Bruce, for all that he seemed so grown-up, could not resist the temptation to brag to his little sister. For he lived in a great new country now, had sailed twice across the ocean, rode his own horse over the plantation with his father, was learning to sail a boat and had shot a wild-turkey just before they left. Susanna was not to be outdone.

“Pish!” she said scornfully. “What do I care for all that! I have two fathers!”

Bruce was taken aback for no more than an instant. “That’s nothing to me, miss. I have two mothers!”

“You lie, you rogue!” cried Susanna. Her challenge might have led to an open quarrel, but just at that moment Amber and Bruce interrupted with the suggestion that they all play a game.


After that she saw Lord Carlton frequently, and he came even when he did not bring the little boy. Usually he stayed no more than an hour or two, but he made no great effort to be secretive and Amber decided that marriage had not changed him as much as she had feared at first.

At last she grew bold enough to say to him one day: “What if Corinna finds out about us?”

“I hope she won’t.”

“Gossip spreads like the plague here at Whitehall.”

“Then I hope she won’t believe it.”

“Won’t believe it? Lord, how naive d’you think she is?”

“She’s not accustomed to London morals. She’ll likely think it’s malicious talk.”

“But what if she doesn’t? What if she asks you?”

“I won’t lie to her.” He gave her a quick scowl. “Look here, you little minx, if I find you’ve been up to any of your tricks I’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

Her eyes sparkled, her mouth smiled. She rolled over on the bed and her arms went about him, crushing her breasts against his shoulder. Their mouths came swiftly together. Corinna no longer existed for either of them.

As the time went by Amber’s confidence increased. For though he said that he loved Corinna she knew that he loved her too. They had shared so much together, there was so much between them, so many memories—those things remained in his heart and they would always remain there, she was sure of that. She began to feel that his wife was merely an inconvenience, a social handicap, and even Corinna’s great beauty held less terror for her than it had at first.

As she had expected, their meetings did not long remain secret. Buckingham, of course, and Arlington too must have known about them from the first—and, though Charles never mentioned it, undoubtedly he did—but all those gentlemen had other matters of greater importance to them than a woman’s love-affairs. The ladies of the Court, however, did not.

Lord and Lady Carlton had been in London less than a month when the Countess of Southesk and Jane Middleton came one morning to pay Amber a visit—and met Bruce just leaving. He bowed to them both, but though Mrs. Middleton gave him her most languishing look and Southesk tried to rally him into conversation, he made his excuses and left them.

“Oh, by all means, my lord!” gushed Southesk. “Do go along. Lord, I vow and swear no man’s reputation is safe if he’s coming out of her Grace’s chamber before noon!”

“Your servant, madame,” said Bruce, bowing again, and he walked away.

Middleton’s eyes followed him down the corridor, her pink lips pouting. “Lord, but he’s handsome! I vow and swear, the person in the world I most admire!”

“I told you! I told you!” cried Southesk gleefully. “He’s her lover! Come, let’s in—”

They found Amber taking a bath in a large marble tub set on a rug in the middle of her bedroom floor. There was asses’ milk in the water to cloud it and a white-fox robe was laid across the lower half of the tub, concealing her body from the waist down. The room was crowded with tradespeople all talking at once, and the monkey chattered, the parrot squawked, the dog barked. Just behind her stood the newest addition to her household, a tall blonde eunuch, handsome and no more than twenty-five. He was one of the many seamen captured each year by Algerian pirates and castrated to be sold back into Europe where they were bought as household ornaments by the finest ladies.

“No,” Amber was saying, “I won’t have it! It’s hideous! My God, look at that colour! I could never wear it—”

“But, madame,” protested the mercer, “it’s the newest shade —I just got it from Paris. It’s called ‘constipation.’ I vow and swear, madame, it’ll be all the fashion.”

“I don’t care. I’d look like a blowsabel in it.” And then, just as the two women came up behind her she gave a little cry of surprise. “Lord, ladies! How you sneak up on one!” “Do we so? We came in noisy as anything, your Grace. Your thoughts must have been elsewhere.”

Amber gave a little smile and snipped at the soap bubbles with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh, well—perhaps you’re right. You can all go now—” she told the tradesmen. “I don’t want anything more today. Herman—” She glanced over her shoulder at the eunuch. “Fling me a towel.”

Mrs. Middleton’s eyes were running appraisingly over Herman’s imposing physique and now she said, as though he were no human being but a mere inanimate object: “Where did you get this fine-looking fellow? My eunuch is a mere jack-straw—a frightful object, let me die.”

Amber took the towel and stood up to begin drying herself, conscious of their close jealous scrutiny. But let them stare as they could, she thought they would discover few flaws, for in spite of bearing three children she looked very much as she had at sixteen—her waist was as slim, her belly as taut and smooth, her breasts as high and pert. She had given herself the best of care, and yet perhaps she had been a little lucky too.

“Oh, I got him from what-d’ye-call—the East Indies merchant. He was mighty dear, but I think he makes a fine enough show to be worth the price, don’t you?”

Lady Southesk regarded him with contempt. “Gad, I wouldn’t have one of ’em about me! Filthy creatures! Unable to perform a man’s most significant function.”

Amber laughed. “Some of ’em will even do that for you, I’m told. Would you like to borrow Herman someday and find out if it’s true?”

