Lady Sherry and the Highwayman (13 page)

Sherry wondered what Andrew would think if she said nothing at all but fled the room instead. She might well have done so were her hand not clasped firmly in his and her feet imprisoned by Prinny’s sprawling bulk.

His lordship was waiting for an answer. She really must say something to the man. “I have a great regard for you! A decided partiality! I am truly sensible of the honor you do me in asking me to be your wife. And— Oh, Lord— Andrew! I don’t know what you wish me to say!” she wailed with such anguish that Prinny roused and tried to console her by climbing into her lap. Lord Viccars dealt with this distraction by bodily evicting the hound from the drawing room and closing the door.

Lady Sherry regarded her fiancé with reluctant admiration. “Gracious! You are very strong.”

Andrew brushed dog hairs off his jacket, then grasped Sherry’s hands and pulled her to her feet. “I am a brute to tease you so,” he said, and bent and kissed her lips. It was a very gentle kiss designed not to alarm, the sort of embrace that rapidly palled, and he very quickly drew away. “Much as I dislike to leave you, I must do so, my love. There is much to arrange. I fear my sisters will be plaguing you as soon as they have the news; they’ll want to know how you brought this confirmed old bachelor up to snuff. Don’t tell them anything. Let them guess! But you’ll know how to deal with them. Tell Cecilia you’ll agree to one betrothal party but with only a few hundred guests.”

“A few hundred!” echoed Lady Sherry, but Lord Viccars had already stepped into the hall, there to adroitly avoid a collision with Prinny, who lurked in hopes of having his revenge.

Chapter Thirteen

Marguerite paused by an E.O. table, watching the gyrations of the little ball. She looked especially lovely this evening in an Empire gown of India gauze shot with silver, which displayed substantial areas of back and bosom, charming the beholder by revealing everything it pretended to conceal. Charming the gentlemen beholders, at any rate; the ladies tended to be a little spiteful because Marguerite had outdone them all in near nakedness. The gown was embellished with a vandyked, scalloped hem and festoons of flowers. Marguerite carried a fan of pierced horn leaves and wore an astonishing amount of jewelry, as well as flowers in her hair.

The E.O. table did not tempt her, and Marguerite moved on through the suite of apartments on the first floor of this discreet establishment in St. James’s Square, which was furnished with many chairs, tables, and stands for the punters’ rouleaux and their wineglasses. All around her, games of chance were underway, hazard and piquet and whist and macao. A faro bank was in operation at one end of the largest salon. Marguerite hesitated only briefly. She had been punting against the bank all the evening, losing on the one side what she gained on the other so that she had merely broken even after several hours of play. She would have some dinner now and a glass or two of claret, and then return to the tables in the hope that her luck had changed.

Marguerite descended the stair to the ground-floor chamber where the dining tables had been set up. Entrance to this establishment was by invitation only. The food was tolerable, as was the wine, and the play was known to be fair. As she passed through the hallway, the butler was opening the door to a late-arriving guest, a slight man with shrewd, disdainful features, dark hair disheveled a la Titus, and carefully cultivated side-whiskers. The high points of his shirt collar brushed his earlobes and framed his chin. He wore a brown-spotted silk coat and breeches, pale pink silk stockings, a pale silk waistcoat with an overall pattern in rose, shiny pumps, and a frilled shirt.

Marguerite smiled at this vision of sartorial elegance.
“Bon jour, mon ami!
You did not tell me to expect you here tonight.”

The man turned, raised the quizzing glass that hung on a black ribbon around his neck, and subjected Marguerite to its scrutiny. Saucily, she stuck out her tongue. He let the quizzing glass fall, brought forth a small enameled box, and inhaled snuff—Martinique, from Frebourg and Freyer’s—in an intricate, one-handed style that he had copied from Beau Brummell. Only when he had finished and tucked away the snuffbox did he speak. “I expected to find you in a tweak, my pet. At the very least vowing vengeance and tearing at your hair. And why ain’t you? Or do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

Marguerite frowned. She had no notion of what her friend was talking about. Why should she tear at her hair when she had no cause for complaint other than her perennially pinched purse.

She recalled that Jeremy had a perverse sense of humor. “What are you playing at now?” she asked.

