Maggie MacKeever (22 page)

Tony didn’t believe he was as totty-headed as his mama thought, and moreover she had several maggots in her own brain, as shown by her belief that Julie was blackmailing him, and therefore shouldn’t be one to talk. Tony conceded that Georgiana had got the blackmail business partly right, though he suspected Julie was as much a cat’s-paw as he. For his mama to take it into her noggin that he had compromised someone, however
. . .

It just went to show that despite her high opinion of herself, Maman wasn’t up to snuff. If anyone had been compromised, it was Tony himself. Yes, and misled also, because Julie had said she would set things right, and Tony hadn’t seen any sign of her doing so yet. He was disappointed in the girl. And
now,
despite all his mama had said to him about scheming hussies and rascally earls, she’d started being nice to Julie, giving her dresses and taking her shopping. Tony despaired of understanding females.

He
did
understand shopping. It was an excellent distraction for
shattered nerves. Therefore, Tony took himself off to Weston’s establishment, and ordered made (against the tailor’s recommendation) a waistcoat in alternating shades of Evening Primrose and Periwinkle Green.

What did Weston know? huffed Tony, as he left the shop. He could see the waistcoat in his imagination, and splendid it was. The viscount flattered himself that he had a nice notion of such things, even if he might not go so far as Brummell, and have one craftsman fashion the fingers of his glove and another the thumbs, or have his boots polished with champagne. He knew he made a fine appearance in his nankeen breeches and brown jacket, the waistcoat with the orange stripes that nicely complimented his bright red watch
fob; his gloves of fine leather and tall beaver hat. His cravat was tied in the intricate Waterfall; his boots gleamed like polished glass, for all his valet eschewed champagne; his hair was styled in the fashionable Titus, cropped short everywhere but at the front with curls combed forward to resemble a Roman emperor
. . .

He was, Tony assured himself, complete to a shade. He felt, in that particular moment, on top of the world. Then a hackney coach drew up beside him and Pritchett popped his head out the window and said, “Get in.”

Just like that, between one moment and the next, Tony’s spirits deflated like a burst balloon. It was damned unfair. He gazed in an opposite direction. If he ignored Pritchett, the Runner might go away.

The Runner did not. “Get in,” said Pritchett. “Or I will get out.”

Stroll down Bond Street arm-in-arm with a Bow Street Runner? Tony thought not. He climbed into the cab, trying not to think who might have ridden in it before him, and what they might have left behind.

Pritchett was holding a sprig of lavender to his nose. “You’ve been avoiding me,” the Runner remarked.

Tony wished he’d thought to bring a scented handkerchief. Not that he’d anticipated riding in a hackney-coach. He
might
have anticipated it, had he been thinking properly, for this was all of
a piece with everything else that was besetting him these days. Foresight, that was the ticket. A fellow needed to anticipate what nasty turn his ill-luck might next take.

Pritchett jabbed Tony with his gilt-headed baton. “Cat got your tongue?”

Cat? Tony looked around the cab. If there was a cat in here somewhere, it might account for the smell.

And if Pritchett didn’t stop poking him with that baton, Tony was going to poke him back. “I don’t see a cat. There isn’t one, is there? You were being clever. I don’t know why people can’t say what they mean.”

Of course there wasn’t a cat. Pritchett closed his eyes, counted to five hundred, and opened them again. “You’re not doing yourself any favors by playing least in sight.”

On the contrary. Tony was doing himself an immense favor by avoiding unpleasant encounters such as this. But he hadn’t avoided this one, had he? Which went back to his previous reflections on foresight. “Can’t blame a fellow for trying,” he muttered.

Pritchett could blame him, and did. The Runner had better
things to do than follow foolish lordlings around town. Such as determining how to save his own skin.

Pritchett didn’t like this business of a stolen codebook. The penalties for treason were severe. And if anyone was caught doing anything he shouldn’t, it wasn’t likely to be Cap’n Jack.

“You might outrun the constable,” said Pritchett, “but you’ll not outrun the Cap’n. Was you to try, he’d take out his displeasure on your mama.”

“Don’t
you
prose and preach at me!” snapped Tony. “I have enough of that at home. If your Cap’n dares try and cross swords with Maman, she’ll make short work of him. I’ll wager a monkey—”

“You don’t have a monkey!” Pritchett interrupted. “And you don’t want your mama tangling with the Cap’n. Trust me on that, Ashcroft.”

