Maggie MacKeever (15 page)

“Gracious!” murmured Lady Dimity, smacking Grimalkin sharply on the head in an attempt to persuade him to release Marmalade’s plump tail from between his sharp teeth. “Sir Edward certainly dislikes dear Jess. I wonder if we should have told him she only bites Vidal. And I must say that Vidal has done a
very
poor job of turning her up sweet!”

Onto her lap, Lady Emmeline welcomed the mistreated Tom who, having triumphantly routed the intruder, stretched out across the backs of Puss and Tab and immediately went to sleep. “This grows more and more curious,” she remarked. “Jessabelle has contrived to affiance herself to the brother of our nephew’s bride-to-be. One cannot help but wonder why.”

“All these betrothals are positively incestuous!” observed Lady Dimity, with a happy smile. “To say nothing of Jessabelle inviting that shatterbrained young man to
kiss
her. Merciful heavens! What would Papa say to that?” On reflection, Dimmy decided that her Reverend papa would have probably decided that to discover whether or not one enjoyed kissing the gentleman to whom one had just become affianced was a very good thing. “You look very thoughtful and I cannot decide about
what,
Em!”

Deftly Lady Emmeline with one stroke petted all three cats. “I was just wondering why Jessabelle kicked her clock.”

Chapter Fourteen

So very many people were curious about the recent actions of Mme. Joliffe that she barricaded herself inside her little gray brick house in Park Lane and issued orders that she was not at home. In most instances this simple precaution served. And the instance when it did not was entirely her own fault.

“I wagered myself a pony that you would see me,’’ said Lady Camilla, with a delightful smile. “Because I knew I’d have seen
you
if the shoe was on the other foot! I have been prodigious curious about you, ma’am— dash it, I can’t go on calling you ‘ma’am,’ and ‘Mme. Joliffe’ is almost as bad. I feel as if we are already bosom bows! Please may I call you Jessabelle?”

“Certainly,” responded Jessabelle, faintly. “Please do.”

“And you must call me Milly!” Lady Camilla responded generously. “Even if I
don’t
like it above half!I knew we would rub along together given but half a chance. We have so much in common, don’t you think?”

What Jessabelle might have in common with this amiable young lady, she could not imagine. The Honorable Adolphus had revealed her direction, Jess decided. That it had been extremely reprehensible of him to do so, she gently pointed out.

“Fidle!” Milly wasted few words in defense of her brother—who, for the record, was not responsible for her presence in Park Lane. “I perfectly understand that some people would be shocked to learn I’d visited you, though I do not understand
why,
and I think it very silly that they should! Good gracious, we are almost blood kin, what with my betrothal to your husband, and yours to my brother—at the very least we must become sisters-in-law!” A tiny frown marred the perfection other brow. “If not more! It seems to me that a gentleman’s second wife must have
some
relation to his first, and if they don’t they certainly should!
You were one of the family that I’m marrying into, and however one may dislike the members of one’s own family one does not go about casting them off like old shoes!”

One did if one was a Pennymount, reflected Jess, annoyed anew by her ex-husband’s attempts to pension her off. “I do not regard it, Lady Camilla,” she responded. “Such is the way of the world. You must not feel sorry for me, you know: I go on very well. Too, it could only prove embarrassing for all concerned were we to meet publicly.”

“Would it?” Lady Camilla looked doubtful. “Why should anyone else be embarrassed if
I
am not? But I did not come here to stir coals with you, Jessabelle!”

“No.” Despite the numerous reasons why she should not have, Mme. Joliffe was beginning to like her unconventional guest. “You wanted to see for yourself the lady who had washed Pennymount’s dirty linen in public. Well, now you have done so. Had I a shred of proper feeling I would not have permitted it. Now I should send you away.”

Lady Camilla dimpled. “Mayhap, but you shan’t!
You’re as curious as I am, confess it! Yes, and glad that I
did
come here, improper as you may call it, because you dared not come to me!”

“Wretched child!” Reluctantly, Jess laughed. “What am I to do with you?”

Seriously Milly contemplated the matter. “I think,” she responded judiciously, “that you should offer me some tea.” Jess could not fail to comply with such a pretty request. She rang for her servant.

