Maggie MacKeever (11 page)

Having been issued
carte blanche
, Lord Pennymount did not know where to begin. He would have very much liked to chide his first countess about her abominably provoking conduct, from addiction to cards and dice to foolish liaisons with émigré Frenchmen and prospective brothers-in-law. But to do so was to confess that Jess was succeeding in annoying him. He must keep in mind his aunt’s strictures about vinegar and honey and flies.

“Has the cat got your tongue?” inquired Jessabelle, in a distinctly vinegary manner. “What is it you want of me, Vidal?”

What his lordship wanted more than anything was that his first countess cease trying to make him a laughingstock, but he foresaw nothing would be accomplished by informing her of that fact. “I’ve come to propose a truce,” he replied. “Yes, and to apologize. I have not dealt fairly with you, Jess, as my aunts have pointed out. Our disagreements belong to the past. There is no good reason why we should now stand on bad terms. Nor is there good reason why we cannot render the observances of common civility.”

So stunned was Mme. Joliffe by this unprecedented affability that her knees betrayed her. Fortunately, this betrayal took place near one of the charming heart-backed chairs. She did not, however, go down without protest. “I can tell you one excellent reason why we should not!” she snapped. “You are the greatest beast in nature, Vidal!”

Not without severe effort was his lordship’s newfound affability, under such trying circumstances, maintained. “I am aware you hold that opinion, ma’am! As I am aware that you have been openly intriguing with— that is, that you have taken a decided partiality to—oh, the devil! I suppose it doesn’t signify if you toss your bonnet over the windmill at this point, but I hope you know what you’re about!”

Of course Mme. Joliffe knew precisely what she was about, a circumstance she wasn’t moved to explain. Obviously Vidal had heard and misinterpreted her encounter with the Honorable Adolphus, just as she had intended he should. As obvious was his resultant fury, which he tried so hard to repress. Jess was made very curious by such monumental self-restraint. Why, after delivering her sharp setdowns for imaginary misconduct, should Vidal suddenly try to swallow her most outrageous misbehavior with a sudden good grace?

Perhaps he thought she might be thrown off the scent? Jess must divest him of that delusion. Perhaps in so doing she might advance her own progress. “I am so glad you understand!” she said. “Some people would question how I come to have a
tendre
for a gentleman somewhat younger than myself, and one whose nature is a trifle ah—”

‘“Cork-brained!” echoed his lordship, rising impatiently from his chair. “In addition, young Aethelwine is a coxcomb of the first water, and a shocking loose screw!”

“Is he?” Briefly forgetting her supposed infatuation with the subject of this criticism, Jess looked interested. “I mean, of course he is not! A slow-top, perhaps—”

“A loose screw!” insisted Lord Pennymount, halting before the chair in which his first countess sat, and contemplating clasping his fingers around her slender neck. Only in the nick of time did he recall his affability. “But you must please yourself.”

“Exactly so.” Unwittingly sharing her ex-husband’s impulse toward violence, Mme. Joliffe clasped her hands in her lap. “Of course you must understand how it is with me since
you
cherish tender sentiments for my dear Adolphus’s sister.”

Jessabelle was closely watching him. Naturally Vidal would not share with her his sudden conviction that existence with his amiably hen-witted second countess would be drearily monotonous. “Lady Camilla is a young female of good breeding and excellent manners,” he responded coolly. A young female, he added silently, who at least could be trusted to do nothing so unmaidenly as embark upon elopements, or dally with mooncalfs and Frenchmen.

So he
did
care for his fiancée, decided Jess, who was not deceived by the earl’s assumed indifference. She should have been delighted by this admission, and the means thereby to put his lordship’s arrogant nose forever out of joint. However, Jessabelle received the intelligence of his lordship’s infatuation with a sharp pain in her midriff. The source of that pain was no sudden bout of indigestion. Jessabelle also rose, and removed herself as far as possible from her ex-husband, lest she succumb to the impulse to fly at him with nail and tooth.

Lord Pennymount cleared his throat. “As I was saying, I no longer believe it necessary that you should depart the metropolis. If you are willing to endure the embarrassment of sharing the city with me and my second countess, then I can endure the discomfort of hearing your name bandied about. It would be different if you still used
my
name; since you do not, it signifies little if you make a byword of yourself. I will of course arrange that your allowance continue to be paid you. No matter how outrageous your behavior, that is yours for life.”

