Maggie MacKeever (16 page)

“Shannon!” uttered Miss Lennox, rather unoriginally. Lord Roxbury grasped her arm, steered her past a flamboyant matron who was discoursing at loud length upon Turner’s
Snowstorm—
in which the painter had employed Hannibal crossing the Alps as an excuse for offering a huge and violent sky—and behind a potted palm.

“Well met, poppet!” uttered the viscount, in tones that were anything but cordial. “You are looking very out-of-sorts tonight.”

It elevated Jynx’s spirits not at all to be thusly informed, especially after the great effort she had made to look sublimely without concern; and it appalled her even further to discover that her fiancé had, in the vulgar parlance, shot the cat. “You’ve been into papa’s claret,” she said severely. “And there’s nothing wrong with me save that Eulalia’s been worrying me to death all the day.”

“Not only Eulalia, I fancy!” Shannon discovered a certain unsteadiness in his knees and leaned against the wall. “Shall I tell you about the damned odd thing that happened to
me
today?”

Miss Lennox studied her betrothed, who was most oddly presented against a background of peach blossoms and imperial dragons and impassive mandarins; and did an unforgivable thing. She giggled. “Shannon, you’re foxed!”

It was obvious to Lord Roxbury that Miss Lennox did not adequately comprehend the gravity of the situation. “And so would you be, were you in my boots!” he announced, in such ominous tones that Jynx’s amusement fled. “Just where is your betrothal ring?”

Clearly, it was the moment for confession, and Jynx thought it would be a great relief to bare her soul. Wishing only that the viscount were a trifle more sober, she opened her mouth.

“Don’t bother! I am obliged to stop you in order to avoid the unpleasant necessity of convicting you of a plain lie, I see.” The remark was not precisely truthful; Lord Roxbury’s vision was far from clear; but the sneering manner in which he made his delivery was masterful. “Good God, Jynx, have you not
one
estimable or redeemable quality?”

Miss Lennox, the number of whose virtues was nothing short of remarkable, was not a little alarmed by this unfair attack. “Shannon, why are you so devilish out-of-humor? And tonight of all nights what possessed you to drink too much?”

Lord Roxbury did not care for this suggestion that he was in his cups. He was, of course, and he admitted it, but it was very bad of his fiancée—whose character, as had been all too amply demonstrated to him, was far from admirable—to make such a fuss over his little lapse from propriety. He told her so. “Furthermore,” he added, as his sense of injustice increased, “I suppose you think you are clever to hold my devotion while ignoring my advice! I tell you, Jynx, I don’t like the appearance of things at all!”

Nor did Miss Lennox, who had been struck dumb and almost lifeless by the viscount’s remarks. Almost lifeless, but not quite. A spark still beat in her astonished breast, and that spark was very close to being ignited into a blazing, and unprecedented, rage. “Moderate your manner. Shannon!” she hissed. “Remember where we are. What the devil has driven you to ring such a peal over me?”

“As if you didn’t know!” The viscount’s left knee betrayed him and, in regaining his balance, he performed a neat little dance-step. “Don’t bother to spin me a Banbury story! I already know you to be an unconscionable little liar.”

“This,” Miss Lennox uttered wrathfully, “is beyond everything! Devil take you, Shannon, make an end. What is it that I’m supposed to have done?”

In this manner recalled to the purpose of the conversation, Lord Roxbury fumbled for his coat pocket. He found it on the third attempt. “I was visited today by no less than Mr. Rundle—of Rundle and Bridges, the jewelers. You are acquainted with Messrs. Rundle and Bridges, Jynx? The gentlemen from whom I purchased your betrothal ring?”

“I have,” Miss Lennox admitted cautiously, “heard of them. Court silversmiths, are they not?”

Lord Roxbury was not to be led into side issues, such as the most recent purchases of the regent, and the ladies upon whom those purchases had been bestowed. “Mr. Rundle,” he continued inexorably, “brought me a curious tale. It seems a gentleman came to him this morning with a certain ring to sell. Mr. Rundle recognized the ring and its bearer; fortunately, he also recognized the potential scandal involved.” He extracted his hand, not without difficulty, and extended it “Well? Have you nothing to say for yourself?”

Miss Lennox did not, it seemed; Miss Lennox appeared at that moment to be turned into stone. She wondered who Mr. Rundle’s caller had been.

