"La, my Lord Kincaid! You have been neglecting us sorely, I swear it! You have barely shown your face at court since you found your pretty little actor." Full, vermilion lips pouted; eyebrows, arched and lengthened with a black pencil, assumed an impossible quirk over the top of her vigorously fluttering fan.
Nicholas smiled, allowing his gaze to travel with lascivious admiration over the charms thus displayed as he picked up his cards in the old, familiar game. At least while he was playing it, he could distance the inconvenient emotions that went with loving Polly.
It was a full hour before Polly was released from the king's Presence chamber. When she reentered the Long Gallery her eyes instantly and automatically went in search of Nicholas in her eagerness to show him that she had survived the ordeal. In fact, it had not been that much of an ordeal. The king had been all condescension, and she had really quite enjoyed herself. But there was no sign of Nicholas.
She scanned the brilliant, chattering throng. Dusk was
falling beyond the long windows, and servants moved to light the flambeaux and many-branched candlesticks so that the room, already heated with so many bodies, grew rapidly stuffy, sweat and the ripe overlay of perfumes mingling, heavy in the air. Coiffures grew limp, and many a lady surreptitiously dabbed at her face, examining her handkerchief for signs that her paint was running.
"You look weary, Polly. I will escort you home." Richard De Winter spoke at her shoulder. She looked up at him with a start.
"That is kind in you, Richard. But I will wait for Nick."
"Nicholas is somewhat occupied." De Winter took snuff. "He has commissioned me to see you safe home, with the message that he will come to you later tonight."
"I suppose he is occupied with another of his painted dolls," declared Polly, looking mischievously at Richard. "Perhaps I had better find him."
Richard gazed into the middle distance, observing casually, "My aunt did enjoy your company on Wednesday. She has expressed the desire to introduce you to others of her friends. You would find their discourse most edifying, I assure you."
"It is not friendly in you to fail to see the jest," Polly told him, somewhat aggrieved at this thinly veiled threat. "Why must you take me home, and not Nick?"
De Winter sighed. "Let us achieve a degree of privacy and I will explain. This is not the place for argument. If you have no objection, we will go by water. 'Tis a pleasant evening, and I have need of the air."
For all that they had become fast friends, and she had been using his first name for several weeks now, Richard could on occasion be irritatingly dictatorial, Polly reflected with a grimace. She much preferred Nick's methods of ensuring her compliance! However, she yielded to necessity without further objection, allowing De Winter to tuck her hand beneath his arm as he escorted her from the palace.
"Well?" she requested, once they had attained Whitehall Stairs. "Where is Nick?"
"Have a little patience, child," her companion advised, gesturing to a wherryman on the lookout for passengers to bring his small riverboat up to the steps. "Let us enjoy the evening on the water."
Polly compressed her lips, stepping into the wherry, managing her skirts with considerable dexterity as she sat down. De Winter took his place opposite her and instructed the wherryman to row to the Somerset Stairs. He smiled at Polly's indignant expression but said nothing, gazing about him instead with every sign of pleasure in the fine spring evening, as he hummed a little tune.
In fact, Richard was nowhere near as easy in his mind as he appeared. How best to broach the upcoming subject to Polly was exercising him considerably. He must somehow ensure that she did not feel betrayed by Kincaid; must somehow convince her of the vital political purpose that lay behind their request; must somehow couch the imperative in terms of a request, he amended to himself.
The wherry scraped against the steps at Somerset Stairs. Richard paid the oarsman his sixpence before assisting Polly onto dry land. It was a short walk from the river to the Strand, and from thence to Drury Lane. Polly kept silence as they walked. She had the conviction that something of moment was about to take place, yet she did not know why she should have this belief, since there was nothing overt in Richard's demeanor to encourage it. But intuition was a powerful persuader; and intuition was also telling her that she was not going to enjoy whatever this momentous happening would turn out to be. Why was Nicholas not here?
The answer to that question was revealed in short order once they had reached her lodging. Politely, Polly offered her guest a glass of sherry before she sat upon the window seat beneath the diamond-paned casement, and waited. De Winter walked around the parlor with a restlessness most unusual in this generally suave and impassive aristocrat.
"Why do you not make a clean breast, sir?" Polly prompted quietly. "I find myself growing apprehensive and would dearly like to make an end of this."
"Very well." He placed his sherry glass upon the side table. "You have heard talk both here and in Nick's house about the way matters of government are conducted-"
"Are not conducted," Polly corrected with raised eyebrow.
"Exactly so." He permitted himself a small smile. "You understand, then, where Nick and I stand in this?"
"That you consider the king ill advised," Polly said. "That the Cabal under Buckingham's leadership is to a large extent responsible for this, and you would bolster the position of the chancellor at this time, because he is a more reliable minister than the Earl of Arlington, for instance."
"I will tell you now, Polly, that myself, Nick, Sir Peter, and Major Conway have pledged ourselves to circumvent Buckingham's destructive influence." He picked up his sherry glass again, sipping slowly, gathering his thoughts.
"To set yourselves up in opposition to Buckingham can only be dangerous." Polly frowned uneasily. "You and Nick both said that only a fool would make an enemy of the duke."
Richard nodded. "We do not make our opposition obvious, Polly."
"So how would you do this thing?" she asked as the flicker of unease blossomed into flame, and she still did not know why.
"We need someone who has access to Buckingham's intimate circle," De Winter said, deciding that directness was his best policy. "Someone whose presence would be so accepted that conversation would go on around her without thought. Someone who could be in privy places where documents might be left lying around-"
"Her?" Polly managed to get the one word out, the word that penetrated her confusion with the blinding speed of a rapier thrust.
"You," affirmed Richard quietly.
"But.…but how should I gain access to-" Then she saw Buckingham's cynical, dissolute countenance bent upon her, the eyes afire with that lusting hunger; and she knew.
She sprang to her feet in a swish of satin petticoats and lace-edged gown. "You say Nick would have me do this? He knows that I cannot abide Buckingham."
"Which is why I am deputed to present the case, Polly," Richard said quietly. "Nick would not ask this of you himself. It is not a lover's request, you must understand, but the request of a political faction of which Nick is a leading member. We have need of your services. England has need of your services, Mistress Wyat. Will you deny them?"
"I have little interest in politics," Polly muttered, pacing the chamber. "Why should I sacrifice myself in this way? If it were necessary for Nick himself, then… then, maybe, I could- No, not maybe," she added with a flash of impatience. "Of course I would… but-"
"This is for Nick," De Winter interrupted. "He has pledged himself to this cause. The specter of civil war still hangs over the land, Polly. If the king sets himself up against the people, as his father did before him, then the specter will take substance. Buckingham does not see this danger. He cares only for the acquisition of power-power he will hold by ruling the king. You say you have no interest in politics. But surely you cannot view such a prospect with equanim-ity."