Cupid's Dart

by Maggie MacKeever

Georgie lowered her gaze to his cravat, which was sadly rumpled, as well as tear-stained. "We could not agree on a certain matter," she murmured.

  Lord Warwick had little doubt of what that matter was. Another interval of kissing ensued. "Let me see if I have got this right," he said, at its conclusion. "Your Mrs. Smith, who is an actress, lost a certain gem at play. Magnus Eliot has that gem. Carlisle Sutton wants it back. Your brother tried to steal it from Magnus Eliot. This conundrum has brought your brother to a state of nervous and physical exhaustion, which causes him to mumble incoherently about twenty-five thousand pounds. And Miss Inchquist—who the devil is Miss Inchquist? No, don't tell me—has run off with a fortune-hunting twiddlepoop."

  Georgie sighed. "Something like that."

  Garth set her aside and stood up. "I suppose I need not point out that did you wish to subject your family to another round of notoriety, you could not have come up with a muddle that would fascinate the gossips more."

  Surely she was not going to cry again! Georgie blinked back tears. "You promised you would not lecture me."

  "I am not lecturing." Garth paused in front of a looking-glass to adjust his cravat. "I am mystified as to the reason why you should think that I might wish to lecture you. Granted, I have lectured you in the past. Unfortunately, it is my tendency to treat you as though you were still a girl, which demonstrably you are not, but I cannot treat you as I truly wish to, and therefore fall back on my old ways."

  Georgie wondered how Lord Warwick truly wished to treat her. "You are in an odd mood," she said.

  Garth turned toward her and arched his brow. "Missing emeralds. Vanished heiresses. Actresses and rakehells."

  Georgie winced. "I take your point. Garth, you said you would never turn away from me. Have you changed your mind?"

  How forlorn she looked, huddled on his peach sofa. "I promise that I shall neither turn away nor run away from you," said Garth. "Now go home and wait for me."

  Georgie didn't know that she wanted to return home. Heaven only knew what additional disasters might await her there. "What are you going to do?" she asked, as she got up from the couch.

  "I don't know what I may do!" responded Garth. "Talk with Magnus Eliot, I suppose. I'll say this for you, Georgie: you pick the devil of a way to call in your vowels."

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Lump was greatly enjoying his first curricle ride. Since this pleasure took expression in a great deal of barking, drooling, and leaping about, his fellow travelers were less enthused. Like Mr. Teasdale, the horses cared for Lump no more in the curricle than they had out of it, and became increasingly nervous and hard to control, a circumstance that Peregrine was not equipped to repair. Unlike a more experienced horseman, who would have known to hold the horses' reins in his left hand, and in his right the whip, Peregrine held the reins in both his hands, and up around his nose.

  A cow-handed whipster, nervous horses, and a barking dog; a sharp turning, a wheel caught on the corner of a bridge—the result: a broken axle, and a tumble into a ditch. By the time everyone had climbed out of the ditch, and calmed the horses, and found an obliging blacksmith, no one was in a good mood, save Lump, who considered this the grandest adventure he had enjoyed in quite some time. While repairs were being made, the small party retired to a nearby inn.

  It was a very rustic inn. Sarah-Louise looked with some dismay around the private parlor that Peregrine had procured for them. The room had more the dimensions of a warming closet, with low ceilings and a small fireplace and a very dirty floor. Even the air smelled stale. "Where are we? This d-does not seem to me to be the way to Aunt Amice's house."

  Nor was it, but instead the road to Gretna Green. Peregrine lifted the tankard of ale that the landlord had provided them, along with a cold pigeon pie. "There is no reason it should seem familiar. We are taking a short cut." This did not seem the moment to inform Sarah-Louise that she was to be a runaway bride. Not that Peregrine expected her to protest. He was doing her a favor, was he not? It wasn't like she might expect to make a love match. Miss Inchquist was unlikely to marry at all, if not for her papa's rolls of soft.

  Matrimony, in that moment, was also on Miss Inchquist's mind, not as a grand aspiration, but as something she didn't think she wished to undertake. Not with Mr. Teasdale, at any rate. Mr. Teasdale had not displayed himself particularly well during the past hour, yelling at Lump, and at her, and letting his horses get out of hand. Scant wonder they had wound up in a ditch, which hadn't improved either Mr. Teasdale's temper, or his appearance. Peregrine's clothes were mud-spattered, his boots scratched and dirty, and he had lost both his hat and his quizzing-glass.

