The Wicked Marquess (12 page)

She parted her lips. Benedict drew her closer still. One of his hands moved to fondle a plump breast.

That hand had moved of its own volition. Its owner was going straight to hell. Benedict gave her breast a gentle squeeze. Miranda made an inarticulate little noise.

He snatched his hand away. It had been many years, not since the occasion of that first opera dancer, since he had been so devoid of discipline. He realized belatedly that the carriage had halted some moments past.

Miranda stared at him, bewildered. Benedict picked up the bonnet and plopped it back on her head.

Miranda was more than a little dazed by this abrupt change of mood. She was even more confused when the marquess bundled her out of the carriage and she found herself at the front door of the British Museum.

Lord Baird handed over his ticket and ushered his guest indoors. “I thought you might enjoy viewing the collections of Sir Hans Sloan.”

At another time, Miranda would have enjoyed seeing the collections very well. At this moment, she was experiencing all the frustration of passion unfulfilled. She reminded herself that Benedict sought to please her with this excursion. She must not be unkind.

Once she put her mind to it, Miranda found the museum most interesting. She ascended the capacious grand staircase, with its rich iron scroll fence; admired the painted ceiling that depicted an assembly of the gods and goddesses, along with the Rape of Proserpine; paused on the galley to inspect the three stuffed giraffes that stood in somewhat startling contrast to the Palladian décor. The various exhibits included not only Sir Hans Sloan’s collections of plants and minerals, zoological and anatomical and pathological specimens, and his library as well, but also numerous animals collected in spirits, most notably the first kangaroo ever to be seen in Europe, which had been collected on the voyages of James Cook. Miranda inspected the enormous skull and tusk of an elephant, a prodigious ram, a Roman tomb about three feet long and sixteen inches deep, an original copy of the Magna Carta, and a cyclops pig. Overall, the museum was a dreadful jumble, and badly in need of repair. The floors of the old building sagged so badly in many places that they had to be supported by iron props.

The gardens were another matter. Miranda’s spirits lifted the moment she stepped onto the flower-bordered paths. Amid the shady groves of lime trees and gay flower beds, the antiquities captured so recently from the French — including a great sarcophagus thought to be that of Alexander the Great, and the Rosetta stone – were housed in wooden structures. Miranda glimpsed the gardener’s shed, and caught her escort by the hand, and tugged.

Benedict had been so busy congratulating himself on devising an assignation that would not damage his companion’s reputation — they were far from the only visitors, and consequently surrounded by chaperones — that she caught him off-guard. He allowed Miranda to draw him into the shed. No sooner were they inside than she spun around, put her hands on his shoulders, and raised up on her tiptoes, lips pursed and eyelids closed.

Her attempt at an embrace was awkward, and her posture stiff. Benedict moved one hand to the small of her back and with the other grasped her shoulder so that he might hold her a safe distance away. Impatiently, she gave a little wriggle, and pressed her mouth to his. Cautiously, he kissed her. Recklessly, she kissed him back.

Benedict felt that kiss through his whole body. Sinbad, indeed. Impossible that a man who had once frolicked in a sultan’s harem should be undone by a maiden’s kiss.

Rather, she should be undone by his. There was a lesson yet to be learned. Benedict slid his hand from Miranda’s shoulder to her waist and then down to one slim hip.

She moved restlessly against him. Benedict slipped his hands under her bottom, and lifted her right off the floor. She squeaked and clutched him harder. He buried his face in the curve of her neck.

Miranda was in bliss. How exhilarating all this was. And what a strange position in which to find oneself, so tightly pressed against a gentleman. Or
not
a gentleman, because no gentleman would so mishandle her. If her skirt were not so narrow, he would have had her legs wrapped around his waist. Miranda’s heart was thumping fit to leap right out of her breast, which had somehow found its way back into his hand.

Benedict’s own pulse was throbbing mightily in both breast and groin. All his senses were in that moment preternaturally alert. The feeling of Miranda’s softness against his hard body. The smell of the dirt. The warmth of the sun streaming through the open door—

The open door? Good God. Benedict released Miranda so abruptly that she stumbled and plopped down plump on a bag of peat moss, sending a cloud of dust rising into the air. “Eeuf!” she said, and sneezed. Benedict pulled her to her feet, brushed her off, and moved quickly away.

