Maggie MacKeever (13 page)

Clea was right. It hadn’t been all hardship, admitted Ned. There had been cards and impromptu musicales and fox hunting in the traditional manner on the Biera highland. Even Wellington occasionally left off deciphering letters and reports of guerilla agents and exploring officers, pouring over maps and plotting enemy marches, to ride out from his farmhouse headquarters. And then had come Badajoz and forty-six hundred allied casualties, over eighteen hundred of the dead and wounded belonging to the storming parties of the Light and 4
th
Divisions, Francis Viccars among them.

“I have vowed,” remarked Sabine, “never to eat rabbit again.”

She was more slender than when Ned had last seen her. The clever cut of her dove-grey gown couldn’t disguise how thin she had become. When the reminiscences wound down, Kane said, “Clea, if you wouldn’t mind—?”

“Just fancy. There is something I must do elsewhere.” Clea walked toward the door. “I could eavesdrop, you know.”

“But you won’t
.
”

“I won’t. But being proper is sometimes a dead bore.”

“‘
Di pia facta vident
.
’”

“The gods see the deeds of the righteous?” Clea pulled a face. “All in all, I think I would rather be bad.”

The door closed behind her. Sabine waited briefly before she crossed the room, opened the door, inspected the empty hall.

She closed the door and leaned against it. Kane stretched out his long legs in front of him. Sabine regarded his damaged boot. He said, “Cerberus is blind to my charm. Unlike yours. Apropos of which, the Czar is cutting a swathe through polite society — and probably impolite society as well, but no one speaks of that — and ladies are falling at his feet like ripe plums.”

Sabine walked to the window. “It is not in my nature to fall.”

Kane looked skeptical. In Ned’s opinion, Sabine spoke the truth. She and her gallant Francis had seemed less like lovers than friends.

She stood at the window, gazing out. Cerberus emerged from behind his stack of books to pad across the carpet and sit down beside
her, pausing to growl at Kane en route. Sabine bent to stroke the dog’s ugly head. “Last night at the opera. Who was that girl?”

Neither Ned nor Kane had any doubt of what girl she meant. “We are most sure of who she
isn’t,
which is one Miss Julie Wynne,” explained Kane.

“Ned said she’s from Yorkshire.”

“Ned was merely attempting to disarm Lady Georgiana. Miss Wynne is a mystery. Why do you ask?”

Sabine picked up her cloak, reached into the pocket and withdrew a miniature in a gilt frame. “You will be discreet?”

Kane’s patience was wearing thin. “Who in all London might better understand discretion than the Swan, the Raven, and the Fox?”

Ned studied the portrait. A young man gazed back at him with amused arrogance. A young man with stunningly blue eyes, a dark arch of eyebrows, and guinea gold curls.

Sabine drew her cloak around her, as if suddenly chilled. “His name was Julian Faulkner, and he was Lord Carlyle’s eldest son.”

Chapter Thirteen

It’s stupid to complain about misfortune that is your own fault.
—
Pubilius
Syrus

London was a city of illuminations, in honor of the peace that had yet to be signed. Shop windows displayed transparencies with lights burning behind them, each in competition with the next. Covent Garden Opera showed Britannia trampling on Napoleon with Elba to be seen on the horizon. Ackermann’s, the print shop in the Strand that had been one of the first to have its premises lighted by gas, featured an especially fine rendition of the Corsican attacked by Death. The Gaslight Company in Fleet Street had erected a tree
of laurel leaves with a profusion of blossoms, each a jet of the marvelous new flame. The town was half mad with festivities and fireworks and frigates firing on the Serpentine.

Cobbled streets were thronged with traffic, every imaginable conveyance from iron-rimmed wheels to leather-shod feet. Street sellers worked their way through the crowd, hawking all manner of goods from hot eels to lavender for use in the linen-press.

Julie didn’t dawdle to look in the shop windows, as on another day she might. Cap’n Jack would want his glove. He’d want to know why she hadn’t made it available to him immediately it was stolen. Julie had to make up some Banbury tale. She didn’t want the Cap’n to come within a mile of Ned.

For that matter, she didn’t want the Cap’n within a mile of her either, and it made her shiver to think she wouldn’t know if — or when — he was. He could be following her that moment. He could, if he wished it, sneak up behind her and slit her throat. Julie glanced over her shoulder but saw nothing more suspicious than a grizzled bellows-mender with his tools in a bag on his back.

