A Highwayman Came Riding (17 page)

“Wake up, sleepyhead! We were supposed to meet Macheath belowstairs. What happened last night? Did he get my diamonds?”

Marianne shook herself awake. She reached under her pillow and handed the duchess the necklace. Her faded face creased into smiles.

“Good lad! Why did you not awaken me, Marianne? You know I wanted to see the scoundrel who robbed me.”

“You were sleeping so soundly we decided to let you have your rest.”

“That was well done of Macheath. Very thoughtful to let me build up my resources for the trip to London. I shall go belowstairs and thank him in person. Join us as soon as you make yourself decent.” Her sweeping gaze took in Marianne’s rough hands and wrists. “You ought to put some Gowlands Lotion on those hands, Marianne, and file your fingernails. A lady is judged by her hands, you know.”

She dropped the necklace into her reticule and bustled off to meet her new beau. Marianne made a hasty toilette and went downstairs. She found the unlikely couple enjoying their breakfast of gammon and eggs, laughing and joking like old friends.

“This scoundrel is up to all the rigs,” the duchess told Marianne. “When La Rue pretended he didn’t have my diamonds, Macheath shot him in the arm. That is the way to deal with these villains. I like a man who knows how to handle himself. You will go far in London, Macheath.”

“Is it arranged that Macheath will be settling in London?” Marianne asked.

“Why, we have practically settled on an heiress for him,” the duchess crowed. She was in prime humor, with a handsome young buck exerting himself to please her and her necklace once again back around her neck, hidden by her gown. She had given the maid the paste pearls in lieu of the customary tip.

Macheath cast an apologetic smile at Marianne for that remark about having found him an heiress.

“Lord Boucher’s youngest gel, Lady Amelia,” the duchess continued. “She has only ten thousand, but excellent connections. Connections are not to be ignored. Boucher can put a dozen court appointments in your way, Macheath, and she is not a bad-looking lass, either, bar the platter face. She was in Bath a year ago visiting her aunt. You didn’t meet her, Marianne. I saw her at the assembly rooms one evening.”

She continued in this vein while Marianne ate a little breakfast. She noticed it was no longer an undemanding cit’s daughter but a lord’s with a hefty dowry that was spoken of as his future wife. That might very well tempt Macheath into agreeing. She found it hard to swallow. He was going along with the duchess’s scheme, asking in a playful way what the Boucher girl was like and what court appointments she might bring him.

They left half an hour later. Macheath accompanied them on his mount, as agreed upon. He traveled sometimes in front and sometimes behind. When they reached the western edge of London, he joined them and rode alongside the carriage. The duchess lowered her window.

“It is au revoir for now, Macheath. Thank you for your escort. I shall expect you to call on me at Grosvenor Square in two days’ time. Say good-bye to Macheath, Marianne. I told him he could leave us when we reached London. Nothing will befall us here in broad daylight.”

Marianne put her head to the window. She wore a questioning look. She had not had a moment alone with him since last night. And as she considered it, Macheath had been rather cool all day. All this talk of Lady Amelia was upsetting. If Macheath planned to abandon his life of crime, he would require a patron to establish himself. If Lady Amelia was pretty, he would easily be seduced into offering for her.

“Good-bye, Macheath,” she said with a questioning look, hoping for some word, some sign to assuage her worries. With the duchess at her elbow, she couldn’t call him John, as she wanted to.

“It is not good-bye. It is au revoir, Miss Harkness. I shall see
you
the day after tomorrow as well.”

Then he tipped his hat, turned his mount around, and rode off, back the way they had come. Marianne had the most awful, sinking sensation she would never see him again.

Chapter Nineteen

All her life, Marianne had wanted to visit London. It loomed in her mind as a fairyland full of unimagined splendor: kings and queens, princes and princesses, castles and grand mansions with gold domes. But at the outskirts of the city, what she surveyed through the carriage window was the sprawling shambles of a million people. The roads were rough, and shabby cottages jostled cheek by jowl with manufactories and warehouses. Ragged urchins stood with their hands out, begging. There were more donkey carts and farm wagons and pedestrians than carriages. They had to crawl at a snail’s pace for half a mile behind a drover with his herd of cattle. Accustomed to the serene elegance of Bath, she felt they must have come to the wrong place.

