Maggie MacKeever (12 page)

Tess did not pursue this topic, though she suspected that relations between Giles’s father and Mrs. Bibby had been a great deal warmer than the association between a duke and his housekeeper should be. Little wonder, she reflected, recalling Sapphira’s wicked tongue. Grasping the cane, she rose awkwardly “We shall probably never know. A pity, but there it is.”

Mrs. Bibby was not immune to the sight of Tess struggling with her cane. “Dinna fash yourself, hinnie! There’s one other person as might know, and that’s Miss Mirian’s closest friend, Celest. A regular slyboots
she
was, and meant for no good end. It’s sorry I am, m’lady, but I cannot tell you more than that.”

“Not even Celest’s last name?” Tess was engaged in valiant combat with the coconut matting that covered the kitchen floor.

“Nay.” Mrs. Bibby was no fool; this queer miss was more accustomed to issuing orders than to obeying them and, furthermore, a great deal more interested in the long-departed Mirian than made sense. She grimaced. It was not without the practice of considerable guile that Mrs. Bibby had so long held her high position in Bellamy House; much as she liked Tess, she liked her comforts more. A shame the girl had brought her questions into the kitchen, but there it was: the dowager duchess would have to be told.

Tess, mounting the steep stairs with grim determination, had no presentiment that she would be in need of good wishes, and soon. She was thinking of Clio, who seemed simultaneously blue-deviled and jubilant. Tess would have been startled to learn that the capricious Clio had discovered a great partiality for a particular gentleman; and positively stunned to discover that she herself was in a position to blight her sister’s romance. The countess puzzled briefly over Clio’s conduct, then dismissed it. Her young sister forever wavered between being in the boughs and in the dumps. Tess achieved the top of the stars, and idly made her way along the hallway.

She did not mean to move with particular stealth, but the thick rug muffled the sounds of her halting footsteps and her cane; she certainly did not intend to eavesdrop, but the door to the front drawing-room stood slightly ajar and voices issued from within.

“More fool you!” growled Drusilla savagely. “That girl is fast worming her way into Sapphira’s good graces. You know what must be done.”

These intrigue-fraught remarks would have sounded a death-knell for the scruples of a far more conventional lady than Tess. She moved to the wall and stood staring, she hoped with apparent appreciation, at a masterful rendition of a gentleman in sixteenth-century attire. A Bellamy ancestor, she thought, regarding his nose. What the devil did Drusilla mean to do about Clio, and why?

“Myself,” muttered Constant, seated again in the spindly little chair, “I think it’s a damned hum.”

With an oath Drusilla flung aside
The Lady’s Magazine,
having derived little enlightenment from an article entitled “High Life and Fashionable Chit Chat.” Like an agitated tigress, she stalked up and down the room.

“My patience is exhausted!” she snarled. “Are you so blind you cannot see what stares you in the face? It must be so, since you continue to live far beyond your income.”

“I suppose
you
don’t!” retorted Constant, following her handsome figure as best he could with his eyes, the high points of his shirt collar making it impossible to turn his head, and recalling rather unhappily the vast sums of money that he owed Messrs. Howard and Grubbs, moneylenders much patronized by the fashionable world. “You’re just annoyed because Sapphira has said you must play goosebody.”

Drusilla battled a strong urge to lay violent hands on her blockish brother-in-law. “My mother,” she remarked, suppressing her blood-thirst only through heroic effort, “doted on Mirian. I suppose had Mirian not run away she might have figured in Sapphira’s will—but, try as she might, Sapphira was never able to trace her one step.”

Constant, prey to an unwelcome notion, let his mouth drop open.

“Precisely!” said Drusilla. “You are a vain, silly fellow, Constant, but you understand well enough once things are explained. Now Mirian’s daughter has turned up, with her oddities of manner that are so strongly reminiscent of her mother, and with her silly little head turned by the exaggerated praises that have been bestowed on her. I do not intend that history should repeat itself! Should Clio, too, settle on Giles, she will have made a
most
unfortunate choice.”

Tess, in the hallway, frowned at Drusilla’s tone, which was absolutely ominous. Did Clio, by her presence, somehow present a threat to the other members of the family? Or was it Clio herself who was threatened and, if so, by whom? Drusilla? Giles?

“So we must move to prevent it,” concluded Constant ponderously. “But how?”

