Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

“Take a damper, Dimmy!” responded her fond sister, who was intently eyeing Lord Pennymount. “Well, Vidal?”

Once more the earl contemplated Marmalade. In the performance of its ablutions, the cat had assumed a highly indelicate posture, one hind leg extended straight up into the air. “You really do have a low opinion of me, Aunt Em. I must thank Jessabelle for that also, I suppose. Say what she may about me, I wouldn’t cut her off—fiend seize the wench!”

Upon hearing this profanity, Lady Dimity gazed fearfully heavenward, as if expecting her Reverend papa to manifest himself in response. Lady Emmeline suffered no such qualms, lacking not only her sister’s imagination but also recalling several occasions on which their Reverend papa had been inspired to utter his own profanities.

“After all,” continued Lord Pennymount, determined to exonerate himself of the poor opinion held by his aunts, “I am shortly to marry! And I would very much prefer to do so without old scandal being revived. That is not unreasonable, surely? How must my second wife like hearing constantly about my first, who is forever frittering away the allowance I make her in a gaming-hell—aye, and dallying also with the Frenchman who owns the establishment! Jess may be my cross to bear, but she needn’t also be Lady Camilla’s. Or so I thought. But no sooner did I tell Jess that she must give up her inamorato than she begins to cast out lures to Dolph.
Dolph!
Who is such a knock-in-the-cradle that he immediately takes up the cudgels on her behalf.
”
Vidal unclenched his hands from the arms of his chair and ran one through his hair. “Is it any wonder, aunts, that I am feeling inclined to violence?”

To these startling disclosures, Lady Dimity reacted as would have any female of exquisite sensibility: “Oh!” she cried, and swooned. Wearing a resigned expression, Lady Emmeline divested herself of cats and uncorked her vinaigrette.

These proceedings, Lord Pennymount silently watched, his lack of dismay prompted not by indifference but as result of having been witness to many graceful swoons as performed over the years by his Aunt Dimity. Though it was impossible to anticipate exactly what would set Dimmy off, one could make wager on the excellence of her performance, and the lack of resultant damage to herself. As he watched Vidal brooded, and tapped irritable fingers on the arm of his chair. As a result of this irritable action, his coat sleeve slid up, revealing his bandaged wrist. That bandaged wrist reminded Lord Pennymount anew—not that he ever long forgot!—of his cross to bear. So far was Jessabelle from being persuaded to give up her inamorato that she had apparently decided to take a second, and that her own divorced husband’s prospective brother-in-law.

In great detail had Lord Pennymount heard about Jessabelle’s encounter with the Honorable Adolphus in the King Street gaming house run by Capitaine Chançard. They had come perilously close, from all accounts, to indulging in a public embrace, beaming upon one another and talking about secrets and assignations. Naturally the world had assumed the worst.

Though the world might zestfully leap to scandalous conclusions, and as proof offer the Honorable Dolph’s proclamation that Mme. Joliffe was a good sort of female who’d made him a happy man, Lord Pennymount was less credulous. The dashing Capitaine Chançard in the
rôle
of his ex-wife’s inamorato
,
Vidal could accept, if with much gnashing of teeth. The Honorable Dolph in that
rôle,
however, he could not. “Jessabelle,” he said aloud, “is trying to put my nose out of joint.”

“Poor thing!” sneezed Lady Dimity, irritably waving away her sister and the vinaigrette. “You need not look to us for sympathy, Vidal. If you hadn’t divorced Jess, none of this would have come to pass, so you have only yourself to blame. And it is no use to try and make us pay for your mistakes! We
like
Jessabelle! And so did Papa look on her favorably. I recollect him explaining to her the means that he had devised to classify spiders—by the position, length, and thickness of the little hairs on their bodies, you know! Or probably you
don’t
know! I am beginning to think there are a great many things you don’t know, nephew. Papa was a very good judge of character, Vidal, and he said you were wretchedly hot-at-hand!”

That tendency, Lord Pennymount strove very hard to repress. His efforts were assisted by Grimalkin, Puss, Tom, and Tab who—having recognized the person most in need of their soothing influence—had joined Marmalade in his lordship’s lap. No less than his aunts was Vidal immune to feline influence. His request to his Aunt Em that she persuade her twin to cease raising such a dust was delivered calmly if in a stentorian manner, which was necessary to insure he was heard above the furry purring din.

