Maggie MacKeever (8 page)

Two things, during this exchange, had come clear to Jess: first, that the Honorable Adolphus was no intellectual high-flyer; and secondly, that she must take immediate charge were any sense to be made from this exchange. “You wished to talk to me,” she pointed out, resolutely ignoring Michon’s ironic presence. “I give you leave to do so—but begin at the beginning, pray, and follow it straight through to the end!”

Dolph tried very hard to follow this good advice. “Yes, but I don’t know what the beginning
is!”
he objected. “Milly says she wishes to marry Pennymount because he don’t dote on her, but I can’t think anyone would be refreshed by a betrothal to a fellow who’s always looking like he bit into something sour! I’ll tell you what it is, she’s cutting a wheedle, and though she vows she don’t, by whatever name she calls them she
does!”

The Honorable Adolphus was making a supreme effort to be coherent, Jess told herself, and therefore his failure must not be harshly judged. “What sort of a wheedle?” she persevered.

“Dashed if I know!” Adolphus’s brow knitted in perplexity. “But I
do
know that if you’d been more biddable I wouldn’t be in this curst cleft stick! Milly says Pennymount means to marry her because she’s a biddable puss, which you wasn’t—and if you
had
been, then he
wouldn’t,
and
I
wouldn’t be caught between Scylla and whatever was the name of that other rock!”

“Charybdis,” supplied Michon.

“Biddable!” ejaculated Mme. Joliffe, a warm gleam in her eye. “Pennymount said that of me?”

“Not Pennymount!” protested the Honorable Dolph. “Milly! But it’s no use crying over spilt milk. Milly is determined to make your acquaintance, Mme. Joliffe, and if I do not oblige her she will not oblige me by—” His gaze fell upon the nonchalant Capitaine Chançard. “—er! She’s taken some ridiculous notion that you may tell her how not to go about being divorced!”

“In other words, your sister hopes to profit from my mistakes?” Jessabelle’s head had begun to ache.

“I think so.” The Honorable Adolphus chewed on his lower lip. “Although she also said that Pennymount wouldn’t say why he wished to marry her and that it would serve him right if she did allow him to divorce her and thereby ruin his credit! Which don’t make any sense to me, because if she wished someone to toad-eat her she shouldn’t have set her cap at Pennymount in the first place. But there’s no sense to be made of the little minx.”

Nor was that commodity much evidenced by the minx’s elder brother, as Capitaine Chançard and Mme. Joliffe both might have remarked. Jessabelle touched her fingertips to her throbbing temples and regarded Adolphus.

Abruptly she reached a decision. “I will speak with your sister at her convenience. You need only tell me where she wishes the meeting to take place.”

“Dashed good of you, Mme. Joliffe! ” Adolphus clasped her hands so exuberantly that he drew the attention of several gentlemen flocked around the E.O. stand. “It must be our secret, mind! I’ll bring you word as soon as I may, about where and when.”

That these ingenuous remarks were open to gross misinterpretation, Jessabelle was aware, as she was aware that their utterance had distracted several onlookers from the gyrations of the E.O. ball. Unless she made an effort to demonstrate the patent absurdity of such a rumor, tomorrow’s
on-dit
would be that Lord Pennymount’s first countess had made the brother of his second countess-to-be her latest conquest. Envisioning Vidal’s fury, were he presented such a tidbit along with his morning newspapers, Jessabelle smiled.

That smile, too, was open to misinterpretation, she realized. So be it! She patted the Honorable Dolph’s cheek. “I shall be greatly looking forward to our next meeting, sir,” she murmured.

With receipt of this obvious enthusiasm, Dolph’s own high spirits received a slight check. Why Mme. Joliffe should grow so cheerful at the notion of prospective conversation with his sister was beyond Dolph’s comprehension. However, a great many things were beyond Dolph’s comprehension, and he saw no reason to fret himself to fiddle-strings over one more. “Dash it, but you’re a good sort of female!” he decided aloud.

So public, albeit foolish, a declaration could only further elevate the Honorable Dolph in Mme. Joliffe’s regard, and no matter if Capitaine Chançard did look as if he would momentarily succumb to whoops. Michon would have already guessed her thoroughly reprehensible ambition to inspire her peevish ex-spouse into an apoplexy, which was exactly what Vidal deserved for having informed her that he wished her embarrassing presence removed from his pathway.

