For all Sam Pepys had doubted Rosamund’s sanity when she agreed to lease the chocolate house nearly two years ago from that scoundrel Matthew Lovelace—who, if he hadn’t killed Sir Everard, had certainly contributed to the man’s sudden death—after some months, he had to admit the wench was doing an admirable job.
In the early days after its reopening, there were those who avoided the Phoenix, as it was eventually renamed, either because the Angel of Death had swung his scythe through the rooms or they couldn’t stomach the notion of a woman in charge. But when Christopher Bowman, the owner of the Turk’s Head in St. Michael’s Alley, died and his wife, Mrs. Bowman, took over its running, the regular patrons there remained loyal, which made those more inclined toward the chocolate house relax their stubbornness. It didn’t hurt that Rosamund was a splendid sight to behold, unlike the homely Mrs. Bowman. Furthermore, she didn’t assert herself in the manner of women inclined to intrude where females were not welcome—like Lady Barbara Castlemaine, they’d mutter wryly. Nor did it hurt that very soon after taking over the running of the place, Lady Rosamund saw to it that beverages other than chocolate were served and a variety of other pleasing distractions were made available.
The moment she signed the lease granting her twelve months (with the potential to extend it a further twelve) at a reasonable rate and allowing Lovelace thirty percent of the profits, Rosamund purchased ale from a local brewery. The brewer, Mr. Brogan, delighted to count a real lady among his customers, began telling all and sundry where his beer was now being served. Rosamund also asked Jacopo to ensure some of the coffee beans her husband’s ships imported made their way to the Phoenix, along with a ready supply of canary, sack and a fine majorca. Coffee serving implements were bought and Filip trained Solomon and Widow Ashe in the making of it. Much of the process mimicked the preparation of chocolate, so it wasn’t difficult to master.
It wasn’t only the range of beverages Rosamund improved. Whereas on opening day the news sheets and books had been sadly out of date, they were now current. Rosamund ensured that L’Estrange’s the Intelligencer: Published for the Satisfaction of the People, an eight-page news book, was readily available and, a few months later, the Newes as well. Now L’Estrange had been confirmed as surveyor of the presses, Muddiman had lost his license. Nevertheless, he continued to provide his handwritten news sheets, and Rosamund subscribed to these. Sam knew she also kept a supply of illegally printed news sheets and pamphlets (who didn’t?), but made sure he never asked to see one lest a government spy be at his elbow. Talk at the Phoenix indicated that even if the men weren’t reading the latest from Muddiman or those anonymous correspondents who dared to put their dissenting thoughts in print, other critics of the King and Council were making their opinions known. Debate was robust and oft times resulted in a gentleman storming out, or even, on two occasions that he’d witnessed, bowls of coffee and chocolate being upended on periwigs, much to the amusement of all and sundry.
Books were also available for reading, stacked in newly built shelves above the booths—another of Rosamund’s innovations. Pamphlets about the latest quack medicines and horse sales were liberally distributed, including those advertising forthcoming plays in the King’s and Duke’s theaters, and lectures at Gresham College. One could stand at St. Paul’s Cross in the cold and rain or the blasted heat of summer and listen to the criers delivering the latest information, or retreat to the comfort of the Phoenix, be served a fine beverage, gaze upon the Winsome Widow and read the very same. Those with time and money chose the latter option. Packs of cards and counters were there for those inclined to a hand of ruff and trump, gleek or piquet, and ticktack and chess boards were also available. Discounts were offered to any musicians who played while they drank, and when members of the Royal Society decided to regularly patronize a booth, they too were given a small discount, providing they welcomed strangers to the table to hear their latest findings. Candle auctions were held once a week with merchants from the Exchange, selling everything from ships to plots of land, wool, coal, tin, timber and hemp. The shouts of the men determined to secure their bids just as a candle expired made a deafening roar.
Less benevolent Londoners refused to believe anything good of a woman in business—especially a chocolate house. Claiming one could call that kind of place whatever they wanted, whether it be for the drink it served or the mythical bird that arose from the ashes, they knew what it was and, more importantly, what she was: once a trull, always a trull. Pretty dresses, a dimpled smile and a laugh that sounded like a chorus of angels didn’t change facts. Everyone knew what chocolate facilitated (did they not enjoy a bowl or two daily?) and the effect it had on all who consumed it. Rumor said that was how the Lady Castlemaine kept the King panting after her, even though she’d borne him more children than a broodmare and lost much of her youthful appeal. Chocolate was an aphrodisiac—a Papist invention brought to English shores to corrupt the souls of good British Protestants. It might put sap in a man’s hairy cullions, allow access to a woman’s bowers of bliss, but it was devil’s work all the same. As God Himself knew, that Lady Blithman let Sir Everard plow her. How else did she persuade him to marry her? Or that dashing correspondent, Lovelace, to hand over his newly acquired enterprise? While she called herself a businesswoman, they knew what she traded in—Cupid’s warehouse: the heavenly cleft where men stored their seed.
