Maggie MacKeever (7 page)

“How
dare
the jade set herself against me?” he inquired aloud, apparently of an overhanging birch tree. “It is not bad enough that she must wash our dirty linen in public, she must continue to make it her object to put me to the blush! I vow it is no wonder if I laid violent hands on the wench—aye, and would do so again, did the opportunity present itself.”

Lady Camilla decided that her fiancé only
seemed
to be addressing the graceful birch boughs, a decision which greatly relieved her, for no young lady wishes to settle in matrimony with a gentleman who goes about talking to trees. “Are you speaking of your wife?” she cautiously inquired.

“My wife!” Lord Pennymount looked as if he might strangle on the words. “It is
you
who are to be my wife. Jessabelle is my cross to bear. You asked if I have hurt myself!” he uttered, in a fine melodramatic manner that might have been envied even by Mr. Edmund Kean, and waved his injured arm. “Well you may ask! And very shocked you would be, my dear, were I to tell you how it came about!”

Since the earl clearly did not wish to explain to her how his wound had been sustained, Lady Camilla obligingly let the subject drop. Truth be told, she disliked to be shocked almost as much as she disliked to be scolded, both of which came secondly onto to her disgust of flowery effusions. All the same, Pennymount might have occasionally pretended to admire her a little bit, she thought wistfully. It wasn’t as if she was some antidote. Still, one must admire his awesome self-restraint.

Or was it self-restraint? Milly could not forget her brother’s assertions. Whilst pondering this puzzle, she put forth an amiable comment upon harpsichords.

Harpsichords? Lord Pennymount was very much taken aback by his fiancée’s introduction of that topic, upon which she apparently possessed no small degree of knowledge, as evidenced by her delicate use of such terms as “damper lever” and “underhammer,” “jack springs” and “pivot points.” “What in Hades are you boring on about now?” he snapped.

Reluctantly Lady Camilla broke off her explanation of Shudi’s much-discussed “Venetian Swell,” a louvered shutter placed over the harpsichord strings and opened or closed by a foot pedal to produce a graded loudness or softness. “There is no pleasing you today! You
did
say I wasn’t to be plaguing you about your wrist!”

Lord Pennymount was positive he had said nothing of the sort; no reasonable gentleman would forbid discussion of the topic that to the exclusion of all else exercised his mind. “Jessabelle bit me!” he announced.

Milly’s brown eyes widened. “Bit you!” she breathed. “Lud! That beats everything! If that’s the way she usually goes on, you can’t be blamed for wanting a divorce.”

Why he should be held at fault for divorcing a wife so singularly ill-behaved as to be abducted by a highwayman while enacting an elopement, Lord Pennymount could not conceive. All the same, he was not an unfair man—at least, not usually. Therefore he conceded that Jessabelle’s act of violence had not been unprovoked.

“You were strangling her?” echoed Lady Camilla, whose lovely brown eyes were now opened so wide they threatened to pop right out other exquisite head. “But
why?”

Of that, Lord Pennymount was not certain, a fact which in no wise improved his mood. Moreover, his first countess had bade him to the devil. Clearly she had neither desire to please him nor longing for his good opinion, which made it nigh impossible that he might deliver her a sharp setdown.

“Why
what?”
he inquired, somewhat absently, when Lady Camilla repeated her question. “Why did I wish to strangle Jessabelle? Because she puts me so devilish out of humor, I imagine. Tongue-valiant wench!”

Extracting information from her fiancé without drawing down his spleen upon herself was an awkward business. “I did not know you were on terms with your previous countess,” Lady Camilla cautiously remarked.

Lord Pennymount glanced at his companion, whose countenance was downcast; and was forcibly reminded that he had deliberately affianced himself to an amiable, albeit beautiful, bird-wit. That she was additionally tiresome was the price he must pay for her total lack of resemblance to his first wife. Jessabelle had never been tiresome, he recalled, for all her sins; nor had she ever been so inconsiderate as to refuse to quarrel with him.

Nonetheless, Vidal was not a cruel man, and some explanation must be made. “I did not speak with Jess for the pleasure of it, but because I sought to persuade her to leave town. That she continues to reside here is very typical of her—and nothing could be more revolting to propriety!”

“Leave London!” repeated Lady Camilla, appalled.

