Winsor, Kathleen (44 page)

She
showed him her rooms with great pride, pointing out every detail so that he
should miss nothing. Rex was generous and gave her almost everything she asked
for; consequently he spent much of his time when not on duty gambling in the
Groom Porter's Lodge or at a tavern.

Among
her recent acquirements was a chest of drawers from Holland made of Brazilian
kingwood—chocolate brown with black veins, decorated with a great deal of
florid Dutch carving. There was a lacquered black Chinese screen, and in one
corner stood a what-not loaded with tiny figures: a tree of coral, a
blown-glass stag, an old Chinese knife-grinder worked in silver filigree. And
over the fireplace hung a three-quarter portrait of Amber.

"What
d'you think of me?" she asked, gesturing toward the portrait, tossing her
muff and fan aside.

Alsmbury
put his hands in his pockets and leaned back on his heels, examining it with
his head to one side. "Well, sweetheart, I'm glad I saw you in the flesh
first, or I should have
been troubled to think you'd grown so plump. And who sat for the mouth? That
isn't yours."

She
laughed beckoning him into the bedroom where she began to unpin her back hair.
"Being in the country hasn't changed you so much, Almsbury. You're still
as great a courtier as ever. But you should see the miniature Samuel Cooper did
of me. I'm supposed to be Aphro—I forgot what he called it —Venus, anyway,
rising from the sea. I stand like this—" she struck an easy graceful pose,
"and haven't got a thing on."

Almsbury,
sitting astride a low chair with his arms folded across the back, gave a low
appreciative hum. "Sounds mighty pretty. Where is it?"

"Oh,
Rex has it. I gave it to him for his birthday and he's carried it ever
since—over his heart." She grinned mischievously and began untying the
bows down the front of her gown. "He's mad in love with me. Lord, he even
wants to marry me now."

"And
are you going to?"

"No."
She shook her head vigorously, indicating that she did not care to discuss the
matter. "I don't want to get married."

Picking
up her dressing-gown, she went behind the screen to put it on. Just her head
and shoulders showed over the top of it, and as she took off her garments,
tossing them out one by one, she kept up a merry chatter with the Earl.

Finally
the waiter arrived and they went into the dining-room to eat. Rex had sent her
a message that he would be on duty at the Palace until late, or she would never
have dared eat her supper with a man, wearing only a satin dressing-gown. For
she had discovered long ago that Rex was not joking when he said that if he
took her into keeping he would expect a monopoly of her time and person. He
kept the beaus from crowding her too closely or impudently at the theatre and
discouraged them from visiting her—though all the actresses held their levees
at home just as the Court ladies did and entertained numbers of gentlemen while
they were dressing. The result was that during the last few months they had
quite given up Mrs. St. Clare. Rex had a formidable reputation as a swordsman,
and most of the tiring-room fops would rather see an apothecary for a clap,
than a surgeon for a flesh-wound.

Throughout
the meal Amber and the Earl talked with all the animation of old friends who
have not met for a long while and who have a great deal to say to each other.
She told him about her successes, but not her failures, her triumphs but not
her defeats. He heard nothing of Luke Channell or of Newgate, Mother Red-Cap or
Whitefriars. She pretended that she still had left a good deal of Lord
Carlton's five hundred pounds, deposited with her goldsmith, and he admitted
that she had been far more clever than most young country girls left to shift
for themselves in London.

It
was two hours later as they sat on her long green velvet-
cushioned
settle, empty wine-glasses in their hands and staring into the last glow of the
sea-coal fire, that Almsbury drew her into his arms and kissed her. For a
moment she hesitated, her body tense, thinking of Rex and how furious he would
be if another man kissed her, and then—because she liked Almsbury and because
he meant Bruce Carlton to her—she relaxed against him and made no protest
until, at last, he asked her to go into the bedroom.

Then
suddenly she shook back her hair and pulled the front of her gown together.
"Oh, Lord Almsbury! I can't! I should never have even let you think I
would!" She got up, feeling a little dizzy from the wine, and leaned her
head against the mantelpiece.

"Good
God, Amber, I thought you were grown up now!" He sounded exasperated and
more than a little angry.

"Oh,
it isn't that, Almsbury. It isn't because I'm still—" She was about to say
"waiting for Bruce," but stopped. "It's Rex. You don't know him.
He's jealous as an Italian uncle. He'd murder you in a trice—and turn me out of
keeping."

"He
wouldn't if he didn't know anything about it."

She
smiled skeptically, turning her head to look at him, though her hair fell
forward over her face. "Was there ever a man yet who could lie with a
woman and not tell all his acquaintance within the hour? The gallants say
that's half the pleasure of fornication—telling about it afterwards."

"Well,
I'm no gallant, and you damned well know it. I'm just a man who's in love with
you. Oh, maybe I shouldn't say that. I don't know whether I'm in love with you
or not. But I've wanted you since the first day I saw you. You know now that
what I told you that night is true, so don't put me off any longer. How much do
you want? I'll give you two hundred pound—put it with your goldsmith, toward
the day when you'll need it."

