Mignon had as little thought for her brother’s inevitable displeasure as she had enthusiasm for the task she must perform. She made her way through the backstage confusion, her nostrils filled with that extraordinary compound of odd scents peculiar to the theatre. Aware of the curious glances that followed her, and that this undertaking was at the very least unwise, Mignon’s cheeks flamed. There was little alternative, as the note had made clear. She had no difficulty in locating the dressing room.
He took her hand and drew her inside. “Well, puss! It has taken you an unconscionable long time to seek me out. I had nearly begun to despair.”
Mignon looked at this well-built young man with his thick and curling dark hair, his devilish smile. How magical it had once seemed that so glorious a creature should care for her. Mignon was a trifle too honest to see herself as Cinderella, transformed by love from a rather dowdy female into a stunning belle, but she could not deny that Jesse was well qualified to play the fairy-tale prince. And so he had, with passionate avowals perfectly fitted to his rôle.
She tried unsuccessfully to remove her arm from his grasp. “This is the last time I will meet you, Jesse.”
“So reason has prevailed?” His smile was crooked, his eyes as cold as ice. “I thought it might in time. What shall I do, I wonder, now that you’ve shattered all my hopes? Would it gratify you if I put a period to my life?”
“You’re talking nonsense.” Mignon tried not to react to the pain of his grip. “I can’t imagine that your feelings for me are sufficiently deep that you could even briefly consider such a thing.”
“Once you thought differently.” Jesse’s fingers tightened even more. “Once you would risk everything for a moment in my arms. What has changed your mind? Have you met another man who can offer more than I?” His voice was harsh. “What would his reaction be, I wonder, if he learned of our relationship?”
“There is no one!” gasped Mignon. “And there is nothing to our ‘relationship’ save a few indiscreet meetings. It would be your word against mine. Who do you think would believe you, Jesse? You’re nothing but a strolling actor and a mountebank. And, I suspect, a fortune hunter as well!”
Jesse flung her away from him, and Mignon came up smartly against a wall. “You have been very foolish. Now you think you may simply cry off.”
He seemed a total stranger, his face set in angry lines. Mignon rubbed her bruised arms. “Is it money that you want? You must already know I cannot touch my capital without the consent of my trustees.”
Jesse ran his fingers through his dark hair. “Ah, I’ve made a mull of it! I cannot blame you for thinking the worst of me. It is my accursed temper—but you accused me of wanting only your money, and it is a taunt I cannot stomach.” He moved toward her and took her face in his hands. “I cannot bear to think that I should lose you, Mignon.”
Miss Montague wondered what had happened to her, for his ardor no longer roused in her an answering spark. “You threatened me,” she said stiffly. “I would hardly call it a loverlike act to promise to publish my letters to the world.”
“As if I would,” Jesse murmured, his eyes now warm. “It was the only way to bring you to me, and I apologize. You must know that I wouldn’t harm a hair of your head. Come, tell me you forgive me and that our misunderstanding is at an end. There is nothing I wish more in the world than to make you my bride.”
“What of my wishes?” Mignon sought refuge from her bewilderment in a display of rage. “Do you think to so easily bend me to your will? What a happy relationship we would have, you and me and my obliging trustees! It’s too late, Jesse. I will not marry you.”
“Won’t you?” His handsome features twisted as he grasped her shoulder. “There is more than one way to bring a reluctant damsel to the altar, Mignon.”
Miss Montague was no bread-and-butter miss to swoon away at the threat of ravishment. Green eyes shooting fire, she drew back her hand and applied it with satisfying force to Jesse’s mocking face.
“An enlightening scene, indeed,” murmured Lord Jeffries from the doorway. “If you are through enacting a Cheltenham tragedy, Miss Montague, I will return you to your aunt.”
