The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy)

by Maggie MacKeever

  While the Morning Post scolded Princess Charlotte for her ‘unnatural’ rebellion, public opinion weighed overwhelmingly against the Regent. Sir Owen could not have been more pleased, save for the matter of certain missing documents.

  Where was Fanny Arbuthnot? Were those bedamned papers in her possession when she sank from sight? Was it because of the documents that she vanished? How many people knew she was in possession of the curst things?

  Maddie reached for a different colored thread, thereby claiming her father’s attention. “What the deuce were you doing at Carlton House?” he demanded. “I suppose you thought I wouldn’t find out.”

  Maddie had supposed nothing of the sort. “ ‘We have a starving population,” she recited; “an overwhelming debt, impoverished landholders, bankrupt traders, soldiers returning home to penury if they make it home at all — while the Regent holds shockingly expensive entertainments at Carlton House.’ It is very sad.”

  Sir Owen regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Who told you to say that?”

  “Lord Maitland. He also said I was only in the gardens, and so it shouldn’t count.” Before Sir Owen could quiz her further, Maddie launched into description: the polygonal ballroom and the covered promenades; the Corinthian temple with its marble bust of the Duke of Wellington; the supper rooms, crammed to their ceilings with delicacies.

  She avoided mentioning the temple of shells, where Angel Jarrow had kissed her, and she had kissed him back.

  Nor did she mention that her bosom was the cynosure of everyone’s eyes.

  Sir Owen left off speculating what Prinny’s tomfoolery was costing the nation, and harrumphed. “You shouldn’t have accepted an invitation without first consulting me, but we will let that pass. So Maitland has an interest. In truth, you could do worse.”

  Maddie was so startled she stuck her needle in her thumb. “Is he not a Tory, sir?”

  “Maitland supports moral reforms, including Catholic emancipation and the abolishment of the African slave trade. It may be to our advantage to have a foot in Prinny’s camp.” Before Maddie could protest that she had no interest in Lord Maitland’s foot or any other part of him, Sir Owen added, “Before you mention Ashcroft, I’ll tell you now that even if you bring him up to scratch, which I don’t anticipate you will, you needn’t hold your breath waiting for me to approve the match.”

  Maddie didn’t need permission to marry, not at her advanced age. However, Sir Owen was the twins’ legal guardian and not beyond putting that circumstance to good use. “To ‘our’ advantage? I have just met the man.”

  “What has that to do with the price of peas?” inquired Sir Owen. “Maitland is in the market for another wife, the first two having died in childbirth.”

  So that was why the marquess had observed her so intently: he had been measuring her breadth of hip with procreation in mind. “You care nothing for me, do you?” Maddie said quietly. “Or what I might and might not want.”

  Since there was no little truth in this observation, Sir Owen harrumphed again, and scolded his daughter for being pert. He went on to speak at length concerning ungrateful offspring who didn’t understand where their duty lay.

  Maddie longed to clamp her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of her father’s voice. She dare not contemplate stolen kisses now, lest he discern the direction of her thoughts and marry her off on the instant, before she could disgrace herself or, more importantly, him.

  “You will show every courtesy to Maitland,” Sir Owen concluded. “Or I will lock you in your room.”

  Maddie already regretted having been polite to Maitland. Better she had kicked him in the shin. “Lord Maitland is not alone in paying me attention,” she informed her father. “I went to Carlton House with Jordan Rhodes, who attended at the Duke of Wellington’s request. You will remember Louise’s brother. He has recently returned from India.”

  Jordan Rhodes? India? This development bore further reflection. Sir Owen added, “I daresay Angel Jarrow was at Carlton House, being as he’s one of Prinny’s set. I cannot fathom why a daughter of mine has taken to rubbing elbows with rogues.”

  Maddie hoped her father didn’t fathom that his daughter might want to rub more than elbows. “Mr. Jarrow inquired after the dog. One meets him everywhere— Mr. Jarrow, that is, not Lappy. If I refused to speak with him, it would cause a great deal of talk.”

  Sir Owen could not argue the point. Still, every paternal instinct shrieked ‘beware’. He squinted at his daughter. “You will not misbehave.”

