The Wicked Marquess

by Maggie MacKeever

  Here was yet another example of what happened when a person let herself be governed by misguided people. Miranda took her companion’s arm. “Poor Nonie. Was your heart quite broke?”

  “Hearts don’t break,” Nonie replied repressively. “We only feel as if they do.”

  The day had grown overcast with the combination of smoke and fog and soot so common to these streets that it had given rise to a popular color called London Dust. Nonie’s reflections suited the weather, as she progressed from love lost – yesterday she had tumbled foolishly in love with the first gentleman who cast his eyes in her direction; today she was a preacher of homilies, lamenting her bygone youth — to thinking of her future, a topic that kept her from many a good night’s sleep. Nonie’s upbringing had not equipped her to make her way in the world. She possessed a smattering of the classics, unusual in a lady, and a modicum of French; she was able to write an elegant if eccentric hand, and to solve simple sums. If she could play the pianoforte tolerably well, her gift for watercolors was nonexistent. Her only real accomplishment was her needlework.

  She was, in short, an unexceptionable female, dull as ditchwater and as poor as a church mouse. Despite all her skill with her needle, and Miranda’s good intentions, neither of them could fashion her into a silk purse.

  Miranda was also brooding, but not about her companion’s romantic disappointment. She was pondering her most recent encounter with the sort of gentleman who regularly broke hearts. Benedict could have had his way with her, had he wished. She had been a moth drawn to his bright flame.

  But he hadn’t wished. True, he had kissed her, but not really. Not the way he would have kissed any of his thousand mistresses. Nor the way he would kiss Lady Cecilia. Miranda had been informed by one of her maidservants that proper kisses involved some queer interplay of tongues.

  She wanted one of those kisses for herself. Shocking in her, Miranda admitted, but there was little point in lamenting the blood that flowed through one’s veins. The women of the Russell family could no more resist the call of passion than they could sprout wings and fly. Even though tumultuous emotions adversely affected their perceptions and romantic rascals all too often transformed into slimy toads.

  Nonie couldn’t say which was more depressing, her future or her past.

  At least she had gainful employment for the moment, however long that moment might last, which probably wouldn’t be much longer if Miranda persisted in unexplained disappearances, as from Lady Underwood’s musicale. Nonie didn’t believe for an instant that Miranda had gone to the ladies withdrawing chamber. She consoled herself that there had been no shrieks of outrage from gentlemen skewered on hatpins. “A penny for your thoughts,” she ventured.

  A penny? Not for a thousand pennies. “I was hoping we might visit Mr. Astley’s Amphitheater, or Mrs. Salmon’s Waxworks. But that can wait for another day.” Nonie wanted to visit Oxford Street, and Nonie had had her heart broken, and so to Oxford Street they would go.

  Miranda would purchase gifts. Nonie would protest that she didn’t want to take advantage. Miranda would point out that Nonie must acquiesce or make Miranda, and thereby Miranda’s uncle, very cross. And then Miranda would take her companion home and prepare some woodroof to cheer the poor woman and make her merry and take away the melancholy she refused to admit she had.

  It was her own fault, of course. A little resolution had been called for, but Nonie was a cabbage-heart.

  There was no reason why Nonie shouldn’t still make a good match. Miranda would put her mind to the business once she had settled her own fate. “Nonie,” she said abruptly, “just what does it mean to be disgraced?”

  Nonie abruptly forgot the confusion in Oxford Street, the street-lamps enclosed in crystal globes, the enticing shops. “Disgraced?” she echoed.

  “Disgraced,” Miranda repeated. “You and Kenrick are always warning me of the dire consequences of misbehavior, and I am uncertain just what those consequences are.”

  Nonie was encouraged by this somewhat belated sign of interest in the matter. “To be disgraced would be dreadful. You would lose the entrée to the best society. Everyone that matters would whisper behind your back and cut you in the street. Believe me, Miranda, it is most important to show that you have a proper way of thinking, and to conduct yourself in the most unexceptionable manner, and to be painstakingly discreet.” Hard to imagine Miranda made into a marvel of discretion, but it was Nonie’s duty to make the attempt.

