The tarts were welcome to him. Nevertheless, her temper flared. “Lobcock!” she spat. “Pillock! Humbug!” And then she shrieked as he struck her, hard, across the face.
The devil had split her lip! Daphne snatched up the plate of marzipan from the sideboard and hurled it at his head. He ducked and grabbed her wrist. She bit him and wrenched away, hearing fabric tear.
Daphne darted for the door. But the conte was bigger than she was, and faster; he caught her and slammed her against the mantelpiece, his hands around her throat.
Her vision darkened. Bright sparkles of light danced before her eyes. She got one arm between them, grabbed hold of his cods and squeezed with all her strength.
He shoved her away. She released him, after one terminal twist. “Pellaccia!” he gasped as he bent double, hands cupped around his injured parts.
A brothel-bred girl learned early when to cut her losses. Daphne ran into the hall.
Chapter Thirty
Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has to do with politics. —Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Horus sat in his black beech armchair. He wore a linen robe styled after an Egyptian kalasiris, sewn from a rectangle of cloth with openings for the head and arms; a blue and yellow striped headcloth secured around his forehead by a golden asp. From a cord around his throat hung a carved stone amulet, a hieroglyphic depiction of an eye. Thong-tied leather sandals covered the soles of his feet.
Gully stood facing his master, sweat trickling along his spine.
On the table near Horus’s right hand, the mummified cat rested alongside a wickedly curved knife decorated with symbolism related to the Egyptian afterlife. Horus owned a fine set of antique funerary tools: bronze hooks, knives, tweezers, needles and awls. The ancients had opened, emptied and closed up corpses on a special slanted table that allowed blood and bodily fluids to drain into a built-in basin.
Gully hadn’t managed to locate an embalming table, yet.
“An unpreserved adult body,” Horus informed him, “buried six feet in ordinary soil, without a coffin, in a temperate climate, takes ten to twelve years to completely decompose. Immerse that same body in water and skeletonization occurs four times faster; expose it to air and skeletonization occurs more rapidly still. Nor are the bones permanent. Acids in the soil reduce them to unrecognizable components as well.”
Gully hoped the body under discussion wasn’t his own. Unpleasant events occurred when the master was in full pharaoh mode.
Horus picked up the cat, which had been wrapped with forelegs lying down the front and hind legs drawn up beside the pelvis, the bandages woven in and out, over and around each other to form an intricate geometric pattern. Given the choice, Gully thought he would prefer to be buried unembalmed, coffin or no.
“Cats,” said Horus, as he stroked the mummy, which he’d named after the feline goddess Bastet, “were so revered they were preserved for proper burial, their bodies dried out with natron salt. In one tomb were found posed in various positions: playing, sitting, running, sleeping. The Egyptian Mau cat is highly regarded for its ability to kill snakes.”
Snakes? Where was that bloody basket? Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Gully peered around the room. He located the basket in a far corner. Surely it hadn’t just moved?
Horus watched, dispassionately. He derived scant amusement from tormenting Gully. Unlike Verity Vaughan.
As Horus had promised, the actress died in his arms. She’d been too weak to struggle. It was the closest he’d come yet to swiving a corpse.
The Burlington House guest register contained six Dianas. The first two had proved negligible. Verity Vaughan had been the third. The fourth, he’d recently discovered, was a featherhead. Even if she had heard or saw anything untoward, and realized it was untoward, she would have forgotten it the next day; but her forgetfulness about the masquerade hadn’t prevented her relating every detail she recalled about everything else. Horus had been tempted to throttle the ninny, but prudence stayed his hand. If a man started strangling people simply because they were stupid, he’d have time for nothing else.
The fifth Diana walked with a pronounced limp.
Louise Holloway should have been the sixth Diana. Louise Holloway, who was not unknown to Fanny Arbuthnot. And who was not beyond meddling in matters that were none of her concern. Since Mrs. Holloway had been attending another event in company with Jordan Rhodes at the time of the bal masque, her costume had obviously been worn by someone else.
