Royal Harlot Read online

  “I am sorry,” he said, sharing my sadness. There was no need to mention his own losses to Cromwell’s evil war. The awful litany was well known to his followers: his father, Charles I, tried and beheaded, his mother in penniless exile in France, his brothers and sisters scattered throughout the courts of Europe, his home and property destroyed, his rightful kingdom torn from him.

  Strange to think how much alike we were, this king and I, each of us without fathers or homes or anything of value beyond what we carried inside ourselves. Strange to think, too, how such suffering could be shared, just as desire could become a remedy for easing that same pain.

  Even for a gambler born.

  He cradled my face in his hand, his fingers warm against my cheek and jaw. “So you’re a Villiers. That makes us distant relations, doesn’t it?”

  “Cousins, sir,” I whispered, and dared to touch my hand to the royal person. In every way, so great a prize would be worth every risk. “Though far removed, cousins still.”

  “Then kiss me, sweet cousin,” he said, his dark face coming close over mine. “Kiss me now.”

  Chapter One

  LUDGATE HILL, LONDON

  June 1656

  “This is the house, miss,” called the driver of the hackney carriage as he climbed from his box. “Was they expecting you?”

  “Oh, yes.” Eager as only a fifteen-year-old can be, I didn’t wait for his help but hopped down boldly to the dusty street on my own, still clutching the crumpled paper with my mother’s address.

  Here was London, London at last! I gazed about at the close-packed houses and the tall square tower of St. Paul’s, my eyes as wide as tea dishes and my mouth gaping like a fish’s. What else could I do, truly? I’d spent all of my short life tucked away in Suffolk for safekeeping, first with a nursemaid, then with a country woman my mother had paid to keep me from trouble, and little else. I was plump and sleek as a young wood-pigeon, and with as little cleverness as that bird, too. Though most who knew me later would never credit it, I came to London as innocent as any other country lass who’s plucked up from the tavern stage by a cunning bawd to break and school for brothel work.

  But on Ludgate Hill that sunny afternoon, there was no waiting bawd to sell me into the fleshly trade for profit. My own mother would do well enough for that.

  Eagerly I presented myself at the doorway, shaking the dust of the road from my best stuff petticoat. My mother’s infrequent letters always lamented her constant lack of funds, and how far down in the world she had tumbled since the poor king had been beheaded by Oliver Cromwell’s followers and the Protectorate had taken to persecuting all good Royalists like us.

  I’d understood, or thought I had. No extra money for ribbons or sweets ever came with those letters. I was assured of her distant love, but never felt or saw the proof. Even deep in Suffolk, I’d spent my childhood alone beneath the pall of Cromwell’s Eastern Association, those misguided dour folk who had first raised the parliamentary army against the crown. England had been torn by civil war for most of my short life; I knew no other way. I’d been taught to loathe this parliamentary army, the ones who’d killed my father when I’d been scarce more than a babe, and caused my mother to leave me behind when she’d wed again.

  Yet while I’d heard how the bulk of my mother’s great wealth and lands had long since been seized by the government, she and my stepfather—who was also by blood my uncle, having been my father’s cousin—were still the second Earl and Countess of Anglesea. To my wide country eyes, their London home seemed large and handsome, with white stone steps and more window glass than I’d ever seen in any house. The maidservant who finally opened their glossy painted door was dressed far better than I, her skirts smartly pinned back from her petticoat to display green thread stockings.

  “Please tell Lady Anglesea that I am arrived,” I said, smiling wide and squinting in the sun.

  The maid kept the door half-closed, looking down her nose at my untrimmed kerchief and flat chip hat. “What name?”

  “Miss Barbara Villiers,” I said proudly. “Her Ladyship’s only daughter.”

  With reluctance the maidservant finally opened the door wide enough to admit me and the driver with my traveling trunk. I paid him with my last shillings and tucked my empty purse away into my pocket while the maidservant went to fetch my mother. I was left alone in the hall, my heart thumping with anticipation. I’d not seen my mother in four years, the last time she’d come to visit me in Suffolk, and this lack of welcome worried me.

