Amber gave Middleton- only a vague nod as she came up. “Almsbury, I’ve got to talk to you! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

The Earl bowed to Mrs. Middleton. “Will you excuse me for a moment, madame?”

Jane looked bored. “Oh, lord, sir, you must excuse me! There’s Colonel Hamilton beckoning me now—I just recalled he asked me this morning to meet him here and I’d all but forgot, let me die.” With an airy wave of one small gloved hand she drifted off, not even glancing at Amber who seemed unaware she had ever been there.

“Come over here—I don’t want a dozen big ears listening to us.” They crossed the room to a quiet little corner near the windows. “Tell me what’s happened!” she cried without an instant’s hesitation. “I haven’t seen him alone for fourteen days! I write to him and he doesn’t answer! I talk to him in the Drawing-Room and he looks at me as if I’m a stranger! I ask him to visit me and he doesn’t come! Tell me what’s happened, Almsbury! I’m going stark staring mad!”

Almsbury gave a sigh. “My Lady Castlemaine showed his wife the satire that Rochester wrote about you—”

“Oh, I know that!” cried Amber scornfully, cutting him off. “But what’s happened to make him treat me like this!”

“That’s what’s happened.”

She stared at him. “I don’t believe you.” Both of them were silent, looking at each other, for a long moment and then Amber said: “But that can’t be the only reason. Just because his wife found out. It must be more than that.”

“It isn’t.”

“Do you mean to tell me, John Randolph, that he’s been using me like this because his wife told him to!”

“She didn’t tell him to. He decided it for himself. I may as well tell you the truth, Amber—he doesn’t intend to see you alone any more.”

“Did he tell you that?” Her voice spoke to him, just above a whisper.

“Yes. And he meant it.”

Amber stood helplessly. She put her drink down on the broad sill of the casemented window and stood staring out at the bare-branched trees. Then she looked up at him again. “Do you know where he is now?”

“No.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. You do know! And you’ve got to tell me! Oh, Almsbury—please tell me! You know how much I love him! If only I can see him again and talk to him I can make him see how foolish this is! Please, Almsbury—please, please! He’s going away soon and then I might never see him again! I’ve got to see him while he’s here!”

For a long moment he hesitated, looking at her shrewdly, and then finally he gave a jerk of his head. “Come along.”

As they passed Jane Middleton he stopped to speak to her but she tossed her curls and turned him a haughty shoulder. Almsbury shrugged.

The afternoon was cold and the mud hard and slippery with a thin layer of ice. Together they got into Amber’s enormous crested gilt coach which was drawn by eight tawny horses, their manes and streaming tails braided with gold and green ribbons. The coachman and eight running footmen wore her emerald-velvet livery and there was another dressed all in white and carrying a white wand with an orange fastened to one end for his refreshment, who ran ahead to proclaim her coming. Some of the footmen hung onto the sides, while others jogged along in back or went ahead to order the rabble out of the way. Inside, the coach was upholstered with emerald velvet, deep-tufted on seat and sides and roof, festooned with gold swags and tassels.

Almsbury gave the coachman his directions and then climbed in beside Amber. “He’s at his stationer’s in Ave Maria Lane, I think, buying some books.” He looked around him, whistling softly. “Jesus Christ! When did you get this?”

“Last year. You’ve seen it before.”

She answered him abruptly and without paying much attention for she was absorbed in her own thoughts, trying to plan what she would say to Bruce, how she would convince him that he was wrong. It was several minutes before Almsbury spoke again.

Then he said: “You’ve never been sorry, have you?”

“Sorry for what?”

“Sorry that you left the country and came to London.”

“Why should I be sorry? Look where I am!”

“And look how you got here. ‘All rising to great places is by a winding stair.’ Have you ever heard that?”

“No.”

“You’ve come by a winding stair, haven’t you?”

“What if I have! I’ve done some things I hated, but that’s over now and I’m where I want to be. I’m somebody, Almsbury! If I’d stayed in Marygreen and married some lout of a farmer and bred his brats and cooked his food and spun his linen—what would I be? Just another farmer’s wife and nobody would ever know I’d been alive. But now look at me—I’m rich and a duchess and one day my son will be a duke—Sorry!” she finished with scornful positiveness. “My God, Almsbury!”

He grinned. “Amber, my darling, I love you—But you’re an unprincipled calculating adventuress.”

“Well,” retorted Amber, “I didn’t have anything to start with—”

“But beauty and desirability.”

“There are other women aplenty who had that—hut they aren’t all duchesses today, I’ll warrant you.”

“No, sweetheart, they aren’t. The difference is that you were willing to make use of both to get what you wanted—and didn’t care too much what happened to you on your way.”

“Lord!” she cried impatiently. “You’re in a scurvy humour today!” Abruptly she leaned forward and rapped on the front wall, shouting at her coachman: “Drive faster!”

Ave Maria Lane was one of the tiny streets which formed a maze about the great burned pile of old St. Paul’s. When at last they arrived, Almsbury took her to the entrance of a new-built brick courtyard and pointed to one of the signs. “He should be in there—the ‘Three Bibles and Three Bottles of Ink.’ ” Too excited even to thank him, she picked up her skirts and ran into the court; he watched her go and, when she had disappeared into the building, turned about and left.

