Maggie MacKeever (15 page)

What Dominic witnessed was a lady embarked upon histrionics of an appalling degree, and he had no more patience with such high flights than with their perpetrator. That opinion, also, he made known.

“If you aren’t the most aggravating man!” Lady Peverell abandoned her swooning posture sufficiently to glare. “I suppose next you will tell me that you consider it perfectly acceptable that Percy has taken to—to philandering!”

“Has he?” For the first time during their conversation, Lord Erland exhibited faint signs of interest.

“Oh, Nicky, he has!” wailed Lady Peverell. “And I don’t know what to do about it! He is dancing attendance on a
most
unsuitable female, and you can well imagine the anxieties that constantly prey on my mind. Dear cousin, you must help me put an end to it!”

“Must I?” Lord Erland was unenthusiastic. “Why? It’s high time the boy made his acquaintance with the petticoat line. Past time, really, since he’s four-and-twenty.” His smile was wicked. “Why,
I
was but——”

“Never mind!” Lady Peverell said hastily. “The world knows your opinion of women, and that you grew disenchanted at an early age. But for you to encourage Percy in such behavior is both cruel and unnatural. He is so
impressionable,
and that creature will encourage him in every sort of excess!”

“You’ve seen her?” Lord Erland helped himself once more to snuff.

“I’ve not only seen her, I’ve spoken with the jade!” Lady Peverell’s indignation lent color to her cheeks. “Nicky, you simply cannot permit Percy to persist in this folly. Heaven only knows what will come of my foolish boy if he continues along this path.”

“Fustian!” remarked Lord Erland. “What do you expect me to do about it, Tansy? I’m no longer Percy’s guardian, and he would highly resent any hints dropped by me. And so he should! It would be a great piece of impertinence for me to interfere, and if you’ve any sense you’ll hold your own tongue. If Percy is desirous of mounting a mistress, it’s none but Percy’s affair.”

The color that had briefly suffused Lady Peverell’s cheeks faded with this blunt vulgarity. “If that were all!” she moaned. “Nicky, my bird-brained son has offered marriage to the wench!”

Lord Erland, who having settled this little matter to his own satisfaction, if not to that of his cousin, was preparing to depart, sank back down into his chair. “He
what?”

Her son’s indiscretions were almost made worthwhile, decided Tansy, by the expression on her cousin’s face. Never had she seen the saturnine Lord Erland look so dumbfounded. “I told you it was serious! Oh, she’s turned him down this time, and seems to have no other view but that of fleecing him, but I don’t doubt that if he persists she’ll have him in the end. In fact, I’m sure of it! What other possible reason could she have for turning down ten thousand pounds?”

“Ten
thousand?”
echoed Lord Erland, in the exact tones— though he could not know it—that had been voiced by the subject of this conversation. “I think you’d better start at the beginning, Tansy!”

Lady Peverell did so with gratification, having at last secured her cousin’s full attention, which was not an easily accomplished feat. The tale she related was far from succinct, and highly dramatic, but she presented the truth as she knew it with laudable accuracy.

“One moment!” interrupted Lord Erland, at a particularly emotional point in the tale. “Do you mean to tell me that you’ve set spies on the boy?”

Actually, Lady Peverell had not meant to tell her cousin that, for she knew he would disapprove, but now the fat was in the fire. As was her custom. Lady Peverell promptly sought to shift the blame. “What else was I to do?
You
had abandoned poor Percy, had left him to wander unprotected through the leisures and dissipations of this town. Heavens, Nicky, have you no notions of the pitfalls that await the unwary in London?”

“I fancy,” Lord Erland replied testily, “that I’ve a greater notion of those pitfalls than you, having in my own callow youth tumbled into every one of them. Cut line, Tansy! This maternal solicitude of yours is nothing more than a desire to keep Percy forever in leading strings.”

Lady Peverell ignored this unchivalrous remark. “Surely,” she said sternly, “you don’t mean that Percy should follow in
your
footsteps?” Lord Erland, given the choice of allowing his cousin to continue or quarreling with her, which would doubtless result in her strangulation at his hands, fell silent.  With a distinct air of triumph, Tansy continued her tale.

She had not gone far, however, before Lord Erland was once more driven to speech. “So you called on the creature and offered to buy her off. Sometimes, Tansy, I think you’re as paper-skulled as Percy!”