Chapter 22
Culpepper was irate. First Charity had disappeared for several hours, returning at last with a weak tale of her sick mother, and then Gibbon had vanished. No doubt the butler was about some business for the Baroness, but his timing was highly inconvenient. Since there was no butler in evidence, his duties fell upon the abigail, second highest in the domestic hierarchy. As if it were not enough to be courted by a drunken watchman, now she must collect coats and hats and see that Lady Bligh’s impromptu party ran smoothly. With a martyred expression, Culpepper made her way to the Ballroom.
She need not have worried: Lady Bligh’s entertainments were as famed for their perfection as for their eccentricity. Even on short notice, the Baroness had procured an excellent orchestra; Indian jugglers who performed in an anteroom; and a craniologist who carefully examined and remarked upon the skulls of his fellow guests. In yet another chamber was a buffet table laden with the most delicate and choice refreshments of every kind. Behind it stood a sulky Charity, assisted by two other maidservants dressed in white uniforms and black aprons. Still later a supper would be served by male attendants in a room connected with the kitchens. Culpepper supposed the guests would drive home by sunlight. Hopefully Gibbon would have reappeared by then.
The fifty-foot-long Ballroom was an exquisite chamber with marble floors and green wall panels on a white ground; the surroundings were pale buff. The richly molded ceiling had been painted by Florentine Cipriani, who was also responsible for the allegorical pictures on the panels of the State Coach first used by George III in 1782. At one end of the ballroom, a large bay window looked onto the gardens; at the other end stood a colonnade of Ionic arches. Statuary marbles were placed at various intervals around the room.
“Sometimes I wonder what my father would have thought of Bligh House,” remarked the Baroness to Sir John. “He was a vulgar soul, I fear. I well recall him swallowing his peas off a knife, eating oysters by sucking them off his wrist, enlivening a dull dinner party by removing his false teeth in front of us all. He fancied himself an artist, and it was his habit to moisten his clay by spitting on it in the presence of his models.”
The Chief Magistrate gazed at her. Her hair was coming unpinned, and he imagined it cascading down her back as he swept her into his arms. “You are trying to distract me, Dulcie. I cannot delay much longer in the performance of my duties. Indeed, I may have already tarried too long.”
His stern tone had little appreciable effect on his hostess, who turned her gaze on the tremulous Willie, deep in conversation with his fellow guest of honor, Jesse Saint-Cyr. “When pallor became the fashion, French ladies applied leeches to draw off their blood so that they could faint away becomingly in company. Do you mean to have Willie do the same in the midst of his victory feast?” She placed her bejewelled hand on Sir John’s arm. “Come, let us mingle with the crowd. It will do no harm to allow our playwright his moment of triumph before you frighten the wits out of him.” She then left Sir John engaged with his amiable and long-winded Prince Regent, and drew Maurice aside.
“What are you thinking?” said her nephew, tugging at his tight cravat and glaring in the general direction of his sister. “How can you allow Mignon to disappear unescorted, for a good half hour, and demand not a word of explanation from her?”
Lady Bligh guided him firmly across the crowded Ballroom. “Take a damper, Maurice. Mignon came to no great harm. You are only out of sorts because your lovely friend pleaded a headache and would not accompany you here.”
Maurice looked stunned. “How did you know that? Mrs. Harrington-Smythe is both shy and retiring. No doubt she felt she would be out of place in such a magnificent assemblage.”
“Doubtless,” replied Dulcie, “she would have been. You would do much better to leave your sister to me.” Maurice opened hi
s mouth but before he could protest the Baroness cried, “Monsieur Trouffant! My nephew has agreed to be your first subject.”
Aristotle Trouffant was a stout little man with cherubic features and a pince-nez. He surveyed Maurice, who was a staggering spectacle in what could only be described as a court habit, complete with lace wrist frills, white stockings, and black pumps with gold buckles. Aristotle allowed no hint of derision to appear on his features. He was a professional.
