Maggie MacKeever (5 page)

“Barrymore.” Lady Bligh was conscienceless; she rose and refilled Leda’s glass. Tolly sat stiffly at attention. Mignon tried very hard, albeit unsuccessfully, not to be amused at his discomfort.

“Barrymore, Barrymore,” mused Leda. “Cripplegate, Hellgate and Newgate and their foul-mouthed sister, Billingsgate. Elegant and spendthrift Irish rakes. An illuminating ancestry, to be sure.”

“I claim no relation to that particular family, madam.” An angry muscle twitched in Tolly’s cheek.

“More’s the pity!” retorted Leda. “A little dissipation might do you the world of good, my lad.”

“Leda, do behave!” Lady Bligh’s tone was disapproving, a thing so unusual in her aunt that Mignon grew immediately suspicious. “We were speaking of the Viscount. He seemed an admirable young man, if a trifle too concerned with his consequence.”

“Were we?” Leda’s brown eyes fixed thoughtfully on Mignon. “It’s his upbringing, no doubt. If only—but there’s no use crying over spilt milk! Come here, girl.”

Mignon obeyed, more than a little amused. It crossed her mind that, for a lady heartbroken crossed in love, she was finding London a source of no small entertainment.

“She’d pay for dressing,” Leda said, eyeing without approval Mignon’s plain muslin gown. “Well, young woman, how’re you enjoying your aunt’s house?”

“Tolerably well, ma’am,” Mignon replied politely, but then she could not repress her smile. “Though Dulcie’s dissipations leave her little time for me.”

Leda hooted. “I might’ve known Dulcie wouldn’t waste her time with a miss as prim as you seemed. Has she told you yet what she means to do with you?”

“Do with me?” Mignon bent and lifted Casanova to her shoulder, where he purred with remarkable violence into her ear. “I’m afraid I do not take your meaning.” She had not missed Dulcie’s frown.

“Then I’ll warn you only that your aunt is an incurable busybody! But far be it from me to throw a spanner in the works.” Leda looked at the Baroness and abruptly dropped her bantering attitude. “In truth, you are an excellent creature, Dulcie Bligh, and it was monstrous good of you to take up the cudgels on my behalf. Did you know that the debtors’ prison at Newgate is a hotbed of vice, run by gaolers who torture the prisoners at will? Have you heard of the Press Room beneath the Old Bailey where the
peine forte et dure
is still carried out? Prisoners are spread-eagled on the floor and heavy weights put on their bodies until confessions are literally crushed out of them.”

The Baroness held up a hand for silence. “You will not make a reformer out of me, for all your zeal! I know your invective is both feared and admired, Leda, but this crusading spirit of yours fills me with considerable uneasiness. In short, I very much suspect you will find yourself in the devil of a fix.”

“When did you become so cow-hearted, Dulcie?” retorted her guest.

Feeling her presence no longer necessary, or even particularly desired, Mignon retreated to her chair. Lord Barrymore looked with displeasure at the battle-scarred tomcat that she still held. Tolly was no admirer of animals? Mignon resolved that thenceforth she would take Casanova with her everywhere.

“Not
cow-hearted,” protested the Baroness, watching with every evidence of displeasure as Leda adjusted her rusty black bonnet, “but prudent. There is such a thing as Fate, my friend. I see you are going to persist in your wrongheadedness and ignore my advice. Where do you go next? You’d do much better to stay here and dine.”

“I’ve not the stomach for your rich fare.” Leda tied her bonnet strings into a lopsided bow. “Anyway, it would ruin my digestion to sit at table and look at your blue hair.”

Lady Bligh touched those lush curls. “It isn’t indigestion my fashions inspire in you, but nostalgia and regret.”

“You’re as perceptive as ever you were, and also as provoking.” Leda rose. “It’s oysters and champagne for me, and then I must go and grovel in a suitably subdued and penitent fashion before Warwick—hell and the devil confound the man!” As she spoke, she moved toward the door. “But first I shall visit a certain firm of soap boilers, where the body of a clerk was found with his blood and brains strewn all about the floor. Are you sure you won’t accompany me, Dulcie?”

“Yes.” Lady Bligh looked grim. “But I will see you to the door.”

