Maggie MacKeever (10 page)

To the Honorable Dolph this explanation seemed reasonable, and one furthermore that would spare him the necessity of introducing his sister to Jessabelle. “That’s the ticket!” he approved, with more cheerful spirits than previously displayed during this interlude. “You don’t want to be hobnobbing with a madwoman, nor to be leg-shackled to a lunatic! Send Pennymount to the rightabout, sis!”

“Did I not require you to stop talking fustian?” Lady Camilla scathingly inquired. “What is it you have against Pennymount? First you claim he is an icicle, and now you say he is a Bedlamite! Maybe it is you who is all about in the head!”

Had the Honorable Adolphus been of a more lucid turn of mind, he might have pointed out that the original slur upon Lord Pennymount’s sanity had not been made by him. Since Dolph was not especially lucid, he did not realize the reason he felt increasingly put upon. “I say!” he said. “If you want Pennymount, you must have him, sis! Although I don’t know why you made sheep’s eyes at him in the first place. No, don’t try and explain it, I know you don’t like romantical high flights. I wouldn’t think you’d like being
pinched
at, either—but that’s no bread-and-butter of mine!”

Lady Camilla was disarmed by this evidence of brotherly concern for her well-being. She smiled and dimpled and patted Adolphus’s sleeve. “Even the earl can’t give me a rake-down if I say nothing that sets up his back! I think that must be where my predecessor went wrong. It doesn’t sound as if she made the smallest effort to be conciliating, not if she went about brangling with Pennymount and running off with other gentlemen!” Again appeared that little frown. “Yes, and who did she elope with?”

“Dashed if I know!” responded Dolph. “And you needn’t try and tease me into
asking
her! Because no matter what you may say about her, Mme. Joliffe is a deuced good sort of female!”

Came a lull in the conversation, while Lady Camilla ventured into the shop of her favorite modiste, and the Honorable Dolph endured yet another incident in his sister’s quest for her bride clothes. At least he was unlikely to encounter any of his creditors in the little modiste’s shop. Even more morose than his demeanor were his thoughts, which as usual centered upon the unhappy fate of luckless gamblers who failed to promptly redeem their vowels. He would drown, thought Adolphus, under an avalanche of unpaid debts.

Lady Camilla was thinking also, and not entirely of her bride clothes. Those cogitations did not prevent her entering with the modiste into a lively discussion of the relative merits of Anglo-merino (a textile nearly as fine as muslin) and Caledonian silk (a material similar to poplin but with a more silky surface and having a checkered pattern on white ground). From textiles the conversation progressed to corsets—the Divorce Corset, a triangular piece of padded iron work pointing upwards between the breasts, pushing them apart and producing a Grecian shape; the Wellington, which claimed to repress that state of fullness found tiresome by corpulent ladies in the present style of dress; the Pregnant Stay, which completely encased the body from shoulder to thigh—and from corsets to a distinctly catty enumeration of specific females forced to endure such restrictive devices by encroaching
embonpoint,
among which number Lady Camilla was not. Then, her business conducted, she shepherded her brother back into the street.

Once there, she paused and shot him a considering glance. The Honorable Adolphus did not notice, being sunk in contemplation of his pecuniary embarrassments. “You are mighty quick,” observed Lady Camilla, “to take up the cudgels on her behalf!”

“Eh?” responded Dolph, and stared.

Sometimes, as on this occasion, Lady Camilla thought her brother was a mooncalf. “Mme. Joliffe! You were quick to take up the cudgels on her behalf! It is almost as if you were taken with her, Dolph!”

“Taken with her?” echoed the Honorable Adolphus, all at sea.

“Midsummer moon!” Lady Camilla patiently explained. “You’ve taken a marked fancy, hold her in high regard! Hang it, Dolph, you must know better than I how you feel!”

What the Honorable Adolphus felt at this particular moment was exceedingly confused. He regarded his sister suspiciously. “You shan’t bamboozle me!”

“The question here,” Lady Camilla responded sternly, “is who is trying to bamboozle
who!
Or is it whom?
No matter! Because what’s smoky is
you,
Dolph! First you agreed to persuade Mme. Joliffe to meet me, and then having persuaded her you start fussing about what Papa will think.”