Removed! Instead Jessabelle would contrive that his lordship trip over her and break his haughty neck. To that end—lest Vidal think that in embarking upon a flirtation with Adolphus she had indirectly obeyed his edict and given up Michon—she bestowed a sizzling smile upon Capitaine Chançard. At that moment, an altercation broke out at the macao table. Jessabelle abandoned her
rôle
as femme fatale for her more usual guise as ministering angel, and hastened away.

A similar impulse toward abrupt departure gripped Adolphus, upon discovering himself abandoned to the tender mercies of the gentleman to whom was owed the largest portion of his staggering total debt. “About those vowels of mine!” said Dolph, after swallowing very hard. “Mean to redeem them any day now! On the square! Thing is, they keep slipping my mind!”

Michon knew very well that no dilatory memory was responsible for his young companion’s lax attitude toward monies owed. Inexorably he drew the Honorable Dolph with him on a stroll around the saloon. Not a word did he speak as they circumvented the gaming tables and the green satin and white-upholstered chairs. The effect of that silence was well calculated. By the time they arrived at the bow window, Adolphus was quivering like a blancmange.

Capitaine Chançard, lacking scruples, was not at all adverse to filching a leaf from someone else’s book, in this instance profiting from the excellent example set him by a young lady who’d secured her brother’s cooperation via the application of gentle blackmail. A young lady in whom Michon’s interest daily grew.

“About your delinquent vowels,” he murmured. “I grieve,
mon ami,
that I must require some proof of your good faith.”

Chapter Eight

Mme. Joliffe’s ignoble ambition to inspire her irascible ex-husband into an apoplexy was very nearly realized sooner than she would have liked. Jessabelle would have been left feeling very frustrated had not Lord Pennymount been forced to simmer for a time in his own juices before being brought to a fatal boil.

In any event, Jess was not to be frustrated by the premature demise of her quarry. However, Vidal’s introduction to the latest
on-dit
was all she might have wished, taking place not across the morning newspapers in the privacy of his dining room, but in Watier’s Club at No. 8 Piccadilly, during a game of macao. Vidal’s reaction to the gossip would have greatly gratified his ex-wife; he was so exasperated that he lost his concentration and went down heavily.

Lord Pennymount did not betray his anger upon hearing further tittle-tattle about his first countess; he would no more publicly vent his exasperation concerning Jessabelle than he would complain over losses sustained at play. To do either would have been ill-bred. Therefore the earl contained his rage until he achieved the street, whereupon he gave his bewildered coachman so very rare a trimming that that worthy quaked in his stout boots.

His lordship’s carriage then hastened toward Chelsea. Within that carriage, Vidal brooded upon the several pungent remarks he meant to make to his aunts.

He found them in the wood-paneled Long Gallery, seated each in a panel-back chair, and each draped about with cats. Despite these encumbrances the ladies were engaged in needlework, a pastime at which both were most proficient, though Lady Emmeline preferred embroidered copies after paintings by old masters, in this instance Gainsborough’s “Girl With Pigs.”

As the ladies stitched, they chattered cozily about what sounded very much like a recent sightseeing tour of the city’s palaces. Who had conducted his aunts on this expedition? Lord Pennymount thought he knew. Because he was fond in his brusque manner of his misguided aunts, he hovered on the. threshold, and tried to impose a check on his burgeoning resentment.

“And the Palace of Whitehall,” continued Lady Dimity, whose back was to the door, “where Charles II had his apartments, and Nell Gwynn dwelt nearby. Oh, but it was nice to have an outing, and very kind of dear Jessabelle to suggest we might!”

Jessabelle! Lord Pennymount’s suspicions had been proven correct. “Aunts, you go too far!” he growled, as he stalked into the room.

Lady Dimity blinked, first at her nephew, then at her embroidery, a mournful deputation of Fame strewing flowers on the tomb of Shakespeare. “I don’t know how you can say so!” she responded, in a huff. “Perhaps I may not be quite so proficient as my sister, whose work is rated equal if not superior to the paintings that she copies, but my efforts have even so been valued at hundreds of guineas! And even if they hadn’t, it would not be kind of you to remark it, Vidal. I begin to think you
have
grown shockingly inconsiderate!”

