The Wicked Marquess

by Maggie MacKeever

  Miranda thrust out her lower lip. Lord Baird pulled away the greatcoat with a flourish reminiscent of magicians manipulating rabbits and hats. “I found her on my doorstep,” he growled.

  Kenrick stared appalled at his niece’s shabby, somewhat odiferous, and distinctly male attire. “You, young woman, will go to your room and stay there while we sort this business out.”

  Benedict caught Miranda by her collar before she could escape. “That won’t serve. Unless you bolt the window and lock the stable and cut down the damned tree.”

  The stable? The tree? “Hell and the devil confound it!” said Kenrick.

  “Just so.” Benedict gave Miranda an irritated shake. “I regret that I must make you some revelations of an unsettling nature, Symington.”

  Miranda tried unsuccessfully to wriggle free from her captor. “I want Nonie!” she wailed.

  Unsettling revelations? Kenrick yanked the bell cord.

  Nonie arrived within moments, a dressing gown thrown on over her nightdress. She blanched at sight of Miranda’s clothes.

  All was soon explained, or if not all, enough to make Kenrick aware of the gravity of the situation, not that he didn’t already have a damned good idea. “I suggest that we withdraw to my home in Cornwall,” concluded Benedict. “If Miranda is no longer in London, we may avoid providing further grist for the gossip mills.”

  Send Miranda out of the city? Out of the country might be preferable. “I think very poorly of your conduct, Baird!” Kenrick snapped.

  “I think damn poorly of it myself,” retorted the marquess. “If you will excuse me, there are arrangements to be made. I will be back within the hour.” He snatched up his greatcoat and strode from the room.

  Miranda remained silent, her face buried against Nonie’s shoulder. How could she have been so mistaken in a man? This particular man had taken shameful advantage, not because he’d had her on his lap and kissed her – for a start — but because he had then delivered her up to her uncle. Sinbad was no less perfidious than Mr. Pettigrew.

  Kenrick was aware he had been presented a highly expurgated accounting of Lord Baird’s relationship with his niece. “Well, miss, here’s a fine kettle of fish. The marquess has seen fit to do you the honor of asking for your hand in marriage. You will accept.”

  Miranda removed herself from Nonie’s shoulder. “I will not. He was just being polite. Oh, confound the man! I do not intend to wed.”

  “You should have considered that before you stole out to meet him!” Kenrick retorted. “I am shocked that you would pull such a sly trick. I hope we may manage to get through this without Wexton challenging Baird to a duel.”

  Kenrick did not aware just how many sly tricks had been pulled. It might be prudent to leave London before he discovered further details. “Why would Lord Wexton challenge Benedict?” Miranda asked.

  Benedict, was it? “It has to do with a gentleman’s honor. You will not understand that, I think. Nor would Baird.”

  “Everything possible has gone wrong!” Miranda sighed. “I have compromised poor Benedict, when all I intended was that he should compromise me.”

  His niece was as great a curiosity as any housed in the British Museum. Kenrick wished he might shut her up there. “Let me understand this. You meant Baird to compromise you?”

  “I didn’t want to marry Wexton,” retorted Miranda. “And I knew it was too much to hope that I lacked the family susceptibility. I decided if I was going to be led astray by a rakehell, it should be the rakehell of my own choice. Now everything is spoiled, because I did not mean for him to have to marry me!” She burst into tears.

  Awkwardly, Nonie patted her charge. She could have wept herself. Nonie had suspected Miranda’s interest in Lord Baird, but like that strange creature the ostrich, had stuck her head in the sand.

  Had Antoinette known of this development? Kenrick thought not. She couldn’t manage the girl. Kenrick didn’t hold it against her. He couldn’t manage the girl himself.

  Baird was furious, and with good reason. For a man of his inclinations, Sinbad was surprisingly discrete. The marquess confined his amorous adventures to bored young wives and widows and expensive courtesans while paying eligible young ladies a great deal less attention than their ambitious mamas might have liked. Miranda could not have more neatly trapped him, had she set out to do just that.

  She looked very small and sodden, and as cross as a wet cat. Kenrick decided that, whatever her failings, and those failings were legion, Miranda was not sly.

