Cupid's Dart

by Maggie MacKeever

  He looked like a devil, conjured up out of the fog to steal away her heart. Georgie blinked. Appalling, the effect Marigold had on one's imagination. "I am thinking of taking a course of sea-bathing. Perhaps I shall even hire a bathing machine."

  Then perhaps Lord Warwick would hire a telescope, like those other gentlemen who sat on the Marine Parade and gazed out to sea, watching not for incoming enemy ships but inspecting the ladies in their flannel smocks as they floundered about in the muddy water. "Ah," he said ironically. "The lovely Mrs. Smith."

  Marigold had made no conquest of Lord Warwick. "She is lovely, isn't she?" Georgie responded. "One might also wish she had good sense. I must ask you not to mention her presence to anyone, Garth. Pray ask me no questions, because I cannot explain."

  "Come, walk with me before you take a chill." Garth offered her his arm. "Is there nothing I can do? I do not like to see you worrying yourself to death."

  He could kiss her, Georgie thought. Not that a kiss would solve any of her problems, but it would feel very nice. "We are at sixes and sevens," she admitted. "Marigold is the least of my worries, to say the truth."

  About those other worries, Lord Warwick had some notion. "You must know that Wellington has been elevated from viscount to earl. Your brother was with Mackinnon at Cuidad Rodrigo, was he not?"

  Georgie glanced up at him, startled. "I did not think you were acquainted with my brother." Lord Warwick shook his head. "I sometimes wonder if Andrew will ever wholly recover. He has recurrent fevers. And nightmares. And gets to raving sometimes about the things he saw there."

  Lord Warwick had a clearer notion of the sights of the Peninsula than did Andrew's sister. Scant wonder the boy raved. "I knew Mackinnon. He once impersonated the Duke of York at a banquet and dived headfirst into a punch bowl. Another time, when Wellington was visiting a convent, Mackinnon pretended to be a nun. Wellington was quite taken with the lady, or so the story goes."

  Georgie smiled. "I think Andrew would like to talk of him. If you would not mind."

  Garth would not mind anything that made Georgie less unhappy. Unless, perhaps, that something involved kissing someone other than himself. "I am at your service. And I will plague you with no questions so long as you promise to come to me if you find yourself in over your head with this business. I have taken a house on the Royal Crescent for the season." He paused. "You will be interested to know that Prinny has now lost not only some fingers, and the whole of his right arm, but also a portion of his nose."

  The Royal Crescent, built facing the sea by a West Indian speculator, was a most fashionable address. The houses there were faced with black mathematical tiles, and in the center of the garden enclosure stood a buff-colored statue of the Prince of Wales. Perhaps Georgie should go inspect the defaced statue, for which either the weather or vandals were to blame. Or perhaps she should inspect the lodgings hired by Garth.

  Georgie was rendered strangely breathless by this shocking notion. She pinched Lord Warwick's arm. "It is not kind of you to try and distract me! Or perhaps it is."

  Lord Warwick wished that he might distract Georgie all the more. "There is one question I must ask. However came you by that nitwit of a butler?"

  Georgie gurgled with laughter. "Poor Tibble. He tries so very hard. I inherited him from my grandmother along with the house, and could not bear to turn him out. Although I admit to being tempted the day I found him trying to break the claws of a lobster between the hinges of a dining room drawer." She then went on to divert Lord Warwick with additional tales about her household, including Janie's efforts to attract the attention of the new footman down the street, which took the little maidservant out of doors at every opportunity on the slightest of pretexts, with the result that they now had the whitest front steps in the entire neighborhood; and Agatha's efforts to tempt Andrew's sluggish appetite with mutton cutlets, eel broth, and rice milk. "She is now experimenting with home remedies for which I have even less hope," Georgie concluded. "They include dried toad, powdered mole, and fresh horse dung."

  Georgie seemed comfortable with her bizarre household, Lord Warwick realized. Indeed she seemed comfortable with herself in a way now that she had not as a girl.

  How dull as ditchwater were his companions. Lump dropped the driftwood that he had been clutching all this time in his jaws. His mistress had ignored him sadly since the gentleman had interrupted them at play. She had not even included in her tales of the household Lump's own discovery in the larder of a sleek and well-fed mouse. A seagull flying overhead caught his attention. He leapt up and barked.

