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BOOK: Maggie MacKeever
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In no time, it seemed, the rest of the inn was aroused and crowding into Tess’s small room. Arms wrapped around her knees, the countess watched the proceedings with great interest, noting that the landlord’s shocked protests lacked sincerity. In no time the intruder, still unconscious, was dragged away.

“I’ll take care of this,” said Sir Morgan, and grasped the broken cane. Heedless of Delphine’s basilisk stare, he touched Tess’s cheek. “Try and sleep now! I’ll guarantee you no more disturbances this night.”

“You have been put to a great deal of inconvenience for my sake!” Quite unself-conscious, Tess smiled at him. “I am extremely sorry for it.”

Again she received that crooked grin. “You need not be,” he replied, golden eyes alight, “though you have caused me a great deal more inconvenience than you know.” With this cryptic utterance, he strode from the room.

“Well!” gasped Clio, making a remarkable recovery. “What boundless effrontery! I wonder if he is a fortune hunter, Tess? He certainly lost no time in attempting to cajole you!”

“Voyons!”
spat Delphine, but the countess only laughed. “Don’t be silly, child!” she replied. “Sir Morgan can nourish no warm feelings—proper or otherwise—for someone like myself. He was only being kind.”

Delphine doubted strongly that Sir Morgan was so chivalrous, but acceded to her mistress’s plaintive request for solitude. With a forceful hand, Daffy propelled Clio from the room. “All the same, my lady,” she pronounced severely from the doorway, “it’s glad I am that on the morrow we will see the last of him.”

Tess drew the bedclothes up to her chin. “Yes, I suppose we shall,” she murmured, with only the slightest of frowns.

 

Chapter 4

 

Tess was not to be granted even that last glimpse of Sir Morgan; she slept late on the following morning and thus did not witness his departure from the inn, a fact that vastly pleased her abigail. Delphine’s relief, alas, was but short-lived. Sir Morgan had not forgotten the countess; he had left behind her mended cane and a note that for all its brevity had been enough a
billet-doux
to make Tess blush and laugh aloud. Delphine would have greatly liked to peruse that missive. Somewhat unwisely, she made her wish known.

“Oh?” Lady Tess could, when the occasion warranted, be extremely intimidating. “Am I a child, Daffy, that you would read my private correspondence? You will confine your chaperonage to my sister, if you please!” Having emphatically squelched her abigail, she returned to her book. It was mere subterfuge—the coach’s jolting made reading very difficult—but Clio and Delphine, neither of whom possessed a fondness for the written word, were equally deceived.

Mistress Clio glanced sideways at her sister, then down at her own clasped hands. She knew she had behaved badly, and was sorry for it; and she had every intention of apologizing to Tess, though not in front of the censorious Delphine. Clio’s self-centered behavior was due more to immaturity than to any basic character defect. She would grow into an unexceptional young woman providing no one, goaded beyond endurance by her capriciousness, murdered her first.

In one matter, though they would have been startled to know it, Clio and Delphine were in perfect accord, and that matter concerned none other than Sir Morgan. The greatest blackguard alive, thought Delphine, quite forgetting her initial favorable impression of the man. Both
diabolique
and
débauché,
a true libertine, as evidenced by his conduct regarding Lady Tess! No matter to
him
that by his behavior he might have sullied her reputation beyond all mending! Were it known that the countess had been closeted with a gentleman in her bedchamber for well over an hour, she would be ruined.

The abigail sighed heavily, but even that did not earn for her Tess’s forgiving glance. Delphine had not meant to question her mistress’s conduct, but to put her on guard against a born intriguer of the boudoir sort, and the attempt had failed. She saw that now she would be required not only to keep a watchful eye on Clio, but on her mistress. The world would never believe that Tess flouted the conventions only through sublime innocence.

In this, Delphine grievously misjudged her mistress. Tess might be totally unaware of her own beauty, but she was far from ignorant of the rigid rules that governed conduct between well-born ladies and gentlemen. Simply, Tess did not think of herself as one to whom those rules applied. The game of hearts was not meant for such as her; if she felt a faint regret at her exclusion from the lists, it was understandable, and little signified. She had liked Sir Morgan very much, had appreciated his blunt manner and his thoughtfulness, had enjoyed talking with a man whose mind was as agile and well-informed as her own; but he had not touched her heart. Were they to meet again, Tess felt that she might call him friend, and with that she was content. She recalled his irreverent note and grinned, an act that her companions mistakenly attributed to the words of Chateaubriand.