One had only to look to Gravesend to know the truth of that. Forget those tales about her being related to the Tomkins. What was a member of a decent northern family doing at an inn, let alone with chocolate beneath her nails, smeared on her mouth, an apron over her admittedly silken dresses and parading about town with a pair of blackamoors by her side? Like they were equals! The woman had no class, just arse, and that’s all there was to it.
* * *
Now Rosamund had been running the Phoenix for a couple of years, Sam had grown accustomed to seeing her at work and quite enjoyed the spectacle. Leaning back in a booth on this cold winter’s day, he watched her standing behind the bar, her face a picture of sweet concentration as she mixed drinks for the patrons, her slender fingers hovering above a bowl here, agitating a chocolate pot there, moving around and beside that Spaniard, Señor Filip, as if they were dancing, and nodding as she listened to that rogue, the Duke of Buckingham, opining about his latest ailment. Sam noted the sympathy in her eyes was not forced, nor was the laughter that rang out when that impish Scot Robert Gilligan, with his dark eyes and voice like a gargling seal, leaned over and whispered something in her perfect ear.
Sipping his chocolate and marveling at the way it coated the roof of his mouth, a syrupy thickness that slid down his throat and made his loins stir, Sam studied Rosamund and couldn’t help but reflect upon what had passed since he’d first met her.
Rosamund had altered greatly from the young woman he had encountered that memorable morning at Blithe Manor. Gone was the uncertain yet gentle deference, replaced by a confident modesty that greatly endeared her to all who came within her compass. Choosing discretion over flaunting her widowhood, she was rarely found outside the manor or the chocolate house. If women could attend the chocolate house, Sam thought, they would see that the only threat Rosamund posed was to men’s dreams.
He sat up abruptly and shook his head. What was he thinking? Thank God and all the saints in heaven above the fairer sex were discouraged from entering. His eyes slid to the door to confirm it was so. The thought of anyone other than Rosamund and that doxy who worked in the kitchen sharing this space was almost enough to put him off his chocolate. The other one who used to work here had been delivered to Blithe Manor and given the role of housekeeper. When Rosamund had first told Sam what she proposed, to offer such a position to someone with no credentials other than loyalty, Sam nearly choked on his sack. Ignoring his entreaties, Rosamund did what she always did of late: exactly what she wanted. Installing Widow Ashe as housekeeper, she then elevated that Amazon tawneymoor, Bianca, to the role of companion. If running a business hadn’t been enough to set tongues wagging, giving a slave such a position—as if she were a gentlewoman come by hard times and not a savage lucky to be living under the same roof—did the trick.
Draining his second bowl and smacking his lips in appreciation, Sam thought about calling over Harry for another. Good Lord, the lad had grown tall but not, sadly, another hand; though he appeared not to need one when he was so adept with that odd little stump of his. On second thought, he might sidle over to the bar and have Rosamund make him a drink while he waited. She was developing quite the reputation for soothing fractious spirits and helping with digestive problems, as well as other, less obvious maladies.
On third thought, given who had just monopolized her attention, maybe not.
Sir Henry Bennet had snuck in while Sam was distracted, his elbow resting on the wood of the bar, his entire body tilted toward Rosamund. The former Keeper of the Privy Purse, now Secretary of State and spymaster of the King, was like a raven all in black with that ridiculous plaster across the bridge of his nose. What kind of wound suppurated so long it required a fresh plaster each day? There were men who lost entire limbs during the Civil War and they didn’t make a show of it. He was making Rosamund laugh, no doubt describing something to her in one of the five languages he spoke, gesturing with his elegant beringed hands. There was a time when Sam would have been jealous of the attention courtiers poured upon his cousin, and which she seemed to enjoy. Likewise, the flattery that idiot Charles Sedley, “Little Sid,” bestowed, a man whose only claim to fame, apart from his wit, was strutting naked with Sir Thomas Ogle at the Cock Inn in Bow Street. Though any number of louche gentry had adopted the Phoenix as their own and would no doubt have taken Rosamund under more than their wings if she’d been willing, Sam found it no longer bothered him.
Well, perhaps a little.
Ipso facto, more than a little. Rosamund had not only resisted his attempts to get to know her better—oh, all right, seduce her—but had kept even her most ardent admirers (and there were many) at arm’s length—including the King himself. That, decided Sam, deserved admiration, not disapprobation, at least from him. The day King Charles graced these rooms was, though she was reluctant to admit it, the making of Rosamund. It wasn’t so much that Charles, dressed in what he thought were ordinary clothes (an outfit that Sam would have been proud to strut about in), had come to the Phoenix and was clearly smitten with Rosamund that surprised people, it was that Lady Castlemaine arrived not long after him. Seeing the King astride a stool before the bar, his deep hooded eyes fixed upon Rosamund as she mixed a drink for him, she’d let out a yowl akin to a breeding cat. Ignoring the looks of shock and disapproval around her, she strode through the room and shot Rosamund a venomous stare, upended the prepared bowl of chocolate upon the bar and took the King’s arm.
