The beleaguered Lord Bourne Read online

  MONTAGUE OUTDID HIMSELF with the breakfast buffet, the menu offering more varieties of meats and side dishes than the best hotel in London. And, to show his newfound mellow temperament, he did not throw more than three platters against the wall when every offering but the toast was sent back to the kitchen untouched.

  Poor Montague. How was he to know that the Bourne morning room, visited separately by the earl and countess in a series of strategic advances and retreats that would have done credit to the wiliest generals, was the last—the very last—place either of the parties would envision as a setting fit to encourage an appetite?

  The earl, first down that morning, had done nothing more than order Renfrew to bring him a glass of brown ale before, looking about him like a culprit waiting for the law to clap him on the shoulder, he slipped from the house; and the countess, who had tiptoed to and from the morning-room door three times before deciding it was safe to enter, had done no more than nibble at a crust of toast before, even bearing in mind the great stress her actions were placing on Montague, she too ignobly retired from the field.

  As this strange dance of advance and retreat, this playing of stay-least-in-sight, was to go on for over a week, it was no wonder that Bob, Ben and Del were soon applying to Charity—the poor, dear thing—to let out their uniforms at the waist. After all, as Bob said repeatedly as he downed yet another light French pastry, somebody had to keep the balmy froggie from murdering them all in their beds!

  CHAPTER NINE

  “THIS BUILDING is relatively new, you know,” Lucy told Jennie as the other girl sat in the Gladwin private box and stared about her openmouthed. “Covent Garden burned down in 1808, I believe it was, and all this had to be rebuilt.”

  “It’s beautiful…simply beautiful!” Jennie told her cousin in awestruck tones. “It must have cost a fortune.”

  Lucy laughed, partly at Jennie’s naive gawking and partly at her naive observation. “Indeed it did, cousin. So much so, in fact that the owners tried to raise the prices to pay for it. Did you never hear of the O.P. riots?”

  “O.P. riots?” Jennie repeated questioningly. “No, I can’t say as I have. Were they very bad?”

  “That, dear coz, depends on whether you were one of the owners or one of the paying public. For the owners, I daresay it was a disaster. As for the public, I do believe it was a bit of a lark. The gentlemen in the pits as well as those in the galleries spent night after night throwing oranges at the stage, rattling rattles, blowing horns, shouting and stamping their feet—even singing songs specially written for the occasion. All to get a rollback to the Old Prices. It really did dampen the actors’ enthusiasm for appearing on stage.”

  “Oh my,” Jennie observed, feeling much in sympathy with the poor actors. “Do you really think that was fair?”

  “Fair or not, it must have been great fun. I only wish I had been ‘out’ in time to participate. Why, I can remember Papa going off to the theater wearing his special O.P. hat on his head and his custom-made O.P. medal on his breast. The ladies, as I recall, had fans, handkerchiefs, oh, all sorts of things, embroidered with the letters O.P., and there was barely a building in all London that did not have those initials scribbled on its walls. Papa said it was the best of good fun—what with the whole of the audience spending every night at the theater, dancing, singing, and jumping back and forth on the benches. The prices,” Lucy ended happily, “were quite naturally rolled back. After all, no one can stand for long against the might of a combined assault of good, honest Englishmen.”

  “Oh, Lucy, you should have been born a man,” Jennie said, taking in the brightness of her cousin’s expression.

  But the smile slowly faded from Lucy’s face as she caught sight of a couple in a box across the way, “Not really, coz,” she said solemnly. “Don’t make it too obvious, but take a look across the way at the box three to the left of the Royal Enclosure.” Jennie made a fuss of adjusting her fan and peered in the direction Lucy had indicated. “Do you see the fierce-looking old dragon in purple with those absolutely nauseating violet plumes sticking out of her head?” Jennie nodded. “All right,” Lucy continued, her voice oddly breathless. “Now look at the man sitting in front of her and to her right. That is Lord Thorpe, the man I am going to marry. Now you can see why I am glad not to have been born a boy. Isn’t he the most handsome man you’ve ever seen?”

