Maggie MacKeever (10 page)

Lord Roxbury, in turn, did not appreciate this frankness, and said so. How, he wondered, had he ever been so lunatic as to become embroiled with a creature so conscienceless— and short-sighted—as Adorée Blissington? That sentiment, too, he made known.

But Lady Bliss, who though frivolous, was not unkind, was already deep in remorse. “It’s not true, one word of it!” she sobbed into her handkerchief. “I spoke out of pique! Miss Lennox is not at all plain. There is something about her—why, Innis even goes so far as to call her a nonpareil!”

Shannon, by this fulsome praise, was not soothed.
“Innis?”
he repeated ominously. Lady Bliss regarded his brooding expression, and the fingers that dug painfully into her arm. “Ouch!” said she.

Extracting information from Adorée Blissington, reflected Lord Roxbury, was no less anguish-filled than the drawing of teeth. “You’ll tell the truth now,” he remarked, and waited. Silently, Lady Bliss contemplated her handkerchief. “I await your pleasure, Adorée!”

“If my pleasure meant anything to you,” retorted Lady Bliss, who could not let this patent taradiddle pass unchallenged, “you would not be upbraiding me! I’m sure I don’t know how I was to prevent her from seeing Cristin. What would you have had me do? Deny her entrance?”

“Cristin.” The viscount’s fingers relaxed their grim hold, and Lady Bliss sighed with relief. “Your niece?”

“At least,” replied Adorée, following her own train of thought again, this time to the effect that young Lord Peverell was positively haunting her house, despite the promises made his cousin to the contrary, and in the process increasing his indebtedness to Innis, “I have managed to keep
her
out of the gaming rooms.”

“The gaming rooms!” Lord Roxbury, who had grieviously misinterpreted this last remark, looked dumbfounded. “You don’t mean to tell me Jynx has taken to
play?”

Of course Lady Bliss meant to tell the viscount no such thing, and she tried to explain, but the viscount was not listening. “So that was what she meant!” he exclaimed, recalling his fiancée’s pointed questions about unpaid debts. “Oh, my poor darling! No wonder she is so fretful! And I had attributed it all to the infernal Eulalia. Tell me, Adorée, I entreat you, is it serious?”

Lady Bliss was prey to conflicting emotions. Obviously Lord Roxbury nourished a degree of affection for his betrothed, and she did not wish to interfere with his romance. On the other hand, she could not be the means by which her brother’s hopes were dashed. Yet Innis planned to deliberately wrest Miss Lennox from the arms of her unwary betrothed, and it was hardly fair that the viscount—who after all
had
been generous—should be at such disadvantage. “Damned serious,” she said gloomily.

“Then I must see Jynx out of her difficulties. How great is the sum?”

Such forbearance was very nice in the viscount, decided Lady Bliss, but it posed her further difficulties. “I do not know. Innis—” And then she bit her tongue.

Shannon recalled, unhappily, the allure that Innis Ashley held for the ladies. He also recalled Miss Lennox’s remark that he resembled, in disapproving moments, her Aunt Eulalia. And then he cursed the day that Miss Lennox had got caught up with Lady Bliss and her rake-helly crew.

Lady Bliss had engaged in her own cogitations, to good effect, despite her unfamiliarity with the exercise. “Shannon,” she pointed out cautiously, “I do not think you should tell Miss Lennox what you’ve learned. She will be cruelly embarrassed, and is likely to blame it all on you.”

“You’re right,” agreed Lord Roxbury, with no little surprise. “Not that Jynx would be embarrassed, but my interference would put her all out of patience with me.” And, he added silently, as he recalled the two baronets, three earls, royal duke and the unhappy marquess, his position was not so firm, despite the encouraging advances made the night before, that he dared hazard Miss Lennox’s displeasure. “Adorée, I think I may see a way out of this, but you must help me.”

“
I
help you?” echoed Lady Bliss. “I don’t know how you think I may help you when I myself am in the suds! And don’t tell me to rid myself of Innis and close the gaming rooms, because for one thing Innis wouldn’t go! And if I did close the gaming rooms I would be no better off, because I can tell a Greek or a Captain Sharp, and I can deal for a faro bank, but I can do absolutely nothing else and have no other way to bring in money!”

