Maggie MacKeever (2 page)

Still, Pritchett’s conscience pricked him. “I’d be lying if I said I knew his purpose. But I’ll give you fair warning, as should know: dare the Cap’n and be damned.”

Came a moment’s silence while Jules mulled over his proposition, her eyes fixed on the floor while she idly poked one toe into the stinking straw. “A Bow Street man would turn on his own mother if there was a reward.”

The girl spoke the truth. “It’s not likely you’ll have any better offer, and that
is
the way of it, lass.”

She raised her eyes and studied him; thrust out one grubby paw. “Done then, and may the devil take you if you’re gullin’ me.”

Gingerly, Pritchett took her hand in his and shook it. He tried not to think what unspeakable substances might be accumulating on his glove.

Chapter One

Death’s unavoidable, let’s have a drink.
— Seneca the Elder

“
More,” she murmured. “Harder. Faster.” Ned eyed the breasts swaying before him, laved one rosy nipple with his tongue. The bedstead creaked beneath them. Lilah was racing hell for leather. He thanked God she didn’t have a riding crop.

He took firmer grip on her slender hips, thrust upward into her, again and again, at a spanking good pace. She gasped and moaned and rode him like the well-seasoned equestrienne that she was. Their bodies were slick with sweat, their image faintly ludicrous in the mirror hung above the bed. An ignoble end for the fifteenth Earl of Dorset: asphyxiated while taking his pleasure amid a whore’s tumbled sheets.

Ned couldn’t die yet. His cousin had been clear about the reproductive duties of an earl. He reached down and slid his fingers into Lilah’s damp curls. A skilled caress, and then another. Her body tensed. One more deft manipulation. She shuddered, and groaned. As did he. She collapsed upon his chest.

Moments passed, before she stirred, and slid off him. Ned opened his eyes. Lilah made a pretty picture, posed provocatively beside him on her crimson satin sheets. Her long, thick chestnut hair fanned out on the pillow. Her lavender eyes, as they met his in the mirror, held the cynical expression of one who had no illusions about the world.

Ned sat up and reached for his waistcoat. “I’ve brought you something. You won’t insult me by refusing it.” While it was the custom for patrons of Lilah’s establishment to give her girls a present — which was then passed along to their employer who in turn shared with them a small portion of its worth — Lilah seldom accepted such tokens for herself. He dropped a string of glittering gems on the sheet.

Lilah held the bracelet up to the light, contemplated the quality of the stones, fastened it on her wrist and admired it again. “I wouldn’t dream of insulting you. Or your excellent taste. Thank you, Ned.”

“You know I would be happy to do more.” He began to dress.

Lilah propped herself up among her pillows to better watch her guest pull on his clothes. The fifteenth Earl of Dorset — to her forever mere Ned Fairchild — was all graceful hard-muscled strength, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, thick auburn hair and eyes a woman might drown in, were she so short of sense. His face was saved from beauty by a slightly aquiline nose and a more-than-slightly wicked month. “Since you are so eager to be of service, you may go downstairs and tell me if my new French chef is worth the fortune I am paying him,” she said.

The moment for any serious conversation had passed. Ned smoothed his hair and gave his cravat one last twitch before he stepped out into the hall.

The Academy was doing a brisk business this evening, its elegant apartments graced with gentlemen in formal attire, women in gowns as fashionable as any worn by ladies of the
ton.
Ned strolled through the supper room, assured himself that Lilah’s French chef
lived up to his reputation; spared a brief glance into another chamber where an enactment of
the Tahitian Feast of Venus was underway. This highly imaginative tribute to the anthropological researches of Captain Cook featured live sex acts performed by South Sea Island ‘maidens’ and a dozen well-endowed athletic youths. Flower-wreathed dildos added a whimsical touch.

Ned had seen it all
before. And done it, like as not. Once with considerably more enjoyment than now.
Everything had changed, and not for the better, since he’d become a bloody earl. He collected his hat and greatcoat from a servant. Perhaps a brisk walk might clear the cobwebs from his head.

