Maggie MacKeever (20 page)

“I wish you might trust me!” said Lord Jeffries, rather testily. “I cannot rid myself of the conviction that you are playing a lone hand, and for disastrously high stakes.”

If it was a game she played, Mignon thought wearily, it was with a deck stacked against her.

“Or can it be,” Ivor added, “that you do not believe in Leda’s innocence? Perhaps you believe like Crump—who has most recently invaded my home to look at, of all things, my pocket handkerchiefs!— that I am her accomplice?”

Mignon wished she might honestly assure him that she questioned neither Leda’s innocence nor his own honesty. “What I may think has little to do with anything.”

Ivor frowned. “I could hardly blame you if you did entertain doubts,” he said, to Mignon’s surprise.” I’ve wondered myself if Leda might be involved in all this, for it’s obvious that she has something to hide. Still, despite her mania for news mongering and stepping on people’s toes, I can’t believe my mother is capable of murder. What a wretched imbroglio this is! I expect to be momentarily arrested myself.”

“Mr. Crump can hardly do that,” Mignon replied, with more confidence than she felt, “without a particle of evidence against you.”

“Evidence! I’ve come to detest that word. Even now Crump is doubtless following us, hoping to witness at least another robbery.” Suddenly, the Viscount smiled. “What do you say, Miss Montague? Shall we treat our shadow to a slight diversion?”

Mignon was torn between vexation and relief by the formality of his address. “I rather suspect that my aunt had something of that nature in mind.” They were presently in The Strand, the thoroughfare that linked the mercantile City with the fashionable West End.

With a grin that betokened devilment, Lord Jeffries guided his companion—more than elegant in white muslin and a golden-brown cloth redingote with satin collar—toward Exeter ‘Change, by Burleigh Street, the main thoroughfare for foot traffic.

“How is your uncle?” asked Mignon. “I believe you said he was going to visit Leda in Newgate.”

“He did,” Ivor replied promptly, with a repetition of his smile. “I don’t know what passed between them, but Percy returned home and took straight to his bed.”

Mignon gazed bemused upon a fat lady of at least fifty-five who was dressed in black velvet with white trimmings and a turban with floating ostrich feathers, and who had two homely daughters in tow. “I hope he’s not seriously ill.”

In the crush of people, Ivor took her arm. “His physicians pronounced his malady to be nothing more than a colossal case of the sulks. Now we are going to temporarily forget my uncle and my mother and this abominable fix. You and I, Miss Montague, and consequently Mr. Crump, are going to view a huge old lion called Nero. We shall also pay a visit to an elephant so well behaved that Byron has claimed he’d like to have it as a butler.”

Miss Montague was a lively, good-tempered girl who viewed the world about her with amiable pleasure when not caught up on gloom, and so she gazed with interest upon the various marvels to be seen in Exeter ‘Change. The lower part was very spacious and had the appearance of a large bazaar. Among the various shops laid out on either side of a large gallery were a substantial dealer in ladies’ workboxes and other fancy articles, milliners and seamstresses, hosiers and bookstores. Over this was a large menagerie, at the entrance to which stood a huge powerful-looking man dressed in the costume of Henry VIII’s Yeomen of the Guard.

“Look here!” he cried, handing descriptive bills to the passersby. “The most extraordinary animals in the world to be seen alive for the price of one shilling! The wonderful elephant Chunee, and Nero, the largest lion ever seen in the world! The boa constrictor and the laughing hyena, the orangutan, birds of paradise and ostriches.” Mignon watched through lowered lashes as Lord Jeffries paid the admittance fee. Heavens, but he was a fine figure of a man! Why, then, this unwavering conviction that she was rushing on headlong to her doom?

It was too precious an afternoon to waste in morbid imaginings. Mignon wrinkled her nose at the smell of the animals and, imagining the Runner’s chagrin at discovering their destination, gave voice to a giggle. The Viscount, once more at her side, glanced down at her.

“What is it?” asked Mignon, for he was studying her face with an intensity that was attracting no small attention to them. “Why are you staring so at me?”

Ivor’s brown eyes held an expression that made her flush. “I am counting your freckles,” he replied, in a tone dangerously close to a caress.

Mignon’s spirits plummeted. How like the Viscount to remind that she was a far cry from the Society beauties who doted upon him wherever he went. “It seems a singularly odd way in which to pass one’s time.”