Miranda’s bliss turned to annoyance. First the blasted man lit a bonfire in her belly, then he dropped her on her rear. Why had he drawn away when matters had been progressing so well? Unless matters had not been progressing as well as all that.

She straightened her clothing and blew peat dust off her bonnet. “Did the setting not suit you? I suppose that everything must be just right.”

Benedict was trying very hard to concentrate his mind. The sunlight, the dirt, the dust in the air, put him in mind of haylofts and willing country lasses. That he had never made love in a hayloft suddenly seemed a great shame. Standing before him, breathless and disheveled, was the perfect damsel to be tumbled in the straw.

“And
then
you will ravish me,” she added. “Because it is not the sort of thing you will care to do more than once. Will you, my lord?”

At the suggestion of repeated ravishments, Benedict’s pulse speeded up again. “A true dyed-in-the-wool libertine only requires once to ruin a maiden,” he responded gravely. “But a certain amount of forepl— That is, forethought is involved. I promise you, Miranda, that we have made considerable progress today.” Before she could demand further explanations, he tucked her hand in his arm and led her off to inspect a remarkable collection of fossils that had been found in Hampshire by one of the museum’s trustees.

Chapter Fifteen

So very distressed was Lady Cecilia  — not only by the deranged finances that would see her soon reduced to poverty, but also by the rumor recently repeated by her malicious cousin — that she had indulged rather more than was prudent in her laudanum. As a result, her recollection of the past couple hours was unclear. She must have made an effort to dress modestly, because she was wearing a high-collared, long-sleeved gown that she disliked; and she was without question standing outside Lady Darby’s grand old Jacobean house with her hand upraised to knock. The front door swung open. A white-wigged liveried manservant surveyed her impassively.

Wiggins was not surprised to find a tipsy female on the doorstep. Any number of bizarre apparitions had appeared on that doorstep during the many years of his employment in this house. His mistress having previously demonstrated herself amenable to such oddities, the butler conducted Lady Cecilia into the drawing room and went to advise Lady Darby that her nephew’s light o’ love had come to pay a morning call.

Ceci settled on an uncomfortably stiff sofa. The drawing room was dark and dusty, and filled with heavy furniture. Across one wall marched a mural of leaves and animals and human figures painted in faded reds, yellows and greens. Ceci sympathized with the rabbit cowering under a prickly bush.

She was aware she owed her creditors a great deal of money. Ceci didn’t see why they must send her unpleasant letters in the post. It would serve them right if she tipped them all the double and fled like Harry to Calais.

But she could not. She lacked even the means to purchase a Channel passage. Unless she pawned her sapphires.

The door swung open. Lady Darby entered the drawing room, or rather swept into it: the wide hoops of her blue taffety gown acted in the manner of a broom upon the dusty floor. Following behind her, the butler carried a silver tray laden with a formidable array of tonics, pills and salts. Trailing after the butler, a footman gingerly bore a basket in which reclined a cream-colored black-faced cat. Around its neck hung a queen’s ransom in red rubies.

Lady Darby settled in a throne-like chair. The butler deposited his tray on a counting table near her elbow. The footman placed the cat in its basket by her feet. The servants withdrew.

Ceci contemplated the counting table, which had a chequered top where counters might be moved about. Lady Darby had had a partiality for play before age left her with only a penchant for her pills. Ceci could not imagine what she herself might have a penchant for, when she in turn grew old.
If
she grew old. Would her creditors regret their heartless treatment when their nasty incessant dunning drove her to shuffle prematurely off this mortal coil?

“Heigh ho!” said Lady Darby, thereby distracting her visitor from these increasingly glum reflections. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit, pray?”

Ceci found herself fascinated by Lady Darby’s tall white wig, atop which perched a tulle cap. While they moved in the same social circles, she and Lord Baird’s grandaunt were hardly bosom bows. Necessity made for strange bedfellows, however, and if anyone had influence over Sinbad, that person was his aunt. Yet how to introduce the subject? She didn’t know.