  Miranda had stopped paying strict attention after the phrase ‘lose the entrée’. “I shouldn’t be able to show my face in London?” she inquired.

  Nonie grew even more encouraged. “Just so,” she said.

  Miranda gazed into a shop window displaying the best English glass. “No gentleman with a proper sensibility would marry me?”

  Perhaps those countless lectures on self-restraint and decorum had not fallen on deaf ears. Maybe Nonie could leave off fretting, to some extent. “You would become ineligible for marriage with anyone of consequence. A young woman must take care to protect her good name lest she be forced to withdraw into obscurity.”

  “I see,” murmured Miranda.

  Nonie hammered home the point. “Only the most desperate of fortune-hunters would continue to dangle at your heels. Such men have few principles where their pockets are concerned.”

  Those aspiring suitors would not dangle long, suspected Miranda, once they understood that she was resolved to remain unwed. She wheedled Nonie into visiting a Ladies’ Bazaar for the Sale of Miscellaneous Articles; and after that persuaded her to inspect the wares of a linen-draper and a silk-mercer, a dressmaker and a milliner and a corsetiere. A bookseller came next, where Miranda treated herself to Langley’s New Principles of Gardening, along with Withering’s A Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain with Descriptions of the Genera and Species according to Linnaeus, both of which she already owned, but had been forced to leave behind. Nonie’s scruples, and the footman, had been buried under a large number of parcels by the time the ladies paused to enjoy an ice and watch a curious advertising device roll down the street. Three immense pyramids, painted all over with hieroglyphics, displayed fanciful portraits of Isis and Osiris, accompanied by cats and storks and apes, from which the observer was meant to conclude that a superb panorama of Egypt had been placed on view.

  Miranda nudged her companion. “How does a lady persuade a gentleman to kiss her?” she asked.

  Nonie tore her fascinated attention from the pyramids. “Did you not just apply your hatpin to an admirer who tried to do precisely that?”

  “Not him!” retorted Miranda. “How does a lady persuade a gentleman to kiss her when he doesn’t wish to do so?”

  Nonie could not imagine there was a gentleman alive who didn’t wish to kiss Miranda. She puzzled over the identity of this paragon of restraint. Mr. Burton? Mr. Dowlin? Could Mr. Atchison be so very upright?

  “Mooncalfs, all of them!” scoffed Miranda. “They would kiss me at the drop of a button, if I let them. I had in mind a more mature person. One with knowledge of the world.”

  Nonie’s stomach knotted. Mature, worldly, gentlemen weren’t prone to dangle after marriageable misses, not with intentions that were honourable.

  She took some comfort from the circumstance that the gentleman under discussion didn’t seem to share Miranda’s interest. “If you want someone to kiss you, you must pretend that you do not like him above half.”

  Miranda frowned at this odd logic. Before she could request further enlightenment, the ladies were interrupted by the clatter of carriage wheels. An antiquated crested coach, drawn by a beautifully matched team of grays, rolled to a stop at the end of the street.

  A liveried groom leapt to open the coach door. A diminutive female gingerly descended into the street. She was very old, with sunken features and snapping dark eyes and a flower-shaped beauty mark stuck high on one rouged, powdered cheek. Her antique riding habit boast
ed a ruffled chemise front and lapelled waistcoat and a domed hoop-skirt. A tall hat adorned with green ribbons and bows and flowers perched atop an extravagantly curled white wig.

  Draped over one fragile old shoulder was a black-masked feline, which appeared to be either snoozing or dead. Even Nonie so forget her manners as to stare.

  The lady’s step, if slow and unsteady, was determined. She tottered to a halt in front of them, raised her quizzing glass, inspected Miranda. Miss Russell elevated her own eyebrows and returned stare for stare.

  “Lud! ‘Tis an impudence,” the old woman said, and let her quizzing glass drop. The feline opened sky-blue eyes, gazed unappreciatively at its surroundings, and gave voice to a startlingly human-sounding complaint.

  Chapter Eight

  Lady Cecilia Montague was in excellent spirits due to a double dose of laudanum and ingestion of an imprudent amount of Arrack punch, a potent mixture of grains of the benjamin flower mixed with rum. Vauxhall was famed for the beverage, along with slices of ham so thin that it was said the carver could cover the entire garden with the meat from a single pig. Ceci didn’t even mind that her escort was lost in reverie. His presence was immensely gratifying. Lord Baird ranked the pleasure gardens alongside such pedestrian entertainments as Astley’s Amphitheater and Mrs. Salmon’s waxwork shop.