Mistress Clio was also pondering her sister’s innocence, to such extent that she ignored the passing countryside. It was little wonder that Tess had no little understanding of the ways of men, for she had had only one suitor, the unworldly curate, and consequently no practical experience. Clio suddenly wondered—she was by no means the fool her behavior implied—if that omission was due to a lack of inclination on the part of the gentlemen, or because Lord and Lady Lansbury had surrounded Tess with a wall of solicitude that no gentleman could penetrate. Struck by this unique thought, Clio frowned.

Aware that she had given both her companions cause for consternation, Tess leaned forward to touch her sister’s arm. “Look!” she said, and gestured toward the window. “While you have been woolgathering, we have arrived in Town.”

Relieved by this indication that she was to be forgiven so easily, Clio cast her sister a grateful glance. She gazed obediently outside, but accorded little attention to the incessant stream of elegant carriages, the well-mounted horsemen, the countless pedestrians. Mistress Clio was not accustomed to devoting her private reflections to other than herself, and found it a difficult exercise.

It was not benevolence that caused the countess to treat her young sister with such kindness—Tess was too well used to Clio’s fits and starts to take offense—but a strong suspicion that the girl had sustained a blow to her pride. Clio was not used to such offhand treatment as Sir Morgan had administered; young men had flocked around her ever since she had left the schoolroom and she could not be expected to find in a rake’s conduct a most salutary moral. Tess did and was grateful to him for it. Sir Morgan might admittedly be a man of little principle, but he was not so depraved as to offer a young girl false coin.

In this manner they passed the journey, which was not without its small excitements and alarums, each wrapped in her own thoughts: Delphine in grim recollection of the squalid little debauch she’d interrupted in so timely a manner the evening before; Tess in amused recollection of the debauchee’s outrageous behavior and even more outrageous remarks; Clio in frenzied contemplation of how she might warn her elder sister that a lame lady no longer in her first youth was easy prey for a reckless and profligate man who was demonstrably more at home in the fleshpots than in the drawing-room. Despite what her mentors might think, Clio was only slightly miffed that her artful lures had earned her cavalier treatment from Sir Morgan. It was not in her nature to bypass an opportunity to flirt with a handsome gentleman, particularly one whom she instinctively knew to be a connoisseur; but in truth she didn’t care a button for him.

As disparate as their thoughts were the ladies’ impressions of the town. Clio saw only richly dressed gentlefolk and fashionable shops and bastions of the nobility which she hoped to breach; Delphine gazed astounded on the street-sellers who dispensed steamed baked potatoes from brightly painted cans, ginger beer from mahogany fountains with gleaming brass handles, treacle rock and hot meat pies and peppermint sticks. It was Tess who saw the ramshackle tenements and stinking alleyways, the ragged filthy people, the poverty that lurked forever on the edges of London’s magnificence.

“Look,” she said, “in the distance. That complex is the Tower, the most venerable pile in London. The oldest building there is the White Tower, built by Bishop Gundulf under orders from William the Conqueror in 1089.” This information earned neither comment nor praise. Tess lapsed again into silence, and at length the carriage halted in front of the Bellamy town house in Berkeley Square.

“Tess,” hissed Clio, as they descended from the coach. Her unusual contrition was prompted by a conviction that Tess was suffering Cupid’s sting, an arrow in the breast that had left a festering wound. “I must speak! I have behaved abominably to you, and I beg you will forgive me for it.”

“Bosh!” replied Tess. That this brusqueness was due to a painful twisting of her lame ankle, she did not explain. “I am hardly like to condemn you for the heartlessness of your conduct, child.” With that she turned away, leaning heavily on the mended cane.

Clio’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly. Laboring under a strong sense of ill usage, she followed her sister to the double front doors. Delphine, who had preceded them, lifted one of the heavy knockers, fashioned like lions, and let it fall. They were admitted into an entryway, bright with Indian red tiles set in purely classical patterns, and left there to cool their heels.