  “This way, miss,” the maidservant said as she returned and bid me follow her up the stairs. “The footman shall see to your trunk.”

  Uncertainly I stood in the doorway to my mother’s chamber. Though it was afternoon, she was still abed, sitting up against the bolsters with a peeled orange in a blue-and-white porcelain dish in her hand and a small black spaniel curled asleep on the coverlet beside her. The bed’s embroidered hangings had been turned up into swags for the day, and the two tall-backed chairs beside the bed showed that my mother was in the habit of receiving guests in this fashion. Her fair hair was arranged in stiffened curls, spilling from a small lace cap, and her blue satin jacket, fastened before with three pink bows, was banded at the sleeves and throat with rich brown fur. Even here in bed, pearls like fat dewdrops glistened at her ears, with more pearls around her pale throat.

  “Come, Barbara, and greet me properly,” she said, setting the dish beside her on the coverlet as she offered her cheek for me to kiss. “There’s nothing to be gained by being shy, especially with your own mother.”

  “Good day, madam,” I said as I curtseyed prettily, the way I’d been taught. I then stepped forward to the bed to kiss her dutifully, noticing how she smelled of the orange, and how the pink of her cheek seemed to sit on the surface of her skin.

  “You’re much larger than I recall,” she said, taking my hand to hold me near so she could study me. “Like a dairymaid. I suppose that comes of so much cream and eggs. At least you’ve all your teeth.”

  I pulled my hand away. “I’d always judged it better to have them than not.”

  “Now, miss, don’t be pert,” she warned. “You’re strong and lusty in the country manner, true, but gentlemen will see that as a promising sign for breeding. We must put more boning and a wider busk into your corsets to narrow you, and then I’ll have my maid lace you more tightly to give you a suitable waist. Take down your hair, so I might see it.”

  I loosened the ribbons of my hat, unpinned the high knot of my braid, and with my fingers pulled the plait apart and shook my hair over my shoulders and to my waist. Surely she’d find no fault here: my hair was deep shining chestnut, thick and curling.

  “It was much lighter when you were a babe.” She reached out and captured a lock, rubbing it gently between her fingers. Her father—my grandfather—had been a famous merchant in the City of London, trading silks and spices to great profit, and surely the method of my mother’s considered appraisal of my hair must have come from his mercer’s touch. “This is Villiers hair, like your father’s, and your eyes—turn toward the window, child, so I might judge the color.”

  Obediently I turned my face toward the leaded glass casement. My eyes were often remarked, so dark a blue that they were mistook for black, and framed with thickets of dark lashes unlike my hair.

  “As I thought,” she pronounced as she reached once again for the dish with the orange. “That’s more of your Villiers legacy, Barbara, and precious little Bayning. The first duke had those same rare eyes, and look how far they carried him.”

  Sheltered as I’d been, even I knew of that first duke: my notorious great-uncle, George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham. A most beautiful youth at the court of King James I, he’d used his charm and grace to win the favor of the slobbery old pederast king. I’d overheard tales of my uncle and his scandalous actions when my elders thought I wasn’t listening, and learned how much he’d been hated yet envied in his time, and how even no
w, thirty years after he’d been killed, he was still so reviled that his murderer was lauded a hero. But I also knew that through his beauty, my uncle had raised himself to a dukedom, and his family—my family—to power and influence that continued now with the second duke, in exile on the Continent with his friend, the young King Charles II.

  Yet no one before had dared tell me that I favored this fantastical uncle so, and the notion startled me both with its possibilities and its hazards.

  “Do not look so shocked, Barbara,” my mother said, her voice brittle. “I cannot provide you with a suitable fortune with which to attract a husband. No one will care for the Villiers name now, not when the most desired brides are the daughters of Cromwell’s ill-born generals. You must pray that your beauty makes some suitable gentleman desire you in spite of your poverty. Why else do you think I’ve brought you here to town?”

