Marigold picked up a white muslin veil with an embroidered leaf border and draped it around her head, looking for all the world as if she fancied herself again a bride. She began to hum. Georgie protested, "Have you forgotten that Warwick is said to have murdered his wife?"
Marigold had forgotten that minor detail. She frowned, then shrugged. "Pooh! I care nothing about that! It's not as though he will murder me, you know!"
Georgie thought that perhaps she would murder Marigold, did this foolishness persist. "You will not torment Lord Warwick," she said sternly. "He already has quite enough on his plate. Do you understand me, Marigold?"
Marigold understood that a great many people were cross with her these days. Her blue eyes filled with tears, and she sank back on the bed. Lump snuggled closer. "Oh, get away, you—you chawbacon!" she snapped, and pushed him to the floor. Wounded, Lump slunk across the room to collapse at Georgie's feet. She gave him an absent pat. The dog wagged his tail and then began to investigate a white kid glove that lay upon the rug.
"I'm not leaving this room, Marigold," said Georgie with determination, "until you tell me exactly what transpired between you and Mr. Sutton. Without further confabulation, pray."
Marigold fumbled in her pillows and withdrew a vinaigrette. "Oh, very well!" She recounted her adventure in the Promenade Grove.
If Marigold's conversation with Mr. Sutton was not repeated entirely verbatim, it was still disturbing enough to make Georgie turn pale. "I thought," Marigold concluded, dramatically, "that I should swoon from the shock!" She paused to gauge her friend's reaction to these disclosures.
Georgie was frowning. Lump was gnawing on a sodden mouthful of white leather. "My glove!" Marigold wailed.
"Your glove? What glove?" Georgie despaired of ever persuading Marigold to talk sense. Then she, too, gazed upon Lump's trophy. "I should leave you to your just deserts. This is all about the Norwood Emerald, I'll warrant. You still have not told me how the emerald came to be out of your possession, Marigold."
"That is because I did not want you to pinch at me!" Marigold had recourse to her vinaigrette. "And you will wish to, but I think that you should spare your breath, because I know it was very wrong of me. The truth of it is, Georgie—" She took in a deep breath. "—I lost the emerald at play."
Marigold had succumbed to the lure of the tables. Georgie didn't know why she should be surprised. Marigold had already succumbed to the lure of everything else. "Oh, the devil!" she sighed.
Marigold unearthed her handkerchief from among the bed linen. "Why must everything be so difficult?" she wailed. "I wish that we were children again, before any of this happened, before I met poor Leo, and before you—" She peered over the handkerchief. "Well, before whatever it was happened to you, because something obviously did."
So now she was grown hagged? Despite her exasperation, Georgie could not help but sympathize with her friend. Marigold's life would have been much simpler if not for her tendency to land herself in the suds.
As for Georgie's own life—"This is getting us no nearer the emerald," she said.
'That shows all you know!" retorted Marigold, somewhat unfairly, because she had done her utmost to keep Georgie in the dark. "We are close to the emerald, I think. That is why I came to Brighton, Georgie. Besides my wish to see you, that is! I have it on very good authority that the person who won the emerald from me lost it in turn to Magnus Eliot."
Chapter Fourteen
Lady Denham's household was not kept smoothly running by a mere cook-housekeeper, butler, and maid-of-all-work. Lady Denham would have been appalled at the notion of attempting to function without a full complement of kitchen and scullery maids, laundry maids, upper and under housemaids, footmen and grooms and coachmen, not to mention her abigail and her French chef, all of whom she kept extremely busy, because everyone knew that idle hands did the devil's work, and Lady Denham would tolerate no such nonsense in her household. Nor were Lady Denham's own hands idle at this moment. In them she held a list.
