The Wildest Rake

She told her father then that she had invited Andrew to be one of the guests at her birthday celebration. The Aider- man looked surprised, but seemed happy enough at the news.

She and Nan walked out next day to see the smoking, blackened ruins of the great fire.

The Sheriff, unsmiling and grave, nodded to her in recognition as he talked to his officers beside one of the burnt houses. Fires were always breaking out in London. The huddled wooden buildings were a terrible fire risk. It only needed someone to fall asleep without snuffing their candle for a whole street to be ablaze.

Cornelia had half hoped to meet Andrew as they walked back, but she saw no glimpse of him. When they returned home, they found her father cock-a-hoop because he had received an invitation to go to Greenwich while the King was visiting there. His views on the King were forgotten as he saw to it that Thomas polished up his gold chains and brushed his best black satin suit.

The royal patronage was always useful to an ambitious merchant. Alderman Brent hoped to make himself known in court circles and thus, perhaps, find new markets for the goods he bought and sold.

When he returned from Greenwich on the following day he was even more excited. He had personally spoken to the King, and was full of His Majesty’s democratic open friendliness, his merry jests and lack of arrogance.

‘Why, his brother, the Duke of York, was far more haughty,’ he told his wife. ‘The King spoke to many people. The Duke to few.’

‘Did you see my Lady Castlemaine?’ asked his wife curiously. ‘What did she wear?’

The Alderman gave his wife an amused glance. ‘A great deal of peach-coloured satin, but none of it about her throat and shoulders. I swear, wife, I could see the very nipples on her breasts, she wore her bodice so low, without so much as a piece of gauze to cover them.’

Mistress Brent gave a shriek, looking scandalised. ‘Did you see her with the King? Are they as intimate as folk say?’

‘She came aboard with him, his arm about her waist, and he kissed her a good many times, in full view of the people, in such a loose fashion that I fair blushed to see it.’ Alderman Brent shook his head. ‘Ah, I pity his poor Queen.’

‘Was she of the party too?’

‘No, she was not with the King, which I thought just as well, considering his fondness for his mistress.’

On Cornelia’s nineteenth birthday, she awoke to find the city covered by a pearly mist. The sun rose late, and the river gently lapped along its banks, veiled in opalescent white, through which the hoarse cries of the watermen sounded, like the noise of gulls wintering along the southern side.

Her father gave her a new cloak of black satin, lined with scarlet taffety. She hugged him excitedly and could not wait to try it with the new gown her mother had made her, also of satin, but in a bewitching sea-green which deepened the colour of her hazel eyes.

Nan had made her a pair of stockings and an embroidered bag to hold her handkerchiefs. When Cornelia, delighted with the delicate work, kissed her, Nan flushed and pushed her away, growling, then hobbled off to vent her pleasure in the kitchen by scolding the maids into tantrums.

To please her mother, Cornelia had asked John Peppercorn to join their party, but had cunningly included another girl, Mary Archer, a city fishmonger’s daughter whose father was well known to be a wealthy man, with a chest of monies deposited with the Lombards for safe keeping. Cornelia knew that Mary, a short, plain girl, admired John Peppercorn and could be relied upon to monopolise his company, leaving her free to sit with Andrew.

Mistress Brent, perfectly well aware of this, looked sardonically at her husband when he commented upon the fact that Cornelia had included a rival in her party. ‘You never see anything until it is pushed under your very nose, husband,’ she said cryptically, making him stare in bewilderment.

Cornelia was delighted by Andrew’s response when she joined the party in her new sea-green satin. The burnished glow of her hair against the slender white shoulders made her an appealing picture.

Andrew stiffened. A dark flush came up under his pale skin. Then he looked away, frowning.

The play her father had chosen for her was a respectable historical drama, performed at the Duke’s playhouse, the subject being King Henry the Fifth. She loved the theatre, although she was rarely permitted to attend, for fear of catching some contagion.

The rabble in the pit shouted and sucked oranges, spitting the pips with gusto. Men walked about, staring insolently at every pretty woman, or mocking the older ones. When the people did not like a scene they jeered and threw orange peel or rotten fruit at the actors. When they were interested, however, they leaned forward, a silence settling on the whole house, and one could hear them breathing, feel the intentness of their attention. It was exciting, Cornelia thought, to be part of an audience at such moments. She whispered as much to Andrew, who smiled.

‘It is cathartic,’ he murmured, and laughed at her blank look.

‘It cleanses the soul,’ he explained. ‘It is always an uplifting experience to be part of an emotional expression, such as a crowd.’

Cornelia gazed at him in admiring bewilderment. She remembered that he had talked like this much more while he was at Cambridge, and just after graduating, but that in recent years he had spoken less of theory and more of practice. He had studied philosophy with much interest, she knew, and often regretted having little time to pursue that discipline. Then she smiled secretly. How strange that so wise and clever a man should be so foolish in little things like eating proper meals. He needed a wife.

Looking back towards the stage, she felt herself being observed, with insolent familiarity, by a tall gentleman who sat to one side of the stage.

Angrily, she returned his stare.

He was a courtier, she could see that. Black curls lay heavily upon his shoulders. He wore magnificent black silk, the foaming lace around his throat enriched by a diamond pin which, even at this distance, she could see to be of extraordinary lucidity and brilliance. His face was long and fine-boned, his nose aquiline, his mouth lazily ironic.

Seeing that she resented his stare, he bowed slightly in her direction, a lace handkerchief held loosely between white fingers. A slow mocking smile touched the corners of the thin mouth, and as she icily regarded him a flash of memory struck her, and she sat up, stiffening, the playhouse seeming to spin about her.

He wore no mask tonight, but she was suddenly certain that this was the arrogant stranger who had kissed her on that windy night. That thin mouth, the strong jawline, the black curls, all were hatefully familiar to her, but it was the glitter in the pale grey, mocking eyes which made her shiver with uncontrollable fear.