Maggie MacKeever (21 page)

“How like you,” sighed Lord Peverell, and he rained kisses on her hands. “My darling girl, you will always deal honorably!” Overwhelmed, Cristin dropped to her knees and embraced him.

“What larks!” remarked Jynx vulgarly.

Lord Peverell appeared a trifle discomposed at being caught out in such an awkward situation. With Cristin clinging to him in a limpet-like manner, he clambered to his feet and sought the source of the untimely interruption. He glimpsed a black-clad figure. “Oh, go away, do!” Then his attention returned to Cristin, who was trembling in his arms.

That Lord Peverell should have mistaken Miss Lennox for a menial is not remarkable; Miss Lennox wore black stockings, a black stuff gown, a cap and a neck handkerchief. Too, she squatted on the hearth in the most ungenteel manner imaginable, and her face was streaked with soot. Overtaxed muscles protested as she rose, and she winced.

Cristin and her swain were oblivious to all but one another, and neither paid the least attention as Jynx crossed the room and dropped into a chair. She regarded them. Lord Peverell, enthusiastically kissing the young lady, looked on the verge of strangulation by the excessive dimensions of his cravat. “Papa told me once,” remarked Miss Lennox, “that Prinny started the fashion for those ridiculously high cravats, and all because he wished to hide swollen glands in his neck.”

Percy released Cristin as abruptly as if she’d been a nest of wasps. “Jynx! Hang it, what are you doing here?” He took in her bizarre attire. “Dressed like
that?”

“It’s a long story.” Jynx pulled off her handkerchief and applied it to her face. “And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I should think not!” Percy watched with a wistful eye as Cristin settled on the settee. “From what I hear, you’ve made a rare mull of it!”

“Oh?” A touch of temper brightened Miss Lennox’s eye. “Just what
do
you hear?”

“Depends on who’s speaking!” Percy lounged against the back of the settee, from which vantage point he could gaze down in a mawkish manner upon Cristin’s gleaming curls. “At last account, you’d gone after Shannon with a dessert knife, or a broken laudanum bottle, or a pair of scissors.” He frowned. “No, that was Caro Lamb.”

Cristin stirred.
“She
attacked Lord Roxbury? The more I hear, the less I think of him!”

“Not Roxbury, Byron. Something to do with a waltz, as I recall.” In response to this explanation, Cristin remarked that she found it all very queer. “Anyway, everybody’s talking about it!” added Percy. “What possessed you to run counter to conventional behavior, Jynx? In your situation,
I’d
apologize!”

Miss Lennox was heard to state, in the most unequivocal terms, that she had no intention of volunteering apologies. Furthermore, she added, Lord Peverell’s affairs were not in such good train that he was qualified to remark on hers. “That’s very true,” observed Cristin, as Percy’s face reddened with embarrassment. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re bent on your own destruction. Even if we
could
marry, I wouldn’t wish a husband who was addicted to play. There is already enough of that sort of thing in the Ashleys.”

“Cristin!” Percy leapt over the back of the settee and crashed to the floor at her feet. “You are unfair! You know it is only because of your uncle that I visit the gaming rooms.”

“Innis,” Cristin remarked coolly, “is a curst rum touch. He reminds me very much of my father, and deep basset was
his
ruin. I wouldn’t wish to see you in the basket, Percy. If you can’t outwit Innis, I don’t think you should continue to come here.”

“Why, Cristin!” Jynx watched with appreciation as Lord Peverell, from his ignoble position on the carpet, sought unsuccessfully to voice the numerous emotions evoked in him by Miss Ashley’s speech. “I thought you cared for Percy.”

“And so I do!” retorted Cristin, woefully. “So much that I wish to see him beforehand with the world—which you must admit is not likely to come about while he is in my uncle’s pocket!”

“That accursed man!” uttered Miss Lennox, with great emphasis. “Have you not noticed, Cristin, that since
I
came to Blissington House, Innis has played least in sight? And well he might, the wretch!” But both Percy and Cristin were regarding her curiously. “Never mind that. I fancy Percy may call on you with relative impunity for the nonce. And if Innis tries to bully you, Percy, you may send him to me!”

“Dashed if you ain’t a good sort of girl, Jynx!” Percy picked himself up from the floor. “And so I told Shannon.”

“Shannon?” Miss Lennox cut across Cristin’s requests for enlightenment. “When?”

“This afternoon.” Percy sat down beside Cristin. The horror-filled expression on his face was not due to the young lady’s proximity, but to unpleasant memory. “Ran into him at White’s, and damned soon wished I hadn’t! He rang a regular peal over me.”

