The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy) Read online

  The

  Purloined

  Heart

  The

  Purloined

  Heart

  Maggie MacKeever

  Vintage Ink Press

  Los Angeles

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictionally.

  Copyright © 2013 by Gail Clark Burch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  ISBN: 978-0-9889799-1-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013943437

  First Printing: July 2013

  Cover based on ‘Portrait of a Woman’, ca 1797, painted by Elisabeth Louise Vigee LeBrun, 1801. Original located at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Robert Dawson Evans Collection.

  This book is an original publication of Vintage Ink Press. For further information contact www.vintageinkpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  With a nod to the incomparable Georgette.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Author’s Note

  THE TYBURN WALTZ

  Other Books by Maggie MacKeever

  Chapter One

  And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in masquerade. —George Gordon, Lord Byron

  “I don’t think,” said Viscount Ashcroft, “this is a good idea.”

  “So you’ve told me several times,” retorted the young woman strolling by his side. “Perhaps you think I have gone deaf?”

  “If that don’t beat all,” Tony muttered, much struck by this ingratitude; had he not put aside his own plans, against his better judgment, to escort her to this masquerade ball being held by members of Watier’s Club to celebrate the long-awaited peace between Great Britain and France, only to discover the surroundings most unsuitable for a respectable female due to the presence of demi-reps? Tony might not be in the habit of hobnobbing with the muslin company but he recognized the breed and if that wasn’t Harriette Wilson standing over there he’d eat his hat, not that he was wearing a hat, being dressed as a medieval monk in a dreary full-length hooded robe, a cross hanging from his neck and a cord around his waist, when he’d wanted to come as Sinbad the Sailor, sporting a hooped earring and a cutlass and tall leather boots, a parrot perched on his shoulder demanding pieces of eight—

  He paused, having lost his train of thought. At any rate, if he had to be here at least his companion might have left the matter of her costume up to him, in which case she wouldn’t have been one of several nigh-identical Dianas, and so he informed her.

  “But I don’t want to draw attention,” she protested. “And the costume was at hand. You’re cross because you were persuaded to come as a monk, and Caro Lamb mistook you for Lord Byron, and made a cake of herself. Try for a little patience, Tony. We needn’t stay much longer now.”

  “How do you define ‘not much longer’?” inquired the viscount, who had already endured several country dances and a gavotte. “Ten more minutes? Two more hours? Tell you what, I’m going in to supper. You do as you please. ” He plunged into the noisy throng, which was immense and colorful as well, everyone having been required to come in costume except the club members, who wore blue dominoes. The doors to the supper rooms had been flung open to accommodate two thousand gay, glittering, and half-tipsy guests.

  Maddie sighed. She had grown fond of Tony since they joined in a conspiracy to mislead his mama and her papa by pretending an inclination toward matrimony neither of them felt; and regretted having made him cross.

  She wasn’t hungry. Maddie snatched a glass of iced champagne from a passing servant’s tray — her sixth of the evening, Tony could have pointed out — and made her way in the opposite direction, savoring this rare opportunity to speak to whomever she chose, say whatever she pleased, without being scolded for it afterward. Maddie didn’t care for being scolded, or receiving disappointed glances, or any of the various unpleasantnesses that now made up her days.

  A corpulent Elizabethan courtier bumped into her. Maddie caught his arm before he could pitch forward on his nose. “Thank’ee,” he said, as he righted himself. “Demned if you ain’t a sweet piece. That is—” He winked a bloodshot eye. “Could a man but feast upon your beauty, he’d have no need for mortal food.”

  Beauty, was it? Maddie pointed him at the supper rooms and gave him a push. “You need spectacles, sir.”

  “Damn me. Spectacles,” the courtier muttered, as he staggered away. Aware that she was being foolish, Maddie peeked in a pier glass.

  Alas, no transformation had taken place. Even costumed in a chiton that clung to her body, girded at breast and waist and leaving one arm bare; even wearing a blonde wig dressed in a classical manner and sandals laced up around her calves, a bow slung over her shoulder and a quiver filled with golden arrows and no gloves whatsoever because Tony had forbade them, she looked what she was: an ordinary female of seven-and-twenty years, with a plumpish figure, a roundish face made no more exotic by the half mask she wore.

  She moved away from the glass. Odd encounters were to be expected, Maddie told herself, when a female wandered off alone. She strolled through the grand silk-lined rooms, lavish with elegant furnishings and crammed with costumed figures, listening to snippets of conversation as she passed her fellow guests. “Byron!” sniffed a Marie Antoinette in hoop skirts and panniers, ruffles and lace; “All that brooding and posturing and pouring vinegar over his potatoes. Someone should give the man a good shake.” Two Roman senators were placing odds on whether the Prince Regent’s efforts to exclude the Princess of Wales from the festivities were destined for success. Several dashing officers of the 19th Light Dragoons were defaming a female of their acquaintance whose affair with the local apothecary had resulted in a not-so-secret abortion, which her husband hadn’t yet found out.

