Royal Harlot by Susan Holloway Scott

Author:Susan Holloway Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.

“I am huge, sir,” I announced, leaning back in my armchair, the better to display my belly to the king. We were sharing supper in my bedchamber, our table set before the open window. “I am enormous, a giantess, nay, a veritable mountain!”

The king raised his goblet to me. “And I say, my dear Barbara, that you have never been more beautiful.”

“Bah,” I said with disgust at my own girth. It was May, and I was wallowing through the last weeks of my second pregnancy. “They say the Alps of France are beautiful, too.”

Charles laughed, not unkindly, but with his customary generosity of spirit toward me. Not only were these my last weeks before I’d be brought to childbed, but his last days free of his own ordeal, for word had come yesterday that the infanta Catherine of Braganza had finally begun her journey here to England for her wedding to Charles. Dutifully Charles had insisted that Parliament work late into the night to conclude this session’s business before he must leave London to play the ardent bridegroom, but he still made time each night to come to me in King Street.

“You’re cruel to yourself, Barbara,” he said easily. “You’re not half so vast as you claim.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, likely the only part of me left that could be called narrow. I’d received him in undress, all that was comfortable, a loose gown of blue silk with a deep neckline, graced with my pearls. “I thought we’d settled that last night with the scales.”

“Oh, those infernal scales!” he exclaimed and laughed. “Only you would do that.”

“Only to prove my point, sir.” I’d vowed that I’d grown so large with this child of his that I outweighed him. Charles had not believed it, not until I’d ordered my servants to fetch a set of scales from the market to my parlor, and had each of us weighed, king and countess. I’d won, or perhaps I’d lost, for in fact I did weigh a fraction more than did my great, strapping lord. It had amused us both no end, but Wilson, scandalized, had reported that the men who’d brought the scales had tattled widely, and by nightfall all of London had heard the story.

Not, of course, that I cared a fig. “I’m as big as any of your French mountains, and I defy you to say otherwise.”

“Le Mont de Barbara?” he asked, teasing.

“More likely Mount Barbara,” I said, “which is I fear what you must do these days if you wish the challenge of coupling with me.”

With a sigh I pushed myself from the chair and went to stand at the open window, my palm pressed to the side of my belly. I was sure this child was a boy, for only a boy would be so restless as this one was, always leaping and tumbling within me to disturb my ease. The night was clear and warm, but what I saw was not the stars and new moon overhead, but the bonfires dancing before most houses and on street corners as far as I could see.

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