Lady Denham's busy hands, and the list they held, were ensconced in her drawing room, upon a painted chair with cross-front legs, a carved Sphinx on each arm-post, and rosettes at the base, crowned with twining honeysuckle and yet another rosette. The rest of the furnishings had also fallen under the Egyptian influence, as witnessed by additional Sphinx-head bodies and ornaments, models of mummies, athenaeum friezes and, most notably, a crocodile sofa. Tables, chairs, and sofas were studiously disarranged around the fireplace and in the middle of the elegantly proportioned chamber, in the modern fashion of placing furniture. Arranged in and about that furniture this afternoon were Lady Denham, her niece, and a number of their guests. Mr. Sutton was in attendance, and Lieutenant Halliday. Most splendid of all present, outshining crocodile and Sphinx and mummy case, Miss Inchquist's cherry-striped dress and even Lady Denham's puce muslin gown, was Lieutenant Halliday's companion—My great good friend! Came upon him quite by accident! Didn't think you'd mind if I brought him along!—Peregrine Teasdale. Mr. Teasdale was a sartorial wonderment in canary-yellow breeches and polished top boots, a waistcoat broadly striped in salmon and cramoisi, and a long-tailed coat of pea-green. His starched cravat was tied in the Oriental, a very stiff and rigid arrangement with not a visible indenture or crease. Exceedingly high shirt points made it very difficult for him to turn his head. His dark hair tumbled dramatically over his pale brow.
Mr. Teasdale's poetic nature demanded expression in flamboyance. Moreover, he very much hoped to set a style. Truth be told, Peregrine would have preferred to dress in black, but Byron had already been before him, and Peregrine above all wished to be considered an original. Or almost above all. Most immediately, he must catch himself a rich wife, preferably before his tailors' bills came due. Miss Inchquist was just the ticket. Young, malleable—Peregrine had no idea what he might wish to mold her into, but malleable seemed like a good thing.
"'But true love is a durable fire,'" he murmured, for her ear alone. "'Into the mind ever burning/ Never sick, never old, never dread/From itself never turning.'"
Sarah-Louise blushed. If she knew those pretty words had actually been written by Sir Walter Raleigh, she kept that knowledge to herself. "You should not say such things to me," she murmured insincerely, and wished he would not stop.
"'Fair, fair and twice so fair/ As fair as any may be,'" Peregrine responded promptly, this time borrowing from George Peele. Blissfully, Sarah-Louise sighed. She caught her aunt's eye upon her. "Lieutenant Halliday knows a great deal about Brighton!" she said hastily.
Lieutenant Halliday, who had been brooding upon his part in this dashed irregular liaison—had he been privileged to know Sarah-Louise's papa, Andrew might well have agreed with that acerbic gentleman that Peregrine was a twiddlepoop—responded to his cue. "At the time of the Norman Conquest, Brighton was not entirely without importance. It was one of the Sussex Manors of Harold II, who raised forces here to augment his troops at Sentac," he offered, while reflecting that Mr. Teasdale possessed an imagination as fanciful as his flamboyant attire. Were Andrew called upon to compose a sonnet to Miss Inchquist, he could only compare her to an amiable giraffe. Not that he meant the young lady any disrespect.
Peregrine took advantage of Andrew's silence to plagiarize the words of both Mr. Schiller and Pierre de Ronsard. "'What is life without the radiance of love?/ Live now, believe me, wait not for tomorrow./ Gather the roses of life today.'" Deuced if he didn't like Lieutenant Halliday's cane. The limp was a nice touch. Perhaps Peregrine might adopt a limp himself. He wondered if Halliday would mind answering some questions, about whether the leg hurt all the time, or more so when the weather was damp, and how he managed to get in and out of bed. Peregrine would have to create an interesting story as to how he had come by the limp, but that should be no problem for someone so imaginative as himself. If it wasn't for that damned Byron, he could carry a cane with a skull knob. Then he recalled with disappointment that Byron also walked with a limp, and a couple
of ill-tempered dogs.
Miss Inchquist was regarding him expectantly. "'Eternity was in our lips and eyes, Bliss in our brows bent,'" Peregrine murmured. Lieutenant Halliday looked skeptical, and he hastily added, "Shakespeare."
Andrew didn't think he should be listening to this poetical nonsense. Nor, for that matter, should Sarah-Louise. Surely someone so very tall and freckled shouldn't wear so many stripes? "A rent, then deemed considerable, was paid to the Lord of the Manor by the fishermen for the privilege to dry their nets, and in the winter to haul their boats upon what is now the Steine," Andrew remarked.
