Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

Chapter Seven

After parting company with his fiancée, Lord Roxbury proceeded to Watier’s, where the going was so heavy that few could stand the pace, and there encountered the celebrated Mr. Brummell and the amiably ugly Lord Alvanley, together with Sir Henry Mildmay and Henry Pierrepoint. These gentlemen being intimate drinking companions of the viscount, with whom he had passed some joyous unprofitable evenings, and the viscount feeling that a celebration of some order was indicated, since he had roused if not her passion then Miss Lennox’s mirth, he retired with his friends to the Beau’s lodgings in Chapel Street, which ran from South Audley Street to Park Lane.

In the book-lined downstairs parlor next to the dining room, the gentlemen took their ease and sampled several bottles of Beauvais claret from the Beau’s cellar. Lord Alvanley protested the persistence of his duns, which made such a noise every morning that he couldn’t get a moment’s rest, and hit upon the happy notion of ordering the knocker taken off the street door; and Mildmay shared a secret confided to him by Scrope Davis, to wit that Lord Byron’s careless ringlets were achieved by the nightly application of curling papers;

and Pierrepoint delivered his opinion of the poet’s latest offering,
The Giaour,
a tale of oriental adventure that had required little thought from the author and less from the reader. Meanwhile, Mr. Brummell lounged in a
dégagé
attitude, with his fingers in his waistcoat pocket, and occasionally offered his quaint absurdities. One of these concerned Lord Roxbury’s upcoming nuptials—the Beau offered his services, if the need arose, and professed himself a matchmaker of no small degree—and further libations were deemed necessary. Glasses were raised to the bride and to the groom, to the friends of each, and to their families—save Eulalia Wimple whose mere name, declared Lord Alvanley, was enough to turn a healthy man bilious. The evening degenerated rapidly from that point, though the only fatality was an ormolu greyhound.

Consequently it was with aching head and fuzzy memory that Lord Roxbury the next day rose, and with a fervent wish that he had been more sparing of his libations to Bacchus. Even in such dire straits, however, Lord Roxbury was a discerning gentleman. Removed from Miss Lennox’s befuddling presence, and from the Beau’s clever nonsense and splendid Beauvais, Shannon’s thoughts achieved a degree of coherence again.

It had not been kind of him, he mused, to abandon Miss Lennox to her aunt’s wrath—but had he stayed, he would have lost his temper with Eulalia, and Shannon knew well the adverse effects of argument on pursuits so happily begun. He did not fear that the infernally interfering Eulalia would steal back the ground he’d gained; Shannon knew his Jynx, and the young lady had a mind of her own. It was enough, for now, that he’d planted in that fertile brain the suggestion that Eulalia’s frequently aired opinions were so much poppycock. Let the old harridan rant and rave! Shannon grinned, then winced. Judging from the dazed expression last seen in Miss Lennox’s eyes, he felt confident that she wouldn’t be unsettled by her aunt’s tirade, probably hadn’t even heard a word of it.

But if that matter was on the way to being satisfactorily settled, others were not. Lord Roxbury recalled various enigmatic remarks that had been uttered by his betrothed and his smile vanished. Shopping with Percy? Certainly not! And what had she said about a
fait accompli?
Shannon scowled as he recalled what else Jynx had let drop. Percy and school friends and gaming debts? Shannon had an excellent grasp of the logic of mathematics, and those integers added up to only one sum: Blissington House. Wearing an expression as black as thunder. Shannon set out.

Lady Bliss was in her drawing room, nibbling at slices of cold partridge from a china plate, when she heard a carriage draw up outside. So sunk in depression was Adorée that she did not, as was her habit, rush fearfully to the window in anticipation of bailiffs, but remained stoically on the medallion-backed settee. “Take me, then!” she uttered, without glancing up, as her caller entered the room. “What with claret forty-two shillings the dozen, and coal forty-five shillings the ton, and two free suppers every night, I’m not sure that debtor’s prison wouldn’t be preferable!”

“Oh?” inquired the viscount. “Things are that bad? I give you joy, Adorée.”

“Shannon!” Lady Bliss was magically elevated from the depths to the heights. “ Have you come to repent your cruel treatment, you heartless lad?”

Lord Roxbury grimaced slightly at this form of address, which was hardly appropriate for a gentleman of eight-and-twenty. Still, Lady Bliss had some justification for speaking so; she could give him seven years. “Cruel, Adorée?” he murmured, and disposed himself elegantly in a cane chair. “Have you already forgotten the sapphires?”

