Maggie MacKeever (3 page)

She eyed the pistol. “Ain’t likely to forget, am I?”

Her hands were tied in front of her. Wisdom dictated that he leave them safely bound. Surprisingly elegant hands they were, the fingers slender and graceful.

Ned set aside the firearm, unfastened the cords that secured her ankles, rubbed the soft flesh where the bonds had chafed. Her bones were small, delicate, finely formed. She cursed and tried to kick him. He experienced an absurd impulse to pick up this defiant scrap and hold her safe from the world.

Well, why not? If he could hardly hold a housebreaker safe, he could certainly still hold her. Ned untangled her from the chair; scooped her up, drapery and all, and sat her on the desk. The fabric parted, revealing one smooth and slender shoulder, and the curve of one plump breast. Older than he had thought her, he decided. She clutched at the curtain and scowled.

Here was a female unimpressed by title and position. Ned trailed one finger down her soft cheek. “Tell me your name.”

She turned her head and bit his wrist; at the same time planted her bare foot in his groin. Abruptly, Ned released her. “Point taken,” he said and then cursed, because she grasped the ugly statue in her hands and aimed it at his head.

Caught off balance, Ned stumbled backward. The thief scooted off his desk. He grabbed for her, caught handfuls of the curtain. She brought the statue down, hard, on his skull. Tangled in dusty draperies, Ned crashed to the floor.

He lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling. Cerberus waddled forward, and stuck a cold nose in his face.

The dog’s breath was unpleasant. Ned pushed him away. Cerberus made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snicker, and flopped down on the hearth.

Slowly, Ned sat up, clutching his sore head. He’d not soon forget his last glimpse of the housebreaker, scrambling mother-naked out his library window, clutching his ugly statue in her hand.

Damned if he’d enjoyed anything so much since he departed the Peninsula. When Bates returned to the library, he found his master holding a bloody handkerchief to his head, and laughing like a loon.

Chapter Two

Be careful about starting something you may regret.
— Pubilius Syrus

Julie slipped through the stage door. The theater’s resident feline rubbed against her ankles with a welcoming
meowr.
She picked up Ophelia and pressed her face against the cat’s soft black fur.

A clutter of theatrical necessities was piled up willy-nilly. Julie skirted scenery and props, a classical doorway with roses creeping up it, a full-scale flying machine drawn by a dragon and complete with clouds; kept her eyes peeled for a glimpse of one of Drury Lane’s resident ghosts, her favorite Charles Macklin, who in a previous century had killed a fellow actor in an
argument over a wig. The theater had burned down since —
plumbers repairing the roof had gone off and left their fires burning — and had been rebuilt, but the ghosts remained. Instead she encountered scene shifters and painters and carpenters, and other corporeal backstage personnel.

Beyond the stage lay the dressing rooms, one for ladies and one for gentlemen. Julie found Rose alone in the ladies’, standing among the dressing tables and wig stands, gazing somberly into a looking glass. She was a woman of determinedly indeterminate age, with warm hazel eyes and fiery red hair and ordinary features that were able to change chameleon-like from joy to sorrow in an eyelid’s blink. Her slender, graceful figure was nicely set off by a high-waisted leaf-green gown.

Julie walked up beside her friend, surveyed her own reflection. Today she was merely another female come from market, her shawl around her shoulders, and her basket on her arm.

She set down the basket. Ophelia pounced. Julie pushed the cat aside, retrieved the statue, set it on the dressing table in front of Rose. The bizarre figurine — head of a hippopotamus, legs and arms of a lion, tail of a crocodile, swollen belly and human breasts — was no more appealing in the brighter light of day. “The fencing cove in Rat’s Castle said it wasn’t worth its weight in metal, whatever that might be, and I should take it from his sight. I’d hoped to do better. You should see the inside of that old house.  Dusty and creaky and full of useless stuff. Not what one would expect of a gentry ken.”

“Language,” Rose said automatically. “And you shouldn’t have broken into a gentleman’s residence. No, or any other. What if you were caught? Oh, this is all my fault!”

“Gammon!” retorted Julie. “You didn’t send me there.”