Drusilla resumed her impatient pacing. “I’ve told you how.”

“Yes, and I don’t like it above half!” Drusilla’s fidgeting made Constant uneasy, suggesting as it did violence barely held in leash. “There must be another way.”

“I flatter myself,” snapped Drusilla, “that I’m a trifle less empty in the cockloft than
you!
Don’t try to outthink me, Constant, it is beyond you.” She smiled unpleasantly. “I fear my dear cousin Clio’s nervous agitations are destined to grow to serious heights.”

Constant was not eager to give the reins over to Drusilla, whose tendency to rush her fences was likely to send them both tumbling head over heels. “There’s always Sir Morgan,” he ventured hopefully.

“Morgan?” demanded Drusilla, with more than a touch of irritation. “What has Morgan to do with this?”

“He could have everything to do with it.” Constant leered. “I’m sure the Wicked Baronet would be happy to do you a favor.”

Drusilla, having the advantage of long acquaintance with the gentleman in question, was more inclined to the view that Morgan obliged no one but himself.
“What
favor?”

“Why, to take Clio off our hands! If Sir Morgan were to make the girl the object of a flirtation, Giles wouldn’t stand a chance.”

Drusilla considered this bizarre notion, and found it abhorrent. “You forget that Morgan has a penchant for clever women. Clio would bore him unutterably within an hour.”

“It might still be worth a try,” Constant persevered. He had a great admiration for Morgan, as a result of that gentleman’s legendary escapades. “He seems to like the other wench well enough, by your own account.”

“Morgan is amusing himself.” With admirable nonchalance, Drusilla shrugged. “Tess has a superior understanding, or so he claims, and he would revel in the speculative glances cast in his direction while he conversed with her. I suspect, too, that she is rather fast; Morgan would not waste time where he was not sure of eventual conquest.”

“You are mighty unconcerned.” Constant was not so short of wit that he did not suspect that Drusilla was severely disturbed. “It seems to me that your cavalier has taken a fancy to the wench.”

“Nonsense!” Drusilla raised her brows. “I believe I know Morgan better than you do. He may lead the girl on, even to the point of prompting her to toss her hat over the windmill for him; but once she has shown herself not immune, and in the process given rise to a great deal of scandal-broth, he will abruptly lose interest. Clio’s companion will be left to wear the willow for him, and I’m sure it will be no more than she deserves.”

“And you don’t care a button for it!” Constant was stricken with admiration for her cold-bloodedness.

“I hope,” replied Drusilla stiffly, “that I am not entirely heartless! I remonstrated with Morgan after that first occasion in the park, for this Tess is not the sort of female to sustain the crushing blow that Morgan will inevitably deal her; but he merely laughed.” She lifted her hands and gracefully let them fall. “I do not see that I should be expected to do more.”

“Certainly not.” Constant recalled the brusque manner in which Tess had dealt with his kindly advances, a manner not at all in keeping with her lowly position in the world, and thought it would do her a great deal of good to be brought down a couple of pegs. “All the same, I find it in myself to pity the wench.”

The wench, in the hallway, had swung around to gaze with mingled anger and horror at the doorway. With her back thus presented to the stairs, she did not remark the arrival of a caller, and consequently started so dreadfully that she dropped her cane when the visitor at last spoke in her ear.

“Eavesdroppers,” murmured Sir Morgan, catching her by the shoulders, “cannot expect to hear good of themselves, little one! A superlative amount of nonsense can in this manner come to one’s ears.”

Tess leaned against the wall as he stooped to retrieve her cane. “I was merely admiring this painting. And I do not see why you persist in calling me ‘little’ when I am far from small!”

Sir Morgan did not question the fact that an unremarkable painting should bring such heat to her cheeks or so angry a sparkle to her eye. “You
are
tall for a woman,” he conceded, with only the slightest of smiles. “What would you prefer I call you? ‘Countess’? Or, perhaps, ‘Lady Tess’?”

“No, no!” Tess protested hastily. Sir Morgan was regarding her with an amused understanding that made her wish to slap his face. It was quite marvelous, in view of the various pieces of information she had gleaned during the past hour, that she should recall the necklace hidden in her portmanteau, but remember it she did. Perhaps, she mused, it was the light in the hallway that made Sir Morgan’s tawny eyes seem suddenly to glitter like those gems.