Sarah-Louise liked stripes. To wear them, when she knew they didn't flatter, was her small act of defiance against the world. To defy the world in the matter of stripes was one thing, however, and to run counter to her papa was another. A letter from that acerbic gentleman had come in today's post. Sarah-Louise's papa wished to know how the ladies went on. Sarah-Louise gazed on Peregrine. Truly, she didn't mean to be a serpent's tooth. But Mr. Teasdale had seen the beauty of her soul, and she wouldn't mind living in a garret if she could be his muse. Sarah-Louise was not entirely certain what a garret was, but she thought it would be very romantic to dwell in squalor with only a few servants, and perhaps a single coach.
Lieutenant Halliday had ceased to extol the wonders of Brighton. Sarah-Louise tore her gaze away from Peregrine to glance at him. He was very pale. His limp was more pronounced than usual, she thought, concerned. "Lieutenant Halliday, are you unwell?"
Andrew disliked the suggestion that he might be in delicate health, though the truth was that he had been racketing himself to pieces, and his bad dreams had returned. "Nothing of the sort! Fit as a fiddle!" he retorted. "In the great gale of 1705 all the houses on the flats below the cliffs were washed away."
At the suggestion that one of her callers might be ailing, Lady Denham looked up from her list. Heaven forbid that someone should disgorge his luncheon upon her expensive Aubusson carpet. Lieutenant Halliday did not look so ill as all that. "I do not think I have ever heard that young man speak of anything but Brighton. It is very odd."
Mr. Sutton had no interest in young Lieutenant Halliday, save perhaps for his sister's sake. Carlisle had reached his own conclusions regarding certain remarks recently overheard. He did not choose to acquaint his companion with those conclusions.
Amice was accustomed to having her own way. She had decided that Carlisle would do for his niece—heaven only knew why, the chit wouldn't last in India a fortnight—and it never occurred to her that the parties involved might have other ideas in mind.
Carlisle very definitely had other ideas in mind than the timorous Miss Inchquist, who plainly had a partiality elsewhere. Did not the girl blanch and tremble each time she was in his vicinity, Carlisle might warn her against wearing her heart upon her sleeve.
"You are not attending me, Amice," he protested. "Do you recognize this female?"
Lady Denham glanced up from her list, which concerned arrangements for the grand event she planned in honor of her niece. A great many members of the fashionable world would be in attendance. Hopefully the girl could be dissuaded from wearing stripes.
She studied the miniature which Mr. Sutton extended to her. Guinea-gold hair, periwinkle eyes, an admirable décolletage—Lady Denham sniffed. "No, I don't know her, and you shouldn't, either. She doesn't look like she's the thing, Carlisle."
That depended on what one considered "the thing." Carlisle found the lady very much in his style. Not that she was a lady. And not that he had lessened in his determination to wring her neck. "What about this dog?" he said, and described Lump.
A great, damp, rude, and multicolored hound? The description sounded familiar. Lady Denham frowned. "I do believe I have seen such a creature. Where, I cannot recall. Ah well, it will come back to me, I'm sure! Meantime—" She waved her list. "Dare I invite Brummell, do you think?"
Lady Denham sat as regally upon her Sphinx-arm chair as if it were the Peacock Throne, once property of the Emperor Shahjahan, a stunning construction of gold and jewels surmounted by a golden arch and topped by two gilded peacocks, birds of allegedly incorruptible flesh. How foolish these English were, with their conviction of superiority in all things, their sublime assurance that they knew best. True, Carlisle was English himself, but India had schooled Mr. Sutton in the arts of duplicity to the point where he could outwit the devil himself.
He smiled. "No party is complete without the celebrated Mr. Brummell. If you truly wish to guarantee his presence, you must invite Warwick as well."
Warwick? The name sounded vaguely familiar. Its origins, Lady Denham could not recall. Perhaps it need not be pointed out that Lady Denham had reached that certain age females must dread, when certain facilities begin to fade, and hair and teeth loosen from their moorings, and the wearing of corsets becomes a necessity instead of a fashionable conceit.
"Very well," said she. "If this Warwick will insure me Brummell, I shall add him to the list."
Among the things Lady Denham had forgotten was that Mr. Sutton was of a sardonic temperament. "I promise you that Brummell wouldn't miss it. Nor would I," he said, and rose to take his leave.