“You may read about it tomorrow then, in my
Apocalypse.”
Leda’s voice echoed back as the ladies proceeded down the hall. “I shall print all the horrid details, with revolting particulars of the mutilated corpse. A pity it wasn’t a woman. Which reminds me, Dulcie, I must congratulate you on your handling of the Arbuthnot matter. A pity more details weren’t released to the Press.” They rounded a corner then, and the Baroness’s reply was lost.

“What an odd creature!” Tolly stirred at last. “How unfortunate that you should be exposed to her. No, no, don’t take offense! Your aunt is a delightful woman, my dear Miss Montague, but I cannot think her influence is of the best. You will think it presumptuous, I suppose, if I say she is not precisely the person I would have chosen to look after you.”

Mignon mused that no one had elected Lady Bligh to act as chaperone. Rather, the Baroness had chosen Mignon. “You are correct. I
do
think you presumptuous,” she said. Tolly’s face fell. Being kindhearted, she hastened to make amends. “We will speak no more of it. You have my best interests in mind, I know.”

“Dear Mignon!” Lord Barrymore caught her hand in his. “If I may call you so? Would that your safekeeping was in my hands! But I speak too precipitately, I know. Forgive me. I will mention
that
matter no more until our acquaintance has had an opportunity to blossom, until you have seen for yourself the depth and durability of my devotion to you.”

Mignon wished ardently that Dulcie had not seen fit to leave her alone with her admirer. “I think you forget, Lord Barrymore, that I am two-and-twenty years of age, and hardly in need of either a keeper or a chaperone.”

“Lord Barrymore?” He arched a brow. “Tolly, surely. And you are the merest child.”

Mignon cast about in her mind for a means of distraction. She hit upon a ploy that, if it did not give Lord Barrymore a positive disgust for her duplicity, would put his tedious devotion to good use. “There
is
something you can do for me, if you will, but it requires the utmost secrecy. You must speak of it to no one, not even my aunt. Nor must you question me.”

“Anything!” Lord Barrymore was fervent. “Ask for the moon, the stars, and I will fetch them for you!”

“It’s nothing so difficult as that.” Mignon drew forth a letter from her sleeve. The posting of this item had proven no small challenge. She dared entrust it to none of Lady Bligh’s servants, not wishing to tax her aunt’s tolerance by means of a forbidden correspondence with an ineligible
parti.
“Merely see this safely posted for me.”

“As you wish.” Without even glancing at the address, Lord Barrymore tucked the letter away. “Tell me more of your aunt’s strange caller. Just who
is
Leda Langtry?”

“A childhood friend,” Mignon replied, relieved that he had temporarily abandoned his courtship. “And the publisher of a weekly news sheet. Dulcie, as you may have gathered, was instrumental in securing Leda’s release from Newgate.” She shrugged, and then caught the slumbering cat as it slid from her lap. “I know little more.”

“A degrading situation,” observed Tolly, “for a female of apparently gentle birth. I’ll wager she has an interesting tale to tell. What is her connection with Warwick?”

Lady Bligh appeared as if by magic in the doorway. In her wake trailed a maidservant burdened with a teapot and two cups. “If Warwick had his way all journalists would be either transported or hanged. Charity! Have you not yet learned to count? I said
three
teacups!”

The maid, an extremely timid creature with homely nondescript features and straggling mouse-colored hair, looked ready to cry. “Beg pardon, milady,” she stammered. “I thought you said two.”

“No matter!” said Lord Barrymore. “I was just preparing to take my leave.” The little maid fled.

Mignon stared after the girl. “I can’t rid myself of the feeling that Charity dislikes me.”

“Nonsense, my dear Miss Montague!” Again she had earned Lord Barrymore’s approval, it seemed. “You are a great deal too imaginative, though that is no great fault in a young girl. The wench is doubtless just envious of one who is her superior in so many ways.”

“Is
it nonsense? I’m not so sure.” Lady Bligh’s remark went almost unnoticed in the flowery effusions with which Tolly presented them as he took his leave. 

At last he was gone. Dulcie’s dark eyes moved to her niece, who with a sigh of relief sank back into her chair. “My dear, such a
worthy
young man!”

Mignon met her aunt’s twinkling gaze. “Dull as ditchwater, you mean.”

Lady Bligh poured the tea, presented her niece with a cup; seated herself once more on the sofa, and propped up her feet on a circular table inlaid with double rows of brass. “I’ve a notion,” she said thoughtfully, “that there’s more to your young Romeo than meets the eye.”