King’s Place was a seemingly insignificant alley near the royal palace. Almost all the houses here were dedicated to pleasure, their interiors designed by the likes of the Adam brothers, decorated with furniture in the elegant styles of Sheraton and Hepplewhite. Liveried servants were
de rigueur,
as well as expensive carriages, for
the residents confined their perambulations to St. James’s Park. Ned pulled up his coat collar and set out for a stroll.

He had not far to travel, though far enough that a more prudent man might have chosen not to go afoot. The streets were dark and empty save for the watchman in his box, the occasional carriage that emerged wraith-like from obscuring mist made up of equal parts coal smoke and river fog. A skinny dog snarled at Ned as it slunk into an alleyway. Moodily, he kicked at a pile of rubble, half-wishing that some thugs would try and interfere with him so that he might break their heads.

No one interfered, alas, and at length he reached his destination, an ancient brick structure perched near the river on the north side of the Thames. The old house pleased Ned, for it stood as far beyond the pale as he. Wakely Court had been the ancestral home of his grandmother’s family, all now deceased.
The
ramshackle building stretched three stories above the street, was adorned with turrets and gables and a forest of tall rectangular chimneys, bay and mullioned windows with tiny jeweled diamond panes set in designs of ornamental lead.

Light shone from a great many of those windows, despite the lateness of the hour. Ned approached the front door.

That great portal creaked open to reveal a glum-faced individual of middle years and impressive girth, his old-fashioned livery
splotched with damp. “I believe you will find Mistress Clea in the library, my lord,” said Tidcombe, as he took Ned’s hat and coat.

Ned mounted the stair. Although she refused to accept it, Clea at fifteen years of age was not altogether grown up. He wondered what excuse she would have, this time, for being out of bed so late.

Candles blazed in the library, illuminating a ceiling with huge molded beams supporting lesser timbers, the spaces between filled with plastered lath; a chimneypiece featuring Bacchanalian revels complete with nubile maidens and satyrs and a large quantity of grapevines; heavy oak furniture embellished with intricately carved animals and flowers.

Dusty draperies hung at the windows. Moth-eaten tapestries adorned the paneled walls. Countless books lined the old shelves, rested tipsily on the floor alongside maps of the world, a calculating board with counters, and a perpetual almanac in a frame. The library was Ned’s favorite chamber. To its clutter, he had added a huge pewter inkstand and an excessively ugly statue that he had brought back from his travels and given place of honor on the old desk.

The first thing Ned noticed as he stepped into the brightly-lit room was that one window lacked a curtain. Second was the aroma of spilt brandy that hung heavy in the air. Third was his sister, perched on the chair behind his desk. She glowed with excitement. Dirt smeared her muslin nightdress, and one pretty cheek. Cobwebs bedecked her mahogany hair.

Ned folded his arms and tried to look stern. “What was it this time? Virgil? Apuleius?”

She twinkled at him. “Juvenal. But I was asleep!  A noise
woke me. I think it was Cerberus.” Wakely Court’s most recent tenant had left behind a full complement of servants —
Tidcombe the butler, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Scroggs; several maidservants, two named Mary; a number of footmen, chief among them James — and also a pug-nosed, pop-eyed, nasty-tempered little dog.

Ned glanced warily around, found the beast sprawled amid a tumbled stack of books, resembling nothing so much as a dirty mop with stubby legs. If Cerberus lacked the three heads generally accorded the guardian at the gate to hell, he had more than enough teeth, as displayed now with a curled lip, and a snarl.

The snarl was directed not at Ned, but at the fireplace. Ned turned in that direction. “What the deuce?” he inquired.

Clea beamed. “I’ve been on the fidgets for fear you wouldn’t return home in time, and I might fall asleep, and she might escape. That is why Bates has the firearm. I told him he might trust me to guard her, but he said you’d have his head.”

Bates, the grizzled batman who had been with Ned in the Peninsula, was indeed holding a firearm. “You would have, sir, and that’s a fact,” he said.

Drawn up close to the fireplace was an armchair. Seated in the armchair was a slight figure bound with cords. Ned’s window cords,
if his eyesight did not deceive him. “Would someone please explain?”

“I caught a housebreaker!” crowed Clea. “Or Cerberus did, because he tripped her. And then I pulled the curtain down, and knocked her on the head.”

