The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy)

by Maggie MacKeever

  Ah. Did he glimpse a quiver? Indicative of some strong emotion? Perhaps, even, fear?

  She should have been afraid, in light of his reputation. Angel let her go. “Where are we?” she asked, rubbing her wrist.

  Ordinary? He had thought the lady ordinary? There was nothing in the least bit ordinary about the glorious golden voice that curled his jaded toes. “We have strayed a considerable distance from the festivities. Across the room is the west door, which will take you back to the grand staircase.”

  Came a sound from the hallway, as if distant doors opened and closed. “Kiss me!” Diana demanded, and flung her arms around his neck.

  Angel had long since passed the stage of kissing every female who asked him. Females, ladylike and not, were forever putting themselves in his path, and if once he had done his best to oblige them all, he was more discerning in these his later years. Still, he found it difficult to resist that voice. Not to mention the warm body fitted so snugly against his. Angel let his walking stick fall to the floor and slid his arm around her waist.

  He had no sooner touched his lips to hers than the hallway door crashed open. Angel raised his head. An Egyptian pharaoh stood on the threshold.

  The pharaoh stepped into the room. “I am searching for Diana. It would seem that I have had some success.”

  Angel felt her body stiffen. “Find yourself another. This Diana is with me.” He dropped one hand to the hilt of his smallsword.

  The golden mask turned toward him. Time stretched out interminably before the pharaoh spoke again. “I have interrupted. My apologies.” The door closed behind him. Diana let out her breath.

  Angel loosened her grip on his sleeve. “I shan’t plague you with questions. A lady has the right to change her mind. You mustn’t clutch me quite so hard. My valet will fall into hysterics if you tear this lace. Much better! No, no, you must not leave me. The pharaoh may return. Now where were we? Ah, yes. ‘Queen and huntress, chaste and fair. Thou that mak’st a day of night. . .’ ” He raised her fingers to his lips.

  She snatched her hand away. “You, sir, have had too much to drink.”

  He smiled at her. “Have I? It seemed the perfect amount.”

  The young woman blinked. Angel’s smile often had that effect, drawing as it did attention to the most kissable — and undoubtedly most kissed — mouth in London. “Are you flirting with me, sir?”

  “I believe I must be. Do you mind?”

  “I daresay I wouldn’t. But you might. I’m not the sort of female—”

  “Nonsense.” In Angel’s considerable experience, under the proper circumstances, every female was. “You are attending a masquerade. None of us are ourselves tonight. And I owe you a proper kiss. No, don’t argue! I have a reputation to uphold.”

  She opened her mouth as if to protest. Angel swooped, launching a sensual assault with lips and tongue.

  He was expert at kissing. With so much practice, how could he not have been? He drew back to salute the corner of Diana’s mouth, brushed his lips across hers, once and then again; teased and tormented and tantalized with nips and nibbles and caresses, earlobe to breast, throat to chin, until she vibrated like a plucked harp string.

  The masks were deuced awkward. Angel reached to untie hers. “No,” she murmured, and drew his mouth back to hers.

  Very well, the mask could stay. Her armament, however, was damnably in the way.

  Angel divested Diana of her quiver. She tossed aside his plumed hat, grasped his shoulders, rose up on her tip-toes and kissed him as if nothing else mattered in the world.

  Moments passed — how many, Angel could not be certain; he had been distracted by a hot sharp stab of desire. He became aware of his surroundings only when Diana placed her hands against her hands against his chest and shoved.

  Reluctantly, he released her. “ ‘Lay thy bow of pearl apart, and thy crystal-shining quiver. . .’ ”

  She backed away from him. “Do you recall what happened to Acteon, sir?”

  Acteon? Who the devil was Acteon? Something to do with stags, thought Angel, but could not remember what. As he was wrestling with his memory, Diana snatched up her bow and quiver and slipped out the west door.

  Angel retrieved his various belongings from the floor where he had dropped them, readjusted his wig and mask.

  What an extraordinary female.

  He was almost tempted to try and find out her name.

