Maggie MacKeever (35 page)

“I told you her nose would be out of joint,” said Julie. “She was probably even crosser when you sent her away.”

“Certain unkind words were said.”

Lord Carlyle disliked being excluded from the conversation.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Betrothals made and broken within a matter of days. Moreover, Faulkners do not gossip. I am certain, Julia, that you have a general wish of doing right.”

Ned had a general wish of bidding his lordship to Hades. “A gentleman can’t be seated while a lady remains standing,” he said softly, for Julie’s ears alone. She rolled her eyes, and sank down on the settee.

Ned seated himself beside her. “I have information for you, Carlyle. About your son.”

“Julian?”

“Jonathan.”

The marquess lowered himself awkwardly into an armchair. “Jonathan believed I came to town at his bidding. I did not explain that a correspondence from Mrs. Viccars influenced me.”

Sabine had been busy. “She wished to speak to you of Julian?” Ned asked.

“I realized she was the chit he once wanted to marry. When Mrs. Viccars showed me the letter that had been sent her, I recognized
Jonathan’s handwriting, though it was some time before I would admit it to myself. ”
Lord Carlyle rested his crippled hands atop his cane. “One of the many lowering realizations of advancing age is that one has been
more often in error than not. In retrospect I may have been too strict with the boy, but wrong-headedness ran in his mother’s family, and he was a difficult child. Still, I find it hard to comprehend the monster he became.”

“He wasn’t wholly a monster.” Ned felt Julie’s gaze on him, but his own attention was for the marquess. “Your son — Jonathan — worked for the Home Office. He was deeply involved in Sidmouth’s efforts to suppress manifestations of disaffection and discontent. Which is how ‘Cap’n Jack’ came to have the network of informants that he did.”

Julie so forgot herself as to clutch Ned’s arm. “Cap’n Jack worked for the
government
?”

Ned placed his hand over hers. “He started out that way, at any rate.”

“Is that why he wanted your statue, and the notebook?”

“Perhaps.”

Lord Carlyle’s eyebrows beetled. “Sidmouth is too severe. Seventeen convicted Luddites hanged at York, by God, despite
numerous pleas for lenience. Julia, you will unhand Dorset at once.”

Julie removed her hand, reluctantly Ned thought. Hoped. It was damned difficult to sit here like a proper gentlemen when he wanted nothing more than to pull her onto his lap.

She looked quizzically at him. Ned hoped his thoughts weren’t writ clear on his face. “I was wool-gathering. What did you say?”

“I said, the Cap’n didn’t know I peached on him.” Julie stole a wary look at Lord Carlyle. “Er, told you his name.”

“He did not. Have you been blaming yourself? None of this was your fault.”

She didn’t look convinced. More time must pass before Julie realized that she was truly safe. Impossible that Ned hadn’t guessed that she was Sabine’s daughter. Yet, how could he have known?

He had promised Julie the Cap’n wouldn’t touch her again, he had said he’d keep her safe. Ned wasn’t worthy to kiss her smallest toe.

Julie edged her hand forward until it touched his, under cover of her skirts. “I think it’s you that’s out of curl,” she said. “What will happen to Pritchett? He was kind to me, in his way.”

“Kane and Pritchett came to an agreement. So long as Pritchett keeps his end of the bargain, he won’t be called to account.” Kane would find it
beneficial to have a villain in his pocket — or in Lord Castlereagh’s pocket — especially when said villain operated under the banner of Bow Street.

Julie’s companion stirred.
Unless Ned’s eyes deceived him, curled up in her sewing basket, amid a tangle of multi-colored silks, was a large black cat.

He returned his attention to the marquess. “Pritchett is the Bow Street Runner who removed Julie from Newgate. After your son arranged for her to be put there.”

Julie searched Ned’s face. “So it wasn’t my fault either that I was pinched?”

“Not a bit of it.”

“Julia tells me you are aware of her background, Dorset,” put in the marquess. “I must request that you keep that knowledge to yourself.”

Julie stared at Lord Carlyle. As did Ned. The older man flushed. “I have no wish for us to be at odds. From what my granddaughter tells me, I am in your debt. However, you must see that under the circumstances the least said is soonest mended. I trust I make myself clear.”

