Maggie MacKeever (11 page)

“From all accounts,” Miss Lennox retorted unsympathetically, “it’ll be bellows to mend with you anyway. Don’t fly into alt, Percy; I’d already heard the tale. I merely wished to have the information confirmed.”

“I’ll tell you what you are, Jynx, and that’s too clever by half!” Lord Peverell’s glare was most unappreciative. “Leading a fellow up the garden path and causing him to trip over his own tongue! And if I didn’t tell you, who did?”

With a fine indifference, Miss Lennox licked her spoon. “My Aunt Eulalia.” Percy burst into garbled speech, in which the terms “tale-pitching” and “prattle-bag” played a major role. “I understand,” Jynx interrupted firmly, “that it is a friendship that has continued for a considerable time.”

“You refine too much on it.” Percy had a noble, if ill-founded, notion of defending his friend. “The lady is, ah, friendly with everyone! She made a dead-set at him!”

“And of course Shannon could not be expected to find it in himself to rebuff her.” Jynx regarded her glass and in one swallow emptied it. “Never mind, Percy! I only wished to ascertain if the tale Eulalia told me was true.”

Lord Peverell had recourse to his usual means of dealing with difficult situations; he signaled for more punch. “Well, now you have it, and I wish you hadn’t, for Shannon will be convinced I’m a dashed loose-screw!”

Jynx was far too kindly to point out that not only Viscount Roxbury, but the entire world, was already convinced of that very thing. “Shannon will be convinced of nothing of the sort, because you are not going to tell him of this conversation, just as you are not going to inform him that I am aware of his fondness for Adorée Blissington. Do you understand, Percy?”

It was another of Lord Peverell’s flaws of character—or virtues, if regarded from the point of view of moneylenders, and Captain Sharps, and others of that breed—that he was easily led. He would no more have attempted to argue with so determined a young lady as Miss Lennox than he would have tried to emulate Lord Roxbury’s feat of transversing the Thames in company with a live hare. “If you say so,” he replied doubtfully. “But I wouldn’t call it a
fondness,
Jynx. It’s my opinion Shannon don’t care two figs for her.”

Even one fig would have been too many, reflected Miss Lennox, cast into a further deflation of the spirits by this additional evidence of her fiancé’s profligate tendencies. Bad enough to learn that the viscount was thick as thieves with a dashing lady like Adorée Bliss; worse still to discover that his affections were not engaged. If Lady Bliss meant so little, and Shannon yet continued to pay her court, then his affianced bride could only mean less. Jynx recalled that recent interlude in the Lennox gardens, and Lord Roxbury’s warm attentions. “We will speak no more of it,” she said repressively.

“Good!” Lord Peverell was making great inroads on his second glass of punch. “Then maybe we can speak of
my
affairs! Dash it, Jynx, you must help us! It’s your duty! If not for you I wouldn’t have gone back to Blissington House, and I wouldn’t have met Cristin, and I wouldn’t have run up more debts!”

Lord Peverell’s efforts with his champagne punch were as nothing compared with those of Miss Lennox, who had already emptied her glass. It was, perhaps, the quality of the brew that attributed a certain justice to his sentiments. “Why
did
you gamble further?” Jynx focused on her companion with some difficulty. “I cannot imagine that Cristin encouraged you.”

“No, but Innis did. He won’t let me see Cristin unless I first try my luck with the cards.” Percy glanced up, and over his pleasant face spread an expression of horror. “Must go now! A previous engagement! Say you’ll help us, Jynx!”

Miss Lennox eyed her companion with a certain resentment. “Oh, very well, Percy.” But her words fell on empty air; Lord Peverell, deeming prudence the better part of valor, had taken flight. Jynx wondered at it, briefly; surely Tom Moore, the Irish poet who functioned as a pet minstrel, and who was currently singing ballads in another room, did not exercise such powerful allure. And then she fell to pondering the recent
on-dit
that the selfsame poet had been responsible for the anonymous publication of the satirical
Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post Bag,
which had included several sharp gibes at the corpulent regent and his current favorite, Lady Hertford. Eulalia had some basis for her unflattering opinion of the gentlemen, it seemed.

One such specimen was standing before her, and a fine figure of a man he was. “I do not think,” Miss Lennox stated severely, “that I should wish to share my husband with anyone.”

