Maggie MacKeever (16 page)

That ploy proved more successful than Jess had anticipated. No little time was passed by the ladies in discussion of mummies and sphinxes and lotus leaves as envisioned against that gloomy background, after which Camilla waxed enthusiastic about her bride gifts, most recently acquired among which was a set of elaborate rococo vases lavishly gilded and painted with figure subjects after Reubens on a ground of mazarine blue. From bride gifts the conversation progressed quite logically to a consideration of fashion, upon which topic the ladies found themselves very much in accord; and by the time they had exhaustively examined the relative merits of buttons and strings as a means of fastening garments, they were established bosom bows.

“By Jove!” sighed Lady Camilla, preparing to take her leave. “How glad I am you invited Adolphus to kiss you, although I still do not understand
why
you wished him to—and you must not be feeling guilty at winding the leading strings around him, because Dolph is very taken with you! Else he wouldn’t keep insisting that you are fine as fivepence and first-rate!” Her attempt to rise was not at first successful. Quickly Milly plucked out the hatpin with which she’d inadvertently skewered herself to the chair. “Good gracious, but the time has flown! I must hurry before my absence is remarked. Dearest Jessabelle, promise me you will allow me to call on you again. Thank you! Goodbye.” As she spoke she sped through Mme. Joliffe’s little house, and out into Park Lane, leaving her newfound bosom bow to abandon tea for more potent stimulant.

Lady Camilla was more than content with the fruits of her enterprise. Definitely, dear Jessabelle was cutting a wheedle. Milly did not mind especially, so long as her brother emerged unscathed. Sir Edward would doubtless be so relieved when his son and heir
didn’t
marry Jessabelle that he would no longer balk at bailing Adolphus once more of the River Tick. It was a great pity, thought Milly, that no one was likely to perform a similar service for Jessabelle, whose slim purse could not satisfy her penchant for play. She wondered if perhaps Lord Pennymount might be persuaded to make as a bride gift to his second countess a handsome settlement upon the first.

Chapter Fifteen

Upon return to the ancient brooding house for which Lady Camilla cherished grandiosely Egyptian schemes of refurbishment, Lord Pennymount was informed by the Ladies Dimity and Emmeline that his future papa-in-law had called, and why. Lord Pennymount did not respond calmly to the intelligence that his ex-countess (a jade, a harpy, a curst conniving wench) had affianced herself to his fiancée’s brother (a rubbishing loose screw, a man-milliner, a court card). Having delivered himself of these and other equally pithy epithets, Lord Pennymount then set out in search of his first countess, with the avowed intention of breaking her traitorous neck. Since he could hardly depart upon so portentous an errand in his stable-dust, and since his lordship was inexplicably concerned this day with his appearance—trying on and discarding the larger portion of his wardrobe before settling on a long-tailed coat of bottle green, fawn pantaloons, and Hessian boots—the day had advanced considerably before he bid adieu to Pennymount Place. Behind him he left a prostrated valet and a basketful of crumpled cravats, as well as two very curious aunts.

His lordship rattled through Chelsea in his elegant curricle at such a reckless speed as to rouse excited comment from the young ladies who attended Whitelands House, the boarding school at the eastern end of King’s Road. With no lessening of speed, Lord Pennymount arrived in record time at the little gray brick house in Park Lane. He leapt down from his curricle, strode to the front door, prepared to deliver his first countess so withering a denunciation that she would never be able to hold up her head again. However, she was not at home. Her destination, the servant—after quick assessment of Lord Pennymount’s murderous visage, and rapid calculation of the odds whether or not that rage would be unleashed upon herself—revealed without hesitation. Lord Pennymount leapt back into his curricle and set out in pursuit.

Through the busy London streets the curricle rattled, presenting to unwary pedestrians grave danger to life and limb. Hawkers of brooms and brushes and bowls, rattraps and clotheslines and doormats darted to safety as his lordship’s lathered horses loomed into view. Sellers of apples and baked potatoes, penny pies and pickled whelks caught up their wares and fled. Not all were fortunate enough to espy the danger in time to escape it. Most vociferous among these latter was a ballad singer whose innumerable sheets of songs were in the wake of his lordship’s passage scattered to the winds.