  Lord Warwick grasped Lump's collar. "No!" he said. "Sit, you wretched hound."

  What was the world coming to, when he was spoken to so rudely twice in so many days? Lump sank down on the sand.

  Georgie clapped her hands in admiration. "How did you do that?" she asked. "None of us can." The wind blew her errant curls into her eyes and she untied her bonnet with the intention of pushing her aggravating hair back beneath its confining bounds. "Although I have noticed that gentlemen can sometimes persuade people to obey them just by employing a certain tone of voice."

  Lord Warwick could not help himself. "Oh?" he inquired.

  "Not that sort of thing!" Georgie made a strong effort to discipline her mind. "You are out early," she added. "Or have you not been to bed?" Quizzically, he looked at her. She sighed. "That didn't come out right."

  "Come, let us continue our walk. You must be very cold." Lord Warwick regained possession of her arm. "No, I have not been to bed. We fashionable gentlemen would be appalled at the notion of cutting short our revels before cockcrow."

  Georgie was not deceived by the lightness of his tone. "I am glad to see you return where you belong," she said. "You were gone from us for a long time."

  Only with great difficulty had Garth rousted himself from the sprawling estate near Penrith where he had been rusticating—or, as some would have it, sulking—for some months. "So I was," he said. "It is almost as good as a play to see the fashionable world watch each other to determine how they must react—for the gossips hint that if I did indeed dispose of my wife, who knows what other dark secrets might lie buried in my past?"

  Thus was Georgie confirmed in her opinion of the fashionable world. "Fiddle-faddle!" she said crossly, and slapped the bonnet against her skirts. "You had no previous wife to dispose of, and even the largest chucklehead would find it difficult to credit that you would sooner do away with a tiresome petite amie than simply pay her off."

  Lord Warwick smiled. "I thank you, my dear, for that vote of confidence. Between you and Prinny, I may yet contrive to hold up my head. Although all the world knows Prinny is hardly a judge of character. Speaking of which, I have been privileged to see Mr. Wyatt's plans for remodeling the Pavilion in the most extraordinary Gothic style. It is expected to cost a minimum two hundred thousand pounds."

  Georgie had forgotten that Lord Warwick was an intimate of the future king. It did not place him in exclusive company—the indolent, affable Regent was not notorious for the discriminatory quality of his relationships, among which had been included not only Beau Brummell and Lord Alvanley and the Duke of Argyle, "Poodle" Byng and "Golden Ball" Hughes, but also the Duke of Queensbury, who for a time retired to the King's Bench Prison for Debtors; Sir John Lade and his wife Letty, once the mistress of a highwayman known as "Sixteen String Jack"; the Barrymore brothers, Hellgate and Cripplegate and Newgate, and their sister, Billingsgate who, it was said, could be outsworn only by Letty Lade—but it reminded her anew of how great the disparity between them had grown. "The Pavilion is already a house run mad," Georgie remarked. "Domes and pagodas and turrets. Banqueting rooms with twining golden dragons. A China gallery of painted glass. One hears the strangest tales."

  "All of them true, I make no doubt. I have seen the new stables myself. They include coach houses, harness rooms, servants' rooms, stables, and an open gallery. The whole structure is lighted through the glazed compartments of the cup
ola by which it is surrounded. It is some sixty-five feet high." Why the devil was he talking about stables? Garth didn't give a damn for Prinny's stables. He paused.

  Georgie was thinking of their first meeting, and what Lord Warwick had said. When had he wished to kiss her? He had used the word "still." Had he done so then, would things be very different now? Not that intimates of the Prince Regent were prone to dally with spinsters like herself. Bonnet forgotten in her hand, Georgie looked up at Lord Warwick. Her ribbons dangled in the sand.

  They were very tempting ribbons. Piece of driftwood or straw hat, it was all the same to Lump. He grabbed the bonnet in his strong teeth, and ran.

  The moment was shattered. Georgie sighed, and gazed after her lost bonnet. "I meant what I said, Garth. I am glad to see you resume your place in the world."

  She was so determined to think well of him. Lord Warwick was touched. "As a gentleman of sinister reputation?" he inquired.