Chapter 5

Simpkin was a most superior valet, a seeker after perfection who could truthfully claim that he had never forgotten a single bag or portmanteau, and who prided himself that his master never set foot outside his lodgings in clothing improperly pressed or boots that lacked a mirror-like perfection. But Simpkin, for all his virtues, possessed one less-than-admirable trait: he eavesdropped.

It was purely a matter of expediency, of course, and one for which Simpkin was nicely rewarded by his master’s wife, who liked to be kept informed of her spouse’s peccadilloes. Lord Warwick was not required to live in this elegant hotel at the West End of Town; he had a home of his own, a perfectly suitable establishment which had been graced by a long succession of his eminent ancestors. That fine structure, however, was currently occupied by Lord Warwick’s wife, a lady so lost to the precepts of good taste that she had lately attended a ball so covered with jewels that she could not long remain standing and had to be followed around with a chair. While accepting her largess, Simpkin deplored a lady so lacking in discrimination that she had most recently announced to the world that her husband kept by his bedside little books of nursery rhymes. All in all, thought Simpkin judiciously, it was as well Lord and Lady Warwick had chosen to live apart. He stopped and applied his eye to the keyhole.

Lord Warwick stood by his writing desk, his features mottled with rage. Confronting him was a small white-haired woman clad in black. As the valet watched, she brandished a fist beneath his master’s nose. “You needn’t threaten
me!”
she said. “I’ll publish an entire series of scurrilous articles about people in high places, yourself included, you damned humbug!” In the hallway Simpkin, having come to a belated recognition of Leda Langtry, groaned.

“You exhibit boundless effrontery in the most revolting manner, madam.” Lord Warwick was a tall, stooped man with gray hair, a hooked nose, and features that could have been pleasant but were instead always sour, perhaps due to the tenor of both his disposition and his thoughts, which at that particular moment concerned his visitor’s decapitation by means of the ancient Sword of Justice that hung on the Old Bailey’s wall. “Come, be reasonable. I will admit that I can hardly blame you for holding no high opinion of a Prince who excels at nothing more regal than shooting chimney pots and riding horses upstairs, but I can and do blame you for publishing your opinion to the world.”

Leda promptly demonstrated a recklessness only to be expected from the female who had visited the insane in an American asylum, invaded a convent and interrogated the nuns, and smoked a peace pipe with heathen redskins. “Thus requiring public punishment,” she commented, “and adding to the not inconsiderable matters which you must, as your Regent’s right hand, personally oversee.” Her tone conveyed little appreciation of Lord Warwick’s exalted position. “Poor man! You would much rather deal with Princess Caroline, would you not? I understand she is currently conducting herself indiscreetly with an Italian of humble origin, so we must conclude that she does not return your regard.”

Lord Warwick looked discomfited, but Leda had not finished. “Then there is the shocking lack of decorum in the Lower House. I myself have seen the chosen representatives of the people sprawling on the benches with their hats on, talking of insignificant trifles while serious discussions went on!
That
would make an excellent topic for a newspaper article, would it not?”

“I see it is no use,” he said grimly, “to discuss the matter with you. If you have finished with your recriminations and your idle threats, I ask that you vacate these premises. The intervention of Lady Bligh will not protect you a second time. Since your moments of liberty are limited, I suggest you make good use of them.”

“Oh, I shall.” Leda looked smug. “Fancy, you and Princess Caroline! I hadn’t suspected—but there it is. My readership will be delighted.”

With an oath, Warwick moved forward. “Print one word of that
,
and I’ll not only see you in Newgate, I’ll see to it you hang!”

“Oh, you’ll see me. And before you think!” Leda moved quickly toward the exit. Simpkin, crouched in the hallway, was not quick enough to escape the opening door.

“Shame!” said Leda as the valet fingered his bruised forehead. “Have you forgotten that curiosity killed the cat? Don’t trouble yourself, I’ll find my own way to the door.”

“Simpkin!” his master bellowed. On reluctant feet, the valet entered the room.

Lord Warwick pulled forth a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “That unnatural female writes the most astonishing newspaper articles lamenting the increase in crimes of violence, the ineptitude of Bow Street, and the corruption of Parliament. Now she promises to write one about me. I’d like to see the entire newspaper world that stretches between Temple Bar and St. Paul’s decimated by a plague.”

“Very good, your grace.” Simpkin wondered if he was meant to personally undertake this task.