Maggie MacKeever (3 page)

Capitaine Chançard signaled a passing waiter, and handed Jessabelle a glass of champagne. Frowning slightly, he watched her sip from it. “So Pennymount forbade your name to be spoken by his aunts.”

“He did.”  Jessabelle smoothed the crumpled letter as best she could with one hand. “In response to which Lady Emmeline informed
him
that she would not be dictated to by any starched-up young jackanapes and immediately ordered the carrier’s cart be summoned back and their luggage brought back down—oh yes, they arrived by carrier’s cart. How Vidal must have disliked that. He would have sent a carriage for them, had they told him they wished to come to town.  The aunts are poor as church mice, which their papa was—not a mouse, but attached to the church. That younger sons take Holy Orders has long been the custom of the Pennymounts.” Now there were no younger sons, she thought. The current earl was the last of his line.

“What was the outcome of the confrontation?” Michon asked.

“Hmm?” Jessabelle, who had been envisioning a different sort of confrontation, in which the current earl made the acquaintance of Mme. Guillotine and forthwith lost his head, looked blank. “Oh! The aunts remain in Pennymount Place. Lest he be forced to endure public speculation upon why his two devoted aunts refuse to dwell beneath his roof, speculation that would doubtless not overlook his fiancée’s connections with trade, Vidal had to back down. I doubt the concession did his temper any good.”

Michon understood the reasons behind Jessabelle’s own display of temper. She did not relish this very strong reminder that she was an outcast. “Pennymount deserves that his liver should be cut out and fried. We shall wish him to the devil,
n’est-ce pas?”

To this subtle indication that a change of topic would be welcome, his companion paid no heed. “The aunts are worried about this child Pennymount proposes to wed. And well they may be! You would think experience might have at least taught Vidal the folly of marrying a chit out of the schoolroom, and then immediately setting out to fashion her into his notion of a comfortable little wife. One may hope his second countess may prove more malleable than I did.” Jessabelle frowned at the close-writ letter. “The girl is a considerable heiress. And if I interpret Lady Emmeline’s handwriting correctly, she has announced that marriage to Pennymount will suit her to a pig’s whisker.” Jess let the letter fall. “A pig’s whisker! Oh, the poor child!”

These ingenious comments immediately reclaimed Michon’s attention. Even while listening to Jessabelle’s laments, he had kept a sharp eye on the games of chance under way in his saloon, as befit a charming ne’er-do-well who lived on his wits and the resources of the dashing Second Life Guards. Michon had already known that Pennymount’s fiancée was an heiress. There was not a wealthy family in all of England who was unknown to Capitaine Chançard, gaming-hells being extremely expensive establishments to maintain. To most of the offspring of those wealthy families, he wouldn’t have given a second thought. But an heiress who likened things to pig’s whiskers appealed to his sense of the absurd.

Play in Capitaine Chançard’s gaming-hell was scrupulously fair, but Capitaine Chançard himself was not. Lady Luck’s favorite had not a scruple to his name. Therefore he firmly placed his foot on Jessabelle’s discarded letter, the better to later claim and read it at his leisure, and suggested that only her gentle raillery could persuade a couple luckless players to refrain from either blowing out their brains or absconding to the Continent, thereby leaving their debts unpaid.

“Since you feel so strongly, you might help the child,
ma chère,”
he ventured carefully. “Perhaps a hint or two dropped to the old aunts? I know you would not wish to expose them to gossip, but what harm could it do if you were discreet? It is a suggestion only. You must do as you think appropriate.”

“Be assured I shall.” Thrusting the whole sorry muddle from her mind, Jessabelle set about her appointed task, enacting the voice of common sense.

Behind her back Michon bent, picked up the letter, swiftly tucked it away. Certainly Capitaine Chançard was concerned with the welfare of his dearest friend. Jessabelle’s well-being, in Michon’s considerations, came second only to his own.

Chapter Three

Our revered papa was a reverend,” explained Lady Dimity. “But you must not think that because he was a country parson, our lives have been dull. Not a bit of it, I promise you! Nor
would
they have been, even had Vidal not brought us all into the public eye—Papa was generally thought to be very dilatory in permitting the divorce, though how Papa was to stop it, I do not know! As you may have noticed, Lady Camilla, Vidal is extremely strong-willed.”

