Maggie MacKeever (18 page)

With this sentiment, at least, Adorée agreed. “My dear, neither do I, and I don’t see what’s to be done! Cristin is so unhappy, and so is that nice Lord Peverell.” She recalled Lord Peverell’s mother, and Tansy’s dire threats. “Oh,
what
am I to do?”

“About what?” Miss Lennox inquired helpfully. ‘Tell me!”

Lady Bliss saw no reason to deny herself this opportunity to unburden herself, and so she complied. Jynx was presented with a highly garbled tale in which Innis Ashley’s schemes and Cristin’s plight were jumbled together with references to country cottages and the specter of advancing age and, inexplicably, ten thousand pounds. “There, there!” consoled Miss Lennox. “Come out of the mopes. I daresay I can put it all to rights, for I am very good at straightening out other people’s tangles.”

“But, Innis!” It was Adorée’s turn now to sniffle; Miss Lennox had been doing so for some time.

“Pooh! I can handle Innis!” Miss Lennox was positively jubilant. “In truth, I should greatly relish putting a spoke in your brother’s wheel. It was one of the reasons why I came. You must admit that Innis deserves to be repaid for the ill turn he has served me.”

This seemed, to Adorée, only fair. “It would be easy enough to keep your presence secret,” she mused. “There are no servants in the house save Tomkin, and he is loyal; and Innis and Cristin can be trusted not to give you away.”

Jynx doubted that Innis could be trusted in any circumstance, but she had the utmost faith in her ability to outwit him. Lest Lady Bliss be prompted at this late moment to administer a scold, she added, “You need not consider my reputation; I’ve already made a byword of myself. I think I must have crossed the Rubicon and burned my bridges behind me! And what does it signify anyway, since no one will know?” She watched the various expressions that flitted across her hostess’s lovely face, and held her breath against what Lady Bliss might next say.

The administration of scolds, deserved or otherwise, was demonstrably beyond the abilities of Adorée Blissington. In fact, such a feather-head was Lady Bliss that she did not even briefly contemplate the inevitable consequences if the daughter of Sir Malcolm Lennox was discovered in her gaming hell. “What shall we do about your clothing?” she asked, stricken. “You’ve brought nothing with you, and that gown is beyond repair. We cannot order you new things without inviting suspicion, for Cristin and I are of a much different size, and there’s nothing in the house that will fit you save some cast-off maid’s uniforms!”

“The very thing!” Jynx replied cheerfully. “I’m sure I can be of some help to poor Tomkin, and I never meant to be a charge on you. With a little intelligence, things can
always
be arranged satisfactorily.”

“My dear,” Lady Bliss uttered mistily, “I begin to think you are a godsend!”

“Or almost always,” Jynx amended miserably, thinking of the furious viscount. Thus it was that when Tomkin once more opened the book room door, he found the ladies weeping all over one another with the utmost camaraderie.

Chapter Fourteen

Not without effort was Lady Bliss torn away from her newfound confidante—who promptly put her head down on the sofa pillows and, owing to the excessive amounts of brandy she’d consumed, passed out—to meet a gentleman caller whose identity Tomkin could not have revealed, even had he known it, because of lack of opportunity.

“Infamous beyond all description is the way that poor girl has been treated!” said Adorée as they proceeded toward the drawing room. “She has been forced to go to ground for a while. You will tell no one, Tomkin, of her presence in the house.”

The butler ventured an objection in which such words as “hornies” and “nicked” were frequently heard. Lady Bliss understood this to mean that Tomkin expected them all to be momentarily arrested by peace officers. “Pooh! I’m sure none will be the wiser, because Miss Lennox means to lay low.” Adorée frowned. “It is our fault she is in such a pickle, anyway— though I can’t imagine who told Shannon that she and Innis were having
tête-à-têtes.”

Tomkin did not have to imagine; he knew, and it was enough to cause one of his queer turns. Who would have thought that so much disaster could result from a few whispered words? He had acted only from the best of motives when he’d warned Lord Roxbury that Miss Lennox was well on the way to becoming a
habituée
of Blissington House. Which, he thought, was all too often the way with good deeds.

“Give me your word!” demanded Adorée. “We have a responsibility to Miss Lennox, as you must agree.”

Certainly Tomkin agreed, but he thought that responsibility might be more readily discharged if the young lady was not on the premises. He presented this opinion. He also offered the viewpoint that if the young lady remained on the premises, they would all find themselves the richer of handcuffs that closed with a snap and a spring.

