Improbable Eden Read online

  Improbable Eden

  Mary Daheim

  Camel Press

  PO Box 70515

  Seattle, WA 98127

  For more information go to: www.camelpress.com

  www.marydaheimauthor.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover design by Sabrina Sun

  Improbable Eden

  Original Published in 1991 by Harlequin Historicals.

  Copyright © 1991 and 2016 by Mary Daheim

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-369-3 (Trade Paper)

  ISBN: 978-1-60381-370-9 (eBook)

  On the spine and back cover: Coat of arms of William Henry, Prince of Orange, Count of Nassau, later King William of England, By Sodacan. This vector image was created with Inkscape. - Own work, Based on: File:Arolsen Klebeband 01 343.jpg [1], CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37593574

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941555

  Produced in the United States of America

  * * *

  Dear Reader:

  Fact or fiction? Often there’s a fine line between the two in my historical romances. I’ve been intrigued by European history since I was in my early teens. When I began Improbable Eden, I gave her two real—and well-known—parents: John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and Barbara Palmer, Lady Castlemaine. Churchill had done his share of philandering in his youth and Barbara had given birth to several of King Charles II’s illegitimate children. Who’d notice one more thrown into the mix?

  The result is the unfolding tale of a seemingly ill-matched “orphan” and an exiled prince. Eden Berenger and Maximilian of Nassau-Dillenburg have both been cheated by Fate. How they manage to regain their rightful places in a turbulent world of schemers and dreamers makes for what I hope is an exciting and sometimes touching adventure in late seventeenth-century England.

  So sit back, relax and enjoy this romantic and sometimes rollicking ride through an era that changed English history forever.

  —Mary Daheim, 2016

  * * *

  Prologue

  Kent, 1684

  Her nose was running, there was a smudge of dirt on one cheek, and her older sister had just dumped lemon ice on Eden’s best frock. Cybele and the three other children were laughing at Eden’s stricken little face, which flushed scarlet at their derision. Madame Berenger peered out from under her bright yellow parasol and scowled. “Behave yourselves,” she admonished sharply from her place next to her husband on the carriage platform. “The King comes at any moment now.”

  Cybele, Genevieve and Etienne exchanged a round of malevolent looks before sitting up straight. Gerard grinned at them and resumed his superior air. But Eden was staring in dismay at her ruined dress. All her life she had waited to see King Charles II, that kind, humorous, charming man who held such a special place in her heart. She knew that Monsieur and Madame Berenger weren’t her real parents, and that the other children weren’t her real brothers and sisters. Yet no one would reveal the truth, and for Eden, there could be only one reason for such deep secrecy: her father must be a most exalted personage, perhaps King Charles himself. That idea had warmed her lonely little heart on many a cold night in the tiny bedroom under the eaves at Smarden.

  And now King Charles was riding toward her, heading for Tunbridge Wells to take the waters. She had dreamed of this day, prayed for it, longed to see that tall, dark, laughing man up close and have him pick her out of the crowd and take her in his arms. He would proclaim that she was not Eden Berenger but Princess Eden Stuart, daughter of the King. And Eden would ride off with him to London or Windsor or whichever of those wonderful places her father lived in royal splendor.

  A cloud of dust began to rise on the far horizon, and the faint blare of trumpets shrilled on the summer air. Nearby, spectators pushed closer to the tree-lined road. Eden watched her foster parents for a signal that they should do the same, but Monsieur and Madame Berenger remained in place on the driver’s platform. It was Etienne who asked if they might stand by the road for a better view.

  “From here, you have the best vantage point,” Madame Berenger pointed out. “We are on a small rise, which permits us to see over the others.”

  Her words made sense, but Eden longed to get as close as possible to King Charles. How else would he recognize her in such a great crowd? For it seemed as if all of Kent had turned out. Shoulder to shoulder they stood, dressed in their best, a cordon of men, women and children lining the road.

  Above the dust, a wavy ribbon of color evoked cheers from the onlookers. Footmen, horsemen, courtiers in carriages, ladies in open chaises, gentlemen on magnificent steeds paraded past. Never had Eden seen such spectacle. She forgot about her soiled dress and her smudged cheek. Her eyes turned darker with wonder, and her mouth formed a circle of delight.

  Reclining in an elaborately decorated carriage was a fabulous creature adorned with silk and pearls and rubies. Then came another lady, raven-haired and olive-skinned, with an emerald-covered bosom, followed by a laughing, bouncing sprite with auburn hair whose conveyance scarcely seemed able to contain her high spirits. Someone called, “Nellie! We love the Protestant whore best!” and the auburn-haired nymph blew kisses with both hands.

  Then Eden saw him, riding easily and exuding good humor, a tall man with a black wig and mustache that turned down at the corners as if to remind his smile that life had its serious side, too. The rest of the cavalcade faded into oblivion. Eden could see no one else. He waved and nodded, laughed and grinned, and Eden gripped the side of the carriage in fierce anticipation. King Charles was almost abreast of her now, exchanging words with a brawny yeoman. Both monarch and subject reeled with mirth. Saluting the man, Charles turned in the saddle to gaze in the direction of the Berenger carriage.