  Chapter Three

  And yet a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an adventure of any lively description. —Lord Byron

  Maddie glanced at her reflection. The dark circles beneath her eyes matched the grey stripes in her gown, result of a sleepless night spent trying to convince herself that her imagination had run riot as result of overindulgence in spontaneity and sparkling wine. Gingerly, due to the headache throbbing at the base of her skull, she opened the door into the hall.

  It was Maddie’s custom of a morning to visit the schoolroom, one of a series of large chambers at the top of her father’s impressive four-story brick house in Portman Square, where the juvenile members of the family were kept tucked away except on rare occasions when they were dressed up in their finest and trotted out to be inspected by their grandpapa. If the furnishings seemed shabby to her grown-up eyes, Maddie still found these rooms the most welcoming in this house.

  Certainly their occupants were. Benjie and Penn greeted her with identical broad smiles. They were identical overall, from their stubborn cowlicks and mischievous expressions to the circumstance that each wrote with his left hand. Their tutor, an earnest ginger-haired young man, said “G-good morning, Mrs. Tate,” and blushed. The family ignored Matthew’s stammers and blushes. He’d been with the boys since they were very young.

  The twins both spoke at once. Today, Benjie informed his mama, they were discussing Mr. Henry Shrapnel’s invention of a hollow cannon ball filled with shot that burst in midair. Since Matthew mixed the study of ancient history and languages with modern developments in science and industry, one as often found his pupils studying Monsieur Lemarck’s theory of evolution (Monsieur believed that giraffes developed long necks as result of stretching to reach the higher branches of trees) as pondering the Trojan War.

  Maddie murmured a polite response. In the presence of her sons she felt like an ordinary hen that one day wakened to discover a pair of exotic peafowl in her nest. Prior to their father’s death, she hadn’t spent much time in their presence. Mr. Tate had disapproved of what he called maternal coddling.

  Mr. Tate had disapproved of many things. He resembled Maddie’s father in that regard as well as others, including their shared belief that women should be seldom seen and less often heard.

  The twins were still explaining missiles. “B-boys!” interrupted Matthew, and blushed again. “A little less graphic, if you p-please. Ladies in general do not care to hear about arms and legs b-being shot off.”

  “Fiddle!” protested Penn. “Mama don’t care about such stuff.”

  “Mama doesn’t care,” corrected Maddie. “However, most ladies have more tender sensibilities.” The tutor awarded her a quick, shy smile.

  Maddie’s father wanted to replace Matthew with someone more sophisticated. Maddie was resisting the suggestion, despite being scowled at and berated and told she didn’t know the difference between prunes and peas. The boys had experienced one unexpected loss. It would be beyond cruel if their tutor, of whom they were fond, also vanished from their lives.

  For all their similarity in appearance, the boys differed in temperament. Penn was more bookish, less bold, took things more to heart. Benjie was more sporting-mad, less studious, more inclined to get into scrapes.

  There had been too many scrapes since they arrived in town. Maddie joined them at the scarred table “Benjie. Is there something I should know?”

  “No.” His face in profile, Benjie did not meet her gaze.

  “But yes. Look at me
.”

  He turned toward her, revealing a blackened eye. “It wasn’t Benjie’s fault,” protested Penn.

  “As to that,” said Matthew, “I b-believe the b-blame more fairly rests with the stable boy.”

  “It ain’t so bad,” Benjie muttered. “I popped his cork.”

  Maddie touched his cheek. “I’m pleased you gave such a good account of yourself. May one inquire why?”

  The twins exchanged glances. Matthew cleared his throat. “It concerns comments m-made about Mr. Tate’s accident.”

  Benjie scowled. “You said you wouldn’t tell.”

  “I haven’t t-told your grandfather,” retorted Matthew. “Which by rights I should, this being his house, and that b-being his stable lad. But you’ve no cause to be k-keeping secrets from your mother. The move to London has not been easy on her either, as you would realize if you thought about anything other than yourself.”

  Benjie flushed. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  “Apology accepted.” Maddie struggled with an impulse to pull her pugnacious offspring onto her lap. “Tell me what the stable boy did to put you in a tweak.”