  “I—I thought you wished to see me,” I stammered through my disappointment. “I thought you wished my company.”

  “Your company?” repeated my mother with scathing incredulity as she bit into another slice of the orange. “You’re fifteen, Barbara. When I was your age, your father had already fought a duel with Lord Newark for the right to my hand, and I was wed to him before my next birthday.”

  Her smugness, and my own dismay, made me speak more frankly than was perhaps wise. “You were worth twenty thousand pounds a year. You’ve told me that yourself. That’s why you’d gentlemen fighting over you.”

  Her pale eyes sparked. “You would fault me for having no fortune left to lavish on you? Foolish child! Have you any notion where that money has gone?”

  “Any child knows that.” I flipped my loose hair over my shoulders. “Because we’ve followed the rightful cause of the king and Father died fighting for it, we’ve been treated like traitors, and all our estates confiscated by the low villains of Cromwell’s Parliament.”

  “What a tidy explanation.” She took another slice of the orange, plucking the white membrane from the tender fruit with vengeful precision. “But only half the tale, you see. What you, child, do not know is that the slow rapine of my estate was begun by your own father, long before Cromwell’s war. Your father made loans to his high-blown friends, secured by their property. Ten thousand to the Earl of Cleveland! Another eighteen thousand to the Duke of Lennox! It was nothing to your father, yet less than nothing to those fine friends. For years I’ve tried to sue for repayment, but where do I take my case when there’s no longer a House of Lords? Where’s my recourse when the estates that were my security have been sequestered by another pack of thieves?”

  She bit into the orange as if the fruit itself were those negligent lords, heedless of the sweet juice that sprayed and stained the silk of her jacket.

  “But that is not all, Barbara,” she said. “Consider all the money I’ve tossed away upon those drabs who raised you in the country. I can get nothing from those others, but you—you owe it to me, yes, to make as favorable a match as you can.”

  I’m certain she intended this speech to make me feel suitably contrite and docile. I hadn’t known that my father had made such loans against her dowry, reason enough, I thought, not to let my fortunes depend entirely upon my husband. Perhaps if she’d seen fit to offer me so much as a slice of her orange and a smidgen of kindness, I might have gone that way with her. But instead the obligation she wished to instill in me turned against her, and made me feel not filial duty but rebellion.

  “Perhaps I do not wish to wed so soon, madam,” I said tartly. “Perhaps I’d rather enjoy the pleasures of the city before I am saddled with some tedious husband.”

  “The pleasures of the city are vastly overrated, Barbara,” she said with acid on her tongue. “If you do not take care, you will find those ‘pleasures’ will bring you nothing but sorrow and pox.”

  I turned away without her permission, and in unhappy petulance went to stand before the grate. There was no fire, it being a warm day, but over the mantel hung a framed engraving that at once caught my interest.

  A melancholy portrait of the martyred King Charles I was flanked by smaller ovals with his two elder sons, James, the Duke of York, and Charles, now King Charles II; pictures such as Royalists would keep in secret, for such shows of loyalty were banned by parliamentary law.

  James was comely enough, with a winning smile and fair, flowing hair, but it was his brother the king who both fascinated and attracted me. Charles was a young man not so much older than myself, with coal-black hair and dark, heavy-lidded eyes that were more Italianate than English. I had yet to kiss a man, or have a kiss bestowed upon me, yet still I intuited the sensuality in this young king’s full lips, and the warmth that Nature must have granted with his regal blood.

  “I wish there were still a royal court in London,” I said wistfully, more to the engraved king than to my mother.

  “I suspect you’ll find mischief enough here, Barbara, without courtiers to lead your way.” My mother sighed crossly behind me, and I heard the clatter of her setting her now-empty dish on the table beside the bed, as if she wished to discard me, too. “I’ll see that you’re properly dressed as fits your rank, and taught the skills that seem so sadly lacking in you. Then Lord Anglesea and I will introduce you into company, with the hope that you will attract a suitable attachment, a gentleman with not only the proper political connections to help us but a fortune as well.”

