Page 36 of Ondine

Warwick felt like throwing a boot at him.

The king’s eyes danced with amusement. Slowly Warwick smiled.

He felt a sudden faith that the king would never betray him.

Oh, he might with Anne, and a few others, yes; they’d both known some women who had known many men.

But he couldn’t believe at that moment—or in any sober moment—that the king would ever touch a woman who was his wife.

“Swim, aye, Your Majesty!” Warwick said with high exaggeration. Charles laughed; then, like the friends they were, they departed for the exercise.

Ondine met Nell Gwyn that day and enjoyed her good-natured and down-to-earth wit.

She spent the majority of the afternoon, though, with Catherine, surprised by the queen’s open admissions.

“Never feel anger against Charles for me!” she stated softly.

“Parliament wished him to divorce me for my barrenness, and he would not! Ah, and I am no saint! I’m glad to see one paramour squirm—Lady Anne!

Oh, you are beautiful—and she is enraged! ”

Ondine didn’t think that Anne was outraged. She watched Ondine with a feline stare—and a secretive smile of knowledge.

And why not? Ondine had barely seen her husband. Most probably, Anne had seen a great deal of him.

Ondine did not see him until dinner. And it was quite strange then to sit beside him. One minute he offered her his greatest, if feigned, courtesy, and the next he stared at her with an elusive amber fire about his eyes, gravely pondering her.

Then at one point during the meal he stiffened, his eyes focusing across the room. “Hardgrave!” He swore softly.

Ondine, curious, followed his gaze to the newly arrived viscount.

Hardgrave was as fashionable as the rest of the company.

He wore a plumed hat much like Warwick’s, red stockings, cream breeches, and a burnt-orange surcoat.

He appeared far stockier than her husband and was a formidable man—broad-shouldered and muscular.

He was short, which made him appear broader, and he carried with him none of Warwick’s natural grace.

Hardgrave came to offer his homage to his king, and then he and Warwick exchanged courtesies, for the benefit of the company, that thinly veiled their hostility. Warwick did not introduce Ondine. The viscount stared at her, she offered a weak smile, and he left.

“Take the greatest care near him!” Warwick whispered quite sharply to her, and she found that his eyes were upon her more fiercely than she had ever seen them. She nodded, too laden with the timbre of his voice to taunt him in return.

The meal ended as the king clapped his hands and cheerfully said that with the charm and nobility of the company present, they must all dance into the night.

Food was cleared, and the tables were taken away.

In the galleries the musicians began to play.

Ondine immediately found herself claimed by the king, and with the pulse and beat of the music in her ears, the king the most charming of escorts, she suddenly found her heart light, youth and laughter bubbling within her.

They paused at last to sate their thirsts with rum punch from a crystal bowl set upon the table, and it was there that Ondine at last met Lord Hardgrave formally.

“Hardgrave!” the king said, sipping his punch. “Ah, what a piece of neglect! You did not meet the new lady of Chatham. Ondine, Lyle Hardgrave, Viscount—”

“The lady knows my lands, Your Grace,” Hardgrave said, and his pale blue eyes upon her were both flattering and cold. “As she surely knows of me. Your husband and I, my lady, are bitter enemies.”

“Not in my court,” Charles said sharply.

Ondine hadn’t known much about the man. She was curious about him, yet presumed that men whose lands adjoined might well find friction. Were they not natural friends, it might be quite easy to become natural enemies.

“Never in your court,” Hardgrave acknowledged.

She sensed something then, and she knew not how, or why, but she warmed. Looking up, she saw her husband, far across the room. She had known by that warmth that he was watching her.

He was in the company of a lovely young lady that she had not met.

Ondine gave Hardgrave a sweet smile. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Lord Hardgrave.”

He clicked his heels and bent to kiss her hand.

Perhaps Charles decided the act dangerous; perhaps he had just grown bored.

He swept Ondine back to the dance with a sudden flourish and he whirled and twirled so quickly and with such grace and energy that she laughed until she could not stop, and at last begged for mercy, saying that she must escape out the open doorway for a breath of air.

The king, waylaid then by his wife, could not follow her.

She was breathless with the dance, breathless with laughter, when she came outside to lean against the stone of the balcony and gasp in air, and cool her flesh and blood. She closed her eyes tightly for a moment. Oh, it was good! Life was good—so very, very sweet!

