Maggie MacKeever (18 page)

Lord Parrington dared not look upon this presumptuous female, lest prudence abandon him. He fixed his attention on another of the Flanders tapestries, a hunting scene which featured an extremely dead hare.

Henrietta took the baron’s silence for consent. So pleased was she by the notion of herself as advisor to the peerage that her plump little person puffed up. “To use the word with no bark on it, my lord, a gentleman shouldn’t allow himself to become overly fond of a lady whose affections are already bestowed elsewhere!”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Due to the vast numbers of people who thronged her long gallery, it was several moments before Lady March reached Amabel. All Nell’s guests were anxious to exchange a word with their hostess, most frequently words of an interrogative nature and focused on her spouse. “It is about time you remembered me!” said Mab, deftly extricating Nell from the clutches of a dowager who was waxing enthusiastic about the young prodigy Master Betty, whom she had recently seen as Hamlet. “I have been trying to catch your attention this age! What were you and Fergus talking about at such length?”

Nell frowned at her young friend, who was in tearing spirits. Could she have been mistaken in her interpretation of Lord Parrington’s remarks? Nell did not wish to add to the misunderstandings that were already rife. Yet what other explanation could there be for his enigmatic comments? Fergus apparently not only knew that the jewels she wore were stolen, but that in their theft Marriot had had some part. In truth, thought Nell, Lord Parrington appeared to know more about her husband’s recent activities than she did.

Mab still awaited an answer. “I told him you were a great comfort to me. Are you
sure
you wish to marry Parrington, my dear?”

“I am!” Lady Amabel’s nature was not so ungenerous as to harbor jealousy. She admired Nell herself, so why should Fergus not? “He’ll suit me right down to the ground. Why do you ask?”

It was all Nell could do to keep up with her volatile friend’s footsteps, let alone her thoughts. “You said you wouldn’t marry him; I heard you say so myself! Mab, where are you taking me?”

Lady Amabel answered these questions in the order they had been presented, all the time inexorably leading Eleanor through the crowd. To insure they were not parted, she kept firm hold of Nell’s black velvet dress. “I was out of patience with Fergus when I said I wouldn’t marry him; you know what my temper is! Of course I will marry him—once I have decided what to do about his mama, because I
do
refuse to live under the same roof as the old bat.”

“How do you mean to accomplish that?” Lady March looked doubtful. “Lord Parrington seems devoted to her.”

Mab wrinkled her pretty nose. “What you mean, dear Nell, is that Fergus seems to be neatly under his mama’s thumb! You think Fergus is lacking in spirit, I’ll warrant, but that is because you’re accustomed to Marriot. I assure you, Fergus is no pudding-heart.”

“I didn’t say he was.” Nell doubted a pudding-heart would lend his presence to the commission of a crime. Lord Parrington hadn’t admitted outright that he was involved somehow in the thefts, but what else could his cryptic utterances have meant? “You still haven’t said where we are going, Mab. It isn’t seemly that I abandon my guests!”

“It won’t be for long.” Inexorably, Lady Amabel drew Nell out into the hallway. “It will take but a moment to mend your torn lace.”

“My lace?” Bewildered, Nell looked down at the gold lace that trimmed her black velvet robe. “But my lace isn’t torn.”

“So it isn’t.” With unabated good cheer, Mab paused, took hold of a swatch of lace, and gave it a good yank. With a very satisfying ripping sound, the lace came loose. Mab grinned. “So much for that! Come along, Nell, do.” Blithely, she continued along the hallway.

Lady March had scant choice but to follow, clutching her torn lace, wondering what bee Mab had taken under her pretty lace cap. Not until they approached the sewing room did she guess. “Oh! You are very clever, Mab.”

In a very vulgar manner, Lady Amabel winked. “Aren’t I just?” she agreed, and flung open the sewing room door.

Framed in the opened portal, Jane sat near the fireplace on a little stool. Glimpsing the ladies, she got up and dropped an awkward curtsey. Then she caught a closer glimpse of Lady March. Her lower jaw dropped open, her eyes protruded, her pale skin turned as colorless as parchment.

It was the briefest of lapses, consternation stifled almost as quickly as it had appeared, yet it left neither Mab nor Nell in any further doubt. “Lady March has torn her lace,” Mab said smoothly before Nell could speak.

