The Wicked Marquess Page 10

  “You hesitate to spare my blushes?” inquired Odette. “I ain’t blushed in many years. Open your budget. Unless you’re here to tell me you’ve sprained your ankle, in which case I don’t care to hear.”

  It was Ceci now who blushed. She hastened to reassure her hostess that she was not with child.

  “Good. See that you keep it that way. If you don’t know how to go about the business, you may ask.”

  Ask this venerable virago how to prevent conception? Ceci was not so intoxicated as that. Since it was not serving her, she abandoned tact. “Is there a strain of madness in the family, perhaps?”

  Odette might have fairly asked if her guest had been at the decanter. Not politeness prevented her from doing so, but a suspicion as to what Lady Cecilia might be talking about. “Does this have to do with my nephew?” she asked.

  Ceci tried to convince herself that Lady Darby sounded sympathetic. “I don’t know what to make of it! I have been in a horrid taking ever since I heard.” She watched as the cat climbed out of its basket and strolled toward the sofa. The creature began sharpening its claws on a sofa leg.

  Odette hoped her guest would refrain from indulging in a spasm. She had scant patience with feminine megrims, having long outlived her own. “Ahem! You’ve been in a horrid taking about what?”

  Where to begin? Protectors with waning interest. Deceased devil-may-care husbands. Felines wearing fortunes around their necks.

  Life was sometimes appallingly unfair. “For Baird to admire Miss Russell is one thing,” said Ceci. “It is quite another for him to escort her to the British Museum.”

  “The British Museum? The Russell chit? Benedict?” Odette raised her quizzing glass.

  Few could wield a quizzing glass as effectively as Lady Darby. Only intoxication enabled Ceci to stand her ground. “I assure you that it’s true. Let us talk without roundaboutation. You won’t want Baird to become entangled with the girl.”

  Odette lowered the quizzing glass. “How have you determined, hussy, what I do and do not want?”“

  Ceci was not so deep under the influence of laudanum as to try and answer this question. “It doesn’t disturb you that Baird took Miss Russell to the British Museum? The girl’s antecedents are a great deal less than they should be.”

  Odette was less interested in antecedents than trysts, of which she had once enjoyed her own share, though never in a setting so uninspired as a museum. She didn’t know what the world was coming to. Rakehells had been more wicked in her day.

  But it was Odette’s day no longer and here she sat, listening to her nephew’s half-hysterical peculiar preach propriety. “I’m told the little Russell is a diamond of the first water,” she said, and rang for tea.

  The little Russell was so great a beauty that she had caused Ceci to spend considerable time gazing morosely at her own reflection in the mirror. She eyed the cat, which had finished sharpening its claws to lethal points. The creature’s eyes were so severely crossed that it appeared to be looking at the end of its own nose.

  Perhaps it was attempting to admire its ruby collar. Which was of sufficient value to satisfy any number of impatient creditors. Ceci wondered if the creature would come close enough that she might relieve it of its jewels.

  Lord, she was grown so desperate she thought to rob a cat!

  Lady Darby was watching. Ceci hoped the old harridan couldn’t guess her thoughts. “You must admit that there is a strain of eccentric behavior, to put it no higher, in Miss Russell’s family,” she said. “As most recently evidenced by her mama and Black Jack Quarles.”

  “Faith, ‘tis a pea-goose!” responded Odette. “Many were the females who would have snatched at an opportunity to run off with Black Jack Quarles. Had I been younger, I might have done so myself.” Before Ceci could comment, the butler arrived with the tea tray. Lady Darby poured. The cat gave an inquiring mewr and leapt into her lap.

  Several moments passed in silence, while Ceci drank her tea and munched on a slice of bread and butter, and Lady Darby poured milk into a saucer for the cat to sip. When she was done chewing Ceci asked, “Is it true that Miss Russell’s great-grandmama trod the boards?”

  “Pish tush!” Odette hefted the teapot. “There’s no point asking me. I ain’t that old.”

  “I did not mean to suggest you are,” Ceci protested quickly. “Forgive my plain-speaking, but you won’t want there to be any doubt about the paternity of Baird’s heirs.”

