Nell’s giggle was infectious. “Bloody right, sweetheart, what do I need with the pompous fools? I bed with the king. It doesn’t get any better than that!”
The shock must have been plain on Rose’s face, because Nell’s giggle rang out louder. Still, Rose couldn’t help wondering at her meaning. The aging King Charles wasn’t so handsome as he’d once been. Did he possess some sort of special aptitude in the bedchamber?
She was on the verge of asking when another lady barged in, her china-white complexion mottled with angry red. Giving Nell a glare that could curdle milk, she plopped onto a green baize bench with her back to them both, her dark ringlets shaking with barely controlled fury.
Nell made a rude noise, then sailed out the door with a reluctant Rose in tow.
“Who was that?” Rose kept her voice low and her shoulders hunched. Though relieved to escape the attiring room’s tension, she didn’t fancy the prospect of being seen on Nell’s arm.
“Oh, just the high and mighty Louise de Kéroualle.”
”The Duchess of Portsmouth?” Another of King Charles’s mistresses. It seemed Rose couldn’t turn a corner without running into one.
“She’s hated by the people, you know,” Nell said with relish.
“Because she’s a shrew?” Rose scanned the room surreptitiously, worried Gabriel might spot them.
Nell guffawed. “Nay—though she is, of course. But it’s her Catholicism they hate. Her grace could be the soul of compassion and they’d still hate her, whilst I get cheered through the streets because I’m the Protestant whore.”
Rose was startled into laughter—though she’d not be repeating the jest to her mother.
“Poor Squintabella is in a snit,” Nell explained, “because she arrived today after a long journey from Bath, but although Charles took dinner with her, he didn’t invite her to stay the night.”
“Squintabella?” Rose echoed weakly, her head spinning with all this lurid court gossip.
“Did you not notice the slight cast in the duchess’s eye? I was here at court before her, and I’ll be here long after she’s gone. She’s managed to send Barbara running across the Channel, but she won’t do away with me so easily.”
“Barbara? The Duchess of Cleveland has left England?” Rose was having trouble keeping up. Barbara Palmer was Charles’s longest-standing mistress, having accompanied him home for his Restoration.
“She’s on the outs now, thanks to Louise. Living in Paris. But she’ll return—she always does. And no matter what she’s done, Charles always forgives her.”
“You must find that maddening,” Rose said.
“Nay, it’s Barbara. She’s had him wrapped around her finger for seventeen years. I know better than to expect that to change now.” Nell grinned and pecked Rose on both cheeks, sang “Good luck in the woods!” and disappeared in the crowd.
No sooner had she left than Louise de Kéroualle took her place. “Enjoying court, Lady Rose?”
Rose turned in surprise. “Very much,“ she said distractedly. Baby-faced with almond-shaped eyes, full red lips, and enough jewelry hanging all over her to stock a small shop, the duchess would make any girl feel unsightly next to her beauty.
But her manner rather spoiled her looks. “You’d do best,” she sneered in a lisping French accent, “not to fraternize with such as she.”
“Do you speak of Nell Gwyn, your grace?” Rose couldn’t help but notice the small squint Nell had mentioned.
“I cannot credit that he’s taken up with such a coarse, common orange wench.” Everyone knew that as a young girl, before she’d stepped on stage at the Theatre Royal, Nell had been employed there selling oranges. “She has no respect for her betters. Calling His Majesty Charles the Third—”
“The third, your grace?”
Her smile was full of venom. “The wench’s former lovers include Charles Hart—a common actor—who then passed her to Charles Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. She called him her Charles the Second, and now the king has become her Charles the Third.”
Rose’s lips twitched.
“It’s not amusing,” the duchess said with a sniff. “Charles deserves his due—not least from a guttersnipe like her.”
Rose bristled. Louise de Kéroualle, daughter of a distinguished house, quite obviously considered herself much above Nell Gwyn. But the duchess’s virtue was just as stained as her rival’s. In Rose’s estimation, that made them equals—and at least the guttersnipe was nice.
Pretty is as pretty does, Mum had always told her three girls. Rose was watching the Frenchwoman’s flawless face shrivel up to match her bitter insides when Gabriel appeared.
“Did you not promise me the next dance?” he asked Rose, although she hadn’t. He nodded toward the duchess. “Your grace.”
The pale beauty nodded back, a smile curving those blood-red lips. “Your grace,” she echoed, her voice as sweet and smooth as honey.
The woman, Rose realized, was a natural-born predator. Though she knew tongues would wag when the duke led her off toward the dance floor yet again, she went more than willingly.
As she took her place across from him, her spirits soared with renewed excitement. She’d always said it was as easy to fall in love with a titled man as one without, and the Duke of Bridgewater certainly had a title worth falling for.
The dance was a branle, and all the running, gliding, and skipping left her breathless. Or maybe it was Gabriel…she couldn’t be sure. She only knew that when he took her by the arm and drew her toward an exterior door, her heart gave a little lurch.
“Are you certain we should—” she started.
“Quite certain. Aren’t you overwarm?” His smile looked innocent enough. “I’m roasting after that dance.”
She glanced toward her mother, who was engaged in conversation across the drawing room. Rose didn’t hesitate. Here was her chance to get the duke alone and…take a walk. Yes, just a walk. And a nice talk. Alone, together, getting to know each other. The first step toward trapping—attracting, that was, not trapping!—the perfect husband. Which was why she’d come to court in the first place.
So why was she suddenly uneasy?
Perhaps it was the dark. She’d never liked the dark, so she was dismayed to see naught