“You truly don’t know? Sometimes the extent of your ignorance amazes me. We can’t talk here.” Jeremy drew her some distance down the hallway into a small anteroom furnished with a couple of chairs, a table, and a clock. “I think you had best sit down,” he said as he reached into a pocket of his brown-spotted coat.

Marguerite obeyed. Jeremy’s sympathetic manner made her more mistrustful yet. He handed her a folded square of paper, then leaned indolently against the wall. Curious, Marguerite unfolded the newspaper announcement and squinted her pretty eyes as she attempted to make out the words—for the fact was that she did not read easily or well.

Jeremy watched her frown over the newspaper for the space of several clock ticks. It truly amazed him that Marguerite was so unaware. She never read a newspaper, trusting that her friends would enlighten her regarding anything she should know. Well, this information she should know, and it was Jeremy’s duty to enlighten her. He helped himself to another pinch of snuff.

Whatever might be said about Jeremy—Jeremy Johnston, self-styled man-about-town, known variously to his acquaintances as a man milliner, an encroaching mushroom, a basket scrambler—his acumen was not at fault. It
was
amazing that Marguerite had not discovered that her protector’s betrothal was official now. All of London was abuzz with the news of Lord Viccars’s forthcoming nuptials.

Marguerite finally finished reading the news of the betrothal and let the paper drop. “
Coquin! Diable! Merde!”
she shrieked. “How dare Viccars play fast and loose with me? After all I have done for him. All I have given up! And now he means to conduct himself with conjugal obligation and decorum and cast me off like an old shoe? I won’t have it! Do you hear me, Jeremy?”

Of course he heard her. It was very likely that every person on the premises heard her. Upon this fact, Jeremy remarked. He did not think Marguerite wished to broadcast the fact of her altered status, especially to those persons who held her vowels—for Marguerite could read and write sufficiently well to set her signature, frequently, on IOUs—and who had been remarkably lenient about payment as long as she was known to be Lord Viccars’s particular friend.

Marguerite saw the force of this argument. She rose from her chair and began to walk agitatedly up and down the room in unknowing but ironic imitation of the lady responsible for the very great trouble in which Marguerite now found herself.

Not that Marguerite would have believed Lady Sherry could have problems anywhere near as severe as those that she now faced. Lady Sherry had a brother, a family, and soon she would have a spouse; and did not have to contrive mightily to be beforehand with the world. A different future stretched out before Marguerite, and the bleak prospect turned her perfectly sick. She would be harried by creditors and have bailiffs sleeping in the house—or not, because the house was not hers and Andrew would no doubt evict her. At any rate the constant worry and depression over her perennial financial crises would make her old before her time.

This horrid thought sent Marguerite hurrying to peer anxiously at her reflection in the looking glass that hung on one wall of the small room. She was relieved to see that she hadn’t aged an entire year in the few moments since Jeremy had brought her the disastrous news.

Jeremy. Her old friend. Surely
he
would not desert her now. Marguerite turned to him with a woebegone expression. “I don’t know what is to become of me!” she whispered.

“Bravo!” responded Jeremy, and clapped his hands. He had enjoyed Marguerite’s performance very much, watched with appreciation the tear that trickled delicately down one perfect cheek. But she now looked very much as if she meant to hurl herself into his arms, and Jeremy didn’t care at all for this idea.

He was immune to Marguerite’s wiles, to her heady perfume; he was unmoved by her extreme décolletage and her near-naked style of dress. She stepped toward him, and he thought merely that he didn’t want tearstains to ruin his brown-spotted jacket and pink silk waistcoat. “I told you not to put all your eggs in one basket!” he said callously as he opened the door.

Marguerite followed him into the hallway. “Where are you going?” she wailed. “How can you leave me alone at a time such as this? I have been treated most cruelly, and you walk away.
Mon Dieu,
I think it very hard!”

“You have been out-jockeyed, my poppet, and by a bluestocking. It is really infinitely droll. There’s no use glowering at me like that.
I
ain’t the one who bungled the thing so completely.” Despite his callous remarks, Jeremy was not entirely without heart. He stopped a passing waiter and removed a glass of claret from his tray.

Marguerite clutched the glass. It would probably not be to her advantage to hurl its contents into her friend’s face. “You might show me a little sympathy. This is a cruel blow. Without Viccars to back me, I don’t know how I am to make a recovery, because my pockets are all to let.” And then she swallowed all the claret in one great gulp, because her ‘friend’ had already walked away.