According to the newspapers, that someone else was Madalyn Tate.
“Some aborigine tribes decapitate their dead to insure the spirit of the departed will be too busy searching for its head to torment those left behind. Others carry corpses out of the house feet first, thereby preventing the shade from looking back and beckoning another member of the family to follow him.” Abruptly, Horus twisted off the cat’s head. He tossed it to Gully, who caught the thing mid-air.
Gully knew better than to ask questions of his employer, to argue or protest. The feel of the cat’s head — dry ancient bones and yellowed linen wrappings, fashioned centuries before he’d been born — made him break out in gooseflesh.
“Zorastrians left cadavers to be consumed by vultures and later collected the bones. The Saxons lopped off the feet of their deceased so they couldn’t walk away.” Horus snapped off a mummified paw.
Gully wished he could walk away. His master speared him with a glance. “I have another task for you. Fail me again and you will find you have fewer lives than this feline.”
Chapter Thirty-One
There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. —Edmund Burke
Sir Owen Osborne couldn’t imagine what had got into his daughter. Forming inappropriate friendships with fashionable fribbles and rakehells; bringing dogs into the house; accusing him of not caring tuppence for her, which was beside the point and not how a man of his stature should be addressed by his offspring. “Burlington House!” he repeated, brandishing his newspaper as if he meant to swat her with it. “What the deuce does this mean?”
Maddie forced herself not to flinch. “I attended in Louise Holloway’s place.”
“And why the deuce did you do that?”
“Her brother wouldn’t have approved.”
“You thought I’d approve?” Sir Owen bellowed. “I suppose I’m to oversee your sons while you go gallivanting without a care for your reputation or, more important, mine!” He then scolded his daughter for tumbling down the stairs in public, and every other misdemeanor he could recall; and, since she’d dared to attend the masquerade, demanded to be told every detail of what she’d seen and heard, most especially those details concerning Fanny Arbuthnot. Since he was, if not frothing at the mouth, alarmingly florid, Maddie presented a highly expurgated version of the affair. Outside in the hallway, two footmen drew straws to determine who would announce that Mr. Rhodes had come to call on Mrs. Tate.
“Rhodes!” harrumphed Sir Owen, when the less fortunate footman dared venture that intelligence. “Put him in the drawing-room. As for you—” He glared at Maddie. “We’ll speak more of this later.” She exited, with obvious relief. Sir Owen sought solace for his exacerbated feelings in the details of various bills involving Land Tax Redemption, Tobacco and Snuff Importation, Tea Export and Thames Navigation, and Corruption of Blood.
Maddie glanced at the footman who held the door for her. “No more flowers, I hope?”
“No, ma’am,” he said.
Maddie walked down the hall. On the first day after her accident, Lord Maitland had sent delphiniums and roses; on the second, hyacinth and tulips and scented geranium leaf; on the third, orchids and peonies and feverfew, accompanied by a fine edition of Miss Austen’s Mansfield Park. Alas for his lordship’s efforts, Maddie would rather have read the latest scandal sheets. Would Angel Jarrow divorce his wife? Had Isabella Jarrow deliberately seduced his sister’s spouse?
She recalled Beatrice
Denny’s kindnesses, and felt ashamed of herself.
Angel had made it clear that his affairs were no longer any of Maddie’s business. She felt an odd kinship with the countless women he had loved and left behind. Maybe one of them might be persuaded to tell her what she’d missed.
Jordan was waiting by the drawing-room fireplace. Lappy lay snoozing on the hearth. “He has been banished from the schoolroom,” explained Maddie, as she entered. “There was a mishap with an inkwell. Benjie and Penn are sulking because I refused to let them go up in a balloon, a notion inspired by a trial run for the aeronaut who is to provide the opening entertainment of the Great Fair. Matthew is attempting to divert them with an account of Mr. George Stephenson’s steam locomotive, named after Marshal Blücher, which recently hauled eight loaded coal engines uphill four hundred and fifty feet. I expect that next they will demand to visit the Cillingwood Railway.”