To the casualties and curses incurred by his haste, Lord Pennymount paid no heed. His entire concentration was on Jessabelle, and what he would do to her when they met. Perhaps it was best for his previous countess, judging from his lordship’s inimical expression, that the meeting occurred in a public place.

St. James’s and Bond streets and Piccadilly were the center of London’s most exclusive shopping district. A slender purse might have forced Mme. Joliffe to forego a great many of her luxuries, but she had not ceased to patronize Berry Bros., purveyors of tea and coffee, tobacco from the New World, and spices from the Far East. In Berry’s wine shop were kept records from the last century to the present day, of kings and commoners who took their morning wine and were weighed on the great scales. Along with bags of coffee, Beau Brummel and Lord Petersham had been weighed there, and duchesses and actresses, and even Prinny in the days before his girth became too great to permit any such public display. That his ex-countess should buy her tea in such fashionable surroundings impressed the earl as yet another proof of her improvidence.

Lord Pennymount strode impatiently forward, looming up before Jessabelle like some specter abruptly risen from the grave, and causing her to start violently. Irritably, his lordship instructed the clerk to add the lady’s purchases to his account.

Firmly he gripped Mme. Joliffe’s elbow. “I would like to break your neck!” he hissed. Among his lordship’s numerous flaws of character was no tendency to mince words. “It was bad enough when you were simply dallying with that damned Frenchman, and only a little worse when the
on-dit
was that Adolphus had taken you into his keeping; but so far as that was concerned, anyone who knew you must have thought you were playing a May-game. But
marriage?
To such a sapskull? Jess, you cannot be serious!”

If Vidal could make such superhuman strides toward affability—doubtless for the benefit of Berry’s other customers, several of whom had already noted Lord Pennymount’s conversation with his first countess— Jessabelle could do no less, sad as it made her to see him grown so calm and cool. Already Lady Camilla’s influence was at work, it seemed. “I don’t know why you should accuse me of humbuggery,” she replied, equally distant. “You yourself are betrothed to just such a featherbrain. What will do for the gander
won’t
do for the goose, I collect!”

Lord Pennymount was far too astute a gentleman to get drawn into a conversation about whose intended had the least native wit.  “Jess, Adolphus is in the basket!   Dished! The word is he’s had to drop out of Brooks, not being able to raise the annual subscription often guineas. And his father is threatening to cut him off.”

Jess wondered how many of the Honorable Adolphus’s difficulties could be directly or indirectly laid at her door. Somehow, she promised herself, she would make amends. “Poor boy!” she said.

This expression of sympathy did not sit well with the earl, who could not ever recall Jessabelle speaking of him with such a fond expression, or in such kindly tones. “The devil! You
are
serious! Then you must be on the dangle for Aethelwine’s fortune. I expected better of you. If you need money so badly, why didn’t you ask me for it?”

“Ask
you?”
Barely in time to prevent herself inflicting violence upon her nemesis, Jessabelle recalled that the gossipmongers were avidly observing this confrontation, and that it was therefore imperative to act as if nothing untoward was being said. “I see no reason why you should be responsible for my expenses, Vidal.”

Lord Pennymount saw no reason why he should not be, and so he remarked. As result of that remark, which had the effect of strongly reminding both that once they had been wed, a pause in the hostilities occurred. Definitely Vidal was trying to disarm her, thought Jess: curse the brute! And he was succeeding excellently well. Of course she could not let him know how damnably attractive she still found him; must dispel whatever fallacious impression might linger as result of their last encounter, and that rough embrace, both of which Vidal had obviously already put from his mind. Jessabelle clutched at her purchases. If her memory was not so convenient, she could at least pretend.

Definitely his ex-countess had set out to deliberately inflame his senses, thought Lord Pennymount; else she would not wear that pensive expression that made him wish to promptly take her in his arms. In point of fact, realized his lordship,
all
his first countess’s expressions affected him that way. It was an appalling weakness to discover in himself, and bloody inconvenient too. Practically on the eve of his wedding to his second countess, Lord Pennymount had realized that no other female would ever suit him half so well as his first had done.

