Maggie MacKeever (25 page)

“Aye!” responded Pegs, enthusiastically.

“Oh, dear!” wailed Lady Dimity, fanning herself. “Is that quite fair? Poor Vidal has already been struck once tonight.”

The Honorable Adolphus could hardly be expected to sympathize with the minor discomforts suffered by the gentleman who doubtless wished to wreak bodily injury on himself; still, for the sake of veracity, he felt compelled to set the record straight. “More than once! He should be used to it, what with Jessabelle abusing him every chance she has—and I don’t mind admitting that I was very nervous lest she offer me
violence while we was betrothed!” He caught his papa’s eye and hastily added: “At any rate she won’t offer violence to either of us now!”

“Won’t?” snapped Lady Emmeline. “Why ever not?”

By this indication that Lord Pennymount’s aunts wished him to be violently assaulted, Adolphus was confused. “Because she’s going away! Dashed if I know where. Or why! That she’s in love with Pennymount is as plain as the nose on her face! But I distinctly heard her say she was going to pack!”

“Pack!”
wailed Dimmy. “Sister, she will ruin everything!”

“Don’t fly into alt!” begged Em, dragging her lamenting twin toward the door. “All is not yet lost!”

Mention of loss recalled to Dolph the enmity doubtless borne him by Lord Pennymount, and the subsequent danger to the intact condition of his several limbs. Gratefully he gazed upon Capitaine Chançard, who had so nobly come to his defense. “Deuced good of you to look out for me! You
are
the best of good fellows!” said Dolph.

Sir Edward roused from grandiose visions inspired in him by mention of “le comte.” “‘Good fellows’! You’re castaway, Dolph!”

“I am not!” retorted Adolphus, stung. “All I’ve drunk this entire blasted evening was a glass of Madeira and several tots of flesh and blood!”

“Madeira!” Sir Edward shuddered. “Now I
know
you’re foxed!”

“Foxes!” Lady Camilla, who had spent the preceding interval snuggled comfortably against Capitaine Chançard, stirred. “Even if I must give back my other bride gifts,” she said judiciously, “I think I should be allowed to keep at least my stirrup cup!”

These side issues Michon ignored. With less than his usual serenity he gazed upon the Honorable Dolph. “I mean to look after you very closely,” he promised softly. “Now that you’re my brother-in-law.”

That softly spoken promise struck Adolphus as extremely ominous. “Egad!” he squeaked, in the same instant as Sir Edward bellowed: “Your
what
?”

“Oh yes, Papa!” Lady Camilla wrinkled her lovely brow. “Did we not say?” She launched into a highly garbled explanation of special licenses and archbishops and wedding ceremonies conducting in gaming-saloons by individuals who shouldn’t have been there in the first place—ceremonies that were legally binding, nonetheless. “And we had ever so many witnesses!” concluded Milly, gesturing toward the fashionable visitors, who had given up all pretense of gambling to simply gawk and stare. “And in case you are thinking of an annulment, you must not, because we have already—”

What his chuckleheaded daughter had already done was glaringly obvious to Sir Edward, as well as to every other occupant of the lofty saloon. “Never mind!” he snapped.

Lady Camilla dimpled. “I said I wouldn’t be so shatterbrained as to marry the wrong gentleman, and I
didn’t!”
she observed blissfully to Capitaine Chançard, who promptly kissed her, upon which the fashionable spectators broke out in a unanimous—save for Sir Edward—hoorah.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Some little time later Mme. Joliffe somberly departed her little gray house in Park Lane and made her way to the Golden Cross, one of London’s most important coaching inns, located in Charing Cross. With her she carried a single portmanteau, in which the majority of her belongings were packed. Her destination was Dover, where she would hurl herself on her disapproving family’s charity—and, barring that, from the cliffs into the sea.

Even at so early an hour—which was not all
that
early; during the recently accounted portentous events time had not ceased its inexorable march, and the new day was now considerably advanced, with dawn mere moments off—the inn yard seethed with sleepy travelers but newly roused from their beds. Ostlers and stable-boys and porters bustled about their business. Their shouts mingled not unpleasantly with the querulous inquiries of sleepy travelers anxious for their breakfast, horses whickering and whinnying, barking dogs. Jessabelle ascertained the direction of the booking office and curiously inspected her surroundings as she awaited her turn with the clerks.