  It augured well for their future together that he indulged her in this manner. They would rub on comfortably enough, after they wed. Ceci looked forward to the day when she might venture out-of-doors without fear of encountering some indignant creditor. She would be able to breathe freely only after her debts were paid.

  Those debts were the sole reason Ceci would consider marrying again. She had been married to poor Harry – God rest his soul – and that should surely be marriage enough for anyone.

  She raised a finger to smooth away the frown that had formed between her elegant dark brows. At eight-and-twenty, Ceci never forgot that she was far past her first youth. Try as she might not to grimace and squint, thereby creating unattractive creases, sometimes she couldn’t help herself. Who wouldn’t grimace when threatened with bailiffs at the door?

  It was all poor Harry’s fault. God rest his soul. Harry, so extravagant and undisciplined, with his fondness for reckless living and his spendthrift ways, his tendency to take everything to excess. It had not been in Harry’s nature to dwell upon responsibilities, or even to consider the limits of his wealth. He had lived for today, leaving tomorrow to fend for itself. And then tomorrow had come, one disastrous occurrence succeeding another, until Harry fled the country in a packet ship that capsized in heavy seas – such was his abominable ill luck – with all aboard it drowned.

  Ceci glanced cautiously around. She hoped none of her creditors were lurking in the crowd. Though Benedict Davenham might have been persuaded to marry a lady up to her ears in bailiffs, the Marquess of Baird would not, no matter how perfectly formed those ears might be. Nor would it reflect well on his lordship if his mistress was imprisoned for debt, which was hardly fair, because he had been more than generous with her.

  She ignored a twinge of guilt. Fairness be damned. Ceci needed a fortune. Baird needed an heir.

  She must convince him that marriage was the perfect solution to both their dilemmas. As soon as possible. All Ceci had to barter was her own fair person, and her assets were depreciating even as she sat and thought.

  She leaned closer to the marquess, cleverly arranging her hooded evening cloak of purple-blue taffeta, lined with rose, to display a great deal of décolletage. . “You do not care for Vauxhall. Yet you escorted me here, nonetheless. No matter what anyone may say of you, you are very kind.”

  Lady Cecilia was suffering a misapprehension. The marquess was not the least bit kind. He had been commanded to present himself at Vauxhall this evening. Inviting Ceci and her friends to accompany him was in the nature of killing two birds with one stone.

  The orchestra struck up another selection, ‘What tho’ his guilt’, performed by two flutes, a cello, and a harpsichord. Benedict did not appreciate the tune. Nor did he admire the supper box, decorated though it was with a romantic mural by Francis Hayman, and lighted by variegated lamps, or exotic faux minarets and splashing waterfalls and shadowy columned ways.

  Ceci sipped her punch. Baird had a talent for silence. Fortunate for their future together that she could talk enough for two. She engaged her companions – Major and Mrs. Watson, Viscount Penworthy and Lady Margaret Smythe – in animated conversation that ranged from the most recent antics of various members of the Buonoparte family, past the very odd business that Tallyrand’s mistress presided over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and arrived finally at the return of Napoleon’s wife to Plombieres, where she was again attempting to overcome her barrenness in an atmosphere of sulphuric waters and pine woods.

  Benedict could bear no more of Lady Cecelia’s practiced chatter. He excused himself and exited the supper box. His companions were not surprised by his departure. Sinbad easily became bored.

  Vauxhall was crowded on this as every other evening, its tree-lined graveled walks festooned with countless shimmering globe lamps hung among the boughs. The revelers promenaded in all directions: along the Grand Walk, a stately avenue of elms nine hundred feet long and thirty feet wide; the South Walk, spanned by three triumphal arches which were a part of a realistic painting of the Ruins of Palmyra; the Hermit’s Walk, which boasted mountains, precipices and valleys, and a large cat with fiery eyes, all worked in canvas and pasteboard, and which was populated also by an old man with white beard and stiff staff who emerged from the depths of a pasteboard ravine carrying the Future, carefully copied out on cream-colored paper, in his arms.

