Maggie MacKeever (7 page)

“She’s newly come to town,” explained Georgiana. “Miss Julie Wynne from York. We have notified Bow Street that Mildred has vanished into thin air.” The girl started, blinked, stared down at her gloves.

Hannah and Georgiana resumed hostilities, and Ned made his way to Miss Wynne’s side. “A dreadful crush, is it not?” he said.

“I suppose.” She spoke so softly that he barely caught her words.

Was the girl shy? Ned studied her bent head, which afforded him only a glimpse of the straight line of her nose and the plumpness of her lips and the rosy color rising in her cheeks. His eyes drifted lower to the bosom of her gown. Clea, who had taken to poring over fashion magazines by the hour, would have called the dress a ‘Corset frock’, the bodice lacing across the front like a corset, the sleeves short and full.

Damned if Miss Wynne didn’t seem familiar. Ned couldn’t think why. A man wouldn’t soon forget those bright willful curls. They looked as if they’d been repressed with a stern hand and were merely waiting for a moment’s inattention so they could burst free.

She said, “You are staring at me, my lord.”

“So I am. My apologies. I was struck mute with admiration for your curls.”

She shot him a sideways glance, so quick he hadn’t time to note the color of her eyes. “Gammon,” she said.

Gammon? Ned’s mood further improved. “Not one for idle conversation, are you, Miss Wynne?”

She flushed but refused to look at him. “Like you say, I have no conversation. I don’t mean to be rude.”

Ned thought she meant to be precisely that. Had she dared, the chit would have shoo’d him away. It was a novel experience. Most females wanted him to stay.

“Dorset!” Hannah beckoned. Ned excused himself. The dowager was no doubt wondering why he was talking to a mere companion, such creatures being — in the opinion of the Hannahs and Georgianas of the world — far beneath the notice of a gentleman as exalted as himself. 

The encounter with her archrival had but briefly distracted Hannah. She drew Ned’s attention to the next eligible on her list, this one a trifle bran-faced, granted, but it didn’t signify, for she was a biddable female and wouldn’t cause a moment’s unease. Alternately, the dowager suggested an acknowledged beauty prone to temper, but she doubted Ned would like that.

Would he not? Temper sprang from passion, and Ned liked passion well. An alliance with a temperamental beauty would be infinitely preferable to marriage with a good biddable female.

What was he thinking? Infinitely preferable would be no marriage at all. The earl required an heir, however, and to the devil with the wishes of mere Ned. Perversely, he imagined the next young lady without her clothes.

Without her clothes?

Ned abandoned Hannah in mid-sentence, and shouldered his way through the crowd. He found Lady Georgiana admiring one of Prinny’s earlier efforts, a Chinese room with walls of painted glass that gave the visitor a disconcerting impression of being trapped inside a lantern. Trailing after her, laden down with vinaigrette and hartshorn and now a Grecian shawl, the rooms having grown too warm for even the languid Lady Georgiana, was Miss Wynne.

As if she felt his attention on her, the girl glanced directly at him. Vivid blue eyes locked with green.

Chapter Six

If Jupiter hurled his thunderbolts as often as man sinned, he would soon be out of thunderbolts.
— Ovid

The Strand was largely empty now of the humanity that crowded along its length by day, from the bewigged barristers of the Temple and the Courts to the curiosities and freaks of Fleet Street. Julie slipped by booksellers and printing houses, repairers of ‘Umbrellas &c’, purveyors of fine spirits and tea. She attracted no attention in her shabby clothing, a cap pulled over her bright hair, dirt smeared on her face.

Noises echoed eerily through the thick sooty fog, the sounds of distant revelry, argument, debaucheries the nature of which Julie could only guess. Moisture dripped off the brim of her cap and trickled down her chin. She ducked deeper into the shadows as a watchman passed by on his rounds, listened to the clatter of the night-soil man’s cart wheels on the cobblestones, inhaled the smell of wet animals and decaying garbage and the stench of the Thames.

Rose’s lodgings were in Russell Court. Julie slipped around the corner of the building, shimmied up a drainpipe, crept along a ledge; crouched outside a third-floor window and peered in. Rose sat in a large winged armchair, writing in her journal by the light of an oil lamp. In her ruffled muslin wrapper, her hair loose around her shoulders, she appeared much younger than her actual years. Snoozing in her lap was Ophelia, the Drury Lane cat. Julie tapped on the glass.