“Clio!” said the countess, a trifle acerbically, “you
did
inform the Duchess of Bellamy of our intended arrival?”

“Of course.” Clio gazed at the splendor of her surroundings with delight. Then her jaw fell. “Tess! I quite forgot to inform her that you were coming, too!”

What Lady Tess might have replied remains unknown; the entryway was invaded at that moment by a small boy, an impish-looking child of perhaps ten years with a most impressive nose, and a huge dog, obviously of dubious parentage, a positive mountain of multicolored hair and uncoordinated parts.

“You must be my cousin!” announced the lad and with grubby fingers clutched Clio’s arm. She regarded him with fascinated horror. “I’m Viscount Wyncliffe.
You
may call me Evelyn!”

Tess, who had a fondness for precocious little boys, might have interrupted at that point since Clio looked to be on her verge of histrionics, had not the dog, sensing an animal lover, chosen to make known his approval of her. Tess was fragile of build and he was not; in the energy of his greeting, he knocked her to the floor.

“Nidget!” cried Evelyn, and rushed across the hallway to tug ineffectually at the beast, which was joyously saluting Tess’s face. “I am dreadfully sorry, ma’am! Nidget has no manners but I am teaching him. He must like you very much to behave so! I hope you aren’t hurt?”

“I don’t know,” gasped Tess. The dog’s massive front paws were planted firmly on her ribs. “Do you think you might induce the monster to get off me?”

“I think so,” replied Evelyn cautiously, pulling on one large canine ear, and consequently buffeted mightily by a frantically wagging tail.

“What the deuce is this?” inquired a calm masculine voice. “Evelyn, if you do not remove that confounded dog immediately, I will have him destroyed.” While Evelyn might have realized the emptiness of this dire threat, Nidget did not. Cowed, he slunk away.

With a deep breath of relief, Tess struggled to her knees. A hand was placed beneath her elbow. “Allow me to assist you,” offered the helpful gentleman, and Tess looked up into a pleasant, if somewhat detached, face. It was easy to guess that this was Evelyn’s father; they shared not only The Nose but the same dark eyes.

“Thank you.” She availed herself of his support.

“I hope that wretched dog has not injured you?” he inquired, in tones of the most polite, and with a look of total unconcern.

“No.” Tess was chagrined, not by his patent disinterest, but that she must ask his further aid. “If I might have my cane?”

This simple request procured for her the gentleman’s immediate attention. He glanced at her as if seeing her for the first time, then looked about him for the desired article. It lay some way across the tiled floor, and beside it a small book. Though such menial errands were clearly not what he was accustomed to, he fetched them both, and returned them to Tess with a raised brow. “Chateaubriand?” he murmured. “Heavy reading for a young lady, surely?”

Tess rewarded this absurdity with a level gaze from her clear blue-green eyes. “Poppycock!” said she.

Lucille hovered in the doorway. It had been a day so distressing, as were most of Lucille’s days, that she devoutly wished herself in a nunnery.
“Maman
is waiting,” she ventured timidly.

“Then by all means we must hasten to her. She is in a devilish temper as it is.” Giles turned cordially to Clio. “You must be my young cousin. May I say how pleased I am to make your acquaintance, and apologize for this dreadful
contretemps?”

“Pray say no more!” replied Clio, who had been hard put to remain silent while her sister monopolized the attention of yet another personable man. “It does not signify.”

“Please hurry,” whispered Lucille, twisting her hands. Clio dimpled as Giles offered his arm, and they followed the faded woman down the hallway.  Tess followed, flanked by Evelyn and Nidget, both of whom had apparently constituted themselves her devout admirers. Bringing up the rear of this small cavalcade was Delphine who, though perfectly aware that she should by rights remove herself to the nether regions, had no intention of leaving the disposition of her charges to happenstance. It was glaringly obvious to the abigail that this was an abominably ill-run household.

Sapphira dominated the drawing-room, seated as she was in her invalid chair with a gold turban on her head and a hideous cashmere shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her daughters and son-in-law grouped subserviently around her, and a glass of negus— sherry and hot water sweetened with lump sugar and flavored with grated nutmeg and lemon juice—in one gnarled hand. Clio took one look at this rather malevolent apparition and gulped audibly. Tess repressed a smile.

BOOK: Maggie MacKeever
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