Maggie MacKeever (18 page)

Ned wasn’t sure either, but he continued nonetheless. “I kissed her. Julie, that is, not Lady Georgiana. I’ll swear she hadn’t been kissed before. Then I said there was no room in her gown to hide anything, and she thought I thought she was bent on larceny, and boxed my ear.”

“You have an interesting investigative technique.”

“When Julie brought the statue back, she was clad in breeches. I kissed her again. Matters progressed.”

Clearly, matters had. “Plundering, were you?” said Kane.

“She had a knife in her boot.”

“Did she threaten to use it on you?”

“I’d like to think we live in a world where men don’t prey on those with lesser strength, but we both know that isn’t true.” Ned dared try sitting up. The room rocked in a nauseating manner. “She’s in over her head, Kane.”

“I’ll agree that someone is.”

“If anyone were to harm Julie in any manner,” Ned said flatly, “I’d flay off the bastard’s hide and make a mat of it to place in front of my hearth. Appalling to find oneself so primitive, but there it is.”

So it was. “You want to rescue her.”

The door swung open. Clea sailed into the library. “Naturally he wants to rescue her. Ned can’t resist a damsel in distress.” She was dressed for the out-of-doors. In one hand she held a roll of papers. Cerberus was tucked under her other arm.

The dog spied Kane, and snarled. Clea tsk’d and tapped his nose. Cerberus snapped at the rolled-up papers. Clea deposited the dog in the hallway and closed the door. “I am to have no more singing lessons. Even Hannah has come to realize it’s not a good idea. I have decided I will study the pianoforte.” She flexed her fingers. “Have you seen my astrolabe?”

“You were eavesdropping,” said Kane.

Clea pulled off her bonnet. “No one tells me anything, so what do you expect?”

Had his head been less painful, Ned might have been sympathetic. As it was, he felt annoyed. “I expect that you will conduct yourself like the young lady you say you aspire to be. Which does not involve listening at keyholes.”

Clea folded her arms beneath her bosom. “I am not a child.”

Kane looked bored. “Stop acting like one, then.”

Clea’s lower lip trembled. For an instant she seemed very much the child she claimed she no longer was. “How long were you listening, puss?” Ned asked.

“Long enough.” Clea walked to the desk. “I heard you talking about our thief. Miss Julie Wynne from York.”

Both men stared at her. Clea shrugged. “I recognized her straightaway, but you seemed to want her identity kept secret, so I didn’t say anything. I would like to speak further with her. She was interesting.”

Ned sat up straighter, despite his spinning head. “Until we decide what she’s up to, you’ll do no such thing.”

Clea glared at him. “You’re treating me like a child again.”

“You
are
a child.” Kane was stern. “Keep your distance from Miss Wynne.”

“I see how it is. I’m to stay home and practice my manners while you have all the fun.” Clea stalked across the library and threw open the door.

Cerberus had been waiting in the hallway. He raced into the room, slavering, all his numerous teeth on ferocious display. Kane snatched up the fireplace poker. Ned fell back on the couch.

Clea closed the door on them. In the ensuing mayhem, neither paused to realize she’d not given them her word.

Chapter Nineteen

Woman outshine men in scheming.
— Pubilius Syrus

It was a lovely afternoon for shopping, if one enjoyed that sort of outing, which Julie did not, although she liked looking at the pretty windows well enough. Milliners and stationers, silversmiths and booksellers, wine merchants and pastry-cooks— Lady Georgiana must inspect them all, with Julie and the sturdy footman trailing along behind. The footman wore Ashcroft livery; Julie, a high-waisted muslin gown and flower-trimmed straw bonnet. Lady Georgiana was decked out in aubergine, topped by a hat
à la
Uhlan, the crown in the form of a lozenge and the front pointed like a helmet, striped with broad swaths of aubergine and rose, with flat feathers to match.

They bypassed the barber’s pole, and the pawnbroker’s three glass balls. Lady Georgiana spent an exhausting interval inside a shop that had a yellow-fringed crimson umbrella hung over the door, and emerged with a pretty lace parasol. Her enthusiasm for shopping no whit diminished, she then directed her footsteps, as well as those of her less enthusiastic companions, to a
Ladies Bazaar for the Sale of Miscellaneous Articles. Julie was grateful
that the bazaar was indoors. Her shoes had not been made for
prolonged tramping over cobblestones. She gazed about with interest, having never visited this particular bazaar before.