As Mme. Joliffe conferred with that worthy, Lady Camilla gazed curiously about the morning room. It was very elegant, she supposed, although tapestries and floral carpets and heart-backed chairs were not to her own taste. Her bright gaze moved from the long-case clock to her hostess. Though Mme. Joliffe did not look like a madwoman who went about kicking clocks, it was best to be prepared. Lady Camilla had not ventured forth without so doing. She surreptitiously opened her reticule and extracted a long hatpin. This item she planned to insert not into her plumed French bonnet but, should the occasion warrant, into her hostess.

Having dispatched her servant, Jessabelle turned back to her guest. What a lovely little creature Lady Camilla was, she thought, contrasting Milly’s stylish bonnet and walking dress of white French muslin striped with color to her own outdated garments and plainly coiffed head. Scant wonder Vidal cared for his fiancée; what man in possession of his senses would not?

“You are staring at me,” remarked Milly. “Why is that? I know I should not have made so bold as to burst in on you like this; but I am accustomed to having my own way and I especially wished to meet Pennymount’s first countess so that I might discover what mistakes I must not make. It is very well for Dolph to say I need only be careful not to elope, but Dolph is without much experience in such things—as you must know, having asked him to
kiss
you!” Her lovely nose wrinkled. “I know I should not ask—I would not wish to seem vulgarly inquisitive—but whatever possessed you to do that?”

Not even briefly was Mme. Joliffe tempted to explain that she had invited the Honorable Adolphus to embrace her in a keen spirit of revenge. However, Lady Camilla obviously awaited some manner of response, Jessabelle did not think Milly would be easily sidetracked. “Was your papa very angry?” she countered lamely. It was an inquiry not entirely free of guilt.

“Angry!” Milly tittered. “I should say he is. Adolphus received a rare trimming on your account. When I left Dolph he was promising to put paid to his life and trying to decide the least painful means by which it might be done. Pray do not look so worried, Jessabelle! Dolph won’t go through with it! He’s too much of a milksop. Besides, I pointed out he would wish to wind up his affairs neatly first, and that is clearly impossible. Not only is Dolph’s business always in a tangle, but there’s no tidy way to skewer oneself on a rapier, or to blow out one’s brains!”

“Lady Camilla, I do not understand you,” Jess said frankly. “Surely you wish to persuade me that I don’t
want to marry your brother!”

Milly looked confounded. “Do I? Why?”

“I am a divorced female,” Jess pointed out, as her servant arrived with a tea tray. She paused while refreshments were laid out. “I have neither dowry nor good name.”

Having decided that Mme. Joliffe was not on the verge of violence, and requiring both hands to deal with her refreshment, Lady Camilla jammed her hatpin into the seat of her chair. “Piffle! I don’t care for such stuff! Although I confess that at first I didn’t think it would
do!
But now that I have met you, I think it may be the perfect thing; Dolph needs a firm hand on the reins! Dashed if I didn’t do both of you a good turn when I convinced Dolph he’s in the petticoat line! Oh, I do not expect you to thank me!” she added, as Jessabelle started, and came perilously close to overturning her teacup. “No matter how much I would like to have you as a sister-in-law, my papa is mad as fire. He was even less pleased to learn you were Pennymount’s first countess than when he just thought you were Dolph’s ladybird. I am curious to learn how you think you may bring Papa about! He will try and make you very uncomfortable, I think.”

“Don’t trouble yourself on that account! I’ve been uncomfortable for years,” Mme. Joliffe responded with a rueful smile.

Poor thing! thought Lady Camilla, but did not voice the thought aloud, lest she wound her hostess’s pride. Nor did she opine that Mme. Joliffe might contrive to be more comfortable could she but overcome her addiction to the cards and dice. “It is Pennymount who’s made you so,” she sympathized. “Never have I known anyone so disobliging! Sometimes I think he delights in acting contrary, not that I should care to tell him so!”

With no little fascination, Jessabelle regarded her guest. “I should think not!” she said.

“Naturally,” Lady Camilla added serenely, “I shall take measures to see that he mends his ways once the knot is tied—in point of fact, I am surprised that you did not! Perhaps that was why he divorced you! For my part, while it is well enough to be betrothed to someone who looks at one like a thundercloud, it would quite spoil my digestion to be
glowered
at each morning over the breakfast cups. How surprised you look, Jessabelle! But you
of all people must know that Pennymount is high in the instep—what Adolphus would call stiff-rumped!”

“Indeed.” Mme. Joliffe’s voice was strained. “I have said for years that Vidal is the most trying creature in existence, and certainly I should know, for I have born the brunt of his bad temper! But it never occurred to me that I might change him, you see.” And now that it
did
occur to her that the irascible Lord Pennymount might by his second countess be rendered gentle as a lamb, the thought did not appeal.

