We often wonder what might have been going through a characters mind after reading a scene in a book. An important scene takes place at a costumed, masked ball held on All Hallow's Eve. Here are some thoughts from certain key characters during that scene that you won't read in Dark Angels. Enjoy.

 

From the Duchess of Cleveland:

You ask how I’m enjoying Monmouth’s fete. All Hallow’s and spirits that won’t rest, and all that.

Boring. This is all too boring. If I’ve seen one costume ball, I’ve seen them all. And to watch Charles salivate over yet another maid of honor. . . I ask you, can there be anything more boring than the sight of an ex-lover––between you and me, my dear, we’re not completely ex’s yet…Charles is a dog, and the bed was always a place he and I met as equals–– But where was I?

Oh yes, to watch him salivating over another woman is just too boring. If I had the will, I could entangle him once more, never mind that he complains about my temper. But the truth is, I tire of him, just as he says he tires of me.

How could anyone tire of me? I don’t understand. My pier glass shows a handsome, vital woman. The years have been kind. My hair is still dark and my face smooth. There are at least five men here who’ve already made their interest plain. Whether I take them on or not will have to do with my interest, won’t it. I whore for no one but myself. Always have, always will. (Charles likes it when I talk like that. Most men do.)

But Charles says he is weary of me. And, in my secret heart, I know it may be my doing, but I won’t, I can’t change, not now, as my thirties gather and bunch around me like beggars out on the streets of London. I’m a duchess, for God’s sake. I’m the most famous woman in England. I receive gifts and letters from the French king. I’m higher than the queen.

So let him chase new maids of honor and bed his little actresses. Nellie Gwynn. Trash off the streets. Charles has no taste.

Oh, there’s Alice Verney, darting about like she owns Whitehall. Little wretch. Daring what she has. I’ll see her ruined if I can, if I don’t get so bored with the whole lot here that I go away.

Charles would miss me if I really went away. I know he would. And I’d make him get like the dog he is.

From Prince Rupert:

Monmouth’s fete, you say?

Oh, it’s great fun. Reminds me once more what fools we men and women are. But I say, I’ve earned the right to be a fool once in a while. And I never mind dancing with pretty women, trying to guess who they are under their masks, and drinking my cousin Charles’s wine.

Of course, I guessed which one was Alice, right away. No one dances the way she does. She could be on the stage, she could. That girl. I’ll say this for Alice. She’s got spirit. I like her, always have, since she was a long-legged girl running about the court like one of the royal spaniels. And loyal to the queen….no one here, including yours truly, who has been more loyal. She never followed the wind on that one. She’s the queen’s gal and makes no bones about it.

Hated to see what happened to her over Colefax, but she’s bounded back. You’d never know there’d been a disgrace. She and I sneak away and smoke, and it’s old times between us, like it used to be before she left for France.

Ha. Look at Cleveland glower like the great bloody cow she is. It does my heart good to see the Duchess of Cleveland walking around without the king following behind like a bull with a ring through his nose. Her time is over. And it’s not a moment too soon. She’s bankrupted the treasury to keep herself in baubles, and she’s made the king a fool when he should have been a statesman. The Duke of Balmoral and I were talking of that the other day, the way she and her wiles and her tantrums kept Charles occupied when he should have been attending his throne.

Not that I like to criticize Charles. I won’t and don’t. But Balmoral and I go back a long way, and we can talk honestly knowing the other won’t go blathering to the first fool he sees. I hate the way Buckingham is stirring things these days. He’s come between Charles and his brother, he has. He can’t be trusted, I told Balmoral. He never could. It was his brother that had all the golden heart of that family, not him. Died, you know. On the battlefield fighting for his majesty, King Charles I, may God rest his martyred soul. Oh dear, I've gone melancholy, I have. Enough. I'm off the dance and flirt with pretty women.

From Henri Ange:

Who are you? What do you want?

How am I enjoying Monmouth’s fete? Forgive me while I laugh, a good, long laugh. Yes, it’s a private jest that only I would understand.

But aren’t you afraid to be out this night….All Hallow’s when spirits walk? Isn’t that why you burn bonfires on the hills, to frighten them off? But perhaps what you do is light their way.

I hear spirits, one in particular who whispers in my ear. But I’m odd. I’ve had an unusual life, living many places, Italy, France, Sweden, now here. Why here? Let’s just say I’ve been commissioned to perform a task. I perform tasks which others are too high-minded to touch. Oh, they desire my services, but they don’t want to….how shall I put this….get their hands dirty. While my hands, like my soul, are soiled beyond redemption.

Not that I believe in redemption. That implies a god. And I believe in no god but my wits and perhaps the spirit who whispers to me and keeps my soul chilled in ice.

Like now, this lovely fete held by the Duke of Monmouth for his father, King Charles, people all about in costume and masks, smiling, laughing, glad to be distracted on this unholy night. I mingle among them and find no laughter in my own heart. I am amused by little, except perhaps their naiveté.

They don’t know I’m a messenger for death. I certain that’s the spirit who talks to me…death. They don’t know hat I could touch their hand with one of my special gloves, and they’d feel ill later, and tomorrow they’d die. Alice knows about me. I saw it in her eyes in France. It was amusing to frighten her. …there was something that amused. Alice with her dark eyes and sharp tongue. Someday I may dim those eyes, still that tongue.

And Richard. I may hate Richard, if I have the capacity to hate.

But there’s the queen, the little birdlike queen, my prey. Let me go and stand near her awhile, watch her among those she trusts, perhaps hear her laugh. It makes my task interesting, to watch those I will touch with my death’s hand.

Beware I don’t touch you.