“I’ve certainly never heard of her!”

Ondine tensed suddenly, aware that she was not alone outside. Beyond a trellis strung with roses two women sat upon a bench, fanning themselves furiously from the dance—and gossiping.

She clenched her jaw together to brace herself; one of the two was Lady Anne.

The voice that had already come her way—imperiously—carried the touch of a French accent, and narrowing her eyes to focus between the slits of the trellis, Ondine realized that the second woman was the king’s mistress Louise.

And it didn’t take long for Ondine to realize that she was the object of their gossip.

“Hmmph!” Lady Anne snorted, in a manner less than delicate, yet she had no audience excepting Louise—and unbeknownst to her, Ondine.

“I tell you she is no ‘lady’! And he swore he’d never wed again—not after that fiasco with Genevieve.

Ah, what a fool he is! He loves me, adores me!

Yet fears to do me ill by marriage. Fool man!

Yet still, I shall be content with just his love—until this wretched little bitch of his has played out her role! ”

“Wretched little bitch?” Louise inquired sweetly, yet Ondine sensed a hidden malice in the tone. “She’s quite beautiful.”

“Quite common! That’s it! I dare say she’s a commoner—”

Louise chuckled, low and throaty, and the tone was definitely malicious. “Not so common! The king is infatuated, as you’ve seen.”

“Oh, men, they all flock to anything new! You wait and see, ma petite, they’ll all tire soon enough!”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps the lord of Chatham is madly, passionately in love with her.”

“His passion, I assure you, Louise, is for me.”

“And the king’s is for me, mais oui? Yet . . . he shares it with others, as well you know. But as Barbara Castlemaine once said of the king, he is exceptionally well endowed for the art of lovemaking.” Louise’s words were very smug.

“And, as you reminded me, I have known them both! Chatham excels even the king in the absolute wonder of masculine endowments!”

Then they both started to titter with laughter, friends, enemies—competitors.

Ondine felt her face flame with fury and humiliation.

All her fascination with the evening came to a crashing halt.

Warwick! Damn him to a thousand burning hells!

Rake, scoundrel, bastard! He’d dragged her here to be subjected to his mistress, her crass remarks .

. . her self-satisfied possessiveness. Oh!

She wanted to race back into the ballroom and rip great handfuls of his rich hair out of his autocratic head.

“Ah, you’ll miss him, won’t you Anne, eh?” Louise inquired then sweetly, still laughing softly. “After all . . . he does have his bride in attendance.”

“Trust me, Louise, she’ll not stand in my way.

” Anne’s voice lowered to near a whisper.

“A bride may, after all, disappear. She is no Genevieve, but one never knows. I may well cause her to run screaming from this place! And,” she added maliciously, “it seems the bride has also caught the king’s attention beyond all limits.

Perhaps she’ll be occupied much of the time that she is about. ”

Ondine could suddenly bear no more. She spun about and stormed back into the ballroom, more aflame with color than she had been from the dance.

She swirled straight into Lord Hardgrave. Hardgrave—her dear husband’s enemy! She gave him a beautiful smile, quickly apologizing for her clumsiness.

His broad hands touched her shoulders; his strange pale blue eyes were upon hers, alit with sudden pleasure.

“Ah, Lady Chatham! How long has that name sounded dung to my ears—yet now it tinkles like the melody of a stream. My dear, please do see fit to stumble against me at any time, for it is with the greatest pleasure that I aright you!”

“Thank you, milord, your words are most charmingly stated.”

“Ah, lady, you’re too fine for the Beast of Chatham!

Would that I had but seen you first, alas!

” His hands lingered too long upon her shoulders; his eyes too long upon the rise of her breasts.

She wanted to shrink from him; she did not.

“Still, the day might come that I may yet slay that beast, and then . . .”

He lowered his head; his face was very close to hers. She longed to escape him, yet knew not how.

“Ah, there you are, my dear!”

The king! Blessed good King Charles! How had she ever feared him? Here he was, chivalrously saving her from this man.

“May I?” Charles asked Hardgrave with a bland smile. “The lady promised me this dance.”

“In all things, Charles, I would serve you,” Hardgrave said.