  “I am ready, madam,” I said, turning to face her. I was so eager, so confident, to start this new life, I was almost giddy with it. Not even my mother’s ill humor could tamp my spirits. “For whatever London may offer, I’m ready.”

  As summer progressed, I began to take my place in this new world, as boldly and as bravely as any voyager exploring new countries to stake beneath his own flag. To anyone who recalled the old London, before the war, this new version under Cromwell’s rule must have seemed but a withered, empty shell. My mother and my uncle complained of it often, as if all the deprivations and changes had been ordered specifically for their torment.

  The playhouses were long since shuttered, puppet shows and traveling acrobats banned, and the gardens made for pleasure empty. Music was forbidden, from the orchestras and singers who had entertained the court to the great choirs in the churches. Most celebrations and holidays—May Day, Christmas, Twelfth Night, St. Valentine’s Day—were deemed either pagan or papist, and likewise forbidden. Books and papers were strictly censored, and nothing could be printed without a special government license. The grand houses that had belonged to the noblest families of the country had been confiscated and given to Cromwell’s generals instead.

  Even the great cathedral of St. Paul’s on Ludgate Hill, near to where we lived, had been sadly ravaged, its colored glass windows smashed, its hangings and high altar destroyed, and its long nave converted to a stable for use by the parliamentary cavalry.

  But to me, with nothing but the tedium of Suffolk for comparison, London seemed an endless string of diversions and amusing company. We Royalists lived beneath the surface of Protectorate London, like clever foxes tunneling our burrows beneath the fields, and so long as we kept to ourselves and drank to His Sacred Majesty’s health and return to the throne out of their hearing, we escaped the government’s reprobation. This wasn’t so very hard. At that time London had nearly 300,000 citizens, behind only Paris and Constantinople in size, and as many before me had discovered, it’s always easier to keep from notice in a crowded city than in a country village.

  If the playhouses were closed, then the players now gave their performances in the great chambers of private houses, for a smaller, select audience. Musicians who had once performed at royal masques and other palace entertainments now gave their concerts for us. We attended fine suppers or visited the more genteel dining houses. We rode through the parks in carriages or along the river in boats. We played every manner of card game: whist, ombre, bassett. We even attended church, and flirted shamelessly with one another over our pews, ignoring
the fact that even our Anglican prayer books had been banned by the Commonwealth.

  There was, of course, a tattered melancholy to our pleasures. The world seemed changed forever for people of our rank, with little hope of it changing back in our favor. Even the slightest attempts at rebellion had been instantly quelled by the Commonwealth’s forces— most recently the sad small uprising at Salisbury led by Colonel Penruddock—and were followed by such punitive measures as the Decimation Tax, a 10 percent levy against the income of anyone with Royalist leanings.

  Yet our despair also bound us together. I quickly made friends among the young Royalists of noble families, many of whom, like me, had lost both fathers and fortunes in defense of the king.

  Over that first summer, my mother concentrated on improving me and polishing away my country manners. I was taught to dance to develop my grace, which I enjoyed, and given lessons upon the virginals, which I did not. We spoke French at meals so I would learn that language. My plain stuff gowns were replaced with lutestrings and satins, and my hair was cropped shorter around my face, the better to curl into tendrils and lovelocks against my cheeks. I grew in height and in slenderness, while my breasts blossomed to a more womanly fullness.

  And by early autumn, when Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, returned to London from France, I was ripe to fall headlong into love for the first time.

  “Who is that gentleman, Anne?” I whispered behind my fan. “He is most splendidly handsome, don’t you think?”

  Beside me, Lady Anne Hamilton’s green eyes widened with delicious interest. Lady Anne was one of the four daughters of the Duke of Hamilton, but more important, the dearest of my new London friends, one whose wicked laughter alone could cheer me from the deepest doldrums. She had a frizz of blond curls and wide-set eyes, and together we made an eye-catching pair on account of being so opposite. Though we were close in age, she had been in the town much longer than I, and I learned of many things in her company that doubtless my mother would wish I hadn’t.