  Benedict made his way to the eastern end of the garden, paused at a large open space in front of the firework tower where scenic displays of various kinds took place. In the distance, a fountain burbled, accompanied by ‘The Lover’s Recantation’, performed by two flutes, two oboes, bassoon and strings.

  He heard a whispered, “Psst!” Large violet eyes peered at him through the leaves of a nearby bush.

  “Alone again?” Benedict inquired, as he entered the secluded grove. Enough light shone in through the trees to illuminate his companion’s gown of blue muslin trimmed with knots of white ribbon, and the very stubborn expression on her very young, very lovely face.

  “I am not alone, exactly,” she retorted. “I left Mr. Atchison prosing on about the history of Vauxhall – it was laid out circa 1661, and originally called the New Spring Gardens, to distinguish them from the Old Spring Gardens at Charing Cross — and Nonie hanging rapt on every word.” Both of those worthies were out of charity with Miranda, but she had meant only to be helpful by mentioning that juice of scabious, mixed up with powder of borax and samphire, was an excellent means by which to clear freckles from the skin.

  She had fallen silent. Benedict knew he must apologize for his conduct during their last meeting, but Miranda had something on her mind, and so he would wait a few more minutes before abasing himself.

  “I had your note,” he said. A shocking thing it was that she had sent him, which was why he had put it away in a safe place. If he had any sense, which obviously he hadn’t, else he wouldn’t be here, he’d burn the damned thing. But Benedict was touched by the child’s naïveté, and curious about her request. “What is so urgent, little one?”

  Miranda stepped closer to him. This business must be concluded quickly, lest Nonie grow suspicious and send out a search party. “My lord, I don’t like you above half.”

  Naturally, she didn’t like him. Benedict had damned near ravished her in an alcove off Lady Sylvester’s music room. “I make you my apologies. My conduct was inexcusable.”

  “You don’t understand!” So far was this from what Miranda wished to hear that she stamped her foot. “I don’t want to kiss you.”

  He had been curious about how she would behave toward him when next they met; had expected embarrassment, or a display of cold
hauteur. Benedict said, “Have you been into the punch?”

  So much for flirtation. Miranda sighed. “You were supposed to kiss me if I acted like I didn’t want you to, which sounds very foolish to me, but that’s what Nonie said. Because though you did kiss me, it wasn’t a real kiss, and so it doesn’t count.”

  Benedict contemplated his tormentor. “Do you want a real kiss so badly, brat?”

  She nodded. “If you are going to seduce me, it seems like you should kiss me first.”

  Seduce Miranda? Benedict was intrigued by the suggestion, and also appalled. “Under those circumstances, I should definitely kiss you first,” he responded gravely. “What gives you the notion that I am going to seduce you?”

  Looking very earnest, Miranda grasped his arm. “Since you do not mean to marry, you can ruin me with impunity. It is the perfect solution. That’s what I wanted to discuss.”

  Benedict had, in the course of his adventures, received invitations beyond count. Quite a few, he had accepted; even more, he had politely declined. Since he could not bring himself to decline this invitation outright, he took a prudent step backward. “Perhaps you should ask your Nonie what seduction involves.”

  Miranda had hoped for more enthusiasm. Since long experience with her uncle had taught her that gentlemen didn’t care to have their garments mussed, she loosened her grip on Benedict’s sleeve. “I’m not sure Nonie is an expert. She certainly got the kissing business wrong. It seems reasonable to me that I cannot be forced to marry if I am already ruined. I expect I could find some other gentleman to besmirch my good name, but it seems a waste of time since I already know you. I daresay you have been told before that your looks are more than passable, my lord.”

  So Benedict had, but not in so artless a manner. He found himself perversely charmed.

  Charmed, but not persuaded. “There must be an easier way to avoid parson’s mousetrap.”

  Miranda released him. “Maybe for you. But to be ruined is my fate. My mama ran off with a philanderer, my grandmama had a great number of, er, admirers, and my great-grandmama was upon the stage. So you see I merely anticipate the inevitable. Besides, when you touched me – I liked it very well.”