Maggie MacKeever (18 page)

“No?” Lord Jeffries sounded oddly amused. “Have you forgotten your aunt’s untimely entrance into the room?”

“You needn’t trouble yourself over Dulcie.” To her horror, Mignon’s voice was husky. She blinked rapidly.

“Do you suffer ‘moments of weakness’ often?” inquired the Viscount. “What a farrago of nonsense! Mignon, look at me.”

“No,” retorted the uncooperative Miss Montague.

“I see,” murmured Lord Jeffries, “that talking won’t pay toll.” Without another word he drew Mignon even closer still. Miss Montague, despite her fine words and noble resolutions, offered him not even a token protest.

“Oh, Ivor!” she gasped, when at length she was permitted to speak again. “Believe me—there are things you do not know—this simply will not do!”

“Moonshine, my darling.” The Viscount smiled down on her in a most dizzy-making manner. And then his glance fell upon the shattered sewing box. With an oath, he released her and moved away.

“What is it?” cried Mignon, dropping to her knees beside him on the floor. Strewn among the wreckage, scraps of material and spools of thread, was the unmistakable gleam of jewels. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes, I fear.” Grimly, Ivor extracted a handful of gems. “From the robbery of Rundle and Brydges, I’ll wager.”

Stunned, Mignon sank back on her heels. “Bow Street surely searched here. How did they come to be overlooked?”

“Bow Street,” mused Lord Jeffries, searching through the wreckage. “I am rapidly coming to rue the day when Henry Fielding was forced to turn from the penning of political satire to the practice of law.” He flicked a piece of broken wood. “Here’s our answer, I fancy. A false bottom. Apparently whoever planted these items here gave Bow Street credit for more initiative than they displayed.”

Mignon’s head was whirling. “You think the jewels were placed here in hope they
would
be found?”

“What other explanation is there?” asked Ivor, his face grim. “Other than that Leda is somehow mixed up in the robberies? Think how it must look! Mary Elphinstone was financed by someone, and in her cottage are discovered the proceeds of robbery. What would seem more obvious than that she was paid to keep silent?” He picked up a piece of paper from amid the rubble and scanned it, his lips compressed into a thin line. “Paid by Leda,” he added somberly.

“What is it?” Mignon asked feebly.

“The deed to this cottage.” Ivor’s glance was searching, as if he meant to seek out her loyalties. “We were sent here to help Leda, and it seems we have opened Pandora’s box instead. Things would be bleak indeed if these things fell into the wrong hands. You see, this property is in my mother’s name.”

Chapter 18

It was midnight. The woman crept along Piccadilly until she came to an elegant complex of buildings set one hundred feet back from the street and protected by a high wall topped by ornamental lamps. This magnificent structure—once Melbourne House, later York House—was the Albany, a most luxurious and convenient hotel that was sacred to bachelors and widowers. Among its illustrious residents was Lord Byron, complete with his macaw and his silver funerary urns from Greece. Also in residence there was Monk Lewis, a gentleman who possessed a taste for the supernatural and macabre, as witnessed by his phenomenally successful book,
The Monk,
and his play,
The Captive,
so
convincing a portrayal of madness that it threw Covent Garden into hysterical confusion during its sole performance. The woman thought she’d as lief not encounter either of those gentlemen.

It meant ruin, of course, for any lady to be seen entering these male premises. She slipped through the gate, beneath its tall classical pedimented arch, and then ducked into the shadows as a porter passed by. He was an impressive figure in his coat with scarlet cuffs and collar, scarlet waistcoat and leather-lined velveteen breeches. Indeed, she reflected sourly, the porter was a great deal finer than she.

Even though it was late, and the night windy and tempestuous, traffic roared past the entrance, filling the air with the load clacking of wheels on stone. The woman shivered, not entirely from the cold, and made her way to a certain ground-floor apartment near the entrance. Gaining entry was no problem; she had her own key. She knew at once that he was present. Cigar smoke hung heavy in the air.

This was not his home, splendid enough as it was, possessing not only kitchens and cellar in the basement, a living room which connected by fine double doors with a bedroom, a dressing room with water closet and hip bath, but a garret on the top floor. He was doubtless in the bedroom that looked onto the Rope Walk. As she moved quickly through the living room, sparing a glance for the silks stretched on the walls, the woman pulled off the wig that concealed her lovely hair.