Clear, indeed. Ned said stiffly, “With your permission, Carlyle, I would like to speak with Julie alone.”

“Most certainly not. The proprieties must be observed.”

To the devil with the proprieties. Ned marveled that Julie sat so quietly while her grandfather preached and prosed.

He shifted sideways on the settee, his back to the marquess. “I wished to talk to you about Sabine.”

“
Was
she a traitor?” Julie asked.

“Wellington would tell you no. The Corsican might not agree.”

Julie sighed. “I’ve never had a family. Except for Rose and Pritchett; and they were related to me by circumstance, not blood. Now I find out I had a real father and a mother, but both of them are dead.”

One had died in front of her, thought Ned. “You have a grandfather,” put in Lord Carlyle.

She’d had as well an uncle who threatened to see her hanged, and worse. Ned glanced at the marquess. “Julie’s father died in a riding accident?”

“So we believed. I now suspect that Jonathan took a hand.”

Julie said, quietly, “Mrs. Viccars didn’t wish to know me.”

“I think she wished it more than anything,” Ned responded gently, “but she feared a closer acquaintance would make things more difficult. Sabine knew she was dying of a cancer, and
that she had little time left. I imagine she thought it would be kinder to remain a stranger than subject you to another loss.”

He didn’t know that he agreed with Sabine’s reasoning. Julie had lost her anyway.

Carlyle put in, with gruff kindness, “I don’t think Mrs. Viccars was certain of her suspicions until Jonathan confessed.”

Julie narrowed her eyes at Ned. “How long did you know?”

He thought he’d known from their first meeting. Ah, but she wasn’t asking about
that.
“There are items among Sabine’s
effects that you may wish to have. A miniature portrait of your
father, for one. I’ll keep them until you decide what you want done.”

Lord Carlyle interrupted. “You will send them here.”

“I will do whatever Julie asks of me.” Ned rose and made his bow. “And now it’s time I take my leave. Carlyle. Miss Wynne.”

“You mean Miss Faulkner.”

“No. I mean Miss Wynne.”

After the earl’s departure, silence fell on the room. Abruptly, Julie stood. “If you will excuse me
. . .
”

Her grandfather frowned. “You’re not to go after him.”

“I’m going to my room.”

The marquess rang for a footman. “Escort Miss Faulkner to her chamber.” Julie departed, muttering under her breath.

Lord Carlyle didn’t care to know precisely what she’d said.
This unexpected granddaughter left the marquess bemused, bewildered, even bedazzled, and feeling as a hedge sparrow might upon finding a yellow-billed cuckoo in its nest.
He hadn’t yet recovered from the shock of being told that appropriating Lady Willoughby’s amethyst cross had been as easy as pissing the bed. A subsequent demonstration of pocket-picking had left him overwhelmed.

Rose gave Ophelia a stroke as she set aside her stitchery, which consisted primarily of misshapen knots and snarls interspersed with the occasional spot of blood. She was much better suited to the footlights than the drawing room, but thus far Julie had refused to let her go. And so she would bathe in strawberries and alternately lime-flowers, and anoint her skin with lemon juice and rainwater enriched with roses; rinse her hair with quinine and rum and coddle her face with milk and lemon juice; perfume herself with violets — in short, pamper herself with every luxury until her understudy proved so hugely unsatisfactory that Mr. Kean himself demanded Rose’s return to Drury Lane.

Pritchett had brought back her precious letters, with a warning they might be better destroyed. But when had Rose ever been wise?
There were her memoirs to consider. And, were romance to ultimately fail her, the comfort of her old age.

She rose and walked toward Lord Carlyle. He roused from contemplation of sparrows and cuckoos to regard her warily.

“You don’t remember me,” Rose said, without rancor; it had taken her some time to recognize the marquess. He had been a handsome rogue, twenty-odd years before. “I was playing Mrs. Teazle in
The School for Scandal.
You gave me a painting, a Gainsborough village scene. I treasure it still
.
”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

When a woman is openly bad, she at last is good.
— Pubilius Syrus

Lady Georgiana was arrayed in a great deal of purplish pink, a shade that she called puce; and plumage that wouldn’t have been out of place on Francis Wakely’s hat. Clea regretted the loss of that hat, as well as the smallsword. Further explorations of Wakely House, however, had unearthed a great many other treasures, including horse pistols richly ornamented with tarnished silver; a green leather case containing a 17
th
century silver and ivory pocket knife and fork; several old manuscripts, a handful of sovereigns dated 1662, a flask of rum, and the bones of a small bird. She hoped this latter had been someone’s dinner, and not a pet.

