The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy)

by Maggie MacKeever

  The baron felt an exasperated muscle twitch in his jaw. Important documents had gone missing, as had Fanny Arbuthnot and Verity Vaughan; Maddie Tate had fled from a pharaoh straight into Angel’s arms. How these matters were related, Kane had not yet determined, but any number of people might attempt to alleviate their pecuniary embarrassments by the sale of stolen documents, including the Prince and Princess of Wales. “Cut line! Or I will empty this pot over your head. Have you learned anything more from Mrs. Tate?”

  Angel had learned that he enjoyed kissing the lady. Hers hadn’t been the most experienced kisses he had ever received, or even the most passionate, but he suspected they had been the most sincere.

  How odd in him to suddenly admire sincerity. Maybe it was another sign of approaching senility. “I believe I spoke with Mrs. Tate at Prinny’s fête.”

  “You strolled with Mrs. Tate in the gardens of Carlton House for at least half an hour. One might ask — if one cared, which I do not— what game you are playing now. I will ask if you think it wise to have brought her to the notice of the ton.”

  “Who has ever called me wise? Mrs. Tate sings beautifully, and her voice deserves to be admired, and I might as well have tossed a new-born lamb into the midst of a pack of sharp-toothed wolves. At your — and Castlereagh’s — request, I might point out. In atonement, I am doing my poor best to ensure she is harmed as little as possible by the experience.”

  “That is well and good, if amazingly unlike you. But may I remind you: Fanny Arbuthnot?”

  “It is because I like her,” Angel continued. “Mrs. Tate, that is, not Fanny Arbuthnot. Not that I dislike Fanny. How could I, after the tender moments we shared? At least, I think it was Fanny who shared those moments with me, but memory may not serve. Imagine, if you can: no posturing, no simpering, no casting out of lures. No affectation or artifice. Mrs. Tate is a most unusual female.”

  Kane brushed toast crumbs off his jacket. “I have never known you to mislead an innocent.”

  “I don’t believe I am misleading her. How goes Castlereagh?”

  “As one might expect. This latest business with Princess Charlotte has inspired Francis Horner to compare the Regent’s conduct to that of a Prussian corporal, and Brougham to inquire whether anything so barbarous as the Regent’s treatment of his daughter may be found outside Turkey. Meantime, Liverpool proposes to increase Princess Caroline’s allowance on the grounds that she desires to travel abroad. Should that happen, it will cause no little consternation among the Whigs.”

  ‘No little consternation’ was an understatement. Before Kane could snatch it up, Angel helped himself to the last slice of toast. It had fallen to the Tories as Prinny’s Ministers to disapprove the Princess of Wales’ doings and to support, as best they could, her husband’s, which was no small feat. In their turn, the Whigs championed Princess Caroline, even if the majority of them held her in contempt. Were she to leave England, the Whigs would lose a powerful political tool.

  “Someone has been interrogating Dianas,” Kane continued, “but we have been unable to acquire a description; he has presented himself to each of them in a different guise. Fanny is rumored to be taking the waters at Margate, or Brighton, or Bath, but inquiries in all those places have turned up no trace of her.”

  “Has it occurred to you that Fanny may have merely ventured further afield?”

  “I begin to suspect Fanny may not have ventured at all.”

  The baron departed. Angel finished his coffee in contemplative silence; called for his valet. Bathed and shaved, dressed to that individual’s satisfaction, he too left the house.

  The day was overcast, the sun having taken up residence behind a bank of lowering clouds. After ascertaining where Wellington was being lionized that day, Angel chose a different route to Wimple Street.

  He drew up his phaeton in front of his sister’s house. A groom hurried to take the reins. Angel tossed the man a coin. “Walk the horses. I won’t be long.”

  He found Bea in her morning room, a charmingly informal chamber. She was standing at the window, her profile to the door.

  “In a brown study, are you, sis?” asked Angel, as he entered the room.

  She swung to face him. “Angel! I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Have I come at a bad time?”

  “Goose! You are always welcome.” Bea crossed the room to kiss his cheek. “Corbin isn’t here, and I’m glad he’s absent, because I wish to speak to you alone.”