Lord Roxbury was in no frame of mind to listen further to such woes. Nonetheless, he was a well-bred Englishman of rank, and this lady had whiled away with him some pleasant hours indeed, and furthermore he required her assistance. “Help me,” he interrupted, “and I will in turn help you.” She stared at him, arrested in midspeech. “I will pay off the most pressing of your creditors, Adorée. Make me up a list.”

“Shannon!” So relieved was Lady Bliss to be rid of this problem that she flung herself again into his arms and wept. Lord Roxbury, who was singularly unstirred by tears that fell as easily as spring rain, waited with resignation for the storm to pass. Jynx had a penchant for the cards? It seemed he had much to learn about Miss Lennox.

No less did Innis Ashley, and he looked forward with pleasure to educating himself. With equal pleasure he observed his silly sister sobbing in the arms of the generous viscount. “A truly moving scene,” Innis drawled from the doorway.

Chapter Eight

Lord Roxbury had been prudent indeed not to wager on his fiancée’s continued ignorance of his association with Lady Bliss, as he had been wise in viewing Eulalia Wimple as an adder in his path. Eulalia had a veritable bladderful of poison, and she meant to disgorge it in such a fashion that it could not miss its target.

This evening found the Lennox family at a musical party held by the great Whig hostess Lady Holland. It was a small gathering of about one thousand persons, and among them were many illustrious members of the
haul ton.
Concerts at Holland House were fine entertainments where only the greatest talent in the metropolis was engaged.

Nonetheless, Miss Lennox was not enjoying herself to any great degree. This was no fault of Catalini, who had been lured away from the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket to enliven Lady Holland’s fête, but to the insidious voice of Eulalia Wimple in her ear. “Look at our hostess!” hissed Eulalia, who was once more embarked upon her favorite theme. “She was originally Lady Webster before she ran off with Baron Holland—married, I believe, at sixteen. And then there are the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and their ‘dearest Bess.’“

“All three of whom,” retorted Miss Lennox, under cover of Catalini’s rather piercing voice, “live together in the utmost amity. What
is
the point of all this, Aunt Eulalia?”

Eulalia smoothed the velvet skirts of her gown—which was mouse-colored, turned up with scarlet and richly embroidered with silver, and leaned closer still. “I have confirmed certain disturbing rumors that have recently reached me, and I do not think you should be kept longer in ignorance.”

Jynx hoped fervently that those rumors had not concerned her own sudden interests in gambling and low life. She turned her head to look at her aunt. Eulalia’s air was nothing short of triumphant. “What rumors are these?”

“Child, I am sorry to tell you this, but you have been misled.” If Eulalia harbored any such regret, it was not apparent to the eye. “I am not one to discount the advantages of a title, but there are limits to how far one should go to become a ladyship. In short, dear Jessamyn, I fear that Lord Roxbury is no better than one of the wicked, if not the greatest blackguard alive! Those who consider him an unexceptionable young man have been gravely deceived.”

Such comments might have been—in truth,
had
been— expressly designed to pierce Jynx’s equanimity. Still, she did not react as Eulalia might have wished—with curiosity, or embarrassment, or dismay. Instead, Miss Lennox’s haughty nose quivered with outrage. “Fudge!” said she, in tones so firm that they called to her the attention of Prince Paul Esterhazy, Austrian Ambassador to the Court of St. James, who smiled benevolently.

“Mind your tongue!” hissed Eulalia. “You may not mind making a spectacle of yourself, but I do!” Jynx refrained from commenting upon which of the pair of them was behaving outrageously, and Eulalia continued more calmly. “I see I must be frank. Very well! I do not scruple to tell you that your precious viscount—with whom you have been behaving in the most imprudent manner!—has been
most
friendly with a certain lady for years.” She paused in anticipation of mortification and piqued vanity.

But Miss Lennox was totally free of the sin of vanity, and she had—owing to her most unpaternal sire’s open propensities—more than a passing acquaintance with the habits of unmarried gentlemen. She remarked only that, in light of the way in which women fawned upon Lord Roxbury, it would have been a great deal more remarkable if he hadn’t availed himself of such companionship.

“Lud, if you ain’t a green-head!” It was Eulalia’s voice that, this time, caused heads to turn. She lowered it, hastily. “I suppose you won’t mind that your husband’s fond of women, although tied up, and that he neglects you for highflyers? For I must tell you, miss, that he ain’t given up his little ‘companion,’ for all he’s betrothed to you!”

“I don’t see,” retorted Miss Lennox, unenthusiastically, “why you must tell me anything of the sort, especially when I don’t wish to hear it. Ah, here comes Percy. I am promised to go into dinner with him.”

