Cupid's Dart

by Maggie MacKeever

  Georgie was more than startled by these revelations. "You mean that she—um—"

  "I mean that Catherine did not consider fidelity a virtue," Garth responded wryly. "In a husband or a wife. I doubt that she was faithful to me beyond the honeymoon, if that. I suppose I should be grateful to her for not providing me an heir, because I should have always wondered who the child's true father was."

  "Garth!" Georgie said again, appalled. 'Yet you let the world think that—" She paused. "Oh. I see."

  "Rather a murderer than a cuckold?" Garth shrugged. "Something like that. To say the truth, I was not altogether certain Catherine was not playing some monstrous practical joke. We had quarreled just before she disappeared."

  Georgie tried to assemble her scattered wits. "It was not the first time you had quarreled, I'll warrant."

  "You think me high-handed." Ruefully, Lord Warwick smiled. "Truly, Georgie, my intentions were the best. I dreaded the consequences you would face, were your name linked with mine. And I will quarrel with you no more about it. The damage has been done."

  What Georgie meant to do, she later was not certain, but she started to move toward Lord Warwick, and her delicate evening slipper slid in the damp grass. Instead of moving toward him, she tumbled right into his arms. Garth caught her up against his chest. Georgie turned her face up to his. He raised one hand and rubbed his thumb along her lush lower lip.

  Georgie shivered, but not with cold. "Garth," she whispered.

  That whisper was Lord Warwick's undoing, such longing did it express. He lowered his lips to hers.

  How gentle were his kisses, then how rough. How sweet and strange were the sensations those kisses aroused. Tingles and trembles and shivers—Georgie wasn't certain she could still stand.

  Garth inhaled deeply, then he removed her arms from round his shoulders, and stepped back. That kiss—or kisses, to be precise—had affected Georgie no more than they had affected him. Garth wished he might sweep her up into his arms and make sweet, passionate love to her right there in the middle of Lady Denham's garden, and be damned if the entire world was looking on.

  "My dear, I wish to do much more than kiss you," he murmured. "Prudence dictates that we stop."

  Georgie recognized the remote expression that had descended upon Lord Warwick's features. "If you turn away from me now, I swear that I shall scream! What do you think that would do for my blasted reputation, pray?"

  Garth regretted that he had put Georgie in a temper. He drew her back into his arms. "Turn away from you? I shall never do that. Oh, my dear, what are we to do about this?"

  Georgie knew what she'd like to do—or if she didn't know exactly, had a fair idea. It involved divesting oneself of one's clothing, first of all. Georgie wouldn't at all have minded divesting herself of her clothing at that particular moment, even if they were in the middle of Lady Denham's garden. She snuggled closer to Garth.

  Lord Warwick reached a decision. He put Georgie away from him and heroically refrained from planting kisses on the creamy flesh so charmingly revealed by her low-cut gown. "I am going to be absent from town for the space of a few days," he said abruptly. "Much as I dislike to leave you at the mercy of your Mrs. Smith."

  Garth was leaving Brighton? The warmer the embrace, the farther he must distance himself from her, it seemed. Georgie would chew glass before she betrayed her bitter disappointment. "We are not yet at point non plus," she responded lightly. "I daresay we shall contrive. But we have given the gossips enough to jaw about for one evening, don't you think? Let us go back inside."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Andrew was feeling sadly out of curl. Agatha's most recent attempts to physic him, involving as they had cold water and stewed prunes, and snails mashed with mallets, had proven little more beneficial to his nerves than the newspaper accounts he currently perused. Andrew was sorry to read that matters in the Peninsula had degenerated into a waiting game, where the French and British armies were evenly matched, and both commanders waited for the other to make a mistake. While Wellington's officers leisurely explored the city, and Old Douro himself was feted and kissed by Spanish ladies everywhere he went, the troops endured scalding sun and bitter cold, choked down breakfasts of beer and onions after performing outpost work all night, and burned emptied coffins for firewood because no other kindling was to be found in the almost treeless terrain.