  Jennie trained her eyes on the gentleman in question and could not help but agree that he was a fine-looking specimen of mankind, although she herself had a preference for dark-haired men such as Kit. Besides, Lord Thorpe had the look of the snob about him, just in the way he was casting his eyes about him now in barely concealed boredom. “Who is that girl sitting next to him?” she asked Lucy, thinking that the young female dressed in demure, rather color-robbing white must be the reason for Lord Thorpe’s rather painted expression.

  “That’s Lady Cynthia, Lord Thorpe’s fiancée,” Lucy told her cousin, a rather waspish note entering her usually lilting voice.

  “Fiancée!” Jennie choked, whirling to look at her cousin in astonishment. “Doesn’t that rather depress your ambitions? I mean, it isn’t as if the man is free.”

  “It does lend a bit of challenge to the thing, doesn’t it?” commented Lucy irrepressibly. “I merely told you I was going to marry the man. I never said it was going to be easy.”

  Jennie was about to question Lucy further, perhaps even intending to try to drum some sort of sense into the widget’s head, when a movement in the previously empty box a quarter of the way around the level theirs was situated on effectively robbed her of coherent speech. “Well,” she snapped, when her voice at last returned to her, “if that isn’t the most odious thing I could ever have imagined!”

  Lucy looked at her strangely. “I don’t think it’s quite that bad, Jennie,” she told her cousin sourly. “After all, did I rake you over the coals when you told me about your Kit? I thought you’d stand my ally in this, cousin, really I did.”

  “Oh, no, Lucy!” Jennie interrupted hastily. “I was not condemning you, truly I wasn’t. It’s just that I just caught sight of Kit entering that box down there. No! Don’t look now for pity’s sake, I think he might have seen us. He’s got Mr. Ives and Mr. Norwood with him.”

  “Don’t you wish to see those gentlemen?” inquired Lucy, still not seeing anything too out of the ordinary in the whole affair. “I quite like Ozzy myself, though I can’t say I’m terribly fond of Mr. Ives. Why not leave Aunt Rachel here and trot on down to visit with them before the first act?”

  Jennie spoke through clenched teeth. “Because they have three of those opera dancers you said he didn’t have in keeping with them, that’s why! Oh! The nerve of the man! Just because I have been avoiding him he thinks he can parade about town with some…some lightskirts. Didn’t he know I’d be here tonight? How could he do this to me, Lucy? Has the man no sense of decency?”

  “He might have, Jennie,” replied Lucy realistically, “although I cannot actually speak for the man, not having ever been that closely acquainted with him; although his being an officer predisposes anyone to assume he is also a gentleman, doesn’t it? As to how he dared to do the thing, I believe the answer might just lie in the fact that you haven’t spoken a single word to the man in a week and he had no idea you would be attending the theater tonight with me. Now really, dear, keep your voice down or you’ll wake Aunt Rachel, a development I’d much rather avoid, as the woman has this infuriating habit of asking entirely the right questions. Now, now,” Lucy pressed, seeing Jennie’s woebegone expression, “don’t go into a taking. After all, it isn’t the end of the world.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Lucy,” Jennie returned, rallying. “I shan’t weep millstones over that beast. Oh, I admit to having been a trifle cast down momentarily, but I have no plans other than to stay here and enjoy the play. And I’ll be dashed if I’ll sit and stew just because my husband chooses to display his lack of good taste in public.”

  Je
nnie’s splendid recovery earned her Lucy’s deep admiration, and that recovery lasted all the way to the end of the second act of The Clandestine Marriage—a story concerning the marriage of a rich, vulgar cit to a bored lord of the realm who openly hated the cit. The cit, it evolved, couldn’t have cared less, just as long as her marriage meant she could go to court.

  Was that how Kit saw her? Jennie questioned in her agitation. Did he think she saw him as a stepping-stone for him alternately to use her and then discard her, only to parade about in public with loose women to show his disdain? Well, the countess of Bourne thought, I do believe Lord Bourne is sadly out if he thinks he can depress my pretensions to “society” that easily. But before I can hold my head up in that society I must rid him of the idea that he can continue on with his ladybirds so publicly.