Ned looked at his decanter, which lay empty on the carpet. “Couldn’t you have used the inkstand, or the globe?”

Clea waved off his objections. “A housebreaker, Ned!  I knew you would like it of all things.”

Ned would have liked it better if his good smuggled French
brandy had not been splashed about the room. Now that he had decided he wasn’t cup-shot, he could have used a drink. “Why is she so damp? Why are
you
so damp? Where are her clothes?” The
housebreaker was clad in nothing but the velvet drape, so far as he could tell. She was a little bit of a thing, and looked not much older than his sister.

“Her clothes were beyond dreadful.” Clea sounded as prim and disapproving as if she cared about such stuff. “I decided she should have a bath. Bates and Tidcombe helped. And James. That is, they helped until we realized she was a girl!  She had on boy’s
clothing, and though her breeches were beyond dirty, it was an excellent idea. Think of trying to climb a drainpipe in skirts! She must
have got in the house that way. After we discovered she was a female, it was Mrs. Scroggs and the Marys and me. And Bates. But everything was proper. Bates looked at the ceiling while he held the gun.”

Clea might believe Bates had looked only at the ceiling while
in a naked female’s presence. Ned was skeptical. He
glanced at his batman. Bates had the grace to blush.

“Her garments were nastier than she was underneath them,” added Clea. “I think the grime is part of her disguise. And a prodigious clever disguise it was, because it fooled us all.”

The housebreaker did not appear gratified by Clea’s approval. Impossible to tell the color of her hair under its grease, but her blue eyes shot angry sparks.

Ned moved closer to the captive. “Why is she gagged?”

“Bates said her language wasn’t fitting for my ears. What’s a gundiguts?”

A gundiguts was a prim pursy fellow. “Tidcombe,” said Ned.

Clea nodded, satisfied. “And a bundle-tail?”

“Mrs. Scroggs, no doubt.” That worthy was both short and squat.

Clea clapped her hands together.
“I am furthering my education!  Nickninny I knew, and lobcock. What about
gingambobs?”

Ned opened his mouth and closed it, appalled at how close he had come to discussing testicles with his sister. Bates cleared his throat. Behind her gag, Ned could have sworn the housebreaker smirked.

He appropriated the pistol. “You’ve had enough educating for one evening. I’ll deal with this now.”

Clea bounced indignantly in her chair. “But
I
caught her!” she wailed.

“Yes, and a good job you did of it.” Ned pulled his sister to her feet. “Now go back to bed.”

She shot him a reproachful glance. Her lower lip quivered. Her shoulders slumped. Unmoved, Ned turned her toward the doorway. “Bates will escort you to your room.”

The batman was no more eager than Clea to be dismissed. “You might want to think again, sir. That one’s a she-demon. Precious near took a bite right off me arm.”

“And I might not!” retorted Ned. “The chit’s no bigger than a minute. Hardly a danger to a great strong fellow like myself. Or maybe you think that since I resigned my commission I’ve gone soft?”

Only a crackbrain would think that. If he no longer fought the French, the lieutenant still rode and boxed; indulged in all the sports so beloved by gentlemen, and some others that were not. Even dressed by the finest tailors, he retained the air of the adventurer he recently had been.

The lieutenant additionally had an air of wishing to punch out someone’s daylights. Bates didn’t care to volunteer. “I’ll be seeing Miss Clea to her chamber, sir,” he said, and ushered that reluctant damsel from the room.

Ned waited until the door clicked closed behind them before he turned back to the prisoner. He found himself curious to see the rest of her face.

He reached for her. She tensed. “Behave yourself,” said Ned. “Or
I won’t remove your gag. Before you try and bite me, you might remember that I may yet turn you over to the constable.” Gingerly, he untied the sodden material and pulled it from her mouth.

She grimaced. “Bugger and blast.”

Her voice was light, oddly appealing. “Tsk! Such language. What were you doing in my house?”

The straight little nose twitched.
“’
Twas a misunderstanding. I was just passing by.”

“And dropped in for a spot of brandy? You’re not a good liar. I think I will untie you. You’ll recall that I have the gun.”