Maggie MacKeever (5 page)

“I don’t know how I can help but listen to them,” he retorted, “when it is you they are always going on about! Devil take it, Jess, this addiction of yours to play must give rise to just the sort of scandal we would both prefer to avoid!”

“I am not addicted to game,” she retorted, “and even if I were, it would hardly be fair for
you
to chide me—unless since our last meeting you have given up your clubs.”

“What nonsense is this?” he asked, honestly perplexed. Lord Pennymount was not of the philosophy that sauce for the gander might also serve the goose. “If you’re not addicted to game, why would the gossips be spreading stories about your frequent presence at an exclusive gaming-hell in King Street?” A possible explanation occurred to him, and he rose abruptly from the desk. “The devil! Is that blasted Frenchman
truly
your inamorato
,
Jess?”

Mme. Joliffe had no intention of discussing with her high-handed ex-husband the more intimate details of her lovelife, or the lack thereof. Even had
she been briefly tempted to divulge the lack of truth in those allegations, confidences are not generally inspired by hands clasped around one’s neck. Lord Pennymount was not throttling his ex-wife, precisely; but his grasp on her shoulders was rough.

“Unhand me this instant, Vidal!” she demanded icily. “Your conduct is disgraceful.”

In comparison with the conduct of his ex-wife, Lord Pennymount reflected, his own behavior was angelic. Therefore he did not release her, but gave her a little shake. So satisfying was that action that he gave her several more. The source of his lordship’s present displeasure is easily explained: by the sudden conviction that Capitaine Chançard was in truth Jessabelle’s inamorato
,
Lord Pennymount was rendered cross as crabs. And by the realization that Jessabelle’s patent wrong-headedness still had the power to anger him, he was even more incensed.

The source of Lord Pennymount’s current outburst of hostility, Mme. Joliffe did not attempt to decipher, being wholly preoccupied with her own response. Oddly, her first impulse was not to box his lordship’s ears, as he certainly deserved, but to smooth back the dark locks that had tumbled forward onto his brow. Perhaps the shaking she was receiving had muddled up her brain. Since Vidal showed no sign of ceasing to manhandle her, Jess turned her head and bit his wrist.

Cursing, Lord Pennymount released her. Glowering, Mme. Joliffe adjusted her chip straw hat. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Vidal?” she inquired.

Lord Pennymount suspected that perhaps he had done so. “There’s no need to make a piece of work of it,” he retorted, nursing his wounded wrist. “I don’t see what cause
you
have to be so cursedly provoked!”

Mme. Joliffe moved away from the window, lest she become so carried away by the violence of her feelings that she shove his lordship straight through it and out into the street. “It is not
I
who am devilish out of humor!” she responded sharply. “I am trying to be civil, but you make it deuced difficult. Do you suppose we might cease exchanging insults long enough for you to tell me why you have come here? Or perhaps you wished to see what effect a carefree life of dissipation— made possible by your so-generous allowance—has made on me!”

Not surprisingly, this ironic utterance increased Lord Pennymount’s wrath. Abruptly, he dispensed with diplomacy and tact, which virtues in any event were not his lordship’s strong point. “I want you to leave London,” he announced.

Whatever she had expected, it was not this; nor that her churlish ex-husband still had the power to deal her a crushing blow. Jess blinked. “Leave London?” she echoed.

Nor had Lord Pennymount anticipated that sight of his dissipated ex-wife’s distress would affect him like a hand clutching at his heart. “Yes!” he snapped, not at all reconciled to the inspiration of his discomfort. “I am about to marry a young lady of breeding, and it would be highly distasteful for all concerned were the two of you to accidentally meet. Which reminds me, Jess: I will not tolerate your renewing your acquaintance with my aunts. They are unworldly old biddies, and cannot be brought to realize that you are not quite the thing.”

Jess had already decided that she must not meet with his lordship’s aunts, for their own sake; now, faced with his lordship’s implacable disapproval, she decided that she must. “You are so certain that I will put my foot wrong!” she marveled. “Considering the very different circles in which we move, I think it most unlikely that I shall encounter your bride.”

Lord Pennymount had no such faith in the benign workings of providence, or in his bride’s good sense. “You will leave London!” he repeated. “As soon as possible. Where you go, I will leave up to you, so long as it is at a large distance. I will arrange for you to receive your allowance there. And of course I will stand the expense.”

