Venus (42 page)

“Well, perhaps you should write and ask him what he thinks,” suggested Polly, peeling the steaming nut. “Before my lord writes to his steward. Just in case Oliver does not care for the idea.”

“Oh, ’e will,” Sue said with confidence. She looked dreamily into the fire. “Just think on’t, Polly. To be married, with my own ’ouse, and babes, and a cow, and a chicken …” The thought of such plenty rendered her speechless for a minute, then she said curiously, “D’ye think of marrying, Polly?”

The question triggered the old unease, the uncertainty that she usually managed to suppress by refusing to think beyond the loving glories of the present. Now she lied. “I’ve never thought on it, Sue. I’m an actor, and there’s Nick. Why would I want to marry?” She smiled slightly, reaching into the fire for another chestnut so that Sue could not see her face. “There are wives and there are whores in the world
you and I come from, Susan. You are made to be wife, and I to be whore.” She shrugged and made the lie complete. “I am content with my lot. Cottages and chickens and cows and babes would not please me half so much.”

“But what about when ’is lordship takes a wife?” Susan asked diffidently. “Will ’e keep you, d’ye think?”

That was the nub—the aspect of the future that Polly dared not dwell upon. Nicholas, Lord Kincaid, would need a wife—and it could not be a Newgate-born, tavern-bred bastard. Society might not frown too heavily on an actor’s becoming a baroness, but Polly Wyat had more than just the stage in her background, as she and Nick knew. Women with her dubious origins did not make the wives of noblemen and the mothers of their heirs, however much they were loved. So what would happen when Nick did take a wife? Would a wife look complacently upon an established mistress? Or would she demand he throw up his whore and devote his full attention to the marriage bed? In the shoes of this putative wife, Polly felt that
she
would most certainly insist. It was a desolate thought. “One day I must ask him,” she said with a light laugh, another shrug. She was not an actor for nothing.

“Now, do you not think ye should discover Oliver’s views on this?” She returned briskly to the original subject, and Sue, fortunately, found it sufficiently absorbing to put the other matter out of her head.

“But ow am I to ask ’im?” Susan frowned, then her face cleared. “Ye’ll write the letter for me, won’t ye, Polly? Now y’are so book-learned.”

Polly looked a little doubtful. “I can read all right, anything at all now; but I’ve not a fair hand.” She grimaced. It was a subject on which Nick was inclined to be testy, maintaining quite correctly that if she bothered to apply herself to the task, she could manage to produce something that did not look as if it had been written by a rampant rabble of centipedes. “But I’ll try.”

Getting up from the floor, she went to the press for paper, sharpened a goose quill, and sat down at the table to com
pose the missive. Sue came to stand behind her, exclaiming in admiration as Polly demonstrated this amazing art of writing. “Who’s to read it for him?” Polly asked, shaking the sand caster over the script.

“Oh, there’ll be someone.” Susan peered closely. “What’s that squiggle there?”

“’Tis just a squiggle,” Polly said regretfully. “I told you I have not a fair hand. But there’s fewer blots than usual. Shall I read it to you? Then you can say what else you want written.”

The task took them well into the night, as the fire died and the candles guttered, but so absorbed were they, they noticed nothing until Polly shivered suddenly. “Put more coals on the fire, Sue. We’re like to freeze to death.”

The sound of the front door made them both start. “’Tis Nick,” Polly said, relaxing at the familiar tread.

“What the deuce goes on here?” demanded Nick, coming into the parlor. “’Tis near two in the morning.”

“Oh, we have been writing a letter to Oliver,” Polly told him cheerfully, reaching up to kiss him in greeting. “At least, I have been writing.”

“Then heaven send Oliver uncommon powers.” Nick tossed his cloak onto the settle. “He’ll never be able to decipher it, else. You might just as well leave him in ignorance.”

“Oh, that is unjust,” Polly exclaimed. “I have made it fair. Only see.” She held out her handiwork.

