Lady Sherry and the Highwayman

by Maggie MacKeever

  Sherry looked down at Prinny, who sprawled dejectedly at her feet. “You had better come along with me,” she said. The dog would prove a diversion in the drawing room, which might be a very good thing.

  Prinny greeted this invitation with enthusiasm and a great damp lick of Sherry’s hand. Already regretting her generous impulse, she descended the stair.

  Andrew was not in the drawing room. Perhaps he had grown tired of waiting and had taken his leave. Perhaps he had grown weary of her altogether and had been relieved when her failure to put in an appearance had given him a reprieve.

  He had taken her in disgust, Sherry thought gloomily. And he would make it so obvious that she would have to withdraw her request for bride clothes. At which point they would all go to prison, because Ned would overturn the apple cart, as he was threatening to do daily, because Sir Christopher was taking his sweet time in handing over the money and Ned was made very cross by the delay.

  Perhaps she should simply ask her fiancé to lend her the money. Sherry paced around the perimeters of the drawing room. Hadn’t Lavinia said repeatedly that Andrew was blessed with an income of ten thousand pounds a year? But any prospective bridegroom would want to know why his intended needed five hundred pounds, and she could not explain.

  Nor could she hope to repay the loan within a reasonable time. Bride clothes it must be. At least the money she was attempting to wheedle from Sir Christopher was her own.

  Sherry had just decided to return to her book room when Lord Viccars walked into the drawing room. She was to have no escape. Escape? Odd to think of Andrew in that manner. Odd and unfair. “Prinny! Pray get down. Lord Viccars does not wish dog hairs all over his nice coat.”

  Lord Viccars wanted no dog hairs not only on his nice blue coat but on his fashionable yellow breeches and buff waistcoat as well. Nor did he wish his gleaming top boots to be scuffed and drooled upon. With exasperation, he fended off the hound and watched unappreciatively as Prinny stretched out with a great sigh on the sofa where his mama had so recently lounged. Then he glanced again at Sherry. “My dear, I hope you don’t mean to introduce hounds into our drawing room!” he said, and smiled.

  “Our—” Sherry blushed. “You have spoken with Christopher.’’

  “I have,” Andrew murmured as he took her hand. The conversation with Sir Christopher had left him strangely out-of-curl.

  Of course he wished to marry Sherry. Had he not been waiting impatiently these past several months for her to set their wedding date? Why, then, this sudden wish that he had discovered Captain Toby’s hiding place so that he, too, could now go to ground?

  Sherry was made uncomfortable by her fiancé’s silence, his intent gaze. She withdrew her hand from his. “You are angry with me. I’m sorry. I had thought— You had said— But if you have changed your mind and no longer wish to marry me, you must say so at once.”

  “How absurd you are.” Andrew firmly banished his doubts along with a nostalgic memory of the fair Marguerite. “I was never more pleased with anything in all my life. It’s just that this is all so sudden. You took me by surprise.”

  Sherry smiled. “I think that’s supposed to be my sentiment, Lord Viccars, as I am succumb to maidenly confusion and the like. I’ve made a rare muddle of this business, haven’t I? Since I have never before decided that I wished to be married, I am sadly ignorant of how to go on.”

  She was sadly ignorant of many things. Unlike another red-haired female of his acquaintance. But one did not seek similar virtues in wife and ladybird.

  Sherry would learn what he liked and wished. For now, he must take care not to frighten her. “I don’t think I care to be addressed as ‘Lord Viccars’ across the breakfast cups, my love. My Christian name is Andrew, as you know very well.”

  Across the breakfast cups? At the image thus conjured—specifically, intimacies leading up to seeing his lordship across the breakfast cups—Sherry’s cheeks flamed. “I thought you had left. When I came into the room and found you were not here. It was good of you to call. We have not seen you for some days.”