“You’re late,” he said. The bedroom was almost in darkness, lit only by a single candle in a massive silver stick. He had a mania for such things, taking no chances that his true identity might become known, for he had long ago taken these apartments, under an assumed identity. The woman looked at him as she stripped off the drab clothing that was so repugnant to her. The cigar burned in a saucer on a table by his chair.

“I could escape no sooner from my watchdogs.” She reached into the wardrobe for a frilled, beribboned dressing gown. “Faith, but I’ll be glad when this thing is done.”

He tapped off the cigar’s long burning ash. “Did you come alone? Or were you followed by a strong force of Bow Street Runners, with a company of Guards in reserve? I trust I needn’t tell you what discovery could mean. We could all be committed for trial on the capital charge.”

The woman tied her dressing gown, so loosely that it threatened at the least provocation to slip off her shoulders and probably to the floor. A far cry from her usual appearance, she thought smugly, as she gazed into a gilt-edged mirror and effected certain changes to her face. “You know as well as I that Bow Street is ineffectual. At any major disturbance, the military is called. Don’t you want to know what I’ve learned?”

“By the statute of the 3rd and 4th of William and Mary,” he murmured, as he crossed the room to stand behind her, “all and every person and persons that comfort, aid, abet, assist, counsel, hire or command any person to rob another shall be hanged, and without the benefit of clergy. It seems of little consequence who brings us in.”

She met his eyes in the mirror. “Since when have you concerned yourself with the clergy?” It was a bitter pill to swallow, for she knew perfectly well that a gentleman of his birth and position was not likely to marry her, for all the pleasure he derived from spitting in the faces of his venerable ancestors. “While I sneak about with my ear to keyholes, you have other fish to fry. I congratulate you that you have found so agreeable a way of passing the time.”

His hands rested on her shoulders. “Jealous, my pretty? You must know by now that I far prefer sluts without morals to insipid Society chits. Tell me what you’ve learned.”

“Everything went off perfectly well.” She completed the repairs to her face, then turned and threw her arms around his neck. “There! Do something for me?” Her voice was husky. “Open the safe?”

He looked down at her, wryly amused, then turned to swing aside one of the many paintings that hung on the walls. These were of an inflammatory classical nature: Lucretia struggling in the arms of Tarquin; Andromeda lashed naked to a rock. His visitor found far more titillation in the sparkling gems that glittered in the safe’s dark recess. Her eyes glowed.

“My avaricious little beauty.” He draped her about with jewels. “I fear I have taught you extravagant tastes.”

The woman had moved back to the looking glass, there to stare greedily at the diamonds and pearls, rubies and sapphires that hung around her neck. “Please,” she whispered, “let me keep just one thing.”

“The devil!” he retorted. “Did I but leave matters to you, we’d quickly be brought to a standstill. You’ll have jewels aplenty in time, but you must wait.”

“That’s what you always say!” She sulked. “I’m tired of waiting. Don’t I deserve some reward for all the help I’ve given you?”

With a pair of silver scissors, he operated on a fresh cigar. “What you deserve is a whipping. May I remind you of the small matter of Warwick’s banknotes?”

“That wasn’t
my
fault!” she cried, stung. “Take the blame for someone else’s carelessness is a thing I will not do!”

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” he murmured, and lit the cigar. “It is entirely your fault that the notes are not again in our possession—though I believe that failure may yet work to our advantage.” He looked at her. “I do not mean to argue with you, my pretty, but there is very little that you will not do. For instance, you will leave here tonight and return from whence you came, much as you dislike the notion, and you will continue to play to the man in the pit and to make the best of a bad audience.”

Perhaps it was due to the priceless jewels she wore that the woman grew so bold. “What if I refuse?”

“Refuse?” he repeated, his voice cold. “You have no choice, being much too deep in this thing to turn craven now. To be perfectly blunt, I will wring your neck myself before I give you a chance to turn King’s evidence.”

She stared at him, chilled, for she knew he spoke the truth. No matter that she loved him, to this man she was merely a convenience, and easily expendable. “I spoke in jest,” she whispered through cold lips. “Good God, you must know I wouldn’t inform on you.”

