Maggie MacKeever (14 page)

“Clearly there are not.” Mr. Ashley had been distracted by sight of her magnificent betrothal ring. “A pretty bauble, that. May I take a closer look?” Miss Lennox hesitated, suspicious. “Do you think I’ll take it from you? I may be untrustworthy—and I admit to that!—but I’m not a pickpocket!”

Jynx was not of a temperament to willingly inflict unhappiness on any man, unless that man was a suitor who had grown too importunate; and it appeared from Innis’s wounded expression that she was guilty of misjudgment. “Just who,” she asked rather absently, “is Eleazar Hyde?”

“A damned fine piece,” retorted Innis, with equal lack of attention. “Not Eleazar, this ring! Roxbury is very generous, as I have good cause to know. You will want for nothing as his wife, Miss Lennox.”

Save her husband’s affection. Miss Lennox reflected silently. “That is,” added Innis, “if you prefer a husband who is distant and cold, and whose infidelities are legion—but you will tell me, rightly, that it is none of my affair.” He laid his hands over hers. “Save that any man who has a fondness for you must deplore such a match. If I were so fortunate as to be in Roxbury’s place, I promise I would treat you very differently.”

Jynx had no doubt of this; the viscount, for all his failings, did not require that she pay his bills. Still, she did not draw her hand away. There was a vast and illuminating difference between these two men who were paying her court. Innis Ashley lost little, she thought, in comparison with a pattern card of respectability. But her poor maid was probably by this time in an absolute frenzy, wondering where her mistress had gone. “Cristin’s marriage with Eleazar Hyde?” she prompted, gently.

Frowning, Innis hesitated, then decided to be honest. She’d find out the truth, anyway, soon enough. He turned over her hand and with his fingers traced the lines of her palm. “You have been deceived. It’s not marriage that Eleazar offers. I trust I need not be more specific?” Jynx stared at him, horrified. “Do not look at me
so,
my darling! I’m in need of a great fortune, and Eleazar is prepared to come over handsomely. What else can the girl hope for?”

“A great deal more than that, I think!” Now Jynx did try to draw away, but Innis held her fast. “What kind of man are you, who’d sell your own niece into debauchery?”

“A weak one,” retorted Innis, who was dismayed to discover that Miss Lennox possessed such high principles, and no less dismayed to discover in himself a vast reluctance to allow her to think so poorly of him, great wealth or no. “But not wicked, I swear it! I like this no better than you, but there is no help for it. It was Eleazar’s decision, and I dare not say him nay.”

“You need a fortune so badly?” inquired Jynx, more quietly. The depth of his emotion was unquestionable, though his sincerity remained in considerable doubt.

“I do.” Innis conceived suddenly of a notion that was staggering in its simplicity. “There is only one thing that might stay me from my course, that might allow me to tear up Percy’s vows and allow Cristin to have him. You know what that is, I think.”

Jynx thought so, too, and her predicament appalled her. “Tell me.”

Carefully, Innis set the betrothal ring on the card table. “Yourself,” said he. Before she could speak, he drew her to her feet, and embraced her passionately. Too stunned by these recent disclosures to put up a defense, Jynx submitted. It was, after all, an admirable opportunity to study the differences between the honorable Lord Roxbury and the extremely dishonorable Mr. Ashley.

“I thought,” Miss Lennox said, rather breathlessly, when she was at length released, “that you dared not defy your friend Eleazar.”

“My darling,” murmured Innis, who was no less short of breath, “for you I think I would dare anything.”

“Dare me and be damned!” came a voice behind them. Jynx regarded Innis, the picture of guilt, and spun around. Before her was a stout and balding individual of advancing years and dissipated countenance. Miss Lennox had no prior acquaintance with such creatures, but she had no doubt she beheld a
roué.
“A nice enough filly,” remarked the
roué,
who had observed her in turn. “She ain’t exactly to my taste, but I daresay the Dragoons would like her.” Innis made a choking sound.

Tomkin had, after a severe struggle with his conscience regarding the mountains of dishes that remained to be washed, succumbed to the lure of eavesdropping; and Tomkin adjudged it time to rescue Miss Lennox. “I beg pardon,” he announced, from the doorway, “but the young lady’s carriage is waiting.”