Lady Peverell stared in outrage at her cousin, and pondered the inequities of a fate that had decreed she should harbor tender emotions for a gentleman who was so blind to her true worth, and found relief in an attack of vapors. Lord Erland regarded her without the least sympathy. Undeterred by his lack of encouragement. Tansy waved her vinaigrette. “I do not know,” she gasped, “how you can be so cruel.”

Lord Erland squelched an unchristian urge to explain. “This is fair and far off!” he said impatiently. “Who
is
this female who’s sent Percy tumbling head-over-heels?”

“Oh, Dominic!” Tansy’s voice was weak. “You will understand my perturbation better when I tell you that Percy has formed an attachment for Adorée Blissington!”

“Lady Bliss?” Once more. Lord Erland looked stunned. “Good God, I didn’t know the boy was so discerning!”

This remark, which might have gratified Lady Bliss no end, plunged as she had been by Lady Peverell’s remarks into a premature contemplation of her own unlovely and unloved old age, had the opposite effect on Tansy. “Sense!” she screeched. “One of faro’s daughters! A family of ne’er-do-well vulgarians!”

“That won’t wash!” the earl retorted crudely. “Our own family has been notorious for centuries for savagery and violence. Come down from the boughs. Tansy! I meant only that Adorée Blissington is a deucedly pretty woman.”

“So she may be!” Lady Peverell’s choler, if truth be told, was inspired not so much by Lord Erland’s callous attitude as by her own jealousy.
Pretty
was a word that Tansy had never before heard on the earl’s lips, and she would have very much preferred, if hear it she must, that it apply to herself. “She is also twice his age!”

Lord Erland, who very well understood his cousin’s sentiments, and deplored them even more, let this rank exaggeration pass. “So she turned down your offer,” he mused. “I wonder why. She can’t seriously mean to marry Percy.”

“What else can she mean to do?” Recalling that she wished to engage her cousin’s efforts in her son’s behalf, and also that her cousin was quite capable of walking out on her if he became either enraged or bored, both of which states afflicted him with unnerving frequency, Tansy refrained from further demonstrations of outrage. “Even I, as Percy’s mother, cannot think she has a true fondness for him. I can only suppose she has an eye to his fortune—although I will admit she didn’t strike me as a
managing
sort of female!”

This remark had the effect of bringing a definite sparkle to Lord Erland’s dark and wintery eye. “I think it safe to assume that,” he said wryly. “From all accounts, Lady Bliss has a positive genius for mismanagement. You made a great error, Tansy, when you offered her money. God only knows, as a result, what maggot the lady will get in her head.”

“Nicky!” Lady Peverell looked aghast. “You don’t mean——”

“I mean you’ve made a rare mull of it!” Lord Erland rose and donned his elegant driving coat. “It would’ve been much better to let the matter take its course.”

“Oh, Nicky, I am very sorry if I’ve made a botch of it, but I didn’t know what else to do!” Tansy was the picture of woe. “I didn’t wish to bother you with my little troubles! You have already done so much for Percy—and for me! Pray do not be angry.”

Lord Erland liked his cousin no better in a fit of contrition than when vaporing, and whatever efforts he had taken on behalf of the Peverells had been inspired by a sense of obligation and a great disgust with Tansy’s dramatic megrims. Though ill-natured and harsh-tempered, however, Lord Erland was not cruel. “I am not angry,” he lied. “Do not take on so, Tansy.”

Lady Peverell’s pale eyelashes fluttered prettily. “You will help me, then?”

Lord Erland’s expression was almost savage. “I have scant choice in the matter. As one of Percy’s trustees, I am duty-bound to see what may be done with him.” With this deflating comment, he tamed on his heel, and was gone.

Tansy sighed disheartenedly, then consoled herself with the reflection that she was not the only lady to unsuccessfully bear the torch for Dominic, and that he had for none of his admirers exhibited the least preference. Indeed, he tended to avoid them like the plague, amusing himself instead with females less demanding and more reckless. It was Dominic’s stated opinion—and how like the aggravating man!—that such creatures were a great deal more congenial than their so-proper counterparts.

Dashing females? Lady Bliss! Tansy sat bolt upright, stricken to the soul by the tardy realization of what she had done.