“Do you not know this place, this Lucrezia, has a reputation that would make a Borgia blush?”
The King had barely formed a protest before she dragged him away, unaware His Majesty bestowed a weary smile and a cheeky wink upon Rosamund as she did.
No, it wasn’t the King’s patronage that shored up Rosamund’s reputation, but Barbara Castlemaine’s furious displeasure.
Not that this prevented the King from returning, albeit in his usual disguise as a regular gentleman about town, answering only to “Old Rowley.” It always amused Sam that His Majesty thought by donning a dun-colored jacket and some worsted linen and pulling a cap low over his head, he was unrecognizable. He was well over six feet, a giant among men. Possessed of the swarthiest of complexions and lugubrious eyes, he turned heads no matter where he went—taking his morning stroll in the park, enjoying the horse races, or boating on the Thames. What was a chocolate house a few miles from Whitehall to him? Especially when it housed such forbidden fruit. Anyone who knew the King knew that was his favorite kind, and if the Lady Barbara had her wits about her, she would have urged him to attend to Rosamund rather than disallowing him. So, Old Rowley returned to the chocolate house occasionally to flirt with Rosamund, and even tried to bestow gifts upon her. All were exquisitely rejected. It didn’t matter that he wore a crown—she refused all who sought her favors.
The only exception was Matthew Lovelace. Whatever that man had done to earn Rosamund’s trust confounded Sam, but it seemed he had, and she in turn had earned his. So much so that the man oft gallivanted around the globe—ostensibly to uncover stories for L’Estrange or Muddiman, though Sam suspected there was more to it than that, especially if the occasional shared drink and unhurried conversation he had with Bennet alone in one of the booths was anything to go by. Curious as to Lovelace’s whereabouts and wanting to confirm his suspicions, Sam had taken to reading every news sheet, searching for his byline to provide a clue.
No longer Nessuno, the name he had adopted to conceal his whereabouts (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) from Sir Everard, Lovelace now wrote for the official news sheets under his own moniker. Sam was unsure that was wise, as he’d dramatically altered the tone and style of his pieces and walked a fine line between comment and dissent. He needed to watch his back lest he draw down the wrath of the authorities.
At least with Lovelace absent, Sam could enjoy Rosamund without him overseeing their interactions. No longer wishing to bed her (quite so often) didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate Rosamund. And he did. Almost daily. She was like a habit he didn’t want to break.
He let out a great sigh, spinning the bowl on the table with a finger, watching the particles clinging to the sides. Sam had to acknowledge the man knew what he was doing when he asked Rosamund to manage the place.
The Phoenix was the place to go both to learn the news and to forget for a time the war against the Dutch and the plague said to be tearing through Belgium, Holland and Germany—topics that preoccupied those sitting in the booth beside him. Agog at the comet seen in northern skies a few days ago, the men were prognosticating about its significance. Sam heard references to famine, floods (no, he wanted to tell them, they occurred last year when all Whitehall was drowned), plague and fire. Next they’d be declaring the four horsemen had been spied on Fish Street. Sam had wondered about the comet himself, seeing it arc across the skies, a flash of silver that made him think of sylvan sprites. For all its majestic beauty there was no doubt it augured something terrible—every comet did. What was it to be this time? They were already at war and foiling Papist plots everywhere. There was that cluster of odd deaths in Yarmouth to consider as well—sailors, or at the least, travelers who sickened and died the moment they set foot on English soil. Covered in strange boils and spots, they had died swiftly.
A voice rose from the neighboring booth. “What does a comet portend if not doom?”
Sam repressed a shudder and pushed such bleak thoughts aside, focusing again on his cousin. Bennet sat back and took a deep swallow of warm, velvety goodness, his eyes screwing up tight, his tongue capturing residue from his rather sensual mouth. Rosamund smiled at him. She had a knack of appearing to concentrate solely on whomever she was serving, as if they and they alone eclipsed all others. She also had a damn fine memory, able to recollect insignificant details about her customers and to ask about them the next time she saw them.
Sam trotted to the bar and, acknowledging Bennet briefly, leaned over the counter to farewell Rosamund, who was holding her own court. He made sure to plant a wet kiss upon her pillow lips—the privilege of cousinage—and was gratified to earn the envious glances of all who loitered nearby.
Tugging his forelock to the Duke of Buckingham and the gentlemen forecasting the future, Sam left the chocolate house with a spring in his step. Life continued, comets and dire predictions aside. Christmas was almost upon them and then a new year: 1665. What would it bring? As he entered Birchin Lane, shivering in the sudden cold, he prayed fervently it was Rosamund to his bed.
Hope, like his prick, sprang eternal.