“I say!” offered the Honorable Adolphus, in his own defense. “You can’t deny the old gentleman would cut up precious stiff!”

“Certainly he would, were he to learn of it, but I don’t know how he
could!
Since when have you become so concerned with what Papa may say to you Dolph? It’s not the first time you tumbled into the River Tick! And I make no doubt it will neither be the last. I think there must be something you are not telling me, and I wish you would, because perhaps I might
help!”
Upon receipt of this offer of assistance, Adolphus’s face lit up. Lady Camilla added: “Providing you help me first!”

Cruel beyond measure was the fate that allowed a chap to glimpse reprieve before sharply slamming shut the window in his face. Adolphus could not assist his sister, much as he would have liked, alas, for his actions were being dictated by a will other than his own.

“Of course I don’t want to displease the old gentleman!” he said, rather lamely. “Nor would you, were you wishful of hauling your coals out of the River Tick, and equally
not
wishful of being cut off without a farthing. Hang it,
I
can’t help it if it ain’t in me to be beforehand with the world!”

“Nor is it in Mme. Joliffe either,” murmured Lady Camilla, looking very contemplative. “Pennymount says she squanders her allowance at play. That is what you have in common, I collect: an addiction to game. I wouldn’t wish to tell you your business, Dolph—but are you
sure
you wish to ally yourself with a divorced woman who goes about biting people? I can’t think Papa would approve!”

“Approve?” echoed the Honorable Dolph. “Dash it, sis, there ain’t nothing
to
approve!”

“Ah!” Thus made aware that her brother’s intentions toward the object of his ardor were not honorable, Lady Camilla beamed. “Then
that’s
all right! And as long as you remember not to lay violent hands on her, she will probably not attack!”

“Violent hands?” Adolphus glanced somewhat desperately down the length of Oxford Street. “I don’t know what in Hades you’re talking about!”

“You don’t?” Lady Camilla looked surprised, then comprehending, then smug. “Of course you don’t! Poor Dolph, you haven’t had much experience in the petticoat line. Mme. Joliffe
will
like romantical high flights, I’ll warrant, having had little of that sort of thing from Pennymount! Or so I assume she didn’t, because
I
haven’t, though there’s no denying he is not indifferent to her.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “Do you know, I am not altogether certain I like the notion that my husband should feel so strongly toward another female, even if what he feels is violence!”

The mind of the Honorable Adolphus ground slow as the mills of the Almighty, but a degree of comprehension was generally achieved. “In the p-petticoat line?” he stammered.
“M-me?”

“You
needn’t try and bamboozle me!” Lady Camilla sternly replied. “I suppose it wouldn’t be quite the thing to introduce me to your, er, ladybird, and though it makes me very cross that you should be so selfish, I still do not mean to scold. All the same, I think I must point out that a lady who fritters away her allowance cannot be thought a
good
influence.”

A man of the world, was he? Dolph had never thought of himself as such. Apparently Milly had a clearer grasp of such matters—as so many others—than did he. “Hah!” said the Honorable Adolphus, throwing out his chest. “We’re birds of a feather, Jessabelle and me! Anyhow, a fellow don’t allow himself to be
influenced
by his ladybird!” He gave voice to what he fondly thought of as a knowing laugh.

Why her brother was tittering in that inane fashion, Lady Camilla might have inquired, had she not espied a gentleman who was observing them from a short distance away. He looked to be in his early forties, with an athletic turn of figure, and a sensual cast of feature, and brown hair streaked with gray. Curious as to why a stranger should so intently watch them, Milly nudged Dolph.

Once more the Honorable Adolphus descended rapidly from the heights. For a few brief dazzling moments he had been a man of the world, firmly in control of his own fate. Now he was again no more than a pawn of Capitaine Chançard.

“Enchanté, mademoiselle,”
said Michon, when the introductions were performed, but in a manner that gave the lie to any professions of delight. Capitaine Chançard knew this particular damsel’s dislike of being forever fawned upon, and therefore he barely looked at her at all.

Dislike as she might romantical effusions, Lady Camilla was accustomed to masculine admiration, and the stranger’s patent disinterest caused her to rapidly assess her reflection in a shop window. Ankle-length walking dress with long sleeves gathered at the armholes and pleats of muslin above the hem; spencer fastened with sash and bow;  French bonnet lavishly loaded down with flowers—Lady Camilla was complete to a shade.

