on its feet again, applauding the actors. Blond Wig was shouting huzzahs at Belinda, who refused to look at him.
“To the devil with him,” hissed Belinda, or rather Mistress Cleone Dubois, to Betterton. “He tried to ruin all my best scenes. Another courtier come to entertain himself by destroying us.”
“He got no change from you, Cleone, my pretty dear. On the contrary, your quick wits had them laughing at him as much as you.”
“And who the devil is he? I know his friend, Sir Hal Bennett, late made Lord Arlington, but not the human gadfly in the blond wig.”
Betterton smiled and bowed, his head almost touching his knees before he led the company offstage, before saying, “Sir Alastair, known as Stair Cameron, Baronet. Rochester’s friend—everybody’s friend, aye, and enemy, too, gossip hath it. Avoid him like the plague that hath just left us. He would be no friend of thine, Cleone—or of any woman’s. Mark me this, he will be in the Green Room this evening, to pursue you further.”
“May God forbid,” Cleone shuddered. She trusted no man, least of all those who infested Charles’s court. “I want naught of him.”
But he wasn’t in the Green Room. Sam Pepys was there, and Lord Arlington, who bowed at Cleone and said in a butter-melting voice, “My felicitations, Mistress Dubois. You have grown since I last saw thee at Sir Thomas Gower’s when you were Mistress Wood. A very child, were you not?”
He tittered a little behind a fine white handkerchief edged with lace. “You look about you, mistress. Is it my friend you seek?”
The violet eyes were hard upon him. “Nay, m’lord. Unless it is to teach him manners—if indeed it were possible to teach him anything.”
Sam Pepys, standing by them, gave a jolly guffaw. “Come, come, mistress, you are too harsh. Stair Cameron is a right good fellow.”
Cleone rounded on him, shaking her fan in his direction, Belinda’s fan. She knew who Sam Pepys was. The Secretary to the Navy, a womaniser and a gossip—but there was no harm in him.
“Fie upon you, too, sir. What, I wonder, would you say, if Stair Cameron entered your office and upset the contents of your inkpot on your newly written letter to your master, the King, ruining it? Would you think the destruction of your work a jolly jest to be applauded? For such were the offences he committed against me!”
Lord Arlington clapped his hands together, and even Sam himself joined in the joke. “Why, madam,” m’lord offered, “you are as spirited a lady as you were a lass. I should introduce you to Sir Stair. How the fur and the feathers would fly, for I vow that in spirit you are well matched.”
Cleone stared at him, nothing daunted by his name or his position, something that pleased the man before her mightily. Oh, he had plans for Mistress Wood, also named Mistress Dubois, great plans. And now he could go to Sir Thomas Gower, his spymaster supreme, to tell him that Cleone Dubois was a lass of spirit who would serve them well.
What she said next had him laughing again behind his lace-gloved hand. “For,” smiled Cleone, “it would please me greatly never to see Sir Stair Cameron again, either on stage, or off it. Unless it were to hand him such a congé from a woman as he has never received before. But enough of him. To talk of him wearies me. What thought you of the play, m’lord?”
Graciously, m’lord Arlington told the lady that he had enjoyed it, his smooth face even smoother than usual.
And all the time he was laughing to himself as he thought of the delightful possibility that the spirited lady and her tormentor might soon meet again—and wondered which of them would come off the best, as the fur and the feathers would inevitably fly like the orange, the posy and the perfumed glove!
Chapter One
1667
“Who the devil can that be at this hour, Catherine?”
Rob Wood had just carved himself a large chunk of cold bacon for his breakfast to go with the buttered slice of bread that his sister, whom he always insisted on calling by her true name, had cut for him.
He had no sooner transferred the bacon to his pewter plate than a vile hammering had begun on the door of their small house in Cob’s Lane, London, not far from the Inns of Court where Rob was studying to be a lawyer. Or was supposed to be studying.
Rob was as idle as his sister was diligent. The only hard work he did was to write pamphlets attacking the rule of King Charles II and praising that of the late usurper and regicide, Cromwell. This was a particularly foolish act since England was at present at war with the Netherlanders—fighting them in order to prevent them from seizing the major share of the world’s trade. Opposition to the king was thus bound to be seen as treason.
Catherine, who was busy buttering a slice of loaf for herself, said crossly, “Answer the door, Rob. Don’t stand there yammering. It’s probably Jem Hollins come to clean our chimneys.”
Grumbling, Rob rose to do as he was bid. Although he was living entirely on his sister’s earnings in the theatre, he resented that fact rather than being grateful for it. Their father, once a rich country gentleman, had supported Cromwell in the late Civil War. Charles II’s Restoration had seen his estates confiscated; he had died penniless, leaving his two children to make their own way in the world.
Rob thought of himself as a dispossessed Crown Prince and behaved accordingly.
He never reached the door. Tired of trying to attract their attention, the Woods’ importunate visitors ceased their knocking abruptly.
Shouting “Ho, there, take heed and attend to us,” they knocked down the house door with iron-tipped staves of wood, before rushing in, seizing Rob and throwing him to the floor.
A third man, carrying a large piece of parchment importantly before him, put one foot on the struggling Rob, whilst a fourth placed himself between Catherine and her brother in case she tried to come to his assistance.
“By what authority—?” she began, using all the power of her stage voice to try to overawe them.
“By the authority vested in me by his most noble majesty, King Charles II, I hereby arrest Robert Wood for the crime of high treason, and detain his sister Catherine Wood, also known as Cleone Dubois, actress and whore, for questioning as to his activities.”
“My sister’s no whore,” shouted Rob as he was hauled to his feet, his hands pinioned behind his back, “and I know of no law which says that a man may not speak or write freely of his opinions—unless you have just invented one.”
If only Rob would learn to keep silent when challenged he would not find life so difficult, mourned Catherine as the leading tipstaff struck her brother across the mouth, bellowing, “That should silence your lying tongue, you treacherous rogue.”
He and two of his fellows began to drag Rob outside. The fourth seized Catherine roughly by the arm with one hand, while running the other across her breasts.
Hissing at him, “No need of that, I have no desire either to have you fondle me, or to escape,” Catherine brought her high-heeled shoe down hard on his instep. The tipstaff let out a shrill cry before striking her across the face with such force that she was thrown against the wall.
“Had