“I thought not!” Lord Roxbury, alas, misinterpreted her silence. Considering the vast number of misapprehensions under which Lord Roxbury labored, it is not at all surprising that he should. “If you had to sully your reputation, Jynx, you could have chosen a less unscrupulous knave than Innis Ashley to do it with! As you can see, he betrayed you at the first opportunity.”

With this revelation, Miss Lennox was roused to speech. “It was Innis who took back the ring?”

“Who else?” Lord Roxbury’s brows had drawn together in a tremendous scowl. “I know the truth, so there is no need to try and prevaricate. Good God, is our betrothal of so little importance to you that you would game away your ring? Am I to have a wife who is forever involved in various escapades and scandals? The prospect turns me perfectly sick!”

“
Game?” echoed Miss Lennox faintly. “Scandals and escapades?”

“I told you not to try and pull the wool over my eyes!” Shannon looked, she thought, as if he wished to wring her neck. “I guess I must not blame you; Innis Ashley would be irresistible to most women; but I would have thought you of all women to have more sense. But no! You go blithely off to Blissington House, which is bad enough; and you take to gambling, which is even worse; and then you compound your folly by engaging with Innis Ashley in private interviews! Don’t you realize that you have been compromised?”

Miss Lennox, who labored under a few misapprehensions of her own, had come to realize a great many things during this tirade. Among these realizations were that Lord Roxbury’s mind was of a mean and little structure, and that his great popularity had endowed him with an insuperable vanity and an appalling tendency to utter officious and disgusting sentiments, and that the situation in which she found herself was utterly insufferable. And in addition, she thought as she studied him, the wretch was as proud and as conscienceless as Lucifer.

Belatedly, the viscount suspected that he had gone too far, a suspicion born distinctly out by Miss Lennox’s features: she was staring at him as if he were the fiend incarnate. “There!” he said, and placed the ring in her hand. “I have had my say, and we will think no more of it. No doubt your love of excitement carried you almost unconsciously into impropriety.”

Miss Lennox positively loathed excitement, for all that it had recently come to be her lot; she was also extremely provoked by her fiancé’s moralizing. “So you do not despair of me, Shannon?” She clutched the ring so tightly that the stones cut through her gloves. “You will trust me to refrain from indulgence in any more Bacchanalian scenes?”

It occurred to Lord Roxbury that he had never before witnessed the particular expression that now rested on Jynx’s piquant face. If such a thing were not unheard of in a young lady of quiescent disposition, he would have thought her on the verge of a temper tantrum. “Of course I trust you,” he replied cautiously. “I daresay I’ve been a little harsh, but you must see—”

What Jynx saw was that in addition to his previous sins the viscount was a hypocrite. She informed him of both her former and latter conclusions, in a voice that shook with unmistakable fury. “A hypocrite?” repeated Lord Roxbury, appalled by the manner in which his great scene of righteous denunciation had slipped beyond his control.

“A hypocrite!” Miss Lennox stamped her foot on the floor. “You berate me, yet your conduct has been worse! All I did was go and see Cristin—and how you came by this notion of me gambling is quite beyond my comprehension, though it is true that I spoke privately with Innis, in an effort to learn if I might extricate Cristin and Percy from his toils!” She was pleased to note his horrified stare. “The only game I ever played in Blissington House was checkers, by which I won from Innis five pounds!”

Lord Roxbury did not pause to ponder the whimsical picture of the rakish Innis so innocently engaged; Lord Roxbury had been rendered abruptly sober by the realization of how grievously he’d erred. “Oh, Lord!” he mourned. “Jynx—”

But Miss Lennox was in the grip of temper for the first time in her life, and it would have taken an act of the Almighty to prevent her from having her say. Since the Almighty was apparently not inclined to intervene, the viscount, as well as any number of interested bystanders, were privileged to hear Miss Lennox’s virgin outpourings of wrath. “It was Lady Bliss who told you, I’ll warrant! Trust her to muddle the thing so completely!”

“Not Adorée,” protested the viscount, but Jynx gave him no opportunity to explain that Tomkin had, from the most altruistic of motives, dropped a word of warning in his ear.