Jessabelle looked not at her odious ex-spouse but at her worn and mended gloves, and thought of the little house in Park Lane that she’d purchased with the proceeds of the discreet sale of her jewels. She thought too of her friend Michon, and of the general quality of her existence. If not precisely happy in London, she was a great deal more so than she could be elsewhere. Yet Vidal would for his convenience uproot her without so much as a by-your-leave. Wearing a very contemplative expression, she raised her head.

Once more Lord Pennymount misinterpreted her response. “You have reached a decision. Excellent. Where is it you wish to go?”

Anticipating the immediate deflation of his lordship’s air-dreams, Jessabelle smiled. “Not I, Vidal. You.”

Suspiciously, he scowled. “I? Where am I going, pray?”

“To the devil, and with my blessing!” retorted Jessabelle.

Lord Pennymount grappled with his temper. “Does this mean that you will not oblige me?” he inquired.

“Oblige you!” Jessabelle laughed bitterly. “That is a damned silly question, Vidal!”

Lord Pennymount was a proud gentleman, and one unaccustomed to laughter, especially laughter directed at himself. One way and another, Jessabelle had caused him on countless occasions to be made a laughingstock. For that, he would never forgive her. Nor would he forgive her for catching his appreciative eye in the first place, the beginning link in a chain of disastrous events.

“So be it, then!” he snapped, snatching up his curly-brimmed beaver hat and striding toward the door. “You will live to regret your folly, ma’am!”

Regret it, would she? Perhaps Jess might. Vidal was in a position to make her life exceedingly difficult. But before she was vanquished, she would put up a good fight.      

Lord Pennymount was embarrassed by the presence in London of his ex-wife? Lord Pennymount’s embarrassment had just begun.

Chapter Five

“Good gracious! Mercy! And then what did he say?” Lady Dimity plucked anxiously at her mourning brooch. “I have always known Vidal was prone to be a little hasty
—
Papa was always used to call him a hothead, which struck me as very apt!—but this utterly sinks my spirits. That my nephew offered you violence—My dear, what happened
next?”

With the utmost satisfaction, Jessabelle replied: “I bit him. On the wrist. It was shocking in me, I know.  But Vidal is determined that I will depart London so as not to embarrass his new bride, and I am equally determined that I shall not.”

Here Lady Emmeline proffered comment, in the form of a snort. “Em thinks it unlikely that anything could embarrass Lady Camilla,” Dimity explained, in response to Jess’s startled look. “And so she would tell you herself, except that she is not talking to me—Em, that is, and all because I sought to assure Lady Camilla that you are
not
a Jezebel! Em accused me of letting the cat out of the bag, which I thought very unfeeling, because she knows I am easily cast into the pathetics, and I meant it for the best. But you must not allow me to ramble on like this! What else did my nephew say?”

“He decreed I must not renew my acquaintance with the two of you, because you are too unworldly to understand that I have sunk myself beyond reproach.”

“Stuff!” Lady Emmeline said crossly. “We aren’t so unworldly as that.”

“Oh, no!” agreed Lady Dimity, vastly cheered by her twin’s indication of imminent thaw. “No daughter of our papa’s could be! I distinctly recall when he excommunicated Charley Littledyke for refusing to repent of his shameful assault on Mrs. Pearpoint. Papa’s lack of religious conviction in no way interfered with his overall supervision of parish responsibilities, or at least not so very much!” She looked wistful, and sighed. “He was especially successful as a fund raiser for charitable institutions. Do you recall the tithe dinners, Em? They were like village feasts! There were races in the vicarage field and bazaars in the vicarage gardens—”

“—where two of the prettiest girls in the village had a kissing stall under the cherry tree!” interrupted Lady Emmeline. “How I could forget those dinners, I do not know:
we
did all the work! Nor do I know what tithe dinners have to do with the present case.”

“That is because you have no imagination,” explained her twin. “If you did, you would see that Charley Littledyke is very much like our dear Jess—not that she has assaulted anyone, or at least not without provocation, though I don’t think she should have
bit
Vidal, even if the Bible does say an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! I do not mean that Jess had been excommunicated, of course, merely that she has come down in the world! And just as Charley reinstated himself in Papa’s good graces, so may she—not with Papa, naturally, but with everyone else!”

Jessabelle glanced at Lady Dimity, who was looking flushed and excited. Beside her, Lady Emmeline gazed grimly heavenward, as if willing her Reverend papa to manifest himself and bid the more garrulous of his offspring to hold her tongue.
“How
did, er, Charley reinstate himself?” Jess cautiously inquired.