Somewhat taken aback by this pronouncement, Lord Roxbury studied his betrothed. She was looking very elegant in a high-waisted and low-bodiced gown of pale Italian crepe, ornamented around the hem with pink and silver ribbon; and her hair, for a change, was arranged very tidily. Then he noted the two empty glasses on the table before her, and the very vague expression in her eyes. “I can understand,” he offered, “why you should feel that way. Come along, poppet! Lady Holland has provided an orchestra for dancing, and you will feel a great deal better for the exercise.”

Jynx doubted that anything short of retirement to a convent would elevate her spirits, but she allowed the viscount to draw her to her feet. The room tilted crazily about her, and she clutched at his arm. “I think,” murmured Lord Roxbury, “that some fresh air might prove beneficial.” His amusement was barely concealed.

“One hopes so,” replied Miss Lennox, who maintained her balance with only the greatest difficulty. “One also feels that one should have been warned about the effects of that punch.” She hiccoughed.

A great number of people remarked upon the fond manner in which Jessamyn Lennox hung onto Lord Roxbury as he led her through the room where a waltz—that dance but newly come into fashion, which was still considered by many as an obscene display—was in progress and out onto the terrace; and also upon her abstraction, which was so extreme that she did not respond even to direct comments. So skilled was Viscount Roxbury, and so polite, that no one suspected the true source of Miss Lennox’s remoteness. Moreover, so enchanted did the viscount appear with his Jessamyn that Lord Peverell breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that Jynx was a good sort of girl who wouldn’t let a minor indiscretion on the part of her fiancé weigh unduly on her mind; and Eulalia sighed in quite a different manner, considering her niece a great deal too tolerant.

Both conclusions had a certain amount of truth in them, yet both were erroneous. Jynx indeed possessed great forbearance, and she had no intention of ripping up at the viscount; but she had been rendered acutely uncomfortable by the revelation that Lord Roxbury was a Man of the World. She gazed up at him, at the gleaming red-gold hair and fascinating features and bewitching green eyes. “One needn’t marvel at it, I suppose. It is not your fault that you have a face that makes women fond and men jealous. Doubtless birds of paradise have vied for your favors ever since you came of age.”

“True,” murmured Shannon, with his dazzling smile. “In point of fact, I believe I came to their notice sometime before. Wealth exercises great allure, poppet, as you must know.”

Certainly Lord Roxbury’s wealth did, as was more than amply demonstrated by the tenacious Ashley clan. Jynx wondered if the viscount would ever be able to extricate himself from their toils—if extricated he wished to be. “Shannon—” she began, then paused. One could hardly tax even so old a friend with the folly of his
amours.

Lord Roxbury, alas, took this unfinished remark to refer to gaming debts. “I know, Jynx,” he said. “Don’t blame yourself for it! All of us at some point blot our copybooks. In truth, the follies of mankind are so legion that one cannot help but be amused by them.”

“Providing,” retorted Jynx, on whom the fresh night air was not having a salubrious effect, “that one does not sully one’s reputation in scorn of the consequence. Are you a cynic also, Shannon? I would not have thought it of you!”

It occurred to the viscount that they might be talking at cross-purposes, but if Jynx did not refer to her gaming debts, he could not imagine what she might mean. “You make too much of it,” he soothed, and drew her closer. “My experience with such things is a great deal broader than yours, and you may trust me when I tell you it is the merest peccadillo, nothing more.”

Miss Lennox had been merely depressed by the revelation that her fiancé had formed—and apparently meant to continue—a liaison with a lady of questionable intellect and undeniable beauty; but by this indication that he considered such behavior unremarkable she was overwhelmed. ‘The devil!” she said, faintly.

“You are not to regard it, Jynx!” The viscount was not a little alarmed by Jynx’s determination to censure herself. “Believe me, at least in this matter I know what is best for both of us. I do not wish you to be plagued by such things, poppet. All will be settled satisfactorily, I promise. You need think of it no more.”

It was true that Jynx had in the most practical of manners arranged this marriage, and equally true that she had expected of her husband no romance, but by this polite indication that in the course of that marriage he intended to elsewhere find both diversion and companionship, she was entirely crushed. “What,” she asked feebly, “if I
wish to
think of it? Oh, I admit that I had not expected to, but I recently learned differently, and I think it is most shabby of you to tell me I may not!”

