Maggie MacKeever (19 page)

“Wonderful,” said Nell, with unabated gloom. “I won’t dare close my eyes at night, for fear the creature may go poking about beneath my bed. Why do we not just give her the wretched things, and tell her to leave?”

Lord March twirled his own goblet, which had been filled with nothing less innocuous than water, his lordship being in great need of a clear head. “That wouldn’t solve the puzzle of how I came by the jewels in the first place, Nell—a puzzle about which I admit myself very curious! If there is a hangman in my future, I would prefer to be prepared. My darling, don’t look so horrified! I spoke in jest.”

Reminded of their guests, Lady March lowered her stricken gaze from her husband’s rueful features to her own hands clenched in her lap. “I beg you will never say such a thing again, even in fun, Marriot! You hanged?” She shuddered. “I cannot bear the thought.”

“It won’t come to that!” soothed his lordship. “I promise you, Nell.”

Her ladyship was not so easily consoled. “That’s all well and good,” she muttered, “but you have also told me that if you
are
guilty, you will take your punishment!”

This somewhat inane discussion could continue indefinitely, decided Lady Amabel. “Have you decided Marriot is guilty, Nell? No? Then pray cease to enact us a Cheltenham tragedy! And don’t
you
scold me for speaking so plainly, Marriot! We were deciding what should be done about Jane, you will recall. No, Nell, we must not push her out a window! You are funning me, I think.”

In point of fact, Lady March had not been funning, but her brief homicidal mania did not last. “Why don’t we just let her ‘find’ the wretched things? Moreover, if Jane came here expecting that we had the jewels, why was she so astonished to see me wearing them?”

“Jane knows they are stolen.” Mab pushed back her chair. “If we had not already guessed she came here in search of the jewels, there would be our proof. You still don’t understand, do you Nell? A person caught in possession of stolen jewels could go to gaol. As for letting Jane ‘find’ the jewels—that would leave our questions unanswered. We would be no nearer knowing how Marriot came by the things.”

“Gaol!” Lady March’s expression was wry. “Marriot is right; you
are
a brat! Do not bother telling me I must be prepared to make sacrifices on Marriot’s behalf, Mab; naturally I am! But I do
not
know that I am prepared to go to gaol in his place.”

“Are you not, my darling?” inquired Lord March in disappointed tones. “You wound me! I made sure that, if push came to shove, you would go to Newgate in my place.”

Had she failed her husband? Stricken, Nell glanced quickly up into his face. “Wretch!” she retorted, reassured by the twinkle in his eye. “This is a dreadful fix, Marriot! I don’t know how you can joke.”

“I fear I am a frivolous fellow.” A certain grim note in his lordship’s voice gave this blithe statement the lie. “Mab was telling us how we must deal with Jane. Continue, please!”

“One almost has to admire the creature.” Mab toyed with her empty goblet. “Forcing her way into the house as she did—she is as bold as brass! She’s also no pea-goose. We’ll need to keep our wits about us—or Marriot will.”

“I will?” Lord March responded warily to this assertion. “Why is that?”

Mab smiled and rose, preparatory to returning to the heavily laden drawtop table for some hothouse fruit and cheese. “Because, Marriot, your memory is about to return!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Cautiously, Jane stepped into the solar and glanced around. A cursory inspection assured her that no one hovered by the oriel window or lurked by the fireplace. Save for Lord March, engaged in contemplation of the caterpillar embroidered on the chair on which he sat, she was quite alone.

He did not rise to greet her, Jane noted, as she took up a position a prudent distance from his lordship. Not that she had expected to be treated like one of the nobs. In all her life, no one had risen when Jane entered a room, and very queer she would have thought it if they had. Very queer, in fact, Jane thought many of the goings-on in Marcham Towers. To say nothing of the house itself, she silently added, eyeing the carved Diana bathing on the fireplace.

Lord March was watching her, Jane discovered when she looked back at him. The quality of his attention put her on guard. She dropped a curtsey. “You wished to see me, sir?”

“You have left me little choice but to see you.” His lordship’s tone was dry. “I think that you have been telling taradiddles, Jane.”

Taradiddles, was it? “Ah! That’s as may be, sir. Mayhap if you was to open your budget, I’d know what we was talking about!”

