Royal Harlot by Susan Holloway Scott

with his other loves. This was no small relief. I found jealousy difficult to bear, and had let it gnaw away at me like a plague.
    Besides, there were other matters to draw the attention of even the most halfhearted Royalists in London. Groveling Parliament had offered Cromwell the crown, but to the relief and surprise of the true king’s supporters, Cromwell had declined it. While some viewed this as a sign of the Lord Protector’s humility, among my friends it was seen as proof that not even Cromwell or his Puritan God dared interfere with Charles II’s right to the English throne, and there was much giddy talk about a joyful future.
    Perhaps because I’d never known England with a king instead of a protector, I was more skeptical than this. Every breath of rebellion that the Royalists had mustered in my lifetime had been quickly smothered, and I couldn’t see that this would be any different. The young Royalist gentlemen of my acquaintance were charming and amusing, yes, but more given to sitting about with their drink and boasting vaguely of what they wished to do against Cromwell’s army than actually accomplishing anything. It was only brave talk, and little more. As quick as Philip’s sword might be in a duel, I’d no wish to see his skill pitted against the grim, somber soldiers who paraded and drilled each day in St. James’s Park.
    Oh, it would be pleasing to have that handsome young king to rule us in Whitehall Palace—I still would study the picture of him in my mother’s chamber, fascinated by his regal mien—but in my head I thought of his triumphant return to London as no more than an idle fancy, like wishing for a songbird’s feathered wings so I might fly high and soar over the spire of St. Paul’s.
    Yet one evening that autumn, while Philip was still held in the Tower, I was made to realize that such dreams could yet become real.
    I had gone to a gathering at Lady Sillsbury’s house on the Strand. It was an old pile of a place, two hundred years old or so, a reminder of the last time that government and religion had warred and claimed each other’s property, in the reign of the eighth King Henry. I’d heard the house had first been built for a flock of papist nuns who haunted it still, reason enough for Cromwell to let the equally ancient Lady Sillsbury keep it. More likely the house was merely too worn and out of fashion for Cromwell’s ambitious generals to bother with, but its rambling wings and black-timbered walls reminded me of the country of my childhood.
    I soon wearied of the music we’d been invited to hear, an Italian singer with a quivering belly and a rumbling voice, and the merriment of the company did not suit my loneliness without Philip to leaven it first. Instead I left the singing and found my way to a rambling balcony off the parlor. The house’s green lawns spilled down to a private landing on the Thames, where the boats that had brought guests were tied up and waiting, the clay pipes of the watermen tiny glowing pin-pricks in the dusk. Mists rose in gauzy tangles from the river’s surface, as they do in that season of the year, yet the slivered new moon still hung fresh and bright in the darkening sky.
    Heedless of the cooling evening air, I stood and gazed upon this pretty scene, finding some small, rare peace in its tranquility. When I heard another’s footfalls behind me, I didn’t turn, I was so loath for interruption.
    “A beautiful evening, is it not?” the gentleman asked.
    I’d no choice now but to answer, else seem ill-mannered. “It’s the river that makes it so. Without the Thames, London would be a drab and cheerless place.”
    “That will never happen, Miss Villiers,” he said, “so long as you are in London.”
    There was an awkward earnestness to this unimaginative compliment that caught my ear and at last made me turn to face its giver.
    “Prettily said, if untrue,” I said, deflecting the compliment neatly back to him. “Mr. Palmer,