  Angel said, cautiously, “Oh?”

  “Indeed.” Contrary to the opinion of the rest of London — save possibly Lord Saxe — Angel’s sister did believe Angel meant to set up Mrs. Tate as his next flirt. She inquired what maggot he had taken in his head, and demanded that he shake it out.

  Angel wondered if maggots were responsible for the queer circumstance that he’d got his feelings hurt. “You should not listen to gossip. I promise you, Mrs. Tate is immune to my wicked wiles. Which brings me to the reason I am here. You are my sister and therefore must be truthful. Do you think me spoiled?”

  Bea blinked at him. “How could you not be spoiled? You’ve been doted on from the crib. Even men admire you, while women go to ridiculous lengths to earn one of your smiles.”

  Angel recalled Mrs. Tate’s parting salvo. “Not every woman,” he said.

  “Are you referring to Bella?” Bea tilted her head to one side. “She dotes on you, and at the same time loathes you because you do not dote on her in return. Whereas you do dote on every other female in town.”

  Angel protested, “You think me such a rake?”

  Bea’s gaze returned to the window. “A rake enjoys the conquest and then moves on to other prey. You are the perfect companion, charming and amusing; and even though your conquests know from the beginning that they cannot keep you for themselves, they seldom regret having been the focus of your attention for a time.”

  Angel was uncomfortable with this conversation, which he suspected was but marginally about him. “Damned with faint praise. I hate to think what you might say if you were feeling unkind.” He took leave of his sister, resolving to not only wring her husband’s neck, but to draw and quarter him as well.

  He descended the front steps, and halted. His phaeton waited where he had left it; but when he had left it, there had been no young woman perched in the high seat. A young woman with chestnut curls and big blue eyes, wearing a high-waisted gown with a low square neckline, a short pink satin spencer with a standing collar, and a matching hat. Angel recognized the bonnet, and the spencer, and those lime green gloves. He would probably recognize her undergarments, were she to display them to him. “Daphne. What are you doing in my phaeton?”

  She dimpled. “It is a splendid phaeton. And when I saw it waiting here — I happened to be passing by — I decided, ‘he has gone to see his sister, but he will not stay long, and so I will sit here and wait for him, and he will be surprised.’ And so I sent my carriage away.”

  “Surprise is not the emotion I am feeling.” Angel swung into his seat and took up the reins. “I have business to attend. Where shall I drop you off?”

  At last, Daphne had managed to be taken up in Angel’s phaeton. She didn’t plan to dismount until the whole world had seen her riding at his side. “Can you not bear to spend even a moment with me? You did not used to be so cruel.”

  Angel wasn’t cruel, but he was having a miserable day. “What do you want, Daphne? I will not ask again.”

  She wanted to beguile him back into her bed, but Daphne was not such a ninnyhammer as to tell him so. “I wished to apologize for my behavior on our last meeting,” she said, and leaned closer, crushing her breasts against his arm.

  Angel started, swore, and brought his horses back under control.

  Daphne gave a little jiggle, in case Angel failed to notice the proximity of her bosom. “You have been very good to me,” she purred. “As am I good to you, when you will allow it, as I hope you will today.”

  She was rubb
ing against him with less lust than desperation. Angel concluded that the conte had been bullying her again. Daphne’s domestic difficulties were none of his concern, but still—

  Wishing he were in truth a heartless rake, Angel flicked the reins.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough. —William Blake

  London had been struck by a plague of peevishness. Not only were Angel Jarrow and Lord Castlereagh snappish, along with their Regent, Viscount Ashcroft’s mama also shared that state. Although choler was not unusual for Lady Georgiana, in this instance she rang such a peal over Tony that he decided to join Mrs. Tate and her twins and their tutor, who had gone to view the wild beasts at Exeter Exchange, a large brick building on the north side of the Strand.

