Maddie was aware, even without her father’s scolding, that ribbons and stripes did not suit her figure. “I like stripes,” she said.
“Yes, and I like cherry tarts!” retorted Tony. “Which don’t mean I should eat them for every meal.”
“Son!” moaned Lady Georgiana. “Pray try not to be a cabbage-head.”
Before the viscount could respond in kind, Maddie smiled at his mama. “It is good of you to invite me to accompany you tonight.”
Lady Georgiana patted her hand. “Nothing of the sort! We must not permit you to withdraw from society. You are hardly at fault for the gossips puffing it around that you were to marry Earl Dorset. Scant wonder the poor man ran off to Gretna Green.”
Not deserving to be the subject of gossip did not lessen the embarrassment of it, reflected Maddie. The most embarrassing thing about this particular rumor was that it was unanimously held to be absurd.
Tony left off contemplating his cherry tart consumption, which had increased so alarmingly since his recent retirement from games of chance that he had been inspired to acquaint himself with corset design. Thus far he had studied long stays, short stays, a ‘pregnant stay’ which enveloped the body from the shoulders to below the hips, and various other devices designed to ‘repress that fullness which some ladies (and gentlemen) find inconvenient in the present state of dress.’ “I say—”
“Must you?” his mama inquired.
“Yes, I must!” said Tony. “You may rip up at me all you want, though I’d prefer you didn’t, not that that will signify, but for you to poke at Maddie goes beyond the line. She ain’t related to you, so you’ve no call to be unkind.”
“Poke?” Lady Georgiana fumbled for her smelling-salts. “As if I would!”
“Gammon! You said Dorset sloped off because of Maddie, and it was no such thing.”
Maddie had grown accustomed to the viscount’s means of interaction with his mama. Since she neither cared to join in the hostilities nor had a hope of halting them, she withheld comment.
Lady Georgiana misunderstood Maddie’s silence. “I did not mean to suggest you are responsible for the earl’s elopement. How could you be? You barely knew the man.” She continued in this vein until they arrived at their destination, a classical brick house in Wimpole Street.
As they descended from the carriage, Lady Georgiana grasped Maddie’s elbow and whispered in her ear. “It must be clear to a fond mama — which everyone knows I am! — that Tony’s affections are on the verge of being fixed. And so I am going to offer you some advice: gentlemen resemble horses in that they can be led to water, but must be given a little encouragement before they condescend to imbibe.” Maddie glanced at Tony, who looked less like a lovesick swain than a felon faced with the hangman’s noose. His fond mama approached their hostess, who stood waiting at the top of the stair, and made a pretense of kissing that lady’s cheek. “Beatrice, allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Tate. She is my son’s dear, dear friend. Madalyn, meet Mrs. Denny, wife of our cousin Corbin. Ah! There is poor dear Hannah. I must speak with her.” The lady in question wore a black gown and a sour expression. Upon glimpsing Lady Georgiana, she whisked herself out of the hallway.
Beatrice, Mrs. Denny, was a slender, honey-haired woman. An amused twinkle lit her hazel eyes. “I am pleased you were able to attend our little gathering, Mrs. Tate. I’m told you have an enchanting voice. I hope we may induce you to sing.” She turned to the viscount. “And were you to perform for us, your mama would be would be torn between deploring your musical ability as ungentlemanly and wishing to claim the credit for your talent herself.”
Tony brightened. Mrs. Denny patted his cheek. “Just so. Now try and enjoy yourselves.” She drifted off to speak with her other guests.
“I like Cousin Bea,” said Tony. “Maman don’t, especially. She says it’s a pity Angel is the beauty of that family. Not that she likes him, either. Sometimes I think Maman don’t like anyone. Excepting you, that is. Which I understand, because I like you myself, but— Don’t mind dangling at your slipper-strings, I swear I don’t, but as for stepping into parson’s mousetrap, I’d sooner slice my own throat.”