“Indeed!” promptly responded that young lady, a curvaceous and extraordinarily lovely little person. Her blond locks were parted on the forehead, drawn back from her glorious face and confined at the back of her exquisite head in a mass of curls and dangling ringlets. If a hairstyle not precisely appropriate for receiving morning calls, it was one that perfectly suited Lady Camilla’s classic features, and emphasized her fine brown eyes. “I was remarking upon Pennymount’s strength of will just the other day! He is such a
lofty
gentleman! But there’s not an ounce of vice in Vidal, for all he’s so starched-up!”

This amiable observation checked Lady Dimity in mid-speech. Owlishly she regarded the young woman in whose drawing room she sat. Lady Emmeline took advantage of her sister’s silence.
“Vice,
Lady Camilla?” she sternly inquired.

“Lud!” Lady Camilla giggled, exhibiting dimples and excellent teeth. “Now I’ve put you in a tweak! You must not mind the way I talk; it’s the fault of my brother, who is very much addicted to sport, and my mama, who died young. I do not claim that Pennymount isn’t profligate, merely that there’s no
harm
in him.”

“Profligate!” Lady Dimity had regained her powers of speech. “Good gracious! I have never heard of such a thing!”

“Don’t fly into the boughs, Dimmy,” interjected Lady Emmeline. “Lady Camilla didn’t mean to infer that Vidal is profligate. I think.”

“Not at all!” agreed that amiable young woman. “And I wish you would call me Milly, as my brother does. Even though I do not
like
it, it is much better than being called Lady Camilla, because then I am always looking over my shoulder to see this strange person who unbeknownst to me has come into the room. You see that I am a sad shatterbrain! As for Pennymount, I’m sure he has never in all his life done anything so bad as to deserve anyone should call him profligate, not that I would know the difference if he
had.”
She paused, and a tiny frown appeared on her marble brow. “But you tell me he has not, so that’s all right, because as a parson’s daughters you should surely know!”

The Ladies Emmeline and Dimity exchanged a speaking glance, then by tacit agreement let the topic of profligacy drop. “Papa had many interests,” Dimmy continued. “He had an especial passion for birds. I recall the occasion when he rescued the eggs from the nest of a nightingale he had just shot and set them to hatch under a thrush. I’ve often wondered what the poor thrush thought when those queer eggs hatched! And when our pet parakeet died, Papa had it stuffed and put back in the cage. Life in the country is not so dull as you may think it, Lady Camilla! My sister and I know all manner of useful things—why, Em regularly records rainfall measurements, and I can recognize the different footsteps of a weasel and a stoat! So when you and Vidal are married, you must persuade him to occasionally come to visit us!”

Was that the purpose of this morning call? Lady Camilla gazed upon her two elderly visitors, who were clad in rusty black liberally festooned with some sort of animal hair. These antiquated tabbies expected to persuade her to tramp about the countryside measuring rainfall, and looking at animal footsteps, and switching birds’ eggs in their nests?

“That sounds very nice,” Lady Camilla fibbed. “You must mention it to Pennymount. He is not the sort of gentleman who can be easily
led,
I think, and I would not wish to set myself at loggerheads with him before even the knot is tied.” She paused to consider. “In point of fact, I’ve seen precious little indication that Pennymount can be led at all. He is much more like to take the bit between his teeth!”

This observation, not surprisingly, cast a pall over the conversation. During that brief silence, Lady Camilla sat staring into space, the perfection of her physical appearance marred only by her little frown, which was a sure sign that she was thinking very hard, a process during which her fine eyes also slightly crossed. In their turn, the aunts covertly studied Lady Camilla, and tried unsuccessfully to persuade themselves that Lord Pennymount’s second countess would suit him better than had the first.

This somewhat infelicitous encounter took place in the drawing room of the Aethelwine townhouse. Unfortunately the room had not been done up in accordance with the superb Adam taste of the architecture. In point of fact, evidence of that good taste could be found only in the chamber’s dimensions and the ceiling coffered with octagons. Instead Lady Camilla’s imagination had been permitted to run riot, with results that were distinctly bizarre. Window hangings of an Oriental nature, blues and reds and violets, with a little yellow and green mixed in, on a white ground; a hand-knotted Turkey carpet of no less garish hue; imitation bamboo furniture and lacquered cabinets and japanned screens—to all but the young lady responsible for its transformation, and her doting papa, the Aethelwine drawing room was a chamber of horrors equal to anything that might be found in Newgate.