Vidal cast his bride-to-be an impatient glance. “I might have known she would refuse, if only to disoblige me. Jess always was lamentably hot-at-hand.”

Lord Pennymount’s first countess was not the sole sufferer of this affliction, Lady Camilla reflected, her dismay inspired not by Lord Pennymount’s confrontation with his ex-wife, but by fear that Jessabelle might depart London before Camilla had devised some opportunity for speech with her. “I don’t care what anyone says, Pennymount.  You are clearly
not
cold!”

“I beg your pardon?” responded his lordship, somewhat befuddled by this comment, for it was an unseasonably warm day.

Lady Camilla giggled. “It was something Dolph said to me—nothing of significance, I promise you! But you are not of an unfeeling temperament.”

Lord Pennymount, unable to imagine the Honorable Adolphus under any circumstances making a significant comment, dismissed that somewhat vacuous young gentleman from his mind. “Unfeeling?” he echoed, in an honest effort to be civil to his equally muddle-headed fiancée. “Of course I’m not unfeeling. I’d like to wring her blasted neck.”

If deficient in some areas, Lady Camilla was in others rather more astute. Her fine brown eyes narrowed. “I’ll wager a pony—”

“The deuce you will!” retorted Lord Pennymount, so harshly that Lady Camilla started and came perilously near to tumbling off the phaeton seat. “You’ll do no such thing, my girl; it’s quite bad enough that I have
one
wife who gambles—not that Jess would have dared do such a thing while we were married, else I would have given her a rare trimming, as well she knew.” His fingers tightened on the reins, causing his nervous horses to dance. “So now she fritters away the allowance I make her at
play!”

Though Lady Camilla did not like arguments, she felt obliged to here insert a word in her own defense. “But—” she said.

“You are surprised!” decided his lordship. “It is the truth. Jess is most often to be found in a select King Street gaming-hell—but I should not be talking to you of such things.” Vidal was glad when Lady Camilla did not press for further revelations. He would have been considerably less pleased to realize that he had already given his fiancé considerable food for thought.

Silence descended once more upon the occupants of the high-perch phaeton. Lord Pennymount pondered how best to persuade his aggravating first countess to remove her embarrassing presence from the metropolis, plans that did not move speedily forward, due to his lordship’s tendency to brood upon the lady’s inexplicable preference for bloody Frenchmen.

At least he might trust that the unromantic Lady Camilla would be drawn to no enterprising rogues who ran gaming-hells. Lord Pennymount anticipated that his second countess would make up in unexceptionable conduct what she lacked in common sense.

Meanwhile Lady Camilla also pondered, and in a manner that might have been expressly calculated to cut up his lordship’s peace. As result of Vidal’s disclosures, and his ominous remarks about laying violent hands on his countesses, and giving them rare trimmings, Milly was more than ever determined to make the acquaintance of his first wife.

Moreover, she now saw how the thing might be accomplished. Disapprove as Pennymount might, Camilla was willing to wager any number of ponies that her feckless brother had become acquainted with the elusive Mme. Joliffe across the board of green cloth.

Chapter Seven

Came evening, and Capitaine Chançard’s select King Street gaming-hell was thronged with its regular clientele. Serious players plunged at macao, hazard, faro; the less adventuresome passed the time with whist and piquet. Hour after hour they stooped over the green baize tables, and thousands changed hands.

Among the players, Michon himself strolled, offering words of congratulation or commiseration as the situation required. Nonchalant as was his demeanor, little escaped his attention. Capitaine Chançard was as aware of the actions of his servants—dealers and croupiers, the waiter who served wine and attended to the gaming room, the burly ex-pugilist who was willing to engage in fisticuffs with any of fortune’s peevish unfortunates—as he was of the progress of his guests.

Especially, he was interested in one of those guests, currently engaged in conversation with Mme. Joliffe near the E.O. stand. Michon was very curious about what the Honorable Adolphus might be saying to Lord Pennymount’s discarded first countess. With the intention of satisfying that curiosity, he moved casually through his guests.

