Maggie MacKeever

by The Baroness of Bow Street

  In the crush of people, Ivor took her arm. “His physicians pronounced his malady to be nothing more than a colossal case of the sulks. Now we are going to temporarily forget my uncle and my mother and this abominable fix. You and I, Miss Montague, and consequently Mr. Crump, are going to view a huge old lion called Nero. We shall also pay a visit to an elephant so well behaved that Byron has claimed he’d like to have it as a butler.”

  Miss Montague was a lively, good-tempered girl who viewed the world about her with amiable pleasure when not caught up on gloom, and so she gazed with interest upon the various marvels to be seen in Exeter ‘Change. The lower part was very spacious and had the appearance of a large bazaar. Among the various shops laid out on either side of a large gallery were a substantial dealer in ladies’ workboxes and other fancy articles, milliners and seamstresses, hosiers and bookstores. Over this was a large menagerie, at the entrance to which stood a huge powerful-looking man dressed in the costume of Henry VIII’s Yeomen of the Guard.

  “Look here!” he cried, handing descriptive bills to the passersby. “The most extraordinary animals in the world to be seen alive for the price of one shilling! The wonderful elephant Chunee, and Nero, the largest lion ever seen in the world! The boa constrictor and the laughing hyena, the orangutan, birds of paradise and ostriches.” Mignon watched through lowered lashes as Lord Jeffries paid the admittance fee. Heavens, but he was a fine figure of a man! Why, then, this unwavering conviction that she was rushing on headlong to her doom?

  It was too precious an afternoon to waste in morbid imaginings. Mignon wrinkled her nose at the smell of the animals and, imagining the Runner’s chagrin at discovering their destination, gave voice to a giggle. The Viscount, once more at her side, glanced down at her.

  “What is it?” asked Mignon, for he was studying her face with an intensity that was attracting no small attention to them. “Why are you staring so at me?”

  Ivor’s brown eyes held an expression that made her flush. “I am counting your freckles,” he replied, in a tone dangerously close to a caress.

  Mignon’s spirits plummeted. How like the Viscount to remind that she was a far cry from the Society beauties who doted upon him wherever he went. “It seems a singularly odd way in which to pass one’s time.”

  “Not at all.” Ivor took her arm in a grip so firm that Mignon felt the warmth of his hand even through the cloth of her redingote. “Strange that I should never before have remarked the allure of red hair and freckles and big green eyes.”

  “You are teasing me.” Mignon wondered if Crump was eavesdropping on their conversation. “You are also making us very conspicuous.”

  “I hadn’t thought you possessed of such a strong sense of propriety,” murmured Lord Jeffries, but he abandoned his contemplation of her freckles to instead guide her expertly through the crowd. “It was not my intention to make you uncomfortable.”

  Mignon gazed upon a rather moth-eaten lion. It gazed back at her, and yawned. “Freckles are nothing to jest about, Lord Jeffries. Ask anyone unfortunate enough to possess them. Try as I may, the wretched things will not go away. At any event, it seems singularly callous to be idling away our time in amusements while your mother languishes in Newgate.”

  “I doubt,” said the Viscount dryly, “that it is in Leda’s nature to languish anywhere. There is one odd thing that came up in Percy’s confrontation with her, of which you may wish to inform your aunt: Leda has no notion of who is paying her way. She assumed I had made financial arrangements with her gaoler, but I had not. I never even thought of it, having had little prior experience with prison protocol.”

  Mignon erred greatly when she allowed her eyes to meet his. Her breath was taken quite away.

  “You misunderstood me,” Lord Jeffries said softly, and touched her cheek. “I wasn’t teasing you about your freckles. Indeed, I do mean to count them, every one.” Just then the animals burst into a dreadful roaring, and the Viscount looked away. Mignon, considering the location of various of her freckles, could only be glad the moment had passed.

  It was the elephant that had started the uproar, by battering his strong trunk and wicked tusks against the iron-banded bars of his cage. Panic swept quickly through the crowd, and the fear that Chunee with his great strength might let loose the whole menagerie to terrorize the neighborhood. With grim efficiency, the Viscount hustled Mignon outside.