“So I see, miss. I’ll just fix it, shall I?” Already Jane had taken needle and thread in hand, had bent to her task. Eleanor forced herself to stand motionless while Jane repaired the lace, her impulse to give vent to temper quelled by the monstrous faces Mab made behind Jane’s back. “There! All’s bowman, ma’am!” said Jane as she stepped back.

Bowman, was it? Whatever that meant! This from the odious wench her husband had allegedly led astray? As if Marriot would! “Thank you, Jane!” responded Nell in unsteady tones. “It was stupidly done of me!” Need for further conversation was spared her by Mab, who whisked her back out into the hallway and closed the door.

“Put her in a tweak, did we not?” Looking very triumphant, Lady Amabel executed a lively little dance step. “I thought her eyes were going to pop right out of her head! She
did
come here looking for the jewels, just like we suspected. We must tell Marriot!”

“So we must,” agreed Eleanor, whose aspect was a great deal less jubilant than Mab’s. Was it possible that Jane and Lord Parrington were in league? Some connection must exist between them, since both knew about the jewels. Yet one could not envision the starched-up baron under any circumstances rubbing shoulders with the very common Jane.

Lord March was at length discovered in the long gallery, enthroned in a Tudor box chair of ample proportions embellished with mythological figures entwined with birds and beasts and flowers. By way of various energetic motions, Lady Amabel caught his attention, as well as that of various other guests. Politely, Marriot disengaged himself from chair and guests alike and came forward. “What is it, brat?”

Mab grinned, “Don’t put on that stern face with me! I’ll warrant you are glad of the rescue. Moreover, we have the
most
exciting news!”

Lord March glanced from Lady Amabel’s animated countenance to his wife’s beloved features, the perfection of which was marred by a slight frown. “She rose to the bait!” he said slowly. “You are to be felicitated with upon the cleverness of your ploy—but
now
what?”

Mab linked her arms with those of Lord and Lady March. “Now you must take Nell and me down to supper, Marriot.”

Intrigued as Lord March was by Lady Amabel’s disclosures, he did not overlook his duties as host. It was some time later—his lordship’s guests being almost unanimously determined to discuss such topics as tinkers and press gangs and foreign agents—before he had further opportunity to speak privately with Mab and his wife. During that interval, Lady March and Amabel had an interesting encounter of their own with a dowager dressed in purple satin, rouge on her cheeks and feathers in her hair.

“Hah!” said the dowager, staring at Eleanor’s jewel-laden chest. “Aren’t
we
decked out in full rig! Why did I have it in my head that you didn’t care for jewels, Eleanor? Marriot has done right by you, I must say!” The better to survey her hostess’s bosom, she elevated her quizzing glass. “Demmed if those pearls don’t look like the ones I had stolen—good Gad, gal, don’t go so pasty on us! I didn’t mean
you’d
took the things!”

“Of course you did not, Lady Agatha!” Solicitously, Mab took Nell’s arm and covertly gave her a sharp pinch. “Nell has been made very nervous by all these thefts, thinking she may be next! That is why she has worn so many of her jewels all at once—but tell us how the robbery came about!” The dowager was not reluctant. Zestfully, she related her set-to with villains, which had taken place on a dark street in a remote section of the city, on a dark and moonless night.

“The links boy was next to useless!” Lady Agatha concluded in disgust. “Took to his heels when the scoundrels came forth with their pistols at the ready, and with him took the light. My people put up a stout enough defense, but they were outnumbered.”

“Ruffians?” Lest Nell’s courage desert her, Mab pinched her again. “There were several of them, then. Masked, I’ll warrant? I thought they must have been! You see, Nell, that your jewels are safe enough, so long as you refrain from going out into dark streets. But there is Marriot, beckoning to us! Excuse us, Lady Agatha, pray.” The dowager regally inclined her head. Mab led Lady March away. “Nell,” she hissed, “if you swoon I shall never speak to you again!”

“Oh, do leave off pinching at me, Mab!” snapped Eleanor, jerking her arm away. Due to the dowager’s confidences, Nell was much closer to hysteria than Amabel had guessed.

This conversation took place in the dining room of Marcham Towers, just off the great hall, where delicate and choice refreshments of every kind had been set out buffet style. The guests had not lost interest in Marriot, precisely, but were so overwhelmed by the feast set out on the seven-foot-long draw-top table that they temporarily ceased to badger their host.