Lady Camilla was frowning. “I cannot help but think Pennymount has behaved very scaly to you, Jessabelle, even if you
did
elope with another gentleman! That he should cut up so very stiff surprises me, I confess; not that I wish to hurt your feelings, but I’d begun to think Dolph was
right
in saying Pennymount was a cold fish. Mayhap you may help me decide whether his behavior is caused by indifference or ardor held in check.”

“Ardor held in check?” echoed Jess. Such heroic measures did not sound like her ex-spouse. Recalling their last encounter, during which neither of them exhibited the least degree of self-restraint, she flushed.

Lady Camilla did not comment on her hostess’s rosy cheeks, although she was surprised that a divorced lady should prove so prim. “We may speak frankly, surely?” she chided gently. “Because I’ll be hanged if I let a few silly scruples stand in the way of my learning how
not to
be divorced! Truly I appreciate the delicacy of your position, and I do not mean to be plaguing you about your elopement—but I wish very much to discover whether I must dread Pennymount making a Jack-pudding of himself by all of a sudden engaging in romantical high flights!”

Jessabelle was even more intrigued by this clue into the nature of his lordship’s courtship of Camilla. “You do not,” she cautiously ventured, “seem to approve of romance.”

“Approve of it?” Lady Camilla set down her teacup. “Such stuff is very well in its place, which
isn’t
marriage, in my book. And so I told Pennymount when he popped the question, and I must say he had been very good about not doting on me.” Her amusement vanished. “So very good I have begun to wonder if perhaps he is altogether indifferent!”

Privately Jessabelle had begun to wonder the same thing, and what significance such a discovery would have to her own schemes of revenge. “He isn’t,” Lady Camilla added thoughtfully, “indifferent to
you,
at any rate! I know that for a fact because he told me so himself. And that is something else I mean to change: Pennymount must not continue to go about laying violent hands on you, Jess.”

In the perverse way of her species, no sooner was Mme. Joliffe promised relief from persecution than she experienced regret. Her existence would be very dreary, she realized, if unenlivened by visions of Lord Pennymount stretched out upon the rack, or being scalded by boiling oil. “There seems to be very little about Vidal that you
do
like!” she observed.

Lady Camilla looked contemplative. “I will like being a countess very well!” she allowed, at length. “And I will especially like refurbishing Pennymount Place in the Egyptian style. As for Pennymount himself, I daresay we shall go on well enough once he is made to realize that it is very tiresome for a sunny-tempered person like myself to be forever enduring trimmings and turn-ups. Not that I
shall
endure them! Pennymount will soon discover that it shan’t accomplish him anything to get on his high ropes. I do not like quarreling!”

What Jessabelle saw was that her irritable ex-husband was doomed to unabated frustration by a countess who would not grant him opportunity to vent his temper. Almost Jess pitied him. Almost, but not quite. “Don’t you
wish
to help me avoid the divorce court?” Lady Camilla plaintively inquired.

Mme. Joliffe didn’t know what she wished, whether Lord Pennymount would be made more miserable by aborting his engagement or by insuring that the prospective nuptials went smoothly off. “I doubt you need fear Vidal will divorce you,” she temporized. “Once was doubtless enough. Moreover, my experience can hardly be of benefit to you, for we are exact opposites that if one of us suits Pennymount, then the other must not.”

Oddly, this reassurance did not especially gratify Milly. Truth be told, her usual good spirits had grown increasingly more difficult to sustain as her wedding day grew near. She supposed she must be suffering from the trepidation common to damsels anticipating their wedding night. That trepidation, too, was odd. Milly had never suffered a moment’s apprehension in all her life.

Thinking that her caller labored under a certain confusion of ideas, Jessabelle lifted the teapot. Her own thoughts were in no less chaotic state. Following her last encounter with Lord Pennymount, Jess had wasted many moments in futile contemplation of the quality of embrace bestowed by her ex-husband on his fiancée. Now it evolved that if his lordship
did
embrace Lady Camilla, it was in a manner that the young lady considered humdrum. Nor did Milly seem to cherish any warm feelings toward her affianced bridegroom, nor expect that he should exhibit warmth toward her. Jessabelle decided she must learn more before determining how best to put a spoke in Vidal’s wheel. With a notion of drawing Milly out, she inquired more closely into that young lady’s plans for the refurbishment of Pennymount Place.