“Not at all.” Ivor took her arm in a grip so firm that Mignon felt the warmth of his hand even through the cloth of her redingote. “Strange that I should never before have remarked the allure of red hair and freckles and big green eyes.”

“You are teasing me.” Mignon wondered if Crump was eavesdropping on their conversation. “You are also making us very conspicuous.”

“I hadn’t thought you possessed of such a strong sense of propriety,” murmured Lord Jeffries, but he abandoned his contemplation of her freckles to instead guide her expertly through the crowd. “It was not my intention to make you uncomfortable.”

Mignon gazed upon a rather moth-eaten lion. It gazed back at her, and yawned. “Freckles are nothing to jest about, Lord Jeffries. Ask anyone unfortunate enough to possess them. Try as I may, the wretched things will not go away. At any event, it seems singularly callous to be idling away our time in amusements while your mother languishes in Newgate.”

“I doubt,” said the Viscount dryly, “that it is in Leda’s nature to languish anywhere. There is one odd thing that came up in Percy’s confrontation with her, of which you may wish to inform your aunt: Leda has no notion of who is paying her way. She assumed I had made financial arrangements with her gaoler, but I had not. I never even thought of it, having had little prior experience with prison protocol.”

Mignon erred greatly when she allowed her eyes to meet his. Her breath was taken quite away.

“You misunderstood me,” Lord Jeffries said softly, and touched her cheek. “I wasn’t teasing you about your freckles. Indeed, I
do
mean to count them, every one.” Just then the animals burst into a dreadful roaring, and the Viscount looked away. Mignon, considering the location of various of her freckles, could only be glad the moment had passed.

It was the elephant that had started the uproar, by battering his strong trunk and wicked tusks against the iron-banded bars of his cage. Panic swept quickly through the crowd, and the fear that Chunee with his great strength might let loose the whole menagerie to terrorize the neighborhood. With grim efficiency, the Viscount hustled Mignon outside.

“Good heavens!” she gasped, for the elephant’s angry bellows were perfectly audible even in the street. “Byron wants
that
creature for a butler? What happened to anger it?”

“Chunee is generally very docile except in the rutting season, when he becomes increasingly irritable each year.” Ivor’s lips twitched. “It is not a condition reserved to elephants.”

Seeking rather desperately for any means by which she might avoid the Viscount’s gaze, Mignon reached for her reticule. “Ivor!” she gasped, for it no longer hung from her wrist. “I’ve lost my reticule.”

“Was there anything of value in it?” Lord Jeffries appeared not to notice that, in the excitement of the moment, she had used his first name.

“A few shillings, nothing more.” Mignon winced at the noise of the milling crowd. “It is no great loss, I suppose. All this excitement has given me a headache. Would you mind taking me home?”

The Viscount hesitated, and she thought he might refuse. “I had thought you were made of stronger stuff, Miss Montague.” He glanced at the building they had just left. “It is some consolation, I suppose, that we have doubtless lost our shadow. No doubt Crump will think I deliberately provoked Chunee so that he might be trapped inside.”

Mignon had not lied; her head ached so abominably that there was a roaring in her ears. Thus when the Viscount spoke again, words of incredible sweetness, she glanced at him with bewilderment, sure that she had not heard him right. “It doesn’t signify,” murmured Ivor, for her distress was apparent. “I hope the day may come, Miss Montague, when you listen by choice to all the various things that I have to say to you.”

* * * *

Lord Jeffries had greatly underestimated both Crump’s dedication and his agility. The Runner had indeed trailed his quarry to Exeter ‘Change, but he had not followed them into the menagerie. He secretly harbored violent antipathy for the prize elephant housed there, a ferocious-looking beast that had been brought from Bombay in 1809. Instead the Runner leaned against the side of a building and chewed contemplatively on his pipe stem while the Viscount and Miss Montague amused themselves within.

Crump had a great deal to mull over, and it was no easy task to make order of the various seemingly unconnected details that danced through his mind. There was Warwick, who had possessed not only forged banknotes and an uncharitable character but also a passion for his Regent’s wife, Princess Caroline, which was the means by which Lady Bligh had blackmailed him into signing Leda Langtry’s release from Newgate. Had Warwick been murdered by his valet, as was so baldly suggested in the
Apocalypse?
If so, where did that leave Leda? Those footprints surrounding the well where Mary Elphinstone’s body was found had been made by shoes that Crump had recently found hidden in Leda’s home, with the mud intact. The pieces were falling into place, and with a precision that seemed a trifle too pat. Crump had a strong aversion to being made a dupe.