  Georgie pushed her windblown hair out of her eyes, and frowned. "You are determined to jest."

  Garth grasped her shoulders, swung her to face him. "It is hardly a jesting matter. I remind you that the gossips have me accused of murder, ma'am."

  Steadily, Georgie met his gaze, or as steadily as she could with her hair blowing in her eyes. "To tell truth, there were several occasions on which I wished to murder Catherine myself."

  Garth was aware of some of those occasions. Reluctantly, he smiled. "As did I. All the same, I did not murder my wife. Nor incarcerate her in some dank dungeon. Nor wall her up in a nunnery. I truly do not know where Catherine may be."

  Georgie was very conscious of the warmth of his lordship's hands through the thin material of her shawl. "Lud!" she said briskly. "I never doubted that."

  Garth was conscious also of Georgie's nearness. He could smell her sweet perfume, see the rapid pulse beat at the base of her throat. He thought that he would very much like to press his lips against that tender spot. He thought also that he was a married man, and one who stood accused of murder, and had much better not.

  Lump, meanwhile, had discovered that even the most enterprising of hounds could hardly play fetch all by himself. Or either hide-and-seek. He couldn't imagine what had gotten into his mistress this morning. Normally she would be chasing over the sand after him, begging him to return to her side. Today, however, she didn't even seem to notice that he'd gone.

  At any rate, she would be glad to have her bonnet back. Lump bounded forward and presented the trophy to his mistress, then sat down, his wagging tail making semicircles in the sand.

  Georgie gingerly picked up the sodden, sandy mess than had once been her straw bonnet. Here was yet another unanticipated expense, because the hat would have to be replaced. "Oh, dear," she said.

  Abruptly, Garth released her and stepped back. Georgie looked up at him, surprised. "I am not entirely without scruples," he murmured, "despite what the gossipmongers think." Bedraggled bonnet in one hand, unrepentant hound's collar in the other, Georgie watched him walk away.

  Chapter Eight

  Silence reigned in the Halliday kitchen, at least for a moment, among the four people gathered there, due to Georgie's recent irritable announcement that her gentleman caller had been an old friend merely, and the next person who pestered her about the matter would be turned out into the street.

  Georgie sat at one end of the long elm table, frowning over her household accounts. Occasionally she reached into a bowl of peas that stood nearby, peeled open the pod, and popped the raw vegetables into her mouth. The peas were very sweet, and grown by Miss Halliday herself in a little garden out behind the house, a pursuit that was horridly unladylike of her, but immensely gratifying nonetheless. Although grubbing in the dirt was behavior hardly befitting a lady, Georgie looked like one all the same, in a high-necked, figured muslin gown. Agatha, just then thumbing through her receipts, was dressed rather less conservatively in a dress of India muslin with a low neckline and puffed sleeves, her blazing hair tucked under a huge mobcap. At the other end of the long table, Tibble sat polishing the silver, a task in which he was unlikely to hurt himself, and one that would overtask neither his strength nor his powers of concentration, since most of the pieces had already been sold. In front of him marched an array of silverplate, a container holding a paste made of hartshorn powder mixed with spirits of wine, a brush, several soft rags, a piece of dry leather, and his wig. Tibble had already this day trimmed the lamp-wicks and replenished the rapeseed oil; brushed and blacked the ladies boots (and if he left behind his hand-mark on the lining, no one but Marigold would be unkind enough to remark); and very narrowly avoided doing himself serious injury while cleaning the kitchen knives.

  "Lord love a duck," muttered Janie, the only member of the little group not seated at the elm table. She was bent over a kitchen dresser, attempting to remove the stain from a silk ribbon by way of a mixture of gin and honey, soft soap and water, not with a great deal of success.

  It was not enough, thought Janie, that she must dust and sweep and polish and scour; now she must also wash out milady's brushes and clean her combs and arrange her hair, remove stains and grease spots from her clothes, and repair her lace. Not that Janie would mind performing any of these tasks for Mistress Georgie, who was a very good sort of person, as Janie should well know, because she had been on the verge of A Fate Worse Than Death when Mistress Georgie and Miss Agatha took her in; but Mistress Georgie's guest was a far different kettle of fish, shedding crocodile tears and capperclawing and butter wouldn't melt in her mouth until one wished that cheese might choke her and the devil fly off with her straightaway.