  First impertinence, and now presumption. This after she had fed the wench. Odette poured herself more tea, pointedly ignoring her guest’s empty cup. “We shall have the word with no bark on it, since that is what you want. The necessity of unquestionable paternity is why I told the boy he should not have you. What think you I have to do with Benedict’s business, by the by?”

  Ceci carefully set down her teacup, lest she succumb to the impulse to hurl the fragile porcelain at her hostess. “I think you have everything to do with Baird’s business. He will not marry where you say him nay.”

  Benedict would not marry without her approval? Odette wished she might be certain of that. “Is it Benedict you fancy, or his pocketbook?”

  Ceci rose so abruptly from her chair that the cat put back its ears and hissed. “I didn’t come here to be insulted. My regard for your nephew has caused me to become concerned—”

  “Sit down!” demanded Odette. Ceci hesitated. “Can you honestly tell me you’re not hip-deep in the River Tick?”

  Ceci was not sufficiently under the influence of either laudanum or bread-and-butter to answer that inquiry. As she sat down, she muttered, “Sometimes I wish that I had been born a man.”

  “Maybe ‘twould be easier, but you ain’t, and so you must do the best you can. Which won’t be to marry Benedict, though you may try and persuade him to haul your coals out of the fire.” Lady Darby refilled her guest’s teacup. “You may set your mind at rest on one thing. No more than you do I intend to watch the boy make a mésalliance. He may dance the blanket hornpipe as he wishes, but he will marry as he must.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  All the Polite World rendezvoused in Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five, the gentlemen mounted on the finest horses England could produce, the ladies elegantly arranged in superbly appointed carriages and attended by servants in fine livery.

  Not only the ladies were on display. Hyde Park at this hour was also the hunting grounds of those lovely avaricious charmers known as Cyprians, or the Fashionably Impure. Once Hyde Park had been hunting grounds of a different sort, part of an untamed forest inhabited by wild boars and wolves and deer — and also a few charcoal burners, according to the Domesday Book, drawn up in 1086, which made an accounting of the state of things ‘on the day when King Edward (the Confessor) was alive and dead’ — before it was acquired by Henry VIII from the monks at Westminster.

  With all these facts and more – James I had hunted in Hyde Park with Jowler and Jewel, his favorite hounds; Charles I had opened the park to the public — Mr. Atchison acquainted his audience, none of whom, with the exception of the ever-polite Nonie, evidenced any interest in what he had to say. Sir Kenrick and Lord Wexton were engaged in earnest analysis of England’s current demand for trade concessions from the French, while Miranda was so deep in reverie that, though her dappled mare was within touching distance, she might have been miles away.

  Even Nonie, despite her polite responses, was not heeding Mr. Atchison. Nonie was instead contemplating the gentleman beside whom her employer rode. Unlikely that Lord Wexton was the sort of person Miranda had in mind when she spoke of wanting to kiss someone worldly and mature. The earl might be handsome in a stern and forbidding manner, but he was also thrice Miranda’s age.

  Nonie returned her attention to Mr. Atchison, who had moved on to the numerous wives of Henry VIII. She hoped Sir Kenrick might be trusted to know what he was about.

  Like Nonie, Sir Kenrick was able to simultaneously converse and cogitate. As he went on at consid
erable length about the quadrupling of England’s coal production between 1705 and 1800, he simultaneously reviewed Lord Wexton’s matrimonial qualifications, which were primarily that the earl would neither gamble away his bride’s fortune nor dangle at her slipper strings. Miranda meanwhile was roused from rumination by Mr. Atchison’s assertion that Hyde Park was home to nearly two hundred varieties of trees, but soon lapsed again into her own thoughts, which had a great deal to do with her recent visit to the British Museum, and the manner in which she had been kissed.

  A proper young lady would have been shocked. Miranda was not. Here was further evidence – had she needed it – that she was not a proper young lady. Miranda was eager to be kissed again. And more.

  What would be an appropriate setting? Obviously, coaches and gardener’s shacks and even moonlit gardens would not serve.