  “Good heavens!” she gasped, for the elephant’s angry bellows were perfectly audible even in the street. “Byron wants that creature for a butler? What happened to anger it?”

  “Chunee is generally very docile except in the rutting season, when he becomes increasingly irritable each year.” Ivor’s lips twitched. “It is not a condition reserved to elephants.”

  Seeking rather desperately for any means by which she might avoid the Viscount’s gaze, Mignon reached for her reticule. “Ivor!” she gasped, for it no longer hung from her wrist. “I’ve lost my reticule.”

  “Was there anything of value in it?” Lord Jeffries appeared not to notice that, in the excitement of the moment, she had used his first name.

  “A few shillings, nothing more.” Mignon winced at the noise of the milling crowd. “It is no great loss, I suppose. All this excitement has given me a headache. Would you mind taking me home?”

  The Viscount hesitated, and she thought he might refuse. “I had thought you were made of stronger stuff, Miss Montague.” He glanced at the building they had just left. “It is some consolation, I suppose, that we have doubtless lost our shadow. No doubt Crump will think I deliberately provoked Chunee so that he might be trapped inside.”

  Mignon had not lied; her head ached so abominably that there was a roaring in her ears. Thus when the Viscount spoke again, words of incredible sweetness, she glanced at him with bewilderment, sure that she had not heard him right. “It doesn’t signify,” murmured Ivor, for her distress was apparent. “I hope the day may come, Miss Montague, when you listen by choice to all the various things that I have to say to you.”

  * * * *

  Lord Jeffries had greatly underestimated both Crump’s dedication and his agility. The Runner had indeed trailed his quarry to Exeter ‘Change, but he had not followed them into the menagerie. He secretly harbored violent antipathy for the prize elephant housed there, a ferocious-looking beast that had been brought from Bombay in 1809. Instead the Runner leaned against the side of a building and chewed contemplatively on his pipe stem while the Viscount and Miss Montague amused themselves within.

  Crump had a great deal to mull over, and it was no easy task to make order of the various seemingly unconnected details that danced through his mind. There was Warwick, who had possessed not only forged banknotes and an uncharitable character but also a passion for his Regent’s wife, Princess Caroline, which was the means by which Lady Bligh had blackmailed him into signing Leda Langtry’s release from Newgate. Had Warwick been murdered by his valet, as was so baldly suggested in the Apocalypse? If so, where did that leave Leda? Those footprints surrounding the well where Mary Elphinstone’s body was found had been made by shoes that Crump had recently found hidden in Leda’s home, with the mud intact. The pieces were falling into place, and with a precision that seemed a trifle too pat. Crump had a strong aversion to being made a dupe.

  As Crump pondered the progress of his investigation, he followed the progress of Lord Jeffries and Miss Montague along The Strand. They were far too engrossed in one another to take any heed of him. The handkerchief he had recently found appeared to be no part of the Viscount’s wardrobe. Nor could he link it to Willie Fitzwilliam, who was far too scruffy to own so elegant a scrap.

  Unhappily, Crump considered the Baroness. If Jeffries was guilty of complicity in robbery, as it very much appeared, there was little hope that Miss Montague was not similarly involved. One need only see the girl’s face when she looked at the Viscount to see that her emotions were seriously engaged. Crump didn’t care to think of Dulcie’s reaction were her
niece to be taken up for trial.

  Nor was Mignon the only member of Dulcie’s retinue whose behavior had roused the Runner’s interest. Just that morning, on the theory that anyone exiting the home of the devious Lady Bligh was worth watching, he had followed Miss Montague’s brother to a rendezvous in Hyde Park. There he had overheard the Honorable Maurice make a passionate declaration to a stunning lady with dark hair and an enviable figure.

  Crump stepped behind the thick trunk of an old and barren oak tree as his quarry approached a stately mansion in St. James’s Square; watched as Miss Montague sped with unladylike haste up the steps, almost colliding in the doorway with an impeccably dressed gentleman. The Runner’s eyes narrowed as Lord Jeffries and Lady Bligh’s caller, deep in idle conversation, passed him by. It was not the least curious that Beau Brummell should call upon the Baroness, but it was startling indeed to see so disturbed an expression on the Beau’s face.

