Maggie MacKeever (7 page)

“Shannon?” queried Cristin, confused.

Miss Lennox did not offer enlightenment. Instead, she took advantage of Lord Peverell’s momentary coherence. “I’ll warrant you’re more than slightly acquainted with that rough diamond,” she remarked. “What was it about your cousin paying your debts?”

“Dash it, Jynx, you know I don’t come into my estate until I’m twenty-five.” Percy was glum. “Dominic and my mother keep me on a curst short string. Why my father left things so tied up I’ll never understand!”

Miss Lennox
did
understand, perfectly, and even spared a commiserative thought for Lord Peverell’s long-suffering family. “Gaming debts, Percy?” she prodded gently. “I credit you tried to catch the smiles of fortune by risking a few pounds you could ill afford to lose?”

“Hah!” Lord Peverell retorted inelegantly. “A few pounds! I’ll be all to pieces, Jynx, if I don’t manage to raise the wind. And don’t tell me to apply again to Dominic, because he’s already told me that if I don’t stop wasting the ready, he’ll see that I’m obliged to knuckle down.” He met her eyes, and read in them censure. “The deuce! You needn’t look at me like
that!
I’m not the first to play beyond his means and find too late that he can’t stay the course!”

“No,” Jynx replied thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you are. But I still think you should tell your cousin that you failed to give him an accurate rendering of your accounts.”

Percy snorted. “And you call
me
paper-skulled!” Miss Lennox preferred no response and he turned with relief to Cristin, and proceeded to enlighten her regarding certain games of chance. Miss Lennox listened without comment to an explanation of macao, a form of
vingt-et-un
which called for no particular skill but a steady nerve, and of E.G., a game of chance in which balls came to rest in niches in a table marked with the letters
E
and 0; but when Percy embarked upon a discussion of the merits of various gentlemen’s clubs, and extolled the virtues of White’s, where one could plunge at hazard and faro, over Watier’s, where macao was the game, she felt called upon to intervene.

“Oh!” Cristin clasped her hands in a worshipful attitude. “You know
so
much, Percy!”

“And
you,”
replied Lord Peverell, who had never in his life been spoken to or of in such admiring terms, “are fine as five-pence, Cristin!”

“Percy!” interrupted Jynx, before she was presented with a further enactment of two hearts stricken by Cupid’s arrows. “Who holds the notes that remain unpaid?” Lord Peverell opened his mouth, flushed, then clamped his lips together firmly. “I thought as much,” said Jynx. “Innis Ashley! Lord, but the man’s a rogue!”

Among the attributes Lord Peverell lacked was an ability to dissimulate. He stared woodenly at the floor. “What do you mean by that?” Cristin bridled, in defense of her uncle. “If Innis is holding Percy’s notes, it must be for a very good reason, and I don’t think it’s very kind of you, Jynx, to infer that my uncle would behave shabbily! Especially when Innis has taken such a marked fancy to you!”

“I suspect,” Jynx retorted wryly, “that your uncle has good reason for everything he does, and that we should be grateful we’re not acquainted with it!” Cristin looked indignant. “Your uncle is a philanderer,” Jynx added bluntly. “Any
tendre
he nourishes is inspired wholly by hopes of gain.”

“Oh no, Jynx!” Cristin protested. “Innis said you’d feel that way, but it’s not true. He even said it utterly sinks his spirits that you’re rich as—as Croesus!—because he fears your wealth will ruin his chances with you.”

“Balderdash!” Miss Lennox uttered rudely, and Lord Peverell was prompted to agree. “Up the garden path!” he hazarded. “Definitely in the petticoat line! Why, Innis Ashley has played fast and loose with half the females in the town!”

“How
dare
you!” In defense of her bold uncle, Cristin leapt feet-first into the fray. “Next you will say that Innis is bound for perdition, and all because he is taken with Jynx, which I’m sure is a thing no one can blame in him, even though Jynx is wanting in dash, and not at all in his style! I think you both are very cruel.” And again she wept.

“There, there! No need to get up on your high ropes!” Lord Peverell wasn’t the least disturbed to discover that the lovely Miss Ashley was so credulous. “Jynx didn’t mean anything by it, you know, and you mustn’t think poorly of her for speaking her mind.” Cristin only cried the harder, and he nobly offered up his waistcoat for further sacrifice. “Tell you what, think of pleasant things—like Almack’s, and the opera, and all that sort of feminine frippery!”

Cristin drew back and stared at him. “Oh,
could
I?” she breathed. “Oh, Percy!”