“Come here,” he said, and smiled. “Don’t you want to know what I next plan?” Slowly she walked across the room. He pulled her down into his lap. “What would you say,” he murmured, “if I told you I meant to join the hordes of hopeful aspirants to extinct titles and dormant funds that keep the courts so busy?”

“I’d say it was a hubble-bubble notion,” the woman retorted, a trifle waspishly. She was feeling sadly unappreciated and the cigar smoke made her head ache. “You already have one title, isn’t that enough?”

“There is no such thing as ‘enough,’ “ he reproved, as he toyed with the tie of her robe. “Although the laws
do
enjoin scrupulous fulfillment of the dispositions of the deceased. Did you know there is a counting house here in England where a fully dressed corpse has been standing at a window overlooking its former property for twenty-five years?”

Despite herself, the woman’s flesh crawled. She liked this talk of corpses no more than she cared to look on them. She was firmly caught, as he had said; if she rebelled, he would see her, too, dead.

“I should not tease you,” he murmured, as he pushed open the robe, “but the temptation is so great. Very well, my pretty, think instead of the Bank of England, that marvelous institution governed by men of enormous power that has mobilized capital, helped make currency reliable, given strength to the whole structure of banking.”

“What of it?” she asked absently. Perhaps there was some way to make off with a single strand of pearls, so fitting to her youth and apparent inexperience in the world of crime.

“I have a plan. And I have a key, borrowed long enough from a certain unsuspecting porter for wax impressions to be made. All that remains is to await the proper time.”

It was, the woman thought, the proper time for her endeavors to be repaid, if not in jewels then in coin of another sort. She sat up, allowing the robe to fall to her waist, then placed her hands behind her head and arched her back provocatively.

“The Society for the Suppression of Vice still thrives,” he said, his voice suddenly deeper. “I wonder what Wilberforce would say to you! But you distract me. I have not yet told you of my plan.”

She stretched her arms into the air, sighed, and let them fall. This one was a devil, with his scheming and his ruthlessness. He lifted the cigar and she shrank back. It would not do to rouse his temper, lest that glowing tip come into contact with her skin. “Go on,” she whispered, all passion fled.

“A plan to rob the Bank of England,” he murmured, “and every bullion merchant in the City of London. A plan that, with your cooperation, must inevitably succeed.”

Chapter 19

Lady Bligh swept like a spring breeze into the stuffy Bow Street Public Office. “Dear John!” she said, and bent to give him a hug. “Don’t trouble yourself to rise. I would have come sooner, had I not been positively overwhelmed with trivial matters. You will overlook my tardiness, I know.”

The Chief Magistrate looked regretfully at the papers spread across his battered desk, then raised his tired eyes to study the Baroness. She wore a pelisse of deep red satin, a Vandyke double pereline, its flat collar spreading to her shoulders, and a chinchilla border and muff. On her golden curls was a black velvet hat, and on her feet light walking shoes.

“It grows cold outside.” Like a delicate bird, she flitted about the small room. “This season is of them all my least favorite, with its accursed fogs so thick that one must see one’s way to breakfast with a taper and light candles in the middle of the day. But soon, in consequence of the opening of Parliament, Society will begin to be livelier again. I believe that I must plan a small party.”

Sir John might have resented this interruption, and this irrelevance, had he not possessed a fair understanding of the working of Dulcie’s mind. As he watched, she alit at last on the old wooden chair. “Do you recall the great frost this February last that turned the Thames to solid ice between London Bridge and Blackfriars? Freezeland Street, they called it, and on either side were booths of every variety—butchers and barbers and purveyors of gin and beer, brandy balls and gingerbread. There were bookstalls and printing presses, skittle alleys and toyshops, and even gambling establishments.”

Whatever the Baroness had on her mind, she was approaching it in a singularly roundabout manner. The Chief Magistrate put down his pen. “What’s the point, Dulcie?”

She pressed the muff against her cheek. “Merely that we are no longer young,” she said wistfully. “I remember the balls when you would dance with me, and then while the other young ladies were very correctly strolling on their partners’ arms, you and I would slip away. Just think how long ago that was! So long that we never even shared a waltz, for it was unheard of.”