Southesk looked furiously insulted at that, though certainly her reputation was none too tidy, but Middleton hastily changed the subject. “Oh, by the way, your Grace, whom d’you think we encountered just at your door?”

Amber gave her a quick narrow look, seeing that the cat was out. She was almost pleased, though she would not have dared spread the news herself. “Lord Carlton, I suppose. Do be seated, ladies. Pray, no ceremony here.”

Amber derived a great deal of malicious amusement from the etiquette which decreed that persons of inferior rank might sit in the presence of a duchess only with her permission, and then upon armless chairs. It pleased her every time a woman who had once ignored or sneered at her was forced to rise or to move to a less comfortable seat because she had entered a room.

Flinging the towel to Herman she slipped into a dressing-gown held by one of the maids, stuck her toes into a pair of mules and taking the bodkins from her hair gave it a vigorous shake. The glowing warmth which filled her each time she saw Bruce still lingered, and she had a wonderful sense of vigorous well-being. It seemed to her that life had never been more delicious or more satisfying.

“They say that Lord Carlton has a most wicked reputation,” Southesk told her now and Amber gave her a half-smile, one eyebrow raised. “I’m afraid your Grace’s reputation will suffer if he’s seen leaving your apartments very often.”

Before Amber could reply Middleton was prattling again.

“Lord, but he’s the finest person, let me die! I swear he’s the handsomest male I’ve ever clapped eyes on! But every time I’ve seen ’im he’s been so furiously absorbed in his wife! How the devil did your Grace contrive to make his acquaintance so neatly?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” cried Southesk. “Why, her Grace has known ’im for years!” She turned back to Amber and smiled sweetly. “Haven’t you, madame?”

Amber laughed. “I protest—you ladies are much better informed about all this than I.”

They stayed a few minutes longer, all three of them gossiping with idle viciousness of the doings of their friends and acquaintances. But Southesk and Middleton had found out what they had come for and soon they went off to spread the news through Whitehall and Covent Garden. Bruce, however, never spoke of it to Amber and, whenever she saw her, Corinna was as friendly and gracious as she always had been. It was obvious that she, at least, had no slightest suspicion regarding the Duchess of Ravenspur and her husband.


Then at last, some eight weeks after Lord and Lady Carlton had arrived, Amber went to call upon her—carefully choosing a day when she knew that Bruce had gone to hunt with the King. Corinna met her at the entrance to the sitting-room of their apartments in Almsbury House, and she smiled with genuine pleasure when she saw who her guest was. The two women curtsied but did not kiss for Corinna had not yet contracted the London habit and Amber could not have brought herself to it—though she habitually kissed and was kissed by many women she liked but little better.

“How kind of your Grace to call on me!”

Amber began to pull off her gloves, and in spite of herself her resentment and jealousy began to rise as her eyes flickered over Corinna. “Not at all!” she protested, very careless. “I should have called much sooner. But, Lord! there’s always such a deal of business here in London! One must go here and there—do this and that and the other! It’s barbarous!” She dropped into a chair. “You must find it a mighty great change from America.” Her tone implied that America must be a very dull place where there was little to do but tend babies and work embroidery.

But even as she talked her eyes were observing Corinna carefully, noticing every detail of her coiffure and clothes, the way she walked and held her head and sat. Lady Carlton was wearing a gown of pearl-grey satin with pink musk-roses thrust into the bodice and there was a fine strand of sapphires about her throat; she wore no other jewels except her gold-and-sapphire wedding-ring.

“It is different,” agreed Corinna. “But though it may sound strange I find there’s less to do in London—for me, at least—than in America.”

“Oh, we have a thousand diversions here—one needs only get acquainted with ‘em. How d’you like London? It must seem a great city to you.” Try as she would, Amber found that she could not speak without sarcastic overtones, belittling suggestions, a hint of superiority she was by no means secure in feeling.

“Oh, I love London! I’m only sorry that I couldn’t have seen it before the Fire. We left here before I was quite five, you see, and I couldn’t remember anything about it. I’ve always wanted to come back, though, for in America we all think of England as ‘home.’ ”

She was so poised, so quietly yet radiantly happy that Amber longed to say something which would shatter that serene protected world in which she lived. But she dared not. She could only murmur: “But isn’t it furiously dull—living on a plantation? I suppose you never see a living soul, save blackamoors and wild Indians.”

Corinna laughed. “I suppose it might seem dull to one who had always lived in a city, but it doesn’t seem dull to me. It’s such a beautiful land. And the plantations all front on rivers so that we travel easily by boat anywhere we want to go. We love to give parties—and often they last for days or weeks. The men are busy, of course, with their work, but they have time aplenty for hunting and fishing and gambling and dancing, too. Oh, forgive me, your Grace, I’m boring you with all this nonsense—”

“By no means. I’ve always wondered what America was like. Perhaps I’ll pay you a visit someday.” She could not imagine what had prompted her to say that.

But Corinna caught her up eagerly. “Oh, your Grace, if you would! My husband and I would love to have you! You can’t imagine what excitement it would cause! A duchess and a beauty in America! Why, you’d be feted in every great house in Virginia—but of course we’d keep you with us most of the time.” Her smile was so genuine, so guileless, that Amber boiled inside with resentful fury. Lord, but she must have lived a retired life! she thought scornfully.

Aloud she asked her: “When are you going over to France?” She had asked Bruce several times but had never received a definite answer, and since they had already been there two months she was afraid that they might be planning to leave very soon.