“Don’t get in a pucker,” soothed Cristin. “You needn’t worry about that nasty man.”

“Not nasty, merely a trifle high in the instep!” Percy gazed rapt on Cristin’s pretty face. “And in a rare pucker because Jynx made such a kick-up, for which I can’t blame him.
You
wouldn’t rip up at a man in public, would you, Cristin?”

“Heavens, no!” With interest, Cristin returned his gaze.

“Angel!” ejaculated Percy.

“Poppycock,” remarked Miss Lennox. “If Cristin received the provocation that I did—but there’s no need for the two of you to trouble yourself with my affairs!”

This sarcasm, which was far from gentle, completely missed its mark. “I’ll allow,” confessed Percy, “that I’d just as soon not. But it seems like I should, since you’ve bungled the thing so completely. Shannon’s in a rare taking. I was shaking like a blancmanger, I tell you.”

Miss Lennox would much rather have been told the viscount’s exact remarks, and so she hinted. Subtlety made little impression, however, on Lord Peverell, who was regarding Cristin very much like a hungry man might eye a beefsteak, and she was forced to be a great deal more blunt. “Devil take you, Percy!” cried Miss Lennox. “What did Shannon
say?”

Thus chastised, Percy wrenched his eyes away from the object of his fantasies. Those eyes, as they rested on Miss Lennox, were distinctly unfriendly. “A great many things,” he retorted, “most of which you wouldn’t care to hear! Dash it, Jynx, it’s your own fault that everything is going as badly as possible.”

“Now
that,”
interrupted Cristin, whose knowledge of the events of the Fateful Night—owing to her habit of thinking of Lord Peverell during every waking moment, to the detriment of her ability to grasp explanations, and to the despair of the explainers—was very sketchy, “is extremely unfair. If Jynx doesn’t want to marry Lord Roxbury, I don’t think she should have to.” She sniffled. ‘To be married to a man one doesn’t love must be a wretched fate.”

“My treasure!” cried Percy. “On all things, you feel just as you should.” He looked bewildered. “But what does love
have to do with it?”

“Oh, Percy!” wailed Cristin, in a heartbroken fashion. “Everything!”

“I suppose,” Jynx interrupted, before the proceedings became totally out of control, “that Shannon has an unfavorable and unalterable opinion of me?”

“Lord, I don’t know what he thinks—except that I introduced you to this house, which was a very great piece of nonsense, and so I told him! I don’t see why I should take the blame, when it was you that brought me here!” Percy’s tone was distracted, because of Cristin, whose golden head was resting on his shoulder. Therefore, he was considerably startled by Miss Lennox’s response.

“You told him
what?”
she shrieked.

“Dash it, Jynx, you needn’t screech like a fishwife. There, you’ve made Cristin cry! Hush, my angel, she don’t mean anything.” It occurred to Lord Peverell that Miss Lennox seemed to be in a very sad way. “I didn’t tell him anything else. Got indignant and refused to speak further with him. A man can’t be expected to tolerate being told he’s queer in the attic, even by a friend. And you needn’t look like you agree with him, Jynx, because he said the same thing about you.”

Miss Lennox contemplated this information, and found in it nothing that could be construed hopefully. “What was the purpose of the conversation, Percy?”

“Hanged if I know! Shannon seemed to think you’d loped off. Said he wanted to find you so he could wring your neck.” Revelation struck, albeit tardily. “Damned if you haven’t!
That’s
what you’re doing here! You’ll ruin your reputation, you know. I can’t think it very smart of you to have slipped the leash!”

“Your reputation?” Cristin raised her head. “Oh, Jynx!”

“Being as a lady’s reputation lies not in what she’s done, but what she’s
thought
to have done,” growled Miss Lennox, “and being as—thanks to Shannon!—I’m
thought
to have done any number of shocking things, I do not think we need to worry about what little remains of my good name! We would do much better to consider what can be done for the pair of you.”

“If you mean to help us in the way you’ve helped yourself, we had much better
not
consider it!” Percy uttered ungraciously. Cristin voiced protest. “Oh very well, I apologize! But with Shannon ringing peals over me, and my mother in one of her takings, and my cousin saying Cristin isn’t quite the thing—well! It ain’t
comfortable!”

Miss Lennox could easily sympathize. Well she knew how it felt to be reduced to such straits. “Wait!” said she. “Your cousin knows about Cristin?”

“He must, mustn’t he?” Percy’s handsome cheeks were bright with recalled rage. “He said she was playing a May-game with me. And that she was a rare high-flyer and a great deal above my touch, and any amount of skimble-skamble stuff, including that my present course is ruinous. And he asked how I expect to support a wife when my pockets are to let.”