If so, it was little wonder, since those gems had remained in Lady Bliss’s possession barely overnight. She wondered if Innis had found a buyer for the jewels, and what he had done with the money thus obtained, none of which had found its way into her empty pockets. “I’m sure it’s not surprising if I have,” she retorted. “You behold me, Shannon, in a perfectly morbid state.”

What Lord Roxbury beheld—as Lady Bliss perfectly well knew—was a lady whose dark hair was dressed
à la Madonna,
with a center parting and flowing locks, and who had clad herself in a gown of cherry-striped silk. Since Lord Roxbury was, all told, a tactful gentleman, he did not inform his one-time flirt that she reminded him strongly of a peppermint stick. “Then I am sorry for it,” he replied courteously. “I especially wish to speak with you, Adorée.”

“Then come sit here beside me!” Encouraged by his sympathy. Lady Bliss patted the settee. All might still be well if the viscount could be persuaded to lend his assistance.

“Talk,
Adorée,” repeated Lord Roxbury, with a slight smile. “You know that I have not come a-courting, and why.”

“I know what you say!” snapped Adorée, rendered irritable by this indication that the viscount had no further interest in frivolous pursuits. “I do
not
see why. Your marriage is to be one of convenience, and as such should permit you freedom in matters of the heart. Heavens, Shannon, everyone has an inamorata! Why should you be the exception?”

“Why should I not?” Lord Roxbury was no whit moved by such flattering overtures. “I hardly think my wife-to-be would care to have me enter marriage complete with romantic entanglements.”

“Pooh! She’s a good, obliging girl, and much too lazy to make a fuss.” Belatedly aware of her blunder, Lady Bliss waved her hands in distress. “Or so I hear! I have not heard you say, moreover, that you’ve formed a lasting passion for Miss Lennox, so I don’t see why you should feel obliged to break off your acquaintance with me!”

“Dipped again, Adorée?” Lord Roxbury inquired bluntly. “I told you how it would be if you allowed your brother to ride on your apron strings. Be rid of him and you’ll find you’ve done away with your greatest expense. But I did not come to discuss your brother with you!”

Mention of the improvident Innis recalled to Lady Bliss her brother’s strictures concerning the viscount. Innis, she reflected, would not be pleased with her handling of this scene. With more animation than enthusiasm, she rose from the settee, then flung herself to the floor at Lord Roxbury’s feet. “Shannon, I beg you, heed me!” The tears in her gray eyes were most effective, if inspired by thought of Innis’s displeasure should she fail. “I have tried to forget you, to set you firmly from my mind, but to no avail! If you only knew of the misery I have suffered since you quit me, of the jealousy I’ve endured, of the sleepless nights I’ve passed!”

“Heavy work, ma’am!” retorted Lord Roxbury, unmoved. Adorée thought of her debts, and her expensive brother, and clutched his knee.

“Ah, Shannon, you do not believe me!” she wailed. “You think I am a frivolous, flighty creature who exists for only her own pleasure. It is not so! I
do
have a heart, for all my love of adventure! Why, I could tell you——”

“I wish that you would not!” Lord Roxbury interrupted hastily. Lady Bliss possessed not only an overwhelming appetite for adventure, but an astonishing naiveté about men, and she was hardly likely to kindle his ardor by wrinkling and weeping over his excellently fitting unmentionables. “Do cease enacting me this Cheltenham tragedy and get up off the floor!”

Adorée did so, having found it distinctly uncomfortable, but she had not yet abandoned hope. She perched on the arm of his chair. “Shannon, Shannon!” she murmured, into his ear. “We were so happy once. You cannot deny it! Surely you cannot have already forgotten the hours we passed together.” If so, she would remind him. “Our
tête-à-têtes!
Ah, the things you said to me, the romantic gestures, the——”

“The generosity I displayed!” So little affected was Shannon by her frequent and inviting smiles that he pushed her off the arm of his chair. “I beg I may hear no more of such things! Innis put you up to this, I suppose, because it’s not at all like you to make such a rowdy-do. You may tell your brother that you tried, and failed, and there’s an end to it.”

Sniffling, Lady Bliss resumed her seat on the settee. “I’m sure you needn’t blame Innis,” she said into her handkerchief. “The moneylenders are urgently pressing him for payment, and I fear their menaces will be put into execution, for Innis simply cannot satisfy their claims. I tell you, it all casts me quite into despair!”