  Janie finished scouring the soiled ribbon with her mixture. She gingerly picked up the ribbon by its corners and dipped the fabric quickly in cold water. After letting the ribbon drip for a moment, she dried it with a cloth, and ironed it quickly with a very hot iron. Then she uttered a strong expletive because the stain was even worse, thereby rousing Agatha from thoughts of Balnamood Skink, and Georgie from the accounts that refused to add up in an encouraging manner, and Tibble from thoughts of which only heaven knew the nature, because he himself could not have said.

  "Bless me!" Agatha ventured. "What is it?" Georgie asked. Too confused to put in his own two penn'orth, Tibble dabbed his forehead with the silver cloth.

  Janie dropped a little curtsey. "Beg pardon, I'm sure. But Miss Marigold is going to ring a right peal over my head." She dropped the ribbon on the table, then sat down and ate a pea.

  Georgie contemplated the ruined ribbon, which was bound to send Marigold again into her tantrums. "Never mind," she soothed. "I believe I have a ribbon of a similar color. Perhaps if you switch them she won't notice the difference. Go now and fetch it from my room." Armed with the ribbon and another pea-pod, Janie set out on her errand, which would take her by a circuitous route that led out of doors, where she hoped to glimpse the new footman down the street, whose name she had learned was Charles.

  Tibble wielded his brush with considerable vigor, and sneezed. "Mad as Bedlam," he remarked. "I seen it before. One day a bee in the bonnet, and the next day, poof! Before you can say Jack Robinson, flying off the hooks and maggots in the brain. Best be shut of the flibbertigibbet, afore she takes it into her head to burn down the house." For emphasis he waved the polishing rag. Then he recollected his surroundings. "Not that it's my place to say so, ma'ams."

  The ladies did not think that Tibble spoke of Janie. "Beauty will fade," offered Agatha. "A wise woman lays in a stock of something to supply in its place." She then returned to consideration of what dish would go best with green peas à la Française. Potted crayfish, perhaps. Or calf s head soup. Providing that Georgie didn't eat up all the peas beforehand.

  Georgie stared at her account book. Everything was grown very dear, for this was the fashionable season, and the inhabitants of Brighton must make up a year's income in but a short time. Lodgings were so greatly in demand that unlet houses now commanded fourteen guineas a week. She wonder
ed what Garth was paying for his house on the Marine Parade, and why. If Lord Warwick wished to reclaim his position in society, what made Brighton preferable to London? The Prince Regent's presence? Or was there some other less obvious reason, one that had to do with Catherine perhaps? His wife's disappearance left Garth in a most unfortunate situation, not only because he was accused of murder, but also because a vanished spouse could hardly produce him an heir. And if Garth had not murdered Catherine—and of course he had not murdered Catherine—where was she? A person didn't simply vanish into thin air. Georgie thought of Marigold. Much as one could wish they might. She looked up as Andrew limped into the kitchen. Lump followed at his heels. "Hello, love," she said.

  Agatha looked up also. Andrew appeared in better spirits today, perhaps due to the distillation of flowers of cowslip she'd snuck into his morning and evening drink. Happily unaware of Agatha's efforts in his behalf, Andrew brandished an envelope. "I found this in the hall. When did it arrive?" he asked.

  Tibble started, guiltily. "I disremember exactly, sir. Mayhap this morning. Or it could have been yesterday. I meant to give it to you straightaway, but you wasn't here."

  Andrew contemplated the shamefaced butler, whose bald head was liberally splattered with silver paste. Then he sat down in a chair and broke open a peapod. Lump looked around the kitchen in hope of a bite to eat. Agatha hissed at him. With a great sigh of canine martyrdom, Lump collapsed against Andrew's chair. "We are invited to join Lady Denham's party for an evening's entertainment in the Promenade Grove, sis," Andrew said.

  Georgie pushed away her household books and regarded her brother curiously. Here was interesting news. Not that she and her brother should receive an invitation, for Georgie was Lady Georgiana, though she disliked to use her title, and Andrew was an Honourable, and Wellington's staff officers had a certain cachet. The Hallidays between them had used to receive a great many invitations before they made it clear that they would rather be left to themselves.