“No, but I might as well have.” Rose glanced from the statue back to her mirror, her expression morose. Handsome — and more important, wealthy — admirers weren’t as plentiful as once they had been, when Rose was young and pretty, and believed the world well lost for romance.   

Not that Rose wasn’t still attractive, at several years past forty, due to diligent applications of
Pommade de Seville
and a Wash of the Ladies of Denmark and Virgin Milk; as well as discrete recourse to Pearl White Powder and rouge. And not, certainly not, that she had given up on romance. Rose fell in love with appalling regularity and predictably disastrous results, due to an unfortunate weakness for handsome rogues. For all her heart was forever being broken, it was generous. As a result, her pockets were most often to let.

“Oh, Jules,” Rose sighed. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

As did Julie. It was that imminent departure that had inspired her foray into the sneaking budge; she had hoped to filch something valuable to tide Rose over while she was away. Which just went to
show that one should stick to one’s own skill, and thereby avoid being first clapped into Newgate, and then running bare-arsed through the streets. Fortunately, like many another young thief before her, Julie had learned to make her way quickly among the
warren of courts and alleys and lanes that lay between the rookeries and London’s fashionable West End.

Her school had been those streets. She had progressed from a ragged cherub perched on a doorstep holding two grubby packets containing some residue of tea and sugar, sobbing that she’d been robbed and dared not go home; to a dirty scamp begging a bite from strangers and later stealing from shop-windows and stalls; to finally a pilferer of pockets so deft as to be a force of nature, like the tide that swept up items from one location and deposited them elsewhere.

She touched the ugly statue, wondered if it had meant something special to its owner. Julie was sorry to have taken it from him, in that case. She scolded herself for this mawkishness. There was no place for regret in her line of work.

Rose meanwhile was scolding Ophelia, who had attempted a foray among the makeup pots and jars. She snatched up the cat and put her on the floor. Ophelia leapt back onto the dressing table. Rose swatted at the contrary creature. Her eyes were suspiciously damp.

Julie pretended not to notice. “It’s not forever, Rose.”

“We don’t know how long it will be.” Rose unscrewed the top of a ceramic jar. “Or what will happen afterward.”

Julie didn’t want to think about afterward. “I’ll not be that far away.”

Rose screwed the lid back on, and pushed the jar aside. “It won’t be the same. We’ve been playing at make-believe. Now things are about to become all too real. I’m afraid for you. The
Cap’n . . .” Rose’s voice trailed off.

No one knew the Cap’n’s true identity, save perhaps for the Bow Street Runner Pritchett, who served as his mouthpiece. Some whispered he was of noble birth. Whatever his origins, the Cap’n was the center of a vast network of profitable nefarious enterprise. Rose was but one of countless unfortunates who’d been caught in his sticky web, in her case result of having been so foolish as to keep locks of hair, each labeled with the name of the paramour to whom it had belonged, accompanied by letters that were equally enlightening, and consequently left open to blackmail.

Which only further convinced Julie that love turned one’s brain to pudding. “Maybe,” she suggested, “I’ll catch the eye of some rich swell.”

“Don’t think it!” Rose said fiercely, tears forgotten as she launched into a tirade. Wasn’t she herself a fine example of what happened when a girl set her feet on the road to ruin, bedazzled in her instance by an attractive young scoundrel who had deceived her into thinking he was a wealthy gentleman? Bread and cheese and kisses. Bachelor’s fare.

Julie recalled the eye she’d caught last night, and wondered what might have happened if she hadn’t fled. She had thought the earl was going to try and kiss her. What a queer thing it had been to be held on his lap. Julie had never sat on anyone’s lap before.

Yes, and she’d not do so again until hell froze over, gentlemen’s laps not being for such as her, so she’d best put the surprisingly pleasant memory out of her head. “In other words, if someone flashes his ivories and expects me to hitch up my skirts I’m not to tell him his brains are in his ballocks. Don’t fret yourself, Rose. I promise butter won’t melt in my mouth.”

Rose picked up a hairbrush. “Remember what I taught you. Don’t put yourself forward. Don’t raise your voice. Adopt a conciliatory manner at all times.”