  “No,” agreed Maddie, with regret she hoped well-hidden. “I will not misbehave.” A servant appeared to announce Mrs. Holloway’s arrival. Maddie gathered up her needlework and escaped.

  Mrs. Holloway was admiring her reflection when Maddie entered the drawing-room. Louise wore a muslin dress today, and a spenser of violet sarsenet; a hat of fine moss straw, shoes of black kid, and a silk parasol. “Sir Owen considers Lord Maitland a promising prospect,” Maddie confided, as she closed the door behind her. “My father isn’t too busy with his political machinations to play matchmaker, alas.”

  Louise abandoned the looking-glass. “Procuring a husband is similar to buying a pig in a poke: you cannot be certain the purchase will prove palatable in the end. But that is beside the point! We’ve had no chance to chat since Prinny’s fête. You went into the gardens with Angel Jarrow. What did he say to you? What did he do?”

  Maddie noted wryly that Louise didn’t ask what Lord Maitland might have said, or done, to her. “You are very curious about Mr. Jarrow. Do you have a partiality there yourself?”

  “Everybody is curious about Mr. Jarrow.” Louise sank down beside Maddie on the shield-back sofa. “Consequently, now everybody is curious about you. And I, your dearest friend, have no delicious details to supply.”

  “I am an object of curiosity?” Maddie asked, dismayed.

  Louise pulled a face. “I don’t know how it has come to this. Your life is more exciting than mine. And before you accuse me of being the most shocking gossip, I will point out that you peruse the newssheets, too. People are growing bored with parades and public rejoicing and want a cause célèbre to savor over their breakfast-cups, preferably a cause célèbre involving the crème de la crème.”

  Maddie could see the headline. Is MT— aware that AJ— is a married man? Surely she must not be or she would not expose herself in the way she does. Those same newssheets that purchased titillating tidbits raked in further income by charging fees for suppression or contradiction. There was nothing like a few scurrilous suggestions thrown out about a reputation to bring the maligned party running forward with pocketbook in hand.

  Heaven forbid Louise should realize how exciting Maddie’s life had become. She frowned. “Where are your pearls?”

  Louise raised her hand to her throat. “I took them to the jewelers so the clasp might be repaired. What did you think? You needn’t try and change the subject! Don’t tell me nothing happened in those delightfully dark gardens. We are speaking of Angel Jarrow, after all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  A mistress never is, nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it’s over, anything but friends. —Lord Byron

  The Upper Ten Thousand hummed with speculation: not only had Mr. Jarrow taken Mrs. Tate driving in Hyde Park, he had singled her out for conversation during the recent Carlton House celebrations, thereby striking envy into the breast of every other female in the room. However, when the band struck up a waltz, he failed to lead his companion out onto the floor. This odd circumstance resulted in a general consensus that the gentleman was going to great effort to make it seem he wasn’t setting up the lady as his next flirt, even if he did shortly thereafter stroll with her in the gardens for a good half hour. Since much of the Polite World was also strolling in the gardens at the same time, the most enthusiastic of gossips couldn’t contrive a scandal from that circumstance, much as they might try.

  Angel’s current flirt was aware o
f this speculation, courtesy of several of her acquaintances, the latest of whom she had just shown the door. Daphne flung herself down upon her hippopotamus couch and reached for a piece of marzipan. If she had been at Carlton House, Angel wouldn’t have gone strolling in the garden with another woman. Alas, the Conte and Contessa DeLuca had not been invited to revel with the Regent, unlike Mrs. Tate.

  Were her rival a nonpareil, Daphne might have borne the business better. Mrs. Tate was not.

  If Angel took any female driving in his phaeton, it should have been Daphne. But Angel had never shown the least inclination to take Daphne up in his phaeton, even when she contrived to meet him in the park.

  Glumly she recalled their last meeting, which had taken place in this very room, and on this very couch. Angel’s preoccupation with other matters had made Daphne cross. When she aired her feelings, Angel had informed her he found tantrums a dead bore. When Daphne bridled at being called boring, he had suggested that since she found him so unsatisfactory, they should bring their association to an end.

