The Wicked Marquess (27 page)

Lady Cecilia was wearing a superb strand of sapphires and a semi-transparent gown. A man’s mistress, Miranda reflected, would not need beg to be seduced.

She could not bear to think of Benedict touching this woman as he had touched her. Yet he had gone to Launceston, and Miranda could not help but fear he had done precisely that. “I’m told that Lord Wexton is your father. You have my condolences,” she said.

“Rather you should make your condolences to him. Wexton finds me a sore trial. And I believe that I must make you my congratulations.” Ceci arched an elegant eyebrow. “Is there something you would like to say to me, perhaps?”

Had Benedict confided in this woman? Miranda wanted to box her perfect ears. “There are any number of things I would like to say to you. Propriety demands that I must not. And now, if you will excuse me—”

Lady Cecilia raised a perfectly arched eyebrow. “I will not get to dagger-drawing with you, Miss Russell. It would make Baird cross. Although I suppose I shouldn’t care for that. He has broken off with me, you see.”

Benedict had broken off with his mistress? Miranda could not help but speculate whether any seducing had been involved.

“You will not make a scene!” hissed Odette, at her shoulder. “‘Twould have made even greater gossip had we not invited the jade. Beside, Phineas’s spirits needed raising up. Ah, there is Benedict at last. He’ll ask you to dance, and you will do so prettily, which will give our guests an opportunity to stare.”

* * * *

Lord Baird had not been deliberately avoiding his great hall. He had gotten caught up in conversation with his groom concerning the recent odd behavior of his horse. As a result, Jem was keeping a sharp eye on the stables, though Benedict considered it unlikely that their villain, if there was a villain, would try the same trick twice. Speaking of villains, there was Phineas, acting positively peppery. Good God, where had Ceci got that shocking dress?

A servant hovered at his elbow. He took a glass from the man’s tray. The crowd shifted, and Benedict realized with whom Ceci had been speaking. He hoped Miranda hadn’t asked for further enlightenment about the amorous arts.

Where would the minx waylay him next? Perhaps he would find her in his bed. Benedict couldn’t imagine anything he might like more than to find Miranda in his bed. But he was not truly wicked, and therefore he would lock his door.

His were not the only eyes on her. Miss Russell needed wear no near-naked dress to draw attention to herself.

Another servant paused by him, offered another glass of punch. Benedict swallowed it in a single gulp. The beverage had a strangely bitter taste. He hoped Colum, or Miranda, had not decided to physic the guests.

A strange sensation swept over him. Perspiration broke out on his brow. Before his blurring vision, the wall tapestries sprang to life.

Surely he had not drunk so much?

His knees began to buckle. Benedict grabbed at a rosewood cabinet in an attempt to break his fall. Gleaming wood rose to greet him. Expensive china shattered on the floor.

Chapter Thirty-four

Tensions ran high at the Abbey, where Lord Baird lay so pale and still. Hastily summoned physicians made ominous predictions and shook their heads. One medico advised administering a purgative to the patient; another, applying a plaster to his chest. A third insisted his lordship should be bled seven ounces to relieve the overflow of sharp and corrupted biliary humours; and in case that did not serve requested an autopsy be performed to ascertain the causes and antecedents of his disease.

The fourth doctor protested that talk of deranged organs was pointless. The facts of the case could most properly be determined by consulting the planets and drawing up a horoscope. An argument then broke out among the learned gentlemen as to the veracity of Giovanni’s Morgagni’s
The Seat and Cause of Disease Investigated by Anatomy
, wherein the author stated the futility of seeking the cause of disease among the various humors, because diseases were not generally imbalances of an entire patient, but specific derangements of particular structures in the body instead.

“Demned if I ain’t about to become deranged as result of all your foolishness!” interjected Lady Darby. The learned gentlemen surveyed her with varying degrees of indignation and shock. This abundance of doctors in the neighborhood was due to the impending prizefight. Odette hoped the bruisers would have no need of medical assistance from these charlatans. She banished the lot of them.

By means of similar plain speaking, Lady Darby rid the abbey of the remaining party guests. Some were reluctant to leave lest they miss some new excitement. Others exhibited genuine dismay. Percy Pettigrew drew away a shocked Lady Cecilia without uttering a single caustic comment.