  Exeter Exchange had once been a handsome structure with an arcade in front and a galley above, both containing shops; but with time the arcade had been filled in, the gallery put into service as shopkeepers’ lodgings, and a natural history exhibit set up. On the front of the building hung plaques painted with likenesses of animals — a Bengal Royal Male Tiger, the Pelican of the Wilderness, a vulture from South America, a Nyl-ghau or horned horse. ‘Pidcock’s Menagerie’ was painted in large characters on the eastern wall, and the roars of the big cats struck fear in the hearts of unwary passersby. Tony hesitated, decided his mama’s roar was louder, and approached the main entrance, which was manned by a doorman in the costume of a Yeoman of the Guard. A dirty urchin scurried around the corner of the building and out of sight.

  The collection was divided into three sections, the doorman informed Tony; the price of admission one shilling per section per visitor, or two shillings and sixpence for the whole. Tony supposed Maddie’s twins would demand to view every exhibition. And therefore so would he.

  A staircase led to the cages and dens housed on the second floor of the Exchange. The pungent scent of animals grew stronger with each reluctant step he took.

  The viscount found Mrs. Tate and her party inspecting the elephant enclosure, its walls painted with scenery intended to recall the creature’s native habitat. Maddie was wearing a white walking dress figured with medallions and — to Tony’s exasperation — stripes.

  “Elephants,” the tutor was explaining, “live an average of sixty years in the wild and eighty in c-captivity. They eat ten p-percent of their body weight per d-day.”

  The tutor, Tony considered a very knowing sort of chap, and the twins an excellent indication of why a fellow should avoid the matrimonial state. He plucked at Maddie’s sleeve. She started. “Tony! I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “And so you should be,” panted Tony. “I’m surprised to see me here myself because I didn’t mean to come. Not that I can see myself precisely, but you know what I mean. Thing is, Maman’s taken the notion that Angel Jarrow is going to steal a march on me. Not that Angel can marry you, because he has a wife, and not that I want to marry you — no offense intended! — but there it is. Maman says if I’m not careful Angel will render you unmarriageable.”

  His voice had risen, attracting the attention of the enclosure’s occupant, which gently raised its trunk. An elephant, as Matthew might have informed them, breathed through two nostrils at the end of its trunk, which was an extension of its nose. The elephant also used its trunk to ingest water and food, sucking up water, curling the trunk, and squirting the water into its mouth. The trunk had a prehensile grasping extension at the tip, which the elephant employed like a finger or a scoop, for example in this instance, when it snatched off Tony’s hat.

  “I say!” cried Tony. “Give that back!”

  The tiger growled. The Nyl-ghau whinnied. “Calm yourself!” begged Maddie. “You’re upsetting the animals.”

  “What if I am? They’re upsetting me! That hat, I’ll have you know, was made by Lock.”

  The elephant inspected Mr. Lock’s creation, and found it wanting. “Look,” said Maddie. “He’s returning it to you.”

  Gingerly, Tony retrieved his hat from the elephant’s trunk. Lock wouldn’t recognize his creation, now squashed in the center until it resembled a figure eight.

  In most seasons of the year the elephant was a timid animal, Matthew explained, and more likely to flee a foe than to mount an attack, the exception being solitary rogues. An elephant charged with its trunk tightly curled up; trampled its victim with feet or knees, or pinned him to the ground with its tusks. This particular elephant, Chunee, had been brought to London from India in 1810. Chunee liked to hold a sixpence in his trunk before returning it to visitors. He whisked off hats, opened doors, wielded a whip, and in general behaved so well that Lord Byron had expressed a desire to hire him as a butler.

  The elephant reached again for Tony. Tony clutched his hat to his chest. Chunee rested his trunk on Tony’s shoulder and gently exhaled.

  “I'm supposed to make you see the error of your ways,” said Tony glumly, as Maddie wiped elephant effluvium from his shoulder with her handkerchief. “Persuade you not to throw your bonnet over the windmill. I like Angel, damned if I don't, but I like you too, and Angel could open up a millinery shop with all the bonnets that have been tossed at him.”

  Maddie deduced from this somewhat garbled speech that the viscount was concerned for her. “Your mama, if you’ll forgive me saying so, has the wrong sow by the ear. I haven’t seen Mr. Jarrow since the Carlton House fête.” When he had said he liked her. Angel probably told all his conquests that he liked them before he set about charming them out of their stays.