  Hopefully, Lord Baird would arrive at that same conclusion. To himself, Kenrick admitted that his niece had a point. Not that she should ruin herself, of course. But that she should ruin herself with Sinbad.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Lady Cecilia was in her bedchamber, curled up in a comfortable wing-chair and sipping her morning chocolate, when her cousin strolled into the room. She closed the book she had been reading, The Life and Adventures of Colonel Hangar, an enlightening volume written while the colonel languished in King’s Bench Prison for failure to pay his debts. The frontispiece showed the author swinging from a gibbet, fashionably dressed in frock coat and high boots, cockade hat and sword.

  Ceci was already sufficiently depressed. She didn’t need to see Percy smirking like the cat that had got into the cream. “You are in good spirits today,” she said.

  “I am always in good spirits.” Percy flicked open his snuff-box. “But you, my poor dear Ceci— I had expected to find you prostrated with grief. But here you sit, sipping your chocolate as if you hadn’t a care in the world. Such insouciance! Such fortitude! I make you my compliments, cousin. Unless—” Delicately, he paused. “Can it be you have not heard?”

  Lady Cecilia regarded her visitor without favor. “Have not heard what?”

  Percy raised a pinch of snuff to one nostril. “Why, the latest on-dit concerning Miss Russell.” He inhaled. “And Baird.”

  What about Baird and Miss Russell? Unlikely that Percy would part with information any quicker if Ceci boxed his ears. “I was on the scene,” he added, when she remained stubbornly silent. “Front and center, as it were. Therefore, I am privy to the truth of the affair. I had sensed which way the wind was blowing, and so I warned you, if you will recall. Another innocent has lost her way in the seething slough of fashionable society, alas.”

  How had she ever found Percy’s proverbs and provocations amusing? “What are you going on about?”

  “A gentleman’s reputation is his most valuable possession.” Percy strolled around the room. “He does not lie, for that would be cowardice. He does not cheat, or go back on his word. Nor does he flinch from the consequences of his actions. Baird is more of a gentleman than I had realized. Although he was caught doing what he should not, one has to sympathize. London must be deadly dull after Equatorial Africa and India and the Middle East. Moreover, Miss Russell in naturabiles is a nonpareil.”

  Percy had seen Miss Russell in naturabiles? “What? When? Where?” Ceci demanded.

  Percy paused by the dressing table. “I deduce from your disjointed utterances that you are eager to learn how I came to witness Miss Russell in a state of nature. She was with Baird in his study. I just happened to come upon them there. Baird was sufficiently a gentleman to betroth himself to the girl.”

  Baird was betrothed to Miss Russell? Ceci flung her chocolate cup against the wall. “You just came upon them,” she said bitterly.

  “I suspected Baird was hiding something.” Percy unearthed Ceci’s laudanum from the dressing-table clutter. “I did not suspect that I would find the little Russell in his house. On his lap, to be precise. To engage in immoral behavior with you is one thing, my dear Ceci, but to play at in-and-out with a well-born young lady– Well. One cannot help but admire such undisguised profligacy.”

  Ceci wondered if she had sufficient energy left to fall into hysterics. She snatched her laudanum bottle from Percy’s hand and removed the cap. “Were they— Um?”

  �
�Um? Ah! Matters had not progressed to that point. I bear Baird no ill will for the incivilities he uttered. I daresay I would have been uncivil also, had I been in his place.”

  Ceci tipped back the little bottle, and drank. Bad enough that she was forced to live like a duck hunted by spaniels, she had additionally been out-maneuvered by a clever miss. Almost she could find it in her heart to feel sorry for Baird.

  Almost, but not quite. Ceci had not expended so much time and energy on the marquess to have him escape her so easily. She strode purposefully toward her wardrobe. Fragments of broken china crunched underfoot.

  Gowns and petticoats and garments of a more intimate nature flew through the air. Percy caught a corset before it could slap him in the face. “What the deuce are you doing?” he inquired.

  Ceci emerged from the depths of the wardrobe, a flimsy muslin gown draped across her arms. “I am going to have a word or ten with Baird.”