No sooner were the doctors banished, and the last guest sent home, than almost every other resident of the neighborhood came asking about his lordship’s health, and if there had been any improvement in his condition, and whether there was any further information regarding the nature of his malaise. Odette stationed the butler at the front door with instructions to tell the busybodies whatever was required to ensure no member of the household was further disturbed.

She stood by Benedict’s bedside, recalling another nephew, another bedside vigil. Odette reached out an unsteady hand and smoothed the hair back off his forehead. “You shan’t turn up your toes before me, boy!” she said grimly, and dispatched the footman waiting outside in the hallway to fetch Colum to her. There might be no competent medical men in the vicinity, but she would not give up hope yet.

Colum arrived within moments, rumpled, as if roused hastily from his bed. With him was Miranda, who still wore her party dress. She cast a quick glance at the figure lying so still and silent on the bed.

The girl was white as chalk. Odette hadn’t the heart to send her away. She left Colum to his business and withdrew to her own chamber, there to fortify herself with French Cream and mutter a prayer.

Chimlin was stretched out to his full length and taking up a great deal of the bed. Odette reached a hand out to stroke the cat, and faltered. The diamond collar no longer hung around Chimlin’s neck.

* * * *

Colum inspected the marquess from his head to his toes. He did not scold when Miranda moved closer to assist. Benedict’s flesh was clammy to her touch, his pulse alarmingly slow.

Gently, Colum peeled back one eyelid. The marquess’s pupil was so dilated that his iris was a narrow band of green.

He had been poisoned. But with what?

The antidote to one toxin might exacerbate another. A consultation, a discussion, and Colum set about preparing an Electuary of Mithridate. The formulation was complex and the components diverse, including among other items myrrh and frankincense and treacle, oil of nutmeg and opium and Macedonian parsley seeds, Celtic spikenard and the tops of St. John’s wort and the bellies of skinks, all dissolved in Malaga wine, with clarified honey added to make the vile concoction more easily go down.

The patient was raised into a sitting position. The remedy was administered, somewhat forcibly. Bedcovers were piled atop him and the fire built up until the room was stifling hot. Perspiring more than a little bit themselves, Miranda and Colum sat back to wait.

Miranda stared at the motionless figure. She was seeing a great deal of Sinbad naked, but not in the manner she required.

She glanced at Colum. “You must have been acquainted with Lord Baird’s first wife.”

“Lady Elizabeth?” Colum’s attention remained fixed on the bed. “She was a flighty piece. All bashfulness and pretty manners and sweet as sugar plums until the master’s back was turned, and then—”

At this most interesting of moments, he recalled his place and refused to say more.

Had Colum disliked Elizabeth? Lady Elizabeth, that was. Miranda was so much
not
a lady that she wanted to curl up beside Lord Baird in his bed.

Time passed. The occupants of the abbey busied themselves as best they could. Jem huddled in the kitchen with little Mary and the cook, convinced that none of this would have happened had he not stayed in the stables as instructed, which said a great deal about orders being obeyed. Sir Kenrick, who was of neither a religious nor philosophic bent, distracted both himself and Nonie by taking her to inspect the abbey’s Tudor drain work, and educating her about London’s early sewers. With the assistance of both Lord Chalmondly and Chimlin, Meggs undertook a thorough search of Lady Darby’s bedchamber. The  missing diamond collar was nowhere to be found.

At last the marquess began to perspire profusely, to the relief of his nurses, who were by this time themselves fairly drenched in sweat. Colum forced another posset upon his master, and for good measure wrapped his head in a hot cloth. Further details will be withheld for sake of his lordship’s dignity, save to say that when an unfriendly substance has been taken into the body, the best remedy is to get it out. This particular remedy expelled wind, cured melancholy, and drove away serpents and other venomous creatures as well.

After what seemed an eternity, the crisis passed. Lord Baird fell into a natural sleep. Colum went to check on Lady Darby, whose own health was far from robust.

Miranda sank down on the edge of the bed. Slumber was said to rob people of encroaching age and care. Asleep, Benedict might seem younger and less wicked, but he remained temptation incarnate. Miranda tucked the sheet under his chin, less in an attempt to keep him snug and warm than to spare herself the distraction of his magnificently naked chest.

