His Last Mistress: The Duke of Monmouth and Lady Henrietta Wentworth Read online

  “Ha!”

  The baby girl began to cry with hunger. “Where is that wretched wet-nurse? Agnes!” exclaimed Eleanor with irritation. “You lazy leech!” she hollered as the wet-nurse came in, “Take her away. That incessant noise is giving me a megrim. I can’t bear that dreadful wail any longer.” She rubbed her temples vigorously.

  As the babe was quickly taken away, Monmouth sat down with an audible sigh upon a nearby caned chair, his hat in his hands.

  “Have you named the child?” he asked.

  She glanced at him coquettishly. “I have been waiting for you to appear before informing you as to my decision on that.”

  “Well?”

  “Henrietta has such a special ring to it, do not you agree?”

  “Why, you bitch!” he spat, angrily.

  Eleanor laughed, gleefully. “I thought you’d say as much. Well, well, you have fallen hard for that insipid Wentworth wench, so I should have taken heed of the rampant rumours about you both.”

  He looked extremely concerned, more than she had ever thought him capable of, and this troubled her, for he was not the anxious type.

  “Why look you so sad? She’s nothing special.”

  “I love her, Eleanor, and this circumstance you have wheedled me into is going to give me no little trouble, but you knew this, you did it on purpose, knowing my weakness. You were a momentary lapse that I would never have her know of, and she will undoubtedly take this very hard indeed.”

  “You will just have to come back to us, won’t you?” she asked, with her devilish grin.

  “Listen to me!” he ejaculated, holding her wrists firmly to stop her from beating him, which she did when angered. “This is one of many reasons why I could not love you; you stir up trouble constantly. Yes, you could set my loins afire, but you cannot stir love in my heart. I do not want you for my mistress any more – you must understand this once and for all. I desire a quiet life.”

  She looked up at him with anger in her dark brown eyes. “Oh, I understand…Your Grace! But did you honestly believe that you could have your way with me all these years only to abandon me for some other trollop? Ha, ha, ha! She won’t want you now that she knows you have deceived her with another. And so you will return to me – we’re a pair, you and I. I gave you things that that frigid cow of a wife never gave you, and certainly more than this new milksop ever will.”

  “Have you finished?” he asked, calmly.

  “Aye…for now.”

  He went to put on his hat and gloves. “You will, of course, be taken care of financially, so you needn’t worry on that score.” He ambled over to the door to leave.

  “All accounts settled? Fine then, go! Go back to your Wentworth whore! Go! But you’ll be back soon, and you’ll be sorry you ever left me!”

  She threw a pillow at him, which struck his arm. She had always loved throwing things at him when in a mood, and he was glad it wasn’t anything more substantial this time.

  “You’re so serious now,” said she. “Who’d want you? You bore me.”

  He calmly took one last look at her.

  “Goodbye, Eleanor, take care of the children.”

  ***

  “You have forsaken me!” Henrietta cried, upon learning of his betrayal. She remembered Eleanor Needham well from court, and was consumed with envy – for Eleanor was so beautiful, so lovely in a way she knew she herself could not be. She was sister to one of Lely’s Windsor Beauties! Jealousy easily took root in Henrietta’s heart, for despite all of his declarations of love for her, she knew he was at heart a weak man; a man unable to say no to temptation and he had fornicated with her, that horrible, vain, beautiful Eleanor.

  “No, Harriet, please, please, it was not like that!” he pleaded, tears in his eyes.

  “You said you loved me and yet you went to her, made love to her, and now she has given birth to your daughter.”

  “Listen to me!”

  “No, go away you false, weak man, and trouble me no more!”

  She ran to up her bedchamber, shut the oak door behind her, and sank down against it as she cried. He rapped at the door, resting his forehead against the coarse wood.

  “Henrietta…please, do not weep,” he pleaded. “You must forgive me…I beg of you to forgive me.”

  “My life was so simple before you came into it,” she whimpered, “Everything was in order, everything as it should be.”