With this general opinion, Lord Pennymount’s aunts agreed. What similar triumph of ill-taste Lady Camilla might wreak upon the venerable ancestral abode of the Pennymounts boggled their combined imaginations.

Ignoring all these considerations for the moment, Lady Emmeline grasped the bull by the horns. “‘Disobliging’ is an odd thing to say about the man you are promised to marry, Lady Camilla. Perhaps you have had second thoughts.”

“Second thoughts?” Lady Camilla looked adorably blank. Then she giggled, even more adorably. “Merely because I called Pennymount disobliging? But he is! You need not fear that we shall get to dagger-drawing over the breakfast cups. I never kick up a dust over trifles. Nor will he need to ring peals over me for cutting wheedles, because I don’t!”

Valiantly, Lady Emmeline struggled toward comprehension. “You don’t?” she echoed, doubtfully.

Lady Camilla wrinkled her nose. “Not a bit of it, nor do I understand why you should think I
might.
We are perfectly respectable, even if Papa was made a knight instead of being born one
—
which is a difference I have never understood. Not that I care for such stuff! Although there are some who’ll say Pennymount has married a wretched little nobody, none can deny the Aethelwines are very snugly placed. Moreover, no matter what they say, I shan’t be a penny the worst of it!”

“Gracious!” said Lady Emmeline. “That is—are you sure you wish to go through with this, Lady—Milly? It is not too late to cry off. Pray do not take offense at my plain speaking; it is not that I consider you unsuitable for my nephew, but that I think him thoroughly unsuited to
you.”

On Lady Camilla, tactfulness was for naught. “You think I
shall take snuff?  But I never do. It is so much nicer to agree with what is said to one than to make a fuss—yes, and easier too! One of the things I recall about my mama was that she never fussed, because she said it caused
lines.
That is why Pennymount popped the question, I make no doubt.”

“I beg your pardon, but what has Vidal’s proposal of marriage to do with your mama’s wrinkles, or lack thereof? I was not aware he had been acquainted with her.” Lady Emmeline struggled gamely onward; Lady Dimity, fast in the grip of a fit of the blue-devils, plucked stray cat-hairs from her black dress. Chide her as Em might about making mountains out of molehills, as regarded their nephew’s bride-to-be, the reality had proven even more appalling than the worst of Dimmy’s fears.

“Was
he?” Milly’s brown eyes opened wide. “I didn’t know! He should have told me about it! I wonder why he did not? I must remember to ask him about my mama when next we meet.”

In lieu of cats, Lady Emmeline grasped and stroked her sister’s hand. The twins were seated side by side on an armless settee of polished imitation bamboo. “If Vidal has not told you he was acquainted with your mama, then we may assume he was not,” she said.

“Then why did you tell me he
was?”
inquired Lady Camilla in plaintive tones. “I wish you would not try and confuse me. I have already told you I am sadly shatterbrained—although I can generally reason things out well enough once they are properly explained!”

To this gentle intimation that she was not the most lucid of conversationalists, Lady Emmeline responded with fingers clenched so tightly that her sister winced. Well did Lady Dimity know the signs of impending temper in her twin. Though not often loosened, that temper was most frequently directed at herself.

Before Em could instigate precisely the sort of fuss that Lady Camilla claimed to dislike, Dimmy quickly spoke. “My sister did not mean to confuse you, child. You see, we find it difficult to understand why you should wish to marry Vidal. Fond as we are of our nephew, we cannot deny his little faults—and you, Lady Camilla, must have had countless suitors from among whom to choose!”

Delighted with this opportunity to prove herself capable of grasping what was properly explained, Milly beamed. “Why, I perfectly understand that!” she cried, lest her fiancé’s aunts fail to grasp the import of her smile. “The reason is very simple: Pennymount isn’t at all in the ordinary way. He doesn’t dote on me at all, which may sound very silly to you, but to me it is a very welcome change. No one else has ever looked at me like a thundercloud. I find it most refreshing to be betrothed to a gentleman who is
not
prone to romantical high flights!”