Maggie MacKeever (6 page)

If any constructive results were to come of this confrontation, her sister must be distracted, decided Em. She suggested that they inspect the menagerie that was one of the principal features of the ‘Change. Leaving her twin to gaze compassionately upon the huge lion known as Nero, she drew Jessabelle aside. “My dear,” she said bluntly. “This marriage of Vidal’s simply will not do. You would be performing a great act of Christian kindness—as well as indulging your own most unChristian desire for revenge—if you could persuade Lady Camilla to cry off.”

“
I
persuade Lady Camilla?” echoed Jess, astounded. “The opportunity is hardly likely to be presented me.”

“I think it is.” Lady Emmeline looked dour. “Lady Camilla has expressed a strong desire to speak with you—she is of the opinion that Vidal may form the habit of divorcing his wives, and since she would not care to be divorced, she has formed the intention of asking you to explain just where you went wrong. Lady Camilla is not a young lady accustomed to having her wishes thwarted, you see.”

Jessabelle discovered in herself a burning desire to gaze upon the damsel who was to become Lord Pennymount’s second countess. “Doesn’t she realize how Vidal must react to such a meeting? He has already forbade you to speak my name under his roof. He will be even less tolerant of her!”

Lady Emmeline recalled her nephew’s decree, and her own rebuttal, which had left him acting sulky as a bear. Since this condition was not unusual, Em did not refine too much upon his displeasure, although Dimmy privately confessed it quite rent her heartstrings. Em glanced at her twin, who was gazing in a morose manner upon the stout oak bars which held the orangutan encaged. Satisfied that Dimmy’s preoccupation was complete, Em turned again to Jess.

 “Vidal has been allowed to grow a great deal too high in the instep,” she explained. “Once I had hoped you would teach him to be more human—but I have not come here to scold you for that singularly foolish elopement. Rather, we must decide what may be done about Lady Camilla.”

“Lady Camilla!” echoed Dimmy, whose attention had progressed from the orangutan to an ostrich, and from the ostrich to her own sister, through thought-processes uniquely her own. “Do you know, I have quite decided that some things are a great deal
worse
than atmospheres of ancient gloom? Pennymount Place, that is! My dear Jess, if only you could have seen Lady Camilla’s drawing room!”

Bewildered, Jessabelle listened to Lady Dimity describe that chamber, a description from which Jess concluded that a violent disaffection for the Chinese style of furnishings had left Dimmy unalterably opposed to her nephew’s fiancée. “The girl is a a pretty widgeon,” interjected Lady Emmeline, when she was given the chance, “whose only saving grace may be her awareness of the fact. She told us she had decided to marry Vidal because no one else had ever looked at her like a thundercloud and it made a refreshing change. I cannot think our nephew will profit from an alliance with a female who goes about speaking of pig’s whiskers, no matter
how
biddable she promises to be. Therefore I decided to ask your assistance, Jess.”

Nor did Jessabelle think her irascible ex-spouse would be made happy by alliance with a goosecap; but it was in no way Jess’s ambition to dissipate her energies on behalf of Lord Pennymount. This unpalatable fact of life she gently pointed out. “I would be a widgeon myself, were I to try and serve Vidal a good turn; after the abominable manner in which he has treated me, it is much more fitting that I should throw a rub in his way. Which I have every intention of doing! I fear we shall be working toward opposite ends, Em.”

“Oh!” wailed Lady Dimity, before her sister could speak. “If you knew what violence it does my spirits, you would not talk like this! As if it were not bad enough that you must ill-wish my poor nephew—not that fondness blinds me to his little faults! If anyone ever did, Vidal deserves to be ill-wished! I know Papa would not approve so unChristian a viewpoint. Or perhaps he might. I recall that he said some heated words about Vidal himself—but worse, you must do it in this dreadful place, when I am already plunged into grief by seeing all these poor beasts
imprisoned!”

“Don’t make such a piece of work of it, Dimmy.” Lady Emmeline grasped her sister’s arm so firmly that Lady Dimity winced. Em then pointed out the unfriendly nature of the boa constrictor, and the mighty elephant’s wicked tusks. In some situations, Dimmy reluctantly concluded, a cage was not altogether a bad idea.

