Royal Harlot by Susan Holloway Scott Read Free Book Online

scratching swiftly over the page. “Gentlemen do love to picture ladies abed, as if we never do repair there every night to sleep.”
    “No ladies sleep in Philip’s bed,” I said archly. “Here, write this next. ‘If you deserve this favor, then you will come and seek us at Ludgate Hill about three o’clock at Butler’s shop, where we will expect you.’ Mr. Butler won’t mind if we linger there a bit, and we can make our plans forward from there.”
    “No one will suspect us, either,” Anne said. “We’ll look thoroughly innocent.”
    “Hah, so long as they never know,” I said, laughing. “Now, here’s the last bit, to tease him. ‘But lest we should give you too much satisfaction at once, we will say no more. Expect the rest when you see—’ ”
    “See what?” Anne asked, swinging her legs in the chair.
    “Why, us, of course,” I said, and grinned, delighted with the notion of pleasing both my friend and my lover. “We’ll sign our names there, to tempt him more. Barbara Villiers and Lady Anne Hamilton. Hurry now, and we can send it directly by one of your servants. And if that won’t tempt and please Philip, then nothing will.”
     
Such a wonderful plan did keep me awake all that night. How could it not?
    But when I arrived at the Duchess of Hamilton’s house the following afternoon to collect Anne, as we’d agreed, I was shown not to my friend’s chamber, as was usual, but to the front room. There in a black oak chair sat Anne’s mother, Her Grace, the most fearsome Dowager Duchess of Hamilton, a Gorgon waiting more to waylay me than to offer any hospitable greeting. She curled one hand like a griffin’s claw around the head of an ebony walking stick, and her gown, though of the first quality, was in the style of twenty years before. Her graying hair was likewise curled after the fashion of Henrietta Marie, the dead king’s queen, and her mouth set with immovable loathing against me.
    “Miss Villiers,” she said as soon as I’d made my greeting. “It is my duty to tell you that you are no longer welcome in this house.”
    I’d no answer to this, and so tried to begin afresh. “Please, Your Grace, if Lady Anne—”
    “My daughter the Lady Anne is no longer in residence here, Miss Villiers,” she said, clipping her words with the northern accent that Anne had relentlessly worked to forget. “She has gone to Windsor, with no plans to return to London.”
    I couldn’t keep from frowning at this; Anne had said nothing to me of going to Windsor. “You surprise me, Your Grace,” I said. “Lady Anne and I had arrangements together for this day, and I—”
    “Oh, I know of your debauched arrangements, miss,” the duchess said, fair spitting at me like an angry old cat. “The footman my daughter entrusted with that foul missive recalled that he is employed by me, not her, and rightly brought it to me instead.”
    I gasped with dismay, and forced my wits to scramble in retreat. “But that letter was never intended for your eyes, Your Grace. It was a thing of sport, a fantastical creation meant only for our amusement and nothing more, and I—”
    “Silence!” The duchess struck her ebony walking stick against the floor to quiet me. “It was a despicable letter of assignation, Miss Villiers, in which you contrived to deliver my daughter into the hands of your pimp.”
    “Lord Chesterfield is no pimp, Your Grace, nor—”
    “He is your pimp, Miss Villiers,” the duchess repeated succinctly, “just as you are his whore. Good day, Miss Villiers, and rest assured that this door will never be opened to you again.”
    I parted my lips to protest, and she stopped me short again, shaking her walking stick like a bludgeon toward me. “Go, Miss Villiers, away with you, before I have the footmen turn you out in the street like the vilest whore that you are.”
    Seeing no reason for lingering, I departed in sorrow for my mother’s house. I was sick over the loss of my dear friend,