Her face fell ludicrously, all the glow and sparkle fading from those great eyes. "But I have never before seen such a place. I will pull the cloak around me-"
"Nay!" he repeated, sharply this time. "It is freezing outside. You exposed yourself to the elements sufficiently last evening." Stepping past her, he sprang lightly to the ground, where Susan already stood in attendance. He closed the carriage door firmly, then, although he knew it to be a mistake, glanced upward. Polly looked at him through the window, as pathetic as any prisoner, as appealing as a drooping violet
after a rainstorm. Kincaid sighed. "If you promise not to set the hothouse on its heels with your wailing, we will stop here on the way back, and you may explore to your heart's content."
The violet lifted its head to the sun, unfurling its radiance. Her mouth curved in that devastating smile as she propped her elbows on the edge of the window and settled down to observe the scene from shelter. Kincaid, completely bewitched, shook his head helplessly.
"Come, Susan, let us deal with this matter without delay." He strode off with the maidservant in tow.
When they returned within half an hour, Susan was lost behind the number of packages heaped in her arms. But when the coachman relieved her of her burdens, thus revealing her face, her expression was one of shock. When the mistress shopped, particularly for her servants, every item was subject to careful consideration, a weighing up of necessity against cost. The materials were all to be sturdy and hard-wearing, coarse and without frills or furbelows, and only the strictest necessities were purchased. His lordship, while bearing in mind that a servant in his sister-in-law's house must be clad only in the most sober, modest garments, had bought a petticoat and smock of the finest Holland, a kirtle of warm, fine wool, and a plain dark gown of a mixture of wool and silk. There was a thick serge cloak with a fur-trimmed hood, and a pair of leather gloves. Two pairs of woolen hose, a pair of leather pumps, and a pair of cork-soled pantofles to wear over the pumps in inclement weather completed a wardrobe that would enrage Lady Margaret by a quality and scope that was most definitely unsuited to the status of a kitchen maid.
"Lor!" murmured Susan, climbing back on the box. "There'll be fireworks when the mistress sees that lot." She regaled the fascinated coachman with a full account of the purchases as they bowled along to the hothouse.
Their arrival at this building caused Polly to assume the mien of one about to ascend the scaffold. She stepped hesitantly out of the coach into the courtyard and stood still,
clinging to the door handle. The vehicle, bearing the Kin-caid arms upon its panels, brought the establishment's proprietor hustling across the cobbles, calling over his shoulder to have one of the privy chambers prepared for his lordship. When informed that his customer was not, on this occasion, to be his lordship, but, instead, the tumbled, begrimed girl at his lordship's side, he rapidly revised these instructions. The common baths in the female wing would do perfectly well. Only the gentry were entitled to privacy.
He was required to revise his plans yet again when he received his lordship's orders, and a more than generous payment. There was to be privacy, a limitless supply of hot water, plentiful towels, whatever assistance was requested for however long the ablutions should take.
The proprietor glanced at the wench again, deciding that it was going to be a long and tedious task. Why was his lordship concerning himself with the cleanliness of this street drab? Then the girl looked up at him, and he understood why. God's grace! But where had he found such a pearl? She was in sore need of cleaning up, though, even if one was not particularly fastidious.
"It shall be exactly as you say, my lord," he murmured, bowing low, rubbing his hands together. "My wife will attend to the girl personally."
"Good. The wench there will help also." Kincaid gestured toward Susan. "I will return in two hours. That should be sufficient."
"Two hours!" Polly squawked. "I cannot spend two hours in water. I will dissolve."
"Do you wish to learn to read and write?" His lordship fixed her with a gimlet eye. "And do all the other things we discussed?"
Polly put her chin up and turned resolutely toward the hothouse. " 'Tis not so very unpleasant," Susan reassured her, trotting along beside her. "We all comes every four weeks, even the mistress. Can't abide dirt, she can't. Says it lids the devil's work. An' lice!" Susan's hands flew up in a gesture of exaggerated horror. "If'is lordship hadn't stopped
'er this morning, she'd have cut all your 'air off, she would. Did it to little Milly only last month. Right down to the scalp."
That prospect was sufficiently hideous to grant Polly a degree of resignation to the alternative offered her. The proprietor's lady was a large, cheerful woman whose experienced eye immediately took in the full gravity of the task ahead. She grimly rolled up her sleeves and added more hot water to the tub.
Kincaid spent the next two hours in a neighboring coffeehouse, looking through the latest Oxford Gazette. The news was as disturbing as ever. Public dissatisfaction with the king and his court was becoming daily more clamorous; the periodicals and tabloids to be found in the coffeehouses all contained tales of the wild doings of his cronies, of how the king was ruled by his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, of the ascendancy of the Duke of Buckingham. There was frank and fearful speculation that the king would make his bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth, legitimate, thus creating him heir to the throne in place of the king's brother, the Duke of York.
For some reason, the king did not seem to see the danger he was in. He ignored the advice of all but those who encouraged him to assert his divine right to absolute power, as his father had done before him. The land had risen against his father's autocracy, and they would do the same again if given just cause. The legitimizing of the Duke of Monmouth and the setting aside of the rightful heir would be seen as just cause. The House of Commons would never ratify such a move, and if the king attempted to force them to do so, he would meet his father's fate. As he would if he continued with a reckless expenditure that was bankrupting the nation. The English people had tasted their own power, and they would not again accept being milked to pay for the king's pleasures and whims.
Nicholas frowned, tapping a manicured finger on the table. Charles II needed wise counselors, not those who were interested only in their own political advancement and per-
sonal power. Unfortunately, the young king had not been taught to distinguish the true from the false and, having spent his youth in impoverished exile, had not been bred to kingship.
Kincaid and De Winter led a small faction pledged to circumvent the influence of those who would lead the king astray, the Duke of Buckingham in particular. The king was a man of whim, choosing and abandoning favorites as the mood took him. If something could be discovered to Buckingham's discredit, then his star would fall. In addition, it might be possible to forestall the worst of the king's errors if they could keep one step ahead, were able to anticipate, so that, if necessary, the full force of opinion from the opposing members of the House of Lords could be brought to bear on the king before he approached the Commons with unpopular demands. If the Lords made its voice heard loudly enough, King Charles might listen.
This two-pronged attack depended entirely on having access to Buckingham's inner circle, to the plots and plans he would weave with Sir Thomas Clifford and my Lords Ashley, Arlington, and Lauderdale. De Winter's manservant had been recruited, initially. He had left De Winter's service to become employed as lackey in Buckingham's household, but not even the substantial sums he received for any piece of information had been able to compensate him for his terror at the prospect of discovery. It became obvious to his real employers that fear was making him unreliable, and one slip on his part would mean the end for all of them. Spying on the king's favorite would be tantamount to spying upon the king-treason, which ended on the block.