Maggie MacKeever (20 page)

“Thank you,” she said crossly.

“You’re welcome,” responded Miss Clough.

For the space of a few moments, the ladies engaged in no further speech. Lady Sweetbriar traversed the perimeters of her drawing room, the feathers of her turban swaying in rhythm with her measured tread.

Keenly, Miss Clough observed this progress. Clytie could not determine whether her stepmama-to-be was a conscienceless fortune hunter, or just appallingly indiscreet. Were Marmaduke so wicked as Nikki sought to paint him, she would hardly permit him to publicly kiss her on the nose.

Or would she? A lady did not criticize a gentleman so severely to another lady without purpose, Miss Clough thought. If only Sir Avery would take a stand! But Clytie knew her papa too well to cling to that forlorn hope. How difficult it was to decide what was for the best.

At least she might pretend to believe Nikki, and thereby gain her future confidence. “I
did
think, when I met Mr. Thorne, that he must be half mad.”

“Oh, yes!” Perhaps because they had been conducted whilst in motion, Lady Sweetbriar’s thoughts had been much more constructive than those of her guest; and she was very willing to have the silence end. Clytie and Rolf were obviously too young to know their own minds. Perhaps, were some compromising situation to be contrived— “The entire family is lunatic. Except, that is, for Rolf.”

Miss Clough had heard quite enough about the dandified Lord Sweetbriar for one twenty-four-hour space. Furthermore, she was no closer to her goal than when Lady Sweetbriar had stepped into the drawing room. “Nikki.” she asked bluntly, “are you certain you wish to marry my papa?”

“Certain?” Wearing a bewildered expression, Lady Sweetbriar once more sat down beside Miss Clough. “What makes you ask that? Of course I wish to marry your father—oh, you are afraid that we may not suit! Silly child, a lady may suit anyone, does she put her mind to it.” A very pensive expression settled on her pretty face. “I’ll wager even Lady Regina might be brought to accept Rolf’s offer, were we to show him how to go about the thing.”

“Are you
sure
this
is
the way one goes about the thing?” inquired Lord Sweetbriar, whilst attempting to position himself comfortably upon one knee, a process made all the more difficult by the extreme tightness of his breeches, and his excessively high shirt points. “It seems like a very queer business to me.”

Ironically, Miss Clough observed her caller; it was the morning room of Clough House wherein Lord Sweetbriar emulated a contortionist. “Nikki swears that, do you but do as she has written out, you must sweep Lady Regina right off her feet. Admittedly, I have never been proposed to in quite so poetically minded a manner—but neither have I accepted any of those offers I
did
receive, so maybe Nikki knows what she’s talking about.”

‘“Your eyes are like stars, your face beyond compare—’” Lord Sweetbriar looked up from the piece of paper he clutched in one hand. “I never heard such poppycock. Dash it, you’ve got freckles! I’ll wager Nikki’s got some ulterior motive for making me talk such skimble-skamble stuff.”  

Miss Clough did not feel up to a discussion of Lady Sweetbriar’s motives. It was all she could do to refrain from laughing at the absurd picture Rolf presented. “It’s not to
me
that you are making your compliments.”

“The devil it ain’t!” responded Lord Sweetbriar, indignantly rearing back, and consequently very nearly toppling over. “As if I don’t know who I’m talking to! Tell you what, Clytie, you’ve taken a maggot into your brain. Not that anyone could blame you for it. Nikki has that effect on a person who’s around her too long.”

Could Nikki be blamed for her stepson’s lack of mental prowess, Miss Clough unkindly reflected, then she was a powerful influence indeed. “You are supposed to be sweeping me off my feet in Lady Regina’s place, Rolf. We are pretending that I am her, so that you may rehearse your part. Shall we continue? Remember, you are supposed to have taken a fancy to me.”

In a less-than-enthusiastic manner, Lord Sweetbriar glanced at his stepmama’s instructions, and then grasped Clytie’s hand. ‘“I am mad for you! Absolutely enraptured! I have an income of—’” He faltered. “What the deuce does
that
signify?”

In the case of Lady Regina, Clytie suspected that Rolf’s income signified a great deal. How clever Nikki had been to work financial matters into this impassioned declaration—but of course Nikki would know what would most interest Lady Regina. For two ladies who thoroughly detested one another, mused Clytie, Nikki and Lady Regina possessed curiously similar outlooks.

“Never mind,” she soothed. “Pray continue. We must assume Nikki knows what she is about.”

