Amanda Scott (12 page)

The gentlemen were already present, but before either of them could utter a greeting, the dowager said haughtily, “Present that young woman to me at once, Lydia. It is just like Rothwell to thrust a guest upon me when he can see for himself that I am utterly undone by my extremely arduous day.”

Lydia obediently introduced Maggie, adding, “You need not have dined with us, ma’am, if you are not feeling quite the thing. You’d have done much better to have ordered a tray brought up and left us to our own devices in the dining room.”

“As if I should so much neglect my duties as hostess,” Lady Rothwell said with a sniff. “I am sure I know as well as does Rothwell the honor due to guests in this house. Although,” she added, shooting a gimlet look at Maggie, “it is generally thought a trifle odd to entertain a guest of whom one has never heard.”

Rothwell said evenly, “I thought I had explained that Miss MacDrumin is the daughter of a once-powerful Highland chief—the very man, in fact, whose estates were awarded to me after the late uprising. She no sooner entered London than her coach was attacked by ruffians, her servants foully murdered, and all her belongings stolen. Naturally, she appealed to me for assistance. You would not have desired me to be so unkind as to refuse.”

Casting him a look of acute dislike, the dowager said, “You will do as you wish, Rothwell, just as you always do.”

James said hastily, “Now, really, Mama, you mustn’t abuse Ned in front of Miss MacDrumin. Only think how uncomfortable you will make her.”

The dowager turned to him and smiled, the expression altering her countenance considerably. Maggie saw then that she had once been pretty, and wondered if her temperament had been more agreeable as well. “My dearest one,” Lady Rothwell said dotingly to her son, “the stuff you brought me made my skin as soft as a baby’s. I cannot think why you waited so long before honoring us again with your company, but you are quite right to scold me,” she added, turning to Maggie. “Pray forgive me, Miss MacDrumin, and do sit down now, all of you, so that they can begin to serve. I protest, I am quite, quite famished.”

A table had been laid with all the accoutrements of a formal dinner, and while they had been talking, a footman had lighted two branched candlesticks. He stood ready now to assist Lydia to her chair, and a second man pulled one out for Maggie, while the two gentlemen moved to take their own seats unaided. Lady Rothwell apparently intended to dine from a tray.

The meal was one of the oddest Maggie had ever experienced, and she found herself utterly fascinated. Conversation was desultory, and the dowager bore her part in it with as much grace as if she had been sitting at the table with them instead of propped up in her bed. Indeed, aside from the odd setting, it might have been any family meal anywhere, until Rothwell raised his wineglass to toast the king.

Maggie hesitated to join in until she remembered similar toasts made by many of her Jacobite hosts. Then, as she raised her wineglass over her water glass, she saw that Lydia, opposite her, was doing the same thing. Their gazes met briefly, and seeing the glint of mischief in Lydia’s dark eyes, Maggie glanced involuntarily at Rothwell.

He returned her look placidly but with slightly raised brows, and she murmured quickly, “To the king.”

“James,” Lady Rothwell said abruptly, “have you seen my new portrait? I must tell you, dearest one, that I am still prodigiously vexed that you would not oblige me.

“And I have told you, Mama,” James replied patiently, “that I do not paint such stuff. Sayers is doing an excellent job.”

“Stuff?” Lady Rothwell was indignant. “How can you, the Court painter, refuse to paint a portrait of your own mother?”

Exchanging a look with Rothwell, James drew a deep breath and said, “I am no such thing, ma’am, and I am sorry if anything I might have said gave you such an impression. I do portraits, of course, but I promise you, they are not what you would like.”

Lydia giggled, and James shot her a quelling look before he added, “I have been painting anecdotal court pictures, ma’am. It is quite a different thing, I assure you.”

“But truly a most fortunate thing,” Maggie murmured.

“What’s that you say?” the dowager demanded. “I tell you, I do not know what modern manners have come to. In any event, what can you possibly know of my son and his business? I do not understand you, any of you. Court is Court, is it not?”

Lydia and James both began to speak at once, but Rothwell’s voice carried easily over theirs and silenced them. “James paints common scenes, ma’am, street scenes and the goings-on in the law courts, much like the ones that fellow William Hogarth paints. Surely, you have seen
his
work.”