  Andrew exercised no vast imagination; these details and others were laid out before him in black and white. Leakage of vital military information was an ongoing problem. The croakers, in their grumblings, gave away intelligence to the enemy; and many details of soldiers' letters home were transformed into newsprint to be read by friend and foe alike. Andrew tossed the newspaper aside. As many another soldier before him had discovered, after the heat of battle, civilian life seemed damned flat.

  If Lieutenant Halliday found Brighton dull this morning, he was in the minority. Even in the bath establishments created for those individuals who did not wish to dally on the seashore or jostle for a bathing-machine, the most notable of them Wood's Baths and William's New Baths, which stood within a few yards of each other on the south side of the Steine, the atmosphere was gay, and orchestras played.

  Andrew had not chosen to submerge himself in the hot baths or the cold, and certainly he had no curiosity about a method of curing the gout by means of an air pump. He had come merely to drink the waters, not because he had any great faith in their efficacy, although they must surely taste better than stewed prunes and mashed snails. Simply, he had sought an excuse to leave the house. On the floor beside his chair sprawled Lump, who was under strict orders to behave himself. Lump looked most incongruous in these elegant surroundings, which were pedimented and colonnaded, and boasted crystal chandeliers and furnishings in the latest style.

  It was that incongruity which first caught Lady Denham's eye. A large, damp, ill-mannered dog with a great many teeth, which looked as though he had been splattered with paint from several different pots—she couldn't think who had been asking her about such a beast. Doubtless she would eventually remember. Just now, she had something in particular to say to Lieutenant Halliday.

  "I wish a word with you, young man!" said Lady Denham, and deposited herself in a nearby chair. Behind her, Sarah-Louise hovered nervously.

  Lady Denham looked quite spectacular in a walking dress of Pomona green merino cloth with a stomacher front and a ruff of triple lace; long, full sleeves tied up in three places with colored ribbons; and a frilled edging to the hem. Upon her coal-black hair perched a narrow-brimmed bonnet with a high crown covered in feathers and flowers. Lump perked up his ears and drooled.

  "No," murmured Andrew, recognizing an incipient canine interest. "If you do not behave I shall make you drink the waters. Good morning, Lady Denham. Miss Inchquist." Sarah-Louise was wearing stripes again, he noticed. This day they were orange.

  At the suggestion that it was a good day, Lady Denham snorted. "Don't try and change the subject! What do you know of Lord Warwick, young man?"

  Warwick? Andrew frowned as he tried to place the name. There had been some business with his cousin Catherine—but Andrew had been in the military then, with scant interest in such stuff.

  Lady Denham, however, seemed very interested. Cautiously, Andrew said, "I've never met the man."

  "Humph!" With the force of her emotion, Lady Denham's feathers swayed. Lump parted his great jaws, and panted. Andrew frowned at him. Thwarted, Lump laid his head back down on his paws. Oblivious to this byplay, Lady Denham continued. "I would not want you to think me a tittle-tattle—I had not wished to mention it—then I decided that I should! I'm sure you will forgive my boldness when you hear what I have to say. To give you the word with no bark on it, you may not have met Lord Warwick, Lieutenant Halliday, but your sister has! She not only waltzed with him, she disappeared with him into the garden for quite fifteen minutes at my rout."

  Andrew followed these disclosures with some confusion. Lady Denham was e
xperiencing a profound degree of emotion, and he failed to understand why. "And so? Where's the harm in that? Warwick's married to my cousin Catherine, as I recall. Which makes him and Georgie relatives of some sort, I think."

  Lady Denham was glad to see that someone else was as ignorant of Lord Warwick's lurid history as she herself had been. "You poor boy! It is positively providential that we encountered you this morning!" Lady Denham proceeded to relate all the tidbits of gossip that had been presented her by her guests, while behind her Sarah-Louise fidgeted and blushed. "Warwick's wife disappeared while on an outing, or so the official explanation goes. Rumor has it that she ran away from home—he must have driven her to it, poor thing—and Warwick either tracked her down and shot her, or drowned her, or broke her neck himself upon learning she planned to elope. And then he hid her body so well that it has never been found!"

  Lady Denham's disclosures were delivered with considerable relish. Some response was required. "Jupiter!" Andrew said.