“Ah, so you entrust yourself to me!” Trouffant flexed plump and well-tended fingers. “You are most discerning! For I, along with Spurzheim, studied under the great Francis Joseph Gall. The skull being molded on the brain, you know, its surface reproduces the shape thereof.”
Maurice, rendered acutely uncomfortable by the gleam in Monsieur Trouffant’s eye, sank down in a chair. “Dulcie!” he protested weakly.
“You will find, Monsieur Trouffant,” said the Baroness, “that my nephew is a coward, among other things. Continue, please!”
“As the brain is the seat of our faculties,” explained the craniologist, “it has been noted that persons having a particular talent, vice or virtue, seem to have the same part of the skull particularly developed.” He smiled, revealing a gold tooth. “Craniology, monsieur, is the study of the individual based on the peculiarities of his skull.”
If not for his aunt’s restraining hand, Maurice would have leaped from his chair and taken to his heels. With a vague notion that Trouffant meant to somehow dissect his brain, perhaps in the manner of the surgeons who dismembered felons hanged at Newgate, he quailed as the Frenchman laid inquisitive hands on his head.
“Ah!” said Monsieur Trouffant. “Never have I seen a better-developed area of self-esteem. You see? It is situated at the intersection of the circumference of the skull and an imaginary straight line starting at the extreme tip of the chin and passing through the greater part of the exterior ear.” As he spoke, he traced that line. Maurice shuddered.
“Fascinating,” murmured Lady Bligh. “And that means?”
“If normal, excellent moral restraint. But this is excessive, indicating pride and disregard of others.”
The Baroness’s dark eyes were speculative. “I suspect you may prove invaluable, Monsieur Trouffant.”
Maurice was not the only one to derive little enjoyment from Lady Bligh’s rout. Mignon cast a harried look at the glittering company. Thus far she had managed to avoid conversation with either her brother or Jesse, but she had little faith that her luck would hold.
“You are looking positively blue-deviled,” murmured Lord Barrymore. “If I may offer a word of advice? Do not judge your brother too harshly. He has only your best interests at heart.”
Startled, Mignon glanced at her companion. Tolly looked very fine in his formal attire, a chocolate brown cloth frock coat with self buttons, beige drill breeches buttoned and tied, a white waistcoat. “You seem to know a great deal of our affairs. Maurice has confided in you, then?”
“Do not think ill of him,” Lord Barrymore repeated. “He was beside himself when he learned that you had left your aunt’s box, and disclosed to me the reason for his concern. I beg you will trust me, as your brother does! As I told Maurice, I have little fear that you will make the same mistake again. If I may be presumptuous, dear Miss Montague, it is not the first time that a young girl has been led astray by an unprincipled blackguard.” He frowned. “I cannot think what your aunt is about, providing you so little chaperonage.”
“You surprise me, Lord Barrymore!” retorted Mignon. “You announce that you are aware of my past indiscretions, which nearly ended in disaster, yet seem not in the least affected by the event.”
Tolly’s gaze was warm. “Surely you cannot think I would harshly judge you for what was surely the mildest of flirtations? Rather, it is to your credit that you possess so trusting a nature and so innocent a heart. It is your mentors who are to blame for not better protecting you.”
Viscount Jeffries paused behind Mignon. “A classic case, perhaps, of the wolf and the lamb? I believe, Miss Montague, that you have promised me this dance.”
Mignon had done no such thing, but she accepted his arm. Ivor doubtless meant to rip her character to shreds. Let him, then. It was no more than she deserved for having acted with foolish scorn of the consequence.
“Your brother,” observed Lord Jeffries, as he led her into a waltz, “is looking sulky as a bear. He is also making frequent assaults on the punch bowl. Perhaps you will forgive me, darling Mignon, if I say that, drunk or sober, Maurice has not the least semblance of being a clever man.”
“He is feeling thwarted,” Miss Montague replied absently. “Only his fear of scandal has prevented Maurice from reading me a thundering scold.” The impact of the Viscount’s words belatedly struck her. “What did you call me?”