Lord Peverell was accustomed to young ladies who gazed as awestruck upon him as if he held the keys of heaven in his rather awkward hands. “Don’t see why not!” he stammered. “Jynx will see to it.”

“No, Jynx will not!” announced that lady, in whom these continued histrionics had roused a raging headache. “Can’t you just see me, Percy, presenting to Sally Jersey the niece of Lady Bliss? I swear that the pair of you have windmills in your head!”

Percy did not take kindly to this frank observation. “Dashed if you ain’t the most cold-hearted female in existence!” he protested, as Cristin sobbed copiously into his handkerchief. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Jynx. I’d have said you didn’t care a groat for such things.”

Jynx could not help reflecting upon Lord Peverell’s rather unique opinion of herself, which seemed to include a conviction that she should not cavil at ruining her own credit with the world so that Cristin might be granted a little amusement. “If Cristin wants to go to the opera,” she said merely, “I’m sure her aunt will take her there. Almack’s is out of the question, and you needn’t mind it, Cristin, because the whole thing is very dull.”

“I do mind!” wailed Cristin, with conviction. “And my aunt won’t take me anywhere. She’s only taken me to Hyde Park once, and she won’t even do that again, because Viscount Roxbury was so rude. She says that my connection with her will do me harm, and that if I wish to contract a suitable marriage, I must play least in sight!” She subsided into hiccoughs. “And how I am to do that, when no one even sees me, I’m sure I don’t know, unless I’m expected to marry that nasty old Eleazar Hyde!”

“Never!” ejaculated Lord Peverell. “You’d do much better to marry me!”

“Oh,
may
I?” Magically, Cristin’s tears subsided. She gazed up rapt at her savior’s face. “I should like that a great deal more.”

“Don’t see why we shouldn’t!” responded Percy, equally taken with the idea. “Saints preserve us!” moaned Miss Lennox. Percy turned on her a most unappreciative look. “Now don’t you go moralizing, Jynx! Who I marry is none of your affair.”

True, and Miss Lennox sent thanks to heaven for that fact. She rubbed her throbbing temples. “No, but it is your cousin’s, and what he’d say to this I can well imagine, even if you cannot. You can’t marry without his permission, Percy, until you come of age.”

“We could elope,” offered Cristin, unwilling to see her roseate dream go so quickly up in smoke.

“No, that won’t fadge,” decided Percy, to Jynx’s vast relief. “It ain’t the thing. Beside, if I did that, likely be cut off without a farthing, which I wouldn’t like.”

“Oh,” Cristin murmured woefully.

Miss Lennox was a good-natured creature, for all she disliked fuss; she was inspired with pity for the two downcast countenances before her; and she thought she saw a way to prohibit this extremely bird-witted pair from doing something rash. “Of course,” she offered slyly, “Percy may do as he pleases when he turns twenty-five, which isn’t very long distant.”

“So it ain’t!” Lord Peverell brightened immediately. “Only three months! That’s the ticket, Cristin. All we have to do is wait till then.”

“And
then
I shall go to Almack’s!” Cristin’s pretty little face was briefly suffused with joy. Then her lips turned downward and her blue eyes brimmed. “Unless I am made to marry someone else in the meanwhile, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my Uncle Innis has something like that in mind.”

“I thought you liked your uncle,” intervened Miss Lennox, in waspish tones. “I’ll be damned if I understand you, Cristin!”

“No, and I do not expect you to,” the young lady replied simply. “Innis says that we Ashleys are a breed apart. And I cannot help think of Innis’s hopeless passion for you, Jynx, and of my aunt’s——”

“Think I should tell you!” Lord Peverell interrupted hastily. “Miss Lennox is betrothed, to Viscount Roxbury!”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Cristin’s hands flew to her mouth. “I’m sure I wish you happy in your approaching nuptials, Jynx, and I see that it is a most eligible connection, though I don’t at all understand why over my uncle you should prefer Viscount Roxbury!”

So Cristin was acquainted with Shannon? That odd fact would also merit future contemplation. “Lord, child, let’s cry friends and have an end to this!” Jynx’s head ached in good earnest now. “Don’t go borrowing trouble. I’m sure that you misjudge your uncle. He will not force you to wed against your wishes.”

“You don’t know Innis.” Cristin was downcast once more. “Aunt Adorée says he can get anyone to do anything.”

Miss Lennox, fatigued beyond bearing by these continual alarums, sighed and pointed out that now Cristin had Lord Peverell to champion her cause. “No, she don’t!” said Percy, also deep in gloom. “You forget that Innis holds my vowels. If I go against him, he’ll call them, and then I’ll really be in the basket.”