“Poor puss!” commented Jordan. “You’re having a trying time of it, are you not?” Lappy, belatedly aware of his mistress’s arrival, lumbered upright. “Sit!” demanded Jordan, with such an air of authority that the dog collapsed at his feet.
“Very masterful!” applauded Maddie. “You should try taking that tone with Louise.”
“I would have called on you sooner, but Louise assured me you weren’t severely damaged, and I had urgent business.” Jordan frowned at Maddie’s fading bruises and bandaged wrist. “You’re not usually so clumsy. What caused you to trip?”
“I didn’t trip. In spite of what everyone assumes. The truth is, I was pushed.”
Jordan, unlike Maddie’s father, uttered no unflattering comments concerning her coordination or intelligence or lack thereof. “By whom? And why?”
“I can’t say by whom. But as to why— ” In as few words as possible, and with minimal reference to Angel Jarrow, Maddie told Jordan about Fanny Arbuthnot, and the pharaoh, and what she had overheard and seen. “Now the newssheets have announced that I was there. My father is furious. And I still have no notion of the pharaoh’s identity.”
Before Jordon could comment, the door was flung open. Louise burst into the room, wearing a spotted muslin walking dress, cherry spencer and pink silk scarf; French hat of white and cherry satin trimmed with balls of ribbon and a large cluster of flowers.
Lappy leapt to attention. Louise hopped up on a chair, displaying neat yellow shoes. “Oh, do be quiet, you nasty hound! If this isn’t just like you, Jordan. When I don’t need you, you’re forever at my heels, but when I do need you, you’re nowhere to be found!”
“Spare us your dramatics,” said that gentleman. “You have found me, have you not?”
Louise twitched her skirts away from Lappy, who was under the impression the latecomer had jumped up on the chair so he could knock her off it. “Maddie, restrain this monster before he ruins my new gown!”
Maddie caught the dog by his collar. “Stop that at once, Lappy. You must not spoil the lady’s pretty dress. She probably has not paid for it yet.”
Panting from his exertions, the dog plopped down on his hindquarters and scratched his chin with his left rear paw. Warily, Louise descended from the chair. “You needn’t pretend I have interrupted a tête-à-tête,” she said to her brother. “I’m sure I understand Maddie wanting to thwart Sir Owen’s matchmaking schemes, and certainly you are far more eligible than Viscount Ashcroft, though no one with a grain of sense would believe for a moment that you wish to marry her— But that is fair and far off. The most dreadful thing has happened. My house has been ransacked!”
No one with a grain of sense, was it? Maddie echoed, “Ransacked?”
“A window was broken!” wailed Louise. “And my belongings tossed about. Even my gowns were thrown on the floor and trampled. Some of them are damaged beyond repair. It is most unfair that someone should try to steal from me when I have so many debts!”
“Odd, I was under the impression I had paid your debts,” Jordan said, in ominous tones. “What is missing?” Maddie asked, not eager to witness a sibling brawl.
“Not a thing that I can tell. As if I had nothing worth stealing, which makes me almost grateful that I had already pawned— That is, lost my darling Frederick’s pearls! And don’t suggest that my creditors may be taking a more devious approach to acquiring payment, because I thought of that.”
Maddie said, “You told me you’d taken your pearls to have the clasp repaired.”
Jordan cursed. Louise glared. “You may blame yourself if I wasn’t entirely honest, because all you do is scold.”
“You may count yourself fortunate if all I do is scold!” snapped Jordan. “I’ll have the whole of it now, if you please.”
“I’ve never heard of housebreakers who removed nothing from the premises,” Maddie put in quickly. “Maybe it wasn’t a simple robbery at all, but had to do with the masquerade.”
“Yes, and that reminds me!” Louise placed her hands on her hips. “I have had a most unpleasant encounter with Lord Saxe. How could you betray me, Maddie? Because obviously you did betray me: he knew you took my place before the newspaper published that guest list. But that doesn’t matter now! What would have happened, do you think, if I’d been home when whoever-it-was broke in?”