Lady Rothwell sniffed and directed a stern look at her son. “I certainly have, and it will not do, James. I have indulged your every wish since the day you were born, but you cannot expect to make a good match if you sully your name by associating with riffraff. I have spoken to Lady Portland about her niece, the heiress one. Coming into more than eight thousand a year, she tells me. ’Tis not all I had hoped for you, of course,” she added, glaring at Rothwell, “but it will do well enough, so there must be no more associations with common rabble.”

“Please, Mama—”

“Now, don’t fuss. I know what is best for you, just as I know what will suit Lydia. Children simply must trust their parents in these matters, for they lack the experience necessary to make such important choices for themselves. Maria, move that branch of candles a little, if you please.” When this was done to her satisfaction, she turned archly back to her son and said, “You have neglected us for so long, James dear, that I daresay you have not heard that your sister has made quite a marvelous impression on young Evan Cavendish. Just think if she can bring him round her thumb, what a triumph that would be!”

Lydia wrinkled her nose distastefully. “Mr. Cavendish is the sort of man who thinks the sun rises and sets by his actions merely because he is some sort of distant relation to the Duke of Devonshire. He simply oozes condescension.”

“You should feel honored that he took notice of you,” Lady Rothwell said. “Every young woman in town will set her cap for him next Season, and having met him before, you might well walk off with the prize by showing only a scrap of resolution.”

Lydia opened her mouth to reply, but once again Rothwell forestalled her, deftly turning the subject to a more general one. Maggie was grateful to him. She had seen a contentious look on James’s face similar to the one on Lydia’s, and she had not the least doubt that had Rothwell not intervened, an ugly scene might have ensued.

When they finished eating, the dowager did offer them tea, and a large, locked tea chest was produced. She unlocked it with a small key she wore around her neck, and Maggie watched the subsequent ritual with fascination. She did not much care for the taste of Bohea, and would have been willing to put a bit of sugar in hers had her hostess not made it plain by her reaction to James’s liberal additions that she did not approve. They did not linger afterward, for Lady Rothwell announced her intention of retiring immediately.

Rothwell bore his half-brother off to play another game of chess, and Lydia took Maggie back to her bedchamber, clearly ripe for confidences. Shutting the door, she leaned against it and said dramatically, “If Mama forces me to marry Mr. Cavendish, I vow and declare I shall throw myself off the new Westminster Bridge into the Thames.”

“Faith, you would not really do such a dreadful thing, would you?” Maggie said, making herself comfortable in one of the room’s several well-cushioned chairs and thinking Lydia sounded quite as ridiculous as Lord Thomas had sounded that afternoon but wanting nothing to spoil this budding and, for her, unusual friendship. If she was to stay in this house for even a few days, she would welcome kindness, and she liked the younger girl for her warmth and her open manner. “Please, Lydia,” she said earnestly, “you must not say such things, even in jest.”

Lydia’s pretty mouth pouted, but then her eyes began to dance and she said with a chuckle, “Well, I am much more likely to elope, and how Mama would hate that, for she sets such store by the family name, you know, and the vast importance of the Earls of Rothwell. Not that she thinks so much of Ned, for to be sure he is descended from only one of King Edward I’s queens, whilst James and I can boast descent from two.”

“Faith, can you indeed?”

Lydia chuckled again. “’Tis prodigious absurd, is it not, but that is why Mama sides with Ned against me in this instance. She does not hold with adding younger sons to the pineapple plant that represents our family tree. But she will soon discover that nothing can prevent what is already predestined.”

Though Maggie’s headache had all but disappeared during dinner, it was beginning to return, and what with talk of watery graves, loathsome young men, and pineapple plants, she felt nearly as dizzy as she had when she had come to her senses in Alsatia. In self-defense, she fastened her attention on Lydia’s final word. “Predestined? Whatever do you mean?”

