Lady Maggie's Secret Scandal (31 page)

Cecily inhaled audibly through her nose. “This is
most
inconvenient. Dose her with the poppy, and then, Martin, you will attend me in my sitting room. I have plans to make, and they will not countenance this one malingering.”

“
Oui, madame
.”

Cecily flounced out, banging the door loudly yet again. Bridget sat up, feeling a headache start in earnest. “Is there any more chocolate?”

“Half a cup. I don’t like this, Miss Bridget. When madam gets to scheming, it isn’t good at all.”

Bridget pushed to the edge of the bed. “I ought to write and congratulate Maggie.” Though if Maggie were marrying an earl, it meant the letters would likely be futile, as futile as the vapid, fluttering drivel Bridget had been able to get past Cecily in the past few weeks—drivel intended to let Maggie know exactly what was afoot without alerting Cecily to Bridget’s misgivings.

Adele passed her the last half cup of chocolate. “You ought to write and warn her.”

Adele had kept her voice very low, almost as if she were confiding in Bridget, and Bridget felt something odd turn over inside her. Being almost fifteen and Cecily’s daughter meant a girl had to be very careful, very discerning about who her friends were.

No, not just friends, but allies.

“Yes, warn her.” Bridget kept her voice just as low. “And perhaps you could find a way to get the letter to Maggie without going through the post?”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

***

“Maggie, I can afford it.” Ben kept his voice down and kept his smile indulgent, but his intended’s mouth flattened nonetheless.

“You should be buying me paste.” She kept her voice down, too, because every jeweler in Ludgate had been at his shop door this morning, smiling and bowing as Ben led Maggie from one establishment to another, their clerks hovering just far enough away to avoid Ben’s ire.

“I will be buying you an emerald, at least, to go with your eyes. Maybe rubies to go with your hair, diamonds for your flawless skin.” That much extravagance might strain his exchequer, not that she’d permit him to indulge such whims.

“I have freckles.” And still her expression did not betray her exasperation. Ben was left to note the ramrod straight posture of her spine and the slight narrowing of her eyes. A less courageous man might have taken warning.

“Where the angels have kissed you and where I fully intend to.” He spoke just loudly enough for the nearest clerk to overhear, which had the intended effect of spiking Maggie’s guns.

“This one is very nice.” She aimed a saccharine smile at the clerk as she fingered a very small emerald. “Perhaps we might discuss settings?”

In the end, she won more than she gave up. She chose a different emerald, even smaller but of excellent quality. The setting was plain gold as was the wedding band. When Ben tried to push matching earrings on her, she went into outright rebellion.

“I am both peckish and fatigued,” she announced, sounding quite like Her Grace. “Perhaps you’d take me for an ice?”

If Ben hadn’t been in her bed just hours previously, if he wasn’t still savoring the memory of her passion and pleasure, he might have believed all those airs and graces were the full measure of the woman.

He had her measure, though, knew her passion and determination first hand, so he capitulated gracefully. He handed her up into his curricle and took his seat immediately beside her.

“Can you really afford this?” Maggie asked, fluffing her skirts as Ben signaled the horse to walk on.

The very quiet, almost anxious tone of her question gave Ben an inspiration. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that.”

She stopped fussing and glanced at him. “What would I know of your finances?”

“Not my finances, but finances in general. I have a great deal of my wealth tied up in the funds, maybe more than is prudent. I was hoping we might discuss it.”

He’d never realized how hard it was to be coy, to cast a shiny lure and just let it lie winking silently in the spring sunshine.

A vertical line appeared between Maggie’s brows. “How much is a great deal?”

Two hours and two ices later, Ben was the one dazed by the brilliance before him. Maggie Windham understood money better than Ben had ever understood anything in his life. Better than he understood his sisters, better than he understood himself.

And he learned something else, too: the way to court Maggie Windham had something to do with making love to her luscious body, but it had more to do with alleviating the burden of a loneliness so vast and airless she’d been nigh suffocating under the weight of it.

Whatever her secret, whomever she was protecting, money was part of it. As they turned into the park and Maggie’s tone grew animated on the topic of trade with the Americas, Ben became determined to free her from that weight, no matter the cost.

“It isn’t very feminine of me to go on this way.” Maggie made the observation on a belated spurt of self-consciousness as the curricle turned into Hyde Park. “Louisa will hear me out, but Westhaven reaches his limit very quickly when I start in on my economic theories.”

“They’re sound theories,” Benjamin replied. “And they let me both steal a bite from your ices and feed you a few spoonfuls of my own.”

She had to glance away lest he see her smile. “I was distracted, else you should not have gotten away with such outrageous behavior. I know what you’re doing, though.”

“I’m glad somebody knows what I’m about, because I seem to have lost my own grasp of it entirely.” He smiled at her, an open, charming smile that had Maggie’s insides fluttering around like the birds flitting from branch to branch above them.

“You’re making it seem as if we’re enamored of one another.” She kept her eyes on the horses before them, because an honest smile from Benjamin Portmaine was enough to steal her few remaining wits.

“I
am
enamored of you.” He slowed the horses to let a landau lumber on ahead of them. “You’re gorgeous, passionate, intelligent, and independent—also a financial genius. I’m the man who proposed to you earlier this week, if you’ll recall.”

“Must you remind me?”

“Frequently, until you comprehend that I did not ask out of anything other than an honest desire to make you my countess.”

She took in a breath, intent on remonstrating him with a list, a long, well-thought-out list of reasons why marriage to her was not in his best interests and marriage to him was not in hers, but her breath froze in her chest.

“Would you like a turn with the ribbons?” Benjamin cocked his wrists so she might have taken the reins from him, except Maggie had all she could do to remain sitting upright on the bench.

