Maggie MacKeever (36 page)

“Inflict?” repeated Adorée. “Privacy? Nicky, you are an idiot!”

“I am,” announced the earl, who was intent on baring his own soul, “a devilish disagreeable man with a very surly disposition.”

“Pooh!” With her gray eyes half-closed, and her long lashes dark against her cheek, Lady Bliss looked impossibly coy. “Since you don’t mind that I am a goose-cap, for me to mind that you are a trifle truculent would be shockingly ungrateful! And whatever may be said of me, no one can claim that I behave ungratefully! Or they may
claim
so, but it would be untrue!” The earl gave a great crack of laughter. “Beside, I love you with utter abandonment, Nicky!” And then she proceeded to demonstrate, in the most delightful way possible, that she did.

“Well!” said the earl gruffly, some time later.
“
That’s settled, then. I confess I am relieved—”

But Lord Erland was not, at that particular moment, to confess the reason for his relief. Adorée, in sitting up, espied the opera cloak; and the opera cloak recalled to her the imminent arrests of Innis and Percy and Cristin, and her own inescapable involvement with Bow Street. Again her scruples rose to taunt her, demanding that she acquaint Lord Erland with that part of the tale, even if it resulted in the eternal ruination of her own happiness. Scruples could ask too much of a woman, she decided, and she bludgeoned them to death.

Lord Erland had watched the expressions that flitted across her lovely face. “What is it, Adorée?”

“This house! I must leave it at once! Oh, Nicky, please humor me.”

The earl professed himself quite willing to humor her in all things, but pointed out that since he had already dealt with the bailiffs, she had no need for such haste. He also pointed out that he was quite comfortable.

As was Lady Bliss, and she admitted as much when she emerged again for breath. “But I cannot be happy here!” she pleaded. “Think, Nicky, how romantic it would be to flee. I have always wished to do so, and never have. You will say there is no need for it, but there
is,
and I beg that you will not ask me to explain!”

And so it came about that Lord Erland, that august and ill-tempered member of Parliament, set out on a midnight jaunt with the scandalous Adorée Blissington.

Chapter Twenty-nine

Miss Lennox was deposited by her sorely beset fiancé in Lennox Square, where she acquainted her equally beset father with the details of their expedition, though not of the small matter of a Bow Street Runner left trussed up like a chicken in a St. Giles alleyway. Sir Malcolm was neither pleased with his daughter’s initiative nor impressed with her abilities; in fact, he said, it was his opinion that she’d only contributed further to the mess. First it had been only the Ashleys that were involved, though that was bad enough; now to the list of persons who could not except by an act of divine intervention escape suspicion of complicity in the crimes were added Lord Peverell, Lord Roxbury and herself. In addition, did Lord Erland present himself as Jynx had suggested at Blissington House, he would be drawn into the thing, which would result in scandal of an awesome degree.

Jynx interrupted, at this point, to inquire why, if Blissington House was known to be the center of illegal activities, Bow Street had thus far refrained from storming its walls. Sir Malcolm explained that this restraint was the brilliant brainchild of one William Brown, the very clever Runner who was assigned to the Ashley case. William Brown waited for the return of Innis Ashley, and then he would close the net. Blissington House was under very sharp surveillance indeed.

“Yet you sent us there?” Miss Lennox’s eye held a distinctly feral gleam. “Sometimes, Papa, I think that
you
are addle-brained! It would serve you right if your part in this was revealed.”

Horrified, Sir Malcolm begged his daughter to refrain from even thinking of such a catastrophe. He then preferred his learned opinion that she could best serve the interests of justice by tracking down a certain hackney coach that carried a cargo no less dangerous than the plague. Succinctly, Jynx refused to have anything more to do with stolen merchandise. She was, she said, with or without her father’s consent, going to leave town. This uncompromising attitude won her no praise. Sir Malcolm was muttering wrathfully about thankless offspring, and enlarging upon his own selfless behavior, when she left the study.

All the same, thought Jynx, as she wearily mounted the stair, she had done the best she could for all concerned. Hopefully, Percy and Cristin would set out without mishap for Gretna Green—and who could be sufficiently dead to romance to suspect a couple set on elopement of complicity in theft! Especially a pair as bird-witted as those two? Adorée, if fortune smiled on her, would be safe enough with Lord Erland, unless Bow Street stormed Blissington House and took them both into custody. That was very unlikely, Jynx decided. Not only was William Brown currently incapable of organizing such a raid, she doubted that even that bold little man would dare implicate so powerful a figure as Lord Erland in this tawdry little charade.