Chapter Fifteen
The Marine Parade stretched to a considerable extent along the sea. The buildings there boasted large windows that disclosed wide views of the Channel, and were considered by some to be preferable to the structures on the Steine.
On a fine day, the Marine Parade was an ever-changing panorama. Military music played. Under the colonnades, visitors congregated to read newspapers and watch other members of the fashionable world pass by. If no more immediate entertainment beckoned, the gentlemen might raise their telescopes and inspect the seashore and the bathing machines. In theory, a person desirous of taking the waters could hire a machine, therein to privately disrobe and don the requisite flannel smock. The machine was then pulled into the water by a horse, and the bather descended under cover of seclusion. In reality, because the bathing machines lacked awnings, little escaped the severe inspection of the gentlemen's telescopes.
Among the gentlemen lounging in front of the library was Magnus Eliot. Mr. Eliot was not peering through a telescope—did Magnus wish to observe a female bathing, there were any number who would oblige him, and without the distraction of a flannel smock—but reading a newspaper article about the Turkish practice of shampooing, which consisted of being wrapped in a wet blanket and stewed alive by steam strained through odiferous herbs, and dabbed all the while with pads of flannel, until one was dissolved into a mass of gelatinous cartilage, all of which Mr. Eliot considered so much humbug. He was distracted from his newspaper by the arrival of a slender blond lady in company with a large and ugly dog. She sat down in a chair beside him. "Mr. Eliot?" she said.
The lady appeared ill at ease, as well she should. Magnus was a man of libertine propensities, a gambler and a wastrel, an impenitent and utterly charming rogue who lived on his wits, which were considerable. He was also handsome, in a very wicked way, with auburn hair and laughing green eyes, intriguingly dissipated features, and the physique of a sportsman. Additionally, he possessed a pair of most enchanting dimples that appeared when he smiled. Magnus smiled often, for he had a large sense of the absurd.
The ladies ran mad for him, of course; how could they resist? Magnus was very grateful for their appreciation and prided himself that he seldom left a lady dissatisfied.
He did not think, however, that this particular lady had amour on her mind, which was rather a pity, because she was very lovely, and not at all in his style. "In the flesh," he responded. "You seem perturbed. Perhaps you would like to compose yourself by gazing out to sea through my telescope. You may watch the fishing boats come and go."
Georgie doubted very much that Mr. Eliot was interested in fishing vessels. How this conversation had passed beyond her control in the space of a single sentence she did not know. Beneath Mr. Eliot's green gaze, she felt like the gawkiest schoolgirl.
&
nbsp; But she was not a schoolgirl, and Mr. Eliot was no gentleman to watch her with such overt amusement. "Fishing vessels, indeed!" Georgie retorted, and wrapped Lump's leash securely around the arm of her chair. "Mr. Eliot, I must speak with you."
She amused him, this so-serious lady. Magnus set his newspaper aside. "You may do with me as you wish, my pet." She flushed, and he smiled at her. "Intriguing as the notion is, I do not think you have come here to get up a flirtation—although should you wish to do so, you may come to me any time. How may I be of assistance to you, Miss Halliday?"
Magnus Eliot made a person wonder what it would be like to enjoy unrepentant wickedness so much. "You know my name," Georgie said.
Mr. Eliot quirked a brow. "I know many things, Lady Georgiana. For instance, I know that your brother is named Andrew. And that this beast—" His gaze fell on the dog, which was stretched out at his mistress's feet, smack in the path of passersby. "—is known as Lump. You look startled, my sweet. To a man in my position, knowledge is wealth."
Georgie imagined Mr. Eliot knew all manner of interesting things. He was probably almost as good at kissing as Garth. Perhaps even better. She scolded herself for her improper thoughts. Her companion looked ironic. Surely he could not know what she was thinking. 'Truly, Mr. Eliot, I do not wish to be one of your flirts."
Of course she did not wish to become one of his flirts. Magnus wondered if he might make her change her mind. "I do not have flirts, my poppet. I have petites-amies."
The man refused to be serious. Georgie frowned at him. "Plural, of course," she commented.
There was more to this so-proper lady than had first appeared. Magnus threw back his head and laughed. "Touché! Pleasant as this is, you should not be talking with me, Miss Halliday."
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