Lord Pennymount had no doubt who had first expressed that adverse opinion. Seeking very hard to control his temper, he pushed a slumbering cat off a third panel-back chair. The cat—which was large and orange and appropriately named Marmalade—leapt immediately into his lordship’s lap. “I wasn’t referring to your cursed fancy-work!” snapped Vidal, as he matched Marmalade stare for stare. “But instead to that accursed Jessabelle!”

“Oh!” wailed Lady Dimity. “How can you speak so of dear Jess? Poor Papa would be very sorry to hear a member of his family express so unChristian a viewpoint. I begin to think you
are
the most ill-tempered wretch in existence, Vidal!”

Nor did Lord Pennymount need to inquire from whence had come that unflattering epithet. “Does memory fail me? Or did I not forbid you to have anything to do with Jess?”

Lady Emmeline set down her embroidery and hugged a purring cat. “You attempted to forbid us to do so, certainly—and it is your memory that is at fault, Vidal, because we told you we’d do no such thing! I will not trust myself to express an opinion of a nephew who tries to dictate to his aunts—but at the very best your conduct is altogether displeasing!”

Lips clenched shut against angry retort, Lord Pennymount looked down upon Marmalade, currently embarked upon a leisurely bath. Perhaps an appeal to common sense might serve where a dictatorial approach had not. “Perhaps I
have
been a trifle high-handed as regards Jessabelle,” he allowed.

“A trifle!” gasped Lady Dimity. “I should say you have been! Sometimes I think you are determined to think the worst of dear Jess, and I do think it very hard of you! Surely she’s been made to pay enough already for any little mistakes she may have made! Don’t you
dare
rip up at me, Vidal—no, or look at me in that unfriendly way. You know how deeply I feel these things, or you
should
know, though apparently you have forgot! But
I
have not forgotten that you were determined to divorce dear Jess despite the family’s urging that you effect a full and formal reconciliation, so any little discomforts you have suffered are wholly your own fault!”

“Little discomforts?” echoed Lord Pennymount, truly angry now. “Jessabelle rejoices to annoy me, aunt.”

“Naturally she does.” Lady Emmeline looked very severe. “It is no more than you can expect when you forbid her name spoken beneath your roof, and demand she should not renew old acquaintance.”

“Consider, Aunt Em.” Vidal placed his hands on the arms of his chair. “Much as you may like Jessabelle, and pity as you may her plight, she is a divorced woman. And as a divorced woman, Jess is beyond the pale. Respectable females like yourself simply do not associate with disreputable females like Jess, no matter if you were once related by marriage.”

“Well!” Lady Dimity’s lips trembled. “In that case, nephew, I think I would prefer to be dishonorable myself.”

“You may be if you continue to be seen with Jessabelle!” Vidal clasped his chair arms so tightly that his fingers began to ache. Draped across his legs, Marmalade still bathed. “Devil take it, you’re
my
aunts! Why is it that you immediately take Jessabelle’s part without even first hearing my side of the tale?”

To this somewhat plaintive query, Lady Emmeline’s response was immediate. Briskly she set aside needlework and cats and settled herself to listen. “Perhaps because you have never offered to tell it to us!” she retorted. “Pray proceed, nephew!”

Lord Pennymount was not especially enthused about resurrecting the skeleton of his ill-fated marriage for the edification of his aunts, especially since he suspected he was partially at fault for its disastrous end, but he did so all the same. It was trial enough to hear all London gossip about his first countess without enduring the incessant utterance of her name within the venerable walls of his own home.

Tersely Lord Pennymount related the history of his association with Jessabelle, in the process shamelessly improving upon his own conduct. Most of the tale his aunts already knew, the rest they would have guessed. Relatively calm when his account began, by its conclusion Vidal was once more in a rage. “I asked her to leave London, which was not an unreasonable request;

and instead of being grateful that I have permitted her to remain so long in the city—have even made her an allowance!—the jade was so churlish as to refuse!”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Lady Emmeline murmured wryly, “Tell me, nephew, has it occurred to you that you could force Jessabelle to do anything you wished simply by threatening to cut off her allowance?”

“Cut off her allowance!” shrieked Lady Dimity, so shrilly that the various eats disposed about her plump person immediately fled. “Em! It is a very good thing if I
do
have a heart as tender as a chicken
,
because yours must be hard as a
stone!”