  Miranda left the puzzle of a proper setting for another time. Concerning other details, she allowed her imagination full rein. Benedict would sweep her up into his arms and carry her into a candle-lit bedchamber. Lay her down on rose-strewn sheets. Rose-petal-strewn, she amended, thinking of thorns.

  She would be wearing her finest undergarments. His hands would tremble as he removed her clothes. Or more likely they would not. Someone so familiar with feminine undergarments would have hands steady as rocks. Would Benedict also remove his clothing? Miranda envisioned him clad in nothing but the clasp that confined his hair. Rather, she tried to envision him. She was a little vague on the finer points of anatomical detail. Still, her efforts caused her cheeks to flame.

  Mr. Atchison realized belatedly that his companion had grown flushed. He broke off his discourse on Henry VIII’s numerous marital escapades. “I beg pardon if I have offended you,” he said

  Miranda hadn’t the slightest notion what Mr. Atchison was talking about, which did not surprise her, because she seldom did. “Mr. Burton! Thomas!” she called out as she glimpsed a familiar figure, and waved.

  Mr. Burton had been reliving his adventures with Colonel Wellesley in India, commencing with Lord Mornington’s decision that the formidable Moslem ruler, Tipoo Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore and ally of the French, must discover who was the real ruler of the jungle, a decision that had led to shipwrecks and contaminated water, politics and petty disputes and corruption and worse. He was grateful when Miss Russell interrupted him. Miss Blanchet was a member of the riding party, and Sir Kenrick Symington, he noticed; Lord Wexton and Mr. Atchison, damn his eyes.

  Mr. Burton drew up his mount alongside Miranda’s dappled mare. “Miss Russell – Miranda! You are not in your usual good looks today.”

  Miranda looked startled, and then chuckled. “I didn’t think, when I asked you to pay me no more compliments, that you would instead call me a frump.”

  She was far from dowdy in her yellow riding habit, her dashing little cap with its jaunty feather plume. “Either you are top of the trees, or you are an antidote. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “I cannot?” Miranda pouted, so prettily that Mr. Burton bit his tongue lest he tell her she might have anything she asked. “Surely there must be something in between.”

  Thomas had known someone in between. He had left her behind in India. An officer might find companionship with a native woman, but he could not bring her home. “Surely there must be,” he responded, vaguely. “But you could never be that.”

  Mr. Burton’s heart was not in his flirtation. Miranda didn’t mind. “Tell me about India,” she said.

  Talk to a proper young lady about India? Thomas was startled by the suggestion. “You won’t want to hear such stuff.”

  Miranda nudged her horse closer to his. “I assure you that I will find it of more interest than reaping machines, or Argand lamps, or Henry VIII.”

  Mr. Burton had no idea what Argand lamps had to do with anything, but Atchison was prosing on about Henry VIII, and there was more than one way to strike a telling blow. He launched into a description of the vast ungainly caravansary Colonel Wellesley had prepared to shepherd southward. So eloquently did he speak that Miranda heard the shouts of camel drivers, the braying of asses and the trumpeting of elephants, the din of 150,000 camp followers advancing inside a hollow square around which circled a guard of 6,000 cavalry; saw progress delayed by misfortune and mismanagement, and by the Nizam’s 120,000 bullocks dying in droves.

  Miranda was fascinated. Lord Wexton was not. He said, “Gentlemen do not speak to ladies of such things.”

  The gentleman and lady did not cease their conversation. Thomas went on to describe the Allied attack against the Seringapatam Tope, although he was not so lost to propriety as to include details of necks being wrung by Jettis, or comrades killed by having nails driven into their brains. Chaos had swept Seringapatan after battle’s end, involving murder, plunder, and streets running red with blood. Tipoo’s tigers, restrained outside his palace, snarled and strained at their chains while British soldiers and their officers carried off gold and objects d’art and even the Sultan’s personal effects. The crisis ended only when a number of looters were strung up on gibbets in key streets and left to hang.

  The Tiger of Mysore died in a bloody melee at the North Gate. He was buried the next day in the Loll Baug garden of cypresses. The river rose in a storm so dreadful that lightning split the sky and killed several British officers.

  “Tipoo was a cruel, brave, and profoundly religious man,” Thomas concluded. “He claimed it was better to live like a tiger for two days than exist for two hundred years like a sheep.”