  “Lucy,” Jennie purred sweetly to her cousin as the curtain fell, “I have just had the most happy notion. I believe I shall make use of this timely intermission to pay a visit upon my husband in his box.” Rising from her seat, Jennie stepped carefully around the slumbering Aunt Rachel and looked back at her cousin. “Are you coming, Lucy?”

  “You must be joking!” Lucy chuckled, a broad smile lighting her features. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world! I vow it will be famous, absolutely famous!”

  KIT WAS NOT A HAPPY MAN, and he hadn’t been one for a long time—ever since the morning he had stood gazing out over Berkeley Square trying vainly to figure out how a nice fellow like himself had ever gotten into such a mess as this. So complete and permanent had been his rapid descent into the doldrums that Ozzy, always out to do his possible when it came to his friends, had decided to take desperate measures. To Ozzy, desperate measures meant Mademoiselle Yvette de La Fontaine, Drury Lane’s latest answer to the Englishman’s love of “finest French pastry.” Too fatigued to enter into an argument with his well-meaning friend, Kit agreed to accompany Ozzy and Dean to Covent Garden, La Fontaine and two of her friends from the chorus making up the remainder of the small theater party.

  The actress, dressed to within an inch of outright ridiculousness, and smelling to high heaven of some heavy French scent, seemed to think she had reached the very pinnacle of success in being seen on the arm of the wealthy, handsome Earl of Bourne and planned to make the most of the evening. Hanging daintily from his lordship’s arm ever since the Bourne carriage had picked them up from their temporary quarters in Clerkenwell, La Fontaine had worn a dreamy smile brought on by visions of the jewels and furs the earl would shower on her once he had established her in a discreet love nest somewhere on the near fringes of Mayfair. So intense was her absorption in her dream that she did not notice that the earl was paying next to no attention to her.

  While Kit sat mute in his seat, variously wishing it were Jennie who sat by his side and wondering if it might still be possible to rejoin his regiment and die a heroic death in action, Ozzy, feeling very full of gallantry and good spirits at his coup in getting Kit into company once again, took an inventory of the occupants of the nearby boxes. The house was full tonight, he noticed idly, with all the world and his wife out to see the play and be seen. There’s a good-looking yeller-haired wench, he remarked idly to himself before, suddenly sitting up very straight in his chair, he exclaimed: “Good God, man! Kit, look over there a moment. It’s your wife—and looking fine as ninepence, if I do say so myself.”

  Kit’s ennui disappeared instantly, and he leaned forward just in time to see his wife turning back toward Lucy Gladwin—too late to see the look in her eyes, but definitely in time to see the stiffness of her spine and the bright flush of color running up her neck. “This’ll set the cat among the pigeons,” he muttered under his breath before saying more loudly and with every intention of lacing his speech with a languid drawl, “So it appears, Ozzy. What of it? Lucy’s aunt is with them, so they’re adequately chaperoned. Do sit back, man, else you’ll fall into the pit and Celeste there will have to endure the play without your services as interpreter.”

  Ozzy, never known for his quick wit, was still sufficiently up to snuff to know having your wife and your latest flirt under the same roof—even a roof so large as that of Covent Garden—was not exactly a sought-after experience. While marveling at Kit’s show of unconcern, Ozzy was much more impressed with Jennie’s behavior, as he was sure she had seen them by now. “Like that girl excessively, you know,” he approved aloud, turning in his seat to look Kit square in the eyes. “And you know what, friend? I don’t think I’d like it above half if you were to hurt her. Game as a pebble, your wife, and it kind of damps one to think she might be made uncomfortable because of your shabby behavior.”

  “You’re becoming damned moral, Ozzy,” remarked Kit sarcastically, “considering it was your idea I accompany you here tonight.”

  Dean Ives, so far a quiet bystander in this exchange, decided it was time to change the subject. It wouldn’t suit his purposes to have the earl and Ozzy at daggers drawn. Leaning across the back of his own companion—rudely pushing her drooping ostrich feather headdress out of the way without so much as an excuse me—he endeavored to engage the men in a conversation. “You missed a most invigorating spectacle this morning, gentlemen. A few friends and myself went to Holburn to view a badger being drawn in a menagerie there. I must say, those places employ the most extraordinary-looking people. I wonder, Kit, these servants of your lady wife’s—do you think any of them came from there? I know you have a giant and a dwarf. Do they do tricks, d’you think? I say, perhaps they juggle?”

