“Naturally you cannot, and fortunate it is.” Lady Bligh contemplated a chess set carved in jasper. “So I am to go to Prinny and ask his forgiveness on Leda’s behalf? A pity that our Regent is as ridiculous as he is thin-skinned, or it wouldn’t matter a whit Leda has informed the world that he enjoys his vices and leaves politics to his ministers; that he entertains shapely tightrope dancers in his private rooms at Carlton House while leaving Lord Castlereagh to represent England at the Congress of Vienna.” Mignon, no peruser of newspaper accounts, gasped. Jeffries glanced in her direction, and she once more buried her nose in her book.
Dulcie ran her fingers through her orchid-colored curls, rather to their detriment. “Or do you prefer that I apply to Lord Warwick, who acts as Prinny’s emissary in such matters, and who is a thoroughly detestable man? He cherishes a violent antipathy to my husband, considering Bat a despoiler of innocent English womanhood.”
“And is he?” queried the Viscount, intrigued despite himself.
Lady Bligh laughed huskily, but her amusement quickly fled. “I ask you once more to reconsider,” she said, as she moved from the fireplace to stand beside Mignon’s chair. “And leave Leda where she is. I shall secure her release if you are set on it, but only because if I do not you will simply find someone else.”
“Precisely,” said Ivor.
“Very well. The consequences are on your head. You will remember that I warned you.”
“I assure you, I will forget not the smallest detail of this encounter, Lady Bligh.” The Viscount studied the young woman bent so assiduously over her book. “I trust your niece is as discreet as you say. I do not care to have my association with Leda made public knowledge.”
Mignon raised her eyes and in them was an annoyed expression that caused him to arch one sandy brow. Dulcie’s hand dropped to her niece’s shoulder, and squeezed. “You may trust Mignon,” she said calmly. “That is something else you may have reason to recall.”
Ivor suspected if he remained much longer in the presence of this exasperating woman he would forget his upbringing and say something unforgivably rude. “I will take my leave of you, then.” He made an exit as graceful as it was abrupt.
Mignon rubbed her bruised shoulder. What had Dulcie been afraid she’d say? “The toad didn’t even thank you.”
“Young Jessop will have ample opportunity to express his gratitude.” Again Dulcie wore that odd little frown. “We will be seeing a great deal more of him.”
“We will?” Mignon was studiously nonchalant. Lady Bligh regarded her niece, and her mouth twisted into a little smile.
“Rhymed tales of corsairs and exotic slave girls and lovesick Eastern princes,” murmured the Baroness. “I think you will find, my dear, that Wordsworth reads much better when not held upside down.”
Mignon tossed aside the book. For no good reason that she could think of, she rose to inspect herself in the silvered looking glass that was topped by an eagle motif. Staring back at her was a very ordinary damsel, taller than average, with bright red hair and freckles, whose only claim to beauty was a pair of large sea-green eyes. In the mirror, she watched as the parrot leaned forward and applied his sharp beak to a particularly tempting patch of orange fur. The cat shrieked and leaped straight into the air.
The Baroness rapped her knuckles sharply against Bluebeard’s beak, and then cradled the tomcat, which looked as though he’d like to make a meal of his tormentor. “Poor Casanova. As for that, poor Leda, too. The dashing Viscount would save us a great deal of trouble if he’d only listened to me.”
Mignon made no reply. She was guilt-stricken by the realization that she hadn’t spared a single thought to her lost love for over an hour.
Dulcie deposited herself and her bristling burden once more in the carved chair. “You do not mean to cooperate either, I see.”
Mignon abandoned the looking glass, her spirits further oppressed by its familiar message that she would never be other than plain. “Cooperate in what manner?” she asked bluntly. “It is good of you to have me here, and I am grateful, but I think I should be informed if you mean to involve me in some scheme.”
Lady Bligh was as devious as she was lovely, and not given to explanations. Imitating his mistress perfectly, Bluebeard sneezed.
