Читаем Forever Amber полностью

“That isn’t fair, Amber, and you know it. He asked you to stop the duel; he even let Captain Morgan cut his arm in the hope that that would satisfy him. There was nothing more to do unless he had let Morgan kill him—and surely even you couldn’t have expected that.”

“Oh, I don’t care what he did! He killed Rex! He murdered him—and I loved him! I was going to marry him!”

“In that case,” said the Earl, with unmistakable sarcasm, “it would have been better judgement not to go off on a honeymoon with another man—even if he was an old friend.”

“Oh, mind your own business!” she muttered, and though he hesitated for a moment, Almsbury got to his feet, made her a polite bow and went out of the room. Amber neither spoke nor tried to stop him.

She did not feel able to go back to the theatre immediately, and then shortly after the first of June it closed for two months. But as soon as she began to admit visitors her own apartments became almost as crowded as the tiring-room. She found, somewhat to her surprise, that the duel had made her as much the fashion as red-heeled shoes or Chatelin’s Ordinary. Lord Carlton was handsome, his family one of the oldest and most honourable, and his exploits as a privateer had made him a spectacular figure, not only at Court but throughout the city.

Amber knew how much such popularity meant, but she determined to take every advantage of it that she possibly could. Somewhere among those clamoring beaus, those beribboned fops and wit-imitators, there must be a man—a man who would fall in love with her as Rex had done; and if she could but single him out, this time she would know what to do. Marriage she did not expect, for the social position of an actress was no better than that of the vizard-masks in the pit, and with Rex dead her earlier opinion of matrimony had revived. But the brilliant lavish exciting life of an exclusive harlot seemed to her a most pleasant one.

She saw herself occupying a magnificent house in St. James’s Field or Pall Mall, driving about town in her gilt coach-and-six, giving fabulous entertainments, setting the styles which would be taken up at Whitehall. She saw herself famous, admired, desired and—most of all—envied.

It was what she had wanted for a long time; and now that she had begun to reconcile herself to the fact of Rex Morgan’s death, the wish opened once more into quick full blossom. Optimistically, she decided that he was all that had kept her from having those things.

But though she encouraged them all, flirted with them and laughed at their jokes, she never accepted their proposals. She knew that they held constancy in contempt, but also that they valued a woman more if she pretended concern for her virtue and made a great issue of surrender—just as they would rather win money from a man who hated to lose it. And so far no one had offered what she wanted.

“Phoo, pox, Mrs. St. Clare!” said one of them to her. “A virtuous woman is a crime against nature!”

“Well,” retorted Amber, “then there aren’t many criminals nowadays.”

But nevertheless she was growing uneasy and discouraged and in spite of her insistence that she intended never to err again, the other actresses taunted her because she had not found another keeper.

“I hear the young gentlemen are grown mighty shy of keeping these days,” remarked Knepp one afternoon when she and Beck Marshall had come to call on Amber. Over her glass of clary—a potent drink made of brandy and clary-flowers flavoured with sugar and cinnamon and ambergris—she flipped Beck a sly wink. “They say three months is the limit a man will keep now, for fear of losing his reputation as a wit.”

“Oh, gad, a man is as much laughed at for keeping as ever he was for taking a wife,” said Beck. “More, I believe, for at least a wife brings a dowry to settle his debts, while a whore gives him nothing but a bastard and more debts.”

“Especially,” said Amber, “if she’s being kept by three or four at once.”

Beck looked at her sharply. “What d’you mean by that, madame?”

“Heavens, Beck.” Amber opened her eyes wide in pretended innocence. “I’m sure it isn’t my fault if your conscience troubles you.”

“My conscience doesn’t trouble me at all! Don’t you agree it’s better to be kept by three men at once—than by none at all?” She gave Amber a malicious tight-lipped smile, and then defiantly downed her drink at one gulp.

“Well,” said Amber, “I’m glad I learnt my lesson on that score. I intend never to go into keeping again.”

“Hah!” Knepp gave a sudden short barking laugh, and then she and Beck got up and prepared to leave.

As Amber closed the door after them she heard Knepp say, “She intends never to go into keeping again—until she can find the man who’ll make her an indecent proposal at a high figure!” And the giggling voices of the two women faded away down the stair-well.

Amber turned back to Nan, who rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Oh, Nan, maybe they’re right! I half believe it’s harder to find a man who’ll keep than one who’ll marry.”

“Well, mam—”