It was now dark outside and the shop was dim-lit; there was a thick dusty smell of ink, paper, leather and frying tallow. The walls were lined with book-shelves, all of them crowded, and piles of brown- or green- or red-bound volumes were stacked on the floor. In one corner, reading by a flickering light in the wall-sconce, stood a short plump young man. He had a pair of thick green spectacles on his nose, a hat on his head, and though it was close and too-warm in there he wore his cloak. No one else was in the room.

Amber looked about and was on the point of going through the door beyond when an old man came out, smiling, and inquired if he might help her. She crossed to him and asked, very softly so that if Bruce were there he would not hear her: “Js my Lord Carlton in there?”

“He is, madame.”

She put a cautioning finger to her lips. “He’s expecting me.” Reaching into her muff she took out a guinea and pressed it into his palm. “We don’t want to be disturbed.”

The man bowed, glancing surreptitiously at the coin in his hand, still smiling. “Certainly, madame. Certainly.” He grinned, pleased to be party to a rendezvous between his Lordship and this fine woman.

She went to the door, opened it, stepped inside and softly closed it. Bruce, wearing his cloak and plumed hat, stood several feet away examining a manuscript; his back was to her. Amber paused, leaning against the door, for her heart was pounding and she felt suddenly weak and breathless. She was almost afraid of what he might do or say when he saw her.

After a moment Bruce, without glancing around, said, “This manuscript of Carew—how did you get hold of it?” And then when he got no answer he turned and saw her.

Timidly Amber smiled and made him a little curtsy. “Good even, my lord.”

“Well—” Bruce tossed the manuscript onto a table just behind him. “I would never have taken you for a book-collector.” His eyes narrowed. “How the devil did you get here?”

She ran toward him. “I had to see you, Bruce! Please don’t be angry with me! Tell me what’s happened! Why have you been avoiding me?”

He frowned slightly, but did not look away. “I didn’t know any other way to do it—without a quarrel.”

“Without a quarrel! I’ve heard you say that a hundred times! You, who made your living fighting!”

He smiled. “Not with women.”

“Oh, I promise you, Bruce, I didn’t come to quarrel! But you’ve got to tell me what happened! One day you came to see me and we were happy together—and the next you’d scarce speak! Why?” She spread her hands in a gesture of pleading.

“You must know, Amber. Why pretend you don’t?”

“Almsbury told me, but I wouldn’t believe him. I still can’t believe it. You, of all men, being led by the nose by your wife!”

He sat down on the top of the table near which they were standing and braced one foot on a chair. “Corinna isn’t the kind of woman who leads a man by the nose. I decided myself—for a reason I don’t think I can explain to you.”

“Why not?” she demanded, half insulted at that. “My understanding’s as good as another’s, I’ll warrant you! Oh, but you must tell me, Bruce. I’ve got to know! I have a right to know!”

He took a deep breath. “Well—I suppose you heard that Castlemaine showed Corinna the lampoon—but she said she’d known we were lovers long before that. She’s gone through a kind of agony these last weeks we don’t know anything about. Adultery may seem no serious matter to us, but it is to her. She’s innocent, and what’s more, she loves me—I don’t want to hurt her any more than I have.”

“But what about me?” she cried. “I love you as much as she does! My God, I think I know a thing or two about agony myself! Or doesn’t it mean anything to you if I’m hurt?”

“Of course it does, Amber, but there’s a difference.”

“What!”

“Corinna’s my wife and we’ll live together the rest of our lives. In a few months I’ll be leaving England and I won’t come back again—I’m done travelling. Your life is here and mine is in America—after I go this time we’ll never see each other again.”

“Never—see each other again?” Her speckled tawny eyes stared at him, her lips half-parted over the words. “Never—” She had said that to Almsbury only an hour before, but it sounded different to her now, coming from him. Suddenly she seemed to realize exactly what it would mean. “Never, Bruce! Oh, darling, you can’t do this to me! I need you as much as she does—I love you as much as she does! If all the rest of your life belongs to her you can give me a little of it now—She’d never even know, and if she didn’t know she couldn’t be hurt! You can’t be here in London all these next six months and never see me—I’d die if you did that to me! Oh, Bruce, you can’t do it! You can’t!”

She threw herself against him, pounding her fists softly on his chest, sobbing with quiet, desperate, mournful little sobs. For a long while he sat, his arms hanging at his sides, not touching her; and then at last he drew her close against him between his legs, his mouth crushing down on hers with a kind of angry hunger. “Oh, you little bitch,” he muttered. “Someday I’ll forget you—someday I’ll—”


He rented apartments in a lodging-house in Magpie Yard, just about a mile from the Palace within the old settled district which had been missed by the Fire. They had two large rooms, furnished handsomely in the pompous heavy style of seventy years before. There were bulbous-legged tables, immense boxlike chairs, enormous chests, a high-backed settle next the fireplace and worn tapestry on the walls. The oak bed was of majestic proportions with carved pillars and head-board, and it was hung with dark-red velvet which, though faded by the years, showed a richer, truer colour deep in the folds. Diamond-paned windows looked down three stories into a brick-paved courtyard on one side and the noisy busy street on the other.

They met there two or three times a week, usually in the afternoons but sometimes at night. Amber had promised him that Corinna would never know they were still seeing each other and, like a little girl put on her good behaviour, she took the most elaborate precautions to insure perfect secrecy. If they met in the afternoon she left Whitehall in her own clothes and coach, went to a tavern where she changed and sent Nan out by the front door in a mask and the garments she had been wearing—while she left in her own disguise by some other exit. At night she took a barge or a hackney, but then Big John was always with her.