A bellows-mender who was oddly familiar. The man stepped into a pastry shop, and Julie decided she must be wrong. She had
no time to be starting at shadows. Lady Georgiana was in a rare taking today, and Julie must be back before she woke up from her nap.

The streets grew increasingly narrow, this close to Drury Lane. Julie side-stepped a donkey cart piled high with firewood, and then a broom-vendor; swiped an apple from a market-cart and tucked it into the pocket of her cloak. Without practice her abilities would wither away, and then where would she be?

Inside the theater, rehearsals had begun. Everyone was tiptoeing around backstage. The Distinguished Visitors were to grace the theater with their presence. Mr. Kean had traded his part of Iago for that of Othello, and consequently Mr. Sowerby’s nose was out of joint.

The scene underway did not require Desdemona. Julie found Rose in the ladies’ dressing room, contemplating her reflection as with a pair of small steel pinchers she removed a stray hair from her chin. Ophelia was snoozing among the makeup pots.

Rose whirled away from the looking glass, grabbed Julie’s elbow, and gave it a good shake. “Where have you been? Pritchett has been plaguing me. He said I’m to tell you that you must watch your step.”

Julie
was
watching, wasn’t she? Every step she took, and every word she said. For the most part. Except when in the presence of a certain earl. Surely she hadn’t — had she? — said ‘back in’ Newgate. Silently, she handed over the glove.

Rose frowned. “
This
had Pritchett in a dither? I don’t understand.”

“You must tell him that I couldn’t get away before.”

“I must, must I?” Rose set the glove on her dressing-table. “And the truth is that—”

“Dorset caught me and pinched the glove himself.”

“Oh, Lord.” Rose plopped down on a bench. Ophelia sniffed the glove, decided it wasn’t worthy of her interest, and resumed her nap.

“I cobbled it,” sighed Julie. “Someone almost caught the both of us, and we hid.”

Rose looked no less horrified. “You hid.”

“In a wardrobe.”  Julie had been thinking about that wardrobe ever since, and how she had enjoyed being held so close. The earl was strong enough to lift her right off her feet, and warm to the touch, and she wished that she might see him without his clothes.

Yes, and then what, pudding-head? “I’d have been nabbed sure as winking if it hadn’t been for Ned.”

Rose elevated her eyebrows, remembered that such movement led to lines marring the forehead, and lowered them again.
“‘
Ned’?”

“He says we’ve gone far beyond ‘my lord’. I’ve been thinking, Rose. If Cap’n Jack is a gentry cove, why does he need me for this business? Wouldn’t it be simpler for him to do the thing himself?”

“That’s for him to know.” Rose looked quickly around, assured herself the Cap’n couldn’t be hiding in a suit of armor, or under a powdered wig. “If Dorset took the glove from you, how did you get it back? Tell me you didn’t steal it from him!”

“No. I stole his pocket watch. A right nice ticker it was. Real gold.”

Rose groaned. Julie grinned. “I gave it back.”

“You gave his watch back to him.”

“I figured if I gave him back the watch, he’d give me the glove. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

All about in the head was what Julie was, if she thought Rose would be put off. Rose demanded to have the whole of the story, and in the proper order, from beginning to end. Therefore she heard about the rendezvous in Hyde Park, and how the earl had taken Julie up on his horse, and managed to make only minimal interruptions, such as,
“‘
Buttercup’?”

“It was in the nature of being a compliment,” Julie explained gravely. “You know all about compliments, Rose. Ned was a soldier. In the Peninsula. That queer statue came from Egypt. It’s a fertility goddess, he said.”

Rose did know about compliments. She also knew a great deal about the sort of gentlemen who made compliments to ladies, and thought,
Oho.
It was one thing for Rose to have a fondness for a rogue; she was — though she had not set out to be — a woman of the world.

Julie was not, nor did Rose intend for her to be. “Dorset said a lot to you. I wonder what you said in turn.”

“What else? That I’m Miss Julie Wynne from York. Which he knows I’m not.” Julie picked up a makeup pot.

The girl had never before shown any interest in cosmetics. Rose snatched the pot away. “And how does he know that?”