To these kind reassurances, Jessabelle reacted with a burning resentment upon which she thought she might choke. Like some servant grown old and feeble, Vidal was pensioning her off. But even if she strangled on her fury, she would remain at least as civil as he. “I am very much obliged to you for it,” she responded. “All that remains is to wish you joy.”

Mme. Joliffe might think she presented a picture of prim civility, but Lord Pennymount was not so easily misled. Vidal well knew his Jessabelle, and consequently was aware she was in the very devil of a rage. This realization immeasurably improved his lordship’s own spirits; it was exactly what he had set out to inspire. Almost he pitied Jessabelle, nonetheless, having of late become very well acquainted with the frustration attendant upon being denied a quarrel.

In that same moment it occurred to Jessabelle that she was most unlikely to ever again have private conversation with her ill-tempered ex-husband. “Oh, Vidal,” she sighed. “It wasn’t an elopement.”

This somewhat cryptic utterance, Lord Pennymount had no difficulty understanding; he also had been thinking of his first ill-fated venture into matrimonial seas. “Then what the devil
was
it?” he asked.

Jessabelle flushed and dropped her eyes to the little satinwood writing table by which she stood. “I was running away from you,” she said. “As you may recall, Vidal, you had just slapped me. I thought that if I turned up missing, you might have been a little bit sorry, and come after me.”

“Had I come after you, my girl,” his lordship responded bluntly, “I would have very likely broke your blasted neck! And you needn’t get up on your high ropes about me slapping you because you kicked me first, in a very tender spot. And it wasn’t a very hard slap anyway.” The implications of this bizarre conversation then burst upon him. “And why the blazes didn’t you say so in the first place?”

Jessabelle elevated her blue eyes from the writing table to his lordship’s face. “I
did
tell you!” she snapped. “But you wouldn’t listen! You were so convinced that I had set out to plant the antlers on your brow!” Her laughter was bitter.
“Me!”

Seeking relief from his conflicting emotions, Lord Pennymount stalked to a damask-draped window and stared outside. If Jessabelle spoke the truth, then he had indeed behaved badly toward her, worse than even he would have believed possible, and Lord Pennymount had no falsely benign image of himself. He knew his temper to be prodigious. But he knew also that Jessabelle wished to be revenged on him, and he suspected this tardy protestation of innocence might be her latest effort toward that end.

From her place across the room, Jessabelle watched, torn between dismay at her own unbidden words and curiosity about her companion’s response. It would be nice to be exonerated of those old charges of misconduct, she thought, if only by Vidal.

The silence stretched out, achingly; the earl made no move toward the disbursement of absolution but stood as if carved of stone. Jessabelle had scant desire to thus add to the furnishings of her pretty morning room and so she inquired briskly about the welfare of his lordship’s wrist.

Her ploy was successful; Lord Pennymount raised and regarded his wrist, from which the bandage had been recently removed. Staring back at him from his own flesh was an excellent impression of the teeth of his first countess. Thus reminded that he had in that quarter as much cause for rage as for remorse, he turned away from the window. “Horn-mad, am I?” he inquired, and glared.

“I don’t know what you are now, but you certainly were then!” The notion of absolution had taken possession of Jess. She moved out from behind the writing table. “It was all the most dreadful misunderstanding. I would be very pleased to let bygones be bygones, Vidal.”

To what lengths she went to disarm him, thought Lord Pennymount, as he watched her approach. Fortunately the earl was blessed with an excellent memory. He recalled not only Mme. Joliffe’s association with the notorious Capitaine Chançard, but the public announcement made by the Honorable Adolphus. Lord Pennymount had a very clear notion of just how Jessabelle had made the beef-witted Dolph a very happy man.

Yes, but
why
had she done so? the earl queried of himself, watching her proud face. Angry as he might be with Jessabelle nine hours out of ten, Vidal had never denied she was a very desirable female. That auburn hair, those patrician features with their faint spattering of freckles, the regal manner in which she carried herself—Jess was quick-tempered and tart and thoroughly invigorating, he thought. And then he thought he was a great deal too quick to appreciate his ex-wife’s assets, which was no doubt what she wanted, else she would not be staring up at him with those big blue eyes.