Ivor smiled down into her stunned face. “It’s as crowded as the very devil in here,” he remarked, and whisked her skillfully into an anteroom where were displayed ancient coats of mail, Indian shields made of rhinoceros hide, and an occasional skull. The chamber ended in a rounded bay twenty feet across, and its walls were covered in a paper with details reminiscent of King Arthur’s castle. “This,” said Mignon unnecessarily, “is the Armory. My uncle is a wide traveler and has a taste for the macabre. The chimney piece was inspired by various tombs.”
“Your uncle,” retorted the Viscount, “is of scant interest to me, and this room of even less. My poor darling, you have truly landed yourself in a damnable fix.”
Mignon turned to pace the length of the room. “You don’t know the half of it. But you surprise me, Lord Jeffries. I had thought a high stickler like yourself would have only contempt for my foolishness.”
“I can see,” said Ivor, so close behind her that Mignon jumped, “that you have not altered your initial opinion of my character. I cannot blame you, I suppose. Nor can I condemn your behavior when I have been at least as foolish myself.” Startled, she stared at him. “It is a lowering reflection,” he added. “I was accustomed to thinking of myself as, er, a nonpareil, and now find myself condemned as the offspring of a murderess and suspected of various unspecified vile misdeeds by Bow Street. It is extremely deflating to one’s pride.”
“It is utter nonsense,” Mignon retorted heatedly. The Viscount smiled, and she flushed. “I must thank you for coming to my rescue. I don’t like to think what might have happened if you had not.”
“It wasn’t one of my happier moments,” Ivor admitted. Mignon dropped her eyes and he gently tipped up her chin. “I am, it seems, a jealous man! But it would be hardly reasonable of me to hold against you an indiscretion that happened even before we met.”
Mignon had an unwelcome and unpleasant suspicion that was speedily borne out. “Much as I would prefer to stay,” murmured the Viscount, drawing her closer, “I must take my leave of you. I will see you clear of this business. The task will prove a great deal easier now that I know the truth. When we are freed of this coil, I mean to set before you an arrangement for your future that I think will prove of mutual, er, convenience to both of us.” And then he enfolded her in a crushing, passionate embrace that was suitable only for one of those infamous creatures known commonly as light-skirts.
Miss Montague was finding in herself a remarkable capacity for violence. For the second time that evening she slapped a gentleman’s face. And then she fled the room in tears.
Chapter 23
While Monsieur Trouffant happily analyzed various illustrious brains, Willie Fitzwilliam underwent an examination of another sort, one that filled him with the deepest misgiving. “I swear I don’t know,” he said nervously, “what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” Sir John paced about the Armory, so recently the setting for a very different kind of scene. “ It will go much easier for you if you confess.”
“Confess!” Willie averted his gaze from a grinning skull. “You are filling me with the liveliest apprehension, Sir John!”
Willie, who looked almost unexceptionable in the formal garb that the Baroness had provided him, silently adjusted his monocle.
“I might add,” remarked Sir John, “that I already know you made the plates. There’s little use in denials. I urge you to cooperate.”
Willie sighed. “How fleeting is triumph!” he lamented. “Even while I wear the crown of laurels, a gallows rope is being slipped round my neck. Very well, if you must have it! Though it goes sorely against the grain to easily give myself over to the law. It was all for the sake of the play, of course. ‘Twas a prodigious undertaking, and I saw no other way to bring it about.”
“So you made and passed false banknotes.” Sir John was rather surprised that Willie was proving so cooperative. “How did they come into Warwick’s possession? You were acquainted with him?”
“Certainly not!” said Willie. “You’ve got the wrong horse by the tail— several of them, in fact.”
Sir John hefted a broadsword with an expertise that made Willie blanch. “Were the forged notes insufficient for your needs? Is that why you and your confederates embarked upon this series of robberies? I’ll have the truth from you.”
Maggie MacKeever Page 17