“Not?”
Miss Lennox’s hands were on her hips, and her hazel eyes sparked fire. “Balderdash, Shannon! I know what she is to you!”

Such an audible outburst of spleen was, alas, bound to reach any number of ears. Conversation faded; the orchestra ceased to play; all waited avidly to hear what might next issue from behind the potted palm. Even Sir Malcolm, who had made even greater inroads on the claret than Lord Roxbury, stopped halfway through a discussion about a notorious Vere Street brothel, the clientele of which included a startling number of noblemen and wealthy cits, to peer about him in an owlish manner and wonder what caused the queer behavior of his guests.

“You do?” inquired Lord Roxbury, in a bemused manner. This untimely distraction was caused by the sight of Miss Lennox’s magnificent, and heaving, breast.

“I do!” Jynx proceeded to demonstrate the truth of her words. “You say our betrothal is of little significance to me, yet
you
have a light-o’-love, and mean to keep her, and even pay her bills—and
I
was prepared to accept the situation, to remain calm about your stated intention to honor her above me, quelling prospect as it seemed!”

“But, Jynx!” protested the Viscount. “I didn’t——”

“Of course you did, and I recall it clearly, so you needn’t try and bamboozle me!” Miss Lennox became aware of the direction of his gaze. “My God, are you incapable of resisting no woman who wants you? It seems not! And it quite decides me
not
to marry you!” She hurled the ring at him. It missed its target and went skidding across the marble floor.

A murmur rose from the rapt crowd. Consequently both Lord Roxbury and Miss Lennox were roused to a realization of their surroundings, a realization that made the viscount grind his teeth and Jynx flush with embarrassment “Are you quite through?” he inquired, in a most deadly tone, as he grasped her arm.

But Miss Lennox’s wrath had built up in her slowly, and no quicker would it depart. Too, she was beset by conflicting and confused emotions, among them misery that Shannon could even temporarily think the worst of her; and a great regret that she had broken off their engagement, no matter how shabby his behavior; and an even greater disappointment that she should be so lacking in pride and dignity as to weep all over her lost love.

Weep she did, to the spectators’ fascination, but it was not on Lord Roxbury. Instead she drew back her hand and slapped his handsome face, and bid him go and be damned, and then picked up her skirts in a definitely vulgar manner and ran from the room.

Naturally, after the first startled moment, confusion reigned. Eulalia, viewing success beyond her wildest dreams, hid her triumph behind an elegant swoon; Sir Malcolm, unacquainted with the circumstances that had led his daughter to make such a scandalous spectacle of herself, promised the furious-looking viscount that she should be indefinitely confined to bread and water in her room. After Lord Roxbury was heard to retort that he thought such extreme measures to be a very good thing, speculation hummed like a thousand buzzing bees.

Chapter Thirteen

At all events, Miss Lennox was not fated to suffer incarceration in her room. She entered this chamber in the conventional manner, crossed the floor, and exited through the window via a handy oak tree. Due to the method employed in her exit, none of the guests who were at length persuaded to reluctantly depart Lennox House were aware that the object of their avid conjecturings had already taken her leave. Miss Lennox considered that although the rest of her behavior may have been appalling, for this tidy feat she deserved praise.

Many would take leave to doubt this conclusion, and among them was Lady Adorée Blissington. The hour was late, and her gaming rooms were in full swing. She watched a young gentleman punt frequently against the bank, so that he lost on one side what he won on the other, and could never lay claim to any considerable sum; she overlooked a not very serious game of hazard in the smaller saloon; she tiptoed past a group of gentlemen engaged in a deadly game of whist, played for high stakes indeed. Then she entertained various of her guests with a deck of playing cards, which she opened and closed like a fan. This legerdemain was, she thought, the only legacy left by her deceased spouse.

That reflection sent her mood plummeting again. Adorée was in a sad case, alternately in tearing spirits—Lord Roxbury had proven as good as his word, and her debts had been paid—and in the sullens. The latter case was brought about by a great many things, which need not be reiterated here, and the combined result was that in one moment Lady Bliss felt herself incapable of coping with the difficulties that beset her, and in the next attributed her debility to the onset of advanced age. Deep in woe, she induced the cards to climb like a ladder up her arm. A cold hand touched her shoulder. Envisioning the grim reaper come to claim his own, Adorée shrieked and dropped the deck.