More elegant houses and an occasional church appeared as they drew closer to polite London. From the carriage window she saw a stretching meadow dotted with trees and bushes and was informed by Her Grace that she was looking at the world-famous Hyde Park. The carriage turned onto Park Lane, where fine mansions of gray or brown brick, all looking similar in size and style, lined the wide cobblestoned pavement.

Here everything was ordered and beautiful but not overwhelming to a young lady from Bath. She had expected more, and was well aware that there was more, but she did not see it today. They drove directly to Grosvenor Square, where they entered one of the brown brick houses with white pillars guarding a pedimented door of oak.

A rattle of the brass-wreath knocker brought an aged butler to admit them.

“Your Grace,” he said, standing aside to usher them into a hallway paved with liver-colored marble, and thence into a dark, dismal purple saloon, where a replica of the duchess sat by an enormous grate in which an exceedingly small fire smoldered. She had an embroidery frame beside her and a fat white poodle at her feet. This dame was Lady Thornleigh, a countess and younger (by two years) sister of the duchess. The only discernible difference between them was that Belle was about twenty pounds heavier. She had her sister’s trick of spending very little of her money on either candles or coal, so that her mansion was dark and frigid. She wore two shawls, a gray one around her shoulders and a black one over her knees.

The ladies brushed cheeks and said, “How do you do, dear?” as if they met every day, though Marianne knew they had not seen each other for over five years. Marianne was presented, examined, and given approval. As soon as this was done, she was told to run upstairs and see to the duchess’s unpacking, but first fetch her shawl—her woolen shawl, mind.

A servant led her up a wide, dark staircase to a long, dark hallway, into a surprisingly bright but cold bedchamber. She took down the shawl and returned abovestairs, where she kept herself busy and tried to keep herself warm unpacking the duchess’s trunk and arranging her own belongings in a smaller room next door until she was called down to tea.

It was difficult to imagine how Lady Thornleigh had put on those extra pounds, for her tea was parsimonious in the extreme. Plain bread and butter and marmalade and tea were all she served. The ladies were joined by an elderly gentleman called Sir Gervase Home, who flirted discreetly with the noble dames and ate most of the bread and butter. The poodle, Bingo, was given all the crusts.

Gervase brought them invitations to a party that evening in honor of the bridal couple. Marianne’s hopes soared, then fell to the ground again when the duchess decided she was too fagged after the journey and would stay home. Lady Thornleigh thought it looked dreadfully like rain. As she disliked to have the horses put to in the rain, she would remain at home as well.

The sisters and Marianne had dinner at seven-thirty in a drafty dining room, where the conversation was as dull as the food. Over mutton and turbot in white sauce, they discussed people from their youth, names Marianne had never heard. Most of them seemed to be dead. The cause of their demise was of great interest to the octogenarians. At eight-thirty they retired to the purple saloon. At nine o’clock tea was served, and at nine-thirty they retired to their beds.

In the morning, Lady Thornleigh mentioned going to Bond Street to buy new gloves for the wedding. Again Marianne allowed herself to hope, but as the sky was gray her hostess decided against having the horses put to and sent a footman instead. To keep her “amused,” Marianne was given a tangled wad of colored embroidery woolens to separate, and she sat at this chore while the sisters entertained a few relatives. One of the duchess’s daughters came, not Eugenie but Hortense. Eugenie was too busy with wedding details.

Strangely, the duchess did not mention the troubles she had encountered on her journey. When her daughter inquired, she said only that a bridge had failed them, and a nice gentleman had helped them escape drowning. Neither her daughter nor her sister was curious enough to inquire for his name. Sir Gervase paid a brief visit in the afternoon and again ate most of the bread and butter, even the crusts, which put Bingo into a snappish temper.

Marianne was sorely disappointed with her visit to fabled London. Were it not for her memories and her hopes, she would have been in the mopes. While the old ladies gossiped, her mind was back at the inn with Captain Macheath. He had said he would call. Perhaps he would come that evening. She imagined herself seeing the real London with him. She knew a highwayman would not be accepted in polite society, but she pictured herself at a ball with him, floating in a lovely silk gown that she did not, in fact, possess. Her hair was piled high on her head, and at her throat sparkled the diamonds she claimed were of no interest to her.

“Eh, Marianne?” the duchess said, interrupting her daydreams.

