Read Online The Purloined Heart (The Tyburn Trilogy) by Maggie MacKeever - Free Book Online Page A

at all.
    He would have dealt with her at once, had he not been forced to waste precious time dealing with the Henry business. And so she had eluded him.
    But not for long.
    Horus began to read. Perspiration trickled down Gully’s cheek and dripped off his chin.

Chapter Eleven
     
     
    Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.  —Sir Walter Scott
     
     
    “It’s more than a man can bear!” moaned Viscount Ashcroft. “Or should be expected to, at any rate. First she goes into one of her takings, saying you are an excellent creature and she begins to despair of me —  and why she should say she ‘begins’ to despair I don’t know; she’s been combing my head for the last fortnight —  and I also don’t know why a man would want to take a lawful blanket when he already dwells under the hen’s foot!”
    Maddie glanced at the other occupants of the viscount’s landau, who were intent on their own conversation, Matthew explaining to the twins that Hyde Park had been appropriated from the monks of Westminster when Henry VIII decided to extend his hunting ground.
    Was she never to escape Henry VIII?
     “That was just the start of it,” Tony continued. “Maman felt she should drop a hint or ten. It’s time I pled my case, lest you’ve mistook the reason I’ve been dangling after you. I said I didn’t think I’d taken your fancy to any marked degree, because I remembered Romeo and Juliet and all that romantical fiddle-faddle and thought Maman might stop ringing a peal in my ear if she believed my heart was broke, though why I should have thought it I can’t say because if Maman has ever cared a button for anything I feel, I ain’t seen indication of it yet —  and then she flew into her tantrums and accused me of behaving scaly and said I should make sure you knew I had matrimony in mind.”
    “High flights!” said Maddie, because Tony was waiting for her to say something, and calling his mama an archwife, however fitting, wouldn’t set a good example for her sons. Fortunately the boys were more curious about how King Henry had disposed of his numerous inconvenient wives.
    “So you may say!” said Tony. His companion in humbuggery was according less consideration to his mama’s crotchets than he felt she should. “I asked what else Maman thought you’d think I had in mind, and said if she figured me the kind of fellow who went around offering females a slip on the shoulder she was all about in the head. Not that you’re the kind of female a fellow offersa slip on the shoulder, didn’t mean to say you was.” Maddie made a stifled noise, and he eyed her anxiously. “You ain’t mistook it, have you? Me dangling after you?”
    “Oh, no!” she gurgled. “How could I? After that pretty speech?”
    Dashed if females didn’t find humor in the oddest things! “We could tell Maman you’ve taken me in dislike.”
    “Then she’d find someone else for you to dangle after,” responded Maddie, having got her giggles under control. “And we’d both be in the suds. We will do much better to go on as we are.”
    “Maman thinks you’re a biddable female,” Tony muttered. “That shows all she knows. I hope you know enough to get in out of the rain.”
    “I am not a child,” soothed Maddie. “At the moment there’s not a dark cloud to be seen, so relax and enjoy the drive.”
    No dark clouds, were there? In Tony’s opinion, not that anyone ever heeded his opinion, Maddie should keep an umbrella at the ready, sunshine or no.
    Later in the day, the haut ton would congregate in Hyde Park, eager to see and to be seen. At this hour, the park was nigh deserted, only an occasional rider or carriage rattling by. Deserted, that was, save for workmen busy with preparations for the Great Fair, and gawkers who had come to watch, and the cows and deer and assorted wildlife found along the shore of the Serpentine Lake, which had been built, according to the knowledgeable Matthew, by