  One officer eyed Maddie, thereby proving that even the most unremarkable female was worthy of attention when she went out in public wearing less than her chemise. Maddie averted her gaze and asked a footman for directions to the ladies’ withdrawing room.

  The chamber was light and airy, with papered walls, a central
fireplace, and crimson-upholstered furniture. A matron dressed in flowing Greek draperies perched on one of the sofas while a harried-looking maidservant pinned up her torn hem. “He kept a mistress from the moment of his marriage,” confided the matron to her young companion, an Austrian peasant girl; “as any fool might have foreseen.” The shepherdess expressed greater interest in the recent elopement of a certain earl. Leaving the ladies to their gossip, Maddie placed her empty champagne glass on a table and went out into the hall. From the public rooms drifted distant laughter, and music, and conversation. She hoped Tony was enjoying his meal.

  If the viscount had the right of it, barques of frailty numbered among the guests. Had the Greek matron been a courtesan? The peasant girl? Maddie doubted she would recognize a high flyer if one leapt up and bit her on the nose.

  A slender hand plucked at her quiver. Maddie paused. The hand belonged to a youthful Henry VIII wearing black satin knee-breeches, fur-trimmed metallic brocade coat, purple tunic, full face mask and a velvet hat. “ ‘Many arrows, loosèd several ways, fly to one mark’,” quoted His Majesty, sounding less like a monarch than a pubescent boy.

  Maddie knew her Shakespeare, Henry V, to be precise. She did not know why Henry should quote Shakespeare at her. Still, this was a gala, where people were imbibing more than they should, herself among them, and so she joined in the spirit of the thing. “ ‘As many ways meet in one town; as many fresh streams meet in one salt sea—’ ”

  “ ‘So many a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose’.” Henry draped an arm around her shoulder. He stood mere inches taller than she.

  His Majesty stank of stale perfume. “You mustn’t let me keep you from your royal duties, sire.”

  “ ‘Every subject’s duty is the king’s. But every subject’s soul is his own’.” Henry detached himself and moved on along the hall.

  Maddie adjusted her quiver, which His Majesty had knocked askew. She suspected young Henry had been drinking something stronger than champagne.

  Why had he been lurking outside the ladies’ withdrawing room?

  She knew she shouldn’t follow. Probably she wouldn’t have followed, save for those six glasses of champagne. But Maddie was having an adventure, she reminded herself; and though she had reservations about the business, she’d not soon be granted another opportunity to behave as badly as she wanted with no one to say her nay.

  The distant sounds of revelry faded altogether as she trailed the furtive monarch into the more private recesses of the house; along a hallway lacking footmen, which was passing strange when one considered the plentitude of footmen elsewhere, including the ballroom, where they stood every few feet against the wall, fluttering large fans.

  The dim corridor stretched before her. Several candles had flickered out. Maddie slipped back into the shadows each time His Majesty glanced behind him, half-expecting someone to seize her by the scruff of the neck and demand she explain her presence in this part of the house.

  Henry reached the hallway’s end, halted in front of a closed door. Maddie ducked down beside an elegant commode.

  A silent moment passed. She peered around the commode’s curved side. Henry knocked once, again, and entered the room.

  The door clicked shut behind him. Maddie crept across the carpet, her pulse pounding in her throat.

  She bent to peer through the keyhole. Her bow and quiver slid sideways, pulling her off balance. Steadying herself with one hand on the doorknob and the other on the jamb, she peered into the room.

  Henry stood in the middle of the chamber, arms folded across his chest. Looming over him was an Egyptian pharaoh clad in sandals, a kilt that hung from waist to knee, and a golden bird mask. A blue and yellow striped headcloth was secured around his forehead by a golden asp with head reared back to strike. In one hand he held a scepter resembling a small shepherd’s crook.

  The men were arguing. Maddie couldn’t make out their words. Something to do with being slave to an unamiable woman, and political necessity. Henry presented the pharaoh with his back and started toward the door. The pharaoh raised his scepter and brought it down on Henry’s skull.

  Maddie’s fingers tightened on the knob. The door swung open and she stumbled into the room. Henry lay crumpled on the floor in an expanding pool of bright red blood.

  Chapter Two

  His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was in every particular, his ruling principle. —Jane Austen

  Angelo Basile Jarrow — known to the world as ‘Angel’, or alternately, ‘that devil’, the latter sentiment often expressed by his estranged wife — strolled through the supper rooms, where excellent wines flowed in abundance while rare delicacies, both in and out of season, were being served. The members of Watier’s Club mingled with the guests, pausing behind this chair and that. The club’s perennial president, George Brummell, sat teasing a lady wearing a wax mask, declaring he would not leave her side until he saw her face.