Lady Bliss was in excellent spirits, however, and dismissed these grave foreboding with a smile. “Fiddlesticks! Meanwhile, Miss Lennox has promised to set all to rights.” Tomkin, whose dignified countenance grew graver by the moment, expressed a strong skepticism that any mere mortal could accomplish such a feat. His mistress glowered at him. He swore silence, reluctantly.

“Good!” She patted his arm. “Now, Tomkin, tell me about this visiting gentleman.”

“There’s nothing
to
tell.” That the butler’s acquiescence had been secured against his better judgment was evident from his aggrieved tone. “He demanded to see you, and wouldn’t be naysaid; and he expressed a wish to avoid the gaming rooms.”

“Odd.” In Lady Bliss’s experience, the gentlemen preferred gambling over almost every other pursuit. Almost? She caught herself up short. There was one pursuit, as she very well knew, that held allure even greater than that of the cards and dice. She tugged at the bodice of her gown, and smoothed her hair, and experimentally fluttered her eyelashes. “I will see him. That will be all, Tomkin.” All being, in this instance, the outside of enough, Tomkin retired to his pantry, there to fortify himself with a quartern of gin. Adorée took a deep breath, then glided in her most seductive manner into the drawing room.

He stood in a negligent attitude near the fireplace, a tall and dark and impatient-looking man clad in an opera dress suit of black superfine and a white marcella waistcoat. Tossed carelessly on the settee was an opera cloak of dark blue lined with scarlet serge. Adorée decided, as the gentleman glanced at her, that he looked less like a hopeful aspirant to her favor than a man in the devil of a rage.

“Can it be,” she asked, a trifle wistfully, “that you are angry with me, sir?”

He straightened. “It is my curst countenance, ma’am. I look to be ill-tempered even when I’m
aux aegis.”

“Oh.” Adorée doubted that so cold and stern a gentleman could be sent into transports. She eyed him curiously, as she approached the medallion-backed settee. “You have come from the opera?”

“I have.” The gentleman’s impatience grew even more obvious. “And so?”

If this was an admirer, Lady Bliss would eat the flowers that adorned her hair. She might not be the most clever creature in existence, she reflected, but she’d had more than ample opportunity in which to learn to size up
beaux.
“And so, nothing.” Prettily, she shrugged. “It is merely that I dote on the opera. A splendid sight it is, with the great horseshoe auditorium and the tiers of boxes, the circular vestibule that is almost lined with looking glass and furnished with sofas. It is London’s most fashionable center of entertainment, I believe.”

“Then I see no reason,” the gentleman remarked, irritably, “why you should not indulge your fancy for it. As I hear it, Lady Bliss, you are not one to practice self-restraint.”

He was not unfriendly, but openly hostile toward her. Adorée shoved aside his cloak and sank down on the settee. “You have me at a disadvantage, sir. You know my name, but I do not know yours.”

“So you don’t.” The gentleman was not only cool in manner, he was frankly presumptuous. “Why
don’t
you attend the opera? It’s a meeting place for others of your stamp!”

Not only did he dislike her, he held her in great disrespect, it seemed. “Others of my stamp,” Adorée retorted, “may be less nice in their notions than I. Beside, what with green peas and champagne and hock—to say nothing of the cost of lamp oil and candles!—I can hardly afford to pay the subscription fee.” And, she added silently, the days when her swains had done each other bodily injury for the privilege of escorting her about the town seemed to have vanished with her youth. “You have not told me, sir, who you are, or what you wish of me.”

“What I wish can wait for later,” he replied. “I am Dominic Devlin, Earl of Erland, ma’am. Cousin to a very dear acquaintance of yours. I doubt I need say more.”

He was correct. “Percy!” uttered Lady Bliss despondently. “Oh dear, you
are
angry! It is such a shame. But all of a piece with my wretched luck.”

“I beg your pardon?” Dominic looked quizzical. Adorée— who could hardly explain that she preferred tiresome and aloof and unfriendly gentlemen above all others, not that she held those others in poor esteem—remained silent. “I believe you had a visit from Lady Peverell recently.”

“So I did,” Adorée admitted. Her tone almost made Lord Erland smile.

“Poor honey, was it so very bad?” Lady Bliss was so startled by this unexpected sympathy that she stared at him. “She is a tiresome female, I admit; and I don’t imagine she had the least notion of how to handle you.” Lord Erland’s tone left no doubt that this ignorance was not shared by himself.