“Thank you, Tomkin!” Miss Lennox—who found she did not appreciate being stared at as if she were plump and tasty fowl—sped in a positively energetic manner from the room. In the hallway, she regarded her unlikely savior. “I suppose you know that I do not
have
a carriage?” The butler’s expression was wooden. “I am grateful to you for sparing me from being put further to the blush.”

“Precisely, miss.” In perfect charity with one another they proceeded down the stair. She had been well served, reflected Miss Lennox, for seeking distraction from her own problems—which concerned her fiancé’s dilatory attitude and lecherous tendencies, and her own shocking behavior on the night of Lady Holland’s party—in Blissington House. Upon her arrival she’d had only to worry about whether or not she had actually dared kiss the viscount, her memory on the point being rather fuzzy. Now she was presented with the further matter of Cristin’s proposed liaison with Eleazar Hyde, the mere contemplation of which made the flesh crawl on her own bones, and the question of whether it was precisely honorable to encourage Innis in an ardor that she didn’t mean to return. “The devil!” Jynx said aloud.

“Quite, miss.” Tomkin’s prolonged sojourn in the hallway enabled him to speak with the utmost commiseration. So sunk in despondency were the both of them that neither recalled Miss Lennox’s abandoned betrothal ring.

Chapter Eleven

True to her word, Lady Peverell no sooner returned to her charming home in Clarges Street, a white-painted stucco structure with round bow windows, a low-pitched roof and fanlights over the door, than she retired to her sitting room, sat down at the delicate writing desk that stood in front of a small window, and dashed off a note to her cousin Dominic. That Lord Erland would respond promptly to her summons, she had no doubt; it was couched in such terms that the earl must surely think that Tansy had gained knowledge of a disaster second in magnitude only to imminent invasion by the French.

Restlessly, she paced the chamber, which was a lovely little room with painted paneling and gray brick fireplace and gay rococo ceiling, furnished with a profusion of gilt and mahogany, the most outstanding piece of which was a tall bookcase, its doors embellished with painted glass showing scriptural stories in black and yellow. Tansy heard the footsteps that she had awaited, and threw herself in a stricken manner upon the sofa. The footsteps came closer. She moaned.

It was a performance lacking for nothing, suggesting it did that Lady Peverell had at least one foot, and possibly a great deal more, poked through death’s doorway; but it won no appreciative ovations from her audience of one. Dominic Devlin, Earl of Erland, was singularly unappreciative of ladies who languished and swooned. In point of fact Lord Erland, a confirmed bachelor, had scant time for ladies of any kind, which is not to say that he had not, at the age of five-and-forty, enjoyed countless successes among the fair and the frail. Definitely, Lord Erland had done so; his conquests were legion; but so far was the earl from an appreciation of genteel hearts and blue blood that he took his pleasure among the muslin company.

Unnerved by the continued silence, Lady Peverell opened a cautious eye. Dominic stood gazing down on her, a hostile expression on his swarthy face. This did not discourage her; Dominic always looked hostile, or angry, or something of that sort. He was tall, dark, ill-tempered and, as is sometimes the case with indifferent gentlemen, completely bewitching. Tansy Phelps was not the only lady to secretly nourish a
tendre
for the earl, who had successfully avoided entanglement with parson’s mousetrap for a disgustingly long number of years.

“Well, Tansy?” Lord Erland inquired, in that deep harsh voice that invariably, afflicted those who heard it, particularly if they were of the female persuasion, with the most delightful goose-bumps. “What catastrophe has occurred this time?”

“Dominic!” Lady Peverell extended a languid hand, which the earl sidestepped adroitly. “I did not hear you enter. Tell me, what news?”

“News?” repeated Lord Erland. “Surely you didn’t drag me away from a meeting of the Four-in-Hand Club just to acquaint you with the latest occurrences?” Tansy opened her eye wider, and discovered that her cousin was clad in a long and voluminous driving coat, silk-lined and of the appropriate down-the-road cut, a high-crowned beaver hat, drab trousers and top boots.

“It all seems so nonsensical,” she commented, in fading tones. “All this pother simply to drive to the windmill at Salt Hill to dine. I would think, Nicky, that you might find some more
useful
way to pass your time.”