  “Please…”

  “I knew you were an inconstant man, and yet I foolishly allowed myself to think that you were capable of change. I must have been mad to think that.”

  “Nay, I am the fool. I should have continued and not stopped at Eleanor’s.’

  “But you did. God have mercy upon us.”

  “Don’t you see? This is precisely what she wanted to happen – to have we two quarrel and part, as we are now.”

  There was silence. And then the door opened a fraction, and she looked at him with red raw eyes.

  “I do not want us to part,” he murmured, his eyes twinkling with tears.

  She shook her head, “Nor do I.”

  She slowly walked into his open arms. He clutched her close to him, nuzzling his face into her soft hair. “I am truly sorry.”

  “How can I trust you now?”

  “I will make amends. I swear it shall never happen again. Any future children of mine shall be yours. Please believe me.”

  Chapter 14 - 1683

  It was a dirty, dusty room to which he was summoned. He immediately recognised his old friend Lord Russell, the Earl of Essex, Algernon Sidney, Lord Grey, and the Earl of Argyll – all men who had been opposed to the Duke of York as the heir to the throne. Men who had agreed and supported the now exiled Shaftesbury. There was one man, however, whom Monmouth did not know.

  “You’re late,” Russell stated to Monmouth, his widely spaced pale blue eyes narrowing with annoyance.

  “I was delayed.” Monmouth looked at the unknown man in the corner of the dingy room, and asked, “Who are you?” The man was tall and dark, with a large, eagle-like nose.

  “The name’s Robert Ferguson, from Aberdeenshire. I have been pamphleteering on your behalf for some years now; you’ll have read them, no doubt. I wrote, No Protestant Plot.”

  “That was you, Sir?”

  “Aye, Your Grace, and I will endeavour to fight against the Duke of York and Popery for the rest of my days, if need be.”

  The Earl of Essex said, “Ferguson was in exile with Shaftesbury, and worked tirelessly on the Exclusion Bill.”

  “I thank thee for thy pains,” replied Monmouth, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “If Shaftesbury trusted you, I shall trust you.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.”

  “Well, I am here. What have you to say that required this kind of…discretion?”

  “Your father, King Charles, intends on going to the races at Newmarket as is his way, and the Duke of York will go with him.”

  “Aye, ‘tis true. My father often goes to races, and the court follows him thither at times. I may be going with them next time.”

  “No, you will not be going,” said Ferguson, rudely.

  “I say! Who the Devil do you think you are?” Monmouth huffed; piqued that someone would tell him what to do.

  “You will not be with them, at least not on their way back from Newmarket to London. They will be in a carriage, I suspect, and anything travelling from the North must cross this narrow bit of land where there is a toll,” Ferguson continued, pointing to an area on the map. “Here there will be an obstacle, and the Duke and the King will be set upon and killed, and the throne will then be yours. Which is why you need to stay away.”

  Monmouth shook his head, his father’s face in his mind’s eye. “No, please, I beseech you, do not allow any harm to come to my father – you should only target my uncle. He is the enemy, my father has done nothing to deserve such an end.”

  “Monmouth, he speaks truth,” said Lord Russell. “We need both th
e King and the Duke of York out of the way in order for a Protestant throne to be secured.”

  “But why?” Monmouth asked, “Once the Duke of York is dispatched, there will be no one to get in the way. Perhaps finally my father will give proof of my legitimacy.”

  “No,” stated Ferguson calmly, “it must be as we have described.”

  “I like this not.” He couldn’t bear the thought of hurting his father, a father he loved so dearly.

  Algernon Sidney shook his head: “The King has thwarted all of our previous attempts to exclude his brother York from the throne. He cannot see reason. We have been reduced to taking up arms! So we must be bold and strike now before it is too late.”

  “Hear, hear!” the other men cried.

  “No one here is asking you to like it, Monmouth,” opined Grey. “You just have to keep quiet and away from Newmarket. Once everything is done, then you will become King. It seems that is all that is required from you.”

