Jane Feather - Venus

"You will bring such faults as there may be to my attention," he repeated with gentle emphasis. "I do not imagine

such a slight diversion from the usual will disturb the immaculate order of the house. Your hand on the reins is too secure, my dear sister."

"And do you find fault in that?" She spoke stiffly through compressed lips, her backbone rigid as a steel rod.

"I think you are on occasion a little severe," he said with a sigh. His head was worsening by the minute, and he could not find the energy to speak with his usual circumspection. Margaret had been left to his charge by his brother's last wish, and he would honor that commitment in more than letter, for all that he despised the narrow rigidity of the Puritan. He had discoursed endlessly with Edward on the possibility of a happy medium between a life governed to the last degree by the rules of divinity and sobriety and one where there were no rules except those of excess. But Edward had been a learned Puritan, one with whom it was possible to discourse. His wife, unfortunately, saw only dogma, and Nick, for love of his dead brother, was obliged to keep the peace with the dogmatist. However, on this occasion, if Margaret's sensibilities were wounded by the truth, it could not be helped. He would not subject Polly to the Puritan's severity, certain as he was that that somewhat mischievous personality with its talent for improvisation would be sure to offend without intent within a very short space of time. However, he reflected with a slight smile, if that brute Josh had not managed to beat the spirit out of her, it was unlikely that Margaret would succeed.

The enigmatic smile did nothing to improve matters with his sister-in-law. "You are entitled to your opinion, brother," she said with harsh dignity. "I must, of course, be glad to have my faults pointed out to me. You may rest assured that I shall reflect upon what you have said." She turned on her heel, and left his chamber, closing the door with a gentleness that contained more reproach than the most violent slam.

Nicholas winced, pulling the bell for his footboy. Somehow he was going to have to weave a path through this tangle, and he had best start by discussing last night's inspira-

tion with De Winter. He had failed to make the rendezvous at the Dog last night, but he would be found at court this morning, where there would be opportunity for a brief word, a new rendezvous. Buckingham's suspicious eye had not yet fallen upon them, and for as long as they continued to play the gay courtiers with nothing on their minds but the pleasures of lust and dalliance, it would not do so.

If all went according to plan, the duke's eye would eventually fall upon the most ravishing actor yet to grace the king's theatre on Drury Lane. And that actor would then have another part to play.

When Lord Kincaid finally left his bedchamber, he was feeling somewhat less fragile, although his hands had proved inordinately clumsy when it came to the tying of his cravat-a sartorial activity that had consequently taken him a full half hour to complete, and had left the chamber floor littered with the crumpled evidence of his failures. His eyes were heavy, but no fault could be found with the cream silk waistcoat revealed through the slashed turquoise doublet, or his brocade coat, embroidered in silver, the wide sleeves turned up to reveal the lace cuffs of his shirt. His gloves were embroidered, his shoes buckled with silver, and his lordship had every reason to be satisfied with an appearance that would come under the informed and critical scrutiny of all those who attended the court of King Charles that morning.

He descended the staircase and paused in the hall, taking a pinch of snuff from the little onyx box that he then dropped back into the wide pocket of his coat while he pondered the question of whether the uncertain weather precluded his walking to Whitehall. The air would do him good, but his garments would not take kindly to rain. A loud caterwauling broke into this not unimportant debate.

"Gawd, sir, whatever's that!" Young Tom, who had has-

tened to open the great front door for his master, jumped as if he had been burned, and the door banged shut again.

"It sounds remarkably like a scalded cat," observed Kincaid, frowning deeply. The wailing, which seemed to originate from the back regions of the house, increased in volume. It was not at all the sort of sound one expected to hear in a gentleman's household, and Nicholas was soon in little doubt as to who was making it. But why? It was clearly incumbent upon him to find out.

His lordship did not in general frequent the working areas of the house, so his arrival in the kitchen caused gasps of alarm from the group there assembled. As far as he could judge, everyone, from the boot boy to the cook, was present, witnessing a scene presided over by a grim-faced Lady Margaret, swathed in a large white apron. Polly, wailing pite-ously, was seated on a low stool before the range whilst her ladyship, mouth set in an unyielding line, was pulling a steel comb through the tangled mass of honey-colored hair.

"Lord of hell!" exclaimed his lordship. "Polly, stop bellowing for a minute; I cannot hear myself think." The noise ceased with a suspicious immediacy, although the combing continued. "What is going on, pray?"

"I'll not have her bringing lice into the house," declared her ladyship tightly. "Her head is crawling with them."

"It hurts!" Polly protested with a vigorous sniff. Matters were not proceeding at all according to her chosen plan, and at this point, she rather thought that life at the Dog tavern had a certain appeal.

"Then it must be cut off," announced Margaret with ill-concealed satisfaction. "It is the devil's vanity anyway."

"No," Nicholas said. "Devil's vanity or no, sister, it is not to be cut. Why do you not send her to the hothouse? She may be bathed there and her hair washed."

"Bath!" Polly stared at him in horror. He could not surely expect her to immerse her entire body in hot water. "All of me? No, I will not. It is dangerous." Infinitely more dangerous than life at the Dog tavern!

"It will not kill you," Nicholas said with an effort at patience. "Have you never bathed before?"

Polly shook her head. Prue washed her hair for her when it became too itchy, and she occasionally took a damp rag to her body, but she could never really see the point; a little dirt hurt no one.