Rose started, and her pen skittered across the page. Her eyes widened when she saw Julie perched on the ledge.

She set aside Ophelia, hurried to the window. “Jules!  What’s wrong with using the front door?”

“I didn’t want to be seen.” Julie scrambled across the sill. This way no one might remember that Mrs. Scarron had been visited by a grubby boy in the wee hours of the night. Rose closed the window against the damp.

Her journal lay open. Julie sneaked a peek, but reading didn’t come easily to her, wouldn’t have come at all had Rose not seduced
her with children’s tales. The actress had been offered a handsome
sum by a Fleet Street firm to publish her memoirs, but had refused it out of loyalty to those with whom she’d shared the experiences that would have made her autobiography profitable.
Too, without the letters and mementos that had been stolen from her, Rose was fuzzy on some of the details.

Julie took off her sodden cap and jacket and backed up to the fire. “You brought Ophelia home with you?”

“I was lonely. Ophelia is good company.” As if the cat under
stood the compliment, it began to purr. Julie regarded the bottle sitting on the table beside Rose’s book. Rose followed her gaze. “Pritchett stopped by.”

Pritchett had probably brought the gin. Like Satan tempting
Christ on a mountaintop. At least, Julie thought that was where Satan had tempted Christ. “It’s none of my affair.”

That
it was not. Rose turned away. Her reflection in the pier-glass
strongly indicated that she was in need of fresh cucumber juice to
rejuvenate her skin. Followed by water in which spinach had been boiled. Finished off with twenty pounds of strawberries and two of raspberries crushed and thrown into a bath.

“Stop frowning,” advised Julie. “Or you’ll get lines between your eyes. You’ve told me so often enough.”

Rose didn’t have lines, did she? With her fingertips, she smoothed her brow
. “I want to know what you’ve been about.”

What Rose wanted was a wealthy protector, so she didn’t have to fill her empty evenings with Bow Street Runners and Blue Ruin. Julie met her friend’s eyes in the glass. “Pritchett mustn’t learn any of what I’m about to tell you,” she warned. Had Cap’n Jack known of Julie’s previous encounter with Lord Dorset, she wouldn’t have met him again in the crowded rooms of Carlton House, because her neck would have been broke first.

 “As if I would.” Rose picked up the gin bottle, and held it to the light. “It wasn’t but a nipperkin, Jules.”

It had been rather more than a nipperkin, unless Pritchett had drunk half the bottle. Which was also none of Julie’s business, as Rose would be quick to point out. “I left Lady Georgiana tucked safely in her bed. Where the viscount might be is anybody’s guess. I have to be back at Ashcroft House before they realize I’m gone.”

Rose thunked the gin bottle down on the table. Some things shouted into the silence even when left unvoiced, especially when accompanied by reproachful glances and primmed lips. Julie thought Rose had been drowning her sorrows in company with Madame Geneva.

Maybe she had been, and if so whose business was it? “I should be safely abed myself,” Rose snapped. “Instead of sitting up late and reading, which everybody knows leads to crow’s feet around the eyes, and fretting about a blameful chit who is wet behind the ears. Yes, and what
are
you doing here?”

If Julie was wet behind the ears, it was due only to the rain. “I’ll tell you when you come down off your high ropes.”

Rose uttered several pithy comments about ungrateful ragamuffins as she paced the floral-patterned carpet, navigating her way between mismatched pieces of furniture and cases displaying her bibelots, among them a fine collection of theatrical figurines and an even more remarkable compilation of love-tokens, most memorable a minuscule Cupid drumming on a pair of breasts. Any of those items might have brought her a fair sum of money, but
Rose would go without a month of dinners before she considered pawning a memento of some lost love. Julie thought of her own stolen statue, and wondered if its owner felt similarly.

Rose sighed as she sank back into her chair. Ophelia jumped into her lap. “If you must have it, I was trying to draw information from Pritchett, though I might have more luck pulling teeth from a hen. I don’t think he has any notion what Cap’n Jack intends.”

Julie was less certain. Bow Street officers were very skilled at looking after their own skins.