Marianne returned to reality with a guilty start. “Er, sorry, ma’am. I didn’t hear you.”

“Belle was saying you will want to have a jig with Gervase at the wedding. He is a widower, you know. An excellent
parti.
Not so young as he might be, of course, but there is plenty of life in him yet.”

“Not young?” Lady Thornleigh said, lifting her eyebrows in astonishment. “He is not a day over fifty-five.”

“Rubbish! He is sixty if he is a day.”

“No, no. You remember he married in ‘81, the year Papa died, and everyone said he was too young to shackle himself with a bride. And she had no dowry to speak of, either. I remember perfectly, for we could not attend the wedding as we were in mourning.”

“That wasn’t Gervase. It was Cousin Lloyd. He married the Rafferty girl—an Irish chit, but with a hefty dowry.”

They were off on another ramble down memory lane, and Marianne’s thoughts returned to greener pastures. When she had hoped to meet an undemanding gentleman, it was not some widower old enough to be her grandpapa. She sat with one ear cocked, hoping every time she heard the door knocker sound that the butler would enter to announce, in a disapproving voice, “Captain Macheath.”

It didn’t happen. Relatives and friends aplenty dropped in to gossip about the wedding, but they all had either gray or white hair except a Lord Penniston, who had no hair at all on his head but a fair-size bush growing out of his ears.

With a wedding to look forward to in the morning, the ladies retired at nine that evening.

The wedding was to take place at two o’clock the next afternoon in St. George’s, Hanover Square, with a reception at the groom’s papa’s mansion in Park Lane after. The mansion on Grosvenor Square was all aflutter. The sisters were busy comparing toilettes, worrying whether an egret fan was too lavish or the painted chicken skin too common.

“I shall wear my emerald pin on my turban,” Lady Thornleigh explained. “The chicken-skin fan does not really go with emeralds.”

“I shall take my painted parchment fan,” the duchess said. “It is not stylish, but it gives a wonderful breeze, and you know how hot the duke keeps his saloon. As bad as Carlton House. I should hate to pay his heating bills.”

“Oh, as to giving a breeze, I find my ivory fan—”

“Ivory! The very thing, Belle. Elegant but not showy. Ivory is at home anywhere.”

Knowing she would be required to assist the duchess with her toilette, Marianne arranged her own early. Mercifully, the blue slippers that matched her gown had not been ruined during her adventures. When she slid the silk stockings on, she felt quite like a lady of leisure. Her blue gown was simple, but its color suited her. With it she wore her mama’s pearls, which she had hidden in the pocket of her best petticoat to escape the highwayman and forgotten all about until she required them. She drew her curls into a nest on top of her head and fastened them in place with half a dozen pins, which she knew would give her a headache before the party was over, but it would be worth it.

Her toilette was as fine as she had ever worn when she went below to ask if Her Grace was ready to begin dressing. Her face was pale, though, from waiting and worrying. She was afraid the duchess would rag at her for looking so stylish, but neither of the sisters noticed her improved appearance.

Wedding or no, the duchess never wore anything but black. Her gown was of silk, however, smuggled in from France. The diamonds looked well with it. She wore a fond smile as Marianne hung them around her crepe-like throat.

“I wonder if we shall ever see him again,” she said in a dreamy voice. Not the Captain, not Macheath, but
him,
as if he had been preying on her mind, too.

“He said he would call,” Marianne reminded her. Was it possible the duchess had forgotten?

“So he did. I very much doubt we shall see him. I could see he was not really interested in Lady Amelia. He never asked a single question about her looks. Even in a marriage of convenience, a gentleman always inquires for a lady’s looks. He only played along to amuse me. A sad rattle like Macheath would have no use for a lady. I expect the moping face you have worn these two days is in his honor. Forget him, Marianne. He is too dashing for you. You are in London now. You want to forget him and enjoy it.”

Sorting woolens was no more exciting in London than in Bath, but Marianne didn’t say so. She was afraid if she mentioned the promised tour the duchess would say Sir Gervase would escort her, and she had already decided she would as lief stay at home. Sir Gervase had begun casting sheep’s eyes at her. She hoped to meet someone more agreeable at the wedding. And even if she didn’t, the Prince Regent and two princesses were to attend. That would be something!