  Horrified, Daphne set out to placate him. She had no little experience in placating gentlemen. Angel departed without further mention of a permanent farewell.

  And without revisiting the couch. She felt a little glum. Angel was an extraordinary lover, when his interest (as it were) could be brought to the sticking point.

  Daphne had not been properly stuck for far too long, either by Angel or the conte.

  She plucked another piece of marzipan from the plate beside her and nibbled the confection. Daphne had been — among other things — both chambermaid and countess in her short life. The latter occupation, she far preferred. Countesses weren’t expected to empty slops or scour bed frames or sweep ashes from the grate. And if occasionally Daphne lit a fire in her bedchamber, or stitched a torn seam, it was labor undertaken by her own choice, and on her own behalf.

  She’d stitch no seams for the conte. She wouldn’t crook her smallest finger. Seldom had Daphne been so mistaken in a man.

  These morose reflections were interrupted by a maidservant who announced, with an air of grievance, the arrival of yet another visitor. Upon hearing the word ‘Jarrow,’ Daphne’s spirits soared. They plummeted back to earth when not Angel but his wife entered the room. Isabella was the height of sophistication in a military-styled pelisse of shot sarsenet trimmed with Egyptian crepe; lemon colored gloves and slippers. Her bonnet’s modish plume curled to frame her face.

  Feeling a frump in her simple morning dress, Daphne rose from the couch. “You need not offer me refreshment,” Isabella said ironically. “I won’t be staying long.”

  “I don’t know why you should be here at all,” Daphne countered, not inviting her visitor to take a seat. “I distinctly recall you saying Angel wasn’t to learn of our relationship.”

  “Association, not relationship,” Isabella chided her. “Sometimes I think you have no more sense than a samovar.”

  Daphne clenched her hands so tightly that her fingernails pricked her palms. Even a samovar, under the right circumstances, might make a useful tool. Isabella Jarrow had a fine collection of useful tools.

  “I am disappointed in you,” that lady continued. “At the rate you are going, your affaire with Angel is unlikely to endure even the customary six weeks. If you want to retain his attention, you will have to make a push. Employ additional ingenuity in the bedchamber. I’m sure I need not tell you about that.”

  “No, you need not!” bridled Daphne, offended by the implication she needed boudoir pointers. Belatedly, she recalled the recent dearth of activity in that room. “Ah— what sort of ingenuity might that be?”

  Mrs. Jarrow tapped one gloved finger against her lips. She then put forth suggestions so startlingly explicit that Daphne, for all her knowledge of the ways of men with maids, felt a little shocked. “Gentlemen are by nature fickle,” Isabella concluded. “They don’t crave what they don’t see. And so, you must make certain that Angel sees you frequently. Unless you want the conte to learn the truth about his wife?”

  Daphne wanted to toss her guest out the window. Reluctantly, she refrained. Vividly, she recalled the day when members of the local Reformation Society removed her twelve-year-old self from a brothel and placed her in service with a good Christian family who’d seen to it that she learned her abc’s, and minded her p’s and q’s (in return for which she was expected to toil without complaint eighteen hours of the day), and had been shocked to the depths of their self-righteous souls when their charity case took up with a handsome rogue and ran away to London, where she eventually met the conte in a gaming hell.

  “Little Daisy Butts has climbed a considerable distance up the social ladder,” remarked Isabella, with unnerving acuity. “Take care lest you tumble off your perch.”

  Take care, the witch meant, lest that perch be dismantled. She was like that Greek goddess of retribution and vengeance, as explained to Daphne by the handsome rogue before he took French leave. Nemesis, that’s who it was.

  Isabella moved toward the door. “Angel is to attend Lady Rutherford’s gala. You may ‘accidentally’ encounter him there.”

  The room seemed oddly empty after her departure. Daphne walked to the window and gazed down into the street. A footman leapt to open the door of Isabella’s town coach and lower the steps. He was a handsome fellow. Angel’s wife admired handsome young men.

  Mrs. Jarrow did not admire her husband. She would go to any lengths to complicate his life.

