Maggie MacKeever (27 page)

During this exchange of compliments, Lord Carlin’s whiskey turned into the leafy byways of St. James’s Park, where once Henry VIII had demolished a leper colony to erect a palace in its place. James I had introduced mulberry trees into the park, and Charles II had added a canal running from the mulberry garden to Whitehall. “Lady Easterling,” added his lordship, “why is it that I suspect you are not paying the slightest attention to me?”

Lady Easterling started so violently she almost tumbled off her seat. “The devil! You gave me a nasty turn. I was thinking of Georgiana, and that I was right to suspect her civility, because Georgiana usually
ain’t!
And now look what’s come of it. Jevon wished to offer Sara a slip on the shoulder, and I think it is probably a very good thing that she saw him buying a bonnet for his opera dancer in the Pantheon Bazaar, because I am not at all certain she would not have
let
him, so frequently is she getting cinders in her eye—not that Sara couldn’t do a great deal worse than Jevon, even if he
does
wish to marry a female of low repute. I do not mean to imply that Sara should place herself under a gentleman’s protection, of course, but there’s no denying she and Jevon would have suited very well, because they both have this habit of kissing everyone in sight. But Sara fancied Arthur, so it was not to be—which is also just as well, since Jevon’s interest is fixed elsewhere!” She turned her head to gaze pertly upon Lord Carlin. “Did you say something, sir?”

Kit knew the futility of trying to stem Jaisy’s flow of words once she was in full spate, as currently she was, having interpreted her escort’s speechless condition as indicative of avid interest.

“What a morning we have had!” Gustily, she sighed. “And all because Georgiana caught Arthur kissing Sara in the morning room. I warned Sara about this trysting, but she did not heed me. Georgiana flew right into a pelter, and it all came out—that Sara had been kissing Jevon as well, and Arthur previously.” She frowned. “Cinders! Georgiana didn’t believe it any more than I did! And it turns out that Sir Phineas
wasn’t
dangling after Sara because I had intimated to him that her nature was a trifle warm, but spying on her for Georgiana, which I must say wasn’t very
sporting
of him!”

This Sara sounded to Lord Carlin like a female of very equivocal character, and one who had no business in any respectable household. Arthur Kingscote sounded scarcely more admirable. Yet Lady Blackwood had hired one as her companion, and intended to marry the other to her niece.

Had not Lord Carlin been acquainted with the dowager duchess, this inhumanity would have passed belief. Since he was, it did not. Georgiana was not one to lightly change her mind.

“Sara’s been turned off,” Jaisy continued. “Poor thing! I tried to speak with her, but Georgiana was being most uncivil, and wouldn’t allow me to get in a private word. And Arthur wouldn’t speak to me. Still, I’ll wager I’ve contrived to settle up his accounts creditably!”

Settle up his accounts? Surely Lady Easterling did not mean that she had paid the scoundrel’s debts? That so exquisitely fetching a lady, albeit a rag-mannered one, should be forced to squander her fortune on a libidinous wastrel
did
surpass belief.

“Good Gad!” responded Lady Easterling, having made the acquaintance of his lordship’s indignant conclusions. “I ain’t such a nodcock as to squander my blunt on a cawker like Arthur, even if I could, which I can’t, because my fortune is tied up. Easterling was used to say the ready flowed like water through my fingers, which is doubtless why he made it impossible for me to breach my capital. And though Easterling was a very
downy
one, it is all deuced inconvenient, which brings me to something I wish particularly to discuss with you.” Looking anxious, she laid her hand on his sleeve. “Would you mind so very much—Georgiana will do nothing for Arthur, not now—I should like to make him an allowance!”

Lord Carlin eyed Jaisy’s clutching fingers and resigned himself to yet another irreparably creased sleeve. “An allowance?” he repeated blankly.

“Out of my own money, naturally!” Apace with her anxiety, Lady Easterling’s grip tightened. “It is only fair! I
had
meant to take Sara into my household before she embarked upon this kissing spree, but now I clearly see that it will not serve! I would much rather make Arthur an allowance than take the chance of Sara kissing
you!”

Kit had a strong suspicion that there were ramifications of this conversation that he had failed to grasp. “Kissing
me?”
he echoed faintly.