  Percy set aside the corset. “You will need to raise your voice. Baird left London hours ago. Along with Miss Russell, Sir Kenrick Symington, and Miss Blanchet. Their destination is unknown.”

  Ceci sank back into her chair. “This cannot be happening to me.”

  “My poor Ceci,” said Percy insincerely; he was never happier than when someone else was not. “Baird has thrown you to the wolves. Once your creditors learn of his defection, they will wear the knocker off your door. But all is not yet lost. I have discovered that Baird owns a centuries-old residence in Cornwall. Where better to hide oneself from scandal than a haunted abbey, pray?”

  Ceci swallowed another sip of laudanum. She wished someone would whisk Percy off somewhere, preferably to the nether regions. His assessment of her creditors was all too correct. With Baird’s sudden betrothal to another woman – if the Russell girl was old enough to be considered a woman; had Ceci suspected Sinbad lusted after schoolroom misses she would have—

  She would have what? Even if Ceci braided her hair and left off her corset, she could not pass as a schoolgirl. This realization put her further out of charity with everyone involved in the disaster that had become her life.

  Percy took another pinch of snuff. “Don’t despair, my pet. There is to be a prizefight in the vicinity of Baird’s Abbey. I have discovered in myself a positive blood-thirst. And a desire to ruralize.”

  “I shall accompany you!” said Ceci.

  Percy flicked snuff off his fingertips. “I rather thought you might.”

  * * * *

  The Polite World savored an exceptionally tasty tit-bit over their chocolate cups this day. Word of Sinbad’s tête-à-tête with Miss Russell travelled from breakfast-table to breakfast-table more rapidly than the speed of light.

  From the breakfast-tables, the rumor spread out into the town. Mr. Atchison encountered it at Ackerman’s, where he was inspecting the latest selection of aquatint engravings, which had been painstakingly water colored by hand. His first thought, upon hearing the on-dit, was that Miranda was very heartless to act in such a fashion after he had dropped one of her decoctions in his ears. Mr. Burton learned the news at much the same moment, in Gentleman Jackson’s Bond St. boxing salon, and reacted to it so extremely that he knocked his opponent out cold. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Atchison encountered Mr. Burton in the Temple gardens behind Fleet Street. If on no other matter, the gentlemen agreed that so dire a development required the sharp thinking of a barrister.

  Mr. Dowlin had been preoccupied with nothing more important than his supper as he hurried across the tranquil Temple courtyard in his gray wig and flapping gown. He was more than a little startled to find Mr. Atchison and Mr. Burton impatiently waiting on the doorstep of his pleasant chambers at Grey’s Inn.

  Both burst into speech as soon as he came within earshot. Mr. Burton spoke ominously of starting mills and drawing corks, while Mr. Atchison waxed loquacious about Shakespeare, who had seen his plays enacted before Queen Elizabeth in the Middle Temple Hall, where the queen had also sometimes danced with her favorites Walter Raleigh and Christopher Hatton. Was Mr. Dowlin aware that the garden of Grey’s Inn had been laid out by Francis Bacon in the 1600’s? That Grey’s Inn had been granted by Henry VIII to the students, and their successors, in 1541?

  Mr. Dowlin realized that standing before him were two gentlemen suffering some great affliction. In his most barrister-like tones, he requested enlightenment. When it was provided him, Mr. Dowlin grew disturbed himself.

  “It’s a damned havey-cavey business!” concluded Mr. Burton, who was unaware of the unwitting contribution of Tipoo Sultan to this imbroglio. Mr. Atchison added his opinion that Baird was a cad, a bounder, a curst conniving scoundrel who had persuaded a well-brought-up young woman to engage in a sordid intrigue. Mr. Dowlin judiciously pointed out that, conversely, she might have persuaded him. His companions expressed dismay at this calumny. All three agreed that Miss Russell could only have her heart broken by a philanderer like Sinbad.

  She must be rescued from her folly. But how? It was Mr. Burton who came up with a practical suggestion. They would track the villain to his lair.

  * * * *

  In a much older part of town, behind a certain grand old Jacobean façade, Lord Baird’s name was likewise being taken in vain. “It passes human bearing! Benedict gives the gel a slip on the shoulder after I have told him he must not, and in the doing he gets caught. And then what must he do but make off with the chit and summon me to lend my countenance? God’s life!”