“You may be sure she knows it!” To his damp brow, Lord Sweetbriar applied a square linen handkerchief with hemstitched border and monogram. “But do
we?
I don’t know why we should trust Nikki.”

Clytie looked startled. “Why should we not? Practicing your declaration is a very good idea, Rolf. What harm can come of it, pray? You are refining too much upon Nikki’s wish that we should make a match of it, I think.”

Lord Sweetbriar thought Miss Clough a veritable innocent as regarded the intricate working of his stepmama’s mind. He did not say so, because his own intellect was not sufficient to enable him to verbalize his forebodings. Perhaps he
was
making mountains out of molehills, as Clytie hinted. Once more he studied his instructions, looking resigned.

‘“I have a great regard for you,’” he read, in a rapid monotone. “‘There is no other woman with whom I could ever think of settling in matrimony. I trust that you will not think me bold if I most earnestly conjure you to become my wife, nor hold me in lower esteem when I vow that if you do not have me I will doubtless succumb to a sickness of the heart. Darling Clytie, say that you will be my bride, so that we may nevermore be forced to endure the anguish of separation again.’”
This
was what he was supposed to say to Lady Regina? Lord Sweetbriar’s brain reeled. Then a puzzling detail presented itself to him. Frowning, he peered at the paper. “‘Clytie’?” he said.

Before Miss Clough could attempt to explain the queer inclusion of her name in an impassioned declaration meant for another lady, a voice behind them intervened. “‘Clytie’!” that voice also said. “You told me Sweetbriar
didn’t
mean to have her, Mr. Thorne.”

The effect of this irate observation was no less staggering than a thunderclap, at least upon Lord Sweetbriar, who in craning his neck to view the newcomers very nearly lost his balance, and in seeking to regain it very nearly dragged Clytie off her own seat. “Lady Regina!” he cried. “You mustn’t think—this ain’t what it seems—I should never have trusted Nikki! This is all her doing! You
must
believe it is all fudge!”

“I will deal with you later, Sweetbriar.” The glance he received from Lady Regina made Rolf anxious to wait. She turned back to her companion. “I will not undertake to express my opinion of your perfidy. You meant all along for Sweetbriar to have Miss Clough. Next I will discover you meant also to give me a slip on the shoulder, I suppose.”

“A slip on the shoulder!” This intelligence brought Lord Sweetbriar up off his heels. “I say, Uncle Duke!”

“Must
you?” inquired that gentleman, somewhat plaintively. “Spare your breath, nephew; I shan’t allow you to call me out. Besides, unless I am mistaken, it was you who put that notion in the lady’s head.”

Perhaps it was the effect of the handkerchief that he had for several moments been rubbing across his brow that activated Lord Sweetbriar’s memory. “Yes, and it was you who put the notion in mine! You said you was making sheeps’ eyes at her so that I could fix my interest with Clytie, and then that you would cast her off.” He frowned. “Or was that when you decided to invite her to toss her bonnet over the windmill?”

“Any gentleman who cares a button for a lady would deal very harshly with someone who offered her insult,” Lady Regina said bitterly. “Even if that someone
was
his uncle!”

By this announcement, Lord Sweetbriar was posed a very sticky dilemma. Did he not challenge his uncle, Lady Regina would deem him a coward, a courtcard, a milksop.
Did
her persuade his uncle to meet him, however, Duke would doubtless prove the better shot. Lord Sweetbriar could not feel happy about this prospective injury to himself. “Agh!” said he.

If Lady Regina and Mr. Thorne, respectively looking resigned and amused, could find in themselves no sympathy for Rolf’s dilemma, Miss Clough was not similarly heartless.
“Most
ladies, if invited by Mr. Thorne to toss their bonnets over the windmill, would be more likely to regard it as a compliment than an insult. Lady Regina is probably miffed because he didn’t invite her to do. She is also miffed because she caught you paying your addresses seemingly to me, Rolf. Set your mind at ease. The lady’s honor hasn’t been besmirched.” Clytie darted a quizzical glance at Mr. Thorne. “Has it, sir?”

“No, my darling, it has not!” Marmaduke’s smile flashed. “But you must not think I will be similarly forbearing about yours
,
after that glowing testimonial which you so kindly gave me. Tell me, Clytie,
would
you toss your bonnet over the windmill?”

The focus of several eyes, in them varying degrees of speculation, Miss Clough wished that she might sink. Alternately, she wished she were less civilized, so that she might express herself via an energetic breakage of bric-a-brac. “I wish you would not be absurd!” she responded crossly.
“I
am not behind this farrago of nonsense.”

