Fortune's Fool by Raphael Sabatini

Author:Raphael Sabatini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Stratus

Etheredge shrugged in despair and disgust.

“Ye’re not only mad, Bucks,” said he, “ye’re coarse. I warned you once of the dangers of this thing. I’ve no mind to repeat myself. But you’ll give me leave to marvel that you can take satisfaction in…”

“Marvel all you please,” the other interrupted him with a touch of anger. “Perhaps, indeed, I am a matter for marvel. I am a man racked, consumed, burnt up by my feelings for this woman who has scorned and spurned and made a mock of me. If I could believe in her virtue, I would go my ways, bending to her stubborn will. But virtue in an actress! It is as likely as snow in hell. She indulges a cruel and perverse zest to torture a man whom she sees perish of love for her.” He paused a moment, to pursue with even greater fierceness, his face livid with the working of the emotion that possessed him – that curious and fearful merging of love and hatred that is so often born of baffled passion. “I could tear the jade limb from limb with these two hands, and take joy in it. I could so. Or with the same joy I could give my body to the rack for her sweet sake! To such an abject state have her wiles reduced me.”

He swung away, and went to fling himself petulantly into a chair, taking his blonde head in his fine jewelled hands.

After that explosion Mr Etheredge decided that there was nothing to be done with such a man but abandon him to his fate. He said so with engaging candour and took his leave.

His grace made no attempt to detain him, and for some time after his departure sat there alone in that sombre book-lined room, a fool enshrined in wisdom and learning. Gloomily he brooded the matter, more than ever exasperated by the defection of Bates, and the consideration that he was left thereby without a minister to assist him in the execution of his wishes.

He was disturbed at last by the appearance of a footman, who brought the announcement that a Colonel Holles was demanding insistently to see his grace.

Irritated, Buckingham was about to pronounce dismissal.

“Say that…” He checked. He remembered the letter received three days ago, and its urgent appeal. That awoke an idea and set his grace speculating. “Wait!” He moistened his lips, and his eyes narrowed in thought. Slowly they lighted from their gloom. Abruptly he rose. “Bring him in,” he said.

Holles came, erect and soldierly of figure, still tolerably dressed, but very haggard now of countenance at the end of that weary day spent between Wapping and the Guildhall with the sense that he was being hunted.

“Your grace will forgive, I trust, my importunities,” he excused himself, faltering a little. “But the truth is that my need, which was very urgent when I wrote, has since grown desperate.”

Buckingham considered him thoughtfully from under his bent brows without directly replying. He dismissed the waiting footman, and offered his visitor a chair.

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