  Angel might have made an educated guess as to who hid behind that wax. It was in his nature to recognize the elegant turn of an ankle, the sweet slope of a shoulder, the flirtatious tilt of a head. He paused to speak with one of his friends, an event that would in the ordinary unmasked way of things have attracted no little feminine attention, the pair of them being the town’s most notorious flirts. Where Lord Saxe was dark and diabolic and devilish handsome, Angel was temptation incarnate, with the face and form of an Adonis (his wife said, Narcissus), sun-kissed skin and gleaming fair hair. Even his hazel eyes were flecked with gold. The more moonstruck among his admirers claimed the day became a little brighter when Angel appeared, as if he drew the light to him and reflected it back again.

  Lord Saxe wore a domino of rich blue Gros de Naples. Angel, who was lazy, spoiled, and indolent, and not inclined toward effort, had permitted his valet to dress him as one of Charles II’s merry cavaliers in brocade and velvet and lace, square-toed high-heeled shoes and a broad-brimmed hat with luxurious ostrich plumes. He carried a walking stick adorned with bright ribbons, a snuffbox and an embroidered handkerchief; sported a smallsword of Toledo steel at his hip, and a nice diamond bob in one ear. His hair had been powdered a delicate pale blue.

  Lord Saxe had had a trying time of it recently, during what he called the Allied Invasion, which followed the cessation of the long hostilities with the French. He was still having a trying time, even after the departure of various foreign princes and potentates. “We are to celebrate the centenary of the House of Hanover in grand style,” he informed Mr. Jarrow. “With temples, taverns, pagodas and bridges in the royal parks, and a mock naval battle on the Serpentine.”

  “And drinking booths,” added Angel. “There must be drinking booths, Kane.”

  The baron scowled. “Are you never serious?”

  “The day will come, I know it will — I am eight-and-thirty and have one foot already halfway in the grave — when my entertainments are restricted to giving long and boring speeches in the House.” Angel rearranged his priceless lace. “There will be time enough to be serious then.”

  “Time, the devourer of all things,” murmured Lord Saxe.

  “I shall skulk about the old manse in my nightshirt,” Angel added. “Stealing kisses from housemaids.”

  The baron’s lips twitched. Angel was pleased. Rumor claimed Kane had suffered a recent romantic disappointment. Difficult to credit, but there it was. A man chased one too many times after Aphrodite’s golden apples, tripped, and tumbled head over heels.

  Such were the risks one took when embarking upon any game of chance. Angel enjoyed games of chance. Such was his luck that he almost always won.

  He saw a gypsy girl approaching. She possessed a well-turned pair of ankles, as he recalled. Leaving the ankles and their owner to the baron, Angel departed the supper rooms. Tonight’s event, for all that highborn ladies were fraternizing with courtesans in an unprecedented manner, was turning out to be a dull affair.

  At least Isabella wasn’t present. Angel’s wife m
ade it her practice to avoid being caught under the same roof. He ventured deeper into the house, currently owned by Lord George Cavendish. Pope had visited this old pile, and Swift; Handel dwelt here three years as an honored guest. Mere weeks past, the Allied Sovereigns had been feted in tents and temporary rooms erected in the gardens, at a cost of £10,000.

  In those same gardens, the marbles brought by Lord Elgin from Athens were decaying in a coal shed. As Angel was pondering the problem posed the gardens’ owner by rubbish tossed over the walls, a female dressed as the goddess Diana raced around a corner and smacked into him.

  His first impression was that the lady made a pleasant armful; his second that he didn’t think he knew her, though in that costume it was difficult to tell. Young, but not too young, he decided; she hadn’t the feel of an untried miss. Her skin (a fair amount of it exposed by her costume) was pale and smooth. He sniffed. She smelled of—

  Peppermint?

  The lady had been running. Her bosom heaved as she gasped for breath, hissed, “Let me go!”

  Angel appreciated a heaving bosom. He pulled Diana through a nearby doorway. She ceased struggling to survey the huge chamber, which contained a fireplace and a bay and walls lined with book-filled shelves.

  Meantime, Angel surveyed her. He was a connoisseur of females, after all. This particular female wasn’t overly tall, or overly short, and — especially in the bosom area — generously formed. Her mask hid the upper portion of her face so well he was unable to determine whether her eyebrows arched or marched or stuttered, if her nose was a girlish button or a frigate’s bold prow. Her earlobes were delicate, he noted; her neck elegant; her jaw and chin line firm. Impossible to tell the color of her hair under that atrocious wig, but her eyes were a honey brown, her mouth neither sensually suggestive nor prettily pouting but almost prim.