Lord Erland did not ponder the injustice of this comment as presented to a gentleman who busied himself in Parliament and on committees and with matters of state, and who was additionally a top-sawyer with four-in-hand. He wondered if equally disparaging remarks were proffered by the families of Lords Sefton and Barrymore, Colonel Berkley, the Marquess of Worcester and Sir John Lade. “I suppose I must indulge you,” he said, as he seated himself in an armchair of graceful proportions, built of mahogany with fine details of reeding and grooving in the arms and back. “Your interest in the state of the country is commendable, for all that it comes so late.”

At this unkind cut, Tansy’s other eye opened, and she regarded her cousin cautiously. If she knew the signs—and none knew the signs better than she—he was in one of his hey-go-mad humors. “Nicky——”

“No, don’t apologize! I am glad to oblige you. I always do
oblige you, do I not, cousin?” Lord Erland looked nothing short of saturnine. “Let me see, where to begin? Ah, I have it! You will be interested to know that I am engaged with a society of coal owners formed to consider the problem of safety lamps. A Dr. Clanny of Sunderland has produced one, but it is too unwieldy. We plan to apply to Sir Humphrey Davy, once he returns from France, where he has gone to accept a Napoleon Prize for his discovery of sodium and potassium. The emperor himself issued Sir Humphrey a safe conduct—marvelous, is it not? With all Europe at war!—and Humphrey and his assistant Michael Faraday are engaged in travel through France and Italy, visiting various laboratories and making diverse experiments. At last report they were engaged in proving that the diamond is a form of carbon.”

“Diamonds?” Lady Peverell hadn’t the least interest in the world beyond the boundaries of the
haut ton, as
her cousin very well knew. “Safety lamps?”

“Definitely, safety lamps.” Among Lord Erland’s vices was a strong tendency to engage in sardonic humor. “I assure you, naked candles will not do, especially in the deeper pits. The lower the men work, the greater is their risk of encountering fire damp, the deadly explosive gas. You may recall the explosion last year, when over ninety men and boys either burnt to death or suffocated.”

“I beg you, do not speak of such things to me!” Lady Peverell raised a hand to her pallid brow. “Recall that I am a victim of intermittent ill health, and that I must be treated carefully.”

“For myself, if I must expire of an illness, I would prefer to die the martyr of excess. You must suit yourself, of course.” Lord Erland, in his highly imitated left-hand-only method, opened his snuffbox. “What other news can I give you then? I attended a grand night at Mrs. Hope’s recently. The regent stood for one-third of the evening in converse with Lady Elizabeth Monk, who leaned gracefully the entire time on a bronze ornament in the center of the room. And the king, it’s said, has ordered his yacht to London in the belief that the city has drowned.”

Lady Peverell wondered uncharitably how much of the old king’s madness could be attributed to this one of his statesmen. Dominic was sufficiently provoking to inflict in even the most rational being—which George had certainly never been— a brainstorm. “Nicky,” she said again. “I wish to speak to you!”

“We are speaking, are we not, cousin?” Lord Erland was at his most bland. “It promises to be a lively season, does it not? Madame de Stael is due to arrive in London momentarily, where she will doubtless be lionized, less on account of
De la litterature,
in which she dared compare our own age with the decadent pre-Christian Roman Empire, than because she has now been exiled for the third time from France; and Caro Lamb is now sending Byron clippings of hair from—well, I shan’t tell you where from, but you may imagine.”

Lady Peverell could indeed imagine, and she uttered an outraged shriek. “Nicky! How can you speak of such things to me? Must I remind you that you are not in the company of one of your demireps?”

“No,” retorted Lord Erland, without the least repentance. “Believe me, Tansy, I am well aware of the difference. Now sit up and cease enacting me high drama and tell me what dire occurrence has led you to summon me here so peremptorily.”

As usual, he had managed to put her at the disadvantage. Tansy arranged herself in a less invalidish position and regarded him. Lord Erland might be cold and stem and artful, tiresome and standoffish; he might be quite cavalier about his visits to her, and invariably made her cross as crabs; but there was an aura of distinction about him, and he was extremely clever, and the merest glimpse of his unfriendly face left her heart pounding and her throat dry. “Nicky,” she said soulfully, “you must be prepared to hear very bad news.”

Every time Lord Erland entered the home of his cousin, he was greeted with such, and he had harbored little hope that this visit would prove the exception. He slouched down in the chair and, without hesitation, told her so.

“Nicky, we are undone!” Tansy clasped her hands to her rather meager bosom, and assumed a look of woe. “You behold me in a perfectly morbid state.”