“He had inquiries made, I guess. Are you worried he’ll find out who I really am? That’s not likely, Rose.”

Of course Rose was worried. It was in the nature of rogues to know more than they should. “We’ve strayed from your story. You stole Dorset’s watch in Hyde Park. Then what?”

Obediently, Julie related her adventure at Covent Garden (which, she assured Rose, didn’t hold a candle to Drury Lane) or at least the gist of her adventure, how Ned had sought her out, and spoke with her, which put Lady Rumption in a snit. “I understand why her previous companion ran off.”

“If run off she did.”

Julie met Rose’s eyes in the mirror. “You think—”

“I think it’s better
not to think about such things. Dorset knows that you stole his statue, yet he hasn’t given you away.”

“He says he won’t peach on me, and I believe him.” Ophelia rolled over and Julie stroked the cat’s furry belly. “He gave me the glove because I said I had to have it. You must swear to me that you won’t tell Pritchett about him, Rose.”

“As if I would.” It wasn’t really a vow, Rose told herself. And even if it was, vows could always be broken, and in Rose’s experience often were. “What
did
you do with the statue?”

“I have it with me in my room at Ashcroft House.”

Telling, that. “You won’t give Dorset the statue because you think that if you do you won’t see him again.”

Julie felt her cheeks redden. “Have you been at the gin? Lady Georgiana has already told me that I needn’t think I may make a conquest of an earl.”

Her ladyship had the right of it, so far as she went. Titled gentlemen married unworldly damsels who knew what forks to use at table and naught of real life. Left to her own preferences, Jules would eschew cutlery altogether in favor of her fingers. If Dorset wanted the girl, it would be as his paramour.

Rose had done her best to warn Jules against such folly. Alas,
Rose knew — none better — that good sense went flying out the window when romance came knocking at the door. “I’ll wash my hands of you, my girl, if you go tossing your bonnet over the windmill.”

Julie rolled her eyes. “I think you must have windmills in your head.”

Rose remained unconvinced that bonnet-tossing wasn’t in the offing. “Do you think your fine earl can protect you, Jules?”

He already had protected her, reflected Julie. “I think I need to know more about Yorkshire.”

Herself, Rose needed to know more about this unpredictable gentleman, and she knew just the person who could find out. While she debated how many of these new developments she should share with Pritchett, Rose armed Julie with further information about bell-ringers and morning prayers, the etymological history of the name ‘York’, and in addition a few pithy proverbs. Wakened from her nap by all this chatter, Ophelia yawned and stretched and took herself off to resume her slumber in a far corner of the room.

A knock came at the door. Rose was required onstage. She locked away the stained glove and went off, as Desdemona, to deal with a fateful glove of her own.

Julie wandered through the theater and back out into the street. She pulled the apple from her pocket and wiped it on her sleeve.

Rose considered herself a Terrible Example. Julie considered her worth a hundred Lady Georgianas with their pills and potions, their meaningless lives. Rose brought pleasure to hundreds, maybe thousands, with her turns upon the stage. Lady Georgiana couldn’t claim to provide that much misery.

The two of them believed she’d taken a fancy to the earl, and maybe she had. What of it? Julie well knew that fancying something and thinking she might have it were two different things.

The cobbles were thronged with traffic, every imaginable conveyance from iron-rimmed wheels to leather-shod feet. Street sellers worked their way through the crowd. Julie passed by a beggar with his leg doubled under at the knee to simulate a lost limb, his mouth frothing with foam produced by eating soap. As she bit into her apple, she felt a prickle of awareness, as if someone’s eyes rested on her.

Julie ducked into the doorway of an apothecary’s shop. Over the counter, for some unknown reason, hung a stuffed crocodile.

A grizzled bellows-mender shambled past the doorway. He met Julie’s gaze.

No wonder the man had seemed familiar. She’d seen him last at Wakely Court, when Miss Clea had insisted that she have a bath. Bates hadn’t been dressed as a bellows-mender then.
She stuck out her tongue.

Dashing earls. Stolen statues. Bloody hell.

Julie slipped out the back door of the shop into a maze of alleyways and courts and interlocking back yards where any thief worth her salt might give pursuers the slip. She
was
a thief, and must not forget it, no matter how many social functions Lady Georgiana dragged her to, or how many dashing earls told her they admired the color of her curls.