“I dare say,” Charles murmured, but then he swept Ondine into his arms, and soon they were on the floor, moving to the strains of music that cascaded down upon them from the minstrels in the gallery.

“You laugh, my lady? Is my dancing so very bad, then?”

“Nay!” Ondine said joyously. “I laugh with wonder, and appreciation, Your Grace!”

“Ah! I did save you from unwanted attentions!”

“Aye, that you did!”

“Mind like a whip—uncanny intuition, how clever, how charming am I!” Charles chuckled.

And Ondine, so excellently swirled about his lead, cast back her head and laughed delightedly at his very wry self-evaluation.

And it was then that she saw her husband again.

He stood by the wall, watching her with eyes of flame and fury.

Stiff and tall and rigid, like a stallion locked in a pen, he watched her.

Angry? Oh, more than that . . . yet how dare he!

Endowments—his endowments were the subject of general discussion, and he stared at her!

But even as she returned his gaze with her head high and cool contempt in her eyes, he was forced to turn, as a female hand touched upon his chest.

Anne’s hand.

And as he turned he smiled, and then chuckled, deep and low, and even that sound, across a crowded room, made Ondine quiver inside.

Idiot! she charged herself. She could not care, could not be such a fool as to love such a man.

Anne’s words, humiliating, shameful, infuriating—painful!

—were true. She played a role for him; he would discard her . . .

She felt ill suddenly. Warwick and Anne were now locked close in a tête-à-tête; Anne’s hands seemed to be all over her lover.

And Warwick was sweeping another chalice of the rum-laced punch from the silver tray, offering Anne a sip, offering her the crooked sensual curl of a grin.

Buckingham was with them; they all laughed and drank and it was the most riotous, intimate grouping.

“Sire,” she said to Charles, “may I retire for the evening?”

“Leave him to the claws of Lady Anne?” Charles whispered.

“I shall hope that they scratch one another’s eyes out,” Ondine replied honestly. “Sire, my head suddenly aches.”

Most courteously he escorted her to her chambers. Ondine noted that Jake followed them—ready to stand guard over her at the door! Charles kissed her hand elegantly before leaving her.

He walked away. “Good night!” she called to Jake, slamming the door after the king had departed.

Ondine went on into the suite. She stared about the outer room; at the settee where Warwick had slept.

She walked over to it and kicked it in a fury, then swept into the bedchamber, slamming the door behind her.

She began to mutter as she went through her chest, absently finding a white silk nightdress, with the finest Bruges lace about the neck and sleeves.

She nearly tore her dress to shreds in her haste to remove it, then tossed it to a pile in the corner of the room. Oh, damn him!

Decked out in the white silk, she thought to go to bed, to forget the night. The world looked well for her! She had escaped the gallows, and now had the king’s own blessing to seek a way to right her wrongs. How could she let this tempest brew within her?

Yet it was true . . . while one lived one felt the furies and glories of life, knew its pains and its elations. Hope, laughter, the coolness of silk against the flesh, the searing blade of jealousy, humiliation . . . and the hurt that she could not shield away.

“Warwick Chatham, damn you!” she cried aloud, but softly. And then she began to pace the floor; she could not help herself. She muttered and raved, thinking that she would tire, that the feelings would at last fade with an onslaught of exhaustion so she could find the solace of sleep.

* * *

Ah, the wretched gutter-bitch!

Warwick stared into Anne’s eyes; he smiled bemusedly at her words, yet heard them not. Buckingham pressed another drink into his hand, and he accepted it blindly.

He talked, joked, laughed.

Inside he raged with emotion, haunted, jealous—ragged with the pain he could not quell. She had left on the king’s arm, and he could not bear it. All he could think of was her.

He had to have her. Nay, he could not . . .

Another drink, aye! To her sea-witch eyes, her siren’s breasts, her walk, her sway, her legs . . .

Stay away, stay away, stay away . . .

He could not. It was late. He had lingered, he had laughed, he had flirted, he had danced and drunk, and none of it did any good.

Quite suddenly he broke from the company. Striding, he left the ballroom grimly, and with his jaw hard, his fists knotted, he headed for his chamber. God rot it, but he could not endure another night like a spaniel on a cushion!