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.”
    Nell put a hand before her mouth, but not before a laugh burst past it. She felt a hand press firmly onto her shoulder. The face that met hers, when she turned around, was long and thin with a square jaw and patrician nose. “If old Moll’s most popular orange seller has an orange left, I should like to buy it,” he said to her in a deeply cultured voice.
    “Indeed I do, sir.”
    After he took the orange, he handed her coins, which amounted to an excessively large tip. “I thank you, sir. ’Tis right generous of you.”
    “Worry not. I always get what I pay for, Nell.”
    When he had gone, Lord Buckhurst asked her, “Have you any idea who that was?”
    “Not a clue. Should I?”
    “Charles Hart is the star of this theater, and one of its principal managers. And, if I may say, he has clearly taken a fancy to you. ”
    “Oh, everyone fancies me, Lord Buckhurst. The same way they do a pup in the street. I get a moment’s notice for a clever tongue and a smile, then no more.”
    “Well, in all my time at this theater, I have never seen the great Charles Hart come out from behind the vaunted curtain, and certainly never as directly for an orange from one of you.”
    “Maybe he was hungry,” she smiled slyly. “I wouldn’t make too much of it.”
    “And I would not discount it, lovely Nell.” He drew up her hand and, for the first time since she had met him, his expression became serious. “Take care with Mr. Hart, Nell. He can be a dangerous man.”
    “He seemed perfectly charmin’ to me.”
    “He’s an actor, the finest one in London. Boasts to everyone that he is a grandnephew of William Shakespeare. Mark me, he sought you out for something more than a piece of fruit.”
    “If you’re right,” she laughed, “we have only to wait and see what that is.”
    Before she left the theater that afternoon, Nell received a message, brought by the girl, still in rouge and lip paint, who had delivered the epilogue. It was from Charles Hart. Nell read the brief words with difficulty; she could barely read, and could not write at all. Still, the message was clear. Mr. Hart wished her to join him in his private tiring-room.
    There was something he wished to ask her.
     

    The king sat at the head of a long, polished table, with the Duke of Buckingham. The Earl of Arlington, who Buckingham openly despised, sat across from him, fingering a silver snuffbox. Thomas Clifford, Buckingham’s new protégé, slouched, while John Maitland, the barrel-chested Scottish Duke of Lauderdale, whispered to the Duke of York at the table’s other end.
    As England’s Lord High Admiral, it was the King’s brother, James, Duke of York, who was spearheading a new effort to locate revenue for England. All of the councillors, with the exception of the gout-ridden, cantankerous lord chancellor, the Earl of Clarendon, were young and enthusiastic for the continuation of the yearlong war with the Dutch. In spite of the enormous cost of sea battles, the potential in victory was too seductive to be denied. “We simply haven’t enough money to continue on! It takes money to make war! We have barely enough to man our harbors as it is!” Clarendon declared, slamming a liver-spotted hand onto the polished oak table. The earl was alone against the younger council members. Their sighs and rolled eyes were a reminder to the king of that.
    “The Dutch have wealth beyond the needs of three countries,” argued Buckingham.
    “That has never meant it is ours for the taking!”
    Clarendon was a stubborn old man, with a shock of snowy hair and a rugged, somber face. He was tolerated, not only because his daughter was married to the king’s brother, but because he had been a great supporter of Charles’s father. But the times were slowly shifting.
    “It will be ours if we are victorious,” Clifford observed in support of Buckingham.
    The Duke of York leaned back in his chair and put a hand on his chin. “There is another way.”
    Arlington