Nick scrutinized the communication, returning it with a head shake of mock exasperation. “You spell most vilely, Polly. I swear I should have used the rod to teach you with.”

“Oh, I do not care a jot for your opinion,” Polly declared. “It says what Sue wished it to say.”

“Then it had best go to the carrier without delay.” Nick took his long clay pipe from the mantel. “Be off with you to your bed, Susan.”

He lit the pipe and stood, shoulders to the hearth, squinting through the fragrant blue smoke as if trying to decide on something.

Polly stood immobile, afraid that a movement would distract
him, and she did not want him distracted because just possibly he was deciding to confide in her. A dreadful thought reared an ugly head, nurtured by her conversation with Sue. Perhaps he had resolved to take a wife, and was even now trying to think how best to break it to her.

Nicholas was thinking of the conversation he had just had with his friends. It was clear to them all that for some cause, Kincaid was regarded with deep disfavor by the king. While he had not been denied admittance to Whitehall since their return from Wilton, he was made to feel like a leper, ostracized by all but his special friends. It was a pattern familiar to all habitués of Whitehall in these days of favoritism and conspiracies, both real and imagined. In a society defined by a complete absence of trust, no one was really safe. A certain coolness would be noticed, an absence of attention if one approached the king; then came the frown, the turned shoulder that denied audience; then came the whispers that fed more whispers; and a man was on his way to outer darkness.

Matters had now reached this last stage for Nicholas, and he was no nearer to understanding the cause than he had been at Christmas. None of his friends could throw light on the matter, either. They knew only that Kincaid was persona non grata, that the king mistrusted him, and it was best not to be seen in his company if one was not to be tarred with the same brush.

His present dilemma was a difficult and a dangerous one. He had two choices: to brave it out, taking the risk that no more than mood and whim lay behind his present disfavor; or he could flee London, rusticate in Yorkshire until some other matter took the king’s attention, to put Kincaid out of sight, out of mind. The latter course would be the sensible one if he thought there was a concrete reason for King Charles’s anger and mistrust. Concrete reasons led to the Tower and the executioner’s block. But he could come up with nothing. And if he fled, what was to be done with Polly? As his mistress, she might also be endangered if he left her behind. Yet to take her away would take her from her
beloved theatre at a high point in a career that depended upon being in the public eye. He did not think he had the right to do that—not without absolute certainty of danger. She was not his wife yet, when all was said and done. Fortunately for her, he thought mirthlessly. In his present anomalous position, the greater the perceived distance between them, the better.

“Are you going to leave me?” Polly heard herself whisper, quite without volition. The bleak look on his face frightened her more than anything she could have imagined, and the need to know what caused it had become invincible, regardless of what misery the knowledge might spell for her.

Nick started at this uncanny reading of his thoughts. What could she know of this? “Why would you think such a thing?” he demanded, his voice harsh without intention.

Polly bit her lip, her fire-warmed cheeks cooling with the chill that seemed to enwrap her. “I do not know why; but you appear so distracted, and you will not tell me of the cause. I … I was thinking of marriage.” This last came out in a rush, and she dropped her eyes lest he read her panic.

“Marriage!” What sort of a mind reader was she? But now was not the moment for such a subject in all its complexities; not now when he was enmeshed in a web of an unknown’s spinning, and he must make immediate decisions that could well have far-reaching consequences for both their lives. “Do you know what o’clock it is?” he demanded irritably. “When I decide ’tis time to talk of marriage, I will apprise you of the fact in good order.”

“And I suppose that then I must find another protector,” Polly said, unable to help herself. Once the monster had risen, it would not return peaceably to its lair.

Nicholas closed his eyes on a weary sigh. Why on earth was she playing this silly game now? Had she no more understanding of his bone-deep exhaustion, his dreadful apprehension than to make ridiculous jests? He heard truculence in her voice, rather than the anxiety this was designed to mask. He saw her pallor and interpreted it as fatigue; the
gaze that would not meet his, he interpreted as the petulance of an overtired child.