  Eden could endure no more. In one swift, scrambling movement, she hoisted her little body over the side and jumped to the ground. In a flash she was running toward the road, tripping on her skirts, red hair dancing on her head like merry flames. The King was only a few yards away; Eden found herself blocked by a hefty couple who paid no heed to the small child trying to wedge between them. But at last Eden made a heroic lunge and came face-to-face with the man who would make her dreams come true.

  Out of breath and trembling from excitement, she stared into the dark, ravaged countenance of Charles Stuart. He inclined his head under the osprey-trimmed hat and laid a finger next to his long nose. Transfixed, Eden watched as he winked and smiled straight into her expectant face.

  And then he was gone. The tail of his fine gelding swished at the flies, and Eden felt herself being dragged away while a harsh hand swatted her backside. “You were told to stay where you were,” growled Monsieur Berenger, his face suffused with displeasure. “For this bad behavior, Maman declares there will be no supper for you tonight.”

  Eden didn’t hear him. Nor did she pay much attention to the snickers of Etienne and Cybele as she struggled into the carriage. The only thing that seemed real was the King, whose entourage was now a few dark specks on the horizon.

  Perhaps it would have been a breach of etiquette for King Charles to seek her out among so many strangers. In a day or so, after the court was settled at Tunbridge Wells, there might be a messenger riding up to the house by the River Beult, requesting Eden’s presence before the King.

  She comforted herself with that thought. The King’s face had
been so kind. Surely he wouldn’t pass by and forget her.

  By the time the apples were harvested and the hops were drying in the oasthouses, Eden’s fragile hope had turned to dark despair. The wind blew the season’s first storms from off the channel, and in November a light snow dusted the barren trees and rolling pastures that lay to the east of the Berenger property. The yuletide season passed with bright, crisp frost.

  Then, in the New Year, under glowering gray skies that dulled Nature’s palette, doleful news came from London. King Charles was dead. After a fit of apoplexy, he had lingered for three days, and the words he had uttered during those final hours were well noted. With typical irony, he had apologized for taking “such an unconscionably long time a-dying,” and had responded to his Queen’s plea for forgiveness by begging her to forgive him a thousand-fold in return. He had remembered in particular that laughing nymph, Mistress Nellie Gwynn, and had summoned all his illegitimate children to his bedside to bid them a final fond farewell.

  All except Eden. Listening to her foster parents exchange gossip about the King’s demise, she had nestled close to the butter churn, out of sight and hanging on to every heartbreaking word.

  “What’s this?” Madame Berenger’s sharp voice cut through Young the butcher’s commentary about Charles’s famous mistresses. “Eden! Why do you skulk in corners to eavesdrop on your elders?” Madame Berenger cuffed at Eden’s ear. “Away with you! Have you no etiquette?” She loomed over Eden, her slack bosom heaving with annoyance. Her pale blue eyes narrowed as she noted the tears welling up in Eden’s dark eyes. “I don’t want tears. You are eight years old next week, and well past the age of crying.”

  Later, when Monsieur Berenger had gone out with the other children to the village, Eden heard Madame Berenger huffing around the kitchen, clattering pots and pans. Eden remained crouched on the floor in silent desolation, but after several minutes had passed, she descended the ladder of the loft where she slept along with Genevieve and Cybele. Madame Berenger’s back was turned, her concentration focused on a huge iron pot into which she was peeling potatoes. For a long moment, Eden regarded the angular form with a mixture of trepidation and determination.

  “Maman?” Eden phrased the word politely. She waited quietly as Madame Berenger wiped her hands and rolled the sleeves of her dress down.

  “Eh?” She turned to gaze at Eden over her shoulder. “Here, you may peel the onions.” Madame Berenger grunted as she hauled a large sack from the cupboard.

  “Maman,” Eden repeated, less politely this time, but in a more mature voice than she usually employed. “I must ask a question.”

  Madame Berenger nudged the bag of onions with her knee. “Ask how many of these go into the pot.”

  Despite her foster mother’s baleful glance, Eden persisted. “Where was I born, Maman?”

  Madam Berenger’s gaze sharpened and she waved a work-roughened hand. “Why do you ask such things? And what does it matter? You have been raised here at Smarden, in Kent, is that not so, eh?”

  Eden planted her feet firmly on the kitchen’s tiled floor. “It matters.” She swallowed hard, desperately hoping that she wouldn’t allow her tears to betray her again. “It matters to me.”

  Her foster mother lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug of dismissal. “Nom de Dieu, it cannot. It is of no importance. If anyone asks, tell them we found you under a cabbage. Come, come, ma petite choute, to your duties.”

  Reluctantly, Eden approached the bag. Hauling it over to the kitchen table, she sat down on a small three-legged stool. It was clear that her foster mother had no intention of revealing more to Eden. Yet someone had cared about her enough to see to her upbringing. If not King Charles, then who? Eden scowled as she began stripping the onions of their golden brown skin. No matter what anyone said, it must have been the King. Maybe he’d left a letter or named her in his will. After a while, Eden felt faintly cheered. When the tears began to pour down her cheeks once more, she blamed them not on disappointment, but on the ragged row of onions she had lined up on the table.

