Maggie MacKeever (19 page)

“You are cold!” Capitaine Chançard placed his arm again around her shoulders and drew her close. “I think it would be prudent, Lady Camilla, to depart this place.”

Milly reached up and pulled off her loo mask. “Moonshine!” she retorted, marveling at the discovery of how snugly her head fit into the little hollow where her escort’s shoulder was fitted to his arm. “If you
truly
doted on me, you would not be in such a hurry to leave me. I think you must be a palaverer, sir.”

“Ma petite.”
His fingers were cool against her cheek. “I am an adventurer, a rogue. Once I was a man of some position, but I left all that behind when I fled France. Now I operate a gaming-hell and live off young fools such as your brother. Your papa would say very correctly that you should not be here with one such as me.”

Never had Milly heard a more affecting speech. So she remarked, into the comfortable little hollow between the rogue’s shoulder and his arm. Furthermore, she added, for her papa’s opinion on this matter she didn’t give a fig.

The muscles in the arm encircling her shoulders clenched. “Do you not understand what I am saying to you?” persevered Capitaine Chançard. “I set out deliberately to whet your interest. You are a very wealthy young woman,
ma petite.”

So intrigued was Lady Camilla by this statement that she sat bolt upright. “You are on the dangle for a fortune, then? But I am betrothed to Pennymount. And I don’t mean to put you in a tweak, but even if I
weren’t
betrothed, I don’t think Papa would consider you a suitable candidate for my hand.”

Plain-speaking did not daunt Capitaine Chançard. With his hands he framed the enchanting little face that was turned in puzzlement to him. “There are other ways to go about marrying an heiress,” he said softly. “You are alone with me at Vauxhall. No one would heed your cries.
Voilà!
In but moments you could be ruined.”

“Lud!” Lady Camilla’s cheeks were flushed. “Would you do
that?”

“
I should like nothing better.” Michon released her. “But I am not that much a rogue.”

In receipt of this intimation of just how much the dashing Capitaine Chançard admired her, Lady Camilla wriggled her toes. Definitely she had been wrong about her opinion of romance.
How
wrong, she had yet to discover. That discovery, she was anxious to make. She resumed her previous comfortable position against her companion’s shoulder and nestled closer still.

“Vixen!” he remarked. “Have you heard a word I’ve said?”

“Every one of them!” Lady Camilla turned up her face. “And now, Michon, if you should not object, I would like you to kiss me.”

“Kiss
you?” The magnificence of this latest bounty bestowed upon him by beneficent Dame Fortune caused Capitaine Chançard to at last lose his habitual sangfroid. “Lady Camilla, I have just finished telling you I have connived at your ruin!”

“Fudge! You cannot both dote on me and scheme to ruin me, sir!” Milly caught hold of his lapel and tugged. Michon knew when the odds were against him. He complied. So excellently did he acquit himself that no sooner was he finished kissing Lady Camilla the first time than she immediately requested he do it again.

After several moments passed in this pleasant fashion, Capitaine Chançard abruptly rose, lifting Milly with him off the bench. Firmly he set her away from him. “That is enough of that, my girl!” he said, in a voice that was almost grim. Swiftly he set off back along the path. Hastily Milly adjusted her loo mask and trotted after him.

They arrived at the tower just in time to see the beginning of the fireworks display—the burning of Moscow, complete with gunfire, rockets that shot straight up into the air and exploded with a dreadful roar, voices of lamentation that issued from the flames. To this stirring panorama, neither paid heed, not even when the walls gave way and a very scantily clad maiden escaped the destruction down a rope hung at a dizzying height. That enterprising damsel earned not a single appreciative glance from either Lady Camilla or her escort, one of whom pondered the rout of Dame Fortune by Cupid’s arrows, and the other of whom contemplated the impalement of the entire opposite sex on her trusty hatpin.

Chapter Eighteen

The next day saw Mme. Joliffe grimly approach Pennymount Place, her intention to pay a great disservice to her good friend Michon. Her sentiments, upon approaching the brooding mansion, were complex. Well did she recall the black and white timbering and brick facing, the high narrow gables and mullioned windows. Nor was she herself unknown to the servant who answered the door. Lord Pennymount was not in, the servant advised her, with mingled relief and regret. But Lord Pennymount’s aunts were in the Long Gallery.