Lord March appeared most interested in his gleaming boots, one of which he had propped comfortably upon an opposite knee. “I would think that was clear enough. You see, I have regained my memory, Jane!” He directed a reproving glance at her. “Oddly, I do
not
remember leading you astray.”

Was his lordship angry? Jane pleated the drab dark stuff of her skirt. “It seemed,” she cautiously admitted, “like a good notion at the time! I had to say something, afore that platter-faced female turned me out—beggin’ your pardon, sir!”

“No need.” Lord March made an expansive gesture. “Henrietta
is
platter-faced. And abominably inquisitive to boot. I have often been tempted to tell her taradiddles myself. There was no harm done. In truth, I should thank you for it, because had you not told Henrietta that you and I were close acquaintances, I would not have regained my memory. Oh, I might eventually have regained it, but not in this same manner, because my wife would have had no reason to hit me over the head!”

“Hit you?” A suspicious nature did not prevent Jane appreciating a good yarn. “Lawks! When I told that clanker, I didn’t know you was leg-shackled to a tempersome female, sir! Very sorry I am if I’ve put your missus in a tweak, because she seems a very fine lady— not but what I ever thought ladies went about hitting people on the head. Though I daresay in her place I’d have acted similar—no offense intended!”

Marriot suspected strongly that Jane
had
done the same, in at least one instance, and was very curious about her motivation. “Let us lay our cards on the table!” he invited. “Knowing I had lost my memory, you secured access to my house.”

“Aye.” For a gentleman determined to have things out in the open, Lord March was being very circumspect. Jane decided it would behoove her to be equally discreet. “I don’t have a mag with which to bless myself—that much of what I said was true. Knowing you to be an open-fisted bloke, I banked you’d help me raise the wind.”

So now he was become philanthropist to the city’s unfortunate females? Marriot stretched his long legs before him. “Whatever you banked on, Jane, I think it was not that. You are not all to pieces—which reminds me, I have not properly thanked you for, er, preventing me from prematurely turning up my toes!”

“No need!” Jane’s bland expression hid her growing conviction that his lordship’s erratic memory had not entirely returned. “Proper grateful you was at the time. And very poorly you repaid me for it, moreover! But if you was to snack the bit, I’d shove my trunk and forget all about this little misunderstanding
. I
ain’t one to hold a grudge!”

Snack the bit? Hop the twig? Marriot’s unexplained knowledge of such esoteric phrases came to his rescue: Jane had just offered, did he but share the money with her, to go away.
What
money? The proceeds of robbery, Marriot feared.

Though every instinct rebelled at the suggestion they had been lovers, he apparently knew Jane a great deal better than he should. “And what if I do not care to, er, ‘snack the bit’?” he inquired.

This suggestion found no favor with Jane. “Cor!” she gasped. “Damned if you
ain’t
an out-and-out rogue. You should be chary of these queer turns you take, or you’ll find yourself being taken for a criminal offense. Not that I’ll ride grub, but I can’t promise someone else won’t nab the rust.” Just how much
had
his lordship remembered? “There was the devil of a rowdy-do when it was discovered the sparklers had been pinched.”

That much Marriot could easily visualize. Was Jane saying that
he
had filched the jewels? “I suppose a great many people are angry with me,” he said plaintively. “I didn’t think of that.”

His lordship hadn’t thought of several things, mused Jane as she eyed a studded, quilted stool; among them that she might welcome an opportunity to rest her bones. Jane’s sojourn in Marcham Towers had been neither idle nor luxurious, and she wasn’t accustomed to the exhausting nature of honest toil. Nor, truth be told, did she care for it. Jane’s recent experience with the straight and narrow led her to seriously question why anyone would choose that path. “You know what you may do to make amends,” she said. “Give the sparklers back.”

So that the gems might immediately disappear into London’s teeming underworld? Marriot thought not. Though he knew little of such matters, he realized that did he simply hand over the gems to Jane neither he nor the rightful owners would see the jewels again. They would resurface, eventually, but in greatly altered form.

Or
did
he know little of such matters? It was proving deuced difficult to find out. Perhaps a different approach might serve him better. Marriot rose from his chair and approached a decanter that he had had the foresight to previously set out.

