Maggie MacKeever (17 page)

“
We
weren’t!” Jess replied sweetly. “You were! If I may give you a gentle hint, Vidal, you no longer have the right to dictate to me.”

Reluctantly, he smiled. “Odiously high-handed, am I? Then tell me so! You weren’t used to be mealy-mouthed. The truth is that I’m concerned for you, Jess.”

Jessabelle responded warily, and with a skeptical glance. “Rather you fear you’ve been out-jockeyed! It will accomplish you nothing, Vidal, to try and turn me up sweet.”

“Tongue-valiant as ever you were!” retorted his lordship. “I would expect no less. If you persevere in this wrong-headedness, Jess, your entire acquaintance will cut you dead.”

“Those few who did not do so when you divorced me?” Scornfully, Jess’s lip curled. “Let us be frank with one another, Vidal. I know that you are in a very underhanded manner trying to persuade me to depart the metropolis so as not to embarrass you and your new wife. And I tell you it will not serve.”

Condemned so unjustly—what Lord Pennymount currently wanted of his first countess was not her departure from London, and had nothing whatsoever to do with his affianced bride—the earlquite naturally took offense. “Devil take it! What maggot have you taken into your head now?”

“There is no point in continuing this conversation,” Mme. Joliffe responded icily. “You and I will never agree on anything, Vidal. Stop this curricle immediately, pray!”

No gentleman would set a lady down unattended in the midst of London in the middle of the day—no gentleman, that is, who was not feeling grievously misused. Promptly Lord Pennymount obeyed, lest he succumb to the impulse to deal altogether differently with her. Never was Jessabelle more inflammatory than when she set herself at odds with him.

Never would the earl tell his first countess how much he still wanted her. No consideration of the young lady to whom he was presently betrothed inspired his forbearance, or for that matter even occurred to his lordship. Vidal cringed at thought of how Jessabelle would laugh at him, did she but know how quickly he’d tumbled for her bait.

She descended from the curricle, stood clutching her parcel below him in the street. “Understand this!” decreed Lord Pennymount, all attempts at affability abandoned. “I will not permit you to marry that blasted jackanapes!” Before Jessabelle could answer, the curricle clattered away, leaving her infuriated, and considerably begrimed.

Chapter Sixteen

“Mon Dieu!”
murmured Capitaine Chançard. “And then what did you do,
ma chère?”

Mme. Joliffe glanced around the tall and lofty saloon, at the gamblers flocked around the E.O. stand and the tables of green cloth: but there was no one present on whom she might fairly vent her wrath. It galled her to recall Lord Pennymount’s high-handedness—and even worse, her own warm feelings—and she wished that she’d done a great deal worse to him than leave her teeth marks upon his wrist. “After he said he wouldn’t permit me to marry Adolphus?” she murmured, absently. “I went straightaway to Gunther’s and bought an apricot tart. I promise you, Michon, that Pennymount will discover I am
not
to be dictated to!”

An odd expression sat on the charming countenance of Capitaine Chançard, partly speculative and partially triumphant and wholly amused. “Pennymount has several surprises in store, I think,” he responded softly. “Ah, I believe I see your fiancé.”

“My what?” echoed Mme. Joliffe, bewildered. Then she, too, espied the Honorable Adolphus, who had slunk in the most furtive of manners into the salon, and who was trying to efface himself by the tomb-inspired fireplace. His attempts to render himself invisible did not serve. Clad in a bright yellow coat and green inexpressibles, gathered up into a wasp’s waist, horizontally striped waistcoat and frilled shirt and starched cravat, spotless gloves and wonderfully made shiny boots; glancing nervously over his shoulder and fidgeting like a cat on hot bricks, the Honorable Dolph looked like an agitated daffodil.

Belatedly Jess received the full impact of Michon’s words.
“What
surprises has Vidal in store, pray?”

Capitaine Chançard smiled. “If I told you that, ‘twould be no longer a surprise,
chèrie.
You have a certain loyalty to your ex-husband, I think. Duty calls me. We will continue our conversation another time.” Before Jessabelle could protest, he had moved away.

Thoughtfully she watched his progress. Unless she gravely misjudged the unscrupulous Capitaine Chançard, something was in the wind. Whatever Michon’s scheme, it concerned Lord Pennymount, she guessed. But what surprises could an émigré Frenchman have to offer that most contentious of English peers? Her gaze then fell upon the Honorable Adolphus, cowering by the fireplace; and she recalled that she was supposed to be betrothed to him. She recalled also Lord Pennymount’s decree that she would not marry Dolph. Immediately she stepped forward.