Maddie had a good notion who Louise’s burglar might have been. As did Jordan, judging by the grim expression on his face. “You expect me to believe you know nothing of those missing documents?” Maddie asked.
“Missing documents?” muttered Jordan. “Why am I not surprised?”
“I swear I don’t!” Louise protested. “Unless they are love letters? It’s astonishing how many people leave love letters carelessly lying about.”
“Were they love letters,” retorted Maddie, “you would have already used them to your advantage. Like you used the conversation we overheard between Isabella Jarrow and Corbin Denny. I don’t know how you live with yourself, Louise.”
“Quite well, thank you!” Louise glanced at her brother, who was grinding his teeth. “At any rate, you’ve missed the point. The item about Mrs. Jarrow and Corbin Denny appeared in the Morning Chronicle. I only provide information to the Post.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion. —Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Lord Saxe was perusing the morning papers when Mr. Jarrow strolled into the room and dropped into a nearby chair without so much as a by-your-leave. “I am reading the notices ordinary of the booths that are to be present at the Great Fair,” Kane informed him. “You may be interested to learn that Mr. F— is directing public attention to several hundred sets of mineral paste teeth he plans to peddle during the Green Park fire-works, ‘to replace any cavities that may arise in the dental work of gaping spectators’. Prinny proposes to provide every possible amusement for every social class, all to take place simultaneously. I lie awake nights thinking of all the things that might go wrong.”
“A corpse in the Chinese pagoda,” Angel suggested savagely. “A ghost in the Gothic castle, a sea monster in the Serpentine.”
Kane set his paper aside. “The parks are to be thrown open to the public. The poorer members of the populace will, in the true spirit of a national festival, be granted their amusements gratis; while the rich may purchase accommodations in a more selective space. The fund raised by the sale of those tickets ‘will be appropriated to some great and benevolent endowment, suited to the occasion and commemorative of it’. Each department of the government is expected to contribute to the cause. As a result, the cost of the Regent’s jubilee will be nominal, and the resultant fund a public gain.”
Angel marveled at the ability of politicians to flimflam their constituents. “Don’t try and distract me. You set Maddie up as bait.”
The baron had hoped he might put off this confrontation until he was more alert, Lilah having staged a performance the previous evening that kept him up — literally — most of the night. “I did not.”
“Then you told Castlereagh.”
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“Can you be more specific? I tell Castlereagh many things.”
“I suppose,” said Angel, “that one cannot blame a snake for acting according to its nature. You told Castlereagh that Maddie Tate was one of the Dianas and he passed the information to the press, using her to bait his trap. I’m tempted to challenge the bastard to a duel, in which case he would suffer more than a shot to the thigh. Unlike Canning, I have fired a pistol many times.” Castlereagh and then-Foreign Secretary George Canning had fought a duel on Putney Heath some five years back. “Or perhaps I will shoot you first.”
“You may try,” replied the baron, who in the course of his diplomatic career had been called far worse than ‘snake’. “Rumor has it that Mrs. Tate has broken off with you.”
Angel plucked a piece of lint from his sleeve. “The lady no longer cares to continue our association. The scandal, you understand.”
Kane understood perfectly. Discretion demanded that Angel avoid Mrs. Tate, and in a manner that indicated the estrangement was no fault of hers, a feat not easily accomplished since it was always Angel who brought his liaisons to an end. “Not long ago a friend informed me that a man must maintain his perspective at all costs. He recommended a visit to a house of civil reception as remedy for misfortunes of the heart, a cool tankard and a warm wench allegedly being the cure for all such ills.”
An amatory misfortune? It was nothing of the sort. Angel was simply concerned for a friend. A close friend, granted: were Maddie Tate a woman amenable to casual encounters, he would have long since tucked her away somewhere safe. On the other hand, were she that sort of woman, he wouldn’t like her half so well. Nor would he be denying himself the pleasure of her company, due to their mutual tendency to have her wind up on his lap.
Maybe Angel was having an amatory misfortune. “Your friend is an ass.”
The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy) Page 16