Maggie MacKeever (17 page)

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, madam,” Tomkin said hollowly. On his gaunt features was an expression that could only be interpreted as shock. “I wasn’t wishful of startling you. If you would step into the hallway, my lady, there is a small matter that requires your attention.”

Lady Bliss knew that tone, and it betokened catastrophe. She excused herself, and preceded her butler into the relative privacy of the hallway. “Tomkin!” she hissed, when they were alone. “There
can’t
be bailiffs in the house; my bills have been paid! Unless Innis’s creditors—but Innis always manages to lay his hands on money when it’s that or the River Tick, and no one ever comes dunning him!”

“Not bailiffs, madam,” interrupted Tomkin, in the familiar manner of an old family retainer who was personally acquainted with his mistress’s various little shortcomings, rather to his regret. “Worse.”

“Worse!” Lady Bliss stared blankly. ‘Tomkin, nothing can be worse than bailiffs in the house!”

The butler snorted. “I wouldn’t lay odds on that, if I was you madam! I’ve put the young lady in the book room, not thinking you’d be wishful of the gentlemen getting a glimpse of her. And I’ve given her some refreshment, too, and lit a fire, because if she comes down with pneumonia we’ll really be in the suds, and she’s in a shocking condition.”

Adorée suffered, during this little speech, great presentiments of doom.
“
What young lady?”

Tomkin, it appeared, could not bring himself to explain. “If I may advise you to make haste, my lady, before one of the gentlemen comes looking for you? I would not trust the young lady to stay put, the state she’s in. Very put-about she is, and muttering to herself, and looking like she’s wishful of breaking things.” Convinced of the need for haste, Lady Bliss—though she would much rather not have—proceeded to the book-room.

This was a small chamber, sparsely furnished, in which Lady Bliss did—or as was more often the case, did
not
do
—
her accounts. Slowly, cautiously, she opened the door. With a great deal more haste she closed it, and herself, inside. “My dear Miss Lennox! What on earth has happened to you?”

“Well you may ask!” replied that young lady, who was lounging in a careless manner on the sofa, and whose gown and elegant coiffure had not adapted well to climbing down trees and making midnight flights. “Suffice it to say that my usage in every respect has been barbarous!”

“In
every
respect?” Adorée sank to her knees by the sofa. “You poor child! Surely Innis did not—I mean, I know he is impatient, but—oh, dear!”

“Definitely, Innis!” Miss Lennox contemplated her empty glass. “Could Shannon but see me now, he would probably accuse me of having taken to brandy, on top of all else! And I’m sure it would be little wonder if I did.”

“Shannon?” Bewildered, Lady Bliss sank back on her heels. “But I thought it was Innis who had ill-used you. Heavens! You cannot mean that
both of
them——”

“I mean precisely that!” Miss Lennox looked as if she might spit nails. “I cannot say whose was the original abuse, but the other certainly compounded it!”

“You cannot say?” Lady Bliss echoed faintly. “Both of them? But they don’t even
like
one another! How did this horrid thing come about?”

Miss Lennox, aware of her hostess’s extreme consternation, temporarily forgot her own wrath. She regarded Adorée, who wore a gown that could hardly have been more revealing, and whose dark hair was fixed atop her head in a flower-adorned Apollo knot; and recalled the reputation of the lady to whom she spoke. “Lord, not
that!
Though I am as effectively ruined as if it had been, I’ll warrant. It’s merely that Innis pawned my betrothal ring, and Shannon thought I had done so to pay gambling debts, and made the devil of a kick-up!”

Lady Bliss recalled her brother’s latest windfall, one hundred guineas of which had gone to purchase a lively miss from a noted procuress, and moaned. “I cannot understand,” continued Jynx, whose temper was still on the flare, “why men should be regarded as unquestionably superior beings! It seems to me that they are uniformly bacon-brained! And it is beyond bearing that Shannon should upbraid
me
for flaunting public opinion when
he is
nothing more than a—a voluptuary!”

“He is?” queried Adorée, perplexed. “Shannon? I mean, Lord Roxbury?”

“Indubitably.” Miss Lennox nodded wisely. “An utterly dissolute young man. Surely you do not deny it!”

