Maggie MacKeever Read Online Free

why you are here.”
    Lady Bligh surveyed him speculatively over the frivolous square of lace, and briskly blew her nose. “First we shall engage in a little polite conversation. It is an art in which you are sadly deficient.”
    “Oh?” Sir John lifted his heavy brows.
    “I have a niece staying with me, a good-tempered friendly little creature who fell fathoms deep in love with a most unsuitable gentleman and was barely prevented from ruining herself. Mignon is very wealthy, did I say?”
    Sir John, watching the various expressions that played across his visitor’s bewitching face, was thoroughly bemused. “No,” he replied, somewhat wistfully.
    Lady Bligh leaned forward and rapped his knuckles. “Stop woolgathering. It is a matter of no small consequence that Mignon made so unfortunate a choice.”
    “What have your niece’s indiscretions to do with me?”
    The Baroness set aside her teacup and moved to stand beside the Chief Magistrate’s desk. “Nothing. As yet.” 
    Sir John gazed up at her, taking in every detail of that extraordinary beauty from her disheveled hair to her inquisitive little nose. “Tell me what troubles you,” he said, and took her hand.
    Dulcie leaned back against his desk. “I had a caller this morning, Ivor Jessop, with a boon to beg.” A faint smile hovered around her mouth. “Begging, I might add, is something the Viscount is quite unaccustomed to. He is a very haughty young man, though I know nothing worse of him than that he once threw an inkwell at a waiter’s head.”
    “What has Jeffries to do with your niece?” asked Sir John. The Chief Magistrate, though he did not deign to waste his time in frivolous pursuits, was by birth a member of the ton .
    “Again, very little, as yet.” Dulcie settled more comfortably against the desk. “The Viscount came to see me in behalf of Leda Langtry. You recall Leda, I’m sure.”
    Sir John knew full well that he was being manipulated. He gave up the struggle and abandoned himself to enjoyment of the interview.
    The Press had a nasty habit of heaping odium on Bow Street, particularly in the matter of blood money, bounty paid to informers and thieftakers for denouncing culprits. Payments of blood money threatened to reach the awesome sum of £80,000 that year alone. Bow Street Runners were often accused of sending men and women to their deaths for the sake of a reward. “Leda Langtry was imprisoned for a libel that she wrote and will stand trial at the next session,” Sir John said.
    “Libel!” Lady Bligh sneezed, so ferociously that hairpins went flying across the room. Sir John wondered what his subordinates would think upon discovering them. “I sympathize with the Luddites myself,” she sniffed. “The poor men believe that the machinery they smash has done them out of their jobs.”
    “Perhaps,” agreed Sir John. “It wasn’t Leda’s sympathy with the rioters that landed her in Newgate, but the fact that she chose to write of our Regent with a pen dipped in bile.”
    “Poor Prinny,” sighed the Baroness. All London knew that the Prince Regent nourished a long-standing tendresse for Lady Bligh. “These robberies. What do you propose to do about them, John?”
    “There’s very little we can do when we have neither description nor trace of the culprit to follow.” Lady Bligh’s thoughtful expression caused the Chief Magistrate’s flesh to crawl on his bones. “I’ve had my best men on the case and they’ve learned nothing, Dulcie. Don’t think that you may do better. I forbid you to interfere.”
    “Interfere?” The Baroness looked wounded. “Unfair, John! I never interfere.”
    “No, you merely follow your nose where it may lead you, and that’s generally into trouble.” Her reproachful expression, not to mention low-cut neckline, inspired him to say things he probably should not. “We have had recourse to our Criminal Record Office, but without result.”
    “Your best men.” Lady Bligh tapped her