Jessabelle blinked, thinking she preferred angry words to grim silence, and thinking also that Vidal’s unusual self-restraint might herald the advent of some new phase in their relationship. Secretly she would have preferred argument to this cool civility. Nonetheless she could understand that Lord Pennymount’s second countess might not appreciate his forever being at loggerheads with the first.

“Vidal,” she said softly, and touched his wounded wrist. “I don’t—I mean, I didn’t—oh,
damn!”

This disjointed speech, his lordship understood, as well as the motivation thereof. Jessabelle was acting in a manner expressly calculated to inflame his passions, and he was appalled by the blatant profligacy of her conduct. As if it were not shame enough to misbehave with all and sundry, now she must turn an eye of ardor upon himself.

Yet upon whom was that eye better turned? suddenly thought Lord Pennymount. If Jessabelle was exciting the passions of half the men in London, why not his own? Indeed, his passions should have preference, for had he not been married to the jade? “The devil you say!” he retorted and drew her abruptly into an exceedingly rough embrace.

That embrace proved of no short duration, and saw the participants therein stagger slowly from the window, past the little writing table, to fetch up at length upon one of the tapestried settees. Nor was the embrace of an especially decorous nature, although neither appeared to note this fact, or indeed to recall that they were no longer wed—in defense of which shocking omission it should perhaps be explained that Lord Pennymount and his first countess had never had any difference of opinion whatsoever as regarded this particular facet of their relationship.

But that embrace was a diversion only, no matter how delightful, or of what duration; and when Jessabelle could bear no longer to be diverted, lest she abandon forever all schemes to secure his lordship’s comeuppance, she leaned back and boxed his ears. Thus recalled abruptly to the present, and to the existence of Jessabelle’s several admirers and his own fiancée, Vidal grasped her shoulders and gave her a good shake, then took an abrupt leave. No sooner had the door slammed behind him than Jessabelle straightened her rumpled gown, kicked the long-case clock, and burst into bitter tears.

Chapter Eleven

Only moments after Lord Pennymount departed Mme. Joliffe’s little gray house in Park Lane, slamming the door so hard behind him that the occupants feared for the pretty fanlight, the Honorable Adolphus arrived. Happily for Dolph, their paths did not cross. In his present hostile state, Lord Pennymount would at the very best have planted his future brother-in-law a facer, and at the worst challenged him to a duel.

Unaware of his narrow escape from at least one unpleasant fate, Adolphus followed the servant to Mme. Joliffe’s morning room. His first thought upon entering that graceful chamber was that Milly, being partial to leering Chinese doorknobs, sphinxes, and mummies and that sort of thing, would find the room a great deal too dainty for her taste. His second thought was that his hostess was looking very much disheveled, and furthermore walking with a limp.

“I say, Mme. Joliffe!” said he. “You’re limping!” To this acute observation Mme. Joliffe responded with a withering glance and a mumbled explanation of her assault upon the long-case clock. “Anyway, what business is it of yours?” she snapped.

For that excellent question, Dolph had no response. In point of fact, he was not even certain of what had brought him to Park Lane. Something to do with his sister, he believed—ah! Enlightenment dawned. The Honorable Adolphus recollected his new status as a man of the world.

“None yet!” he responded, meaningfully. “None of my business, that is! Thing is, it
should
be! Mean to say, you’ve taken my fancy!”

Mme. Joliffe’s blue eyes widened, then narrowed; an odd little smile touched her lips. “Sir, you astonish me!”

“Dolph!” supplied Adolphus, feeling vastly encouraged that the object of his affection had thus far refrained from ordering him thrown out into the street. “No need to be so formal! And I’ll call you Jess! Dashed if you
ain’t
a good sort of female!”

Upon receipt of this commendation, Mme. Joliffe discreetly lowered her gaze, lest her admirer read therein a combination of scorn and despair. Jess could only hope that Lady Camilla was less beetlebrained than her brother. How
could
Lord Pennymount ally himself with such a family? “I have had no word from your sister,” she said.