“Lud, ’tis the most wondrous thing,” Lydia said ardently, moving away from the door and drawing the dressing chair up next to Maggie’s. Seated, she explained, “Little more than two months ago, at a fair, a gypsy fortune teller read my palm and told me I would meet my heart’s desire dressed all in blue, walking along the Mall, which is precisely how I chanced to encounter Lord Thomas Deverill. He was strolling with James at the time, and it was love at first sight for both of us. ’Twas prodigious romantic, but Ned, thinking his power so great that he can even shackle Providence, has most cruelly forbidden poor Thomas the house, and takes every care that I shall not meet him in company.

“I have met Lord Thomas,” Maggie said, adding tactfully, “He seems to be rather a passionate young man.”

“Lud, yes,” Lydia agreed, “and I am excessively glad to know you have met him, for I collect that he must have been in James’s company when you did, and when I tell you that after Ned forbade him the house, he actually threatened to poison himself, you will understand my relief. And before you accuse
him
of jesting, let me tell you that once before when Ned was cruel, Thomas actually tried to hang himself with one of my hair ribbons. So you see, I have good cause for my relief. That is … you do not suppose he might have poisoned himself
after
you met him!”

“No, indeed,” Maggie said, overcome by her sense of the absurd. “He had altogether given up the notion of poison in favor of drowning himself.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t be a goose,” Maggie said, chuckling. “He had already looked at the water and decided not to do it after all. Really, Lydia, don’t you find him just a little silly?”

“No, I do not! And it is unkind of you to suggest such a thing when, if it were not for Tilda’s being cousin to James’s Mrs. Honeywell, I should have no way even to hear about him, for Ned keeps me so close these days that it is well-nigh impossible to do anything of which he does not approve.”

Having learned enough to realize that Rothwell had excellent cause to watch over his half-sister, Maggie was nonetheless sincere when she said, “I am sorry to hear that, for he has said he does not want me to leave the house and I simply must contrive to evade his protection at least once, and rather soon, too.”

“Where must you go?” Lydia asked, instantly diverted from her own difficulties.

Maggie hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was imperil Charles Stewart or his cause, and she was by no means sure Lydia could be trusted with even the smallest of secrets, but she was rapidly becoming convinced that if she was going to evade Rothwell’s protection, she would need help from someone, and she did not think she could look to James to provide it.

Lydia had been watching her and now her eyes widened and she said in a voice of dawning excitement, “You wish to meet with your friends! That is why Ned looked so forbidding when he said you were not to set foot in that particular street. I do not recall which it was, but I did wonder about his order, because it seemed such an odd thing, and I know nothing about Lady Primrose. Is she a Jacobite? Are you? I saw how you toasted the king. Oh, you can tell me, Maggie. You must know that you can! Did you not see that I, too, toasted the king over the water?”

Making up her mind, Maggie said, “I did see you, Lydia, but anyone might overhear us now, so I cannot give you a full explanation. Suffice it to say that I must at least contrive to get a message to Essex Street, for not only will her ladyship be wondering what became of me but I am expected to attend a masquerade ball at her house tomorrow week.”

“A masquerade! How exciting, for you must know that because the stupid king, though he was used to be quite fond of such entertainments, has taken them in dislike, all due to Elizabeth Chudleigh’s attending one, two summers ago at Ranelagh Gardens, dressed—or undressed, one should say—as Iphigenia. She is maid of honor to the Princess of Wales, and his majesty was quite shocked, though he said it was no more than might be expected from that household, for he holds them all in the greatest dislike. At all events, then the earthquakes came, you see, which so many felt to be a judgment—”

“Earthquakes?”

“Lud, yes, did you not feel them in Scotland? The first was in February, the second a month to the day later, and so naturally a third was expected in April. Many families evacuated to the country. We did not, for Ned said it was all foolishness, but Mama and I did have warm earthquake gowns made, so that if we had to sit up all night outside we should not catch our deaths.”

“And was there a third?”

“No, but masquerades fell sadly out of fashion, and even at Ranelagh, they are now called ridottos instead, and loo masks are held up on sticks like quizzing glasses instead of being properly tied round one’s head with strings to conceal one’s identity. Indeed, there has been only one so far this year, at Ranelagh, for most balls are now in the Venetian style. But I should adore to go to a proper old-fashioned masquerade!”

“Well, I must go,” Maggie said, a little disturbed at having aroused such enthusiasm, “but first I must somehow get a message to Essex Street.”