“Why, by helping Papa to excavate that Anglo-Saxon cemetery he discovered on the cemetery grounds!” Dimmy beamed. “It was vastly exciting! They found male skeletons wearing necklaces of amber and brass, and a female buried beside a clay spindle—not that I mean you should go about excavating ancient cemeteries, dear Jess! Indeed it would be thought very odd in you, and I daresay Vidal wouldn’t like it above half. Still, there must be
some
way to reconcile him to you.”

“But I don’t want to be reconciled with Vidal,” protested Jessabelle, a feral glint in her brown eye. “In point of fact, I bade him to the devil, which was no more than he deserved after accusing me of gaming away my allowance, and other such shabby stuff. I beg you, do not press me on this head! Between Vidal and myself there are differences that can never be reconciled.”

Lady Dimity looked very sad. “But I thought—”

“Dimmy!” interrupted her sister. “Do cut line!”

This conversation was taking place in Exeter ‘Change, located on the north side of the Strand. In the lower of the portion of the ‘Change, numerous shops gave the appearance of a large bazaar. Thus far the ladies had inspected the wares of a dealer in hardware. Now their combined attention was caught by a display of fabrics, and several moments passed in discussion of the relative merits of damask-figured sarcenet at six shillings, and cambric muslins at one and eight the yard, and twilled ditto at four and six. Lady Dimity was impressed by a color called “London dust” and Jessabelle by “the flame of Mount Vesuvius”. Lady Emmeline was partial to neither, and it would have made no difference if she were, since they all three could not afford to purchase any of the above.

Since Lady Emmeline aired this sentiment, her companion’s enthusiasm palled. Jessabelle dropped a copy of the
Journal des Modes,
in which were illustrated the models of the incomparable Leroy, as abruptly as if it had been a hot brick. “We have strayed from the subject, I fear,” said Em, with a pointed glance at her twin. “Vidal forbade you to see us. That was what decided you to do so, I collect.”

“Sister!” protested Lady Dimity, little hands fluttering in distress. “How can you speak so to dear Jess? And after all these years! My dear, you must not pay any mind to Em’s plain-speaking. What she
meant
is that it is prodigious good of you to see us!”

“I am very glad to see you both again,” Jess said gently. “I shall always be grateful to you for offering me your friendship when Vidal cast me off.”

“Cast you off!” echoed Lady Dimity, forcibly stricken by this dramatic turn of speech. “Oh! Such a sad business that was.”

“Cast me off,” Jessabelle repeated firmly, “like a worn-out old shoe, into the street with scarcely a penny to my name. Not that I fault him for it, or bear him a grudge! I’m sure I wish that Vidal may be very happy with his new bride.”

Lady Emmeline was sure that Jessabelle wished nothing of the sort. She was equally certain that Jessabelle would not welcome a reminder that vengeance was more properly the Lord’s work. “And it was not at all good of me to see you,” concluded Jess. “It would have been far kinder had I not, and I wouldn’t have except that Vidal said I mustn’t, as you have guessed. And it is only fair to tell you that it is my ambition to put Vidal’s nose out of joint.”

“It is?” Lady Dimity clasped her hands to her plump breast. “Oh, I
knew
he had left an arrow planted in your heart! Poor, poor Jess!”

Did Lady Dimity imagine her wasting away from unrequited love? The sentiments Jess cherished toward Lord Pennymount were not so gentle. “Not an arrow planted in my heart, but a thorn in my side. What was it you meant earlier, when you said you’d let the cat out of the bag?”

“Oh,
that!”
Under her sister’s fulminating glance, Dimmy squirmed. “Nothing, I do assure you! A mere figure of speech!”

But Jessabelle had an excellent memory, which she now employed. “Why should you need to reassure anyone that I am not one of the frail and the fair?”

Lady Dimity looked confused. “Because you are not, my dear! Of that I am certain, having met a few. One could not help be aware that Papa had dealings with such unfortunate females, try as he did to keep us well wrapped in lamb’s wool. Oh, not
that
kind of dealings!” she added, as her sister made a strangling noise. “He was only interested in the salvation of their souls, and to that I always held firm, no matter what the villagers whispered! Which excellently proves what I was saying about the present incumbent, because no one ever whispers anything about him!”