  Daphne looked around the drawing room, wondering how much longer she and the conte might remain in Brook Street, and when they left, where they would go. He had sold the last of her trinkets. Next he might try and sell her.

  The contessa was less shocked by this notion than she should have been. Crusaders might have removed the girl from the brothel, but they hadn’t managed to remove the brothel from the girl.

  Daphne held no ill-will toward Angel. However, given a choice between his well-being and her own—

  She sank down on her couch, selected another piece of marzipan, and began to scheme.

  Chapter Twenty

  Variety’s the very spice of life. —William Cowper

  Angel dreamed he was in the Regent’s temple made of shells, seated on a marble bench with a warm woman on his lap. Lamplight reflected from the minerals set in the walls, and the tinsel in her dress.

  He traced his fingertips across her face. Her breath caught in her throat. His lips followed the curve of her cheek to the corner of her mouth. His hand slid down her side to rest on the curve of her hip.

  She sighed with pleasure. Her breath was hot and sweet against his skin. He wanted to slide her beneath him on the bench and kiss her senseless; to explore her luscious body with his lips, and fingers, and tongue; to pleasure her as no one had pleasured her before.

  Her kisses were sweet, and urgent. He edged her bodice off her shoulder, and her chemise; pushed aside the soft fabric until the curve of one plump breast was bared.

  Her skin was soft, silken beneath his lips. He yearned to feel her lips on his skin. No sooner had the fancy struck him than she sat up, grasped his jacket and—

  Voilà! He wore nothing. She wore nothing. They were both naked as newborns.

  Angel was only mildly startled; this was, after all, a dream. A most pleasant dream, he decided, as he savored the sensation of flesh sliding against flesh, her hand moving across his chest, his belly. Those clever fingers approached his navel and his heart pounded fit to burst—

  Not pounding, but knocking. “Enter,” Angel groaned.

  The door opened. Angel’s valet informed him that he had a guest.

  Daphne, concluded Angel. She continually sent messages he chose to ignore.

  “Tell her to go away,” he snarled, and pulled the pillow over his face, determined to savor the last vestiges of his dream.

  “Which ‘her’ are you expecting?” inquired Lord Saxe. “Actress, opera dancer, wife?”

  Angel lifted the p
illow to glare at his friend. “What in Hades are you doing here at this ungodly hour?”

  Kane pulled out his pocket watch. “It’s past twelve o’clock.”

  “You make my point.” Angel lowered the pillow back onto his face. “A normal person would still be abed.”

  “You think me abnormal?” Kane picked up the pillow and tossed it aside.

  Angel scowled at him. “I know you’re abnormal. Else you wouldn’t go around disturbing people’s rest.”

  “I need to speak with you.” Kane drew a chair closer to the bed.

  “Not before coffee, I beg you! See to it, Jessop, if you will.”

  The valet — a pale, thin, infinitely discreet individual — silently departed. Kane settled in the chair and stretched out his long legs. “Breakfast in bed?”

  “My last clear memory is carousing until six of the morn,” retorted Angel. “That was two nights ago. I am not done recuperating. Such are the indignities of advancing age.”

  Lord Saxe was prevented making a rude remark by Jessop’s return. Following the valet was a footman bearing a tray. On the tray reposed a coffee pot, cups, and a plate of toasted bread.

  Angel pulled himself up against the headboard. “Jessop, you are worth your weight in rubies. Now go away.”

  The servants departed. Kane removed a slice of toasted bread from the breakfast tray. “Help yourself,” invited Angel. “Have some coffee, why don’t you? And while you’re at it, you may pour a cup for me.”

  Kane picked up the coffee pot. “As I said, we need to talk.”

  “Speech is the most common means of communication.” Angel watched Kane pour. “Though not the sole method by any means. Or the most pleasurable.”

  Kane handed him the cup. “That may be. However, I’ve no desire to communicate in any other manner with you.”

  “You relieve me.” Angel sipped his coffee. “I daresay that any number of fellows might be more, ah, accommodating in their mode of intercourse. The lovely Lilah could provide an introduction, were you to ask.”