Lady Bliss could have easily done so, but she did not deem it wise. Recalling her rapidly advancing age, and the brittle tendencies of old bones, she climbed stiffly to her feet. “I’m very sorry that Innis has behaved so badly,” she offered, with great sincerity. “He was always the worst of us. Our elder brother was merely improvident and a reckless plunger, and I am merely improvident and feather-brained.”

“While Innis is improvident and a Johnny Sharp and a scoundrel, to boot! You have spoiled him, you know. Actually, it is not Innis’s part I mind so much—it is no more than one can expect of him! Shannon has a great deal more to answer for.”

Lady Bliss touched her temples, which were aching with her efforts to understand. “I think we could both use further refreshment,” she murmured, and touched the bell-pull. Tomkin appeared, in his usual magical manner, bearing the brandy decanter and another glass on a silver tray. “Now,” said Lady Bliss, when they were private once more, “why are you so angry with Shannon—I mean Lord Roxbury? It doesn’t seem unreasonable that he should have been upset to think you’d game away his betrothal ring.”

“He
shouldn’t
have thought it! Shannon has known me all my life, and should consequently have known that I have no taste for such things.” Miss Lennox, a fiery gleam in her eyes, drank thirstily of her brandy, choked, and drank again. “But no! I have succumbed to the lure of the tables! I am bound for perdition, says Mr. Facing-both-ways!”

“Gracious!” Lady Bliss sank down on the sofa beside her guest. Jynx moved her feet so that her hostess might have more room. “I tried to tell him—” And then she bit her tongue.

“Never mind,” responded Miss Lennox, in a manner that was both doleful and magnanimous. “I know about all that, and I think none the less of you for it, though I do think you could do a great deal better than Shannon.”

“You don’t mind?” repeated Lady Bliss; then she took solace from her own brandy glass.

“An unprotected woman in any circumstance is to be pitied,” said Jynx, somewhat pontifically. “I’ve seen enough of your brother to realize he’s worse than no protection at all! Besides, it’s no longer any of my affair.”

Lady Bliss, who found her guest’s conversation very difficult to follow, strove mightily to concentrate her mind. “But you are betrothed to Lord Roxbury. His concerns
must
be yours, Miss Lennox.”

“There you’re out!” Jynx grasped the decanter and filled their glasses again. “And since we seem fated to see a great deal of one another, you might call me Jynx.” She pondered her nickname, bestowed upon her by her doting papa after a childhood incident in which she had emptied an ink well on some dusty-looking papers that had turned out to be of great importance in a legal suit. “I need not concern myself with Shannon at all, since we are no longer betrothed.”

“‘Twas a mere misunderstanding. He’s bound to come about.”

“You think so?” Miss Lennox’s expression was wry. “So do I not! You see, Lady Bliss, all this occurred during a ball. Shannon ripped up at me, and I grew angry in turn, and threw his ring in his face. Or I meant to throw it in his face, but I missed. So then I slapped him.
And,”
she added with gloomy satisfaction, “everybody saw.”

Lady Bliss regarded her guest with utter fascination, and tried to envision the lethargic Miss Lennox in so excitable a state, and failed. “Good gracious!”

“Exactly.” Once more Jynx drained her glass. “So you understand why Lord Roxbury need no longer concern me. I have washed the dirty linen in public, and that Shannon will never forgive. So you need suffer no pangs of conscience on my account.”

Lady Bliss wasted no time in inquiring why her conscience, which had lain dormant for time out of mind, should suddenly rouse to cause its owner anxiety. “My dear, I am very sorry for all this,” she said, “but what induced you to come here? It is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. It would be a very great calamity were it to be known that you had entered a gaming hell. ‘Twas bad enough in the daytime, but unthinkable at night!”

“I haven’t made the situation clear; I already
am
in the fire! By now I must be the talk of every groom and footman in the town.” Absently, and ineffectually, Jynx tried to smooth the wrinkles from the abused skirt of her gown. “I couldn’t stay at home, for Papa was furious and Eulalia was having vapors, and at the best they would have made my life a misery. I cannot bear to be teased and scolded! And at the worst they would have packed me off to the country somewhere to live down my disgrace—not that I ever shall! I did not
wish
to spend the rest of my life rusticating.”