  Chapter 21

  The Royal Patent Theatre at Drury Lane had seen no small excitement in recent years, from the fire in 1809 that raged with such fury that it illuminated Lincoln’s Inn Fields with the brightness of midday to the debut only last summer of a morose and ugly little actor named Edmund Kean whose dramatic abilities took London by storm.

  This evening, too, the theatre was crowded, even without the inducement of the bewitching Eliza Vestries displaying her elegant legs in the role of Macheath. The subscription boxes were filled with royalty, including the Regent himself; members of the quality who had elected to spend autumn in town; and the demimonde. Prostitutes turned the Green Room into a veritable hunting ground, as well as the lobby, where loitered procuresses shepherding herds of innocent-looking girls. In “Fop’s Alley,” young gentlemen gossiped and strolled; in the saloon, Crump idly lounged, his bright eye alert for pretty pickpockets, his services procured for a guinea a night.

  Crump was not the only representative of Bow Street to grace Drury Lane tonight. Sir John was a prominent, if reluctant, member of the party in Lady Bligh’s box. “I’d give a great deal to know why you enticed me here,” he said.

  “Enticed you, John?” The Baroness wore a revealing gown with traces of the Greek influence in its Ionic sleeves and the palmette border at its hemline. Her golden curls were caught up in a Grecian knot, and disposed about her lissome person was a fortune in rubies. “Have you no curiosity? Willie is a brilliant dramatist, whatever else he may be.” She smiled. “Too, dear John, I thought it would benefit you to experience a taste of family life.”

  Sir John withheld reply. The antics of the family Bligh bore closer resemblance to the capering of a dozen chattering monkeys than to any model of domestic tranquility. He glanced at Mignon, demure and withdrawn in her gown of white satin and jaconet muslin, and wondered what Dulcie found in that quiet little creature to cause her unease. His gaze then moved to an opposite box where Maurice, staggering in a violet satin frockcoat, white satin waistcoat and breeches, the whole enlivened with jeweled buttons and gold and green embroidery, was deep in animated conversation with a dark-haired lady. As he watched, Lord Barrymore entered the box and bowed to the woman before speaking to his friend.

  “Maurice has more hair than sense.” Dulcie glanced at her silent niece. “I fear it is a common failing in the Montagues. But we shall speak no more of that just now. Tell me, John, do you recall the Chevalier d’Eon, whose sex was so long a matter of debate? The Chevalier was not only a distinguished member of the French diplomatic corps, but he excelled at dueling. He also posed most successfully as a woman during negotiations with Empress Elizabeth of Russia.”

  “The Chevalier toured English towns and watering places as a woman fencer until wounded during a duel in, I believe, 1796. Is there a purpose to this conversation, Dulcie?”

  “Must a conversation have a purpose? Cannot one talk for the sheer pleasure of it?” She leaned against his arm. “I meant only to point out to you the efficacy of clever disguise.”

  Whose disguise? wondered Sir John, but Dulcie’s soft body was warm against his, and her heady perfume was in his nostrils, and his effort at coherent speech resulted only in a groan.

  Beside Miss Montague sat Viscount Jeffries, stunningly handsome in his coat of blue superfine and white marcella waistcoat. “You are very quiet,” he murmured. “Have I offended you?”

  Mignon smoothed her white kid gloves, well aware of the distinguishing preference signaled by Ivor’s presence at her side and of what the world must think. “Not at all,” she replied, and hoped her face did not betray the effort necessary to maintain that cool tone. She looked across the auditorium at her brother. “Tell me, Lord Jeffries, do you know anything of a Mrs. Harrington-Smythe?”

  “Is that what she calls herself?” Ivor quirked a brow. “I’m afraid I don’t, Miss Montague, and neither should you.”

  Mignon frowned. From something Maurice had said, she had thought Mrs. Harrington-Smythe to be no stranger to Polite Society. “Are you saying,” she demanded, “that she is a—”

  “Ladybird, pretty horsebreaker, high-flyer, take your pick. You see what a broadening of your horizons may result from association with me?”