Chapter 2
The Chief Magistrate of Bow Street sat at a scarred desk in the small and stuffy office that had originally been tenanted by Colonel Thomas de Veil, magistrate for Westminster and Middlesex, who had been both corrupt and energetic, and who had hounded criminals with a vigor that quite astounded them. There had been many occupants of the shabby Bow Street quarters since then, among them the Fieldings and Sampson Wright and Sir Richard Ford; but Sir John could not see that the conditions they battled had noticeably improved.
He inspected his visitor. She wore a purple velvet gown and a hooded cape of purple-blue taffeta lined with rose. “What brings you here, Dulcie?”
Lady Bligh widened her bright dark eyes. “Why, you do, my dear. Since you won’t do the pretty and call on me, I have come to you.” She paused to sneeze. “Bat is off jaunting about the Continent, surveying dead horses and shattered homes and the crippled remnants of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. He will then proceed to Vienna, where the Allied Sovereigns and ministers have assembled to rearrange the map of Europe according to their various ambitions. What gaiety that sad city shall see! Vienna is thronged with crowned heads and ambassadors and ministers, all engaged with hunting and shooting, drives and promenades and vast dinners, evening assemblies and balls and petits soupers, plays and operas.” She threw back the hood of her cape. “To tell truth, John, I cannot envision Bat promenading in the Prater and watching the Danube passing idly by.”
Nor could the Chief Magistrate, who had no high opinion of the fifth Baron Bligh, considering him an unconscionable rake as well as the untrustworthiest of men. Had Sir John been fortunate enough to win Dulcie’s hand in marriage, he would not spend the greater portion of the year away from her side. He glanced once more at Lady Bligh, who at that moment, and despite her orchid curls, appeared the most demure creature in existence, and repressed a smile. It was perhaps fortunate that Fate had not thus favored him. Life with Dulcie would doubtless have resulted in his early demise from an apoplexy.
“Tsk, John!” reproved the Baroness. “How uncharitable you are. At last report, Bat was administering the last rites to a dying British soldier whom he found in a church at Champagne. But I have not come to talk of that.” Dulcie settled herself more comfortably on her hard wooden chair.
The Chief Magistrate rubbed his forehead, which was deeply lined. Bow Street was exceptionally busy just then, due not only to the robberies but also to a complicated case of fraud in which a certain Member of Parliament was implicated. But he could no more refuse Dulcie than he could hold back the tide. “What is it, then?”
“I shan’t tell you,” retorted his heartless tormentor, “until you have offered me some tea. It is no wonder that you are sulky as a bear. Your entire existence is dedicated to dispensing justice. What of pleasure and amusement, pray? Dear John, if you keep up at this pace you will be old before your time.”
If Lady Bligh was up to further shenanigans, as appeared very likely, Sir John thought he would turn her over his knee. He had not yet forgotten the cursed Arbuthnot business, when her ladyship’s damnable meddling had brought her into grave danger and had him fretting his guts to fiddle-strings. He put down his pen and rose to call down the hallway for her ladyship’s tea.
“Much better,” said Lady Bligh, in a tone that made the Chief Magistrate temporarily forget both crime and miscreants. “I flatter myself that I am precisely the diversion that you need.”
A gangling underling appeared with the refreshments. “You,” Sir John retorted, when they were once more alone, “are a cursed nuisance, Dulcie.” His expression belied his words, for his weary face wore a smile.
“Am I not?” The Baroness balanced her teacup in one hand as with t
he other she sought ineffectually to repair an unpinned orchid curl. Sir John struggled with a wish to take that heavy hair in his hands and to bury his face in its perfume. Lady Bligh winked at him. “You are also a great deal too intuitive,” he said.
“Poppycock!” Dulcie abandoned her efforts with the curl and searched in her reticule for her handkerchief. “You might recall that my intuition has in the past been of no small service to you.”
Sir John wisely skirted this topic. Lady Bligh’s assistance in the Arbuthnot matter, a combination of shrewd conjecture and feminine illogic and what could only be divine revelation, had nearly driven him into a fever of the brain.
“Play off your cajolery elsewhere, Dulcie,” he said gruffly. “Tell me why you are here.”
Lady Bligh surveyed him speculatively over the frivolous square of lace, and briskly blew her nose. “First we shall engage in a little polite conversation. It is an art in which you are sadly deficient.”