  Why the deuce was Sarah-Louise staring at him? It put a fellow off. Peregrine hoped she didn't mean to gawk at him like that every morning over the breakfast cups.

  Gawking was a small enough price to pay for a fortune, he supposed. Peregrine drained his tankard, and broached the pigeon pie. It was not edible. He put down his fork, and decided he might as well get on with the business. "'O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move/The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love. '"

  Sarah-Louise was in no mood for this nonsense. "Thomas Gray," she said. "Tell me the truth, Peregrine. Were you going to take us home?"

  The word "us" reminded Peregrine of that blasted hound. He glanced down to find that Lump had disposed of the pigeon pie. Miss Inchquist was frowning. Peregrine called her his "bright particular star."

  "Shakespeare!" retorted Sarah-Louise. "Answer me, please! Where were you planning to take us, sir?"

  Peregrine cast about in his mind for an appropriate reference to marriage. Neither "Marriage is a noose" (Cervantes) nor "Wedding is destiny, And hanging likewise" (Heywood) seemed appropriate. "'As may arrows, loosed sev'l ways, Fly to one mark, '" he ventured. "Dear heart, we are flying to Gretna Green."

  Mention of Gretna Green recalled to Sarah-Louise an earlier overheard conversation. Gretna Green was going to be overridden with eloping lovers at this rate. Sarah-Louise didn't think she wished to be among them. "You bamboozled me," she said.

  Peregrine sincerely hoped so. Ladies who had been bamboozled were much more compliant than otherwise. "Not a bit of it. I'm devoted to you. Give you my word."

  Devoted to her? Rather, devoted to her papa's pocketbook. "Fiddlestick!" said Sarah-Louise.

  The normally meek Miss Inchquist looked as though she was about to spit fire. "Nonsense," Peregrine soothed. "You are fine as fivepence." Perhaps that reference was imprudent. "Top of the trees."

  Sarah-Louise did not care for this reminder of her height. "You have never written a single word of your own poetry, unless it was that silly sonnet about my nose, or if you have, I have never heard it, so I can hardly be your muse. Papa was right. You only wish to marry me because your pockets are to let."

  Peregrine didn't see that it was any of his bride-to-be's business if his purse was empty. And she was his bride-to-be, whether she liked it or not. "You are making a great deal of fuss over nothing," he said crossly. "I wish that you would stop. So what if I pretended to write something that I didn't? You liked it well enough at the time."

  So Sarah-Louise had, because she thought he cared for her, and now she clearly saw that he did not. The realization of her folly made her very sad. It also made her want to damage something, preferably Peregrine. "I thought I wouldn't mind being married for my papa's money. Now I find I do. I no longer wish to marry you, Mr. Teasdale."

  Peregrine smiled, unpleasantly. "A pity," he said. "Because now even your father will agree that you no longer have a choice."

  Sarah-Louise couldn't imagine her papa agreeing to any such thing. "You must be all about in your head. My papa doesn't even like you," she retorted. "And neither do I!"

  Peregrine moved around the table. "Think, Sarah-Louise. You are alone with me. Unchaperoned. And you have been for some time. Your father will be grateful to me for marrying you, now that your good name has been compromised."

  Compromised!
So busy had Sarah-Louise been with all her other worries that she had not considered that her good name might be besmirched. What Mr. Teasdale said was true. She should not be alone with him. "Oh, botheration!" she cried.

  There was more than one way to lead a horse to water. To clinch the matter, Peregrine would see that the young lady was compromised in truth. He moved closer. Sarah-Louise backed away. Lump watched with interest, curious about this new game. Mr. Teasdale and Miss Inchquist circled the small chamber until she came up smack against the fireplace. "Hah!" said Peregrine, and reached for her.

  Mr. Teasdale might have done well to recall the remainder of the adage about leading horses to water, to wit that once arrived at the puddle one still had to encourage them to drink. Sarah-Louise grasped the fireplace poker and swung it at his head. Peregrine ducked and cursed. Sarah-Louise screamed, loudly. Lump threw back his head and howled.

  The parlor door flew open. Mr. Sutton and Mr. Inchquist burst into the room. Sarah-Louise flung down the poker—narrowly missing Peregrine—and ran to her father. "I am so glad to see you, Papa! How did you find us?"

