Maggie MacKeever (26 page)

“Heavens, child! Don’t think of it.” Adorée achieved a degree of sincerity, though she wished that her entire plaguesome retinue would take itself elsewhere. “You are welcome, but I still think it unwise. What would the world think if it knew you had taken up residence with——”

“With Lady Bliss and company,” concluded Jynx. “I neither know nor care.”

Once more, Adorée tried. “Shannon sincerely wishes to marry you,” she said slyly. Miss Lennox, alas, gave no indication of wishing to rush out and find the viscount and hurl herself into his arms. In an attempt to divert the young lady, Adorée proffered discourse on the foibles and indiscretions of the gay and polite. In so doing, she distracted not Miss Lennox but herself, and was soon heard to remark, plaintively and inexplicably, that she wished that she might be the favorite of rather more than a moment—to be precise, several hours.

“Yes,” said Jynx, who was growing very weary of hearing Lord Erland’s praises sung, “and you would be done a great disservice thereby. Don’t you smell a rat, Adorée?”

“Rats!” shrieked Lady Bliss, and peered in a timid fashion about the room. “Not in Blissington House!” It was some little time before she could be persuaded that Miss Lennox referred not to rodents, but to gentlemen in rodent form. “Have you taken leave of your senses? You gave me a nasty turn!”

“Not I,” Jynx retorted bluntly, “but you! Consider, Adorée! Erland thinks that his cousin is infatuated with you. How can you possibly condone his conduct? In effect, he would steal you right out from under Percy’s nose.”

Adorée wished to consider no such thing, and said so, amid a chorus of grumbling. She considered Miss Lennox’s suggestions monstrous and that, too, she made known.

“Piffle!” Jynx was encouraged by Lady Bliss’s return, although reluctant, to reality. “Lord Erland seeks to dupe you, and he may very well succeed. Not only would you walk into his trap, you would rise, nibble, and swallow the baft! I think it is a very great shame.”

So did Adorée, who had no difficulty taking Miss Lennox’s meaning, despite Miss Lennox’s scrambled metaphors. “I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. “Why should Nicky wish to behave so cruelly?”

Jynx fingered her coarse gown and thought that, if ever she escaped this hobble, she would never wear black again. “I don’t know, but I can hazard a guess! Percy’s family has already tried to buy you off, and failed; perhaps Lord Erland thinks to remove Percy from your clutches by attracting your affection to himself.”

If so, he had succeeded, as was evidenced by Adorée’s pale face. She looked as if she had just received her deathblow. “But Nicky didn’t even discuss Percy with me!” she protested faintly. “He refused to speak of him.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?” Jynx pointed out. “He couldn’t very well make you forget about Percy if you were discussing him! Trust me, Adorée. “I think
I
have more than a passing acquaintance with gentlemen’s duplicity!”

Had Lady Bliss stopped to ponder this remark, she might have realized that Miss Lennox’s experience was extremely limited. Instead, she recalled her moonstruck behavior of the previous night, as a result of which Lord Erland must think her shockingly unscrupulous, and disgustingly lax in her notions of nicety, and as bold as a brass-faced monkey. She flung the rose stalk onto the floor and burst into violent tears.

Miss Lennox had a large fondness for Lady Bliss, in spite of all the reasons why she should not, and she was appalled. She had not meant to reduce Adorée to such misery, merely to bring her down from cloud-cuckoo-land before further unhappy developments ensued. She rushed to the sofa and took Adorée into her arms.

“I should not have said such things to you!” cried Jynx, herself close to weeping. “It was most improper in me, and perhaps I was wrong. You would know more about Lord Erland’s motives than I. I’m sorry, Adorée! Please don’t cry.”

Adorée was beyond heeding this request. “Brief though splendid!” she sobbed, against Jynx’s breast. “Surely I am the most unfortunate of beings, and I should have suspected this was the case, for if ever anyone was trained in a school of sorrow, it is I! Lady Peverell was right, when she said I was past my youth—and so were you, because in that case no gentleman would trifle with me unless he had something to gain!”

Miss Lennox was stricken by these revelations with an unholy impulse to giggle. “Stuff and nonsense!” she said, in a voice that was only slightly strained. “If Lady Peverell said that, it was out of jealousy. Percy told me his mother’s been dangling after Lord Erland for years.” Lady Bliss revealed a curious eye. “And,” Jynx added, “that Erland will have nothing to do with her. Just think how livid Lady Peverell would be if she knew he’d displayed an interest in you.”