  Penn was hovering. “It was what he said. Which was that Papa was a pompous puffguts, and if he hadn’t stuck his nose in where he shouldn’t, he wouldn’t have broke his head.”

  “And then I drew the clunch’s claret, which is what he deserves for telling whoppers.” Benjie chewed his cheek. “They were whoppers, weren’t they, Mama?”

  That depended on one’s definition of a ‘whopper’. The boys’ father had tumbled off a roof whilst demonstrating to his carpenter the proper way to hammer in a nail. No one had suggested outright that the carpenter might have pushed him, though Maddie suspected the idea may have occurred. There had been moments — were she truthful, many moments — when Maddie had been tempted to shove Mr. Tate herself.

  And what did it say about her marriage that she referred to her deceased spouse as ‘Mr. Tate’?

  It hadn’t been unhappy, she supposed, as marriages went. Maddie had even enjoyed those moments when her husband wasn’t treating her like a comfortable old chair in which he sometimes liked to perch.

  Perching had occurred less and less often after the arrival of their sons. Maddie conceded that the twins might be offspring enough for any man.

  Benjie was waiting for her answer. She dared ruffle his hair. “Your papa died of a fall from the conservatory roof. I’m sure he would rather have not. In any event, you can’t go about brawling with everyone who makes unkind remarks.”

  “That’s what Matthew said.” Benjie didn’t seem convinced. “He also said I should avoid the stables in the future, because it wasn’t fitting for me to be rolling about in the muck, and that if Sir Owen learned of it, he’d scold you for my conduct, which I think dashed unfair!”

  The tutor winced. “I suggested there might be b-better ways to d-deal with a stressful situation. In consequence of his actions, B-Benjamin has been set to studying Socrates’ thoughts on justice, injustice, and appropriate response.”

  “I will leave you to it.” Before Maddie left the room, she gave both boys a quick kiss. If at nine years of age they considered themselves too old for demonstrations of affection, in this rare instance she put her own needs first. In passing, she removed a peppermint drop from the covered candy dish and popped it in her mouth.

  Maddie closed the schoolroom door behind her, wishing for the hundredth time that she and the boys and Matthew might have stayed at Meadowmount. But her father insisted it wouldn’t do. Sir Owen had been named the boys’ guardian until they came of age. Was her father a less interfering person—

  Alas, he was not, and so here they were in London, the boys engaging in fisticuffs while she flirted with strange chevaliers and witnessed mayhem being done.

  If she had seen mayhem done.

  Sometimes Maddie wanted to plant someone a leveler herself.

  The sunny breakfast room was deserted, save for the footman stationed at the sideboard. Maddie selected poached eggs on toast accompanied by cold ham; collected the newspapers and chose a chair. Sir Owen believed in being well-informed. She could peruse the Morning Chronicle, the leading Whig daily, much of its content supplied by journalists labeled as radicals; the Examiner, which had published a diatribe against the Prince Regent that resulted in the writer, Leigh Hunt, and the editor, his brother John, being sentenced to two years in gaol; the Morning Post, a Tory publication ever since Prinny took a share in the paper under the terms of a libel settlement several years past; or The Times, which to its credit refrained from slandering anyone not in public or political life.

  Maddie knew a great deal about Tories and Whigs, due to Sir Owen, who was the former and prone to make his unflattering opinion of the latter known.

  The city parks, from all accounts, were a-bustle with preparations for the Great Fair. The Examiner reported that five hundred men had been set to work to produce the ‘most brilliant fireworks ever seen in this country.’ The Morning Post promised spectacles of unparalleled splendor. Lamenting ‘Alas! To what are we sinking?’ the Times — amid ominous references to debauchery, drunkenness, and abominations — condemned the gingerbread stalls, the facilities for selling ale and gin, and the scanty precautions against the intrusion of a violent mob.

  In a change of pace, the wife of a certain butcher had delivered her twenty-sixth child.