She had almost lost him. Had he as many mistresses as Pope Alexander VI, were he as virtuous as a Puritan, Miranda did not want to lose Benedict.

But she must lose him, mustn’t she? Miranda pondered how she might contrive to disappear from his life while repairing his reputation at the same time. After this seduction business was accomplished — and she was all the more determined now that it
would
be accomplished — she would hide away somewhere and become a star-crossed lover, like Romeo and Juliet. Or like Tristram and Yseult, for this was Cornwall, after all, where Tristram had wooed the wife of his uncle, King Mark, at Tintagel, only to be parted from her, and die without her, upon learning of which she had committed suicide, and the two of them had been buried together in the end. Or like Triphine, wife of a previous King Mark, who discovered in his castle crypt six stone coffins, one empty and five full, whereupon the ghosts of the deceased revealed themselves as her husband’s previous wives, murdered each in turn by poison, strangulation, fire, battery, and quartering. Understandably, Triphine had fled. King Mark had found her hiding in a bramble bush, and promptly cut off her head. But then her head was miraculously restored to her body, and she became a saint, and gave birth to a son. Years later, riding in the forest, King Mark came upon and decapitated that son. The boy, however, picked up his head and followed his father to the castle, whereupon the castle walls crumbled and fell upon the king, crushing him to death.

Danger-fraught, these interactions between the sexes. But Benedict had no murdered wives waiting to waylay Miranda in a crypt. Instead he had Miranda trying to waylay him. As well as Lady Cecilia.

Had Benedict anticipated that his mistress would follow him to Cornwall? Had he refrained from kissing Miranda because he was saving his kisses for someone else? Lady Cecilia had said he ended their relationship. Miranda wondered what that meant. If it mean anything at all.

The troubadour poets had begged their ladies not to grant them sexual favors. They believed that unquenched passions improved a person’s character and made better warriors out of knights. Of the opposite opinion had been one Dr. Martin Luther, who claimed that since celibacy had been invented by the Devil, priests should be able to marry; and who claimed furthermore than he had broken wind in the Devil’s face and told him to lick his nether parts. Add to this the Puritans’ view on the matter, and elephants and weasels, and Miranda could only conclude that a great many people had not known what they were talking about.

She hoped Lady Darby was not among them. Since her patient was resting comfortably enough, Miranda settled in to divert herself with
The Thousand and One Nights.
She read for a time of Sinbad and the Mountain of the Zughb, an ape-like folk with black faces and yellow eyes, who stood a mere four spans high.

The tale did not long hold her interest. Miranda put aside her book and gazed at the bed. Lord Baird had been felled every bit as effectively as if he had been struck a successful blow by The Cornish Bruiser or The Black.

Chapter Thirty-five

Bare-knuckle boxing had been declared illegal in 1750, after the Duke of Cumberland heavily backed Jack Broughton against Jack Slack, and the wrong man won. Prohibition did little to decrease the popularity of the sport. Matches generally took place a good distance from London, the venues changed at the last minute so that local authorities could less readily interfere. In the instance of The Cornish Bruiser and The Black, such precautions had been unnecessary. The local authorities were enthusiastically at ringside.

Illegal or not, bare-knuckle fighting – along with gambling and whoring – was one of the pleasures of the age. Strong feelings existed both for and against the sport. Proponents claimed that boxing provided the best way of quelling the natural wrath that men felt toward one another. Opponents insisted that boxing matches inclined men toward anarchy, and as proof pointed out the disorderly crowds. True, all ranks of society rubbed shoulders at ringside, from the noble patrons who arranged the prizefights to the thugs who fixed matches and worse.  All the same, to make comparison with France during the Revolution may have been to overstate the case.

This particular prizefight was to take place on a hilltop some distance from Launceston. The day was fine and sunny. Not a dark cloud marred the sky. More than five thousand people, along with their gigs and curricles and carts, were packed in a circle around a roped-off ring eight foot square. Pickpockets and straw-heeled damsels and petty criminals worked their way through the crowd, as did vendors of various substances, and an occasional goat or chicken curious to discover what the hubbub was about. The noise level grew louder and louder as the hour drew near. Only the goats and chickens were not placing wagers on the outcome of the bout.