“No, Nikki is!” Lord Sweetbriar, stiff from prolonged kneeling, tottered across the room. “Dash it, Regina, you must see that I can’t marry two females at one time. It was you I asked first—yes, and I was going to ask you again. It was Nikki’s notion that I should practice! And that’s what we was doing when you came in.” In proof, he waved his instructions. “Look: it’s all written out.”

“A likely story.” Sniffing, Lady Regina snatched the paper. Lord Sweetbriar’s pretty speech had indeed been written out, complete to the last detail—Clytie’s name. Furiously, Regina crumpled up the damning missive. Then, in complete disregard of those ladylike precepts which governed the large majority of her actions, she flung the wadded paper at Miss Clough.

“Oh, I say!” said Rolf, who could not feel that for one young lady to be hurling things at another in the second young lady’s morning room was the epitome of good conduct. Nor would it be a comfortable habit in a wife. Just in case Lady Regina
did
become his wife, unlikely as seemed that possibility, Lord Sweetbriar thought it behooved him to nip potential bad habits in the bud. “It ain’t seemly to be throwing things!”

Lady Regina’s fine green eyes fixed on the gilded clock that sat atop the mantelpiece, and then moved resolutely away. “You are a fine one to scold me for misbehavior,” she said bitterly.

“Who better?” inquired Lord Sweetbriar, happily unaware of how close he came to being fatally wounded by a chimney clock. “Dash it, I want you to be my wife.”

“Me and Miss Clough and who else?” Lady Regina’s voice was bitter, her incomparable features chagrined. Sweetbriar had been her ace up the sleeve, or so she thought. How her sisters would roast her for this mortifying development, and her mother scold. Regina turned on her heel, gathered up the tattered fragments of her pride. “I beg that you may remove me from the list.”

Lord Sweetbriar wrinkled his brow. “But you have to marry someone; everyone knows that. Your papa’s pockets are to let. It might as well be me as anyone else, because even if you don’t hold me in any special affection, you don’t dislike me either.” It occurred to Rolf that his beloved’s expression could well be interpreted as less than fond. What reason Regina might have for taking him in aversion, Rolf could not imagine. Unless—He aimed an accusing forefinger at his uncle. “Aha!”

During the preceding exchange, Mr. Thorne had strolled about the morning room, fetching up at last by the chair where his hostess sat. Judiciously he surveyed his nephew’s accusatory stance. “The lad has quite a way with a word,” Marmaduke marveled, to Miss Clough. “No, Rolf. Your suspicions are unfounded. I have not put paid to your romance.”

Although he ceased to stab the air with his forefinger, Lord Sweetbriar’s doubts were not entirely assuaged. “I ain’t saying you meant to,” he admitted. “Confound it, Uncle Duke, you
are
a dab hand at the game of hearts!”

“So very high an accolade,” murmured Mr. Thorne, greatly moved.

“Yes, and from
such
a source!” remarked Miss Clough, in an unsteady voice, an observation which earned her a glance that was very warm.

“Why are you staring at me in that gudgeonish manner?” inquired Mr. Thorne of his nephew, annoyed. Mr. Thorne was growing very wearied by the antics of his family, which might have been expressly designed to alienate him from Miss Clough. “Must I be more plain-spoken yet? Very well. I have not the most distant interest in Lady Regina, Rolf. She may be a diamond of the first water, but she’s not in my style.”

“Oh!” Hectic spots of color flamed in Regina’s cheeks. Impotently she glared at Mr. Thorne, who was ignoring her altogether, and then at Lord Sweetbriar, who dared to look relieved. The failure of these gentlemen to enter the slightest distance into her feelings caused Lady Regina to commit her second rude act that day. She stamped her foot. Alas, in so doing, she inflicted excruciating pain upon her opposite ankle bone. “Oh, blast!” cried the much-abused young lady, as she limped toward the doorway. “I vow I shall spend the remainder of my days upon the shelf.”

Here was a threat worse even than that presented by Lord Sweetbriar’s uncle; in Regina’s voice had been the ring of truth. “Not that!” protested Rolf, as he hobbled after his beloved. Their argument wafted back from the hallway. Lady Regina accused her admirer of being a false deceiver, and lamented her own lack of worldly knowledge, and mourned that she had never thought he would use her in such a heartless way; in response to which Lord Sweetbriar accused his beloved of having windmills in her head. Fortunately, from the viewpoint of their auditors, the voices then passed out of earshot.