  Lady Darby was in as rare a taking as her abigail had ever seen her. “Calm yourself, my lady,” Meggs said.

  “Calm myself? Nincompoop!” Odette would have said more had not Chimlin been inspired by all the upheaval to relieve himself on the bedspread.

  Meggs set about cleaning up the mess. Lady Darby grasped her pet and gave him a good shake before returning to her primary source of grievance, and consigning the marquess to perdition, after calling him a confounded jingle-brain.

  As Lady Darby continued on this manner, her abigail set about placing vials and bottles in a travelling-bag. Meggs was not looking forward to the long journey to Baird’s Abbey. She ventured, “Perhaps the girl may be persuaded to cry off.”

  “It’s odds Benedict has already tumbled the wench. But there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” Odette tugged at her elaborate wig, pulling it further askew. “You’d think the rogue would have given me some warning before dragging me willy-nilly into this mess. But no! I must be the last one to find out.”

  * * * *

  Lady Darby was not, in fact, the last to be enlightened about what Sinbad and Miss Russell had got up to the previous night. Lord Wexton had been called away from London, and therefore did not learn of the disgrace of his intended spouse until he returned much later in the day. He had not been home five minutes before his next-to-eldest daughter informed him that his prospective bride-to-be had been discovered in a compromising position, and was betrothed as a result. Lord Wexton set out immediately to confront Sir Kenrick, only to learn from a footman that the family had left town. Where they might have gone, the man could not say.

  Could not? Most likely, would not. Lord Wexton strode angrily down the steps.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Cornwall was rife with odd legends and quaint customs, lovely highlands and moors plunging into the sea. Celtic crosses dotted the landscape, alongside ruined castles, strange standing stones, and the towers of tin mines. Burial mounds of long-forgotten chieftains stood beside the road from London, which was pitted with holes and pools.

  Not far from the Tamar River, which separated Cornwall from Devonshire, Baird’s Abbey lay. The sprawling structure incorporated convent buildings of the thirteenth century, cloisters of the fifteenth, two towers dating from the mid fifteen hundreds, and a Gothic archway built in 1754; gargoyles and chimeras and a great rose window with blue glass. Surrounding this eccentric edifice were elaborate gardens in a semi-formal style.

  Behind the house, noble ancient trees spread their
leafy branches over garden plots and pleasant stone paths. Wisteria and clematis and climbing roses gracefully draped the old stone walls. The air was pungent with the scent of the herb borders from which family medicines and flower waters had once been made. Borage, lavender, hyssop; sage, parsley, rosemary; chervil, thyme, marjoram; gillyflowers and poppies and marigolds— An Elizabethan lady would have mixed up household simples, patched up knights freshly home from the Crusades. Miranda imagined just such a lady peering over her shoulder as she knelt by a patch of Rheum rhaponticum.

  Probably the Elizabethan lady would also like to scold her. Everybody else was scolding her, save for the gardener who was currently lurking behind a cypress bush. Miranda felt as persecuted as a certain medieval theologian who, when he first raised fruit and flowers under glass in winter, was threatened with the stake for being bewitched.

  Bewitched! Who had bewitched whom? Miranda wasn’t the sort of female who lured unsuspecting rakehells to their doom. Yet somehow she had managed to blacken Sinbad’s reputation – who would have thought anyone could blacken Sinbad’s reputation? – when what she’d wanted was for him to tarnish hers.

  It served him right for trying not to besmirch her reputation, the wretch. Improper in her? Improper in him! Miranda had done as she intended, she had blotted her copybook, and so unsatisfactory were the results that she might next have to empty an entire inkwell over her head. The gardener was now pretending to inspect a privet hedge. Perhaps he feared she had improper designs upon his rhubarb.

  Miranda vowed she would not knuckle under. Unfortunately, she had not the faintest idea of how she might accomplish this feat. Even were she to escape her watchdogs, she had nowhere to go. Though this portion of Cornwall was not as wild and savage as she had expected – which was disappointing; a wild and savage terrain would have suited her mood – it was still remote. The nearest thing to local excitement was the weekly market in Launceston, which lay some distance away.