Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

The Earl burst into hearty laughter. Amber looked at him in surprise and some annoyance. “Well—my lord? What makes you so hysterical, pray?”

“You do, sweetheart. I swear no one would ever guess to hear you talk that six years ago you were a simple country-wench and so virtuous you slapped my face for making you an honest offer of my affections. I wonder what’s happened to her —that innocent pretty girl I saw on the Marygreen common?” His voice and eyes turned a little wistful at the last.

Amber was petulant; why shouldn’t he be satisfied with the way she was now? She liked to think of Almsbury as one man who accepted her exactly as she was, liked her and approved of everything she said and did. “I don’t know,” she said crossly. “She’s gone now—if she ever existed at all. She couldn’t last long in London.”

He gave her hand a quick friendly grasp. “No, darling, she couldn’t. But seriously, I think it would be a mistake for you to marry Radclyffe.”

“Why? You suggested it yourself to begin with.”

“I know. But I only wanted to make you think about something besides Bruce. In the first place, he’s deep in debt. It might take half your inheritance to get him out.”

“Oh, I’ve got that all planned. I’ll have the contract drawn to let me retain management of my own funds.”

Almsbury shook his head. “That’ll never do. He wouldn’t marry you with any such arrangement as that—any more than you’d marry him if he was to retain sole use of his title. No, if you marry Radclyffe you’ve got to sign over your money to him. But do you think you could tolerate living in the same house with him—not to mention sleeping in the same bed?”

“Oh, as for that! In London I won’t know he’s about. I’ll spend all my days at Court—and maybe some of my nights, too.” Her mouth turned up significantly at one corner; she had never completely abandoned her earlier ambition of being his Majesty’s mistress—and whenever Bruce Carlton was gone the prospect glittered.

To be mistress of the King, a great lady, feared and envied and admired. To be stared and pointed at in the streets, watched in the galleries of the Palace, bowed and truckled to in the Drawing-Rooms. To be begged for favours, fawned upon for a smile—to hold the power of success or failure over dozens, even hundreds, of men and women. That was the summit of ambition—higher than the Queen, mightier than the Chancellor, greater than any nobly born woman in the land. And if she could once be presented at Whitehall, have the right and privilege of the royal apartments, see him day after day-Amber had no doubt that she could occupy the place which Castlemaine was said to be rapidly losing.

All those things were in her mind when—just a few days after Christmas—she accepted the Earl of Radclyffe’s proposal of marriage.

It came after a boresome week of impatient waiting on her part, for though she had been so scornful of him at first and still was, the more she thought about it the more she wanted to become a countess. And marriage with him did not seem any formidable price to pay for the honour. He had come back to Barberry Hill for the avowed purpose of “paying his compliments to Mrs. Dangerfield,” but he did very little of that or anything else which seemed to Amber like courting. She could not even catch him looking at her again as he had that day in the library.

The day before he was to return to his own home some thirty miles north, they sat alone in the gallery playing a game of trick-track. The gallery, on the second floor of the house, was an immense room which ran along two sides of the courtyard. It was massed with deep set diamond-paned windows, on the panelled walls were dozens of portraits, and the ceiling was painted light blue with great wreaths of gilt roses. Radclyffe wore his hat and both of them had on long fur-lined cloaks; a brazier of hot coals was set beside each of them, and an enormous log blazed in the fireplace. But in spite of all that they were uncomfortably cold.

Amber moved a peg in the board to change her score. Then she sat, staring absently at it and waiting for him to make the next play. At last, when several seconds had passed, she looked up. “Your move, my lord.” He was watching her, very carefully, like a man studying a painting—not like a man looking at a woman.

“Yes,” he said quietly, not taking his eyes from her. “I know.” Amber returned his stare. “Madame—I am not unaware that it is a breach of propriety to ask for the hand of a lady who has been widowed only nine months. And yet my regard for you has reached that pitch I am prepared to fly in the face of all decorum. Madame, I ask you most solemnly —will you do me the honour to become my wife?”

Amber answered him immediately. “With all my heart, sir.” She had thought from the first that since each knew what the other wanted it was absurd they must mince and simper like a couple of dancing-mice at Bartholomew Fair.

Again she thought that she caught the hint of a smile on his mouth, but could not be sure. “Thank you, madame. Your kindness is more than I deserve. I must return to London soon after the first of the year, and if you will go with me we can be married at that time. I understand that the sickness is now greatly abated and the town has begun to fill again.”

He wanted, of course, to make certain her fortune had survived the Plague before he married her—but Amber was tired of the country and eager to get back herself.

They set out together in his coach on the second of January, bundled in furs and covered with fur-lined robes; it was so cold they could see their breath as they talked. The roads were so hard and frosty that it was possible to travel much faster than if it had been raining, but they had to stop that afternoon at four because the bouncing and jogging distressed his Lordship.

The marriage-contract had been signed at Barberry Hill and Amber supposed he would take advantage of the usual custom to lie with her that night. At eight o’clock, however, he bowed, wished her a good night, and retired to his own chamber. Amber and Nan watched him go, both of them staring with astonishment. Then as the door closed they looked at each other and burst into uncontrollable giggles.

“He must be impotent!” hissed Nan.