“I’ll do no such thing!” Lady Emmeline shouted back. “Dimmy has the right of it. Jess is a charming creature who improves amazingly upon acquaintance; and if you are not aware of that, Vidal, it is because you did not cease brangling with her long enough to
make
her acquaintance when you were wed!”

“A young woman of charm and distinction!” corroborated Lady Dimity, resuming her efforts with Shakespeare’s flower-strewn mortal remains. “An excellent creature, in fact! If Jessabelle is beyond the pale, as you tell us she is, then it is your fault, nephew, because if not for you she wouldn’t
be
divorced.”

“In my opinion,” Lady Emmeline added thoughtfully, “a lady should remain a lady even if she is divorced.”

“In
my
opinion,” Lady Dimity offered, “Vidal should remarry Jess since he’s the one who made her dishonorable in the first place.”

“The devil!” ejaculated Lord Pennymount, with such scarce-suppressed violence that the anxious cats nestled closer still. “Must I remind you that I already have a fiancée?”

 Lady Dimity looked very much as if she’d bitten into something sour. “We are not likely to forget Lady Camilla, I assure you! Jess tells us she’s all the crack. Oh, Vidal, I am distressed beyond measure that you stand on such bad terms with dear Jess. We passed
such
a charming afternoon!”

Lord Pennymount might well have expressed his opinion of the fancy taken to his first wife by his unworldly aunts, had not he opened his mouth only to close it abruptly against the intrusion of a fat and fuzzy tail. Somewhat irritably, and not without difficulty, he dislodged Grimalkin from his shoulder and dropped him on the floor. Undeterred from his duty, Grimalkin stretched out across his lordship’s boots and purred. “I will not tolerate this interference!” snapped Vidal.

“It seems to me,” remarked Lady Emmeline, busy once more with Gainsborough’s “Girl with Pigs,” “that you are being made to tolerate a great deal that you would rather not. I wonder why you do not put a stop to it, because if you wished to you surely could, even leaving her allowance intact.”

Upon receipt of this assurance, the earl cast his Aunt Em a skeptical glance. “Indeed.”

“Oh, yes!” Lady Emmeline’s fingers flew over her embroidery. “Jessabelle’s intention, you say, is to put your nose out of joint. I must agree with you on that head; she admitted she would not have met with us had you not forbidden it. I believe, Vidal, that you take my point?”

Lord Pennymount was not wholly certain that his aunt’s confidence was not misplaced. “I do?” said he.

“Papa was always used to say you could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” Lady Dimity offered.

“Yes,” agreed Lady Emmeline. “And it takes two people to make a quarrel.”

To this startling advice, Lord Pennymount made no answer, being rendered temporarily speechless by the bizarre notion that he should try and turn the provoking Jessabelle up sweet. The cats purred all the harder. Absently he gathered Puss and Marmalade, Tom and Tab up into his arms.

Yes, and it
was
an excellent notion, he decided at length, and one moreover that would enable him in his turn to thrust a spoke in Jessabelle’s wheel. Of the former conclusion he informed his aunts, as he rose and divested himself of cats; and of the latter intention he kept deliberately silent.

The aunts, too, had their secrets. No sooner did their ill-tempered nephew quit the room than the Ladies Dimity and Emmeline rose from their panel-back chairs, clasped hands, and around the old Long Gallery danced a lively little jig.

Chapter Nine

Lady Camilla too had secrets, or so her brother guessed.

“You
are
cutting a wheedle!” he scolded. “Call it what you like! Was the old gentleman to find out you was wishful of rubbing shoulders with Mme. Joliffe, he’d cut up
very
stiff!”

Lady Camilla surveyed her rebellious brother, a much less delightful vista than the wide flag-stoned street lined with shops of every description and streetlamps enclosed in crystal globes. Linen drapers and silk mercers, dressmakers and milliners, corsetiers—Oxford Street was the logical destination for a young lady in need of bride clothes. “You are wretchedly cow-hearted, Dolph!” she scornfully replied. “If
you
do not tell him, because
I
certainly shan’t, how is Papa to find out, pray?”

Pray? The Honorable Adolphus wondered if that hitherto-untried expedient might serve. “Dashed if I know how the old gentleman does it; he’s a very downy one! But I
do
know what he’d say if he discovered I’d introduced you to Mme. Joliffe! He’d cut up precious stiff! He might even cut me off without a farthing, which don’t bear thinking of—not that I have sixpence to scratch with
now,
but that ain’t to say I won’t someday!”