It was a large and none-too-cleanly room, ornamented with large posting bills, the larger portion of which was enclosed behind a huge counter fitted up with recesses that put Jessabelle in mind of cages in a menagerie. In the line directly in front of Jess stood a tradesman carrying a large paper parcel that he arranged to book. The arrangements completed, the clerk carelessly tossed the parcel over his shoulder into the recess. Wondering if she was to be similarly treated, Jess stepped up.

She was fortunate to obtain a seat so late, the clerk sternly explained; places had to be secured in advance, with the hopeful traveler’s name entered in a book, and half his fare taken in deposit. However, by a great stroke of good fortune, which had arranged for one of the Dover passengers to conveniently break his leg, a seat was available, providing the lady did not mind an outside place. The lady contemplated the discomforts of that means of travel: exposure to the elements and the adventurous young men who preferred clinging to the exterior of a coach, along with countless bags and bales and parcels, over more secure transport within; near-asphyxiation from the dust stirred up by the vehicle’s wheels. Then she contemplated Vidal’s reaction when he recovered his senses and his memory. Not only upon the Honorable Adolphus would Lord Pennymount’s bloodthirst fall. Hastily Mme. Joliffe agreed to the place offered by the booking clerk. At least it was not winter and the outside passengers need not fear being frozen to death, a not-unprecedented event.

Her inclusion on the waybill assured, Jess hastened into the coffee room and made an excellent breakfast of cold pigeon pie, boiled beef and ham, grilled kidneys and bacon, hot buttered toast and muffins and tea. No sudden onslaught of gluttony accounted for this feast. Jessabelle had done enough traveling to know that she would only have time to swallow a hasty mouthful of the enticing repasts laid out by innkeepers en route. Her breakfast was an extravagance she regretted, immediately the lid of the boot was slammed shut, and the coachman had mounted his box. Out into the street they rattled, at a speed that would spell doom for any who dared get in its way. Almost that speed spelt doom for Mme. Joliffe. Grimly she concentrated on keeping her extravagant breakfast in its proper place.

Not long was such heroic effort required of her. No sooner had the coach passed beyond the environs of the city than a bizarre apparition rode out from a leafy copse. “Stand and deliver!” bellowed this picturesque individual, who was swathed about in a voluminous cloak, with hat pulled low over his brow, and a cravat wrapped round the lower portion of his face. Jessabelle wondered how he could see. That he
could
see she trusted: he held a pistol in each hand. Almost Jess was grateful to this intruder for his timely interruption, which had prevented her lowering herself in the opinion of her fellow-passengers, and doubtless ruining several of the parcels alongside which she rode.

Her gratitude was not long-lived. One of the highwayman’s pistols pointed straight at her. “Get down, if you please! Yes, you! And be quick about it or you’ll rue the consequence!” Amid the frightened, speculative murmurs of her fellow travelers, Jessabelle grasped her portmanteau and very awkwardly alit. As result of her prior encounter with a gentleman of the road, she had lost everything she possessed. On no account would she forfeit what little remained to her. To the highwayman she made this clear.

Though Jessabelle could not know it, her obduracy posed the highwayman a dilemma of no minor degree. Somehow he must contrive to get this uncooperative female—and didn’t she look damnably alluring clutching that battered portmanteau to her breast as if it were a babe, and wearing that dreadful scowl—up in the saddle before him without lowering his pistols, lest the coachman and guard conspire to overset him, a possibility that caused his steady hand to waver, and the pistol to go off.

But suddenly there was chaos. Jessabelle blanched and dropped her portmanteau; the passengers screamed and swore; the nervous horses leapt forward in their traces, nearly unseating the coachman; the vehicle raced pell-mell down the road. Both Jess and the highwayman stared after it. Before their very eyes the coach lurched and tumbled over in a ditch. The horses were in a dreadful tangle. The coachman extricated himself from the shrubbery where he’d been hurled and engaged in a stomping, shouting temper-tantrum right in the middle of the road. Cursing, the highwayman put away his pistols, leaned down from his saddle, and swept up Mme. Joliffe across its prow.

Jessabelle was not one to appreciate so masterful an approach. “My portmanteau!” she wailed.

“The devil with your portmanteau!” snapped the highwayman, setting off in the opposite direction from the stricken coach, at a very rapid pace.