Lady Bliss wished to do that very thing, but she could not expect her guest to share her views. She regarded Miss Lennox, who was by this time a trifle tipsy, and wondered what on earth she was to do with her. With Sir Malcolm’s temper, Adorée was more than slightly acquainted, having more than once brought down his wrath on her own unwary head; and while his ire lasted, it was both unheeding of reason and formidable. She could hardly send Miss Lennox home, in her present sorry state, to face the consequences of paternal wrath; nor could she contact Lord Roxbury, who was doubtless still stinging from his fiancée’s blow, and probably engaged—much as was Miss Lennox—in drinking himself insensible.

At that point, Miss Lennox interrupted her hostess’s cogitations. “So,” she said simply, “I ran away from home. I left a note, in the correct romantic style, informing my father that I would take refuge with relatives in Cornwall.” She hiccoughed. “I also told him that under no circumstances would I marry an overbearing and hypocritical person like Shannon. Not that I imagine Shannon will wish to marry me after tonight!”

It was evident to Lady Bliss—whose experience in matters of the heart, after all, equipped her to be a very fair judge— that this conclusion had cast Miss Lennox plump into the dismals. “Surely you’re mistaken!” she soothed. “Once Shannon’s temper has cooled—I mean, once——”

“Lord Roxbury’s temper has cooled!” Jynx managed a weak grin. “Don’t sham it so, ma’am. Shannon’s temper will not cool, and besides he didn’t wish to marry me in the first place but I bullied him into it, because I wished to marry him. I always have.” She sighed. “Well, I’ve well served for my forwardness. I’ve no hope of forming any eligible connection now.”

“But why not?” wailed Lady Bliss, whose head was throbbing like an African drum. “Miss Lennox, I do not understand!”

“No, since I failed to inform you that Shannon accused me—also in front of witnesses—of having
tête-à-têtes
with your brother, by which I have been compromised.” Jynx attempted to set her glass on a table, and missed. It shattered on the floor. She regarded it unhappily. “This is my evening for catastrophes! And after Shannon said that to me, I could not help but retaliate by taxing him with his association with
you. I
had meant to be very philosophical about his preference for you, and to try not to mind that you are his—Well! But I
do
mind. Oh, curse the man!”

This much, at least, had come clear to Lady Bliss. She was horrified. “My dear Miss Lennox, I am
not——”

“It does not matter!” Jynx blew her nose on the hem of her petticoat. “I shall not wear the willow for him, I vow! And now let us speak no more of Shannon, for I have not told you why I came to you, and it is very bad of me, and I’m not at all surprised that you should be confused!”

Confusion was far too mild a term for Adorée’s condition of complete befuddlement. “Please do!” She took her guest’s grimy hands. “I am very sorry for this dreadful hobble— though I think you make a great deal too much of it!—and I wish very much to help you, but I do not comprehend——”

“You are so good!” cried Miss Lennox, with every evidence of gratitude. “I am very much obliged! I had not meant to come here, but I was not thinking clearly when I left home, so I did not take anything that I might pawn. I’ve already spent my pin money, as usual—Papa is not begrudging, and I lack for nothing, but he does not hold with females handling their own affairs. A great piece of nonsense, I’ve always thought, and never so more than now! Anyway, I am temporarily without funds, and I can hardly lay my case before the governors of the bank, and I thought myself at point nonplus—and then I thought of you!”

“Of me?” Not King’s Bench Prison, decided Lady Bliss, but Newgate, to be charged with abducting the offspring of a peer. “But——”

“You, and Innis,” persevered Miss Lennox. “It is all his fault that I made a Jack-pudding of myself. Furthermore, I’ll stake my reputation—or I would if I had a shred of reputation left—that neither Papa nor Shannon will think to look for me here.”

“Look for you?” Lady Bliss not only sounded like a parrot, she looked every bit as witless as that bird. “Do you think they will?”

“Probably,” admitted Jynx. “I’m not sure Papa will swallow that clanker about Cornwall, because he knows I cannot abide those relatives. They are all so very fidgety.
As for
Shannon, I’m sure he will wish to find me, so that he may break my neck. I embarrassed him dreadfully, and he will wish to wreak his revenge on me.”

Adorée goggled at the diabolic portrait thus drawn of a gentleman whom she had always considered most amiable. “I know Shannon will call on you,” Jynx hastened to add, “but he needn’t tumble to my presence here, need he? If I am very stealthy and keep out of the way? It wouldn’t be for so very long, merely until I decide what to do with myself.” Still, Lady Bliss was speechless. “And I would be company for Cristin, and I might even think of some way to thwart your brother’s plans for her, which I cannot like.”