And tawdry it was, she decided, as she opened her bedroom door. The whole proceeding had been poorly planned, and ramshackly executed, and exhausting to a most distasteful degree. Miss Lennox concluded that she had no taste for adventuring. Or, she added, as she thought of Innis, for adventurers. Still, she wondered where he was, and how he could possibly avoid the numerous traps that had been set for him. It was difficult to imagine the insouciant Innis in captivity.

Jynx had, in her cogitations, allowed one player in this farce to escape her mind. That omission, as she glanced blankly around her room, was speedily repaired. She looked upon the elegant comer basin stand, which had a pleasing serpentine front with a tambour shutter, and a small cistern with a tap, and wished that she might splash some of the dirt from her hands and cheeks; she gazed upon her bed, which appeared like a sofa with a fixed canopy over it, the curtains looped back prettily, and pillows tossed carelessly about, and wished even more fervently that she might have a few hours’ sleep. She could do neither; she was not alone in the room. “I should have expected it, I guess,” Jynx said wearily. “From all appearances, you must have climbed the  tree.”

“So I did.” Eleazar Hyde was distinctly the worse for wear, his clothing torn and grass-stained. “I told you once before that you shouldn’t try and poke your fingers in my pie.”

Miss Lennox regarded those digits, which were extremely grubby, and thought irrelevantly that any pastry thus abused must be condemned as unfit to eat. “What do you want of me?”

Eleazar studied her. Her chestnut hair was in a dreadful tangle; her hazel eyes were huge in her pale drawn face. Even in this sorry state. Miss Lennox had an unmistakable air of quality. Eleazar had a great need of a young lady with an unmistakable air of quality, and so he explained. “You may blame yourself for this, you know! I had definite plans for Cristin, but Cristin has loped off and I make no doubt that you’re at fault. There’s nothing for it but a last-minute substitution, and to hope that those who are in a position to mind don’t!”

Jynx was bedraggled and exhausted and weary of the world, but this careless use of a plural pronoun caused a distinct frisson along her spine. “Are you mad?” she said. “You cannot seriously mean to kidnap the daughter of a magistrate!”

“I’ll admit that it’s not what I like, but a man can’t hang twice, and Bow Street is getting much too close on my heels.” Eleazar contemplated the deadly pistol that he held. “As to that, I don’t aim to get my neck cricked at all! Nor do I aim to be nicked and lodged in the Newgate Prison. Come now, Miss Lennox, we must have this little business settled. Out the window, if you please.”

But Jynx did
not
please, and so she said. She crossed her arms beneath her bosom, and jutted out her forceful chin, and further explained that he might as well shoot her on the spot, because rather than endure the depraved fate that he planned for her, she preferred to be dead.

Eleazar Hyde was not accustomed to young ladies who regarded his pistol with as little concern as if it were a bouquet of posies, and he was temporarily at a loss. “That’s a very proper sentiment, but you don’t mean it. I’ll allow it won’t be what you’re accustomed to, but it must be a great deal better than being dead.”

Miss Lennox, after due consideration, could not agree. “Do your worst!” she invited. “I do not intend to budge from this chair. And you might as well put that silly gun away, because you know as well as I do that you have no intention of shooting me.”

Clearly, this chit had no notion of the dangerous nature of the man to whom she spoke. Eleazar proceeded to enlighten her. He was, he said, a very desperate criminal, one who had committed such atrocities as must make any young lady, gently reared or otherwise, swoon. It had been a bad day for Miss Lennox, he let Miss Lennox know, when she had come into the orbit of Eleazar Hyde. Had she let well enough alone, as he had advised her, she might have escaped his wrath. But she had not. She had taken it upon herself to act the part of a spy, and in so doing had sealed her own doom.

“Pish, tush!” remarked Miss Lennox, whose lack of terror was not due to bravery, but to an exhaustion so complete that she was incapable of feeling anything. “You have only your own stupidity to blame for the fix you’re in;
I
didn’t snitch on you. And if Innis didn’t frighten me, you can hardly expect that you will; Innis is a great deal more dangerous than you are.”

Naturally, Eleazar did not care for this comparison. “That shows all you know!” said he. “What if I was to tell you that Innis Ashley is small fry in comparison with myself? That I duped him very successfully?”