  No, Sherry had not seen him. She, too, had been subject to his neglect even though it had been caused by his efforts on her behalf. Not for diversion had Andrew visited such locations as Petticoat Lane on the boundary of the City, where one might buy anything from shoe buckles to coffins; and the British Museum, where one could admire all manner of displays, from Egyptian mummies to Aztec turquoise mosaic work to enameled Chinese cocks. Nor had he derived any great entertainment from sitting for hours in the coffeehouse across from the Bow Street police headquarters or from rubbing shoulders with such strangely named individuals as Tinker Tom and African Sal and Billingsgate Moll. However, he had gleaned information of interest about which he had wished to speak with Sir Christopher, and it was for that reason he’d come today to this house. But no sooner had he stepped across the threshold than things had gotten hopelessly muddled, and the capture of a certain notorious highwayman—even his desire to help Lady Sherry overcome her creative difficulties—now seemed of only secondary importance.

  Even now Andrew could not believe his good fortune. He gazed ruefully at his bride-to-be. “My dear, how fine you look today,” he murmured, and it was true. Sherry’s morning dress had puffed sleeves and pretty frills at neck and wrist. It was even unusually free of ink stains, as Sherry was herself.

  Lord Viccars concluded that she had taken especial pains with her appearance today on his behalf. This effort boded well, he thought as he drew his fiancée with him toward the settee, forcibly evicted Prinny, then with equal masterfulness ensured that she seated herself by his side. “I had a most interesting conversation with your brother. It may be very strange in me, but I rather wish you’d broken the happy intelligence of our forthcoming nuptials to me first instead of to him. Therefore let us make believe that you have not yet spoken with Chris. You are going to speak with him after you have spoken with me first. Now, what have you to say to me?”

  Sherry wondered what Andrew would think if she said nothing at all but fled the room instead. She might well have done so were her hand not clasped firmly in his and her feet imprisoned by Prinny’s sprawling bulk.

  His lordship was waiting for an answer. She really must say something to the man. “I have a great regard for you! A decided partiality! I am truly sensible of the honor you do me in asking me to be your wife. And— Oh, Lord— Andrew! I don’t know what you wish me to say!” she wailed with such anguish that Prinny roused and tried to console her by climbing into her lap. Lord Viccars dealt with this distraction by bodily evicting the hound from the drawing room and closing the door.

  Lady Sherry regarded her fiancé with reluctant admiration. “Gracious! You are very strong.”

  Andrew brushed dog hairs off his jacket, then grasped Sherry’s hands and pulled her to her feet. “I am a brute to tease you so,” he said, and bent and kissed her lips. It was a very gentle kiss designed not to alarm, the sort of embrace that rapidly palled, and he very quickly drew away. “Much as I dislike to leave you, I must do so, my love. There is much to arrange. I fear my sisters will be plaguing you as soon as they have the news; they’ll want to know how you brought this confirmed old bachelor up to snuff. Don’t tell them anything. Let them guess! But you’ll know how to deal with them. Tell Cecilia you’ll agree to one betrothal party but with only a few hundred guests.”

  “A few hundred!” echoed Lady Sherry, but Lord Viccars had already stepped into the hall, there to adroitly avoid a collision with Prinny, who lurked in hopes of having his revenge.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marguerite paused by an E.O. table, watching the gyrations of the little ball. She looked especially lovely this evening in an Empire gown of India gauze shot with silver, which displayed substantial areas of back and bosom, charming the beholder by revealing everything it pretended to conceal. Charming the gentlemen beholders, at any rate; the ladies tended to be a little spiteful because Marguerite had outdone them all in ne
ar nakedness. The gown was embellished with a vandyked, scalloped hem and festoons of flowers. Marguerite carried a fan of pierced horn leaves and wore an astonishing amount of jewelry, as well as flowers in her hair.

  The E.O. table did not tempt her, and Marguerite moved on through the suite of apartments on the first floor of this discreet establishment in St. James’s Square, which was furnished with many chairs, tables, and stands for the punters’ rouleaux and their wineglasses. All around her, games of chance were underway, hazard and piquet and whist and macao. A faro bank was in operation at one end of the largest salon. Marguerite hesitated only briefly. She had been punting against the bank all the evening, losing on the one side what she gained on the other so that she had merely broken even after several hours of play. She would have some dinner now and a glass or two of claret, and then return to the tables in the hope that her luck had changed.