Lady Camilla surveyed her brother, a tiny frown on her otherwise unflawed brow. “Adolphus, you are a looby!” she said. “Papa will cut you off without a farthing anyway, as soon as he discovers how deep you’ve got in debt.”

The Honorable Dolph’s lower jaw dropped. “Hang it, Milly, you won’t ride grub!”

“If that means I won’t tell Papa, you’re right, of course. But were you not so paperskulled, you would realize one of your creditors eventually
will!”
Lady Camilla looked very sad. “And then Papa will ring a dreadful peal over you, and set the whole house at sixes and sevens. I do think you should have considered, Dolph, how very uncomfortable everyone will be made!”

“If that don’t beat everything!” Adolphus looked nervously about, in momentary expectation of being seized by bailiffs. It occurred to him, a trifle tardily, that a young man desirous of avoiding the greater part of his acquaintance did not prudently stroll in full sartorial glory—the
pièce
de resistance
a wide-shouldered wasp-waisted coat fashioned of bright primrose superfine and fastened with brass-plated buttons the size of saucers—along busy Oxford Street. “It ain’t my fault that I’m in the basket—at least insofar as I didn’t
plan to
be. I think it must be you that’s paperskulled, Milly! As if I’d deliberately land myself in the suds! To say nothing of marrying a curst icicle!”

“Dolph!” In ungallantly asserting that his fiancée when deep in thought was prone to eyes that slightly crossed, Lord Pennymount had spoken no more than the truth. Even with crossed eyes, Lady Camilla remained delightful to behold. “Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

The Honorable Adolphus blinked. “Tell you what?” said he.

Lady Camilla bestowed upon her brother an arch look. “That you was wishful of getting leg-shackled, goose!”

“I am?” Now Adolphus frowned. “I don’t like-to argue with you, sis, but I think you must be all about in the head. Stands to reason! Because I ain’t the one of us that’s wishful of stepping into parson’s mousetrap.
You
are! In case you’ve forgot!”

To these brotherly sentiments, Lady Camilla responded with a delicately upturned nose. “You put me all out of patience, Dolph! Maybe I
should
tell Papa you’re all to pieces again, so that he may check your starts!”

“No!” moaned the Honorable Dolph.

“Yes, and so I shall,” retorted Lady Camilla,
“
if you don’t stop talking such fustian!” She ducked into the establishment of W. H. Botibol, a
plumassier
by trade, thus saving her brother the necessity of reply.

Adolphus had little more interest in the fancy feathers and artificial flowers offered to the discriminating buyer by W. H. Botibol than he had had in the more diverse selection of feminine fripperies available in the Pantheon Bazaar. While his sister concluded her business, he stood at a window, staring gloomily out at the confusion of Oxford Street.

He was truly in a cleft stick, thought the Honorable Dolph, on the one hand anxious to pay off the more pressing of his obligations, and on the other equally anxious to prevent his plump-pocketed papa from learning that his own pockets were empty of everything except lint; on one hand wanting to secure his sister’s good will by introducing her to Mme. Joliffe, and on the other reluctant to risk his father’s resultant wrath—a fellow needed to be an octopus, merely to keep proper count of all his woes.

Lady Camilla completed her business, returned to her brother’s side. “If you have got cold feet about performing an introduction, you can at least tell me about Jessabelle.”

Dolph supposed he could, and suspected that he shouldn’t, but he required his sister’s assistance to remove himself from debt. Though by nature a sunny-tempered creature, Milly could turn tempestuous indeed when she was displeased. “What about Jessabelle?” he inquired. “I’ve already told you what she said.”

“Fiddle!” Definitely Lady Camilla’s good humor had grown strained. “This is Pennymount’s first countess we are discussing, Dolph! The lady he divorced! After laying violent hands on her and giving her rare trimmings—although if it is her habit to go about
biting
him, Pennymount can hardly be blamed. But I shouldn’t like being violently treated even less than I should like being divorced, so you must see why I wish to know.”

“I must?” repeated the Honorable Adolphus, weakly. “That is, of course I do! She bit him, you say?”

“Oh, yes! Pennymount told me so himself! But he excused her by saying he’d been trying to strangle her at the time.” Lady Camilla frowned. “I sometimes wonder if maybe the both of them aren’t mad!”