The Wicked Marquess (17 page)

 “A gentleman’s reputation is his most valuable possession.” Percy strolled around the room. “He does not lie, for that would be cowardice. He does not cheat, or go back on his word. Nor does he flinch from the consequences of his actions. Baird is more of a gentleman than I had realized. Although he was caught doing what he should not, one has to sympathize. London must be deadly dull after Equatorial Africa and India and the Middle East. Moreover, Miss Russell
in naturabiles
is a nonpareil.”

Percy had seen Miss Russell
in naturabiles
? “What? When?
Where?
” Ceci demanded.

Percy paused by the dressing table. “I deduce from your disjointed utterances that you are eager to learn how I came to witness Miss Russell in a state of nature. She was with Baird in his study. I just happened to come upon them there. Baird was sufficiently a gentleman to betroth himself to the girl.”

Baird was betrothed to Miss Russell? Ceci flung her chocolate cup against the wall. “You just came upon them,” she said bitterly.

“I suspected Baird was hiding something.” Percy unearthed Ceci’s laudanum from the dressing-table clutter. “I did
not
suspect that I would find the little Russell in his house. On his lap, to be precise. To engage in immoral behavior with you is one thing, my dear Ceci, but to play at in-and-out with a well-born young lady– Well. One cannot help but admire such undisguised profligacy.”

Ceci wondered if she had sufficient energy left to fall into hysterics. She snatched her laudanum bottle from Percy’s hand and removed the cap. “Were they— Um?”

“Um? Ah! Matters had not progressed to that point. I bear Baird no ill will for the incivilities he uttered. I daresay I would have been uncivil also, had I been in his place.”

Ceci tipped back the little bottle, and drank. Bad enough that she was forced to live like a duck hunted by spaniels, she had additionally been out-maneuvered by a clever miss. Almost she could find it in her heart to feel sorry for Baird.

Almost, but not quite. Ceci had not expended so much time and energy on the marquess to have him escape her so easily. She strode purposefully toward her wardrobe. Fragments of broken china crunched underfoot.

Gowns and petticoats and garments of a more intimate nature flew through the air. Percy caught a corset before it could slap him in the face. “What the deuce are you doing?” he inquired.

Ceci emerged from the depths of the wardrobe, a flimsy muslin gown draped across her arms. “I am going to have a word or ten with Baird.”

Percy set aside the corset. “You will need to raise your voice. Baird left London hours ago. Along with Miss Russell, Sir Kenrick Symington, and Miss Blanchet. Their destination is unknown.”

Ceci sank back into her chair. “This cannot be happening to me.”

“My poor Ceci,” said Percy insincerely; he was never happier than when someone else was not. “Baird has thrown you to the wolves. Once your creditors learn of his defection, they will wear the knocker off your door. But all is not yet lost. I have discovered that Baird owns a centuries-old residence in Cornwall. Where better to hide oneself from scandal than a haunted abbey, pray?”

Ceci swallowed another sip of laudanum. She wished someone would whisk Percy off somewhere, preferably to the nether regions. His assessment of her creditors was all too correct. With Baird’s sudden betrothal to another woman – if the Russell girl was old enough to be considered a woman; had Ceci suspected Sinbad lusted after schoolroom misses she would have—

She would have what? Even if Ceci braided her hair and left off her corset, she could not pass as a schoolgirl. This realization put her further out of charity with everyone involved in the disaster that had become her life.

Percy took another pinch of snuff. “Don’t despair, my pet. There is to be a prizefight in the vicinity of Baird’s Abbey. I have discovered in myself a positive blood-thirst. And a desire to ruralize.”

“I shall accompany you!” said Ceci.

Percy flicked snuff off his fingertips.  “I rather thought you might.”

* * * *

The Polite World savored an exceptionally tasty tit-bit over their chocolate cups this day. Word of Sinbad’s tête-à-tête with Miss Russell travelled from breakfast-table to breakfast-table more rapidly than the speed of light.

From the breakfast-tables, the rumor spread out into the town. Mr. Atchison encountered it at Ackerman’s, where he was inspecting the latest selection of aquatint engravings, which had been painstakingly water colored by hand. His first thought, upon hearing the
on-dit
, was that Miranda was very heartless to act in such a fashion after he had dropped one of her decoctions in his ears. Mr. Burton learned the news at much the same moment, in Gentleman Jackson’s Bond St. boxing salon, and reacted to it so extremely that he knocked his opponent out cold. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Atchison encountered Mr. Burton in the Temple gardens behind Fleet Street. If on no other matter, the gentlemen agreed that so dire a development required the sharp thinking of a barrister.

