Maggie MacKeever (2 page)

Yet how to go about it? How to fashion a well-behaved young lady out of a highly capricious damsel whose past career had amply demonstrated a tendency to run counter to conventional behavior at every opportunity? Sara was in the highly unenviable position of being obliged to fashion a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Of this assessment of her character, Lady Easterling was blissfully unaware—though had she been made privy to it, she would have cheerfully agreed. Jaisy nurtured few delusions concerning herself; she knew she was reckless and extravagant and wild to a fault. However, at this given moment, Jaisy was not contemplating her various little quirks. Instead she was plotting her brilliant entry into the
haut ton.

She would be the cynosure of all eyes, anticipated Lady Easterling; a much-courted lady accustomed to moving in the highest circles of society, tormented on all sides for an approving glance. At least half the gentlemen in London would dangle at her slipper-strings; and she would find it amusing to keep them dangling until she decided in which direction she would toss her handkerchief. Having once sampled freedom from the shackles that hampered a single lady, Jaisy was not overly enthused at assuming those shackles again. It would not be for long, she consoled herself, and this time she would not throw herself away on an elderly gentleman. Actually, Easterling had doted on her, had made it his ambition to gratify her every whim, but all the same— And in the interim, she would make a stir in the world.

It was not without foundation that Lady Easterling cherished so high an opinion of herself. If she fondly believed that every gentleman who had ever looked on her had done so with the eye of love, she wasn’t far wrong; if she expected to beat to flinders every other beauty present in London this Season, she had no reason to expect that she would not. Lady Easterling was an incomparably lovely damsel, with golden curls cropped in the current mode and clustering around her face, which was comprised of features so perfectly beautiful that they defied analysis. Various of Lady Easterling’s admirers had tried to describe those features, impossible as was the task: lips so delightfully lush and rosy that they put the most glorious bloom to shame; skin so fair as to seem almost translucent, through which could be seen a faint and fascinating tracery of veins; a nose simultaneously adorable and sublime; huge blue eyes that teased and tormented—the list went on. The lady’s dimples were roguish, her smile divine; her person was perfection, and her little ankles (although her admirers weren’t so rag-mannered as to say so to her ladyship, not that Jaisy would have minded one bit) were very neat. In short, all of Lady Easterling’s countless assets dwelt together in the utmost felicity.

Nonetheless, though such excesses of adulation were most gratifying to their inspiration, they failed to explain how so young a lady had already set so many hearts afire. This was more a result of expression than of inherent beauty, although of beauty Jaisy possessed a surfeit: she was a bewitching madcap, an arrant minx; and jaded indeed was the gentleman who could gaze upon that mischievous countenance, observe the merry twinkle in those huge blue eyes, and not realize first that her ladyship was a shocking flirt, and secondly that he wished nothing more in the world than to embark immediately upon a flirtation with her ladyship.

“And
then,”
announced Lady Easterling, “I shall set myself up in the very latest mode, and you shall come and be
my
companion, Sara, and you may have as many bonnets as you please!”

Ruefully, Miss Valentine glanced at the bonnet on the seat beside her, a confection of large ribbon bows and ruchings and ostrich feathers perched atop the bandboxes and cosmetic case and picnic basket. In all else she had schooled herself to be the ideal servant, meek and uncomplaining, decorous and affable; bonnets were her one remaining frivolity and she indulged herself shamelessly.

Were she to continue to indulge that frivolity, by means of the generous wage paid her by her employer, she had best make an effort to reform the harum-scarum manners of her employer’s scapegrace niece. “That would be very nice,” Sara said diplomatically, “but first we must bring you up to snuff, my pet. Jaisy, I do not know precisely how to phrase this, but—”

“Give me the word with no bark on it!” invited Jaisy.
“I
shan’t take snuff!”

Miss Valentine availed herself of a deep breath. “Though you were a belle in the country, you must not expect to have a similarly dazzling career as an acknowledged beauty in London. Things, my dear, are different in the metropolis.”

There came a brief silence. Lady Easterling pondered her companion’s remarks, and doubted very much if gentlemen anywhere were so different as all that, which is not an unreasonable viewpoint for a damsel who had all her short life had innumerable admirers in tow. She thought that perhaps her beloved Sara had grown a trifle bacon-brained as result of prolonged exposure to the Tartarish dowager duchess. Or perhaps Sara was remembering that she, too, had been an accredited beauty in the country, but in London had failed to attract.