  Quentin regarded his daughter, who did indeed look glad to see him, and rather the worse for wear. "There aren't many violet and vermillion and blue curricles about. Teasdale wasn't hard to trace. But what's this? You wanted us to find you?" he asked.

  Sarah-Louise suffered a moment's horrid fear that her papa would do as Peregrine had predicted. "Please don't make me marry him!" she cried. "I know I have been foolish, and disobedient, but please, please, please don't make me do that!"

  Quentin hugged his daughter, somewhat awkwardly, because she was taller than he, and also distraught. "You aren't wishful of eloping, puss?"

  Sarah-Louise shuddered. "I never wanted to elope, even when I thought I liked Mr. Teasdale, which I do not anymore. Oh, Papa, if only I had listened to you, none of this would have happened, because all along you were right. Peregrine was everything you said he was. Can you ever forgive me?"

  "There, there!" Quentin gave his daughter's arm an awkward pat. "It's partly my fault. I shouldn't have sent you off to your aunt. But if you weren't wishful of running off with him, then why are you here?"

  Sarah-Louise explained the accident. "I only got into his curricle because he said he would take Lump and me back to Aunt Amice."

  Quentin's eye kindled. "The scoundrel kidnapped you. I'll give him his bastings, that I will." He paused. "He didn't, er—"

  Sarah-Louise wasn't sure quite what "er" entailed. "He has never so much as k-kissed me, Papa."

  Mr. Teasdale was not only a knave, but a knuckle-head as well. "What a paltry fellow," Quentin soothed. "You'll want Sutton, then."

  Sarah-Louise glanced at Mr. Sutton, who looked as appalled as she felt. "I do not wish to marry Mr. Sutton! Nor does he wish to marry me. Besides, he is quite old."

  Quentin frowned at this pronouncement. It was clear that Sarah-Louise needed a husband, the sooner the better; Sutton would make Sarah-Louise a better husband than the mincing Peregrine. Still, if the girl didn't want him— "That settles it! I don't care if you are rich as Croesus. I shan't have my girl taken off to India, and there's an end to it."

  Carlisle was happy to disabuse Sarah-Louise's papa of this bloodcurdling notion. "Your sister's matchmaking aspirations are so much moonshine, Inchquist. The furthest I agreed to escort your daughter was to the Hallidays, and even that has proved to be a large mistake."

  Things had gone from bad to worse. Peregrine wished only to escape. He picked up the fireplace poker. Unfortunately, the only exit was the doorway, where Mr. Sutton stood.

  Lump grew bored with watching Miss Inchquist and her papa clutch each other. Clearly, nothing interesting was going to happen there. He looked around the room for further entertainment, or perhaps another pigeon pie. Then he espied Mr. Sutton in the doorway. Lump remembered Mr. Sutton, and the tack room. Growling, he advanced.

  Carlisle Sutton was not about to wind up this wretched day getting either dog-bit or brained by a fireplace poker. Therefore, he did the only thing he could. With a kick and a swish and a thump he divested Mr. Teasdale of his weapon, knocking him unconscious in the process, and with the poker held off the dog. "Get back, you cur!"

  Thus distracted from their hugging, the Inchquists turned to look. Sarah-Louise hurried forward to grasp Lump's collar. "No, no! Mr. Sutton is a friend!" she said. "If you wish to bite someone, bite Mr. Teasdale."

  Lump did not wish to bite Mr. Teasdale, or, for that matter, anyone. The pigeon pie was not sitting well with him. He parted his great jaws, and belched.

  Mr. Sutton looked at Peregrine, stretched out unconscious on the floor, and suggested that they take their leave before the gentleman awoke. Ungently, Mr. Inchquist prodded the body with his boot. Much as Quentin would have liked to dress the rapscallion's hide neatly, prudence dictated otherwise. Unless he wished to be clapped in irons for attempted kidnapping, the twiddlepoop would bother them no more.

  Chapter Thirty

  Georgie lay on the drawing room sofa with a damp cloth upon her forehead. Andrew had moved with his blanket to a chair, his lame leg propped up before him on a stool. "If that potion is what Agatha has been physicking you with," moaned Georgie, "no wonder you were ill."

  Andrew had no idea what concoction Georgie had swallowed in his place. "I'm just as glad you drank it instead of me," he said. "Though I'm sorry for your headache."

  Georgie pushed back the damp cloth. "You were shamming earlier, weren't you, Andrew? When you were talking about Cuidad Rodrigo and Badajoz? You are not still feeling ill?"