Mr. Dowlin had been preoccupied with nothing more important than his supper as he hurried across the tranquil Temple courtyard in his gray wig and flapping gown. He was more than a little startled to find Mr. Atchison and Mr. Burton impatiently waiting on the doorstep of his pleasant chambers at Grey’s Inn.

Both burst into speech as soon as he came within earshot. Mr. Burton spoke ominously of starting mills and drawing corks, while Mr. Atchison waxed loquacious about Shakespeare, who had seen his plays enacted before Queen Elizabeth in the Middle Temple Hall, where the queen had also sometimes danced with her favorites Walter Raleigh and Christopher Hatton. Was Mr. Dowlin aware that the garden of Grey’s Inn had been laid out by Francis Bacon in the 1600’s? That Grey’s Inn had been granted by Henry VIII to the students, and their successors, in 1541?

Mr. Dowlin realized that standing before him were two gentlemen suffering some great affliction. In his most barrister-like tones, he requested enlightenment. When it was provided him, Mr. Dowlin grew disturbed himself.

“It’s a damned havey-cavey business!” concluded Mr. Burton, who was unaware of the unwitting contribution of Tipoo Sultan to this imbroglio. Mr. Atchison added his opinion that Baird was a cad, a bounder, a curst conniving scoundrel who had persuaded a well-brought-up young woman to engage in a sordid intrigue. Mr. Dowlin judiciously pointed out that, conversely, she might have persuaded him. His companions expressed dismay at this calumny. All three agreed that Miss Russell could only have her heart broken by a philanderer like Sinbad.

She must be rescued from her folly. But how? It was Mr. Burton who came up with a practical suggestion. They would track the villain to his lair.

* * * *

In a much older part of town, behind a certain grand old Jacobean façade, Lord Baird’s name was likewise being taken in vain. “It passes human bearing! Benedict gives the gel a slip on the shoulder after I have told him he must not, and in the doing he gets caught. And then what must he do but make off with the chit and summon me to lend my countenance? God’s life!”

Lady Darby was in as rare a taking as her abigail had ever seen her. “Calm yourself, my lady,” Meggs said.

“
Calm
myself? Nincompoop!” Odette would have said more had not Chimlin been inspired by all the upheaval to relieve himself on the bedspread.

Meggs set about cleaning up the mess. Lady Darby grasped her pet and gave him a good shake before returning to her primary source of grievance, and consigning the marquess to perdition, after calling him a confounded jingle-brain.

As Lady Darby continued on this manner, her abigail set about placing vials and bottles in a travelling-bag. Meggs was not looking forward to the long journey to Baird’s Abbey.  She ventured, “Perhaps the girl may be persuaded to cry off.”

“It’s odds Benedict has already tumbled the wench. But there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.” Odette tugged at her elaborate wig, pulling it further askew. “You’d think the rogue would have given me some warning before dragging me willy-nilly into this mess. But no! I must be the last one to find out.”

* * * *

Lady Darby was not, in fact, the last to be enlightened about what Sinbad and Miss Russell had got up to the previous night. Lord Wexton had been called away from London, and therefore did not learn of the disgrace of his intended spouse until he returned much later in the day. He had not been home five minutes before his next-to-eldest daughter informed him that his prospective bride-to-be had been discovered in a compromising position, and was betrothed as a result. Lord Wexton set out immediately to confront Sir Kenrick, only to learn from a footman that the family had left town. Where they might have gone, the man could not say.

Could not? Most likely, would not. Lord Wexton strode angrily down the steps.

Chapter Twenty-two

Cornwall was rife with odd legends and quaint customs, lovely highlands and moors plunging into the sea. Celtic crosses dotted the landscape, alongside ruined castles, strange standing stones, and the towers of tin mines. Burial mounds of long-forgotten chieftains stood beside the road from London, which was pitted with holes and pools.