“Do not talk such arrant nonsense,” he said shortly. “It seems to me that you lack even common sense. You were exhausted four hours ago, but instead of seeking your bed like the rational grown woman you are supposed to be, you waste the night in idle chatter with the maid.”

“I had thought that was why Susan lived here,” Polly fired back, confused resentment overcoming anxiety. “So that I should have someone with whom to engage in idle chatter!”

“I do not always make the right decisions, particularly where you are concerned,” snapped his lordship. “Get you to bed straightway.”

“I will not on your say-so,” she declared, furious at this apparently unprovoked attack.

Nicholas sighed. “Polly, I am awearied, too much so to join battle. Go to bed or not, as you please.”

“I do please!” Polly banged into the bed chamber, there to crawl beneath the quilt, falling asleep with sticky lashes and tear-wet cheeks and salt upon her lips.

Nicholas remained beside the fire, tobacco and wine providing a measure of spurious ease. Eventually he went to bed, slipping an arm beneath the sleeping figure, rolling her into his embrace before finding his own uneasy oblivion.

T
hey came for Lord Kincaid that same night, in the hour before dawn when the spirit is at its lowest ebb and the night’s chill at its most pervasive.

The hammering at the street door, the bellowed “Open in the name of the king!” brought casements flung wide the length of Drury Lane, and Goodman Benson, in nightcap and gown, hurrying from his bed, shivering with fear and cold, to draw back the bolts.

The lieutenant pushed past him, a troop of six soldiers at his back. “We are come for Lord Kincaid. Where is he to be found?”

Benson, quivering like an aspen leaf, pointed abovestairs, unable to find his voice in the face of this terrifying visitation.

The lieutenant, hand on sword, mounted two steps at a time, flinging open the door to the darkened parlor. He crossed the empty room, threw wide the door to the bedchamber. “My Lord Kincaid?” he demanded into the darkness, his soldiers crowding at his back.

Nick had heard the banging, had had time to recognize what was about to happen, but not to prepare himself. Now he reached for flint and tinder, lighting the candle beside the bed. Polly had sat up, her eyes wide in incomprehension, her
tumbled hair doing little to conceal her breasts as the quilt fell to her waist.

The intruders’ eyes, as one pair, became riveted upon that creamy, rose-tipped perfection. Nicholas took hold of the cover and drew it up. “You have need of this,” he said quietly. “To what do I owe this pleasure, gentlemen?” An eyebrow quirked in sardonic question.

“You are Lord Kincaid?” The lieutenant approached the bed, one hand still on his sword hilt, although the man in the bed was both naked and unarmed.

“The very same,” Nicholas said with an ironic bow of his head.

“What is happening?” Polly found her voice at last, clutching the sheet to her neck as she stared at a scene that smacked of a Bedlamite’s lunacy.

“Hush, sweetheart,” Nick commanded, gently but with authority. “You are to say nothing at all.”

“I bear a warrant for your arrest, my lord,” intoned the lieutenant. “You are to be committed to the Tower, there to await impeachment.”

“On whose authority?” asked Nick, still quiet.

“His Grace the Duke of Buckingham signs the warrant in the king’s name,” came the answer, promptly.

“And the charge?”

“Treason, my lord.”

Polly gasped. “But that is—”

“Hold your tongue!” Nicholas snapped. “May I see the warrant, Lieutenant?”

Polly subsided, realizing that she must sit still, and watch and listen. Only thus could she perhaps find a clue to this mystery. Surely it was a mistake; Nick would read the warrant and laugh, because it was meant for some other Lord Kincaid. But she knew that there was no mistake, and when Nick, having perused the document, handed it back without a word, the little cold space in her heart began to expand until she felt a great, terrifying emptiness.

“Will you grant me privacy to dress, Lieutenant?” Nicholas
asked politely. “If you await me in the parlor, I will join you in a few moments.”