  Only of the mulligrubs, as Marigold would say. Her words, and the truth of them, still stuck in his mind. "No, sis. I'm not feeling ill. I just wished to throw Mr. Sutton off the scent." Could Andrew have paced the floor, he would have. Instead, he drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "I wish the devil I knew what was happening."

  Georgie wished she knew where Marigold had got to. Her guest was nowhere in the house. Agatha entered the room with a tea tray, to inform them that Mr. Brown was still in the kitchen with Janie, the pair of them sitting at the kitchen table munching freshly baked almond cake and talking a blue streak.

  She placed the tea tray on a table. Georgie eyed it doubtfully. "Pray take no offense, Agatha, but what is in that pot?"

  "Just some nice tea," soothed Agatha, failing to add that she had added a bit of borage to expel pensiveness and melancholy, and clarify the blood.

  Gingerly, Georgie sat up, and allowed Agatha to pour her a cup of tea, which she then spilled all over herself and the sofa, because Lump bounded into the room and leapt into her lap. Lump was much too large a dog to fit comfortably upon anybody's lap, but Georgie didn't mind. She hugged him. Lump licked her face. Agatha tsk'd and set about mopping up the spilt liquid. Andrew looked anxiously at the door.

  At a less excited pace, Mr. Inchquist and his daughter entered the drawing room, followed by Tibble, who had given up trying to monitor the parade of people in and out of this house. "Inchquist!" he announced, belatedly, before Agatha shooed him back to the kitchen to act as Janie's chaperone.

  "You have found Lump. I am grateful to you." Georgie studied her pet, who was now sprawled across the sofa, as well as her lap. "He doesn't look well."

  "I think it was the pigeon pie," offered Sarah-Louise, looking not at Lump but at Andrew, who was likewise staring at her.

  Agatha paused in the doorway, en route to fetch more teacups. "Georgie, set that dog down at once! Before he casts up his accounts."

  Damned if this wasn't a chaotic household. "He's already done that," Quentin said, as he settled in a chair near Georgie. "All over my coachman."

  Georgie buried her fingers in Lump's thick fur. "I am so sorry, Mr. Inchquist. We Hallidays have caused you a great deal of trouble, sir."

  "Nothing of the sort." Quentin squelched an impulse to pat Lady Georgiana comfortingly on the knee, so disheveled did she look, with her hair every which way, and her dres
s stained with tea, and that great hound stretched across her lap, staring up at her soulfully. "You Hallidays have spared me a great deal of trouble, because if not for your brother I would not have reached my girl in time. We'll say no more on it. Save that I, Quentin Inchquist, am in your debt."

  Georgie wondered if Quentin Inchquist might wish to donate twenty-five thousand pounds to the cause of retrieving a certain emerald necklace, then cast aside that unworthy thought. "I am glad all has ended well," she said.

  Andrew was less certain that all had ended well. "You didn’t wish to elope with Teasdale?" he inquired of Miss Inchquist, who perched upon another stool drawn up by his chair. "I'm sure you said you did. You liked that he was a poet. Wrote sonnets to you, and such stuff."

  "Yes, but he didn't!" explained Sarah-Louise. "None of those words were his. Mr. Teasdale was a mere pretender, and I changed my mind."

  Andrew was trying hard to understand. "Sutton, then. I wouldn't wish to go to India myself, but you must know what's best." Sarah-Louise protested that she didn't wish to go to India, either, which further confused Andrew. "Dash it, I was sure you wished to elope with someone!"

  "No, I didn't." Sarah-Louise's cheeks were pink. "Or if I did, it was none of them. Anyway, you were the one who was going to run off to Gretna Green."

  "I was?" Andrew set down his teacup, and wondered if Agatha had doctored it again, because this conversation was making no sense. "No, I wasn't! I never would have done such a thing."

  "Why is it that gentlemen must be forever telling whoppers?" In her frustration, Sarah-Louise so forgot herself as to strike Andrew on the leg. "I had not thought that you would treat me so. With my own ears, I heard you ask that pretty lady if she would like to elope, just before she hid behind the couch."

  "Pretty lady?" Andrew clutched his injured knee and stared at her, appalled. "You mean Marigold. Miss Inchquist, I would allow myself to be captured and tortured by Afrancesados before I ran off with a featherhead like Marigold."