That pace, as well as the strong arm which held her captive, had a most unsettling effect. “If you do not slow down immediately,” Jessabelle announced grimly, “I am going to cast up my accounts.”

Immediately they slowed. “Curst disobliging creature!” the highwayman murmured, affectionately.

Of course Jessabelle realized the identity of her captor, had suspected from the instant she’d first glimpsed the tall figure in its absurd costume, first heard his harsh voice. He did not know she knew, however. How to turn this fact to her advantage? Jess was stricken by a positively brilliant plan.

“You needn’t try and make it up to me!” she said crossly, therefore. “I told you what would happen if you ever posed again as a gentleman of the road. It was only because you assured me you were very sorry that I didn’t betray you the first time. Not that I could approve being held to ransom but I was very angry with Vidal—yes, and you promised you would never do that again, either! I think you must have been rubbing shoulders too long with Lady Camilla and have grown similarly bacon-brained.”

To this spate of accusations the highwayman offered no defense. “Have I indeed?” he asked thoughtfully.

“You must have.” Encouraged, Jessabelle persevered. “Why else would you have waylaid my coach? You can hardly expect Vidal to ransom me again! I suppose you must be very angry with me for throwing a rub in your way, but I couldn’t let you steal a march on Pennymount.” Here her innate honesty asserted itself. “At least not by so underhanded a means. And if you did not know that, you must have, er, a maggot in
your
brain!”

No lady, decided the highwayman, spoke thusly of her inamorato
.
Having assured himself that Mme. Joliffe cherished none of the warmer emotions for frippery fellows, he proceeded next to loose screws. “What about Aethelwine?” he snarled.

“What
about
Aethelwine?” snarled Jessabelle in turn. “You’re the one on the dangle for a fortune, not I! And when I think that Pennymount accused me of frittering away my allowance—hah! Not that he would ever believe my sole purpose in your establishment was to prevent luckless gamblers from doing away with themselves.” She paused. The highwayman recalled that he was on horseback and addressed himself to his steed, which had wandered altogether off the highway and was lunching lightly on the lower limbs of a tree.

“As well,” continued Jessabelle, encouraged anew, “as to put poor Vidal’s nose out of joint. That is why I became betrothed to Adolphus—though I am amazed anyone believed that after being married to Vidal I could even
think
of marrying such a cabbage-head! It was very badly done of me, I admit. But I could not bear to think of Pennymount Place refurbished in the Egyptian fashion, or Pennymount rendered gentle as a lamb. Oh yes, Lady Camilla intended exactly that! She told me so herself.”

The highwayman decided his simplest course of action was to let his horse graze. “Pea-goose!” said he.

“Indeed she is!” Jessabelle quickly agreed, more optimistic still. “I thought Vidal must be fond of her, else they would not have become betrothed. Truly I did
not
mean to see the betrothal broken off—or to make a shambles of his life, or to shatter his hopes! All I wished to do was make a byword of his name like he had mine, which just proves how disastrous it is to bear a grudge. Vidal has good reason to wish me to perdition. Well, I shall trouble him no more. I mean to throw myself on the charity of my family. No doubt they will make sure I live the rest of my days kept safely out of sight.”

Nor was the highwayman one to be impressed by noble self-sacrifice. “Balderdash!” he said.

“It does sound rather grim,” admitted Jessabelle, wriggling about in the saddle so that she could gaze upon her abductor. “Still, that is what I thought. Perhaps
I
have grown shatterbrained. Truly I am sorry
about Lady Camilla, Vidal.”

Feeling more than a little absurd, Lord Pennymount pushed back his obscuring hat and unwrapped the cravat from the lower portion of his face. “Don’t be! The chit would have driven me to murder her before a fortnight was out.” He looked somewhat abstracted. “I wonder whatever made me think I was hankering after a biddable female.”

Jessabelle, despite the discomfort of her awkward position, was feeling a trifle abstracted herself, a circumstance that had much to do with Lord Pennymount’s hungry gaze upon her face. “I cannot imagine!” she gasped. That gasp recalled to Lord Pennymount occasions on which Jessabelle had proven even more inflammatory than when they were at loggerheads. One such occasion immediately followed, as result of which Lord Pennymount and his first countess very nearly tumbled off their horse.