It was a sort of street under cover, a large long room with a row of shops on either hand, and a thoroughfare between. At the far
end, a splendidly costumed man stood talking softly to an irritable macaw perched on a wooden pole. According to Lady Georgiana, the
man and the macaw belonged to the menagerie located above stairs alongside a picture gallery.

The menagerie would not be so fine, Julie thought loyally, as the Exeter ‘Change. From force of habit, she considered how a clever thief might filch merchandise from the stalls. Shopkeepers in general didn’t protect their goods properly, put them on open display near open doors. Many were the times she’d snuck in on hands and knees and slid merchandise from counters without the shopkeeper being any the wiser until after she made her escape. Small items were good for stealing, such as handkerchiefs. Her fingers itched.

Lady Georgiana concluded her purchase of purl-edged ribbon and handed the package to her stoic footman. “You are very quiet, miss. How is it again that you know my son?”

“From Yorkshire, my lady,” Julie said.

“Yorkshire,” repeated Lady Georgiana. “I cannot think when Tony might have been there.”

“I didn’t mean the viscount was in Yorkshire,” Julie countered quickly. “Did you know that the churches in York are mostly from the medieval period? At the city’s center stands York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe.”

Lady Georgiana knew that she wasn’t going to be out-jockeyed by a dab of a girl. “I daresay there is a great deal of glass.”

Julie blinked at her. “Glass?”

“Stained glass, you little goose. York as a whole and particularly the Minster have a long tradition of creating beautiful stained glass. Some dates back to the twelfth century. As you should well know.”

What had Rose told her? Julie tried to recall. “Oh! I mistook your meaning. The Great East Window is the largest example of medieval stained glass in the world. It stands seventy-six feet tall.”

A clever recover, allowed Georgiana. But of course the chit was clever or they wouldn’t be in this fix. “And the stone is such a lovely weathered gray. How many altars are there, do you think?”

Julie thought that if Lady Georgiana grew wise to her, Cap’n Jack would not be pleased. “I’ve never counted them.”

“There are thirty altars. The stone is not gray but creamy white, limestone quarried in nearby Tadcastle. How
do
you know Tony? I’ll have the truth, if you please.”

If Julie pleased? In a pig’s eye. “Like I said, my lady, I don’t know the viscount. Or I didn’t before. We have mutual acquaintances. And as for the stone, it depends on the light.”

Another nice save, conceded Georgiana. It might even be true.

The baggage had caught Tony’s eye when he wasn’t looking. Perhaps, with the proper encouragement, some other gentleman might be persuaded to take her off their hands. “You have been going out in society a great deal. My cast-offs look well enough on you, but I believe we might have a new gown or two made up. Or even more, if you play your cards well.”

Warily, Julie inquired, “How might I do that?”

“Don’t play the innocent with me!” snapped Georgiana. “You may leave, that’s how.”

The chit gaped at her as if she’d grown a second head. “I can’t do that.”

“Think about it,” said Georgiana, though it went against the grain to try and buy the creature off. “Tony will stand the reckoning. Or rather,
I
will. The dear boy hasn’t a powerful understanding of financial matters. One doesn’t wish to admit one’s own child is a sad shatterbrain, but there it is.” If Miss Julie Wynne from York anticipated she might plunge greedy fingers into the family coffers, that would surely put her off.

Georgiana had misjudged her opponent; her words had the opposite effect. Tony may have been on the wrong side of the hedge when brains were given out, admitted Julie, and perhaps he was the most luckless gamester in all the town; but he didn’t deserve to be bullied by both his mamma and Cap’n Jack. “He is not so bad as all that,” she protested.

Not? Tony was a perfect block. Who, Georgiana recollected, had said this little sneaksby was a good sort of girl. If
Julie dared defy her to take up the cudgels on Tony’s behalf, things had progressed further than she had realized.

What was needed here was a plumper goose to pluck. Considering where she might best find one, Georgiana grasped Julie’s arm with one hand and her parasol with the other and set out through the busy streets.