Eulalia did not concede defeat so easily. She held her niece immobile with a hand on the skirt of her gown. “Then ask Peverell,” she retorted, “about Roxbury’s association with Adorée Blissington! And ask him, too, how Roxbury occupied himself during the two hours he spent at Blissington House today!” That would make Jessamyn sit up and take notice! Eulalia rose and swept magnificently away.

“Lady Bliss?” Jynx echoed blankly. This novel notion explained a great many things, such as that aborted encounter in Hyde Park, and Cristin’s knowledge of the viscount, and even Percy’s odd behavior. But that gentleman— resplendent in evening attire, to which he’d added a waistcoat done up in a broad stripe of salmon and cramoise—had reached her side. “Dinner, Jynx,” he prompted. “Deuced if you don’t look knocked up! What’s plaguing you?”

Miss Lennox took his arm, and in her eye there was a purposeful gleam. “Lady Bliss,” she explained succinctly.

Lord Peverell might have been, as his doting family claimed, a trifle wanting in the cock-loft; but he was not so addlepated that he failed to realize the extreme impropriety— and furthermore grave danger—of a discussion of Lady Bliss. “Pooh!” he said, as he led Jynx into a separate room where had been set up a long table with the most delicate and choice refreshments of every kind. “There ain’t nothing
bad
in her running a gambling den. Among ladies of fashion it used to be the thing.”

“Not for the past thirteen years!” It must be remembered that Miss Lennox was the daughter of a magistrate. “Not since Lady Buckingham was relieved of the box containing the cash of the faro bank, despite the precautions of blunderbuss and pistols, and her croupier was charged with being proprietor of the box. I was not talking about gambling, Percy.”

“Good,” said Lord Peverell, morosely. “I don’t mind telling you that a discussion of gambling would ruin my appetite. Damned if I see how I ever got so deep in debt!”

Miss Lennox might have explained that matter to him, so uncharitable was her mood, had not fate—in the form of their fellow guests—intervened. Dinner was served up in a buffet style by servants, uniformed in white gowns and aprons, who stood on the other side of the table; and the crush was considerable. Nor did such enforced intimacy lend itself to a discussion of private matters. Jynx listened absently to the chatter all around her, and thus learned that Lady Oxford had recovered from the blood vessel she’d burst upon learning of a meeting between Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb; and that the poet Shelley had written a work entitled
Vindication of Natural Diet
which traced man’s evil impulses, and most wars, to a meat diet; and that Madame de Stael, who allegedly considered herself as free as a man to sample romance, had been denounced on the floor of the Convention for conducting a monarchist conspiracy under cover of cuckolding her husband, and had consequently been exiled by Napoleon from France.

“My accounts,” remarked Lord Peverell, as he seated himself—with particular care to the lead weights sewn into the hem of his coat to insure that it hung immaculate and creaseless—at one of the small tables placed about the room for the convenience of the diners, “are of the most desponding cast. What do you mean to do about it, Jynx? You said you’d help us out.”

“I
,” retorted Miss Lennox, with her fork suspended in midair, “ said nothing of the sort. Give me one good reason, Percy, why I should help you.”

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” Lest he erupt into indignation, Lord Peverell took a very large gulp of a very potent champagne punch. “What about Cristin, eh? You’d let her uncle marry her off to that curst rum touch, Eleazar Hyde?”

Jynx, a good trencherwoman, saw nothing in this dire pronouncement to interfere with her enjoyment of her meal. “I have no influence with the Ashleys,” she replied calmly. “You’d do much better to apply to Shannon. No doubt he would be willing to present your case to Lady Bliss.”

Unfortunately, the champagne punch had flown straight to Percy’s brain. “A precious lot of good that would do!” he uttered irritably. “Adorée Bliss won’t fly against her brother, and Shannon has no influence there. The truth of the matter is that Shannon can’t abide Innis Ashley.”

Miss Lennox had recourse to her own punch glass. “Can he not?” she repeated thoughtfully.

“No, and I don’t wonder at it! Adorée may be content with a pretty bauble now and again, but her brother won’t leave off dipping into a man’s moneybags. That affair’s cost Shannon a pretty penny, I can tell—” And at this point he was rendered abruptly sober by the look in his companion’s eye. “The devil fly away with you, Jynx! It’d be bellows to mend with me if Shannon knew I’d told you.”