The precise shade of Lord Ashcroft’s satin waistcoat, he informed her, was Evening Primrose. His cravat —
blanc d’innocence virginale,
the purest white — was tied in the Trone d’amour. He broke off, uncomfortably, as if unsure that he should
be speaking of such things to her, despite the fact Clea was wearing
blanc d’innocence virginale
herself. While the viscount was in excellent spirits, his mama was subdued.

Lady Georgiana was talking, nonetheless, to Clea’s cousin. Or, in this particular moment, listening, because Hannah held the stage. “Why, if the gel is Carlyle’s granddaughter, was she acting as your companion? That’s what
I’d
like to know.”

So would have Georgiana liked to know, although she would hardly share that circumstance with her old foe. “It was a way for dear Julie to get her toes damp before she determined whether she wished to take the plunge. Odd as it may seem, Polite Society is not to everybody’s taste. And who better than I to show a young woman how to go on?”

Who, indeed? Hannah sniffed at this further example of Lady Georgiana’s exalted opinion of herself. The aggravating creature had once again managed to garner a fair amount of attention, for the
ton
was all a-twitter over the intelligence that a child had resulted from the hitherto-unacknowledged marriage of Lord Carlyle’s eldest son.

Hannah understood perfectly why the matter had remained secret. The boy had married a nobody. One disliked to admit such a
mésalliance
.

One also disliked admitting one was less well informed than one’s archenemy, but curiosity won out. “And does she? Wish to take the plunge?”

She almost
had
taken the plunge. Georgiana shuddered to recall a certain nigh-fateful shove. “Now that Jonathan Faulkner’s sudden death has sunk the family into mourning, Julie will be making no social appearances for some time. A strange business, that. No one knows exactly what had happened. Rumor has it all tangled up with Home Office affairs.”

Hannah could have cared less about the Home Office, or Jonathan Faulkner, for that matter. There was an earl to get married off. Ned had shown a partiality for Lady Georgiana’s companion. Who had turned out, to Hannah’s astonishment (and Lady Georgiana’s, she would wager), to be the perfectly appropriate granddaughter of a marquess.

Not that Hannah would dream of interfering. She’d given her word.

Clea could almost hear the cogs clanking in her cousin’s
brain. She had quite naturally been eavesdropping on the conversation, not ladylike conduct admittedly but nigh unavoidable since Lady Georgiana and Hannah hadn’t bothered to lower their voices in the
slightest, which had earned them several annoyed glances: the musical part of the evening had begun, and various ladies were assassinating Clementi, Pleyel and Haydn by means of pianoforte and harp.

At the moment, Madalyn Tate was singing. She had a surprisingly pleasant voice.

Sabine had spoken kindly of Mrs. Tate. If not
to
her, from all accounts. Clea wondered if Madalyn knew Sabine was gone.

It didn’t matter. Clea knew. Therefore, she had dressed up in her finery and insisted on going out into the world, because she had lived through a war and consequently realized that life is short and precious, and should be enjoyed while one can.

She glanced at Lord Ashcroft, seated beside her. He caught her eye, and winked.

Tony felt as if the troubles of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. His vowels had been restored to him, accompanied by some stern advice, as result of which he had told his mama he was taking control of the purse strings.

He had been very firm. Maman hadn’t recovered from it yet.

Her displeasure didn’t signify. No matter how many crows she plucked, or peals she rang, he wasn’t going to change his mind.

Tony had moreover, on further good advice, hired a man of business to instruct him regarding the wise and unwise uses of his funds, and only a little bit regretted that worthy’s stern injunction against gaming hells. The clever fellow had managed to track down his mama’s previous companion, and discovered she had been given a goodly amount of money to leave town. Tony had offered her even more money to return. Mildred had thus far refused, but he hadn’t given up hope.