They waited now to witness the discomfiture of Madam Carwell, as they had called Louise since her arrival in England. They refused to try to pronounce Kéroualle. Louise was Carwell to them, and no fine English title was going to alter that. It would please the Londoners to see her neglected whom they called The Catholic Whore.
Here was another foreigner, but this woman was at least a beauty, and they would be glad to see their King lured from the side of the squint-eyed French spy.
Louise was worried. She believed that she had lost her hold on the King. She knew that that hold had largely been due to the fact that she had not been easy to seduce. She could not, of course, have held out any longer; to have done so might have made the King realize that he did not greatly desire her.
The sickness which she had contracted had not only taken its toll of her looks; it had left her nervous, and she wondered whether she could ever regain the health she had once enjoyed. She had grown fat and, although the King had nicknamed her Fubbs with the utmost affection, she felt the name carried with it a certain lack of dignity. She was beginning to fear that had Charles been less indulgent, less careless, she would have been passed over long ago.
She did not believe that he did half those things which he promised he would do and which she was commanded by the French King through Courtin, the French ambassador, to persuade him to.
He would look at her with that shrewd yet lazy smile and say: “So you would advise that, Fubbs? Ah, yes, of course, I understand.”
She often heard him laugh uproariously at some of Nell Gwyn’s comments and frequently these were uttered to discountenance herself. And now this most disturbing news had reached her. Hortense Mancini was in London.
There was no one in England whom she could really trust. Buckingham, her enemy, was in decline, but for how long would he remain so? Shaftesbury hated her and would want to destroy her influence with the King, since he was anti-Catholic and she had heard through Courtin that he was planning to expunge all popery from the country. It might have been that Shaftesbury knew of that secret clause in the Treaty of Dover concerning the King’s religion; if so, he would know that she had her instructions from Louis to make the King’s conversion complete and public as soon as she could.
She was trembling, for she had lost some of her calmness during her illness.
She decided that there was only one person in England who would help her now, and that the time had come for her to redeem those vague promises which she had held out to him. She dressed herself with care. In spite of her increased bulk she knew well how to dress to advantage and she had taste and poise which few ladies at Court possessed.
She sent one of her women to Lord Danby’s apartments with a message which was to be discreetly delivered and which explained that she would shortly be coming to see him, and she hoped he would be able to give her a private interview.
The woman quickly returned with the news that Lord Danby eagerly awaited her coming.
He received her with a show of respect.
“I am honored to receive Your Grace.”
“I trust that in coming thus for a friendly talk I do not encroach on your time.”
“Time is well spent in your company,” said Danby. He had guessed the cause of her alarm. “I hear that we have a foreign Duchess newly arrived among us.”
“It is Madame Mazarin … notorious in all the Courts of Europe.”
“And doubtless come to win notoriety in this one,” said Danby slyly.
Louise flinched. “I doubt it not. If you know aught …” she began.
Danby looked at his fingernails. “I gather,” he said, “that she does not wish to live in the Palace, as Your Grace does.”
“She comes because she is poor,” said Louise. “I have heard that that mad husband of hers quickly dissipated the fortune she inherited from her uncle.”
“’Tis true. She has let His Majesty know that she must have an adequate income before taking up her apartments in Whitehall.”
Louise came closer to him. She said nothing, but her meaning was clear to him: You will advise the King against providing this income. You, whose financial genius enables you to enrich yourself while you suppress waste in others, you, under whom the King’s budget has been balanced, will do all in your power to prevent his giving this woman what she asks. You will range yourself on the side of the Duchess of Portsmouth, which means that you will be the enemy of the Duchess Mazarin.
Why not? thought Danby excitedly. Intrigue was stimulating. Discovery? Charles never blamed others for falling into temptation which he himself made no attempt to resist.
He took her hand and kissed it. When she allowed it to remain in his, he was sure.
“Your Grace is more beautiful than before your illness,” he said; and he laughed inwardly, realizing that she, the coldest woman at Court, was offering herself in exchange for his protection.
He kissed her without respect, without affection. He was accustomed to taking bribes.
Hortense received the King at the house of Lady Elizabeth Harvey.
She had guessed that as soon as he heard of her arrival in his capital he would wish to visit her. It was exactly what Hortense wanted.
She lay back on a sofa awaiting him. She was voluptuously beautiful and, although she was thirty and had led a wild and adventurous life, her beauty was in no way impaired. Her perfect classical features would remain perfect and classical as long as she lived. Her abundant bluish-black hair fell curling about her bare shoulders; but her most beautiful assets were her wonderful violet eyes.
Hortense was imperturbably good-humored, lazy, of a temperament to match the King’s; completely sensual, she was widely experienced in amatory adventures. She had often been advised that she would do well to visit England, and had again and again decided to renew her acquaintance with Charles; but each time something had happened to prevent her, some new lover had beguiled her and made her forget the man who had wished to be her lover in her youth. It was sheer poverty which had driven her to England now—sheer poverty and the fact that she had created such a scandal in Savoy that she had been asked to leave. The last three scandalous years had been spent in the company of César Vicard, a dashing, handsome young man who had posed as the Abbé of St Réal. When the letters which had passed between the Duchess and the soi-disant Abbé had been discovered, they, completely lacking in reticence, had so shocked those into whose hands they fell, that the Duchess had been asked to leave Savoy.
So, finding herself poor and in need of refuge, Hortense had come to England. She knew no fear. She had faced the perilous crossing in the depth of winter, and with a few servants had come to a completely strange country, never doubting that her spectacular beauty would ensure for her a position at Court.
Charles strode in, took her hand, and kissed it while his eyes did not leave her face.
“Hortense!” he cried. “But you are the same Hortense whom I loved all those years ago. No, not the same. Od’s Fish, I should not have believed then that it was possible for any to be more beautiful than the youngest of les Mazarinettes. But I see that there is one more fair: the Duchess Mazarin—Hortense grown up.”
She laughed at him and waved him to be seated with a fascinating easy gesture as though she were the Queen, he the subject. Charles did not mind. He felt that he should indeed forget his royalty in the presence of such beauty.
The long lashes lay against her olive skin. Charles stared at the beautiful blue-black hair lying so negligently on the bare shoulders. This languid beauty aroused in him such desire as he rarely felt nowadays. He knew that his bout of sickness had changed him; he was not the man he had been. But he was determined that Hortense should become his mistress.