Read Online The Perfect Royal Mistress by Diane Haeger - Free Book Online

it was over. “God’s blood, but you had me wild for you,” he said to her then, kissing her forehead. “But I promise you, ’twill be better between us next time.” Arranging his shirt, waistcoat, and trousers, Charles looked back down at her, and saw something that stopped him. There were streaks of blood on her thighs. “Great God above! Tell me you were not still a maiden!”
    “I tell you nothin’ now when you wouldn’t listen to anythin’ a moment ago.”
    “A pox on it!” He gripped his head with both hands. “You should have told me! I’m not in the habit—” Charles Hart’s words fell away. He looked at Nell for another moment, his expression pained. It twisted his handsome face. He was shaking his head as he walked out of the room. “Damn orange sellers! Damn the lot of you!”
    After he had gone, Nell slid from the daybed and onto the floor. She reached up to cover her breasts, where he had torn away the bodice, and only then realized how violently she was trembling. She smoothed out her dress and tried vainly to catch her breath. She tried to tell herself she was all right, that her mother and sister did that as a matter of course. She was not certain she could ever learn to actually enjoy it. For all of his reputation as a smooth and confident actor, Charles Hart had been a moaning, sweating pig. She wished she had at least been paid a few shillings if she was going to be forced to live the indignity of her mother and sister’s world after all. But that was her defenses talking, certainly not her heart. She felt a complete fool that her usual judgment had been so impaired by an outwardly charming and famous man. She really should have known better, she thought.
    “Are you all right, mistress?”
    A tentative voice shocked her and she turned, grasping the torn fabric tighter to her chest in response. “Who the devil are you?”
    “Richard Bell, mistress.”
    “Why are you ’ere?”
    “I’m one of Charles Hart’s actors,” he replied. Then, in the awkward silence, he shrugged. “Actually, I’m more of a cleaning boy, one who gets onstage from time to time when Mr. Hart needs a larger crowd scene. But I have hope, anyway. It’s my foot in the door.” He waited a moment. “But you, you’re different from the others. I’ve seen you. You’ve a way with words.”
    “’Tis only what I’m supposed to do to sell oranges.”
    “But if you’ll pardon me for being bold, Mrs. Gwynne, you’ve got a spark.”
    “And didn’t that just start a flame I didn’t want.”
    They both knew what she meant. He ran a hand behind his neck. She looked away, aching to be somewhere else, even to be someone else.
    “I have an idea how you can best him and better your own situation in the bargain.”
    She truly looked at him then and saw a thin young man with limp hair and a wide, flat nose covered with a smattering of freckles. He had remarkably gentle brown eyes. He was everything Charles Hart was not. That registered with her, especially now. “No one goes up against a powerful man without his own reasons. What’s in it for you, Mr. Bell?”
    “I don’t like Charles Hart. And I do like you.”
    “You don’t even know me.”
    “I know I’d fancy getting the better of that rapscallion. And, I don’t know it for certain, but I believe you are the one to help me do it. If I’m right, we both win.”
    “And if you’re wrong, we’ll both be out of the King’s Theater on our very common arses.”
    “That you can be so witty after…” He took a breath. “Well. It tells me all I need to know.”
    Richard Bell pushed past a collection of stage props and painted pictorial scenery after Nell had gone, pausing at the empty stage upon which Charles Hart was sitting, hunched over, head in his hands. “Something wrong, sir?”
    “Foolish, foolish!” He was murmuring the word. He did not look up.
    “The girl, sir?”
    “She was still a maid. Blast! How was I to know?”
    The obvious response