Rose added, “He was in momentary expectation of something, but I don’t know what. Tell me about these people you’re staying with.”

Julie did know what Pritchett was expecting. Alas. She moved away from the fireplace, her backside having grown quite toasty as
the room filled with the stench of steaming wool. “Lord Ashcroft
is a noodle. Lady Georgiana is sensitive to the dismals and forever quacking herself. I’m supposed to entertain her, though she doesn’t know how I may do so when I have no conversation. She says it is disobliging of me not to be more interesting.”

Rose snorted. “If she only knew.”

“In that event, Lady Georgiana would drink from all fifteen of the medicine bottles on her bedside table, her favorite being Bateman’s Pectoral Drops. She too is a gamester, and better at it than her son. I play at cards with her, and she wins.”

“You must let her, then.”

“She cheats.” Julie wriggled her toes in the old boots, which were much more comfortable than what she thought of as her proper lady shoes. “Lady Georgiana has dragged me into every shop in Oxford Street and through a tedious procession of afternoon calls. I‘ve drunk enough tea to float the British Fleet. Oh, and we went to Carlton House.”

“Carlton House!” Rose sat up so straight that Ophelia extended claws to avoid being bounced off her lap. “Tell me all, you wretched child.”

“The pillars were hung with thousands of lanterns. The screen that separates the house from the street was silhouetted by topaz and scarlet flares set between palm trees. Inside
. . .
” Words were inadequate. “It was like something from a fairy tale.”

“Did you see the Distinguished Visitors?”

“Ordinary folk dressed fine.” Julie grinned as Rose looked shocked. “Lady Georgiana likened the Czar to an angel. He was handsome enough, I suppose. The ladies were strutting like crows in a gutter to get his attention. I’ve never seen anything like that house.”

“I don’t think there
is
anything like it,” Rose said dryly. “The Prince Regent has expensive tastes.”

So he did. Julie gazed at the painted village scene, one of Rose’s most prized possessions, which hung upon one wall. She had counted over a hundred pictures on the walls of Carlton House, in just the rooms she had been privileged to inspect. Of those rooms,
Julie had been most impressed by the Armory, the palanquin of Tippoo Sahib, and the dagger of Genghis Khan, which was perhaps not surprising in a young woman who went about with a knife tucked in her boot.

“It doesn’t seem right,” she concluded, “that one man should have so much.”

Of course it didn’t seem right, reflected Rose. Julie had no more than the clothes covering her back, and those were on loan. “The man who owns all that will one day be king. Sooner than later, if his father keeps talking to oak trees in the park.”

Julie hadn’t been impressed by her Regent. “He is very fat.”

“
Spoken with all the disapproval of one who’s never had an opportunity to overindulge. Time will smooth the edges of your critical faculties, my girl; and Prinny was handsome once. What else?”

What else, indeed. “Lord Dorset was at Carlton House.”

Sometimes, despite the long-term consequences, nothing but a frown would do. Rose asked, “Did he recognize you?”

“I think so. I can’t be sure. I thought it was all up with me, but then he walked away.” And thus far no representative of the law had come knocking at the door.

“Hmmm.” Unless she was mistaken, and Rose was seldom mistaken about such matters, Julie’s cheeks were flushed beneath her dirt. “What is Dorset like?”

How to describe the earl? Julie didn’t try. “He said he felt as if we had met before. If he hasn’t placed me yet, he will soon enough. Maybe I should just hop the twig.”

“Language,” scolded Rose. “In any event, you couldn’t hop high enough. I wish we were well out of this business.”

“If wishes were horses, pigs would fly.” Julie reached into her pocket. “I don’t think I got that right.”

Rose threaded her fingers through Ophelia’s soft fur. “It’s
when
pigs can fly. Which will be never in our life.”

And never in her life, thought Julie, was when she’d be done with Cap’n Jack. She opened her hand and spilled its contents onto the tabletop. Lilacs, mauves, deep purples glittered in the lamplight.
Gold-set amethysts in the form of a large cross. Ophelia reached out an inquisitive paw.

“Carlton House, I presume.” Rose nudged aside the cat, picked up the brooch and held it closer to the light. “A pretty thing, but not worth the risk of stealing it. I wonder what the Cap’n is about.”