Not far from the Tamar River, which separated Cornwall from Devonshire, Baird’s Abbey lay. The sprawling structure incorporated convent buildings of the thirteenth century, cloisters of the fifteenth, two towers dating from the mid fifteen hundreds, and a Gothic archway built in 1754; gargoyles and chimeras and a great rose window with blue glass. Surrounding this eccentric edifice were elaborate gardens in a semi-formal style.

Behind the house, noble ancient trees spread their leafy branches over garden plots and pleasant stone paths. Wisteria and clematis and climbing roses gracefully draped the old stone walls. The air was pungent with the scent of the herb borders from which family medicines and flower waters had once been made. Borage, lavender, hyssop; sage, parsley, rosemary; chervil, thyme, marjoram; gillyflowers and poppies and marigolds— An Elizabethan lady would have mixed up household simples, patched up knights freshly home from the Crusades. Miranda imagined just such a lady peering over her shoulder as she knelt by a patch of
Rheum rhaponticum.

Probably the Elizabethan lady would also like to scold her. Everybody else was scolding her, save for the gardener who was currently lurking behind a cypress bush. Miranda felt as persecuted as a certain medieval theologian who, when he first raised fruit and flowers under glass in winter, was threatened with the stake for being bewitched.

Bewitched! Who had bewitched whom? Miranda wasn’t the sort of female who lured unsuspecting rakehells to their doom. Yet somehow she had managed to blacken Sinbad’s reputation – who would have thought anyone
could
blacken Sinbad’s reputation? – when what she’d wanted was for him to tarnish hers.

It served him right for trying
not
to besmirch her reputation, the wretch. Improper in her? Improper in him! Miranda had done as she intended, she had blotted her copybook, and so unsatisfactory were the results that she might next have to empty an entire inkwell over her head. The gardener was now pretending to inspect a privet hedge. Perhaps he feared she had improper designs upon his rhubarb.

Miranda vowed she would not knuckle under. Unfortunately, she had not the faintest idea of how she might accomplish this feat. Even were she to escape her watchdogs, she had nowhere to go. Though this portion of Cornwall was not as wild and savage as she had expected – which was disappointing; a wild and savage terrain would have suited her mood – it was still remote. The nearest thing to local excitement was the weekly market in Launceston, which lay some distance away.

Miranda pressed her fingers into the warm earth, gently so as not to bruise the rhubarb stalks. Both the abbey and its gardens would have pleased her well in circumstances other than these. The gardener — a wiry, swarthy, dark-haired man named Colum – dared ventured closer. Would miss like to be shown around the grounds? he asked.

Miss would. The tour took no little time. Miranda was impressed by a maze planted with clipped hyssop, lavender cotton, marjoram, privet, savory and thyme; a magnificent topiary garden with yew and box growing thick and compact, trimmed in the shapes of birds and animals, pyramid and balls. The gardener admitted, shyly, that he was partial to bush-barbering. This led to a discussion of landscape gardening, complete with the various theories thereof. Miranda expressed a preference for Nature in her less docile moods, and Colum for Nature thoroughly crushed and tamed. From there the conversation progressed to Elizabethan horticulture. Colum had collected an extensive library on the subject, and Miranda knew a considerable amount about the topic from her studies. An Elizabethan gardener desirous of growing red or yellow apples bored a hole in the tree’s trunk with an augur, made water mixed with a pigment of the wished-for color, poured the liquid into the trunk, stopped it with a pin of the tree’s wood, and sealed the whole with wax. Scarlet apples were ensured by red roses growing by an apple tree.

Miranda beamed at her companion. “You are most knowledgeable. I would consider it a privilege if you allow me to look through your library of books.”

  “The privilege would be mine, miss.” Colum pointed out the classical marble fountain, and the pretty sundial, and left her there.

Miranda resumed brooding. She felt very much alone. If Mr. Atchison were present, he could tell her all about Cornwall, and she could make him a freckle ointment of the cowslips that grew nearby. Mr. Burton, were he here, might distract her from her dreary musings with further tales of his adventures with Colonel Wellesley in India. And Mr. Dowlin— Well, Mr. Dowlin could fidget and stammer all he wished and Miranda would not mind it, for she missed her friends.

Friends they were, unlike her current companions, who were so unanimously determined to make her behave as a well-bred young woman ought. Toward Nonie, Miranda held no ill feelings. Nonie was only following instructions and had furthermore already demonstrated a distinct lack of resolution in the matter of her broken heart. With her uncle, however, Miranda was wholly out of charity.