of Polly’s theatrical ambitions, she would cast her into outer darkness without compunction. The theatre was the devil’s breeding ground!

Polly thought of being able to read and write, of a world far away from taverns and the grasping hands of drunkards, from Josh’s belt and the obscene leer in his eye. She thought of the now-broken circle of her allotted destiny, and she kept silent.

“How is she called?” Margaret asked, directing the question at Nicholas.

“Polly,” he answered. “What is your surname, Polly?”

Polly shrugged. “Same as Prue’s was before she married Josh, I suppose. Don’t know my father’s name,” she added. “Prue didn’t know either.”

Nicholas winced as the pounding in his head reached a new pitch, unaided by this still uninformative if artless recital. “And what was Prue’s name before she married?”

“Wyat,” Polly said. “But I’ve no need of it.”

“Of course you have need of it,” declared the Lady Margaret. “No decent girl goes around unnamed.”

“But I am a bastard,” Polly pointed out, with devastating effect.

“You are insolent!” Margaret glared in ice-tipped fury, and Polly looked at Nicholas in sudden alarm. She was accustomed to bearing the brunt of Josh’s anger, and Prue’s on many occasion, but this lady seemed much more formidable than either of them.

“She but speaks the truth,” Nicholas said swiftly. “It is innocence, not insolence, sister.”

There was a tense silence while Margaret, lips compressed, continued to fix Polly with a baleful eye. Then, to Polly’s heartfelt relief, she turned back to her brother. “Where are her clothes?”

Nicholas scratched his head; he had been expecting this question, but no satisfactory answer had yet come to mind. “There is the difficulty, sister. She has none but her smock.”

Margaret looked astounded. “How should that be?”

“It is a little difficult to explain, and I do not care to do so at present.” Kincaid opted for the assumption of authority—the master of the house who chose not to be troubled by certain matters. “Send one of the girls to the Exchange to purchase necessities for her. I will bear the cost myself; it need not come out of your household purse. In payment for her services as kitchen maid, she will receive three pounds a year and her keep.” A hard look at Polly ensured her continued silence.

Margaret was not happy, but she could not gainsay the orders of her brother-in-law. Her own authority was dependent
upon his, for a man was master in his own house. It was a sore shame that Nicholas, unlike his late-lamented older brother, seemed to care little for the sober and devout regime that she and her late husband had fashioned for their household during the days of the Lord Protector. But Nicholas, his brother’s heir, had been Baron Kincaid for the last three years, and his widowed sister-in-law was dependent upon him for house and home. Not that he was ever ungenerous in spirit or fact, but Margaret wished for the past, when he was still leading the life of a younger son, seeking what advancement he could at the court, where he was so manifestly at home. Now, with such a one at its head, what had been
her
household was becoming infused with the dangerous ways of that same loose and licentious court.

Such thoughts were acid and wormwood, as usual. She turned to the cause of all this trouble. “Come,” she said shortly to Polly. “It is not decent for you to be in here.” She went to the door, calling for Susan, who appeared, wide-eyed, almost before her name had been spoken. “Take her down to the kitchen.” Margaret pushed Polly through the door with a grimace of distaste. “I will come down and see what is to be done with her in a minute.”

“Sister!” Nicholas spoke with sudden briskness as he got out of bed, drawing a furred nightgown over his shirt. “One thing more.” He walked to the window and drew back the heavy curtains, examining the gray day with a slight frown. “I know you do not believe in sparing the rod, Margaret, and while I would not in general interfere in your running of this household, which you do impeccably, in this instance you will stay your arm. If you find fault in her, bring it to my attention. Is it clear?”

Margaret’s lips tightened. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a manner. “And is she not to be subject to my authority, then, brother? I cannot have, in my household, one who is excused faults for which others are punished.”

“You will bring such faults as there may be to
my
attention,” he repeated with gentle emphasis. “I do not imagine
such a slight diversion from the usual will disturb the immaculate order of the house. Your hand on the reins is too secure, my dear sister.”