Chapter Twelve

Lennox Square was crowded with carriages and mettlesome horses and the clatter of iron hoofs and wheels. Coachmen swore mightily at one another as they tried to force their way through the confusion. In turn, and after considerable effort, each drew up to the brightly lit residence of Sir Malcolm Lennox, and the occupants were assisted tenderly in disembarking by liveried servants. Bright streams of light shone from the mansion’s windows, and the music of an orchestra drifted out into the night. Despite Eulalia Wimple’s great efforts to the contrary, the betrothal between her niece and Lord Roxbury continued in effect, and Eulalia had taken what scant consolation was available to her and had harried Sir Malcolm into throwing open his home to the
ton.

The ballroom was a splendid chamber, decorated in a fashion that only Eulalia—and perhaps the regent—could applaud. It was an oriental fantasy, lush with such unforgettable Chinese motifs as pagodas and waterfalls, strange elongated birds and dragons and icicles, japanned furniture and screens. On the walls were scenic papers designed to continue around the whole of the huge room; from the ceiling hung a vast central chandelier featuring silvered dragons and tinted lotus flowers, a misconceived fantasy that Prinny fulsomely admired.

It was the usual assemblage of beauty, splendor, and profuse magnificence. The regent was present, as were the more distinguished and powerful and amusing of his subjects. So crowded were the premises that there was standing room on only the staircase, and at least one young lady had fallen into a faint. It was a shocking crush, all agreed; the most successful ball that this season had yet seen.

Yet not all present were gratified by the triumph, and the most notable of these exceptions was the young lady in whose honor the festivities were being held. Miss Lennox, it was noted, was not her usual lethargically cheerful self. One unkind wit went so far as to whisper that Miss Lennox looked less like a young lady soon to embark upon the pathway to marital bliss than a prisoner en route to the guillotine.

There was good and sufficient reason for Miss Lennox’s distraction—a state that had induced her aunt to dose her with everything from Godbold’s Vegetable Balsam (for Consumption and Asthma) to Velno’s Vegetable Syrup (for All Else)—and that reason was not unrelated to her upcoming nuptials. Miss Lennox had become aware of the loss of her betrothal ring. There had been no opportunity to slip away to Blissington House to retrieve it; Eulalia, having sniffed something in the wind, had been sticking as close as a court plaster to her niece all day. Consequently, Miss Lennox was doing her utmost to avoid her fiancé.

She looked quite lovely in the evening gown of pale pink sarcenet with tiny puff sleeves and a narrow skirt trimmed with double ribbon fluting, with which she wore a small fortune in matched pearls; and she stood out among the women in their elegant variegated dresses, enhanced by sparkling diamonds and waving plumes, like a perfect rose in a cabbage patch. Jynx did not appreciate this fact, nor the viscount’s tall stature. She knew perfectly well that his brooding gaze followed her around the room.

Still, appearances must be kept up. She paused briefly by her father, who was holding forth to Lord Castlereagh on such matters as the upper class, which throve on enhanced rents and paid too small a portion of the war taxes, revenue that was raised largely by duties on consumption, and the effect of which was felt mainly by the poor; she listened to Sir Sydney Smith’s revised vision of heaven and hell, the latter of which consisted of a thousand years of tough mutton, and the former
pâtés de foie gras
eaten to the sound of trumpets, and to his remarks on the regent’s Royal Pavilion at Brighton which, said Sir Sydney, looked as if St. Paul’s had gone to sea and had pups. Then she fell prey to Lord Alvanley, who was once more worrying about his rich uncle, a sickly gentleman who never quite managed to die, an event that Lord Alvanley had anticipated for years, so that he might settle his debts and then enthusiastically accumulate new ones. From Lord Alvanley she was rescued by the celebrated Mr. Brummel, without whose presence no party was a success. Mr. Brummel spent several moments in gently satirical conversation with Miss Lennox and informed her of his inclination, should the regent continue to behave badly, to bring the old king back into fashion. Miss Lennox smiled politely at all these sallies; and responded in her usual slumbrous manner to the flattering attentions presented her; and grew increasingly more depressed.

Meanwhile, Lord Roxbury grimly watched, performed a minuet and a number of country dances in the most completely elegant style, and drank rather more of his host’s excellent claret than was wise. At length, he judged that Miss Lennox had been made to suffer long enough, and made his way to her side. With so little grace was this accomplished, and with such poor success did Miss Lennox mask her strong impulse toward flight, that several persons remarked upon the fact that, since the betrothal of Lord Roxbury and Miss Lennox, the amiability of both seemed to have deteriorated rapidly.