“I think, sir,” she said gruffly, “that I have unwittingly come into possession of something that belongs to you.”

“I believe you have,” agreed Sir Morgan. With a quizzical expression, and a great deal of impropriety, he gently brushed back the curls that had tumbled onto her forehead. “But I had not expected you to be aware of it, little one.”

Chapter 10

The Dowager Duchess of Bellamy’s elegant barouche wound its way through the busy crowds that thronged the streets of London’s fashionable West End. It passed by tall houses that overhung the streets, shops with gleaming plate-glass windows filled with silverware and engravings, books and paints and fine glass; and stopped at last in Piccadilly, at the entrance to Bond Street, where houses and shops faced each other across a narrow carriage-way.

“You may pick us up in Oxford Street,” said Lucille to her coachman, as a footman assisted her to alight. Clio and Tess followed in a mutual silence that, had she known them better, would have stricken Lucille as queer. She did not, however, yet realize that Mistress Clio was a chatterbox, or that Tess’s sad habit was to talk aloud to herself, and consequently considered them both prettily behaved.

Lucille subjected her companions to a critical eye. Clio looked smart as paint in a pink and white striped percale half-dress with a flowered embroidered border and white ruchings, with green knots of ribbon on the mameluke sleeves and gored skirt, and a bonnet to match. Tess, too, looked very nice in a figured muslin gown worn with blue kid shoes, a bonnet of white thread-net trimmed with lace, kid gloves and reticule, all of which had been procured for her by Clio. If only she didn’t limp, concluded Lucille, the girl might do very well.

It was not Lucille’s habit to question the obvious, and thus she did not join the rest of her family in puzzling over why Clio should be so determined to push her companion forward. Nor was Lucille, for all she knew the intricacies of fashion to a nicety, accustomed to applying those precepts to herself. What little money there was for such frivolities was spent in Constant’s efforts to peacock it over his acquaintances. Lucille did not mind her husband’s spendthrift ways any more than she minded that he appeared a figure of ridicule. She had married him on impulse, in hope of escaping the house in Berkeley Square to embark upon a life of her own; it had not served, and Constant had proved a lamentable failure as a provider. For the fact that her husband’s fishlike eye often strayed to other women, and for the existence of the plump and middle-aged widow who served his more unmentionable needs, Lucille was grateful. Truth be told, she disliked Constant very much.

“My cousin has told me about Bond Street,” offered Clio, with little hope that her sister would take up the gambit. The entire household knew that Sir Morgan had encountered Tess in the hallway of Bellamy House, and had been discovered by Drusilla and Constant in an improper attitude. “This, and St. James’s Street, are the province of the gentlemen. No woman who values her reputation is seen here in the afternoon.”

“By your cousin, I assume you mean Giles?” Tess asked innocently. The gentlemen, she reflected, certainly possessed a knack for having things their own way.

“Yes.” Clio glanced at the countess. “Tess, he is the
nicest
man! And he has a high regard for you.”

“Has he?” Tess asked absently. She was thinking not of the estimable Duke of Bellamy, but of his reprehensible friend. Morgan, on their discovery in the hallway, had merely laughed and released her, going to join Drusilla and Constant in the drawing-room while Tess fled. A hairsbreadth escape! she thought wryly. Whatever else the Wicked Baronet might be, he was not easily discomfited.

“Oh, yes!” gushed Clio. They strolled along Bond Street, past a music shop and a picture gallery and a silversmith, pausing while Lucille made several purchases from Mr. Savory, the apothecary. “He has told me so.”

“How nice.” Tess gazed at the smart hotels, Long’s at the corner of Clifford Street, and Steven’s on the corner opposite, both with saddle horses and tilburies outside. Lady Tess liked the duke well enough, but she had certain more pressing matters on her mind.

“I
do
wish you’d listen to me!” wailed Clio, so intent on her own pursuits that she failed to notice the approving glances cast her by several Bond Street beaux. “And I wish you wouldn’t constantly refuse to accompany with us! I don’t like these outings half so well when you won’t come.”

This bizarre remark earned Tess’s full attention; in the past Clio had many times complained that the countess was forever at her heels like a guard dog. “It is
your
season, child, not mine! I am thought to be your companion, if you recall.”