Obviously the Frenchman did not think so. Milly wondered how she might change his mind. No unladylike desire to add Capitaine Chançard to her long list of conquests motivated her. As result of her brother’s recent confidences, Lady Camilla was more than ever anxious to make the acquaintance of Lord Pennymount’s first countess, most often to be found frittering away her allowance in a certain French émigré
’
s
gaming saloon.

Chapter Ten

Contrary to popular belief, Mme. Joliffe didn’t spend the majority of her time at the board of green cloth. Her allowance, even had she chosen to thusly squander it, was not so large as to stake her to more than a few moments’ play. Nor was it sufficiently ample to enable her to adequately staff her little house in Park Lane, one of the boundaries of exclusive Mayfair. That omission, Jessabelle made up for by herself undertaking a large portion of the housework, as on this particular morning, when she donned the oldest of her gowns, wrapped a towel around her head, and set out to dust her house from cellar to garret. No window ledge escaped her notice, no picture frame. The dusting done, she set about polishing the furniture, the lamp glasses and candlesticks, whisking the curtains and shaking the mats. Then she paused and gazed about her morning room with an expression that was glum.

It wasn’t her surroundings inspired that discontent. Jessabelle was very satisfied with her symmetrical little gray brick house with its crimson Windsor window arches and shallow-pitched slate roof. Nor did her morning room deflate her spirits. It was a charming chamber, with plaster ceiling and wainscot punctuated by fluted Corinthian columns and hung with exquisite tapestries of simulated silk damask with a floral pattern, a set woven for her family in a more affluent era, consisting of three large and eight small hangings, with two settees and six chairs, on a rose damask ground. At the windows were hangings of rose-colored satin damask, gold-fringed. On the floor was a carpet done in
gros point,
with a large floral design. Scattered around the room were charming heart-backed chairs with legs that tapered slightly to plinth feet, several little tables, a long-case clock with pedestal-shaped body veneered with satinwood. The overall effect was of delicacy and grace. Nonetheless Jessabelle continued to look blue-devilled. It was not of the morning room that Mme. Joliffe thought as she trod across the carpet and dropped down gracelessly upon one settee. She brooded still upon how best to serve the disagreeable Lord Pennymount his justly merited comeuppance.

Apparently Lady Camilla had suffered second thoughts about meeting with her. Jess could not fairly bewail this display of prudence, though from what she had heard of Lady Camilla, prudence from that source was the last thing she would have anticipated. However, Lady Camilla had neither appeared nor sent word, and Jessabelle was left pondering alternate means by which she might serve his lordship an ill turn.

Mme. Joliffe might have done well to recall the old saw about imprudent use of the devil’s name. Into her reverie broke a servant, with the intelligence that no less than Lord Pennymount waited on the doorstep, desirous of speech. Jessabelle gasped and leapt up off the settee, yanked the towel from off her head and stuffed it behind the clock. Then she turned to face the doorway, looking disheveled but—she hoped—composed.

Only seconds later, Vidal sauntered into the room. He was dressed for riding, which recalled to Jessabelle his habit of taking early-morning exercise, which in turn recalled to her the days when they had been wed.

These recollections did not endear his lordship to her. Jessabelle wondered why Vidal had come to Park Lane. She wondered too why he was looking so unusually affable. Suspiciously, she studied him. In response his lordship quirked a quizzical brow and intimated politely that he would like to sit down.

“Why?” bluntly inquired Jess. “So that at your leisure you may try and bully me into leaving town? It won’t serve, Vidal. This is my home and I shan’t be made to leave it—but I wish
you
would!”

By this evidence that his foe was on the defensive, Lord Pennymount was even further cheered. “But I do not wish to leave, at least not until I say what I came here to say—sorry as I am to disoblige you!” With this patent clanker, down he sat on one of the tapestried chairs, without so much as a by-your-leave.

Sorry to disoblige her, was he? Jessabelle would not be so easily put out of countenance. Striving for an air of nonchalance, she strolled around her morning room. “Have it your own way then; you usually do! What is it you wished to say to me?”