“Throat-cutting is so final,” protested Maddie. “Surely it would be simpler to chew off your foot.” The viscount stared at her with horror. “Never mind,” she soothed. “It will not come to that.”
An archway opened into an elegant drawing-room where the evening’s musical entertainment was underway. As a damsel rose from the pianoforte, her cheeks pink with pleasure at the applause, Maddie settled into a chair. She loved music in its various guises, including amateur performances such as these. Tony sat down beside her, looking glum.
The program was varied. Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn; selections from Corissimi, Scarlatti, and Gluck; all executed with varying degrees of success by a series of earnest young women who believed they might ensnare a bridegroom with the lure of musical proficiency. Maddie had never sung to Mr. Tate. He would have called her lunatic.
Perhaps she was. Maddie recalled a certain masked cavalier. What did it say of her that she could enjoy a stranger’s kisses after having witnessed violence being done?
Could the desire for kisses be a natural reaction to witnessing such things?
If she had witnessed violence, and not a piece of exceptionally realistic playacting, in which case one had to wonder: to what end?
Would the pharaoh recognize her, should they meet again? Would she recognize him?
Was he among the guests tonight?
An unwise attempt at an aria from The Marriage of Figaro roused Maddie from her reflections. The soprano was wishing love might provide her comfort. Tony looked fit to leap out of his chair.
Chapter Seven
I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions. —Lord Byron
If it would not be altogether correct to claim that Mr. Jarrow had forgotten the Burlington House bal masque, the business had not much exercised his mind. Numerous more urgent matters demanded his attention, and his time. Angel was rich almost as Croesus, a fascination with inventions and investments and scientific progress having enabled him to increase a respectable fortune fifty-fold. His legendary laziness did not extend to affairs of business and finance. Nor did it allow him to ignore familial obligations, and so he set out.
London might be less crowded than before the decampment of the Allied Sovereigns, but even as they departed Wellington had returned to make his first appearance in the House of Lords, which did nothing to ease congestion in the streets. Marshal Blücher of Prussia and Count Platoff, Hetman of the Cossacks, had remained behind when their respective sovereigns set sail, and a sighting of any one of these three was enough to bring traffic to a halt.
Since none of those dignitaries were present in the vicinity of Wimpole Street tonight, Angel arrived without mishap at his sister’s house. The strains of Beethoven’s Sonata #8 in C Minor, the Pathetique, as adapted for the harp, drifted out into the street.
“Tony,” explained Beatrice as she kissed her brother’s cheek. “I begged him to salvage the evening before my guests made their excuses and fled. That last poor child should never have attempted something so ambitious. Or so unsuitable! I hold her mother to blame.”
The viscount moved on to Quasi una fantasia, ‘Almost a Fantasy’, which reminded Angel of moonlight reflecting off a lake. “Isabella isn’t here?” he asked.
“No, you goose! I warned her away. You had much better settle this business between the two of you, you know.”
So he should. Angel wished he could. “Poor Bea, you are caught between us, are you not?”
Mr. Jarrow’s arrival in his sister’s drawing room caused a ripple of reaction, for the gentleman adored the ladies, individually, plurally, in their various phases and permutations, and the not-so-ladylike as well; and the ladies and the not-so-ladylike doted on him in return. Angel was generous and charming, his sense of humor irrepressible; he didn’t turn ill-tempered if a jealous mistress flung bre
akable objects at his head. Consequently, his legion of ex-lovers bore him no ill-will even after his fickle affection faded and he flitted (as one jilted ladylove had put it) like a seraph from cloud to cloud. Only Angel’s estranged wife was so uncharitable as to proclaim he had the attention span of a gnat.
He murmured a greeting to this person, and another; spoke briefly with Lady Georgiana; managed to wrest the glimmer of a smile from the most critical of his sister’s guests. Tony moved from the harp to the piano. A dark-haired female wearing an unfortunate combination of green stripes and white ribbons stood up and began to sing.
“Well met, well met, my own true love
Well met, well met, cried he
I’ve just returned from the salt, salt sea
And it’s all for the love of thee.”