As Crump pondered the progress of his investigation, he followed the progress of Lord Jeffries and Miss Montague along The Strand. They were far too engrossed in one another to take any heed of him. The handkerchief he had recently found appeared to be no part of the Viscount’s wardrobe. Nor could he link it to Willie Fitzwilliam, who was far too scruffy to own so elegant a scrap.

Unhappily, Crump considered the Baroness. If Jeffries was guilty of complicity in robbery, as it very much appeared, there was little hope that Miss Montague was not similarly involved. One need only see the girl’s face when she looked at the Viscount to see that her emotions were seriously engaged. Crump didn’t care to think of Dulcie’s reaction were her niece to be taken up for trial.

Nor was Mignon the only member of Dulcie’s retinue whose behavior had roused the Runner’s interest. Just that morning, on the theory that anyone exiting the home of the devious Lady Bligh was worth watching, he had followed Miss Montague’s brother to a rendezvous in Hyde Park. There he had overheard the Honorable Maurice make a passionate declaration to a stunning lady with dark hair and an enviable figure.

Crump stepped behind the thick trunk of an old and barren oak tree as his quarry approached a stately mansion in St. James’s Square; watched as Miss Montague sped with unladylike haste up the steps, almost colliding in the doorway with an impeccably dressed gentleman. The Runner’s eyes narrowed as Lord Jeffries and Lady Bligh’s caller, deep in idle conversation, passed him by. It was not the least curious that Beau Brummell should call upon the Baroness, but it was startling indeed to see so disturbed an expression on the Beau’s face.

Chapter 21

The Royal Patent Theatre at Drury Lane had seen no small excitement in recent years, from the fire in 1809 that raged with such fury that it illuminated Lincoln’s Inn Fields with the brightness of midday to the debut only last summer of a morose and ugly little actor named Edmund Kean whose dramatic abilities took London by storm.

This evening, too, the theatre was crowded, even without the inducement of the bewitching Eliza Vestries displaying her elegant legs in the role of Macheath. The subscription boxes were filled with royalty, including the Regent himself; members of the quality who had elected to spend autumn in town; and the demimonde. Prostitutes turned the Green Room into a veritable hunting ground, as well as the lobby, where loitered procuresses shepherding herds of innocent-looking girls. In “Fop’s Alley,” young gentlemen gossiped and strolled; in the saloon, Crump idly lounged, his bright eye alert for pretty pickpockets, his services procured for a guinea a night.

Crump was not the only representative of Bow Street to grace Drury Lane tonight. Sir John was a prominent, if reluctant, member of the party in Lady Bligh’s box. “I’d give a great deal to know why you enticed me here,” he said.

“Enticed you, John?” The Baroness wore a revealing gown with traces of the Greek influence in its Ionic sleeves and the palmette border at its hemline. Her golden curls were caught up in a Grecian knot, and disposed about her lissome person was a fortune in rubies. “Have you no curiosity? Willie is a brilliant dramatist, whatever else he may be.” She smiled. “Too, dear John, I thought it would benefit you to experience a taste of family life.”

Sir John withheld reply. The antics of the family Bligh bore closer resemblance to the capering of a dozen chattering monkeys than to any model of domestic tranquility. He glanced at Mignon, demure and withdrawn in her gown of white satin and jaconet muslin, and wondered what Dulcie found in that quiet little creature to cause her unease. His gaze then moved to an opposite box where Maurice, staggering in a violet satin frockcoat, white satin waistcoat and breeches, the whole enlivened with jeweled buttons and gold and green embroidery, was deep in animated conversation with a dark-haired lady. As he watched, Lord Barrymore entered the box and bowed to the woman before speaking to his friend.

“Maurice has more hair than sense.” Dulcie glanced at her silent niece. “I fear it is a common failing in the Montagues. But we shall speak no more of that just now. Tell me, John, do you recall the Chevalier d’Eon, whose sex was so long a matter of debate? The Chevalier was not only a distinguished member of the French diplomatic corps, but he excelled at dueling. He also posed most successfully as a woman during negotiations with Empress Elizabeth of Russia.”