“But your fortune,” persevered Jynx, “is such as must be acceptable to him. There,
that’s
solved! Percy, I hesitate to remind you, but your horses have been standing all this while, and I think we should go!”

For someone who had approached Blissington House with the greatest resistance, Lord Peverell exhibited a large reluctance to depart. “It ain’t solved,” he replied, in tones that were positively dire. “Innis needs money, and he ain’t likely to wait for it three months.”

“I’ll be married off to Eleazar Hyde!” offered Cristin, dramatically. “Percy and I will be kept apart forever. Oh, whatever are we to do?”

“Stuff and nonsense!” Jynx said, and briskly rose. “Three months is not so long! I’m sure that something may be contrived.” It seemed a safe enough remark; Jynx doubted that this suddenly formed attachment would last a week. And if it did prove enduring, as Percy had pointed out, it was scarcely her concern.

In that, she erred. Two suddenly hopeful faces turned to her. “Knew you’d help us!” cried Lord Peverell as he grasped and pumped her hand. “There, Cristin, you may trust to Jynx to see all’s settled tidily. She may
seem
slow, but she takes every trick.”

“Oh, Jynx!” breathed Cristin, damp-eyed. “You are so
good!”

Jynx was no such thing; Jynx was possessed of no wish to lend her doubtless strenuous assistances to this most tiresome romance but, instead, of a cravenly impulse to flee. But could she, despite her patent unenthusiasm, leave these nitwits to muddle along on their own, and abandon Cristin to the loathesome-sounding Eleazar Hyde, and Percy to the tender mercies of Innis Ashley, who would doubtless see him ruined?

“Hell and the devil confound it!” uttered Miss Lennox mournfully, and she sank back down in her chair.

Chapter Six

A gentleman so greatly sought after as Viscount Roxbury might have enlivened his evening hours with any number of amusing pursuits. He could have chosen among dinner parties and balls and galas, for Viscount Roxbury was welcome in every fashionable residence in London, including Carlton House, a formerly modest two-story mansion which Prinny had transformed into a palace worthy of an oriental potentate;

he could have presented himself at any of his clubs, White’s or Brooks’, have dined luxuriously with the
beaux
at Watier’s, have listened to more serious discussions at the Alfred Club at No. 23 St. James’s Street.

Viscount Roxbury did none of these things. Nor did he venture forth to the Italian opera; nor don knee breeches and white cravat and present himself at Almack’s, there to survey this season’s crop of young marriageable ladies; nor visit Vauxhall Gardens, where among the Turkish minarets and Arabian columned ways an adventurous gentleman might encounter unfettered females of quite another kind. Instead Viscount Roxbury enjoyed a solitary dinner in his own home, which had been built by Sir Christopher Wren, then set out on foot for nearby Lennox Square. His destination achieved, he did not present himself at the front door, but crept about the side of the house in the most clandestine of fashions until he came to a small walled garden. The viscount’s odd behavior did not end then: he proceeded, in a very skillful manner, to climb an old oak.

The garden lay before him, a charming enclosure lush with lilac bushes and roses and noble trees. Directly below him was a marble bench, upon which a young lady sat in an attitude of gloom. The viscount inched further along the limb, and dropped a handful of acorns upon her bent head.

“Damnation!” gasped Miss Lennox, and gazed upward. “Shannon!
What
are you doing up there, you wretch? I suppose you had better come down.”

Lord Roxbury did so, with such athletic grace that even his fiancée—whose opinion of sporting gentlemen was only slightly more favorable than her opinion of persistent suitors —was impressed. “I didn’t,” he explained, as he seated himself beside her on the bench, “wish to encounter your Aunt Eulalia.”

“That,” uttered Miss Lennox with great sincerity, “I can very well understand. It was a similar desire that brought me out here.” She wrinkled her nose. “Do you know, Shannon, sometimes I think Eulalia doesn’t
want
me to marry you?”

Shannon was inclined to agree. The spoilt darling of London society, he reflected, received scant preference in Lennox House. He took Jynx’s hand. “Or anyone,” she added, before he could speak. “Eulalia has waxed eloquent all the evening about the pitfalls of marriage, of which she seems to consider Prinny the prime example. For my own sake, I could wish that the royal domestic troubles weren’t made so wretchedly public! But what must they do but allow the whole matter to reach the press, so that now Prinny is more unpopular than ever because he’s forbidden his wife to see their daughter more than once a fortnight.” She sighed. “And the Princess of Wales after dinner each evening makes a fat wax statue, and sticks it full of pins, and puts it to roast and melt on the fire.”