Vidal must not be allowed to think he had cozened her, decided Jess. He must be shown that she didn’t care a button for his opinion. “And if Aethelwine doesn’t come around,” she said blithely, “there’s always Gretna Green.”

Thus reminded of his first countess’s addiction to elopements, Lord Pennymount scowled. Recalling the gossipmongers, he quickly replaced the glower with a smile. “I can’t imagine why I thought you needed protection from Sir Edward!” he snapped. “The shoe is on the other foot. Jess, how the devil could you stoop to asking that nick-ninny to kiss you? If not worse!”

Jessabelle recalled the quality of the Honorable Dolph’s embrace. “Worse? What could be worse?” Realization smote her. “Oh!” And then, remembering the tongue-tied nature of the Honorable Dolph’s declarations of admiration, and the speed of his departure, she smiled.

By this indication of pleasant reminiscence, the earl’s murderous inclinations were not stilled. Once more Jessabelle had made a fool of him. Perhaps it had been her intention all along. Vidal did not know whether he was more furious at Jess for deliberately exciting his passions or with himself for harboring feelings that could still be inflamed. “So you admit it!”

No more than the avidly watching audience was Jessabelle deceived by his lordship’s carefully maintained semblance of civility; his smile, she thought, was very suggestive of clenched teeth. Prudently she suggested that this conversation might best be continued elsewhere. Made aware of the attention they had attracted, Lord Pennymount hastily agreed, and escorted his ex-countess to his waiting curricle. Alas, the simple act of assisting her to be seated reminded both anew of the days when they had been wed, when they frequently drove out together through the busy streets.

Never had they done so, even in the early days of their ill-fated marriage, with as keen an awareness of each other as they did now. Despite Jessabelle’s conniving character, and her deliberate attempt to excite his senses, Lord Pennymount wanted to do nothing so badly as to tumble the jade right on the carriage seat. And despite Lord Pennymount’s dastardly attempts to disarm her, and consequently prevent her doing him further mischief, Jessabelle would have liked nothing else so well. Fortunately for the sensibilities of those other individuals present in London’s busy streets that day, Lord Pennymount and his ex-countess communicated their mutual inclination toward tumbling no better than they communicated with each other on any other topic, and thus remained rigidly upright.

“Think what you like!” remarked Jessabelle. “It signifies nothing to me, and you will anyway.”

“So I will.” Wearying of the effort, Lord Pennymount ceased to smile. “And what I think is that you are exhibiting symptoms of the utmost lunacy, openly intriguing with frippery fellows and loose screws!” Belatedly he recalled his aunts’ strictures concerning honey and vinegar and flies. “But you must know your own business best! I would not wish to see you involved in further scandal, but it’s none of
my
concern if you make an exhibition of yourself.”

Jessabelle had expected that Vidal would give her a dreadful trimming as result of her betrothal to Adolphus, and she interpreted his self-restraint as further proof of Lady Camilla’s influence. Pennymount made gentle as a lamb, she thought sadly, was not so impossible as it had first seemed. He must positively dote on his affianced second countess; so hot-at-hand a gentleman did not acquire self-restraint without monumental effort.

It seemed Lady Camilla had good reason to fear that Lord Pennymount might succumb to ardor and make a Jack-pudding of himself. Were he indifferent to her he would not strive to please her by curbing his temper. No doubt he similarly sought approval in other ways. Vidal had certainly made no such efforts for his first countess, reflected Jess. Not that she had asked it of him. The one thing Jessabelle never objected to in her ex-husband was his lovemaking.

He knew it, too, she decided, as she stole a sideways glance at his shuttered face. Perhaps his coolness resulted not only from a desire to please Lady Camilla but from the fear Jessabelle had read undue significance into that last embrace. As if she would! Jess’s cheeks flamed. His lordship must be speedily disabused of that assumption.

She too could be cool. “I understand that your fiancée means to refurbish Pennymount Place in the Egyptian style.”

Lord Pennymount had been expecting her to respond with annoyance to his various provocations, and was in turn annoyed that she did not. Clearly his approval meant nothing to Jessabelle, nor the lack thereof. “The devil with my fiancée! We were talking about your making a cake of yourself.”