  “And he died like a tiger,” sighed Miranda, quite taken by the tale.

  Lord Wexton sneered. Had the company been entirely masculine, he might have enjoyed Mr. Burton’s stories; but among the company was the young woman the earl meant to make his wife. His lordship had buried two wives already. He knew perfectly well what suited him, and had no scruple in pointing out what did not. Neither of his previous wives had been so ill-advised as to ignore him when he administered a set-down; and had they dared to do so, they would not have done so for long.

  A husband could confine a wife against her wishes. He could punish her if he pleased. Lord Wexton was partial to the administering of leeches and a course of blistering. In the present instance he hesitated to act only because it was Sir Kenrick’s place, as Miss Russell’s guardian, to issue reprimands.

  Lord Wexton glowered at Miranda. Kenrick scowled. Nonie’s hands tightened on her reins.

  Miranda felt the weight of this combined disapproval. She glanced at the earl and made an effort to be polite. “What adventures! Thomas is quite a hero, don’t you think?”

  Lord Wexton thought it highly improper that his next wife was calling half the men in London by their Christian names. He had not planned to remarry before Kenrick approached him, but upon consideration had found Miss Russell’s person appealing and her portion even more so. A gentleman’s way of life was expensive. Her fortune would make possible costly improvements to his estates.

  He had children older than Miss Russell, but they were too well-schooled to fuss. His second eldest daughter would instruct Miranda how she must go on. Though he needed no more heirs, it would be pleasant to get them on the girl, once she had learned how to behave. It wasn’t as if he’d have the tending of the brats.

  Miranda was familiar with young gentlemen who were struck mute in her presence – Mr. Dowlin, for example, was a most loquacious and persuasive young barrister when not in her company. But Lord Wexton was not young.

  She studied him more closely. His skin had a jaundiced tone. Unlikely that the earl would provide her with a sample of his urine in a bottle so that she might throw it into a stream, thereby testing the theory that as the urine mixed with water the patient’s skin would lose its yellow tone.

  Mr. Burton disliked the prolonged silence. “I’m no hero, merely a soldier,” he said.

  Lord Wexton gazed in a superior manner down the long length of his nose, a gesture he found effective in cowing underlin
gs of all sorts. “Even a mere soldier should realize that to discuss military matters with a delicately bred young woman is not at all the thing.”

  Thomas had served under officers like this pompous puff-gut prig. Since he was no longer required to obey orders, he merely said, “Oh?”

  The earl’s aristocratic nostrils flared. “Nor is it proper in you to cast aspersions on a young lady’s appearance. I distinctly heard you call Miss Russell a frump. You will apologize.”

  “Fiddle!” said Miranda, before Thomas could speak. “He’ll do nothing of the sort. If it’s not improper for Thomas to be sent into such a situation, it shouldn’t be improper for him to talk about it afterward, especially when I asked him to. As for calling me a dowd, I asked him to do that also, so he doesn’t deserve a scold.”

  Lord Wexton’s sallow skin bloomed crimson. Sir Kenrick hastily put forth a provocative remark about the Royal Institute, while Miss Blanchet chimed in with astute observations about the other people walking and riding in the Park. Mr. Atchison resumed his commentary on the wives of Henry VIII, in which progression he had reached Anne Boleyn.

  The small party moved slowly forward along the bridle path known as Rotten Row, which at the end of the seventeenth century had been lit with three hundred oil lamps and made wide enough for three carriages to drive abreast. Coarse Thames sand covered the roadway, as Mr. Atchison interrupted himself to point out. Nonie nodded and smiled and wished she had the courage to set her heels to her horse’s flank and gallop right out of the park. Miranda lapsed again into contemplation of the complicated process of having her good name tarnished, and the sooner the better, for she had begun to suspect Lord Wexton’s intentions toward her, though fortunately not his intention to apply a plaster to her chest. Mr. Burton, aware that storm clouds were brewing, beat a strategic retreat, but not before inviting Mr. Atchison to join him in a glass of porter at White’s. Mr. Atchison cast a wary eye on Sir Kenrick’s lowering countenance and promptly agreed.