Briefly Lady Emmeline toyed with the notion of arranging for her garrulous sister to share the cage of the unfriendly boa constrictor, or the mighty elephant, with its wicked tusks. “Jessabelle,” she said. “Though I cannot condone it, I understand your hostility toward Vidal. But I am very disappointed to discover that your animosity spills over to include a young lady whom you have never met. It is one thing to bid Vidal to perdition, but quite another to inflict that same fate on a second person, and one who has done you no disservice. In indulging your spite, you condemn Lady Camilla to a lifetime of misery.”

Jessabelle knew she was being manipulated. Still, there was truth in Lady Emmeline’s claims. “Not a lifetime, surely,” she protested.

“You share Lady Camilla’s conviction that Vidal will make a habit of divorce?” Em raised a scornful eyebrow. “Mayhap you
are
grown shatterbrained. Vidal’s reputation could not survive a second divorce, and well he knows it. If he is permitted to marry Lady Camilla, he will stay married to her; and if he stays married to her, he will make her miserable. She may not be the sort of female I care to welcome into the family, but she doesn’t deserve to bear the brunt of Vidal’s temper for the rest of her days, which we may conclude will not be few, since she is only eighteen!” Here Lady Dimity interjected a soulful comment regarding thwarted affections and early graves.

“The decision is yours, Jessabelle,” continued Em. “You must determine what you will say to Lady Camilla when she confronts you, as I promise you she must. As Vidal’s first countess, you are the only one who can persuade the girl that she is about to make a very grave mistake. We will allow you a moment to consider the matter. Come, sister!”

Jessabelle needed rather less than a moment in which to arrive at a decision; of course she could not connive at making another young lady as unhappy as she had been. She would have to devise another means by which to put Vidal’s arrogant nose out of joint.

Or would she? Perhaps not, if Vidal truly cared for his fiancée. Were that the case, Jess might simultaneously serve Lady Camilla a good turn and Lord Pennymount an ill.

Dared she inquire Lord Pennymount’s sentiments of his aunts? Jess glanced at the Ladies Dimity and Emmeline, who had their heads together near the stout iron-banded bars of the elephant’s cage. A wave of fondness for them caught her, unexpectedly. How misguidedly gallant they were, those two elderly unworldly ladies in their unfashionable dark dresses, festooned as always with cat hair.

Could Jessabelle have but overheard the conversation even then passing between those unworldly ladies, the affection in which she held them might have received a sharp check. “Merciful powers!” whispered Dimmy, to the twin with whose mind worked almost as one with her own. “I never realized you were so very
clever
, Em!”

Chapter Six

Mme. Joliffe was not alone in wondering if Lord Pennymount held his bride-to-be in any affection; in that same question, Lady Camilla herself had a certain interest. “You will be very curious to learn what I’ve been doing, Pennymount!” she promised—erroneously, as it turned out. “I have been thinking very hard about what we may do to brighten up that dreary old mausoleum of yours, and I have decided that the Egyptian style of furnishing will suit us to a pig’s whisker! Sphinx heads and models of mummies, atheneum friezes and lotus blossoms and crocodile sofas—you know the sort of stuff! I saw a truly
nacky
table yesterday while shopping in Oxford Street; the base looked exactly like a jackal’s head!”

Lord Pennymount exhibited slight enthusiasm in these marvels. Naturally he must be wholly occupied with keeping his nervous horses under control, Lady Camilla decided generously. Hyde Park was exceptionally crowded this afternoon. Still, a polite inquiry into her comfort and enjoyment would not have come amiss. On the other hand, Lord Pennymount might reasonably expect that anyone would not only be made very comfortable in his high-perch phaeton, but also gratified at being taken up therein, a singular privilege even for his fiancée. In proof of her lack of resentment, Lady Camilla launched into an amiable discussion of wedding gifts, most remarkable among them a gilt sauce-tureen with realistic twined serpents for handles, the bowl resting atop elephants; and a stirrup cup shaped as a fox’s head.

As Lady Camilla had noted, Hyde Park was exceptionally crowded at this hour. Long a favorite spot—in time long past the haunt of wolves and wild boars, then in the days of William and Mary highly regarded by highwaymen; James I had ridden there with his favorite hounds, and many other members of royalty had shot the deer, until at last Charles I had thrown open the park to the public—Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five was now the promenade of the beau monde and demimondaine. Across the green and undulating surf they swarmed, down the pretty pathways and under the leafy trees; clad in the highest kick of fashion, riding in elegantly appointed carriages or mounted on spirited steeds.

