The Perfect Royal Mistress Read Online Free Page A

another hour on her knees on cold stone in her private chapel.
    Lifting the wide, outdated farthingale of her buff-colored gown, she stood, having taken only a single bite from her plate. Then she backed away from the table. If only Castlemaine had an ounce of civility, or a modicum of culture, to compete with her ambition…The queen looked across the table at them. It was not that Charles wished to hurt her. She knew that. Rather, it was that he could not bear to hurt anyone at all, least of all a woman with whom he still slept on a revoltingly frequent basis. What was it, she wondered as she watched the court fall to a hush at her abrupt departure, about a calculating woman, aging rapidly, that held Charles? She wondered with voyeuristic curiosity precisely how she achieved it. In her mind, heart, and in her soul, intercourse was for the creation of children only, an heir for the king. Something that, in four years of marriage, she could not do, while Castlemaine had given him four children who, to her horror, he had quickly acknowledged as his own. That, she reminded herself, was the reason Castlemaine reigned supreme. But a vengeful heart made a poisoned soul, and she would have to do penance for those thoughts, as well.
    At first, naively, she had loved him. But that seemed a lifetime ago. Now there was only the longing for home, for Portugal, for the soft lavender-scented breezes near the seashore, and for her family. Catherine glanced back one final time at Charles. He and Castlemaine were laughing and chatting happily. At least, with the years, the raw part of the wound of his infidelities had healed. That was God’s blessing. With a sigh, Catherine, followed by her entourage of Portuguese ladies, left the banqueting hall.
     

    After dinner, the king walked with friends through the outer gallery and past the old tiltyard of Henry VIII. On the path that led to the privy gardens, the Earl of Arlington approached. Charles waited as he bowed.
    “I have found what Your Majesty desires to know.”
    “Then tell me.”
    “It seems that Eleanor Gwynne, the orange seller who calls herself Nell, is from quite a—shall we call it— colorful family. Her mother is a whore plying her trade on Pudding Lane. Her father is dead, and her only sister is in the Newgate gaol. Nell refuses to ply the family trade, which brought her to Orange Moll.”
    “Bring me a petition to release her sister.”
    “Your Majesty must know that Rose Gwynne is there for theft.”
    “It is my wish that she be released, and so she shall be. Once you have organized that, you are to give Rose Gwynne one hundred pounds, which she is to be instructed keenly by you, personally, to share with her sister, Nell, that the two of them might get their lives in order. Is that clear?”
    Once again, Arlington bowed deeply. “Crystal clear, Your Majesty.”
     

    Near midnight, Barbara Palmer rolled onto her back, her bare, fleshy body glistening with a sheen of perspiration, and began to laugh. The canopy above them was blue silk. The tapestry curtains were closed.
    “Was I that dreadful?” the young man asked, his dark brown eyes as wide and discerning as his father’s, but without the jaded depth of difficult experiences, and years.
    James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, was perfectly sculpted, taut, and deliciously olive skinned, Charles’s Medici blood dominating in his eldest son’s veins, as it did his own. But Monmouth, unlike his father, was an abysmal lover, still as quick and unskilled as a colt.
    “Not dreadful,” Barbara sighed. Apparently, in this past month, she had taught him nothing. It all seemed pathetically comical. “Just a dreadful bore, I’m afraid.”
    “Well, thank you very much indeed for that!” he said as he bolted from the bed and bent to retrieve his silk pants.
    “Oh, now, my dear Jamie,” she began, trying hard to stifle what she knew was a cruel-sounding laugh. “To succeed in this world, one must be as realistic about