"This is hardly an appropriate matter for you, brother," Lady Margaret said. "You may safely leave it in my hands."

Polly instantly began to wail again, the soft, sensuous mouth quivering pitiably, her eyes fixed on Kincaid so that he thought he would drown in their liquescent green-brown depths. There was no resisting that appeal even though he was convinced that her distress was in some degree feigned.

"Stop that noise," he said softly. "You are not going to be hurt. I will take you myself."

"Brother! You cannot do such a thing." Margaret, in her outrage, forgot the unseemliness of a brangle with her brother in front of the servants.

"May I not?" He lifted an incredulous eyebrow. "I think I may be the judge of that, Margaret." He turned to Susan. "You will accompany us. We shall stop at the Exchange for clothes on our way. You will know what to purchase that will be appropriate, and then you may assist Polly in the bathhouse."

Susan cast an anxious look at her mistress, uncertain whether obedience to the master's commands would be construed as disobedience to the mistress. But Margaret knew when she was defeated, just as she knew that further protest would simply make her look ridiculous.

"If you wish to burden yourself with such a task, brother, far be it from me to object. Susan will know what clothes I consider suitable for a girl in that position." Casting Polly a look of loathing, she swept out of the kitchen.

"Tom, have the carriage brought around," Nicholas instructed the footboy. "Susan, find a cloak or some such to cover that smock; and some pattens for her feet." He also left the kitchen, well aware that his intervention had done Polly no good with Margaret, but confusingly unsure what else he

could have done. It should have been simple enough to leave women's work to the women, but when Polly had looked at him in that manner, he had become as putty. Now, instead of spending his morning at Whitehall in the leisured pursuits of a courtier, he was going to drive around the city with two maidservants, buying stuff gowns and petticoats, and encouraging one recalcitrant, lice-infested wench into the hothouse!

"Lord love us!" Susan ejaculated, once the kitchen was returned to the sole use of its accustomed occupants. She regarded Polly with awed interest. "What you done for 'is lordship, then? 'E never goes against her ladyship, never." She nudged Polly with a salacious grin. "Given 'im a bit o' the other, 'ave ya? Aren't ye the lucky one, takin' 'is fancy like that!"

Polly frowned, thinking of last night and his refusal of the offer of her body. "I don't think I have taken his fancy," she replied honestly, not a whit put out by the girl's manner or a conclusion that she could see would be the only reasonable one. She was perfectly at home in the kitchen; which, in all its essentials, except for the extraordinary degree of cleanliness, resembled her usual haunts, and perfectly at ease with Lord Kincaid's servants for much the same reasons. "I did save his life, though," she confided, her frown clearing at this happy truth. Just in time, she stopped herself from continuing blithely that in exchange he had promised to help her with her life's ambition. It would take a much less astute mind than Polly's to have missed the significance of Lady Margaret's dress and bearing and pronouncements on the devil's vanities. She was in the house of a Puritan.

She had scrambled into adulthood in a land ruled by the Lord Protector, where all forms of entertainment and gaiety were forbidden as the devil's work. Color and adornment in dress were held sinful vanities, punishable by stocks and pillory. Only in the last five years, since Charles II had been brought triumphantly from exile, had the Puritan rule lost its sway. Indeed, the pendulum had swung to the opposite extreme, and there was little extravagance in dress or behavior

that was now considered impermissible. It was a matter of some interest, she reflected, that his lordship, whose dress and bearing bore ample witness to his allegiance to the courtly norms, should share houseroom with such a stickler for the sober and divine. But then, kin had claims upon kin, and not since the reign of Henry VIII had there been anything unusual in two members of the same family holding opposing views on the manner in which the worship of God should be conducted. The present rule of the land was much more tolerant of differences in religious conviction and lifestyle than the Lord Protector's.

Polly dismissed the matter as being of little importance and turned her attention to the immediate issue-that of a visit to the hothouse. The gentleman-she still could not think of him in any other way-had told her last night that she would be required to do certain things that she would not wish to do, but that it was all part of some plan that would enable her to achieve her object. If immersing herself in hot water would draw her closer to her goal, then she supposed she would have to submit. At least she would do so in friendly company.

' 'Ow d'ye save his life, then?" asked Susan, rummaging in a cupboard. " 'Ere, these'll do you." She handed her a pair of wooden pattens. "Ye'd best borrow Bridget's cloak, for I'll have need of mine."

"Carriage is 'ere!" Tom appeared breathless in the door. " 'Is lordship's coolin' 'is heels abovestairs, and bids ye both come straightway."

Polly smiled her thanks as she took the cloak of coarse homespun handed her by the cook. The smile, did she but know it, did much to reconcile Bridget to the loan of such a precious garment.

"We must make haste." Susan pranced in the doorway, in her anxiety and excitement quite forgetting that she had not received an answer to her question.

Nicholas, while he was resigned to the task ahead, was also regretting his impulse until Polly appeared, wrapped in the ample folds of the cook's cloak. She turned the full sun of

that glorious countenance upon him and smiled-a smile that carried a hint of shyness behind its gratitude. He ceased to regret the impulse, accepting that it had been as inevitable as the sunrise. Clean, groomed, not at a disadvantage, who would she not entrance? He would welcome De "Winter's second opinion, and such an opinion would only be hastened by the speedy performance of the business in hand.