Said Lady Amabel as she and Nell joined Marriot at one of the small tables set up around the room, “We have learned a prodigious lot! Lady Agatha recognized Nell’s pearls—Don’t look so horrified! You are as bad as Nell, Marriot! Since no one would ever credit Nell with filching anything, we are perfectly safe.”

“Safe, are we?” Lord March arranged himself in a panel-back chair. “You are of an over-optimistic nature, brat!”

Lady Amabel made a
moue
. “And
you
are a spoilsport! Do you not realize what this means? Jane doesn’t work alone!” She paused so that her companions might share in her enthusiasm. They did not. Undeterred, Mab continued, “Now that we are certain Jane came here in search of the jewels, we must plan what to do next. I
had
thought of simply turning her over to the authorities, but it would be her word against ours; and while I am reasonably certain no one would believe her, I think we should have proof. And we should make a push to round up her confederates as well. Beside,” and Mab wrinkled her pretty nose, “‘twould be a very lame ending for our adventures!”

Lady March gazed without enthusiasm upon her tray supper of chicken and champagne. Mab would be a great deal less enthusiastic did she realize Jane had not been the only person to react suspiciously to the gems. “I knew I should never have let Henrietta talk me into having that female in the house!” she moaned.

“Darling Nell!” Lord March grasped her hand. “This business will soon be over—and then I will make up to you for every instant of discomfort you have endured on my behalf!”

“Oh, Marriot!” Eleanor placed her other hand atop his. “As if you needed to do any such thing!.”

“Fiddlestick!” Having polished off her own plate, Lady Amabel gave the plates of her companions a covetous glance. “Next you will tell Marriot you are
glad
to be made unhappy on his account, which is a great piece of nonsense, Nell! No one can be glad to be made unhappy unless they are very much of an oddity. As for Jane, Henrietta served us a very good turn by taking up the cudgels on her behalf. I know you cannot like her, Nell—and scant wonder! I don’t like her myself!—but Jane is the only way we can learn the truth about the jewels.”

Jane was not quite the
only
way, thought Nell; of all the people possibly looking for Marriot in connection with the jewels, she had never thought Lord Parrington might be one. Nell glanced around the dining room and glimpsed Fergus seated at a distant table with Henrietta. What were they discussing? Henrietta looked very animated, and the baron grim. What would Fergus do now he had confirmed Marriot’s possession of the stolen gems?

“What a coil!” Nell said aloud, and shoved aside her untouched plate. “Next I suppose Henrietta will take to confiding to her cronies that she knew all along Marriot was not in Cornwall—and how we are to wrap
that
in clean linen I do not know!”

Lord March expressed an ignoble wish to wrap his cousin in linen—to wit, her own shroud. “We must not borrow trouble, puss! Henrietta dare not be that malicious so long as she remains beneath our roof.”

Not surprisingly, Eleanor’s black mood was not lightened by this reminder that Henrietta’s sojourn was like to prove of long duration. She sighed.

“Sweet Nell!” murmured Marriot, who had been puzzling over his elusive memory of a red silk bonnet. “I shall make it up to you, I vow!”

Lady Amabel, the only member of this small group to evidence an appetite, had occupied herself during this exchange by nodding at the passing guests and cleaning off all three plates. Temporarily replete, she touched a fringed napkin to her lips. “I do wish the two of you would cease to make sheep’s eyes at one another!” she remarked.

Thus abjured, Lord and Lady March looked guiltily elsewhere. Since both were temporarily out of charity with Lady Amabel, conversation flagged.

Though remarks between Lord and Lady March and Lady Amabel had ground down to a halt, talk elsewhere flowed as lavishly as his lordship’s wine, and the guests circulated freely around the dining room. This chamber, with its low exposed rafters and mullioned windows and linenfold paneling, was made cozy by a stone fireplace with pilasters and semi-raised work. Most outstanding among its many antique furnishings was a huge court cupboard which served as a sideboard for displaying a vast array of treasures, including silver plate and pewter, vases of gold and crystal and myrrh wood from Arabia, all set out on Turkey cloth. Not all such treasures were confined to the court cupboard. The guests ate from exquisite dishes, drank from goblets fashioned of Venetian glass.

Having emptied her own goblet, Mab set it aside. “Now that Jane knows the jewels are in the house, she will try even harder to get them back.”