  If Lieutenant Halliday did not faint dead away upon receipt of her confidences, his startled reaction left Lady Denham not dissatisfied. "Your sister should not associate with such a reprobate! You will wish to tell her so. Now you must excuse me for a moment while I speak with an old friend. Sarah-Louise, do stop hovering, and sit down."

  Obediently, Miss Inchquist perched in her aunt's abandoned chair, reached down to give Lump a pat. "I do not think the matter is so bad as my aunt imagines," she ventured. "She tends to exaggerate. Lady Georgiana appeared to be enjoying herself."

  Lady Georgiana was having a prodigious good time of late, reflected her brother. He wondered which she liked better, waltzing with a murderer or sitting on a rakehell's lap. "My sister is a woman grown," he said, with no great conviction. "She must know what she's about."

  Sarah-Louise hoped that Lieutenant Halliday was not mistaken. "Have you no family other than your sister?" she asked.

  Andrew was still thinking of his sister and her queer behavior. That everything was to be laid at the hen-witted Marigold's doorstep, he made no doubt. "Our parents died in a carriage accident some years ago. There are an uncle and some cousins— my cousin Catherine's relations—but Georgie is estranged from them."

  "And therefore so are you." Sarah-Louise admired this loyalty. However, mention of family had brought her own to mind. She glanced cautiously around for her aunt, and found that lady deep in conversation some distance away. "I am in a dreadful pucker," Miss Inchquist confessed. "My papa is coming to Brighton, and once he arrives, my aunt is bound to tell him that she has decided I would make Mr. Sutton a good wife."

  Better Carlisle Sutton than Peregrine Teasdale, thought Andrew, but politely refrained from remark. Not that he had ever observed Mr. Sutton so much as talking to Sarah-Louise. "Does Mr. Sutton wish to marry you?" he asked.

  "Whyever should he?" retorted Sarah-Louise. "I am hardly in his style. Not that either Papa or Aunt Amice will care for that. Sometimes I wonder if perhaps I was left on my papa's doorstep, because I cannot see any resemblance between myself and any other member of my family. They take a notion in their heads, and nothing can stand in their way. I am instead a pudding-heart." She paused to contemplate that unhappy fact. "The only thing I can see for it is that Mr. Sutton should develop a preference for someone other than myself. Do you think—That is, I have noticed that Mr. Sutton seems to like your sister very well."

  Was there a gentleman who didn't like his sister? While Andrew had been preoccupied with his own troubles, Georgie had apparently come out of her shell. "No!" he said, so sternly that Lump, thinking he had been spoken to, apologetically wagged his tail. "If Georgie wishes to cultivate Mr. Sutton, it will not be at my request."

  Miss Inchquist wondered how she might persuade Lady Georgiana to cultivate Mr. Sutton. If only Sarah-Louise were not of too meek a nature to stand up to her father and her aunt. If only Peregrine were not pressing her to run off to Gretna Green. "I do not wish to elope," she said aloud. "I want a real church wedding. A very grand wedding. Perhaps even at St. George's, Hanover Square."

  Miss Inchquist did not wish to marry Carlisle Sutton, yet it appeared she'd already made her bridal plans. Andrew despaired of ever understanding the gentler sex. Perhaps it was not Mr. Sutton that Sarah-Louise wished to greet her at the altar in Hanover Square. Andrew wondered what Mr. Teasdale might deem suitable attire for a wedding. The thought gave him a headache. As did the realization that his sister was not so up-to-snuff as he had thought her, as demonstrated by her recent shenanigans in gardens and on laps.

  Why was it that the ladies seemed to have a susceptibility for gentlemen they should not? Damned if Georgie wasn't every bit as green as Sarah-Louise. Now Andrew must worry about them both. He almost wished that he might be in the Peninsula again, dealing with the bloody-minded French.

  Chapter Twenty

  Marigold had thought and thought, and couldn't think what she was to do. However could she come by twenty-five thousand pounds? If only she had something left to wager, she might win that amount at play, providing that she was very, very lucky, which she had not been yet. Marigold possessed little more than the clothes on her back—figuratively speaking, that was. As poor Janie could attest, Marigold's clothing filled to overflowing both a wardrobe and a portmanteau.

