Dulcie Bligh by Maggie MacKeever

Author:Maggie MacKeever [MacKeever, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regency Romance/Mystery
Publisher: Belgrave House
Published: 1978-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Sir John loved his London and its people, from scarlet-coated porters laden with bags, and hawkers with bandboxes on poles, to country milkmaids with yokes across their shoulders and the manure of rustic cowsheds on their feet. White-aproned bakers added cries of “Hot loaves!” to the medley of dustcart bells and newsvendors’ horns. A little ballad-singer crooned the tale of a highwayman who paid for his sins with his head; pale-faced merchants’ clerks hurried to their counting houses. On the pavements, apprentices removed shutters from bow-fronted, multi-paned windows while ragged urchins leapfrogged over posts.

Unlike the City, the fashionable West End was not yet awake. Here were no brewers’ drays, drawn slowly by draught-horses as large as elephants; no carts with hay for the London marts or drover-driven bullocks on the way to Smithfield. The Chief Magistrate, who had already that morning sentenced several criminals to death, made his way to the Bligh mansion.

Mary, a mob cap covering her carroty hair, perched dreamily in the upper-story window where she’d taken refuge from the battle royal raging within the walls of the Baron’s home. The strife was initiated when Pudding, the jovial cook, had let fall an unwise, and somewhat vulgar, observation concerning the progress of Culpepper’s romance with the whiskey-swilling watchman. The argument had ended in fisticuffs and tears. Mary surveyed the approaching visitor with a connoisseur’s discriminating eye, then, waving to catch his attention, gestured toward a pathway that led around the side of the house.

Sir John found Lady Bligh in one corner of a walled garden, the perfect setting for clandestine intrigue, gazing pensively at a circular pool bordered with lilacs, tulips, jonquils, acacias, and syringas. Here the Baron’s fancy, held firmly in check by his wife, had found expression only in statuaries, the most exceptional pieces being a bronze Apollo and Daphne, and a sleeping Morpheus in plaster.

The Baroness looked like a woodland nymph in a morning dress of cinnamon jaconet, its sleeves tightly buttoned at the wrist, and its hem embellished with a broad, embroidered flounce. Her hair was a stunning shade of palest peach. “John,” she said, holding out her hand.

Sir John was stricken with guilt. Dulcie must be driven half-mad with worry about her nephew’s predicament; never had he seen her so melancholy. The Chief Magistrate could not know that Lady Bligh had spent a large portion of the night staring intently at a piece of parchment with a blacked-out name.

The Baroness gestured to a great oak bench designed in the shape of a shell. “Pray be seated. How good it is of you to call.”

Dulcie’s tantalizing scent surrounded him, a combination of frankincense, mastic, benzoin, cloves, pine-nut kernels and a half-dozen other things, and sold under the impressive banner of Imperial Water. “Why so blue-devilled, Dulcie? You are usually more cheerful.”

“I try,” sighed the Baroness, “to be brave. Time marches on, dear John, and inexorably.” Her somber gaze rested on her guest. “Madman Mott once snatched a kiss from me in Marylebone Gardens, more than thirty-five years ago.

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