“And do you find fault in that?” She spoke stiffly through compressed lips, her backbone rigid as a steel rod.

“I think you are on occasion a little severe,” he said with a sigh. His head was worsening by the minute, and he could not find the energy to speak with his usual circumspection. Margaret had been left to his charge by his brother’s last wish, and he would honor that commitment in more than letter, for all that he despised the narrow rigidity of the Puritan. He had discoursed endlessly with Edward on the possibility of a happy medium between a life governed to the last degree by the rules of divinity and sobriety and one where there were no rules except those of excess. But Edward had been a learned Puritan, one with whom it was possible to discourse. His wife, unfortunately, saw only dogma, and Nick, for love of his dead brother, was obliged to keep the peace with the dogmatist. However, on this occasion, if Margaret’s sensibilities were wounded by the truth, it could not be helped. He would not subject Polly to the Puritan’s severity, certain as he was that that somewhat mischievous personality with its talent for improvisation would be sure to offend without intent within a very short space of time. However, he reflected with a slight smile, if that brute Josh had not managed to beat the spirit out of her, it was unlikely that Margaret would succeed.

The enigmatic smile did nothing to improve matters with his sister-in-law. “You are entitled to your opinion, brother,” she said with harsh dignity. “I must, of course, be glad to have my faults pointed out to me. You may rest assured that I shall reflect upon what you have said.” She turned on her heel, and left his chamber, closing the door with a gentleness that contained more reproach than the most violent slam.

Nicholas winced, pulling the bell for his footboy. Somehow he was going to have to weave a path through this tangle, and he had best start by discussing last night’s inspiration
with De Winter. He had failed to make the rendezvous at the Dog last night, but he would be found at court this morning, where there would be opportunity for a brief word, a new rendezvous. Buckingham’s suspicious eye had not yet fallen upon them, and for as long as they continued to play the gay courtiers with nothing on their minds but the pleasures of lust and dalliance, it would not do so.

If all went according to plan, the duke’s eye would eventually fall upon the most ravishing actor yet to grace the king’s theatre on Drury Lane. And that actor would then have another part to play.

W
hen Lord Kincaid finally left his bedchamber, he was feeling somewhat less fragile, although his hands had proved inordinately clumsy when it came to the tying of his cravat—a sartorial activity that had consequently taken him a full half hour to complete, and had left the chamber floor littered with the crumpled evidence of his failures. His eyes were heavy, but no fault could be found with the cream silk waistcoat revealed through the slashed turquoise doublet, or his brocade coat, embroidered in silver, the wide sleeves turned up to reveal the lace cuffs of his shirt. His gloves were embroidered, his shoes buckled with silver, and his lordship had every reason to be satisfied with an appearance that would come under the informed and critical scrutiny of all those who attended the court of King Charles that morning.

He descended the staircase and paused in the hall, taking a pinch of snuff from the little onyx box that he then dropped back into the wide pocket of his coat while he pondered the question of whether the uncertain weather precluded his walking to Whitehall. The air would do him good, but his garments would not take kindly to rain. A loud caterwauling broke into this not unimportant debate.

“Gawd, sir, whatever’s that!” Young Tom, who had hastened
to open the great front door for his master, jumped as if he had been burned, and the door banged shut again.

“It sounds remarkably like a scalded cat,” observed Kincaid, frowning deeply. The wailing, which seemed to originate from the back regions of the house, increased in volume. It was not at all the sort of sound one expected to hear in a gentleman’s household, and Nicholas was soon in little doubt as to who was making it. But why? It was clearly incumbent upon him to find out.

His lordship did not in general frequent the working areas of the house, so his arrival in the kitchen caused gasps of alarm from the group there assembled. As far as he could judge, everyone, from the boot boy to the cook, was present, witnessing a scene presided over by a grim-faced Lady Margaret, swathed in a large white apron. Polly, wailing piteously, was seated on a low stool before the range whilst her ladyship, mouth set in an unyielding line, was pulling a steel comb through the tangled mass of honey-colored hair.