The
money was a convincing argument, but the thought that someday Bruce Carlton
might hear about it—and be hurt— was even more so.

It
was true, as Amber had told Almsbury, that Rex Morgan wanted to marry her.
During the past seven months they had been happy and content, leading a life of
merry companionable domesticity. They took an instinctive pleasure in doing the
same things, and it was heightened always by a warm suffusing glow of happiness
at the mere fact of being together.

The
summer just past they had been together most of the time, for with the King out
of town Rex had no official duties and the theatres were always closed for a
vacation period of several weeks—though twice Amber had gone down with the rest
of the Company to perform before their Majesties at Hampton Court. With Prudence
or Gatty or whomever she might have in service, they would pack a hamper and
ride out Goswell Street on warm June evenings to eat a picnic supper
at the lonely,
pretty little village of Islington. Several times they found a quiet spot in
the river and pulled off their clothes to go swimming, laughing and splashing
in the cool clean water, and afterwards while she dried her hair Rex would
catch a few fish for them to take home.

Or
they rowed up the river in a hired scull, Amber with her shoes and stockings
off and her ankles trailing in the water, screaming with delighted laughter to
hear Rex bandy insults and curses with the watermen—caustic-tongued old
ruffians who amused themselves by hooting and jeering obscenely at everyone who
ventured upon the river, whether Quakeress or Parliament man. At Chelsea they
would get out to lie dreamily in the thick meadow grass, watching the clouds as
they formed and passed overhead, and Amber would fill her skirt with
wild-flowers, yellow primroses, blue hyacinths, white dogwood. Then she would
open the hamper and spread a clean white linen cloth, laying on it the potted
neat's tongue, the salad which the celebrated French cook at Chatelin's had
made for her with twenty different greens, fresh ripe fruits, and a dusty
bottle of Burgundy.

They
seldom quarrelled—only when, rightly or wrongly, Rex's jealousy was aroused,
though before she had seen Almsbury she had never been unfaithful to him. But
she did drive out to Kingsland to see the baby once a week. For a long while
she contrived to keep her visits secret from him, but one day, to her
astonishment, he accused her of having been with another man. During the
violent quarrel which ensued she told him where she had been—and told him also
that she was married.

For
two or three days he was angry, but no matter what lies he caught her in he did
not seem to love her less, and even after that he asked her again to marry him.
She had refused before, pretending that she thought he was only joking, but now
she objected that it was impossible. Bigamy was punishable by death.

"He'll
never come back," said Rex. "But if he does—well, you let me alone
for that. I'll see to it you're a widow, not a bigamist."

But
Amber could not make up her mind to do it. She still had a lingering horror of
matrimony, for it seemed to her a trap in which a woman, once caught, struggled
helplessly and without hope. It gave a man every advantage over her body, mind
and purse, for no jury in the land would interest itself in her distress. But
neither that horror nor the greater one she had of being prosecuted for bigamy
was the real reason behind her refusal. She hesitated because in her heart she
still nursed an imp of ambition, and it would not let her rest.

If
I marry Rex, she would think, what will my life be? He'd make me quit the stage
and I'd have to start having babies. (Rex resented the child she had had—he
thought by her first husband—even though he had never seen the little boy, and
had a
sentimental desire for her to bear him a son.) And then most likely he'd grow
more jealous than ever and if I so much as came home a half-hour late from the
'Change or smiled at a gentleman in the Mall he'd tear himself to pieces.

He
probably wouldn't be as generous as he is now, either, and if I spent thirty pound
for a new gown there'd be trouble and he'd think last year's cloak could do me
again. First thing you know I'd grow fat and pot-bellied and dwindle into a
wife —and before I was twenty my life would be over. No, I like it better this
way. I've got all the advantages of being a wife because he loves me and won't
put me aside, and none of the disadvantages because I'm free and my own
mistress and can leave him any time I like.

She
had heard that King Charles had remarked more than once he considered her to be
the finest woman on the stage, and that in particular after her last
performance at Hampton Court he had told someone he envied the man who kept
her.

A
fortnight or so after Almsbury's return to town Amber got a new maid. She
dismissed Gatty one day when the girl surprised her taking a bath and talking
to his Lordship, sending her away with the warning that Almsbury had a great
interest at Court and would order her tongue cut out if she spoke to anyone at
all of what she had seen. She told Rex that she had turned the girl away
because she was pregnant, and sent Jeremiah to post a notice for a
serving-woman in St. Paul's Cathedral, where a good deal of such business was
done.

But
that same morning as she was riding from the New Exchange to a rehearsal, her
coach stopped at the golden-crowned Maypole, and while Tempest was bellowing
abuse at the driver and occupants of the coach that blocked his way, the door
was flung open and a girl leaped in. Her hair was dishevelled and her eyes
looked wild.

"Please,
mam!" she cried. "Tell 'im I'm your maid!" Her pretty face was
intense and pleading, her voice passionate. "Oh, Jesus! Here he comes!
Please,
mam!" She gave Amber a last imploring look and then retreated far back
into one corner, pulling the hood of her cloak up over her red-blonde curls.