“Maggie?”

She averted her face from the sight before her and made herself take the reins from Benjamin’s hands. Speech was beyond her.

“Would you like my driving gloves, my dear? And who is that woman, and why did she send you a positively venomous glare?”

“What woman?”

His smile was nowhere in evidence as he studied Maggie’s face. “The woman who just drove past us, the one with the pretty child seated beside her whose face was painted in the most atrocious manner and whose bosom was indecently on display.”

“Atrocious…” She hadn’t meant to repeat the word aloud, but gracious God, Bridget had been wearing enough paint for a Haymarket whore at midnight. And Cecily hadn’t looked venomous, she’d looked smug and evil.

“You just drove past our turn, my dear.”

“I’m not quite ready to go home.”

He was still inspecting her, and Maggie didn’t think for one moment he was fooled. “Then far be it from me to cut short an outing with my affianced wife on such a pleasant day.” He lounged back against the seat, and the density of his silence was nearly as disturbing as the sight of Bridget tricked out like a soiled dove twice her age.

***

“You’ll want this.” Archer passed Benjamin two fingers of whiskey. “And if I had time, I’d beat about the bush and break what I have to say to you gently, but it’s more fun to clobber you over the head with it.”

Ben took the drink but did not put it to his lips. “Fun for whom?”

“Me, of course. While you were out swilling claret with old Moreland last night, those two brawny footmen went calling on your ladylove again. They stayed more than an hour, and I heard voices raised in the kitchen even from my spot in the mews.”

“You’re sure?”

Archer merely lifted one blond eyebrow.

“The same two?”

“Yes, the same two. Drink up, your lordship. It was your own Lady Maggie who let them into her kitchen, and she hugged them, first the one, then the other.”

This was not good news. The idea that Maggie was keeping secrets from him rankled, of course. The idea that she was on hugging terms with not one man but two was equally troubling.

“How quickly did the yelling start?”

“Almost as soon as the door was closed behind them. It didn’t last long.”

Ben paced around the sitting room with his drink. “Did Lady Maggie raise her voice?”

“I am not sufficiently familiar with her voice to identify it,” Archer said, sprawling on Ben’s sofa. “I made out only one word.”

Ben glared at him and resisted the temptation to hurl his drink at his cousin.

“Dandridge,” Archer said. “Or it might have been Cambridge or Bainbridge. Would you like a suggestion?”

“No.”

“Ask your fiancée who her callers are.”

Ben set his drink down very carefully on the mantel. “And if she asks how I know she’s been hugging strange men by the pair after dark in her kitchen, what should I tell her, Archer?”

Archer heaved a sigh and directed his guileless blue eyes toward the ceiling. “You tell her you’re worried about her, and you wish she’d trust you, but you’re too damned stubborn and uncertain of her affections to ask her to confide in you. The sheer novelty of your directness ought to wring confidences from her by the hogshead.”

Ben tossed himself down on the sofa beside Archer. “I’m trying to inspire her trust. I think I made a start today, and then you tell me this.”

“And how did you go about inspiring her trust?” Archer’s tone was level—not at all mocking, which suggested he might live to see the next sunrise.

“I asked for her help.”

“With?”

“My bloody finances.” Ben grabbed the drink from Archer’s hand and took a hefty swallow. “She’s a prodigy with figures. She’s read that Scot, the one who talks about supply and demand and division of labor, and she’s brilliant at it. She sees patterns in finances the way I can parse a scent with my nose or sniff out a straying wife by the way she’s dressing too modestly.”

Archer frowned at the remains of his drink. “I was under the impression your finances were enjoying reasonable health. You’re not going to bequeath me a pile of debt to go with that damned title, are you?”

And why hadn’t they ever had this discussion? Archer was his heir, his only paternal adult male family member, his business partner, and the closest thing he had to a friend.

“My finances enjoy modest good health. I’ve worked like a fiend these past years so I might someday generously dower my sisters, and that objective has been accomplished.”

“And this leaves you with a problem, doesn’t it?” Archer surrendered the last of his drink without being asked.

“Precisely. For what reason am I to work like a fiend now, when both sisters are happily ensconced in the arms of their swains, and I’m still skulking about Mayfair, peeking in windows and hating every bloody minute of it?”

Archer rose, glanced at the clock, and brought Ben the decanter.

“Given the state of things with your Lady Maggie, I don’t think it’s quite time to retire from the sneak-thief lists just yet, old son.”

Ben poured himself another drink while Archer appropriated the glass still sitting on the mantel. “Not just yet,” Ben said, “but soon, by God. Very, very soon.”

***

“Have you delivered my note to Maggie yet?” Bridget kept her voice casual and spoke in French.

“Not yet.” Adele stepped back and surveyed Bridget’s hair in the vanity mirror. “With madam determined we must move again this very week, there hasn’t been time to slip out.” She spoke in French, as well, dousing her hands with scent then fluffing her fingers through Bridget’s hair. Even to Bridget’s eye, the style was too sophisticated for somebody who’d not yet turned fifteen, but Adele—being similarly cursed herself—understood the dubious challenges of possessing red hair. There was no hiding it, no pretending it would look any less red for being in a tidy bun.

“Mama insists we need more elegant quarters,” Bridget said, glancing around at her perfectly lovely room. “She says fifteen is not too young to socialize, and she’s made me drive out with her every day this week.”

Bridget’s gaze fell on the cosmetics scattered around her vanity. They were an early birthday present from Cecily, though even the sight of them made Bridget’s flesh crawl. “When we’re in the park, the ladies won’t look at me, and the gentlemen don’t stop looking at me.”