  To the relief of both Mignon and Sir John, Willie bounced into the box. He sank down beside the Baroness. “Witness me all a-tremble! The play is about to begin.” Sir John gazed upon the young man, pale and tremulous with excitement, and wondered for what incomprehensible purpose Lady Bligh encouraged him. It was due to Dulcie’s influence that the theatre was filled to overflowing with not only commoners but also every member of the ton who remained in town, from Brummell to the wicked Duke of Queensbury.

  “Don’t fret, Willie,” soothed the Baroness, and patted his hand. “Your play shall have as tremendous a success as Timour the Tartar, the play in which real horses trod the stage of Covent Garden for the first time.” She lowered her voice. “And you might bear in mind that for my efforts payment is still due.”

  “I’ve done all you wished,” he protested, “even to the announcements. Jesse has been kept incognito, though I have been plagued on all sides to reveal the name of my principal.”

  “You would have him, despite my advice.” Lady Bligh gazed about the theatre, noting the decorations in salmon pink, the burnished gold ornaments and crimson upholstery, and then, with little more enthusiasm, Mignon. “Ah well, I’ve done the best I can.”

  Miss Montague had so much to occupy her thoughts that she scarcely noted when the play began. Chief among those perplexing matters was the theft of her reticule. The purse had been returned to her later the same day by Charity with the mumbled explanation that it had been left by a child. No child, thought Mignon unhappily, had penned the note she’d found inside. One could not make one’s problems disappear by simply ignoring them, it seemed.

  The curtain rose to display a masterpiece of scenic art. Clouds painted in semitransparent colors on framed, stretched linen rose diagonally by way of a winding machine. Behind the clouds rose mountains, and in the foreground lay a sand pit covered with moss and lichen. Thunder rattled, lightning flashed, and a pale moon rose. Willie’s moment had come.

  The audience sat rapt through the melodrama, which combined such disparate elements as Satan portrayed by a chef de cuisine, and a teapot, milk jug and cup which executed a pas de trois while spoons and forks danced around them as figurantes. The hero played expertly on musical glasses and suffered an unfortunate addiction to apricot tarts; the heroine served as a scullery maid; and a large Newfoundland dog was in the habit of biting Satan in the seat of his pants. Even the Chief Magistrate laughed himself into stitches, while Lady Bligh expressed a vast appreciation for a half ruined Moorish castle and a wish to use a certain temple of glowworms at her next rout.

  Throughout it all Miss Montague sat silent, her green eyes riveted to the stage. Only when the curtain descended did she make a sound, and that was merely a soft little expulsion of breath. With a flourishing bow, Jesse Saint-Cyr retired through one of the doors, with
brass knockers on them, which stood always open upon the stage.

  “He is no William Charles Macready,” observed the Baroness, “but I suppose that he will do.” Willie did not argue the point, being overwhelmed by enthusiastic applause. With fluttering hands, he screwed his monocle into one eye socket, where it did not long stay, being quickly dislodged by the restless hopping of his brows.

  Lady Bligh’s box was soon crowded with appreciative spectators, among them Beau Brummell, whose approval was all the more valuable for being restrained, Lord Barrymore, and Maurice. It was not difficult, under cover of the confusion, for Mignon to slip away.

  Maurice may have appeared a ridiculous figure, his eyes faintly bulging and his breath constricted by the tightness of his cravat; but, despite his dizzying infatuation with the elusive Mrs. Harrington-Smythe, the Honorable Mr. Montague was not entirely a fool. Additionally, he had the benefit of a lifelong acquaintance with his sister. It was no more than two shakes of a lamb’s tail before Maurice realized Mignon was gone.

  He looked around the crowded box. “I swear I’ll wring her neck.”

  “Your shirt points are sadly wilted,” observed the Baroness. “In fact, nephew, you look a regular quiz. Do you not mean to congratulate Willie on the success of his play?”

  “I mean to take my sister back to Yorkshire and lock her away!” Maurice looked at his aunt’s stern face. “I would never have allowed her to come to you, Aunt, had I thought you would encourage her rash behavior. Think of the scandal! “

  “If there is to be scandal,” Lady Bligh said calmly, “it will be of your making. I suggest you be seated and drink some lemonade.” With a forceful hand she pushed him down in the chair. Maurice bitterly regretted the unkind fate that had brought Mignon to London. The family had thought her restored to her senses, but clearly she had none.