With determination, she returned to the card room, taking her place with a laughing group around the shuffleboard.
"Something appears to have pleased you mightily, duke," observed Lady Castlemaine, her eyes gleaming through the slits in her black silk mask.
"Perhaps I, also, should adopt the fashion of the vizard," drawled His Grace. "I'd not have my every thought broadcast upon my countenance."
"Only broadcast to those who have the code and can therefore read," responded her ladyship. "You are uncommon satisfied by something. Confess it."
The duke smiled and reposed himself elegantly upon the scroll-ended chaise longue beside her. He straightened an imaginary wrinkle in his aquamarine hose, turning his calf for further inspection, thus offering his companion the opportunity to admire the fine shape of his leg.
"Has Lord Kincaid's little actor at last come to appreciate your manifold attractions?" hazarded Lady Castlemaine, her baleful gaze wandering to where the subject under discussion sat at the shuffleboard. Polly wore no vizard, her own having been removed by the king himself, on the grounds that beauty such as hers had no right to be concealed beneath a mask. Such a statement had done little to improve Lady Cas-tlemaine's disposition, and her mouth thinned spitefully.
Buckingham read her expression correctly, despite the mask. He chuckled. "Do not let your ill will show, my dear. Malice is not a pretty emotion. Its manifestation wreaks havoc with the complexion; such hard lines as it produces."
Lady Castlemaine managed a wan smile. "I am indebted to you, my lord duke, for your advice. I will make certain to heed it. But, pray, will you not answer me? Does your present complacence have aught to do with the actor?"
"Well," the duke murmured, "I think you could say that I have justification for feeling satisfaction." His eyes rested on Polly, and he nodded pleasantly to himself. "I have found both the currency and the price, my lady."
The countess closed her fan, tapping the ivory sticks against the palm of her hand. "Will you say no more, sir?"
"If I may count upon your assistance," the duke replied, "you shall be a party to the entire plan."
"Gladly," the lady agreed. "I will render whatever assistance I may."
"I shall need you to plant a few seeds in the king's ear," Buckingham explained, his voice low, a smile on his lips, his eyes still upon Mistress Wyat. "Easily done in the privacy of the bed curtains."
"On what subject?"
"Why, treason, my dear, and my Lord Kincaid."
"You talk in riddles." Barbara momentarily forgot the need for caution, and her voice rose above an undertone. "What has Kincaid to do with treason?"
Buckingham shrugged, smiled. "I am sure I can find a connection if I look hard enough, madame; sufficient to impeach him and lodge him in the Tower."
"But how would such a manufacture assist your cause with the actor? She does not appear to hold him in ill will, for all that they do not live in each other's pockets."
"Ahhh, now there is the nub," the duke said, his smile broadening. "The facade they present for public consumption is precisely that-a facade presenting the complacent protector and the kept woman with an eye to the main chance. In fact, matters run much deeper." He shook his head in mock wonder. "So beautifully they play it, too. But I tell you, Barbara, if aught were to be amiss with my Lord Kincaid, I'll lay any odds you choose to name that his mistress will make whatever sacrifice demanded of her to buy his safety."
"And you will name the price," said Lady Castlemaine, her eyes brightening as comprehension dawned. " 'Twill be a high one, I imagine."
"By the time I have finished with the little whore, she will never want to show that glorious countenance at court again." The vicious words, spoken in a soft, pleasant tone, fell from smiling lips. Barbara Palmer shivered in sudden chill. "She will know herself for what she is-a slut whose place is on her back in Mother Wilkinson's brothel."
Indeed, reflected Barbara with a renewed shiver, one did not refuse the patronage of the Duke of Buckingham with
impunity. The wench would suffer well for such presumption; for imagining that a creature coming from nowhere, with a little talent and a moderately pretty face, could dare to play fast and loose with the most powerful man in the land.
"When do you begin?" she asked, taking a cheese tartlet from a tray presented by a bowing page.
"There is no time like the present." Buckingham waved the tray away and took snuff. "You will begin to make little murmurs about Kincaid, which I will follow up with graver doubts. By the time we are returned to Whitehall, the crop should be ripe for harvesting."
It was not until after Christmas, however, that the metropolis was considered sufficiently plague-free for the court's return. Polly did what she could to overcome her fear of Buckingham, to regain her pleasure in the sojourn in Wiltshire. Her efforts were assisted by the duke, who seemed to lose interest in her altogether, and eventually she was lulled into a sense of security, able to believe that he had enjoyed tormenting her in revenge for her rejection of his advances, but had now found other interests.
He had, indeed, found other, related interests, and the quiet work of discrediting Nicholas, Lord Kincaid, went on behind the scenes, and in the privacy of the king's bed.
The twelve days of Christmas at the court of King Charles II surpassed Polly's wildest dreams of that pleasure-oriented celebration.
Christmas at the Dog tavern had, in latter years, been celebrated with less than Puritan severity, certainly, but Polly had been kept far too hard at work to glean much amusement from the mummers and the musicians; the mistletoe hung upon the rafters had merely served to add to her burdens. There had been Christmas fare, and she had eaten her fill of goose and mince pies, but nothing in that experience had led her to expect the magnificence of this Christmas.
Day after day, the junketings continued to the music of viol and drum; tables groaned beneath the boar's head, the
pheasants, the sturgeons and carps, the venison pasties, cheesecakes and sugar plums, nuts and fruit. Faces remained flushed with the canary and sack, the punch and best October ale that flowed from earliest morning until the last reveler had sought his sodden slumber. And each night, the festivities were directed by the man who meant Christmas-the Lord of Misrule.
Polly had thought it the most famous jest that Richard De Winter, elegant, aloof Richard, should have been chosen for this role, but she realized rapidly how clever a move it had been. It was the Lord's task to keep the wildness from becoming out of hand, and De Winter enforced his discipline by fixing sconces, or penalties, of wickedly witty appropriateness, so that the miscreant, in paying his forfeit, would provide lavish entertainment for the assembled company. A sullen look, an unkind remark, the bringing of dissension, were punished instantly, as was horseplay that crossed the boundary of play. To be accused as a spoilsport of either kind meant the ordeal of firecrackers and squibs, and while the company might split its sides laughing at the antics of the offender, leaping and dancing as the fiery things tied to his heels and hems exploded, the delinquent was unlikely to repeat his offense.