  “How would you like to juggle your front teeth?” Kit inquired pleasantly enough, effectively putting an end to the discussion, and it was difficult to tell just who of the party was most grateful when the curtain rose on the first act.

  When the curtain fell again Kit chanced a quick peek in the direction of the Gladwin box, just in time to see his wife departing through the door at the rear. Where the deuce could she be going? he thought angrily. And unaccompanied as well. But no, there goes Lucy, trailing behind her like some grinning idiot off to see the fair. What maggot can Jennie have taken into her head now?

  Kit did not have long to wait for his answer, if he had only been paying attention, as there soon came a knocking on the door of the Norwood box. When Ozzy, having detached himself from his clinging feminine companion with some difficulty, at last opened the door, it was to see Lady Bourne waiting without, Lucy Gladwin standing behind her, smiling and waggling her gloved finger at him. “Well, Mr. Norwood, have you been somehow transformed into marble?” Jennie asked, tilting her head inquiringly.

  “Lady Bourne!” Ozzy squeaked, his voice climbing octaves he thought he had left behind at the age of thirteen. “Do you really think…I mean, that is to say…oh, ma’am, are you really sure…”

  Jennie put the man out of his misery. “My husband, Mr. Norwood. Is he not within?”

  Ozzy could only nod, his voice now having completely deserted him.

  If Jennie had been in better spirits she might have felt her tender heart moved by Mr. Norwood’s plight. But she was feeling sorely tried at the moment, and her charity was all directed toward herself. Her features hardening slightly, she looked the uncomfortable man straight in his anguished blue eyes and pushed pointedly: “Then perhaps you will have the goodness to step aside and allow us to enter.”

  Kit had been deep in his own thoughts and was therefore guilty of paying little attention to what had been going on at the door, but when he saw his wife guiding her skirts through the narrow opening he immediately knew what it was like for a drowning man to see his entire life flashing past his eyes in an instant.

  “We have the guests!” La Fontaine lisped delightedly, being none too intuitive and not feeling the sudden chill that had descended on the box. “Will none of you fine gentlemen make us the—how you say—introductions?”

  Refusing to give Jennie the satisfaction of seeing how much she had discomfited him, Kit rose and bowed to the newcomers. “How remiss of me. Of cou
rse you must be introduced. Ladies, this charming woman is my wife.” He then went on with the more formal, detailed introductions, steadfastly refusing to look directly into Jennie’s eyes to see the hurt he was sure was lurking there.

  That Jennie was hurting was not an exaggeration. But if Kit believed that Jennie was about to let him or anyone else know it was killing her, absolutely killing her, to see her husband sitting so comfortably next to that obvious lady of the evening, they were sadly out. “You are French, Mademoiselle de La Fontaine?” she said brightly once the introductions were complete. “How marvelous. It has been an age since I’ve had anyone to practice my rather lamentable schoolgirl French on—do you mind?” Not waiting for an answer, she launched into a cheerful monologue touching lightly on the weather, the play they were seeing that evening, and the oppressive crush of people in the lobby clamoring for lemonade during the intermission, all conducted in flawless French.

  Looking faintly dazed by this flurry of words, La Fontaine—who had been born and raised within spitting distance of Piccadilly—frowned intently, tilted her head to one side in deep thought, and then replied brightly, “Oui!”

  Jennie clapped her hands in seeming delight. “Quite right, mademoiselle!” she trilled. Then leaning down more closely to the seated woman, Jennie delivered the coup de grace. “Mademoiselle,” she said almost gently, “savez-vous que vous aver le nez d’un cochon?”

  Ozzy, who had been taking a restorative sip from the silver flask he carried with him in case of emergencies, started violently, felt a bit of the fiery fluid slide down his throat improperly, and could not resist a fit of coughing that had people from several of the nearby boxes looking to see just who was dying.