Nor did Adorée doubt him. “It was,” she admitted cautiously, “a bit unpleasant.”

“Tell me about it!” The earl tossed aside his opera cloak and sat down beside her on the settee. At such close quarters, his magnetism was nigh overwhelming. Adorée would have happily told him her entire life history, for the pleasure of keeping him by her, but unfortunately she could not.

“There’s little enough to tell.” She folded her hands in her lap and steadfastly regarded them. “Lady Peverell taxed me with, er, leading her son astray; and demanded that I give him up. I refused.” Briefly, she forgot to whom she spoke. “Heavens, to listen to the woman, you’d think I made it a practice to lure young gentlemen into iniquity. And she kept harping on the matter of age.”

Lord Erland gave a great roar of laughter, and Adorée jumped. “I’m glad
you
find it amusing! I tell you I am afraid to look into the mirror, lest I discover that I have overnight become fubsy-faced.”

“I do not think you need worry.” Lord Erland grasped her chin and studied her features. “You’re a deuced pretty woman, as I told my cousin, and I’ll warrant you’ve a few good years left in you.”

It must be recalled that Lady Bliss, in company with the distrait Miss Lennox, had imbibed no inconsiderable amount of brandy. So bemused was she by Lord Erland’s extreme presumption, and by his deep rough voice, that she made no objection to being appraised as if she were salable merchandise. The earl’s features were not handsome, she mused, but compelling in a harsh, stern way. “Thank you!” she murmured, weakly.

“What May-game are you playing?” the earl inquired. His fingers moved from her chin to her cheek. “It’s plain as a pikestaff that my young jackanapes of a cousin can’t mean anything to you.”

Of course he couldn’t, but this man could; never had Adorée felt her widowed state more keenly. Yet, she could not betray Cristin, and shatter Percy’s dreams. “He’s rich,” she said gloomily.

“He may be, in a few months.” Dominic released her. “Providing he doesn’t waste it all on pretty high-flyers and gambling debts!”

“Pretty high-flyers?” Surely Percy wasn’t already playing Cristin false? “Oh! You refer to me. I must take leave to tell you, sir, that Lord Peverell hasn’t squandered so much as tuppence on me.”

“More fool he.” Lord Erland idly touched a dangling dark curl. “Diamonds would suit you best, I think: hard and cold and brilliant.”

Adorée silently agreed, but could not let so arrant a misjudgment pass. “I am not,” she protested, “cold!”

“I did not think you were, else how could be explained your remarkably tempestuous—and foolish!—reputation? It was the fascination of opposites to which I referred: cold, hard gems and a woman who is both soft and warm.” To her horror, Adorée blushed. Lord Erland smiled. “Why
did
you turn down my cousin’s offer to buy you off? Ten thousand pounds would surely be of great assistance to a lady who is forever outrunning the constables.”

Lady Bliss, whose thought processes were erratic at the best of times, had the greatest difficulty in maintaining some vague semblance of order in her fevered brain. “Scruples,” she said, unhappily. “You will not believe that I possess them, but I do.”

“And they are both inconvenient and uncomfortable?” Lord Erland appeared to derive a perverse amusement from this upsetting interview. “Still, it was with an eye to Percy’s potential wealth that you first lured him to your cozy evening parties?”

“I do not know why everyone assumes that I lured your cousin anywhere! You make him sound like a donkey and me a carrot—and anyway, as Lady Peverell pointed out, I am older than he.”

“That rankled, did it?” Lord Erland’s smile was all the more effective for that it seldom appeared. “You are speaking in a very odd way about a young man from whom you refuse to be parted. Come, admit the truth! You find Percy a dead bore.”

Lady Bliss could do no such thing, true as it might be. Things had come to a pretty pass, she lamented, when she must turn aside a gentleman in whom she could easily feel the keenest of interests on behalf of a pair of young lovers who between them lacked sufficient sense to appreciate the magnitude of her sacrifice. “I don’t see,” she said stiffly, “what it has to do with you.”

“Of course you do.” The earl still toyed with her curls. “It must be apparent even to a ninnyhammer that my relationship to Percy brings me close to this affair.”

“And I am a ninnyhammer, I suppose?”

“You know you are.” Dominic took her hand. “Albeit a lovely one. Give up this nonsense about Percy, and admit that you were but cutting a wheedle with Lady Peverell, and that damp-eared halflings aren’t to your taste.”