It did not occur to Adorée that a great number of people would be not only livid but thoroughly scandalized by Miss Lennox’s knowledge of that event. So cheered was she by contemplation of Lady Peverell’s chagrin that she sat up, rubbed the red mark left on her cheek by the rough fabric of Miss Lennox’s gown, and emptied Miss Lennox’s cup of cold chocolate. “You’re sure of that?”

“Positive!” So relieved was Jynx by Adorée’s recovery that she perjured herself without a qualm. “I know it for a fact.”

“You, young lady,” Lady Bliss remarked acerbically, “are too knowing by half! Still, I suppose it is all for the best— though why people say things always
are
I do not know, because I see very little evidence of it! And there is no denying that all this has been a terrible blow to my pride.”

Jynx, who understood that feeling perfectly, sympathized. Her hostess cut her short. Denied her castles in the air, Adorée had turned, rather astonishingly, practical. “Very well!” she said briskly. “I am restored to myself. Now, my dear, since you are so needle-witted, you may tell me how to extricate myself from this fix!”

So oddly did this weighty manner sit on Adorée that Jynx grinned. “I’d be glad to, if only I could. You might recall that I’ve made rather a botch of my own affairs. And don’t tell me again that I may apologize to Shannon and make all well! There are between Shannon and myself serious differences.”

“The deuce!” lamented Lady Bliss. “I thought you would know how to take us all in hand. Which reminds me, I must apologize to you on Innis’s behalf. Never did I think he would behave so abominably! If Shannon knew of
t
hat, he’d call Innis out and probably skewer him.”

“But Shannon won’t know about it!” Jynx said hastily. Adorée looked distinctly damp around the eyes. “I won’t tell him and neither will you. Lord, a pretty uproar
that
would make! This is profitless speculation, anyway. We would do much better to consider why your brother is so eager to placate Eleazar Hyde.”

“I don’t know.” Lady Bliss was the picture of gloom. “Innis told me once that Eleazar had threatened to see him in gaol. And then Innis threatened me within an inch of my life if I breathed a word of what he’d said. None of this makes sense to me. Poor Cristin! The worst thing of all,” she moaned, “is that I am being dunned again! I’m sure I should be used to it, since it has happened all my life, but I vow it grows ever more tedious. Nicky even offered to pay my debts for me, and I had to refuse.”

Jynx regarded the delicate writing desk, in which post-obit bills were stuffed out of sight. So did Lady Bliss, with as much distaste as if it had been a guillotine. “Why refuse?” inquired Miss Lennox. “Let him pay them! Better yet, let him buy you off. After all, he wishes to make a monkey of you, so it is no more than he deserves.”

Lady Bliss might be a trifle reckless in her dealings with the opposite sex, and so she frankly admitted; but she was neither unscrupulous nor scheming, and so she also said. “My dear Miss Lennox,” she concluded, with a quelling glance, “I do not think you know very much about
love!”

Obviously she did not, decided Jynx, or she would not be in her present dreadful situation. “I don’t imagine,” she offered, “that you’d consider applying to Shannon?” Lady Bliss stated emphatically that she would not. “Then I don’t know what to suggest!” sighed Miss Lennox. “If only Innis had not taken that pretty snuffbox away with him—which is just like the man!—you might have sold that. I cannot draw on my own funds without my father—and the Runners—learning that I’m here, so unfortunately that’s out.”

Adorée, thus reminded of Sir Malcolm, sat suddenly upright. There was an expression of such intense concentration on her lovely face that Jynx stared. “You’ve thought of something! What?”

“I? Nothing at all!” Lady Bliss successfully hid her guilty expression by yanking her mobcap down over her face and off her head. Then she rose to her feet.

“Adorée!” Jynx was not deceived. “What are you up to?”

“What
could
I be up to?” With an almost successful look of wounded innocence, Adorée moved toward the door. “I have been dealt a grave wound, my dear, and my spirits must be raised.” Miss Lennox looked doubtful that this miracle might be accomplished, and Lady Bliss further explained that it was her habit, when disappointed in romance, and she seemed destined to be disappointed in romance, to seek consolation among the various stalls and shops at the Pantheon Bazaar. Before Jynx could point out that, for a lady already deeply in debt, such an undertaking was most unwise, Adorée had whisked herself out the door.