Lord Roxbury might have been more sympathetic had not Lady Bliss teetered on the brink of disaster during the whole of his acquaintance with her. That acquaintance, despite the lady’s reputation, had permitted of no greater license than casual familiarities; they had engaged in a flirtation that was both amusing and safe, requiring as it had no depth of emotion from either participant; and Shannon wondered what prompted Adorée, now, to make the devil of a fuss. In search of enlightenment, he made known his puzzlement.

Lady Bliss was in no position to offer explanations, although she might have expressed concern for her niece, and fear of the lengths to which her feckless brother might dare go, and a great curiosity of her own regarding his proposed pursuit of the wealthy Miss Lennox. “You are thinking me a greedy, grasping female, I suppose! But Shannon, I am not! I have a very large and sincere affection for you, and for you to abandon me for a dab of a girl more than ten years my junior is the outside of enough.”

Shannon had been thinking, but not precisely that; he had been comparing Adorée’s gray eyes to Miss Lennox’s sleepy hazel orbs, and Adorée’s pouting lips to Jynx’s generous mouth, and had discovered in himself a large preference for haughty noses and forceful chins. “I am not the only wealthy man in London, Adorée.”

“No,” agreed Lady Bliss, deep in her own ruminations, “but word has gotten around about Innis, and most of the wealthy men of my acquaintance consider him a great deal too dear, and those who do not are either repulsive or common.” She crumpled the handkerchief. “No matter how dire my straits, Shannon, I will not enter into an alliance with a—a sugar baker! But you are patently disinterested in my dilemma, so tell me what prompted you to part long enough from your fiancée to visit me.”

“It seems to me,” remarked Lord Roxbury, stretching out his long legs, “that you are suddenly very interested in my fiancée.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” Lady Bliss asked bitterly. “The chit caused me to suffer a great disappointment.”

“How strange.” Shannon’s gaze was- keen. “You did not seem particularly disappointed when I first told you of my betrothal to Miss Lennox.”

“Naturally not.” Lady Bliss was deep in gloomy contemplation of her household accounts, in particular the sum of seventy-five pounds outstanding for candles. “I had not met her, then.”

This idle observation acted on Viscount Roxbury like flame to kindling. He rose abruptly from his chair. “And when was that, Adorée?”

“When was what?” she queried absently. “When did you make the acquaintance of Miss Lennox?” Shannon sat down beside her on the settee. “Don’t try and say you
haven’t
met her, Adorée, because in your usual cockle-brained way you just told me that you did.”

Lady Bliss took less exception to the inference that she was a ninnyhammer than she did to the viscount’s grasp of her arm. “Oh, Shannon!” she whispered, and collapsed against him. “I knew you’d change your mind!”

Lord Roxbury disabused Lady Bliss of that notion speedily. He pushed her away. “If you do not tell me the truth instantly, I shall shake it out of you!”

“Oh, I
do
appreciate a masterful man!” sighed Adorée. The viscount’s dangerous expression warned her not to pursue that line of attack. Still, she had no intention of acquainting Lord Roxbury with her brother’s intention of inducing Miss Lennox to make a byword of herself. “It was all quite unexceptionable, and you’ve no need to make such a piece of business over it! However, I understand that my life and past history are not such as you would wish in a companion of your affianced bride.” Unable to master his impatience, Lord Roxbury growled. “I see what it is!” Lady Bliss added, hastily. “She doesn’t know about us. Shannon, I’m sure of it!”

Not yet, amended the viscount silently. An excellent gambler with a great degree of cool caution, he’d lay no odds against Miss Lennox’s eventual enlightenment. “Do not be angry with me,” pleaded Lady Bliss. “I told her she shouldn’t have come here.”

“Jynx came
here?’
Lord Roxbury repeated, in awful tones. “The devil you say! How
could
you allow it, Adorée?”

Lady Bliss, though she might harbor her own reservations about Miss Lennox’s appearance at Blissington house, could not be expected to react kindly to similar sentiments from a gentleman who had long had the
entrée.
“You make it sound,” she said wrathfully, “like my home is no better than the fleshpots! What causes you such alarm, Shannon? Do you fear your fiancée will fall in with raffish company? Well, even if she should, I’m sure you need not fear anyone will make off with the chit, because she’s too plain for anyone to dream of it!”