Conversation as conducted between the Honorable Dolph and the dishonored Mme. Joliffe, however, must have at first disappointed any eavesdropper alert to the possibilities of adding yet another rumor to the
on-dits
perpetually circulating about the lady. The prospective union between Dolph’s sister and Jessabelle’s ex-husband was not the topic under discussion, but a recent contest between two men of science as witnessed by Adolphus. Graphically, with gestures, he described this bout, an account liberally spiced with such sporting terms as “muzzlers” and “doublers,” “wisty cantors,” “cross-and-jostle work”; and embellished with fond descriptions of various strategies employed by the bruisers thus engaged.

Mme. Joliffe listened, and wondered if any of the science displayed by those milling coves might be adapted to her own purpose. Eyes torn from their sockets, flattened noses, battered teeth—how very satisfying was the notion of a crashing blow delivered in the jugular with the full force of the arm shot horizontally from the shoulder. Fondly she envisioned Lord Pennymount felled by such a blow, and without the reviving effects of brandy or the consolation of a heavy prize purse. Then she recalled that Vidal was not uninterested in the noble art of self-defense, had at one time been a frequent visitor to Gentleman Jackson’s exhibition rooms. Doubtless Vidal was familiar with all the blows described by Adolphus. Doubtless he would also forego no opportunity to mete out punishment in turn.

Reluctantly Mme. Joliffe abandoned yet another means by which Lord Pennymount might be delivered his comeuppance. It seemed her only course was to try and break up Vidal’s prospective alliance with Lady Camilla. Jess eyed the Honorable Adolphus, and wondered how best to discover his sister’s sentiments.

The Honorable Dolph was similarly pondering, even as he explained the code of rules that governed the science of pugilism. Personally he remained very curious about why Milly was determined to marry the earl. Milly might protest that Pennymount was not
unfeeling, and offer as evidence his alleged desire to wring his first countess’s neck, but Adolphus remained unconvinced.
Were
it true that Lord Pennymount was in the habit of laying violent hands on his countesses, Adolphus considered that shoddy practice an even better reason for breaking off a betrothal than mere indifference.

Dolph did not understand his sister’s reasoning. The only aspect of this situation that he
did
grasp fully—all too fully!—was that if he did not assist Milly to make the acquaintance of Mme. Joliffe, she would not assist him in his desperate effort to get some money from their father. If Milly did not speak to the old gentleman in her brother’s behalf, the consequences would be dire. He would be forced to flee to Calais, leaving half the tradesmen in the West End in lamentation—that, or blow out his brains.

As the Honorable Adolphus was contemplating putting an end to his existence, and Mme. Joliffe was contemplating providing the same service for Lord Pennymount, and both were despairing of working the conversation around to Lady Camilla’s fiancé, they were joined by Capitaine Chançard. In one careless glance, he grasped their dilemma. “So you have met,” he murmured helpfully. “How nice. It is always useful to make the acquaintance of one’s family—and such you almost are,
n’est-ce pas?”

The Honorable Dolph, seeing in his host the unmistakable signs of a creditor whose account is grievously past due, gazed at his gleaming boot, procured from the incomparable Hoby. Alas, with the incomparable Hoby, Adolphus was also out of favor. One would have thought a fellow who was a Methodist preacher in his private life should be a little more tolerant about post-obit bills.

Belatedly, the impact of Michon’s words struck. “Eh?” asked Dolph.

“I think,” offered Mme. Joliffe, “that Michon refers to your sister’s impending marriage to Pennymount. That event will ally your family with me, I suppose, in a queer sort of way.”

“I say!” said the Honorable Adolphus, delighted to discover the ice fairly broken at last. “I was wishing to talk to you about exactly that!” He cast a cautious glance at his host, wondering if he dared request privacy. Recalling the prodigious amount of money he owed Capitaine Chançard, Adolphus decided he dared not.
“Did
you bite Pennymount, Mme. Joliffe?”

“
Bite him?” echoed Michon, with a wicked glance at his dear friend Jess, whose cheeks had turned pink.
“Mon Dieu, chèrie!
This you did not tell me.”

Capitaine Chançard was in the confidence of Mme. Joliffe? Recalling the rumors about their relationship, Dolph decided he should not be surprised. Lest he cause a rift between them, he added hastily: “He was trying to strangle her, and naturally she had to defend herself.”

“
Naturellement
,” murmured Capitaine Chançard.

Gratified by so sympathetic an attitude, and from a gentleman who might be expected to display the exact opposite as result of monies due, Adolphus added confidently: “And I
still
say he’s a curst cold fish.”