  Marguerite descended the stair to the ground-floor chamber where the dining tables had been set up. Entrance to this establishment was by invitation only. The food was tolerable, as was the wine, and the play was known to be fair. As she passed through the hallway, the butler was opening the door to a late-arriving guest, a slight man with shrewd, disdainful features, dark hair disheveled a la Titus, and carefully cultivated side-whiskers. The high points of his shirt collar brushed his earlobes and framed his chin. He wore a brown-spotted silk coat and breeches, pale pink silk stockings, a pale silk waistcoat with an overall pattern in rose, shiny pumps, and a frilled shirt.

  Marguerite smiled at this vision of sartorial elegance. “Bon jour, mon ami! You did not tell me to expect you here tonight.”

  The man turned, raised the quizzing glass that hung on a black ribbon around his neck, and subjected Marguerite to its scrutiny. Saucily, she stuck out her tongue. He let the quizzing glass fall, brought forth a small enameled box, and inhaled snuff—Martinique, from Frebourg and Freyer’s—in an intricate, one-handed style that he had copied from Beau Brummell. Only when he had finished and tucked away the snuffbox did he speak. “I expected to find you in a tweak, my pet. At the very least vowing vengeance and tearing at your hair. And why ain’t you? Or do you know something the rest of us don’t?”

  Marguerite frowned. She had no notion of what her friend was talking about. Why should she tear at her hair when she had no cause for complaint other than her perennially pinched purse.

  She recalled that Jeremy had a perverse sense of humor. “What are you playing at now?” she asked.

  “You truly don’t know? Sometimes the extent of your ignorance amazes me. We can’t talk here.” Jeremy drew her some distance down the hallway into a small anteroom furnished with a couple of chairs, a table, and a clock. “I think you had best sit down,” he said as he reached into a pocket of his brown-spotted coat.

  Marguerite obeyed. Jeremy’s sympathetic manner made her more mistrustful yet. He handed her a folded square of paper, then leaned indolently against the wall. Curious, Marguerite unfolded the newspaper announcement and squinted her pretty eyes as she attempted to make out the words—for the fact was that she did not read easily or well.

  Jeremy watched her frown over the newspaper for the space of several clock ticks. It truly amazed him that Marguerite was so unaware. She never read a newspaper, trusting that her friends would enlighten her regarding anything she should know. Well, this information she should know, and it was Jeremy’s duty to enlighten her. He helped himself to another pinch of snuff.

  Whatever might be said about Jeremy—Jeremy Johnston, self-styled man-about-town, known variously to his acquaintances as a man milliner, an encroaching mushroom, a basket scrambler—his acumen was not at fault. It was amazing that Marguerite had not discovered that her protector’s betrothal was official now. All of London was abuzz with the news of Lord Viccars’s forthcoming nuptials.

  Marguerite finally finished reading the news of the betrothal and let the paper drop. “Coquin! Diable! Merde!” she shrieked. “How dare Viccars play fast and loose with me? After all I have done for him. All I have given up! And now he means to conduct himself with conjugal obligation and decorum and cast me off like an old shoe? I won’t have it! Do you hear me, Jeremy?”

  Of course he heard her. It was very likely that every person on the premises heard her. Upon this fact, Jeremy remarked. He did not think Marguerite wished to broadcast the fact of her altered status, especially to those persons who held her vowels—for Marguerite could read and write sufficiently well to set her signature, frequently, on IOUs—and who had been remarkably lenient about payment as long as she was known to be Lord Viccars’s particular friend.

  Marguerite saw the force of this argument. She rose from her chair and began to walk agitatedly up and down the room in unknowing but ironic imitation of the lady responsible for the very great trouble in which Marguerite now found herself.

  Not that Marguerite would have believed Lady Sherry could have problems anywhere near as severe as those that she now faced. Lady Sherry had a brother, a family, and soon she would have a spouse; and did not have to contrive mightily to be beforehand with the world. A different future stretched out before Marguerite, and the bleak prospect turned her perfectly sick. She would be harried by creditors and have bailiffs sleeping in the house—or not, because the house was not hers and Andrew would no doubt evict her. At any rate the constant worry and depression over her perennial financial crises would make her old before her time.