It was obvious to Odette, if not that her visitor was suffering the effects of a triple dose of laudanum, at least that Lady Cecilia was experiencing some difficulty transitioning thought into speech. “Behold me all ears,” she said. “I’ve not got all day.”

Ceci knew she must make Lady Darby her ally. However, she had not decided –
could
not decide, due to all that laudanum – how to tactfully broach the matter uppermost in her mind. “It is a matter of some delicacy,” she ventured.

“You hesitate to spare my blushes?” inquired Odette. “I ain’t blushed in many years. Open your budget. Unless you’re here to tell me you’ve sprained your ankle, in which case I don’t care to hear.”

It was Ceci now who blushed. She hastened to reassure her hostess that she was not with child.

“Good. See that you keep it that way. If you don’t know how to go about the business, you may ask.”

Ask this venerable virago how to prevent conception? Ceci was not so intoxicated as that. Since it was not serving her, she abandoned tact. “Is there a strain of madness in the family, perhaps?”

Odette might have fairly asked if her guest had been at the decanter. Not politeness prevented her from doing so, but a suspicion as to what Lady Cecilia might be talking about. “Does this have to do with my nephew?” she asked.

Ceci tried to convince herself that Lady Darby sounded sympathetic. “I don’t know what to make of it! I have been in a horrid taking ever since I heard.” She watched as the cat climbed out of its basket and strolled toward the sofa. The creature began sharpening its claws on a sofa leg.

Odette hoped her guest would refrain from indulging in a spasm. She had scant patience with feminine megrims, having long outlived her own. “Ahem! You’ve been in a horrid taking about what?”

Where to begin? Protectors with waning interest. Deceased devil-may-care husbands. Felines wearing fortunes around their necks.

Life was sometimes appallingly unfair. “For Baird to admire Miss Russell is one thing,” said Ceci. “It is quite another for him to escort her to the British Museum.”

“The British Museum? The Russell chit?
Benedict?”
Odette raised her quizzing glass.

Few could wield a quizzing glass as effectively as Lady Darby. Only intoxication enabled Ceci to stand her ground. “I assure you that it’s true. Let us talk without roundaboutation. You won’t want Baird to become entangled with the girl.”

Odette lowered the quizzing glass. “How have you determined, hussy, what I do and do not want?”“

Ceci was not so deep under the influence of laudanum as to try and answer this question. “It doesn’t disturb you that Baird took Miss Russell to the British Museum? The girl’s antecedents are a great deal less than they should be.”

Odette was less interested in antecedents than trysts, of which she had once enjoyed her own share, though never in a setting so uninspired as a museum. She didn’t know what the world was coming to. Rakehells had been more wicked in her day.

But it was Odette’s day no longer and here she sat, listening to her nephew’s half-hysterical peculiar preach propriety. “I’m told the little Russell is a diamond of the first water,” she said, and rang for tea.

The little Russell was so great a beauty that she had caused Ceci to spend considerable time gazing morosely at her own reflection in the mirror. She eyed the cat, which had finished sharpening its claws to lethal points. The creature’s eyes were so severely crossed that it appeared to be looking at the end of its own nose.

Perhaps it was attempting to admire its ruby collar. Which was of sufficient value to satisfy any number of impatient creditors. Ceci wondered if the creature would come close enough that she might relieve it of its jewels.

Lord, she was grown so desperate she thought to rob a cat!

Lady Darby was watching. Ceci hoped the old harridan couldn’t guess her thoughts. “You must admit that there is a strain of eccentric behavior, to put it no higher, in Miss Russell’s family,” she said. “As most recently evidenced by her mama and Black Jack Quarles.”

“Faith, ‘tis a pea-goose!” responded Odette. “Many were the females who would have snatched at an opportunity to run off with Black Jack Quarles. Had I been younger, I might have done so myself.” Before Ceci could comment, the butler arrived with the tea tray. Lady Darby poured. The cat gave an inquiring
mewr
and leapt into her lap.

Several moments passed in silence, while Ceci drank her tea and munched on a slice of bread and butter, and Lady Darby poured milk into a saucer for the cat to sip. When she was done chewing Ceci asked, “Is it true that Miss Russell’s great-grandmama trod the boards?”