Clearly his lordship was aghast at the idea that he might be accosted by a female of such catholic tastes as Sara Valentine, and Lady Easterling made haste to ease his mind. “I knew you would not like it!” she soothed. “Don’t fret, you will not be reduced to such straits. Sara will have Arthur, though why she should want him I cannot imagine, but each to his own taste. I only hope that Arthur does not botch the business! I told him just how to go about it, but I did not know precisely how to get to Gretna Green.”

“Gretna Green?” repeated Lord Carlin, in tones even more horrified.

“Oh, yes!” Victim of no false modesty, Lady Easterling was delighted with her own inventiveness. “Ain’t it a nacky solution? Georgiana will be mad as fire but even she can’t force me to marry a gentleman who’s already married to someone else. And Sara will like an elopement very well, I’ll warrant; I would myself! Not that such a thing would do for someone so stiff-rumped—I mean, with such a strong sense of propriety!—as yourself.”

Stiff-rumped, was he? In addition to being a coxcomb and a curst loose-screw? If nothing else, reflected Lord Carlin, association with Lady Easterling had fast taught him humility. “You speak in jest, I hope,” he said repressively.

Jaisy widened her big blue eyes. “Why, no! Why should you think I was hamming you? I do not scruple to tell you, sir, that I ain’t one to stand still and allow fate to mill me down! Sara and Arthur haven’t a ha’porth of spirit between them. If I hadn’t taken a hand, we’d have all been brought to a standstill.” She frowned then, as Lord Carlin leaned forward to murmur instructions to his fascinated coachman. “What’s amiss?”

That question Lord Carlin answered at great length, and in such terms as left no doubt that elopements were not undertakings of which a starched-up and stiff-rumped gentleman could approve. The kindest explanation his lordship could conceive of Jaisy’s appalling conduct was that, when he had shaken her till the teeth rattled in her head, he had also addled her brain.

Jaisy responded to this stern denunciation as would any instinctive flirt, which detracts no whit from her sincerity: her huge eyes filled with tears. “Oh!” she breathed. “You
have
taken me in disgust, as Georgiana said you would! It makes me very sad! Because I want more than anything to please you, and I cannot bear that we should stand on bad terms!” A tear slid down her delicate cheek, trembled on the end of her dainty nose.

Lord Carlin glanced first at his coachman’s rigid back, and then at Lady Easterling’s averted face. A second tear followed the first, and then a third, splashing unchecked on her ribbed muslin dress. Half-exasperated, half-ashamed and totally disarmed, Kit applied his handkerchief to her damp cheeks. “I don’t
wish
you to think poorly of me!” she sobbed.

Fortunate it was for Lord Carlin that few people were abroad in the Green Park this day, or the newest
on-dit
to circulate among the West End clubs would be that he had callously reduced Lady Easterling to tears. Fair Fatality! He had named her well. “If you wish to please me, you will instantly cease this missishness. It is not at all seemly.”

Lady Easterling lowered the handkerchief to regard his lordship with belligerence. “I vow there is no satisfying you!” she snapped. “First I am bold as brass, and now I am too coy! I wish you would make up your mind what it is you want before I am driven into an apoplexy!”

Lord Carlin, face to face with opportunity, clutched at it. “What I
don’t
want is for you on my account to try and make yourself into a pattern-card of respectability.”

“If that don’t beat all!” Lady Easterling twisted the handkerchief between her fingers, with results more ruinous even than those wrought on his sleeve. “There is no use in trying to bamboozle me into thinking you liked me as I
was,
because I ain’t
that
great a pea-goose! You needn’t try and be kind about it; I see exactly where the trouble lies. You will never like a madcap like myself, and I’m sure I cannot blame it in you, for you are a nonpareil! A regular Trojan!” She sniffled. “All of which goes to show that Easterling didn’t know what he was talking about! Even if one
does
throw one’s heart over, one’s horse don’t necessarily follow? And it is all
most
unfair, because all I ever wanted was that you should show me a little
preference!”

That he had already shown Lady Easterling a great deal more preference than exhibited to any other lady in all his life, those ladies including the immediate members of his family, did not occur to the guilt-stricken Kit. Since he could not deny that he had spoken unappreciatively of Lady Easterling, and not only on the occasion she had overheard, he sought to assuage her hurt by some other means. “You mustn’t pay any heed to what
I
think!” he protested, then went on to remind her ladyship that she deemed him a stiff-rumped, starched-up coxcomb, not to mention a curst loose-screw.