Tony wasn’t so sure. What kind of unnatural parent called her sole offspring a numbskull? It might serve Maman right if she was to have a scare. But then she’d blame that on him, like she did all else. If Tony had known what was to come of it, he wouldn’t have picked up that first deck of cards. Now the sole relief to be had for the troubles pressing down on him was to spend the ready as easily as if he was flush in the pocket, which he wasn’t, on things he didn’t want or need; and Pritchett needn’t pull a long face over him and point out there would come a day of reckoning, at which point he would be in an even worse case than he was now, hard as that was to imagine, thank you very much.

The viscount was a pigeon for the plucking, thought Pritchett, just as Jules had said; a lamb ripe for fleecing, a chicken
waddling straight toward the stewing pot.

The Runner was astonished to find himself experiencing equal parts exasperation and regret. Perhaps he
was
developing scruples. Inconvenient, if true. A sympathetic nature was no asset in a villain. Villain, Pritchett was. And he didn’t care to know what the hen-wit was now nattering on about.

Neither did Pritchett care to know about Jules getting close to Dorset, but know it he did. Rose had reservations. Any right-thinking person would. She also had some fanciful notion that the earl might ride to Julie’s rescue like some knight of old.

The actress’s years upon the stage had left her with a taste for melodrama. If rescues were to be ridden to, Pritchett wished someone might ride to his.

He didn’t dwell wholly in his employer’s pocket. Pritchett knew things he’d not tell Cap’n Jack. Such as that Jules had retrieved the notebook by way of Wakely Court’s front door, and from the earl’s own hand.

That Pritchett hadn’t told the Cap’n, however, didn’t mean the Cap’n didn’t know. Impossible to be sure who was and wasn’t under the Cap’n’s thumb.

Dorset wasn’t. Yet. He thought.

M’sieur Morel wasn’t, because his wife had chose instead to hang herself. Cap’n Jack was furious as a result. Pritchett suspected the Cap’n had sought access to M’sieur’s diplomatic dispatch box.

Dorset should look to his sister. The Cap’n knew to attack a man’s weakest spot.

Tony disliked the Runner’s silence. Truth be told, he didn’t like the Runner, but he was not sufficiently deficient in the nous
-
box (no matter what his mama thought) as to say so out loud. “Maybe I should ask if the cat has got
your
tongue. Unless you only meant to scold, in which case I wish you’d let me be about my business, because the smell of this carriage is enough to put a man right off his feed. My valet will raise the devil of a dust about getting the stink out of my clothes.”

The viscount was surrounded by people prone to excesses of emotion. “You are to fetch something for the Cap’n,” Pritchett said.

Tony didn’t like the sound of this. “Fetch what? From where?”

“A statue with the head of a hippopotamus, legs of a lion, tail of a crocodile, human breasts and swollen belly.” Pritchett gestured with his hands. “About this size. He expects you’ll find it in Miss Wynne’s bedroom. Where in her bedroom, I don’t know exactly. You’ll have to search.”

If that wasn’t the outside of enough. It went against Tony’s principles to go snooping through a female’s bedroom. And yes, he
did have principles, though the Runner might not think it; just because a man made mistakes didn’t mean he lacked integrity.

Tony’s protests fell upon deaf ears. Or if not deaf, because Pritchett could not fail to hear him, on ears that could have cared less about his horrified dismay.

“I’m no thief,” insisted Tony. “And I won’t be made into one, so there!”

“No?” inquired Pritchett. “What else do you call it when you order things from merchants knowing your pockets are to let? Your creditors won’t be so obliging if they realize you can’t pay the shot. Fetch the statue like you’re told.”

Tony sputtered with indignation. Pritchett was threatening him. Which went to show that one should never trust a man in spectacles. Not that Tony
had
trusted Pritchett, not for an instant, but still he felt as if he’d taken a sharp blow to his breadbasket.

The cab drew to a halt in front of Ashcroft House. Tony grasped the door-handle. Pritchett said, “Remember the Frenchwoman who hanged herself?”

“Remember her? Why should I? I didn’t know the wench.” Since this sounded cold, Tony added, “Poor thing. But what does some dead Frenchwoman have to do with the price of peas?”