  He’d like her a great deal less for having told him he was spoiled.

  Spending time with Angel Jarrow had much the same effect as overindulging in champagne. A giddy, euphoric feeling. A brief, sweet respite from life’s worries and woes. Which too soon came crashing back threefold.

  “Maman says you’re going to have to marry someone,” persisted Tony, illustrating the truth of her reflection, “and so it might as well be me. Says she wants to dandle her grandchildren on her knee. Which is more of her twaddle, because when I was a child she never dandled me.” He jammed his misshapen hat back on his head and went off to join Matthew at the Bengal Tiger display.

  Maddie glanced at her sons, who were on their best behavior, result of an earlier altercation involving Lappy, Sir Owen, and the roast intended for dinner. She recalled Lord Maitland, last seen going in search of lemonade, and hoped they might soon meet again so she could inform his lordship she had no desire for additional offspring, thereby demonstrating that breeding-stock can talk.

  “There you are!” Louise Holloway appeared at the top of the stairs. “Your father’s butler informed us that you had come here. How very odd of you.” She wrinkled her nose.

  “Not so odd,” pointed out Jordan, who had accompanied his sister. “Maddie has children. Children enjoy this sort of thing. I do myself.” He walked over to the group gathered near the tiger cage. Tony stole a sideways glance at Jordan’s excellently fitting breeches. His own plump posterior would never show to such advantage, no matter how compressive a corset he devised.

  Jordan eyed Tony’s battered hat, but withheld comment. “In India,” he remarked, “tigers are revered. The tiger is the guardian of the jungle, carrier of the Mother Goddess, an incarnation of whom came into being as a collective force of all the Gods to fight the evil power of the demon Mahishasura, whose father once fell in love with a water buffalo.”

  “A water buffalo?” marveled Tony. “If that don’t beat all.”

  Louise clutched Maddie’s arm, claiming her attention. “Have you any news for me? No? I wish you would try! Incidentally, I’ve learned what turned Caro Lamb against Lord Byron. If not for Jordan’s interference, I might have broke the news first. Aren’t you least bit curious? Then you may wait and read the newssheets, along with everybody else!”

  Maddie frowned at her friend. “How is it that you know these things?”

  Louise laughed. “There are no secrets, Ma
ddie. Servants can be bribed, as can friends and foes and family members. Of course, they cannot always be believed.” She went on to tell how a certain editor had printed a scandalous, unsubstantiated story involving Lady W—, as result of which Lord W— stormed into the newspaper office and knocked out several of his teeth. “That doesn’t amuse you either? Really, you have grown quite dull.” She flounced off to inspect an exhibit of ostriches and emus.

  Dull, am I? Maddie wished the elephant would snatch off Louise’s pretty bonnet and eat it for lunch.

  Jordan strolled up beside her. “The last time I was here the exhibit included a unicorn, a zebra, a kangaroo from Botany Bay, an African ram, a secretary bird that killed snakes, a Fiery Lynx and a Ravenous wolf from Algiers, along with such timely but unrelated items as a French Beheading Machine.”

  Maddie kept a cautious eye on the elephant, which had left off hat-snatching for the moment. “When I was a child, I saw a two-headed bovine in a traveling menagerie. One of the heads was allegedly that of a bull, and the other a cow. I do not think I would be so easily convinced now.”

  Jordan smiled. “Being grown up, as you are, Mistress Pattern-Card.”

  It had not been grown-up of Maddie to mention this man to her father, rather in the manner of dragging a red herring across her track, nor had it been particularly wise. She had done a great many unwise things of late, beginning with the Burlington House masquerade.

  And she was about to do another. “I have a favor to ask.”

  “You may ask, but I don’t guarantee my answer,” Jordan replied. “Have you reconsidered your decision?”

  “Decision?”

  “Regarding Louise.”

  Maddie tucked her arm through his. “This has nothing to do with your sister. Do you recall when we were young, and you rescued me from scrapes?”