Jane was not adverse to a dram taken so early in the day, indeed quaffed it at a gulp. She was no more appealing at close quarters than at a distance, Marriot decided. Lest she prove to be responsible for the recent frequent assaults upon his. head, he stepped warily back and leaned against one of several wall panels decorated with landscapes. “We are not proceeding very quickly,” he observed after sampling his own glass.

So they were not; Jane had already realized that despite his assertions to the contrary, his lordship’s memory wasn’t in prime twig. Not that she cared a button about his lordship’s memory. What Jane wanted was to speedily remove the jewels—and herself!—from this depressingly grand house. To this end, she silently held out her glass.

Marriot refilled it, as well as his own. “We both know that I have not been in Cornwall, following a quarrel with my wife.”

“Aye, sir.” Appreciatively, Jane sloshed the wine around in her mouth before swallowing audibly. “That we do!”

Here was heavy going! Marriot took another sip. “And both of us know what I was actually up to.”

Unquestionably, both of them did not, thought Jane, and licked her lips. “If this don’t bring back memories! Many is the time we’ve shared a rum-stick of bob slim—not that I mean to impose, you understand!”

Lord March understood that the drink thus referred to was a certain quantity of punch. He eyed his alleged drinking partner, and then his own glass. Looking very cheerful, Jane boldly hefted the decanter. “Or,” she added, for good measure, “a flag’s worth of lightening— you remember, sir, fourpence of gin! But I’ll be as close as oysters! No one will learn from
me
that Lord March did what he should not!”

“No one that has not already,” his lordship amended wryly. “You could hardly do worse by me than you have already done—but never mind that! I am still waiting for you to lay your cards on the table, Jane.”

Cards it was his lordship wanted? Jane prepared to withdraw an ace from up her sleeve. “I
am
sorry, sir,” she said sadly, “but you know you’ll have to give the sparklers back! Very angry the lads were when they discovered you’d sloped off—very unsporting they thought it, seeing as it was all your idea!”

“My
idea.” Lord March sought refuge from this appalling suggestion in his own wineglass.

“Your idea!” Jane was quick to recognize her advantage. “I ain’t one not to give credit where it’s due. ‘Twas your idea entirely as you must remember, and you were set on it even when I told you how you could be hobbled—taken up, that is, and committed for trial!”

“Trial,” echoed his lordship faintly, still peering into his glass. Solicitously, Jane filled it. “You jest.”

“As if I would!” Jane looked reproachful. “About a thing-like that! Oh, I knew how it was with you, from the beginning, that you was one for queer turns—but that ain’t something as can be easily explained to the lads! A proper take-in, they think it—and I can tell you they don’t take kindly to having been gulled! ‘Twas all I could do to prevent them taking matters into their own hands.”

What might be done to him by ruffians who thought him a traitor Lord March could not imagine, but he didn’t anticipate that the experience would be nice. No coward, and certainly no weakling, Marriot wasn’t overly concerned by the suggestion that physical violence might be offered him. His wife’s sensibilities, however, were considerably more acute. Marriot frowned at the red-painted wainscoting touched out in gold and blue.

His lordship, thought Jane, was a little the worse for drink—not that he should be condemned for it, having consumed a fair quantity of wine on an empty stomach and very early in the day. As had, in fact, Jane; but Jane had a very hard head. “The lads said they’d like to use your guts for fiddlestrings!” she added. “I don’t know how long I can hold them off. Give the sparklers back, do! I’ll hand them over to the lads and no further harm done. It ain’t like you’re under the hatches yourself!”

Lord March thought he was like to be worse than under the hatches. “You are telling me that while in temporary loss of my memory I embarked upon a life of crime.”

Just as she had thought! His lordship had
put forth a great amount of humbug in an effort to catch her out. Jane was not so easily done for. “Why should I be after telling you what you already know?” she asked. “Give over, guv’nor! Wasn’t I right at your shoulder when you planned the things out?”

Slightly inebriated as Marriot might be, he wasn’t sufficiently cast away to believe that he had ever, for any purpose, even temporarily allied himself with this whey-faced female. “The devil you were!” he snapped.

“Then I wasn’t, sir! Whatever you say!” Jane clasped her hands, and her empty glass, to her bosom. “Don’t hit me, I beg you! I’ll stand buff and won’t squeal, I swear it—just don’t take a distempered freak!”