  At last Maddie found a description of the Burlington House masquerade. Princess Caroline, perhaps due to her husband’s efforts, hadn’t numbered among the guests; Caro Lamb had drunk more than was prudent and persuaded a Guards officer to strip off his scarlet cloak. There was no mention of a hostile encounter between an Egyptian pharaoh and an English king.

  Maddie shoved aside her eggs and toast and ham. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing, result of those six glasses of iced champagne. Maybe she hadn’t seen murder, or at least mayhem, committed; hadn’t been pursued by a pharaoh and rescued by a handsome rogue — she assumed he was handsome; he certainly possessed a splendid jaw and chin — who charmed her so thoroughly that she quite forgot the pharaoh, and kissed her so well she barely recalled her own name.

  Chapter Four

  There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women who deserve them. —Jane Austen

  “As I recall my mythology,” said Lord Saxe, “Diana turned Acteon into a stag. Result of him seeing her naked, I believe.”

  “It was Artemis, not Diana,” interjected the third occupant of the study. Both Kane and Angel looked at the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Castlereagh. “Artemis was bathing in the woods when Acteon happened upon her. Naturally, he stopped and stared. She punished this impudence by forbidding him to speak. When he heard his hunting party approaching, Acteon called out to them and as a result was changed into a stag, at which point his hounds set on him and tore him to pieces. Now may we please return to the business at hand?” The Burlington House bal masque was a matter of interest at No. 16 St. James’s Square.

  “One of Diana’s nymphs, sworn to chastity.” Angel had put aside his satin and lace in favor of fawn-colored inexpressibles, brown coat, gleaming Hessian boots. “I am fortunate to have survived. As are you both fortunate, for otherwise I would have been unable to answer your so-urgent summons today.”

  Lord Castlereagh was not prone to amusement, an unsurprising circumstance given the various difficulties that beset him. Instrumental in negotiating the quadruple alliance between the United Kingdom, Austria, Russia and Prussia against marauding France, he was now responsible for preventing the Grand Coalition from falling apart as result of internal subterfuges and squabbles. At the same time, Napoleon had to be kept under close watch; even exiled on Elba, the Emperor continued to glean information not only from the countless visitors who flocked to see the Corsican in his cage but also the major newspapers that kept him abreast of current events. Meanwhile agents from other countries spied on him, and on each other, and contrived p
lots to abduct him, or each other, or both, such political conspiracies offering ample opportunity for any adventurer, liar, or impostor who cared to try his luck.

  The beleaguered Foreign Secretary contemplated Angel. “I have failed to acknowledge that it is generous of you to honor us with your presence,” he said.

  “So it is,” responded Angel. “However, I had nothing better to do.”

  Kane elevated an eyebrow. “The divine Daphne has begun to pall?”

  Angel wandered to the bookshelves. “I passed a charming evening at Burlington House. I believe I danced. I must have been bosky. Even, drunk as a wheelbarrow. Have you ever asked yourself, how does a wheelbarrow get drunk?”

  “I ask myself,” said Kane, because Lord Castlereagh appeared to be on the verge of an annoyed rejoinder, “why you are leading us up the garden path.”

  “Because I can,” retorted Angel. “But since you insist: as I have already told you, I encountered nothing more remarkable than a Diana running through the halls. She demanded that I kiss her, and I did. We will go on much better if you tell me what’s afoot.”

  “Fanny Arbuthnot,” Lord Castlereagh reminded him. “You are acquainted with the lady, I believe?”

  Angel searched his quixotic memory. “We enjoyed a brief friendship, as I recall.”

  “Fanny attended the masquerade,” said Kane. “She failed to return home. There will be a pretty commotion if she doesn’t do so soon.”

  Angel could well imagine. Fanny Arbuthnot was a friend of the Prince Regent’s provoking wife, and featured often in the Whig press. Did she disappear, Prinny would doubtless be blamed, as he was already blamed for causing Princess Caroline’s countless indiscretions on the grounds that he had sent his mistress to receive his bride on her arrival in the country, and spent his wedding night drunk, and more recently prevented her meeting with the visiting sovereigns, not to mention curtailing her visits with her daughter, with whom Fanny Arbuthnot often acted as a go-between.