“Ruinous!” As might have been expected of her, Cristin dissolved into tears. “I’m sure I’m a very
good
manager! Any daughter of my father’s had to be, or starve.”

“And then,” continued Percy, “he complimented me on my taste! It was the strangest thing. Nicky has the devil’s own temperament, but I’ve never known him to go off in odd humors before.”

“And I’ve never even
met
him!” Cristin sobbed. “Oh! It is all so unfair.”

“You are not,” Percy said grandly, “to regard it I sent him off with a flea in his ear.”

“One moment,” uttered Jynx, before Cristin could demonstrate her appreciation of so masterful an attitude. “Your cousin said all that about
Cristin?”

“I’m
ruined!” moaned that young lady. “And my conduct has been irreproachable. Or almost irreproachable! How can fate be so unkind?”

“I don’t know who else Nicky could’ve been talking about!” snapped Percy, as he patted Cristin’s head. “There, angel, don’t take on so! What Nicky thinks don’t signify!”

Neither of the young ladies appeared to derive much from this patent, if well-intentioned, fib. Cristin wept the harder, while Jynx scowled thoughtfully. She wondered—”Once more, Percy, did your cousin ever refer to Cristin by name?”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Lord Peverell’s irate face indicated his opinion of this persistence. “Nicky may be a curst addle-plot, but no one can say he ain’t tactful! He kept referring to her as my little ladybird.”

“I see,” murmured Miss Lennox, and she did. It took no great intelligence to equate Lady Bliss’s interview with Lord Erland—of which Jynx had heard in great and incoherent detail, along with a large number of disclosures about Lady Bliss’s past infatuations, none of which was at all suitable for her maidenly ears—with Lord Erland’s remarks to his nephew. “Cheer up, the pair of you! Lord Erland wasn’t talking about Cristin.”

“Lord Erland?” Cristin blinked. “He was the gentleman——”

“He was,” agreed Jynx.

“The opera cloak!” Once her mind was guided into a certain channel, Cristin could reason very well. She sought to share her enlightenment with Lord Peverell. “Innis wanted to sell it, and he and my aunt quarreled mightily.”

“Oh.” Percy was blankly uncomprehending.

“I think,” offered Cristin,” that she sleeps in it. She was wearing it at breakfast this morning, at any rate.”

Lord Peverell sought to make sense of these remarks, and failed. Miss Lennox, who was having a severe struggle with her errant sense of humor, was unable to offer assistance.
“What,”
he inquired, “does my cousin’s opera cloak have to do with anything? Sounds to me like your aunt has rocks in her head!” Cristin stared at him, aghast, and once more burst into tears.

“Don’t fly into alt!” begged Percy. “I didn’t mean it! I’m sure your aunt is a very good-hearted soul, for all she’s addle-brained!” When these words of comfort failed to quiet Cristin’s sobs, he cast an anguished eye at Miss Lennox. “Jynx!”

“Don’t apply to me!” replied that young lady. “I don’t know what she’s maundering on about! It seems that your cousin, Percy, hasn’t the least notion of Cristin’s existence and thinks your visits here are prompted by love of Adorée.” Lord Peverell looked dumbfounded, and she grinned. “A pretty pickle, isn’t it? Look at it this way! Your family will probably be so relieved to find out that it’s
not
Adorée you wish to marry that they’ll welcome Cristin with open arms.”

Percy, who knew his family a great deal better than Miss Lennox, who did not know them at all, failed to be convinced. “Curst high sticklers!” he mumbled mournfully.

“Piffle!” Miss Lennox thought this affair might be more easily settled were not the two principals both bird-brained and cow-hearted. “Then elope!”

On this callous advice, Cristin emerged from her tears. “I think,” she said unkindly, “that you want to see us all ruined, Jynx! Have you forgotten the money that Percy owes Innis? And Eleazar Hyde? And if Percy’s family dislikes my aunt, they aren’t likely to approve of
me!”

True,” uttered Lord Peverell, gloomily.

“As for Innis—” Miss Lennox fell silent, stricken by the suspicion that Innis would soon realize that she could not turn him in for theft without herself landing in the suds. Nor could she divert his attention from Percy without access to the fortune that he coveted so mightily. Were she to attempt to withdraw funds from the bank, Sir Malcolm would learn of it, and that didn’t bear thinking of. She could hardly, reflected Jynx, provide assistance while locked in her room. Yet, without funds she could not hope to save Percy from Innis, and Cristin from Eleazar Hyde.