“You are in a very teasing mood!” Jaisy responded generously. “I don’t regard it! If bosom bows cannot speak without roundaboutation, I don’t know who may. But you are all about in the head, Sara, if you fear I shan’t
take
! I’ll wager anything you wish that I’ll be top-of-the-trees. How Friday-faced you look! Are you wishing me to the devil? Silly widgeon! On my solemn word of honor, we shall rub along together very well!” The carriage hit yet another pothole. Lady Easterling neatly fielded Sara’s silly hat, then added in a burst of candor: “So long, that is, as you don’t take the cork-brained notion that you may prevent me from cutting a dash!”

Dusk had fallen upon the metropolis by the time Lady Blackwood’s traveling-carriage drew to a halt before a freestanding stone-fronted house located in a fashionable section of the metropolis. Built as were the majority of London townhouses, Blackwood House dominated a long strip of land running back from Queen Anne Street. On the foremost portion of the lot presided the residence itself; behind the house lay a brick-enclosed garden; in the very rear, fronting on Duchess Street and reached by a subsidiary road, stood a coach house and stables which could accommodate twelve horses and four coaches.

Toward these accommodations the coachman proceeded, having disgorged his passengers in front of Blackwood House. As had the stables, the residence had benefited from the abilities of the brothers Adam, and was noted for its admirable portico and proud display of ornamental ironwork, its Venetian windows, the pedimented door set within a shallow arch. Beyond that pedimented doorway lay an entrance hall japanned in soft shades of slate and green with gilt decoration, embellished with Ionic columns. Beyond the entrance hall lay an abundance of polished wood adorned by the occasional carpet, and an enviable stone staircase.

The door was opened to the ladies by no less august a personage than Lady Blackwood’s butler Thomas. His expression, as he gazed upon Miss Valentine, was indicative of great relief.

“Lady Blackwood has been inquiring, miss,” Thomas offered in hushed tones, as he ushered the newcomers into the entrance hall, “as to whether you had yet returned. She is in the morning room. If I was to venture an opinion, miss, it would be that you attend her straightaway.”

“On the fidgets, is she?” inquired Lady Easterling with bright interest, while Miss Valentine sighed and untied her frivolous bonnet strings. “I told you we wouldn’t be in the house above two minutes before Georgiana started cutting up stiff! We might as well go and confront the old gorgon in her den and get the worst over with. The morning room you said? Good God, man, what the devil have you done to your hand?”

“Thomas, your hand!” echoed Sara. “You have hurt yourself! Oh, dear! You must have displeased Confucious. I am so sorry, Thomas. If I had been here it would have never come about.”

“Confucious?” queried Lady Easterling, as Thomas struggled with a most unprofessional impulse to state a frank and extremely unflattering opinion of his employer’s ill-tempered lap dog. “Is that horrid creature still alive? Jupiter! The brute must be in his dotage. I’ve always held he should have been drowned at birth, but Georgiana took a fancy to him, which just goes to
show!
Moreover, Sara, I see no reason for you to feel guilty because the beast bit someone—as I recall, Confucious always was biting someone!—because Georgiana herself sent you to fetch me. And if you
had
been here, it would’ve been you who was bitten, so obviously you have had a very narrow escape!” Having delivered herself of these eminently reasonable sentiments, Jaisy beamed upon her audience.

That audience did not appear especially taken with her ladyship’s reasoning. Instead they exchanged glances that smacked very strongly of anticipated fellow-suffering. “Confucious does not snap at me,” Sara said, without overt gratification. “It is one of my tasks to feed the little beast.” Thomas then suggested diffidently that the Dowager Duchess might have all their heads for washing, were she any longer left twiddling her thumbs.

Thus abjured, the ladies passed through the green and slate entrance hall, up the grand stone staircase, to the first-floor morning room, pausing only long enough to shed bonnets and wraps. Blackwood House, as always, was blanketed by a profound hush. In return for the generous wage she paid, Lady Blackwood expected her domestic staff to court exhaustion on her behalf, and was prone to assign any idle-looking servant some highly distasteful task. Thomas himself had on more than one occasion been reduced to such ignominious chores as polishing the furniture with a combination of treacle, oil, small beer, sulphuric acid and ivory black. Consequently, the entire domestic hierarchy, from superior Thomas down to and including the least significant kitchen maid, dreaded to attract their mistress’s attention as much as they feared to excite her acidulous tongue.