Thither Jessabelle wended her way, without escort; she needed no one to guide her through what had once been her home. Lady Camilla wished to befoul these polished floors and paneled rooms and stained glass windows with Egyptian artifacts? It verged on sacrilege.

As promised, the Ladies Dimity and Emmeline were present in the narrow multi-windowed Long Gallery, settled in ancient panel-back chairs and working on their embroideries, cats disposed about their persons and at their feet. Dimmy was first to see Jessabelle hovering in the doorway like some homeless wraith. Indeed Dimmy at first thought she viewed one of the specters that she had long been convinced haunted this dreary place. Then she realized that the intruder was of far too solid an outline to be fashioned from incorporeal flesh. At this point Lady Emmeline became aware of the fixed manner in which her sister regarded the doorway. She, too, glanced in that direction. “Why, Jess!”

“You are surprised to see me.” Cautiously, looking curiously around her, Jessabelle walked into the room. “No less surprised than I am to be here, I’ll warrant. Never did I imagine to find myself again in Pennymount Place. It is a very queer feeling, I promise you.”

“Oh, my dear!” Dimity could easily understand poor Jessabelle’s feelings upon so momentous an event. “Did you wish to see Vidal? I am so sorry he’s gone out, but it is all for the best. Now we may have a comfortable coze together, and bring each other up to date on recent events. You encountered Vidal in Berry Brothers; and Sir Edward called on us here! Em predicted that any number of interesting developments would result from that announcement of your betrothal in the
Morning Post
and she was obviously correct!”

Somewhat relieved—yes, and curiously disappointed—by Lord Pennymount’s absence, Jessabelle chose a third panel-back chair. “I don’t
wish
to see Vidal,” she said, to set the record straight, “but I think I must. He told me Sir Edward had called on you.”

“Sir Edward,” remarked Lady Emmeline, “was a trifle out of sorts.”

“Out of sorts!” Lady Dimity tittered. “You have a genius for understatement, Em. Or perhaps you have forgot that Sir Edward believes Jessabelle is dangling after his fortune, and that he called her a brass-faced monkey. Well, my heart may be tender as a chicken but there’s nothing at all wrong with my brain, and I’ve forgotten nothing.” She pursed her lips and gazed on Jess. “All these incestuous betrothals! My dear, how
can
you think you’ll be suited by marriage to a shatterbrain?”

“Don’t you try and talk me out of it!” Jess retorted. “I have already listened to Vidal’s comments on that head.”

“Oh?” Lady Emmeline looked intrigued. “What, pray, had he to say?”

In graphic detail Jessabelle remembered that interview. “Primarily that he’d like to break my neck.”

“Oh, dear! I am sure he did not mean it!” Lady Dimity clicked her tongue. “Doubtless he was a little angry because you had just become betrothed behind his back —Sir Edward expects him to straighten out the business, you know! You cannot blame Vidal for being a
little
angry, Jess, when you go about inviting strange young men to kiss you and persuading them they meant to offer you honorable wedlock.”

Thus made aware of the public knowledge concerning the manner in which her bethrothal had come about, Jess winced. Sometimes she wondered what she could possibly accomplish by this sham engagement.

Lady Emmeline spoke. “I assume you have your reasons, Jessabelle. However, I feel compelled to warn you that Sir Edward is prepared to go to any lengths to see your bethrothal to his son broken off.”

“What sort of gentleman is Sir Edward?” Jessabelle asked, remembering that she must contrive to reconcile the elder Aethelwine to his improvident son.

“My dear, he owns factories!” Lady Dimity fanned herself with her needlework. “It is almost as if Papa guided Sir Edward’s footsteps toward us so that we might help him change his ways. Imagine, he doesn’t
know
if working conditions in his factories are better than most, or worse! When I think—”

“Don’t!” interrupted Lady Emmeline, before her sister could launch into detail about the Factory Act. “Sir Edward seems an irascible sort of gentleman, Jess.”

“Irascible!” echoed Lady Dimity. “I should say he is! Why, he even attacked poor Tom with a rolled-up newspaper, if you can credit such a thing.”

Appalled by such brutality, Jessabelle gazed upon the victim, who—along with Puss and Tab, Grimalkin and Marmalade—had recognized which occupant of the Long Gallery was in sorest need of soothing, and who therefore was along with his cronies disposed about her chair. On either side of Jess snuggled Puss and Tab; in her arms she held Grimalkin; on her shoulder Marmalade perched precariously. The place of honor in her lap, as befit one so recently abused, had been accorded Tom. Aware that he had become the center of attention, that mighty warrior rolled over on his back, extended all four legs heavenward, and purred. “What
I
would like to know,” muttered Lady Emmeline, “is why you kicked your clock, Jessabelle!”