“Oh?” Sir John lifted his heavy brows.
“I have a niece staying with me, a good-tempered friendly little creature who fell fathoms deep in love with a most unsuitable gentleman and was barely prevented from ruining herself. Mignon is very wealthy, did I say?”
Sir John, watching the various expressions that played across his visitor’s bewitching face, was thoroughly bemused. “No,” he replied, somewhat wistfully.
Lady Bligh leaned forward and rapped his knuckles. “Stop woolgathering. It is a matter of no small consequence that Mignon made so unfortunate a choice.”
“What have your niece’s indiscretions to do with me?”
The Baroness set aside her teacup and moved to stand beside the Chief Magistrate’s desk. “Nothing. As yet.”
Sir John gazed up at her, taking in every detail of that extraordinary beauty from her disheveled hair to her inquisitive little nose. “Tell me what troubles you,” he said, and took her hand.
Dulcie leaned back against his desk. “I had a caller this morning, Ivor Jessop, with a boon to beg.” A faint smile hovered around her mouth. “Begging, I might add, is something the Viscount is quite unaccustomed to. He is a very haughty young man, though I know nothing worse of him than that he once threw an inkwell at a waiter’s head.”
“What has Jeffries to do with your niece?” asked Sir John. The Chief Magistrate, though he did not deign to waste his time in frivolous pursuits, was by birth a member of the ton.
“Again, very little, as yet.” Dulcie settled more comfortably against the desk. “The Viscount came to see me in behalf of Leda Langtry. You recall Leda, I’m sure.”
Sir John knew full well that he was being manipulated. He gave up the struggle and abandoned himself to enjoyment of the interview.
The Press had a nasty habit of heaping odium on Bow Street, particularly in the matter of blood money, bounty paid to informers and thieftakers for denouncing culprits. Payments of blood money threatened to reach the awesome sum of £80,000 that year alone. Bow Street Runners were often accused of sending men and women to their deaths for the sake of a reward. “Leda Langtry was imprisoned for a libel that she wrote and will stand trial at the next session,” Sir John said.
“Libel!” Lady Bligh sneezed, so ferociously that hairpins went flying across the room. Sir John wondered what his subordinates would think upon discovering them. “I sympathize with the Luddites myself,” she sniffed. “The poor men believe that the machinery they smash has done them out of their jobs.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Sir John. “It wasn’t Leda’s sympathy with the rioters that landed her in Newgate, but the fact that she chose to write of our Regent with a pen dipped in bile.”
“Poor Prinny,” sighed the Baroness. All London knew that the Prince Regent nourished a long-standing tendresse for Lady Bligh. “These robberies. What do you propose to do about them, John?”
“There’s very little we can do when we have neither description nor trace of the culprit to follow.” Lady Bligh’s thoughtful expression caused the Chief Magistrate’s flesh to crawl on his bones. “I’ve had my best men on the case and they’ve learned nothing, Dulcie. Don’t think that you may do better. I forbid you to interfere.”
“Interfere?” The Baroness looked wounded. “Unfair, John! I never interfere.”
“No, you merely follow your nose where it may lead you, and that’s generally into trouble.” Her reproachful expression, not to mention low-cut neckline, inspired him to say things he probably should not. “We have had recourse to our Criminal Record Office, but without result.”
“Your best men.” Lady Bligh tapped her fingers on his desk. “Who might those be, pray?”
That there was a purpose to this conversation, Sir John never took leave to doubt. Heaven forbid that he ever encountered the crafty Baroness in the witness box. “Townsend and Sayer were diverted briefly from their duties concerning the Regent. Neither discovered anything. Ruthven had no better luck, though he’s my leading expert on bank robberies and forgery. Nor did Vickery, for all his expertise in tracking down and recapturing escaped prisoners of war.”
“Bank robberies,” mused Dulcie. “I do not believe your culprit, as you call him, has yet committed a bank robbery.”
“As yet?” Sir John was suddenly alert. Lady Bligh might be exasperating and capricious, but there was no denying that she possessed formidable foresight. “What are you trying to tell me?”
