Maggie MacKeever (26 page)

That occasion recalled to Lord Pennymount the ignoble suspicions so recently held by him in regard to his first countess. “Yes, but I saw that damned puppy pawing at your skirts!” he said, as he helped her to dismount.

“My skirts?” echoed Jessabelle, in bemused tones. “Oh! Dolph had just spilled Madeira all over me, and we were trying to get it out.
Why
he had called on me at that absurd hour I am not certain, unless it was to tell me Lady Camilla had cried off.” Looking anxious, she grasped the lapels of his coat. “Vidal, are you certain
you don’t mind that?”

“Mind?”
Lord Pennymount clasped her hands. “I’d begun to think there was no hope for me. I am in your debt.”

For so wonderfully stiff-necked a gentleman to make so lowering an admission, especially to her, was an act of humility so astounding that it made Jessabelle’s head swim. Since her knees had already grown weak as result of his lordship’s ardent endeavors, she had no choice but to accept his kind assistance in staying upright. “Then why did you offer for her in the first place?” she inquired, with praiseworthy lucidity, as he enfolded her in his arms.

“Because I thought you were indifferent!” responded Lord Pennymount, and then proceeded to prove to himself that she was not.

Only when both Lord Pennymount and his first countess were satisfied of that fact did their voices again shatter the silence of the little copse—although not without various groans and sighs and similarly impassioned expulsions of breath had their current supine position beneath a leafy tree been attained. “I thought you had been exciting the emotions of at least half the gentlemen in London,” confessed Lord Pennymount, ruefully.

His first countess laughed and smoothed back the dark hair that had tumbled forward on his brow, his hat having somehow gotten misplaced during the proceeding interval. “I have never sought to excite anyone’s emotions but your own, Vidal.” Reminiscently, she smiled. “If only you could have been present when I set out to convince Adolphus he wished to marry me!”

For the antics of the Honorable Adolphus, Lord Pennymount no longer cared. “I have been thinking about something my aunts said to me,” he murmured, as he kissed the hand Jessabelle had raised to his face.

“About catching more flies with honey?” Entranced, Jess watched her ill-tempered ex-husband nibble at her fingertips. “They said the same thing to me.”

“No.” Lord Pennymount abandoned his first countess’s fingertips for her throat and neck. “The aunts believe that only manner in which we may redeem ourselves for our combined wrong-headedness is to become married once more.” Wryly he smiled. “They returned home to Pennymount Place this morn barely in time to prevent me setting out to murder either you or Adolphus or both! If you do not mind, I think we might have them to live with us, Jess.”

Jessabelle had no objection to an existence shared with the Ladies Dimity and Em, to say nothing of Tom and Tab and Puss, Grimalkin and Marmalade; and she was filled with enthusiasm at the prospect of resuming matters connubial with her incendiary ex-spouse. Since resumption of matters connubial was also foremost in Lord Pennymount’s mind, and since Jessabelle raised no objection to that either, the morn had considerably advanced when conversation was resumed. With precisely what elapsed during that interval, the reader need not be concerned. And for the reader who is so shockingly indelicate as to wish to peek into the resumed connubial relationship between Lord Pennymount and his first countess, let Jessabelle herself speak: “Vidal,” she said, as she plucked leaves and twigs from the curls that grew profusely on his chest, “you may glower at me like a thundercloud across the breakfast cups any time you please!”

Epilogue

Thus was confusion fashioned out of chaos, due largely to the efforts of the Ladies Dimity and Emmeline, with the assistance of their feline friends, all of whom lived to an amazingly ripe age and wrought a vast improvement in the gloomy atmosphere of Pennymount Place, within the ancient walls of which a single stick of Egyptian furniture has never been glimpsed, even to the present day. Sir Edward Aethelwine, as promised, paid off the Honorable Adolphus’s debts, which led to great rejoicing amid various tradesmen in the West End; Capitaine Chançard, as instructed, took his brother-in-law in hand, to such good effect that though Adolphus did not cease to gamble, he most often won. The King Street gaming-hell was closed down and refurbished by its new mistress, so successfully that astonished visitors immediately forgot those whimsical chambers had ever witnessed the shuffle of cards, or heard the clink of coin.

Denied his avocation, Capitaine Chançard devoted himself to other endeavors with such diligence and skill that by the time Sir Edward discovered no
comte
adorned the family tree he was so besotted with his grandchildren, and so relieved to discover this new generation was
not
shatterbrained, that he refrained from kicking up a dust. Too, Sir Edward had by then fallen under the influence of the Ladies Dimity and Em, who in the tradition established by their Reverend papa had made him personally acquainted not only with conditions in his factories but also provisions of the Factory Act, and who turned out to possess such shrewd business acumen that all three became so prodigiously rich that Sir Edward ceased eventually to care if the headquarters of his financial advisers was overrun by affectionate felines.

And as for Mme. Joliffe, who, despite Lady Camilla’s efforts to upstage her, remains the heroine of this tale: dusk was descending when Lord Pennymount and his first countess emerged from their leafy bower and immediately repaired to the nearest inn, for purposes the indelicately-minded reader may imagine for himself and vicariously enjoy. Pray let not the less broad-minded flinch nor judge too harshly of this misconduct. Vidal
did
eventually pause long enough in his celebrations of reunion to restore to his first countess her good name. And ever after, Lord Pennymount and the lady most inclined toward public washing of the family’s dirty linen dwelt together in the most felicitous disharmony.

Copyright © 1981 by Maggie MacKeever

Originally published by Fawcett Coventry (0449501906)

Electronically published in 2006 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this   publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.