  “Gentlemen,” said Monmouth, “you seem to forget one thing - my cousin Mary is next in line after the Duke of York.”

  “Pah!” scoffed Ferguson. “She’s in the Dutch Republic with her Orange husband – and no one wants a foreigner on the throne. No one will want her here whilst you, Charles’s eldest son, is living.”

  “She is a woman, after all,” stated Essex. “Elizabeth Tudor did well, but Mary Stuart is no Queen Bess.”

  “There are those present here who would rather have a Commonwealth again and no King,” Monmouth said, referring to Algernon Sidney in particular, who had been a Parliamentarian Colonel during the Civil Wars, and who had also at one time been Monmouth’s mother’s lover.

  “I seek only what every man here seeks,” replied Sidney. “If we must have a King, so be it, but I could only tolerate one that was a Protestant.”

  “Scotland will rise,” added the Earl of Argyll. “But she is poor, and will need funds. A thousand pounds would do, I daresay.”

  “We shall see if that can be arranged,” replied Ferguson.

  Monmouth pulled at his full lips as he thought about it all.

  “I will not stop you, but I will not be party to any scheme that intends to harm my father.”

  ***

  The plans for assassinating the King and the Duke of York were put in place. Disaster, however, thwarted their diabolical plans. Fire broke out at Newmarket, and the King and the Duke of York left earlier than anyone had expected. Nearly everyone who had been in the secret meeting was arrested and thrown into the Tower.

  Someone had betrayed them. Had one of the men in the meeting room informed the authorities? Had someone been eavesdropping on them?

  The Earl of Essex, fearing that his family’s livelihood and reputation would be tarnished were he to have a public execution, took a razor and slit his own throat in his cell at the Tower.

  Hearing that Russell was carted away, Monmouth acted with haste. He was too clever and too quick to be caught. Soldiers inspected his various homes – those that he shared with his Duchess, those with Eleanor, and still he could not be found. He hid at a friend’s home, and then with another acquaintance, and continued north from London towards Bedfordshire, towards Toddington, towards his love.

  “They’ve taken my Lords Russell and Essex,” he said, fear in his eyes, “and now they’re after me. I do not know if you still love me, but I have nowhere else to go, and if my time has come, I want only to die in your arms.”

  Chapter 15

  Her mind flooded with reasons to end their affair; it was morally wrong, it would only end in heartbreak, probably for her, he would find another; he would betray her love again. A man who betrays a woman inevitably betrays her again, through man’s ancient weakness.

  He had come back to her, fleeing from the authorities for his part in the newly uncovered plot against the King, which they called the Rye House Plot.

  But Henrietta was no different from anyone else who knew the Duke – she had to forgive him for having betrayed her, as everyone including his father the King, had always forgiven him. Whereas King Louis XIV in France was hailed as the Sun King, her Monmouth was like Apollo, the Sun God; all mortals surrounded him with awe as the planets surround the sun itself. She was like the mythological nymph Clytie on her knees in veneration to Helios as he rode his sun chariot across the sky.

  She shook off the mantle of pain that followed his deceit, and she willed herself into forgetting his indiscretion. She resolved to leave the past in the past.

  “It is May Day, my love. Shall we go and see the people dance around the may pole in town?”

  “I would like that dearly, but I might be arrested should we go into town.” He would be easily recognisable in public, so he generally stayed within the manor.

  “Yes, I remember now – I’m sorry, I had forgotten.”

  “Never mind,” he said, idly tracing her soft jaw-line with his index finger. “Do you know what the ancient peoples of this land did on this day?”

  “No, I know not. What did they do?”

  “For three days and nights, they celebrated Beltane, and made love outdoors as if to herald in the return of summer.”

  “Outdoors? They did it in front of each other? The heathens!” she said, with an embarrassed giggle, colour rising in her cheeks.

  He held her in his arms, and caressed the small of her back. “At least, that is what Rochester once told me. Can you imagine the bonfires, the chanting, and the whispering and moaning of lovers in ecstasy in the dark? It was a mystical time, when people could wed each other in nature, the oldest bond imaginable.”