Was her every act reported and embellished upon? “I cannot blame Sir Edward for being angry,” Jess responded, in an effort to distract the aunts from her own bizarre conduct. “He would be even more furious if he knew his daughter had been to visit me.”

As distraction, this ploy worked very well. “Gracious!” Lady Dimity threw up her hands. “This reminds me of the time the curate and the church choir and the organist were
all
on the point of resignation—do you recall, Em? What will happen next, I wonder! Tell us about it, Jess.”

“Yes, do!” harrumphed Em.

“There is not a great deal
to
tell,” protested Jessabelle, whose spirits were sunk so very low that she remained unconsoled even by five energetically purring felines. “Lady Camilla thinks I will do very nicely for her brother, thank you; he needs a firm hand on the reins. Indeed, he must! It was Lady Camilla who convinced him he was in the petticoat line. For the most part, she was concerned with my marriage to Vidal. She doesn’t wish to repeat my errors. I told her she should not have called on me, and she told me she wasn’t going to let a few silly scruples stand in the way of her learning how
not
to be divorced.”

“Oh!” Dimmy cried softly. “Lady Camilla is a good little creature, but the idea of Vidal
married
to her quite wrings my heart!”

Jessabelle discovered that her own heart was not wholly immune to similar affliction, while Em said: “Enough, Dimmy! Continue, Jess.”

“Lady Camilla means to reform Vidal, did you know?” Jess turned her head to avoid Grimalkin’s rough tongue. “She told me she will tame his temper. And I think she may succeed! Vidal has sometimes seemed almost
affable
of late. He must be very fond of Lady Camilla to try so hard to please her.”

Lady Dimity was startled by the erroneous conclusions her dear Jess had reached. She parted her lips preparatory to explaining that in no effort to please Lady Camilla had Vidal strove to control his temper. It was due entirely to her sister’s pinching fingers, applied sharply to the fleshy part of Dimmy’s upper arm, that she said “Ouch!” instead.

“I beg your pardon?” Jessabelle roused from morbid speculation upon Lord Pennymount disarmed.

“When Vidal encountered you in Berry Brothers,” interrupted Lady Emmeline, “what had he to say?”

At least the gossip-mongers had not overheard their conversation, thought Jess, grimacing as Grimalkin shifted positions so as to better bathe her cheek. “He accused me of dangling after Aethelwine’s fortune. As well as openly intriguing with all and sundry. Furthermore I am acting like a Bedlamite.”

“Oh!” wailed Lady Dimity. “It utterly sinks my spirits to think Vidal could be so
unkind!
You need not glower at me, Em! Even you
must admit that it was excessively uncivil of Vidal to speak so harshly to Jess.” She frowned. “But I thought you said he was almost affable.”

“He was,” responded Jessabelle, ironically. “He said that he was concerned for me—right after he said it was none of his concern if I made an exhibition of myself! He even admitted he is odiously high-handed. And in the next breath announced he wouldn’t permit me to marry Adolphus.”

Lady Dimity looked doubtful. Perhaps, she ventured, it was Lord Pennymount himself who had run lunatic.

“Stuff!” Lady Emmeline was stem. “Vidal doesn’t go about kicking clocks, sister—no, or biting people on the wrist. I conclude that our nephew aggravated you beyond bearing in both instances, Jess.”

It was time to come to the point. “There is something I must tell you,” Jessabelle said grimly. “About Vidal.”

“Oh!” Lady Dimity struggled to recall the precepts of her late Reverend papa regarding the unpleasant afterlife reserved for prattle-bags. A fondness for gossip was such a
little
vice, she consoled herself. If one just listened and didn’t repeat tittle-tattle, what harm was done? “Do you think you should?”

Jessabelle looked determined. “Of course I should—I
must!
Much as I would like to see Vidal put to torture, I cannot connive at doing him so great a disservice. Do not misunderstand: I wish I could! It is no more than he deserves. But Lady Camilla does
not
deserve to fall into the clutches of a fortune hunter—or if not a fortune hunter precisely, a gentleman who is not likely to whistle a fortune down the wind!”