Julie glanced over her shoulder. There was Bates, paused by a barrow to buy a penny pie. Today he was pretending to be a porter. What would he do next? Hawk doormats, or display rabbits on a pole?

Bates looked up, caught her watching him. Julie winked. Lady Georgiana tugged her arm. “What are you gawking at, girl?”

Julie turned hastily away. “Nothing, my lady.”

“If you call me ‘my lady’ once more this morning,” Georgiana snapped, “I shall wrap this parasol around your neck.”

Her ladyship was in another of her snits. Julie hoped the porter’s shoes were more comfortable than her own. Bates had been trailing after them since they left Ashcroft House.

Ned wanted his statue. He would
not
want to speak to her again. Julie could hardly blame him. She’d hit him over the head, kicked him, boxed his ear.

She hadn’t bit him. At least, not v
ery
hard.

And in the midst of all that madness, he’d taken her knife from her, and she hadn’t thought to snatch it back. Pritchett had given her that blade, on the occasion of her graduating from boy’s breeches to a proper dress. He’d said a runt like her should have some way to defend herself other than her mouth. The knife had come in useful more than once. It wasn’t likely Lady Georgiana
would look the other way while Julie ducked into a shop and filched another to take its place.

Ahead lay Lady Georgiana’s next stated destination, a linen-draper’s shop of such exalted nature that in the normal way of things Julie would never have dared poke her larcenous nose through the front door. Yet here she stood on the threshold. Life was prodigious strange.

In the fine high windows of the shop, a cunning device displayed fabrics so that they hung down like the folds of women’s dresses. Inside were two large rooms fitted up from floor to ceiling with shelves and oak counters and merchandise displays. Georgiana was surrounded by shop assistants the instant she appeared.

A discussion of fabrics was soon underway — India muslin, anglo-merino, gros de Naples; percale and jaconet and silk. Colors were considered next. Jonquil was inappropriate for a young lady with Miss Wynne’s coloring, and daffodil as well. Pomona green might serve as a trimming, and coquelicot, but both were much too bold for someone so
young — No? Lady Georgiana
must know best. Miss Wynne would have one gown made up in the color of field poppies, and another in apple green.

Miss Wynne was overwhelmed by the idea of buying a gown new-made instead of from a used clothing dealer. She watched as Lady Georgiana held a bolt of fabric to the light and inspected it for flaws. Would Ned think her pretty when he saw her in dresses that had been made for her, and not cut down from someone else? Julie couldn’t stop thinking about their last meeting. Each time she tried to send her thoughts in a different direction, they swung around and crept right back.

Rose had told her how matters progressed between a man and a maid. What Rose had neglected to mention was how pleasant that progression felt. Julie wanted to be trifled with some more. She wanted to trifle with Ned.

Alas, the feeling wasn’t mutual. She’d tried to toss her bonnet over the windmill, only to have it handed politely back to her, and sent on home.

Now she was ordered to break into Wakely Court and steal a book. She might as well take up residence there.

“Perdition,” muttered Lady Georgiana, under her breath, and Julie returned to her surroundings with a thump. Sailing toward them like the skeleton of a once-proud schooner was Lady Dorset. On her head was perched a large-brimmed straw bonnet trimmed with ribbons and a veil.

The ladies settled in to gossip. Georgiana fired the opening salvo, for she had intimate knowledge of a recent barge trip undertaken by the Royal Sovereigns down the river to Woolwich. The Czar, she explained, had been most interested in the
rocket displays. His sister, always curious about the wonders of science, had enjoyed the explosions more than the music that accompanied them wherever they went. The following day they traveled to Oxford, where the Duchess offended everyone by having the organ stopped the moment it was struck up.

“Pish tush!” interrupted Hannah. “That is all old news. Sabine Viccars was one of the party. Alexander paid her very particular attentions. Even the Grand Duchess favors her, and Catherine is hard
to please. What of it? Some of us have more important fish to fry.”

Hannah had lost interest in the Distinguished Visitors? Lady Georgiana ventured, “You are in high spirits today.”

“And so I should be.” Hannah settled her bony hindquarters on a chair. “I have found Dorset his bride.”