Lady Camilla broke off smack in the midst of a discussion of urns japanned in shades of vermillion, tortoise shell, and green, which she thought might liven up Pennymount Place’s venerable hall. “Armorial decorations and angels leering from the rafters are not precisely what I can like,” she gaily explained, and paused. No assurance that her preferences must weigh above all other considerations was forthcoming from her escort, nor promise that her wish was his command. Indeed, despite her efforts to amuse him, Lord Pennymount had very much the aspect of someone whose thoughts were elsewhere. Still, he was a handsome devil in his brass-buttoned coat and buff-colored waistcoat, buckskin breeches, and top boots. “I do not mean to complain,” remarked Lady Camilla, and to insure his attention gave her escort a gentle nudge, “but though I do not care a straw for gossip, it seems to me you
do,
in which case you might try to look a little less liverish, before people start to wonder if you’ve eaten some bad fish.”

In response to this pretty concern, Lord Pennymount turned on his bride-to-be an expression no less liverish. “
What
are you blathering about?” said he.

“I’ll be dashed if I understand you, Pennymount!” the young lady bluntly replied. “You don’t give at all the appearance of a gentleman whose affections have become fixed—not that I care a button for
that,
because I wouldn’t have accepted your offer otherwise, as I told you then! Romantical high flights and transports of passion are very fine in their place, but I have always thought it revolting to see a husband dangle at his wife’s slipper strings.”

Lord Pennymount’s acquaintance with slipper-strings had naught to do with groveling.  In his dark cheek, a muscle began to twitch. “Rest assured, ma’am; I shan’t!”

“I make no doubt of that. We shan’t live in one another’s pockets!” Lady Camilla remembered then that she was supposed to be a biddable female. “You must not mind my plain-speaking.  It is just that I have begun to wonder why you so suddenly decided to settle again in matrimony, and with a wretched little nobody like me. Not that I am
truly
wretched or a nobody, but only in comparison with your toplofty family. Your first countess was of noble blood, was she not?”

Reference to his previous marriage made Lord Pennymount’s jaw clench. “That is none of your concern!” he snapped.

None of her concern? Poppycock! Had Lady Camilla not so disliked quarrels, she might have set herself at loggerheads with her fiancé over this slight. It would serve Pennymount very well if she
did
allow him to divorce her, and thus forever ruin his credit. Adolphus had hit the nail smack on the head when he called the earl cold and unfeeling. Milly frowned at her escort, who gave much less an impression of indifference than of passion held scarce in check.

Passion? Could Pennymount’s habitual ill temper be inspired by repressed ardor? Lady Camilla’s heart sank. He was no different than her other suitors, then; and she could expect him to any moment fling himself upon his knees and start spouting poetry at her. It was very disappointing, especially after she had gone to such lengths to discover a gentleman who did not admire her. She could only pray the earl’s ardor might not burst its bonds.

Lord Pennymount, meanwhile, was not unaware of his fiancée’s unusual silence, nor of her keen regard. He returned the latter. Then he ungallantly remarked that when his prospective bride frowned in that goosish manner, her eyes distinctly crossed.

Lady Camilla giggled. “You are being very silly.  Everyone knows that geese cannot frown! But I am glad to see you are come out of the sullens, because I was growing very weary of talking to myself. I do not expect you to make sheep’s eyes at me—and if you did, I probably wouldn’t like it above half!—but people are bound to remark it if we do not occasionally converse. Not that I care for such things in the ordinary way, but
you
do, so I must!
At least while we are betrothed. I daresay that if you do not wish to talk to me after we are married, it won’t signify in the least!” In response to this amiable conversational sally, Lord Pennymount merely growled.

“What has put you so sadly out of curl?” Lady Camilla turned her head to stare at him.  Her perplexed gaze alit upon Lord Pennymount’s bandaged wrist. “Oh! You’ve hurt yourself!”

Lord Pennymount gazed also upon his wounded wrist. It was no dissatisfaction with Lady Camilla that prompted his sullenness this day. Clad in a lilac gown of French washing silk, long-sleeved and high-collared and pleated with lace above the three narrow flounces at the hem; and wearing a high-crowned Angouleme bonnet of straw that tied at the side, Milly looked fine as fivepence. However, it was not Vidal’s prospective second countess who occupied his thoughts.