She might have chosen to showcase her sumptuous sensual voice with a complex sophisticated piece, but instead had selected a simple — some might have said unsuitable — song and with it held her audience entranced.
Angel’s toes curled in his evening shoes. “Diana,” he breathed.
“Madalyn Tate,” his sister responded. “As you would know if you paid the slightest attention to respectable females. Mrs. Tate is a widow with two young sons and a political papa. Lady Georgiana claims she is Tony’s ‘dear, dear friend,’ but I’ll wager that horse won’t fly.”
Angel didn’t bother pointing out that horses, in general, weren’t prone to levitation. “Why not?”
“I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“I know you weren’t. I recall the occasion. Nasty squally brat you were. Thank God you improved with time.”
Beatrice pinched his arm. “You haven’t! Now hush.”
Angel said no more, content to listen and watch. Madalyn Tate had the voice of the celestial being he was not, and it affected him more powerfully than the most explicit suggestion ever whispered in his ear.
She had progressed from demon lovers to gypsy laddies.
“ ‘What hills, what hills are those, my love
That are so dark and low?’
Those are the hills of Hell, my love
Where you and I must go.”
“Mrs. Tate will sing for her supper, but she insists on ballads,” explained Bea.
Applause followed the performance, and an intermission. Guests flocked round Mrs. Tate, who appeared uncomfortable with so much attention. “Introduce me,” Angel said.
Beatrice slipped her arm through his. “The lady is hardly in your style. You needn’t frown. I am your sister and therefore obliged to say these things.”
“I am your older brother,” replied Angel. “And can still turn you over my knee.”
She twinkled at him. “Denny would hardly permit that.”
“And where is your estimable husband tonight?”
The twinkle faded. “He regrets that he could not be here.”
Angel regretted that his sister had married Corbin Denny. “You malign me, Bea. I do not attempt to seduce every female who crosses my path.”
“No, merely the majority of them. Very well, I will provide your introduction. You may ingratiate yourself with Mrs. Tate by bringing her a lemonade.”
Angel refrained from remarking on either his sister’s errant spouse or her erroneous assumption that he needed to impress young women by fetching them beverages.
This young woman’s back was to them. If her gown failed to flatter her shapely person, her dark hair was attractively arranged, twisted up behind in a chignon that revealed her graceful shoulders and the slender column of her neck.
“Brava!” applauded Beatrice. “Mrs. Tate, I have now heard the music of the spheres. Permit me to make known to you my brother, Mr. Angelo Jarrow. Since singing is thirsty work, he has brought you lemonade.” Mrs. Tate turned toward them, granting Angel his first clear glimpse of her face, which was both ordinary and extraordinary, though he could not have explained why it struck him that way. Upon her first clear glimpse of his face, she looked horrified.
Had it come to this? he wondered. Had he become a figure of such mythic reputation that a young woman blanched corpse-white at sight of him?
Or at the realization she had kissed him? Angel snatched back the glass before she could spill lemonade down his waistcoat. “You have a glorious voice, Mrs. Tate. Unforgettable, in fact.”
She gaped at him as if he were a genie who’d popped out of the piano. Looking amused, Beatrice shepherded her other guests toward the room where refreshments were being served.
Angel positioned himself between his quarry and the doorway, handed her the glass. “Fate has conspired for our paths to cross again, ‘o goddess excellently bright’. I daresay you didn’t expect to find me here. I didn’t expect to be here, but my sister commanded me to attend. I am grateful to her. Otherwise, I would not have heard you sing.”
The lady glanced around them. “You are mistaken. We’ve not met before.”
This plump little wren with the voice of a nightingale didn’t care to claim him? Angel found himself intrigued. “Too little too late, my goddess. I recognized you straightaway. You have an especially fine earlobe. Not to mention that prim little mouth.”
“Prim?”
“Prim and disapproving. Do you really wish to turn me into a stag so I may be eaten by my own hounds?”
“What I wish is that you would stop this nonsense!” Mrs. Tate hissed.