“That stung, did it? My wretched tongue!” Jaisy’s fingers flew to her mouth, as if she could stuff back into that reckless orifice words best left unsaid. “I beg you will forgive me! I did not mean it, but you had made me very angry. And I am very sorry if I have made you angry again, because truly I meant to do no such thing.”

So often had Lady Easterling reiterated her desire to please him that Lord Carlin had begun to wonder if it might not be true. He retrieved his handkerchief from her lap and applied it to his damp brow, then glanced from Lady Easterling’s woebegone face to his coachman’s rigid back. “Jarvey, drive on!” he said to the latter, and to the former: “Abominable baggage! What
am
I to do with you?”

Lady Easterling took no offense at being thus disrespectfully addressed; instead she interpreted his lordship’s exasperation as a sign that her current batch of transgressions had been erased from the slate. As with many another shriven sinner, her relief expressed itself in ebullience. “La, sir!” she responded, with a wicked twinkling glance. “I’d have thought you could reason that out for yourself!”

Certainly Lord Carlin could do so; unlike various of his associates. Lord Carlin had not been shortchanged by the Almighty in regard to intellect. “We’ll talk about that later!” he said hastily. “Right now you must tell your aunt what you have told me.”

“Jupiter!” gasped Jaisy, her eyes wide.
“All
of it, sir?”

Lord Carlin contemplated Lady Blackwood’s reaction were she to be made privy to some of her niece’s more provocative remarks, and regretfully decided that a gentleman could not honorably induce spasms in even the most viper-tongued of harridans. “No, no! Only the part about Sara,” he explained. Jaisy looked rebellious. “I thought you wished to please me,” he added craftily.

“You are as bad as Easterling!” In a very truculent manner, Jaisy stuck out her lower lip. “He was used to say that though I could not be driven, I could be
led!
It is not at all
elevating
to be treated like a donkey with a carrot being dangled in front of its nose! Oh, very well, if nothing else will do—but I hope you realize that if Georgiana prevents Arthur from eloping with Sara, she will force him to marry
me,
and we will all three be miserable!” Carlin vouchsafed no response, being wholly occupied with contemplation of the deceased Lord Easterling’s most recently revealed words of wisdom regarding his mule-headed spouse. Unaware that the viscount was turning over in his mind the infinite guises in which a carrot might be offered a recalcitrant donkey, Jaisy pondered the quixotic workings of Fate. With victory within her grasp, she had been laid low, and by as neat a bit of cross-and-jostle work as she had ever seen.

In very little time, Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling arrivedat Blackwood House. The journey had been accomplished with a maximum of speed and a minimum of conversation, the latter confined to Lady Easterling’s muttered commentary upon handy bunches of fives and cross-and-jostle work, and his lordship’s insistence upon following the honorable course. “Honor be damned!” snapped Lady Easterling. “I am sorry if you do not like it,” Lord Carlin responded calmly, “but our duty is clear.”

“I suppose you are correct,” sighed Jaisy; “Have you ever noticed that doing one’s duty is most often curst
unpleasant?”
And then the front door swung open, and they stepped into the entry hall.

Lord Carlin and Lady Easterling adjourned to the drawing room, where the dowager duchess was seated upon her crocodile sofa. Her countenance was no more welcoming, as she gazed upon Lady Carlin, than that reptile. Lest he misinterpret her expression as appreciation of his presence, the dowager said, “Paugh!” Lord Carlin was not so easily intimidated, however. Nor was he any more inclined than his hostess toward passing time in polite inanities. He nudged Jaisy, who clung like a barnacle to his prow, as if she expected her aunt to forcibly detach her therefrom.

Jaisy cast him an anguished look. He nodded and looked stern. “Georgiana,” she said weakly, “there is something I must tell you, not because I think I should, but because Carlin insists. It is about Sara. I have—she has—Arthur has—oh, the deuce!”

“Pea-goose!” observed the dowager unkindly. “If you mean to tell me that the silly twit has spirited away Confucious, I am well aware of it. Ingratitude! After all I have done! I hope Miss Ungrateful Twit may discover what it is like to be bitten on the hand that provides sustenance, because it is a great deal less than what she deserves!”