“I hope so!”

It was nightfall on the fifth day when they reached London. Amber had a feeling of dread as they approached the city, but as they rolled through the dark quiet streets it began to disappear. There were no dead-carts, no corpses, very few red crosses to be seen. Already the sloping mounds in the graveyards had been covered over with a coarse green vegetation—the hundred thousand dead were effacing themselves. Taverns. were brightly lighted again and crowded, coaches teetered by filled with gay young men and women, the sound of music came from some of the houses.

It never really happened, she thought. It never really happened at all. She had a strange sense of discovery, as though she had wakened from some terrible nightmare and found to her relief that it had been only a dream.

Radclyffe House stood in Aldersgate Street above St. Anne’s Lane and just without the City gates. The street was a broad one lined with large wide-spaced houses. Radclyffe told her that it resembled an Italian avenue more than any other street in London. It was the only place left so near the walls where some of the great old families were still living.

The house had been virtually unoccupied for almost twenty-five years, but for a few servants left there as caretakers, and most of the windows were bricked up. Inside it was dark and dusty, the furniture was shrouded in dirty white and nothing had been brought up to date since it had been built eighty-five years ago. One room led into another like a maze, and with the exception of the grand staircase in the center of the house, all passages and stair-wells were narrow and dark. Amber was relieved to find that the apartments to which she was shown had at least been cleaned and dusted and aired, even though otherwise it was in no better condition than the rest.

Early the next morning she went to visit Shadrac Newbold and found that he had kept all her money intact. (He also told her that Lord Carlton had sailed for America two weeks before.) When she told him that her money was safe Radclyffe suggested that they be married as soon as all necessary arrangements could be made. As she knew, he was a Catholic—hence it would be necessary to have two services performed, for a Catholic ceremony could be declared null and void.

“I’d intended,” said Amber, “to bespeak a gown of my dressmaker. I haven’t got anything that’s new—and I think she could get one done in ten days or so.”

“I don’t think it would be safe, madame, as yet—the sickness is still too much with us. But if you would care to oblige me, I have a gown laid away I should be most happy to have you wear.”

Somewhat surprised, wondering if he kept a wedding-gown about for unexpected marriages, Amber agreed. Certainly it seemed a simple harmless request.

Later in the day he came to her chamber, carrying in his arms a stiff white-satin gown, embroidered all over with tiny pearls, and as he shook it out she saw that there were deep sharp creases in it, as though it had been lying folded for a very long while. She realized then that it actually was an old gown; the white had turned creamy and the cut and style were many years out of fashion. The waist-line was high with a flaring peplum slashed in four places; the low square neck had a deep collar of lace and lace cuffs finished the long full sleeves; when the skirt opened down the front a petticoat of heavy silver cloth showed.

Radclyffe smiled at her puzzled expression. “As you can see —it isn’t a new gown. But it is still beautiful, and I shall be grateful if you will wear it.”

She reached out to take it. “I’m glad to, sir.”

Later, she and Nan examined it carefully, speculating. “It must be two-score years old, or more,” said Nan. “I wonder who wore it last?”

Amber shrugged. “His first wife, maybe. Or an old sweetheart. Someday I’ll ask him.”

To her surprise she found when she put it on that it fitted her very well, almost as if it had been made for her.

“AMBER, COUNTESS OF RADCLYFFE,” she said slowly, watching herself in a mirror, whereupon she wrinkled up her nose, snapped her fingers and turned away. “Much good it does me!”

They had been married just one week, but so far her life was no more exciting than it had been when she was plain Mrs. Dangerfield—certainly far less so than when she was Madame St. Clare of His Majesty’s Theatre. The weather was so cold that it was unpleasant to go out. The plague deaths for the past week had been almost a hundred, and neither King nor Court had yet returned to Whitehall. She stayed at home, scarcely left their suite of rooms—for the rest of the house continued in its dirt and gloom—and spent her time feeling bored and resentful. Was this what she had traded her sixty-six thousand pounds for! It seemed a bad bargain—dullness and a man she despised.

For now that she was his wife Radclyffe was a greater enigma than ever.

She saw him but little for he had a multitude of interests which he did not wish to share with her, nor she with him. Several hours of almost every day he spent in the laboratory which opened out of their bedroom, and for which new equipment was constantly arriving. When he was not there he was in the library or in the offices on the lower floor, reading, writing, going over his bills, and making plans for the remodelling and furnishing of the house. Though this was to be done, obviously, at Amber’s expense, he never consulted her wishes in the matter or even told her what plans he had made.

They met, usually, just twice a day—at dinner, and in bed. Conversation at dinner was polite and arid, carried on chiefly for the benefit of the servants, but in bed they did not talk at all. The Earl could not, in any real sense, make love to her, for he was impotent and apparently had been for some time. More than that, he disliked her, frankly and contemptuously —even while she roused in him conflicting emotions of desire and some wild yearning toward the past which he could never explain. Yet he longed violently for complete physical possession—a longing at which he caught night after night, but never grasped, and it drove him down a hundred strange pathways of lust and helpless rage.

From the first morning they were enemies, but it was not until several days had gone by that mutual antipathy flared into open conflict. It was over a question of money.