“So much for my pretensions.” Angel was enjoying himself, to his admitted discredit, but after all he was a rogue and what else could one expect? “I daresay you’ve forgotten. That would explain why you haven’t apologized.”
“Apologized?”
“First you almost knocked me down and, when I had begun to recover from the shock, you practically ravished me, ma’am.”
“I—”
Angel took her glass from her and set it aside, but retained possession of her hand. “Never think I minded! You may ravish me again whenever you like. Although if you don’t mind, we might skip the almost-knocking-me-down bit first.”
Mrs. Tate said, with feeling, “You are the most outrageous man!”
“I am, I admit it.” Angel leaned closer. “And then there is the peppermint.”
“Peppermint? Oh!” She removed her hand from his. “My sons are fond of peppermint. I said goodnight to them before I left.”
Sons? Ah, yes. Bea had mentioned something of the sort. Angel was accustomed to widows, but unsure how he felt about widows with offspring.
Nevertheless, he persevered. “I understand. Some temptations are too tantalizing to be withstood. Do you care to know what tempts me, Mrs. Tate?”
“I am certain I do not!”
“A pity. You would have liked it, I think.”
He expected to see her splendid bosom swell with indignation, but she surprised him with a chuckle. “You are determined to unsettle me. I wonder why that is.”
“Unfair! It is not I who am unsettling. You did kiss me, if you will recall. Were you toying with me? Cruel Diana! To first engage my heart and then throw me to the hounds.”
She regarded him with irony. “I doubt your heart was engaged.”
“Well, something certainly was!” He smiled to see her blush. “I am unkind to tease you. And I am monopolizing you as well when others are waiting to compliment your voice. I hope I may soon claim the privilege of speaking with you again. ” He bowed and moved away.
Chapter Eight
For what do we live, but to make sport of our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn? —Jane Austen
Angel Jarrow. Maddie had kissed Angel Jarrow. No wonder she had enjoyed herself so well. From all accounts, the man had kissed a good three-quarters of London’s demimonde.
She should be horrified. She was horrified. And she regretted that on their reacquaintance she had resembled a plump pullet trussed up in white striped with apple green.
Maddie had suspected her masked chevalier might be handsome. She realized now that ‘handsome’ w
as far too colorless a word. Angel Jarrow was even more glorious in evening breeches than in brocade and lace. His unpowdered hair gleamed like spun gold.
She’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Pressed herself so tight against him she’d almost skewered herself on his smallsword.
And then, upon encountering him again, she’d acted gauche as a schoolgirl. Mr. Jarrow hadn’t seemed surprised by her reaction. No doubt he was accustomed to females being struck witless by the splendid sight of him.
Lest Matthew also deem her witless, Maddie forced herself to concentrate on the tutor’s passionate defense of Rousseau’s philosophy of education, currently under attack by Sir Owen, who opposed children asking questions of any kind. Benjie and Penn (she would never dare call them ‘children’ in their hearing) were eager to enlighten her about the Final War of the Roman Republic, which (as she understood them) concluded with Antony falling on his sword, and Cleopatra being bitten by a venomous snake, and Octavian being named Pharaoh. Reminded of her own pharaoh, Maddie withdrew to the drawing room, a bright and rather formal chamber located at the back of the house.
Oriental rugs protected the polished wooden floor. Green and white striped paper covered the walls. On either side of the windows, damask curtains hung. The room was furnished with mahogany, ebony and brass.
No sooner had Maddie settled on a shield-back sofa than a fragrant-smelling whirlwind swept into the room. “I didn’t bother to have myself announced. Did you fear I was never coming? Things have been in such a whirl!”
Exquisite in form and feature, with flaming hair and bright green eyes and translucent skin, the newcomer was a walking advertisement for the latest fashions. Resigned to being allowed no peace, Maddie said, “Good afternoon, Louise.”
Mrs. Holloway tilted her head to one side. “Gracious, what a dull dress! At least you are not wearing stripes.”
The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy) Page 4