Jeremy paused to observe the players at a game of macao, a form of vingt-et-un that called for no particular skill but a very steady nerve, since thousands could change hands in the blinking of an eye. There was nothing to keep him at the table, and he soon passed it by. Unlike Marguerite, Jeremy was not a reckless plunger who could not help succumbing to the fascination of the tables. Play he did when the occasion warranted, and with enviable good luck that was partially accounted for by the fact that Jeremy was very discerning when he sat down at the gaming-table. He had no interest in overcautious players who kept their judgment and their emotions under strict control, but in those who in the excitement of the moment would stake fortunes on a single turn of the card or throw of the dice.

Jeremy was, in short, that particular sort of social parasite known as a Captain Sharp. He had not been accused of cheating yet, but he could claim a steadily increasing list of reckless young bloods whom he had led astray. Jeremy felt no twinges of conscience about his chosen profession. It was more honorable, and lucrative, than others he could name.

He turned and looked through the crowd for Marguerite. If she were to come down in the world, then he must come down with her, because it was through their friendship that Jeremy had gained the
entrée
to such select establishments as these, which were liberally supplied with foolish young bucks waiting to be fleeced. There she was, at the faro table, trying to resolve her pecuniary embarrassments by risking a few pounds she could ill afford to lose.

Jeremy drew her away. “I think that it is time to utilize the aces you have up your sleeve, my pet.”

Aces up her sleeve? Marguerite passed a moment in puzzlement before she remembered her boast. “I don’t
have
any aces up my sleeve,” she said gloomily. “I have thought of all sorts of things, but none were practical. I mean, I don’t know who I could bribe to have Lady Sherry transported or kidnapped. And if I did, my part in it would be bound to come out and Viccars would cast me off anyway. I still do not believe it, Jeremy.” She looked at the newspaper clipping, which she still clutched in one very smudged glove. “He said not a word of it. I might have been given some warning, don’t you think? Instead, I have not seen him for some days, not since he gave me this!” She touched the diamond and emerald necklace at her throat.

Jeremy’s interest was aroused. A gentleman and would not treat his
petite amie
like some chance-met member of the muslin company. At the very least, one might anticipate a touching farewell scene. “There’s something dashed smoky here. Viccars has been asking questions all over town and visiting the queerest places, like Bow Street and Petticoat Lane and the British Museum. He’s taken quite an interest in that highwayman fellow who barely avoided having his neck stretched.”

Since their conversation was being conducted in low tones as they passed through the throng in the gaming rooms, Marguerite thought she could not have heard her companion’s words correctly.
“Comment?”

Jeremy repeated his earlier statements. Marguerite had not misunderstood. “The British Museum?” she echoed, perplexed.
“Pourquoi?”

Jeremy shrugged. “I don’t know why. He’s trying to track down the highwayman’s red-haired doxy, from all accounts. It don’t signify.”

“Maybe not to you!” Marguerite interrupted with an expression of perfect horror on her pretty face. “But you haven’t been offered false coin!
Zut!
So
that
is what it is! I have wracked my brain, I can tell you, trying to figure out what she has that I do not—and now I understand! I tell you, Jeremy, it has rather raised my spleen, because never have I been so deceived in anyone!”

If Marguerite at last understood, her companion was not similarly blessed. Aware of the curious glances being cast at them, Jeremy begged Marguerite to lower her voice. He then begged her to share her enlightenment with him. Just what did it concern?

“Why, Viccars, of course!” Marguerite was exasperated to find Jeremy such a slow-top. “Lady Sherry, me, the highwayman’s wench—we’re all redheads, don’t you see?”

A certain portion of Marguerite’s logic, Jeremy could follow. He failed to see what about it had sent her into the boughs. “So you’re all carrot-tops. So what?”

“And so it doesn’t matter
which
red-haired female he’s with!” cried Marguerite. “When he’s with one he forgets the rest. He hasn’t been to see me because Lady Sherry occupied his thoughts. And he’s probably neglected her while traipsing after the highwayman’s wench. Two of us aren’t enough for him, apparently! His memory for mistresses is so short that we are all interchangeable.”