  This horrid thought sent Marguerite hurrying to peer anxiously at her reflection in the looking glass that hung on one wall of the small room. She was relieved to see that she hadn’t aged an entire year in the few moments since Jeremy had brought her the disastrous news.

  Jeremy. Her old friend. Surely he would not desert her now. Marguerite turned to him with a woebegone expression. “I don’t know what is to become of me!” she whispered.

  “Bravo!” responded Jeremy, and clapped his hands. He had enjoyed Marguerite’s performance very much, watched with appreciation the tear that trickled delicately down one perfect cheek. But she now looked very much as if she meant to hurl herself into his arms, and Jeremy didn’t care at all for this idea.

  He was immune to Marguerite’s wiles, to her heady perfume; he was unmoved by her extreme décolletage and her near-naked style of dress. She stepped toward him, and he thought merely that he didn’t want tearstains to ruin his brown-spotted jacket and pink silk waistcoat. “I told you not to put all your eggs in one basket!” he said callously as he opened the door.

  Marguerite followed him into the hallway. “Where are you going?” she wailed. “How can you leave me alone at a time such as this? I have been treated most cruelly, and you walk away. Mon Dieu, I think it very hard!”

  “You have been out-jockeyed, my poppet, and by a bluestocking. It is really infinitely droll. There’s no use glowering at me like that. I ain’t the one who bungled the thing so completely.” Despite his callous remarks, Jeremy was not entirely without heart. He stopped a passing waiter and removed a glass of claret from his tray.

  Marguerite clutched the glass. It would probably not be to her advantage to hurl its contents into her friend’s face. “You might show me a little sympathy. This is a cruel blow. Without Viccars to back me, I don’t know how I am to make a recovery, because my pockets are all to let.” And then she swallowed all the claret in one great gulp, because her ‘friend’ had already walked away.

  Jeremy paused to observe the players at a game of macao, a form of vingt-et-un that called for no particular skill but a very steady nerve, since thousands could change hands in the blinking of an eye. There was nothing to keep him at the table, and he soon passed it by. Unlike Marguerite, Jeremy was not a reckless plunger who could not help succumbing to the fascination of the tables. Play he did when the occasion warranted, and with enviable good luck that was partially accounted for by the fact that Jeremy was very discerning when he sat down at the gaming-table. He had no interest in overcautious players who ke
pt their judgment and their emotions under strict control, but in those who in the excitement of the moment would stake fortunes on a single turn of the card or throw of the dice.

  Jeremy was, in short, that particular sort of social parasite known as a Captain Sharp. He had not been accused of cheating yet, but he could claim a steadily increasing list of reckless young bloods whom he had led astray. Jeremy felt no twinges of conscience about his chosen profession. It was more honorable, and lucrative, than others he could name.

  He turned and looked through the crowd for Marguerite. If she were to come down in the world, then he must come down with her, because it was through their friendship that Jeremy had gained the entrée to such select establishments as these, which were liberally supplied with foolish young bucks waiting to be fleeced. There she was, at the faro table, trying to resolve her pecuniary embarrassments by risking a few pounds she could ill afford to lose.

  Jeremy drew her away. “I think that it is time to utilize the aces you have up your sleeve, my pet.”

  Aces up her sleeve? Marguerite passed a moment in puzzlement before she remembered her boast. “I don’t have any aces up my sleeve,” she said gloomily. “I have thought of all sorts of things, but none were practical. I mean, I don’t know who I could bribe to have Lady Sherry transported or kidnapped. And if I did, my part in it would be bound to come out and Viccars would cast me off anyway. I still do not believe it, Jeremy.” She looked at the newspaper clipping, which she still clutched in one very smudged glove. “He said not a word of it. I might have been given some warning, don’t you think? Instead, I have not seen him for some days, not since he gave me this!” She touched the diamond and emerald necklace at her throat.

  Jeremy’s interest was aroused. A gentleman and would not treat his petite amie like some chance-met member of the muslin company. At the very least, one might anticipate a touching farewell scene. “There’s something dashed smoky here. Viccars has been asking questions all over town and visiting the queerest places, like Bow Street and Petticoat Lane and the British Museum. He’s taken quite an interest in that highwayman fellow who barely avoided having his neck stretched.”