  The clothes on Marigold's back, just then, were not what one might expect. Mrs. Smith wore no percale or spotted cambric, no embroidered mull or pique or gauze. Instead she was dressed in baggy breeches, a brown stuff jacket, less-than-pristine linen, scuffed shoes, and had a handkerchief tied round her neck. Her hair was tucked up beneath a felt cap. Although she looked well enough, Marigold enjoyed this garb no more now than when she had worn it onstage. To pass as a boy, her magnificence of figure necessitated the use of considerable camouflage. However, Marigold could hardly jaunter openly around Brighton making inquiries about a certain gentleman from India. Though she may have decided that it was necessary for her to speak with Mr. Sutton, she did not wish him to see her first.

  Discovering the gentleman's lodging place was not an easy feat, and dusk had descended on the city by the time Marigold limped into the yard of The King's Hand, past a hay-strewn horse trough and several dilatory grooms. In her wake she had left numerous kitchen maids and potboys with the impression that a certain Indian gentleman was a three-tailed Bashaw, or alternately a Mugwump, guilty of some unnamed but hideous offense, and consequently a-hiding of hisself. None of those worthies questioned Marigold's identity. Her experience on the stage stood her in good stead, and she had liberally laced her vocabulary with such words as "Cricky!", "Hoi!", and "Adone-do!"

  Luck continued to be with her now in the person of a little barmaid, who cheerfully confided that Mr. Sutton had a room on the second floor, and was even so helpful as to point out which window was his. Marigold eyed the window, and then a nearby tree.

  The barmaid returned to her duties. Marigold glanced around, found herself unnoticed, and swung herself onto the lowest limb. Up the tree she scrambled, as if it were the rigging on a stage.

  A breeze ruffled the white curtains at the open window. A pity Marigold lacked the wherewithal to gamble, so lucky was she this day. Now she could inspect Mr. Sutton's belongings before he returned home to find her awaiting him, at which time she would be reasonable, and hopefully so would he. In case he was not, Marigold had her little pistol tucked into her waistband.

  It never occurred to Marigold that Mr. Sutton might be in his quarters. In Marigold's experience, gentlemen were never in their quarters at this time of day. She swung one leg over the windowsill and ducked into the room. The chamber was much as she had expected—narrow bed and wooden chair, small chest of drawers, water pitcher and bowl on a corner stand—save for the gentleman in the metal bath.

  The bathtub was too small for him. His knees protruded through the soapy water like two islands in a sea. "Ah, Miss Macclesfield," he said. "You have recovered from your grief."

  From her grief—which admi
ttedly had centered more on her late husband's lack of foresight than the fact that he had shuffled off this mortal coil—Marigold may have recovered, but not from the circumstance of having interrupted a gentleman in his bath. This particular gentleman had the physique of a Greek statue. Marigold was not accustomed to gazing upon so splendid a masculine specimen, her husbands—with the exception of poor Leo—having been past their prime. She experienced a certain difficulty in tearing her gaze away from Mr. Sutton's splendidly bronzed and muscular chest. One would think he went about in the sun half-clothed. Or perhaps unclothed. "Um," she said.

  His uncle's widow, decided Carlisle, was beginning to realize that she had met her match. "I am glad that you have seen the wisdom of coming to me. Allow me to make myself more presentable. Pray hand me that towel."

  Heavens, was the man going to remove himself from the tub now? Not that he could stay in it indefinitely without shriveling like a prune. Though Marigold might long to drown Mr. Sutton for the trouble he had caused her, she did not wish for him to shrivel. She handed him a towel, and then turned her back, a movement that brought her face-to-face with the looking-glass atop the chest of drawers. The mirror afforded her an excellent view of Mr. Sutton as he removed himself from the tub. His lower half appeared every bit as excellent as his upper half had been. Perhaps more so. Marigold scrunched her eyes shut. The odious man had already made it very clear that he would not catch her if she swooned.

  What a brazen wench she was, to climb right through his window. Carlisle wondered what she had thought she'd find. Not what she had found, he'd warrant. "All right. You can turn around."

  Marigold did so, then stared. "Excuse me," she said politely. "I believe you've forgot your shirt."