In Jynx’s lazy eye was a faint spark of interest. “So you’re a deeper one than I suspected?” she mused. “It’s possible. Definitely, it’s possible. I never did understand how Innis could be sufficiently clever to play any successful crime. You did it all, I conjecture, and cleverly fixed things so that suspicion would fall on Innis and Adorée. I suppose you must have somehow involved Innis, to insure his complicity. Very crafty, Mr. Hyde.”

Praise at last! With singularly unnerving effect, Eleazar smiled. “And,” added Miss Lennox, before he could speak, “a very unsporting thing to do! No one with a single ounce of proper feeling would take such shocking advantage of two unfortunates like Innis and Adorée. The Ashleys may be blessed with beauty, but they are
not
blessed with intelligence, and only the greatest of blackguards would consider using them as cat’s-paws.”

Eleazar glared. To enter upon an explanation of the criminal mind was not at all what he had intended when he entered, after strenuous effort, this room. “Damn your eyes!” he snarled. “You think if you delay me long enough, someone will come to your rescue. That won’t fadge! If you don’t come with me instantly, I’ll expose the lot of you in a way that won’t be palatable to your feelings. Would you like to see your father in the dock, Miss Lennox? Along with your fine and handsome viscount?”

Jynx did not relish the picture thus conjured, though she suspected it might come into being even without Eleazar’s assistance. “Do your worst,” she said indifferently. “I have told you I do not mean to budge an inch.”

Eleazar had not reckoned on Miss Lennox’s calling his bluff, or remaining so unmoved by his threats that she looked very likely to fall asleep momentarily. He swore, and trod heavily across the room and yanked her from the chair. Jynx kicked him, then uttered a blood-curdling scream. Eleazar tried to silence her, and she bit his hand. He howled and dropped the gun. A fracas ensued.

For all her determination not to be removed, Jynx was inferior in strength. Eleazar had dragged her halfway to the window when the door flew open and a gentleman ran into the room. He took in the situation at a glance, then stopped and retrieved the gun. “Damn you, Ashley!” shouted Eleazar.
“
You won’t take me!” He flung Jynx aside, and lunged. Miss Lennox closed her eyes and covered her ears.

It was an exceedingly short struggle; Innis shot Eleazar in midstride. He then clasped Miss Lennox in his arms. “I don’t suppose,” he murmured, “that you would reconsider? I do have a very great regard for you, my darling, no matter how it may seem.”

“Piffle!” retorted Jynx. “You are incorrigible.”

“What the devil?” inquired Sir Malcolm, from the doorway. A mad dash up the stairs had left him short of breath. “Unhand my daughter, Ashley!”

“You must not scold Innis, Papa,” protested Jynx. “This wretched man was either going to abduct me or make of us all a
cause cèlebre,
he hadn’t quite decided which, when Innis saved the day.”

Sir Malcolm cast an unappreciative eye upon the corpse that bled profusely over the Aubusson rug. The eye narrowed, then widened, and with a muffled exclamation he bent for a closer look. “Too,” Jynx added serenely, “he confessed to me that he was solely responsible for the thefts, as well as the forged note sent round to Tattersall’s.”

“Hah!” Sir Malcolm was in a judicious manner going through the pockets of the dead man. “I’d like to know how you learned about
that.”

“Still,” murmured Innis, into Jynx’s ear, “it was a damned good try. Consider my dreadful forlorn position, my darling, and come away with me!”

“God in heaven!” Sir Malcolm rocked back on his heels. “Ashley, do you realize what you’ve done?”

“I rather thought,” responded Innis, with a raised brow, “that I’d shot Eleazar Hyde.”

“That may be what you called him; we knew him by several other names. Damned if fate isn’t an ironic thing; you’ve been instrumental in the apprehension of a very notorious criminal.” Sir Malcolm studied Innis. “I have to congratulate you, much as it goes against the grain. And I thought I told you to release my daughter!”

“Then,” said Jynx, along with Innis ignoring this request, “since this man, whoever he was, is your culprit, Innis may go free.”

“I wish I might let him.” Sir Malcolm looked very unhappy. “But the best Ashley can do now is surrender himself up as king’s evidence. I told you my hands would be tied once he was arrested.” With a stern expression, he regarded his daughter. “And speaking of hands being tied—”