Without any appreciable lightening of mood, the Honorable Adolphus watched her approach. Indeed he granted scant attention to that approach, aside from noting that Jessabelle clutched a parcel, and appeared queerly begrimed. At the current moment the least of Dolph’s problems was this fiancée he had so inexplicably acquired. His case had grown so desperate that he expected at any moment to be set upon by bailiffs and rendered from limb to limb, his flesh and blood the only coin his creditors would accept in lieu of monies due.

Mme. Joliffe having come to a stop in front of him, Dolph felt he should make some comment. “Ho!” he said.

Ho? echoed Jess, silently. No wonder Vidal thought she was playing a May-game. “Hello, Adolphus. You are in high bloom today. What are you fidgeting
about?”

The Honorable Dolph craned his head to gaze nervously upon the newcomers who had appeared in the doorway that led into the salon. They were too fashionably clad to be bailiffs, he decided, and expelled his pent-up breath. “You’d be on the fidgets too, were you in my shoes!” It occurred to him that she very well might be. “Addicted to play—
you
know how it is! And now I can’t raise the wind. I tell you, I am very seriously considering blowing out my brains!”

Jessabelle squelched a very unkind impulse to tell the Honorable Adolphus that one could not thus eject what one didn’t possess. Instead she put forth her usual arguments concerning the less permanent nature of prudent flight. As might have been expected of him, Adolphus immediately misunderstood. “That’s well enough for
you.”
he gloomily replied. “Daresay you’d
like the Continent very well. Thing is, I wouldn’t! I mean—White’s! Brook’s! Watier’s! Hazard and piquet and macao!” He recalled that he had somehow gotten betrothed to the lady who was eyeing him with so very queer an expression. “You!”

She must not add ridicule to her sins against this young cawker, Jessabelle sternly cautioned herself, and toward that end bit down on her tongue.

That grimace, Adolphus also noticed. Had he said something untoward? “That is, hope you won’t
mind
flying to the Continent—if we’re to be leg-shackled, it ain’t fitting that I should leave you behind.” Adolphus then cleared his throat. “You said you could bring the old gentleman about. Dashed if I know
how—
but I surely wish you would!”

Jessabelle recalled making some foolish statement to that effect, among various others; she had, she decided, made a large number of foolish statements of late. “All in good time!” she responded vaguely.

During his fiancée’s hesitation, Adolphus had recalled that he was a man of the world. Worldly gentlemen, he decided, would not allow themselves to be so easily put off. “That won’t fadge!” he therefore said sternly. “Maybe you don’t mind that the old gentleman refuses to haul my coals out of the River Tick, but
I
do! Being rolled up is a very awkward business. You wouldn’t wish to be hounded by your creditors, I’ll wager—no, nor have people following you through the streets!”

If only Pennymount had not forbidden her to marry the Honorable Adolphus, Jessabelle would have immediately cried off. Under the present circumstances, however, she could not, lest Vidal be given the wholly erroneous impression that she was trying to please him. Thought of Vidal reminded Jess all too clearly of their recent encounter. If only, when the opportunity had been granted her, she had enacted harsher reprisals than merely boxing his ears.

There was in Mme. Joliffe’s begrimed demeanor a quality that put her companion very forcibly in mind of violence unleashed. “Don’t rip up at me!” he hastily admonished. “Dashed if I meant anything by it!”

Feeling more than ever guilty about involving this muddle-headed sacrificial lamb in her May-game, Jessabelle clutched her parcel to her bosom and strove for patience. “I am not angry with you, Adolphus,” she explained.

“I say, I’m deuced glad to hear that.” Adolphus relaxed sufficiently to lounge against the tomb-inspired fireplace. “Thing is, I ain’t fond of violence. I mean,
I
shouldn’t wish to be bit, like you did Pennymount—not that I’m saying you
shouldn’t
have!” he added hastily, when she scowled. “I’ll wager any number of people would have liked to bite Pennymount if only they’d dared! And you had every right to, being as you was married to him. What queers me is why anyone should
want
to marry him—but there it is! You did, and so does my sister, and I’ll be hanged if I can understand why anyone should wish to be tied up with someone who’s so stiff-rumped!”

“Pennymount is not stiff-rumped!” Jess retorted, surprising Adolphus no more than herself.