The Baroness slid off his desk, sending his senses pleasantly reeling with her heady perfume. “If I meant to tell you something, John, I would do so without roundaboutation.” She turned to look out the window and the Chief Magistrate remembered belatedly to exhale. “You have not seen fit to utilize Crump’s talents in this affair?”
Sir John scowled. “To my mind, Crump’s most outstanding achievement has been the apprehension of an enterprising couple who fought a duel in two balloons.”
“You refer to the criminal in the singular.” Lady Bligh stared somberly into the street below. “I suspect you are mistaken. I suspect also that you undervalue your enterprising little Crump. He may arrive at the truth via circuitous routes, but arrive at it he does.”
Sir John remained briefly silent, drinking in the sight of Dulcie bathed in sunlight like a lissome purple-haired nymph. He moved to stand beside her at the window. “Very well. If you think it so important, I will put Crump on the case—not that I anticipate he will achieve any better result than his predecessors.”
“Dear John!” Dulcie touched his arm. “It is so good of you to indulge my whims. Now, we have had a pleasant conversation, but it is time to get down to business. There is an errand that you may execute.”
Who but Lady Bligh would dare order the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street Public Office to execute her commissions as if he were a footman? Succumbing to temptation, Sir John lifted his hands to tidy her coiffure. “What errand?”
Dulcie drew back to look up at him, her lively countenance alight with mischief. “Why, to conduct Leda home from Newgate, of course. Your wits are sluggish today! What else would I ask?”
The Chief Magistrate glowered at her. “Take care, Dulcie! The Regent’s wishes cannot be denied.”
Lady Bligh drew forth from the bosom of her gown an official-looking document. “As if I would think to do such a thing. This is an order for Leda’s release. I think you will find it all it should be.”
Sir John held the paper, still warm from contact with her body, as if it might momentarily burst into flame. “Where did you get this?”
“From Warwick. I did not think it wise to apply to Prinny, poor man. He is very nearly dying of a disgraceful debauch, having sent for George Coleman to come from the King’s Bench Prison to entertain him. A pity, is it not, that a dramatist and theatrical manager should be imprisoned for debt? They sat up all night carousing until Prinny was literally dead drunk and had to be carried to bed. Sir Walter Farquar has saved his life, but at the cost of twenty-seven ounces of blood.” The Baroness touched her handkerchief to
her nose. “To further poor Prinny’s distress, he is being dunned in the streets for his debts and the most discreditable stories about him are going the rounds of society.”
“I would appreciate it if you would stop trying to humbug me!” said Sir John. “How did you persuade Warwick to give you this release?”
“Warwick was not in the least anxious to be of assistance, as you can imagine, but he soon saw the advantage of cooperating with me. I have certain information in my possession, the publication of which would make life most uncomfortable for him.”
“You would,” retorted the Chief Magistrate. “This mania of yours for collecting damning information may well land you in serious difficulties one day.” He was haunted by the thought.
“Piffle! Life would be very dull indeed, did I leave other people’s business to them and confine myself to my own.” Dulcie brushed idle fingers along the windowsill. “Are you thinking I should have applied to you for assistance? I could not. It was you who committed Leda to Newgate, after all.”
“So it was.” For a man who deprecated Lady Bligh’s involvement in what might be logically considered his affairs, Sir John was unaccountably relieved. “Save me your further blandishments. I will see Leda safely home. In return you might tell me what Ivor Jessop has to do with her, and why you are so interested in this recent outbreak of robberies.”
“So I might.” Lady Bligh adapted an attitude every bit as provocative as those employed by the lightskirts who plied their trade in Covent Garden’s narrow streets. “Much as it distresses me to refuse you, in this case I think I must. But you are very kind to oblige me about Leda. I am very, very grateful to you.”
“All the same,” said Sir John, “I would vastly prefer to see that particular troublemaker remain behind bars.”
Dulcie stepped back, drawing the hood of her cloak over her again unruly curls. “Oddly enough, so would I.” By the time the Chief Magistrate thought to question this startling statement, the Baroness had gone.
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