Julie extricated Ophelia from among the clutter of cosmetics. The cat draped over her shoulder and batted lazily at her curls. On Cap’n Jack’s orders, Julie had endured a caper merchant (dancing master); could now employ the break-teeth words (King’s English) of a young lady and properly use a muffling-cheat (napkin); had in fact had so many new notions stuffed into her idea-pot (head) that sometimes she feared it might burst. After spending the past four years being trained to play the part of a pretty-behaved female, Julie would much rather be a sow’s ear than a silk purse.

But her friend was in a fluster. “I was bamming you, Rose.”

“You shouldn’t be bamming me, any more than you should try and swear the devil out of hell.” Rose had received a more than adequate education before her slide down the slippery slope to ruin. “You must stay always in character, and think in proper terms, to avoid making a misstep. Young ladies are supposed to be, well, ladylike.” She abandoned her lecture to throw her hands up in the air. “This is a mad scheme!”

Julie privately agreed. “Mayhap I should let that swell set me up nicely, so that we may lie in clover, and bid Cap’n Jack go and be damned.”

Rose shook her head. “Don’t think you may outsmart the Cap’n. I know of one girl that had her face slashed, and that’s not the worst I could tell.”

Julie needed no warning. Cap’n Jack could have had her clapped back in irons anytime these past four years.

A knock came at the door. Rose was required onstage. She grimaced at her mirror— 

“O! now forever

Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content!”

 Then squared her shoulders, transformed herself into gentle Desdemona, and sallied forth so that Othello might smother her beneath the bedclothes.

Julie picked up the ugly statue. She dared not leave it behind to incriminate Rose. Too, she had developed a fondness for the thing, reminder as it was of the brief glimpse she’d had of another kind of life. Not the bathing part — she’d gotten over her horror of baths these several years past — but the closeness between young Clea and her Ned. Blood kin, they were, from the look of them; and fond enough of each other, which from what Julie had observed of the world, was often not the case.

She shoved the statue into her basket. It was foolish to become attached to things, for there was always someone bigger, quicker, more clever, to snatch them away. Even more foolish was becoming attached to people, for the same applied. Julie didn’t need to be warned about the consequences of disappointing Cap’n Jack. She was less afraid of what might be done to her than what might befall Rose.

Julie set that worrisome notion aside as she left the dressing room. She inhaled deeply of the familiar scents of candle wax and lamp oil, unwashed bodies, dust and wood. Drury Lane was huge, seating three thousand bodies in boxes and galleries and pit. The newly rebuilt theater additionally boasted a grand circular saloon with rooms for refreshment at each end; Doric columns and Corinthian pilasters; an arched ornamented ceiling with a turret light. The interior was colored gold upon green, with rich crimson relief. She wondered what it would be like to watch an entertainment from a private box.

Julie didn’t know much about the
ton,
save what had been taught her, which was concerned largely with how to flimflam them; and that the nobs could so easily be gulled made her think them pig-widgeons to a man. She exempted from that harsh judgment her gentleman acquaintance of the night before. That one had been no pig-widgeon, even if he had been careless enough to let her escape. Julie’s thoughts kept returning to him, and his pretty face. Although ‘pretty’ wasn’t the right word, and ‘handsome’ not close. His eyes had been green as emerald glass, or maybe genuine gemstones; she had no experience with the real article. Yes, and wasn’t she becoming as big a pudding-head as Rose. Maybe it was something that happened to a female’s brain when she reached a certain age.

She was eighteen now. Or thereabouts. Julie had no one to tell her when she’d been born. Or where.

The actors had gathered on the stage, which was so large they were dwarfed by its immense space. Between the pedestal lamps and the curtains on each side were massy columns of verd antique, the gilt capitals supporting the arch over the stage, in its circle the arms of his majesty. Julie stepped into the wings, where she and Ophelia, who had followed her, might watch the action without being in the way. The huge auditorium made subtlety next to impossible — a person seated in the back row of the Two-Shilling Gallery was one hundred feet from the stage door — and the rehearsal was perfunctory at best.