“Dashed if I understand you!” Adolphus abandoned regard of his fiancée’s begrimed countenance for contemplation of the doorway. “Thought you didn’t like
Pennymount!”

“Like
him?” Jess echoed, honestly incensed.
“Like
the man who has just accused me of exhibiting symptoms of the utmost lunacy? I do not scruple to tell you, Adolphus, that I would not be displeased to see Pennymount nibbled to death by ducks!”

Disturbed by this further evidence of the bloodthirsty nature of the female he had somehow become betrothed to wed, Adolphus trod warily. “Lunacy?” he echoed. “By Jove!”

“Exactly! Moreover, he accused me of making a cake of myself by openly intriguing with frippery fellows and loose screws.”

That Lord Pennymount should adjudge him a loose screw did not surprise Adolphus, who all his life had heard himself referred to by those terms and worse; but who was the frippery fellow also alluded to? An affianced fellow, thought Adolphus, should concern himself with such things. He expressed this point of view.

“Do try not to be such a simpleton!” Jessabelle snapped. “Michon, of course!”

“Me a simpleton!” echoed the Honorable Dolph, cheeks pink with outrage. “Then what does that make
you?
You said marriage to me would suit you right down to the ground! Heard you myself! And there’s no use hinting I was a trifle bosky or anything of that nature because I
wasn’t!”

Jessabelle forced herself to relax her grip on her parcel, lest her rigid fingers pierce the paper and strew expensive imported tea all over the floor. “It was Michon whom Vidal referred to as a frippery fellow,” she repeated. “And I did not mean to insult you, Adolphus.”

By this grudging apology, which was a great deal more than Adolphus usually received from the people who insulted him, that young man was appeased. Too, he had recalled the
on-dits
that until recently had circulated about Mme. Joliffe and Capitaine Chançard. In short, Michon had been generally considered Jessabelle’s inamorato. But now Jessabelle was betrothed to Adolphus. Ergo, Dolph had cut out the dashing Capitaine Chançard.

Clearly Adolphus was much more a man of the world than he had heretofore realized. Handsomely he offered to call out Lord Pennymount.

“Call him out?” Jessabelle repeated absently; she was pondering what else, during their recent confrontation, Lord Pennymount had said. Odiously highhanded he definitely was—but concerned? About
her?

“Yes, call him out.” Which of the pair of them was acting like a looby, thought Dolph, was open to doubt. “Demand satisfaction! Issue a challenge! You know, pistols for two and breakfast for one! Dash it, the fellow insulted you, m’dear.”

“Good God, Adolphus!” So startled was Jessabelle by the notion that someone should wish to defend her honor that she almost dropped her parcel. “You can’t do that!”

“Don’t see why not!” Pleased to be the focus of his fiancée’s attention, the Honorable Dolph hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat and gently swaggered. “Insulted you, didn’t he? I won’t have people insulting you, m’dear. It ain’t fitting. By the bye, have I told you today that you’re a deuced good-looking female?”

Dolph’s compliment somehow saddened Jess, putting her in mind of Pennymount Place refurbished in the Egyptian style, and its quarrelsome owner rendered gentle as a lamb. “Thank you!” she said quietly. “You are very good to wish to ac in my defense. But you cannot fight a duel with your own brother-in-law, Adolphus.”

“He ain’t my brother-in-law yet!” Dolph was greatly taken with a vision of himself returning triumphant from the field of battle. He would not mortally wound his opponent, he decided, merely teach him to be a little less starched-up.

Into these roseate reflections Mme. Joliffe inserted herself. “Pennymount,” she explained gently, “is a crack shot.”

“Oh!” said the Honorable Adolphus, who was not.

With this exchange of pleasantries, conversation briefly ceased. During the silence, both parties thereto pondered unpleasant fates, Mme. Joliffe Lord Penny-mount’s, and the Honorable Adolphus his own. “About the old gentleman,” he offered cautiously. “I don’t wish to sound pessimistic, m’dear, but I’ll be hanged if I can figure how you mean to bring him about!”

Hereby roused from a particularly satisfying vision of Lord Pennymount staked out upon some hot exotic sands and being devoured alive by even more exotic insects, Mme. Joliffe regarded her companion, and was smitten with a pang of guilt. No more than she did the Honorable Dolph wish to be betrothed, but he had risen gallantly to the occasion. “Adolphus, I owe you an apology. I’m afraid I have added to your difficulties.”