“Shabby?” echoed the bewildered Lord Roxbury, who was still under the delusion that Jynx spoke of gaming debts. “I’d call it damned generous. Good God, Jynx, you can’t expect me to
like
you to lower your character with such improprieties!”

Miss Lennox could not trust herself to speak, else she would have pointed out that the viscount, just recently, had appeared to like those same improper pursuits very well. She was possessed of a strong desire to slap his beguiling face. But, since violence was foreign to her nature, she rose on her tiptoes, and placed her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him instead. He did not, she noted, protest. And then, because she could clearly no longer trust herself in his presence, in her own turn she fled.

Alone on the terrace, Lord Roxbury straightened his rumpled jacket, and absently adjusted his mussed cravat, which was arranged rather ironically in the Trône d’Amour, a well-starched style with a single horizontal dent in the middle. Shannon was surprised by that queer embrace, and gratified, and he harbored a strong suspicion that Miss Lennox had gone quite mad.

Chapter Nine

Lady Bliss was once more in her drawing room, a chamber that she had come to consider alternately her place of refuge and her prison, for there she withdrew from such annoyances as the gaming gentlemen who haunted her house, and the creditors who threatened to do likewise; and there she sat and twiddled her thumbs in a voluntary incarceration brought about by the fact that she dared not set foot out-of-doors, in fear of bailiffs and other bogeymen, who no doubt lurked just around the corner in wait for her, until her bills were paid.

Adorée glanced around the room, which once she had liked very well. Now she found the damask-hung walls offensive, and the caned furniture dull. Furthermore, the cost of hock had risen to thirty shillings the dozen, and the novel she had chosen for diversion—
The Absentee
by Maria Edgeworth— was no romantic effusion but a realistic description of Irish exploitation by English landlords. She dropped the volume onto a sofa table veneered with mahogany and inlaid with bands of satinwood, its flaps supported on hinged brackets, which stood on a central pillar with a claw base. That, too, aroused Adorée’s displeasure. She thought she might like to retire to the country, there to have a garden and some chickens and a cow, perhaps in time to contract an alliance of mutual benefit with some rosy-cheeked squire.

It would not serve, alas; Innis would not let her go so easily. Adorée had fallen completely out of charity with her brother, who had no notion whatsoever of conduct that befit a gentleman. She hated to think what his latest wild start might be, and knew only that it concerned their niece. Cristin was absent from Blissington House, once more in company with the loathesome Eleazar Hyde. The girl was obviously unhappy, and Adorée was sorry for it, but she didn’t see what she could do to remedy the situation.

Then there was the matter of Miss Lennox. For a gentleman suffering the pangs of unrequited love, Adorée mused, Innis was being remarkably patient—and for Innis to in any situation be patient was in itself a highly suspicious circumstance. Lady Bliss wondered if she should inform Lord Roxbury that he had made various erroneous assumptions, and acquaint him with the truth, especially since he had been so kind as to take with him a rather staggering total of her overdue accounts. Of the fact that he would pay that total, as he had promised, there was no doubt; Lord Roxbury always kept his word.

Unfortunately, this reflection brought Lady Bliss no relief. Though her bills were to be paid, an event worthy of the most profound thanksgiving, she was expected in turn to present Lord Roxbury with her assistance, and an accounting of his fiancée’s further excursions into depravity. How she was to do so, when Miss Lennox hadn’t given any indication of being the slightest bit depraved, Adorée could not say. Meanwhile Innis, having witnessed Viscount Roxbury embracing his sister, considered them reconciled, and Adorée had dared not tell him otherwise. Nor had she informed her brother that certain of her debts were to be paid, lest he somehow divert the funds for his own use. Clearly, decided Lady Bliss, she was reaping the rewards of a misspent life. There was scant consolation in the thought that things could grow no worse.

But even that small comfort was not granted her for long. Tomkin appeared in the doorway, an apron tied over his butler’s suit and a feather duster in his hand, and an expression of deep suffering on his face, all of which were occasioned by the circumstance that the housemaids had once again parted for greener pastures, their wages in sad arrears. “Lady Peverell, madam!” he announced, then departed, after an oddly commiserating glance. A diminutive creature—clad in a velvet pelisse and bonnet and kid boots, all of violet, a cashmere shawl and lace ruff. Limerick gloves and a large ermine muff—tottered into the room. “Lady Blissington?” she inquired, in fading tones.