  Chapter One

  Kent, 1695

  Gerard had come home from the Battle of Namur with a stiff leg and a melancholy disposition. The yuletide season had passed all but unnoted in the Berenger household. Though English and Dutch troops had finally succeeded in recapturing an important fortress in Brabant, the victory had proved costly to the elder Berenger son.

  Eden tried her best to buoy Gerard’s spirits, insisting they hitch up a makeshift sleigh and ride out through the snow-covered apple orchards or slide on the north downs beyond the village. Gerard rebuffed her at first, but Eden was determined to drag him not only out of the house, but out of himself, as well.

  “I need more than sheep for company,” she declared, yanking at his broadcloth sleeve. “We might even ride to Romney Marsh. You’ve always enjoyed fishing off the spit at Dungeness.”

  Gerard gave her a wry smile. “That was before I got hurt. As for you, I doubt you’d be lonely in the village. Smarden’s swains are quite taken with you.”

  Eden raised both eyebrows. “I prefer the sheep. The local lads are a glum lot, with little humor and less wit. And most are twice as gawky as you, even if they do have two good legs.” She made no effort to ignore Gerard’s handicap and refused to patronize him as the rest of the family did. Approaching her nineteenth birthday, Eden had learned to face life squarely—except for that still secret place in her heart that had never stopped crying out for her long-lost father.

  “It’s cold,” Gerard protested, his voice peevish. “This weather makes my leg ache.”

  Eden got up from the table and moved briskly to the big open fireplace, where she turned the hissing logs with a sturdy poker. “The sun is trying to come out. I’d wager half a crown it won’t snow again today.”

  Gerard was mulling over a suitable rejoinder when Cybele and Etienne, their faces red with cold, stomped in through the door. Cybele was a recent widow with two children; her figure had grown plump and her countenance sour.

  “Where are our parents?” Etienne asked, a wary expression on his goatlike face.

  “Out,” Eden replied tersely, grabbing Gerard by the back of his shirt. “As the two of us will be shortly. Come, Brother, let us make our way into the village as we planned.”

  “Hold, Brother!” commanded Etienne with an excited wave of his hands. “We have guests coming up the walk even now! Most important business, I assure you.” He gave his foster sister a shrewd look. “You, too, Eden.”

  “Assuredly.” Cybele smirked as she hung her heavy black shawl on a peg by the door. As ever, she was galled by the sight of Eden, whose long, thick hair was the color of claret and tumbled in shining waves down her back. Her wide mouth had a smile that could light up at the very hint of humor, and the huge, dark eyes were set wide under heavy lashes and perfect, dense brows. She was slim, too, with a body growing more lush each day and with skin the color of cream. Eden wasn’t much more than average height, but she gave the illusion of being taller and moved with a sprightly grace. “Not the least bit sedate,” Cybele was fond of saying. The remark always struck a responsive chord in Etienne and Genevieve, who never failed to repeat it when they felt Eden was being overly vivacious. Indeed, it was Eden’s exuberance and love of life that galled her family most. Even Gerard no longer found her open, expansive nature as engaging as it had seemed before Namur.

  Eden was determined not to let the Berengers dampen her spirits. With a purposely winsome glance at Etienne, she started to ask what business matter could possibly concern her when their visitors suddenly materialized on the threshold. At first, the pair of newcomers appeared to be blackamoors from some exotic African tribe. But as the door closed behind them, Eden recognized the two men as Bob Crocker and his son, Charlie, their faces and hands stained by the charcoal they burned from the local iron smelters.

  Etienne was greeting the Crockers warmly. With her usual frankness, Eden started to ask why they’d come
but Etienne waved her to silence.

  “Be patient!” he admonished. “Bring us hot cider. And rolls, too, if you baked enough this morning.”

  Controlling her temper, Eden went to the heavy white crock where the half a dozen potato rolls she’d baked before dawn reposed in a linen napkin. Etienne’s tone was more supercilious than usual, the well-bred accent their tutor had drilled into all five children more pronounced. The visitors were expounding on the lamentable state of the charcoal industry.

  “T’ bosky trees are all but gone in t’ weald,” Bob Crocker explained over the rim of his steaming mug of cider. “We get only half as much wood t’ burn nowadays.”

  “A sorry state of affairs,” commented Etienne, holding out his roll to be buttered. Eden slapped a knifeful against it and tried to ignore Cybele’s snicker.

  “Why must I stay?” Eden hissed at Cybele, who was seated at her loom, sorting different shades of green yarn. “It may be hours before our parents get back.”

  Cybele squinted at two lengths of pale mint wool. “Can’t you guess?” Her little black eyes darted in Charlie Crocker’s direction. “That great brute of a boy wants to make you his wife.”

  Eden stifled an incredulous cry. Only the most strenuous self-discipline prevented her from staring aghast at Charlie, whose eyes seemed to bug out at her from his soot-smudged face. “No!” she breathed, hoping for once that Cybele would show some sympathy.

  But her foster sister merely looked smug. “And why not, pray? You may have come to this family with an allowance of sorts, but not with a dowry. Who did you expect to come a-courting, a noble lord from London?”