  “Oh, it must have been wonderful!”

  “Let us have a small bonfire tonight.”

  They lit the bundle of wood and the yellow and orange flames began to crackle and pop, as the heat grew more intense.

  “Come, let us dance together,” he said with his hand outstretched to her. They danced around the fire, and chased each other merrily, playfully, like children.

  “Take your clothes off,” he commanded, his eyes smouldering with the flickering light from the bonfire.

  “What, out here?” reddening with embarrassment.

  “Aye.”

  “But if someone should see us?”

  “I care not if the whole of Toddington watches us, for you are the only one I shall look upon.”

  They looked at each other for some time; she unfastened her bodice and dress and let them fall to the ground. She stood wearing her shift, which she pulled up and over her head. He also took off his clothes and they stood before each other naked, as Adam and Eve had been in the Garden of Eden.

  He knelt down before her upon both his knees, “Be my wife?”

  She looked down at him, her eyes filling with tears. And whispered hoarsely, “You cannot ask me this.”

  “You are the only woman I have ever wished to wed. Be mine, here and now, and join with me. Let us be made one. Here, naked before God and the heavens, we two shall make the most sacred of oaths to bind us together for eternity, and I shall vow to never betray you again.”

  Naked, they sat opposite one another, clasping each other’s hands. The fiery light from the bonfire cast a golden glow upon them, and everything was still.

  It was as though they were the only humans in the world.

  Monmouth, his voice steady and strong, said, “I hold thy hand in mine, thy heart I declare mine own, I look upon thee as my wife, now and forevermore.”

  His eyes shimmered in the orange light and she repeated the words to him.

  “I hold thy hand in mine, thy heart I declare mine own, I look upon thee as my husband, now and forevermore.”

  Her bent over, and cupping her face in his hands, kissed her with something akin to reverence.

  “Come, my wife,” he said, “Come, let me feel your body under my own. I belong to you, and my flesh shall never unite with any other but yours.”

  He laid out their clothes and gently coaxed her onto her back upon them. He was unq
uestionably the most handsome of all the Stuart men, the most irresistible. The heat rising within her like the fire blazing beside them, she opened up to him with a hunger that could fill several lifetimes.

  “Jemmy! Jemmy!” she moaned, as his body intermingled with her own. And with the crackling heat from the bonfire, they made one with the night.

  ***

  Again they trekked out adventuring forth as they did when first they were together. Monmouth dressed as a commoner, half because his safety demanded it and half because Henrietta disliked his penchant for flamboyant attire. He did not even wear a periwig, but his own grey-streaked locks.

  They ambled along the narrow footpath until they came upon an ancient oak tree, whose majestic boughs swayed, rustling and creaking, with the autumn wind. Monmouth remembered well his father’s story of escaping from Cromwell’s thugs by hiding in the hollow of an oak tree, and he told this to Henrietta, who leant against the great tree, enrapt as she listened to Monmouth’s tale.

  “It is wonderful that he survived such terrible times,” she said, “I thank God my father was able to see the return of the king before he died.”

  “Aye, your father was a true royalist and patriot – the country lost a good man when he died.”

  She turned around and ran her hands across the tree bark.

  “It is rather sad, is it not, that this tree was here for so many generations, and it will still stand when you and I are dead and forgotten.” She looked down at her bare feet and laughed, “What am I saying? No one could possibly forget about you, my love. You are unlike anyone that ever existed.”

  “If this tree should stand when we two are dead and buried, this,” he said, taking his dagger from his belt, “will ensure that our love will ne’er be forgotten.” He began to scratch the bark with their initials: JDM & LHW.

  “There,” he said, when he had finished, “it is done.” And by the tree, upon the foliage, he made love once again to his Harriet.

  The lovers then continued along the wooded lanes and the sound of music, singing, and laugher filled the air. Some country folk were celebrating something or other, and Monmouth’s countenance grew suddenly sad.