She had not precisely lied. Lady Bliss consoled herself, as she ran to don a bonnet and pelisse. As far as she had spoken, she had spoken truth. Too, Jynx’s spirits were already depressed. It was far kinder
not
to tell her that her hostess meant to make a slight detour by way of Lennox Square.

Chapter Twenty-one

Evening had come, and the gaming rooms in Blissington House were once more in full swing. Tomkin, stationed near the front door, opened the portal to a latecomer. He stared, and grimaced in the most extraordinary manner, and looked very much as if he wished to faint but could not. Then he stepped aside and in quavering tones bade the gentleman enter.

Lord Roxbury did so. With an ironic glance at the distrait butler, he strode toward the stairway that led to the first floor.

Lady Bliss, clad in a romantic and revealing peasant costume, presided there. The more astute of her guests remarked that she did not seem to be in her usual lively spirits, and the less kind of them vowed she moved about in a fit of ambulatory somnambulism as effective as that of Mrs. Siddons’s final enactment of Lady MacBeth the previous year at Convent Garden, which had so stirred her audience that they preferred to applaud her through the rest of the evening rather than let the play go on.

Shannon watched as Lady Bliss manipulated a deck of cards into a great curving fan in front of her. She lifted the first card with her finger, and the other cards, one after another in a pretty ripple, lay face upward on the green baize cloth. She touched a card on the other end, and the cards rippled again, and lay face down. The gentlemen applauded and Adorée bowed. Then she glanced up, and caught Shannon’s eye, and turned ashen.

He said nothing to her, but continued to make his circuit of the rooms. Lord Roxbury was a gentleman who attracted attention everywhere he went, despite his adherence to his friend Brummell’s aphorism that the severest mortification a gentleman could incur was to attract observation by his outward appearance. It was not the viscount’s raiment that drew all eyes to him; the viscount’s raiment was elegant in cut, and so understated as to seem, to the uninitiated eye, dull. Not the least unremarkable, however, was the viscount himself. Ladies wistfully eyed his handsome physique and red-gold hair, his sensual features and ascetic green eyes. Gentlemen regarded him also, with less appreciation but as great a curiosity; and all speculated upon the countless
on-dits
heard about Lord Roxbury, and Miss Lennox, and Adorée Blissington.

Not by so much as an eyelid’s flicker did Shannon betray his awareness that a great deal of the conversation that buzzed about Blissington House that night was concerned with him, or the distaste that the situation caused him. He strolled idly through the rooms, spent a half hour at the E.O. table, punting carelessly on the spin; he engaged in a game of whist, won two rubbers and two Monkeys; he paused by the crowded écarté table and admired its cover of black velvet embroidered with gold. Those who closely watched the viscount admitted that, for a man so plagued by rumor, he was extremely unconcerned.

Shannon was far from unconcerned, but he well knew the importance of appearances in his world. Thus he listened to a raddled dowager’s comments upon the poet Byron’s relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh, who had come to London in search of aid in her financial difficulties, and remarked that the hint of incest was not only a bit beyond the line, even for a figure of romance such as Byron styled himself, but also libelous; and he admitted to a foppish fellow that he had been present at the Dandy Ball in the Argyle Rooms, and had seen the regent cut Brummell dead, and had heard the Beau inquire blandly of Lord Alvanley the identity of his fat friend. Conversation then turned to Madame de Stael, lately arrived in England from Stockholm with her daughter, son and young lover. The fop declared his opinion that the lady was large, coarse and homely, with a total lack of beauty and grace. Lord Roxbury, who had a newly developed horror of malicious gossip, announced a prior engagement and took his leave.

In point of fact Shannon left the gaming room, but he did not depart the house. En route to the attics, where he meant to if necessary gag and bind Miss Lennox so that she had no choice but to listen to him, he passed the book room. The door stood ajar, and an altercation was underway within.

“Furthermore,” said Miss Lennox wrathfully, “I do not know what you can be doing here when your sister has forbidden you the house.”

“Never have I seen so stiff-necked and stubborn a girl!” For emphasis, Innis brandished the brandy decanter that he held. “It’s my home as much as hers. I live here, don’t I? Anyway, everyone knows that my sister’s heart is soft as mush.”