Lady Blackwood was enthroned, according to her custom, in her morning room, a chamber most notable for an entablature with a striking frieze of ox skulls married to walls decorated with beautiful relief panels of nymphs dancing. The furnishings included a gilt suite upholstered in Beauvais tapestry, very light frames on straight turned legs. Rare plants grew out of lacquered boxes. A candelabrum of four lights in pale blue-green and white was supported by porcelain elephants’ heads. Seated in a massive chair ornately carved and gilded with scrolled arms that terminated in eagles’ heads with sharp savage beaks, the dowager duchess clasped upon her lap a bundle of multicolored fur through which protruded a damp black nose and the scant remnants of what had once been an exceptionally fine set of viciously sharp teeth. Though time may have diminished Confucious’s ability to wreak mass mayhem among his foes, it had not similarly dulled his less amiable instincts. He pointed his nose at the doorway and snarled.

In this manner interrupted in her self-appointed task of hand-feeding her beloved pet a repellant-looking mixture from a china bowl, Lady Blackwood also directed her attention to the interlopers. A thin, elegant lady in her mid-sixties, Lady Blackwood was every inch the aristocrat, from the top of her exquisitely coifed white head to the tip of her nimble toes. She was not beautiful, nor had she ever been; and like her ill-tempered pet, the dowager duchess had suffered the ravages of time.

Eyes narrowed, Lady Blackwood glared in a distinctly inhospitable manner at her niece. That keen regard, Jaisy cheerfully returned. “Well, miss?” snapped the dowager duchess. “Have you nothing to say to me?”

“Certainly I do!” said Jaisy promptly, and seated herself without further ado—and without her aunt’s permission—in a delicate armchair, “though I can’t think how you knew! First I must thank you for having me with you in London, even though I do think you might have invited me before. But never mind that! Had you given me my Season when I came of age, I would not have married Easterling; and say what you will about Easterling, he was a great gun!”

Unaccustomed to young ladies who dared address her disrespectfully, the dowager duchess scowled so severely that her eyebrows almost met atop her nose. Very well acquainted with the dowager’s methods of dealing with those hapless creatures that roused her displeasure, Sara caught her breath. “Don’t hover, you silly twit!” snapped Lady Blackwood, thus reminded of the presence of a hireling upon whom she might without reservation vent her wrath. Cowed, Sara withdrew to a far corner of the chamber. The dowager returned her attention to her niece. “As for you, my girl, I have no desire whatsoever to discuss Easterling.”

“No, and I don’t know why you should!” retorted Jaisy, with unabated good cheer. “He didn’t like you above half, either! Said you was a—but never mind that! The fact is that I was in a pucker until your invite came. I was set on coming to London, but I wasn’t sure how the thing could be arranged—which brings to mind something that I particularly wished to say to you, aunt!”

“Oh?” said the duchess, but in so ominous a tone that Sara, in her corner, shuddered.

“Indeed!” responded Lady Easterling, archly. “I must tell you that the arrangements made for our journey here were not at all what I am accustomed to. The inn where we paused for refreshment was a very shabby place, and no matter what Sara may say to the contrary, I’ll wager the landlord was in league with highwaymen. We would probably have been murdered en route had I not made known my suspicions, because the landlord knew we were on our guard, and therefore his accomplices dared not waylay us!”

A colossal ruin indeed was the dowager duchess’s face, and on those raddled features now was an expression of the utmost disfavor. “Poppycock!” she said.

Promptly, Lady Easterling demonstrated not only her sublime disregard of divergent viewpoints, but the remarkably one-track quality of her thoughts. “And it is a very good thing,” she added severely, “that I
did
warn off the scoundrel, because your coachman would doubtless have delivered us right up! You are pulling a long face, aunt, but I assure you the man is quite cowhanded! At times I truly thought he was wishful of overturning us in a ditch, but now I see that was a cork-brained notion, because much as you may disapprove of me, it would avail you nothing if I broke my neck.” Having absolved her aunt of malice aforethought, Jaisy smiled. “I am not complaining, mind!”