“Cap’n Jack.”

What Cap’n Jack had to do with peas, Tony could not imagine. Thought of what the Cap’n might have had to do with a dead Frenchwoman, however, caused him to tumble headfirst out of the cab. Pritchett pulled the door shut behind him and repeated, for good measure, “Dare the Cap’n and be damned.”

Be damned, decided Tony. That was Pritchett in a word. The bedamned Runner had ruined his shopping expedition and now the anticipation of his lovely new waistcoat had been spoiled.

Tony brushed himself off, stomped up his front steps and past the footman waiting in the hall, who wondered why his master chose to travel around town in a hired hack when he owned several fashionable carriages himself. Tony belatedly recalled that he had set out in one of those spanking rigs earlier today. Ah well, his groom would eventually grow tired of waiting and come home.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe the groom would turn out to be like Mildred, who went to Oxford Street to match a length of ribbon and never returned home. Tony might have liked to not return home himself, if not for his harp.

“Miss Wynne has gone out and Lady Georgiana is lying down,” the footman said, in response to Tony’s query. The viscount withdrew to his study, leaving orders that he was not to be disturbed. He fortified himself with brandy before again poking his head out into the hall. Several moments later he had achieved an elevated heartbeat and a heightened awareness of the staggering number of
servants he employed, a matter he hadn’t considered before he attempted to avoid the lot of them. Tony closed Julie’s bedroom door behind him, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

The room looked no different from when Mildred had slept in it, a fact Tony knew because his mama had demanded he inspect the items that poor Millie left behind. Everything was tidy. Not a pin was out of place. No ugly statue sat out in plain sight. Feeling uncomfortably as if he was trespassing in his own house, Tony opened the wardrobe.

There was little enough to see inside. Astonishing, that a person could get by with so few items of attire. Tony moved on to the tallboy.

What if he didn’t find the statue? What would the Cap’n do? Tony’s belly churned. Perhaps an attack of indigestion was coming on, result of the tart he’d ate. Or his interview with Pritchett. Or the brandy that he’d drunk. Maybe he was developing nervous agitations like his mama.

Yes, and why should he not? He could hardly be expected to steal things if he was sick in bed. As he pondered the benefits of a prolonged convalescence, Tony rifled through the mysterious garments in the tallboy drawers. A corset caught his interest, and he inspected the device more closely, turning it this way and that.
Certain areas were reinforced with cotton cording, others stiffened
with quilting, so that parts of the body could be prevented from expanding as they wished. Tony contemplated his own tart-filled breadbasket and the application of similar principles to a gentleman’s waistcoat.

Came a shriek behind him. Tony spun around, the corset clutched to his chest. In the doorway stood his mama, horror writ large on her face.

Chapter Twenty-Four

He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.
— Pubilius Syrus

Astley’s Royal Amphitheater was located in Lambeth, near the Westminster Bridge. While the structure’s exterior was generally considered unimposing, the interior was accorded one of the most splendid in London, done up as it was in white, lemon gold and yellow, and lit by a huge chandelier containing fifty patent lamps plus sixteen smaller chandeliers with six wax lights each. The amphitheater boasted one full tier of boxes, with two half tiers at the side; and above the half tiers, the galley slips. The sawdust-
covered equestrian circle was bounded by a four-foot-high enclosure painted as stonework, the curve of the circle next to the stage forming the outline of the orchestra, and the remainder that of the pit, which contained fourteen rows of seats and had a spacious lobby as well as
a bar for refreshment. Rich crimson draperies adorned the private boxes. A faint smell of horses hung in the air.

From one of those private boxes, Lord Dorset and his guests had thus far observed a Grand Oriental Dramatic Spectacle and an elaborate equestrian pantomime; rope dancers and jugglers and acrobats. Clea was most impressed by the gentleman who balanced with his knees on the saddle, his horse running ahead at full speed; and from that position leaped over a ribbon extended ten feet. For her part, Mrs. Viccars admired the lady who juggled four oranges in the air while she rode around the ring. Miss Wynne was more impressed with the stage itself, which was larger than that at Drury Lane, and very well adapted to the introduction of grand spectacles and pantomimes. Platforms rose one above another and extended straight across, strong enough that riders could gallop across them, yet so constructed that they could be masked by scenery, and set up and removed in a short period of time.