Maggie MacKeever (26 page)

Mournfully, Lady Sweetbriar gazed after Mr. Thorne, feeling as though she had been abandoned by her oldest friend. Then she recalled her predicament, and that Bow Street might come any moment calling, and scurried down the broad staircase, and bolted the front door.

In the Towneley gallery of the British Museum, meantime, Lady Regina had been revived via the vinaigrette which Miss Clough had brought along in case her own spirits took an abrupt turn for the worse. Having been revived, Lady Regina was indulging in a tantrum. “How could you have been so negligent?” she inquired acerbically of Lord Sweetbriar. “How could you have let your stepmama do such a thing?”

“Dash it, I didn’t
let
her!” As he tried to focus on the marquis ring which Lady Regina waved under his nose, Lord Sweetbriar’s eyes slightly crossed. “Although I might have, had I known how things stood. A fellow don’t relish his stepmama being dipped, no matter how much of a nuisance she’s been.” He darted a quick glance at Sir Avery who, having grown bored with the proceedings, had begun to compose a catalogue of the new gallery’s contents. “No offense, sir.”

Sir Avery didn’t look up from the Cottonian coins and medals. “Umm?” said he.

“Never mind, Papa,” murmured Miss Clough. Denied a handy collection to catalogue, Miss Clough was occupying herself in wondering whether or not Marmaduke Thorne was a villain, and if she wanted to kiss him again in any event. “I do not think a response is required.”

So it was not; the hostilities between Lord Sweetbriar and Lady Regina had not halted for comment. In point of fact, Lady Regina had during that brief interval once more made adverse comment regarding his lordship’s mental abilities, as result of which his lordship was grown increasingly irate. “And you call yourself a pretty-behaved female!” scoffed Rolf, brandishing the jewel chest. “It would serve you right if I
did
leave you upon the shelf!”

It occurred to Lady Regina that a young woman did not enhance her standing with a gentleman by indulging in such audible fits of temper as were impossible to keep from reaching strange ears; and she clamped her teeth shut. Since her tongue was in an infelicitous position, she then winced. Realization that her bitter and ill-advised comments had been heard by other visitors to the Towneley gallery caused her further anguish. As ill luck would have it, there were an inordinate number of such visitors today. It took little imagination to realize the probable consequences of her injudicious temper tantrum. Did this story get around, she would be mortified. As result of these reflections, Lady Regina succumbed to chagrin.

“Dear Rolf!” Lest he take it in his head to leave, she clutched his arm. “I have been a trifle too quick to speak. Try and enter into my feelings. You would not like it were the, er, object of your affections to seem to prefer another, I think.” Belatedly, she recalled that the object of Lord Sweetbriar’s affections had seemed to do just that. “I mean—”

“Moonshine!” retorted his lordship, rudely. “I ain’t so great a cabbagehead that I don’t know what you mean, no matter what your father thinks—which ain’t half as little as I think of him. You mean that it was all right for you to throw out lures to Uncle Duke, but it ain’t all right for me to have a fondness for my own stepmama.” He looked indignant. “And you called
me
a jingle-brain!”

Lady Regina closed her eyes and counted slowly to a thousand. “I did not call you a jingle-brain,” she said, at length. “I never even thought such a thing. Oh, this is all your stepmama’s doing! If only she had not—”

“Twaddle!” interjected Lord Sweetbriar, more rudely still. “It ain’t Nikki’s fault you was so determined to have her accursed baubles. Well, you wanted them; now you may have them! Much good they will do you.” He thrust the chest at Regina, so roughly that she gasped. Then he turned on his heel.

That his lordship did not make a precipitate departure, so wroth was he with his beloved, was due to some excessively quick thinking on that young lady’s part. Inspired to fast action by the realization of impending spinsterhood, Lady Regina tucked the jewel chest under one arm, took firm grasp of Lord Sweetbriar, and dug in her feet. Lest Rolf drag the lady whom he had wished to marry across the floor, he was forced to halt. “What is it you want now?” he inquired irritably. “Ain’t Nikki’s jewels enough?”

Lady Regina’s own temper was not unfrayed, despite her attempts to be contrite. “But I do not
have
Nikki’s jewels,” she pointed out. “I have paste imitations of Nikki’s jewels, which is not at all the same thing. You are wonderfully calm about this business, Sweetbriar. Your stepmama sold jewels that were not hers
to
sell. That is a criminal offense, surely.” Regina’s tone was sharp. “One for which a person could be confined to a prison such as Newgate.”

This callous arrangement of his fiancée’s future roused Sir Avery from his absorption in the Cottonian coins. “I do not think Nikki would care for Newgate,” he remarked judiciously. “And I also do not think I can allow any of you to do something for which Nikki would not care.”

Lady Regina stared at Sir Avery. Perhaps here was someone who was not immune to reason, she thought. “Consider, sir!” she pleaded. “Lady Sweetbriar has sold jewels that were not hers
to
sell, and has substituted copies made of paste. No one with a proper way of thinking can approve such grave misconduct.”

Sir Avery’s expression made it very clear that the current subject of his disapproval was Lady Regina herself. “Pea-goose,” he remarked, and returned to his work.

‘Pea-goose?’ Lady Regina felt this rudeness so very keenly that she did not trust herself immediately to speak. As she sought to regain her self-control, Lord Sweetbriar twitched himself out of her grasp. “I don’t think there’s anything left to say.” he said. “You have what you wanted. I will bid you good day.”

“No.” Regina placed herself smack in his pathway. “I don’t. That is, what I wanted was for you to show me that you favored
me!”

“And so I did. I gave you Nikki’s baubles. Dashed if I know what else it is you want.” Lord Sweetbriar stuck out his lower lip. “Now I think on it, dashed if I know why you made such a kick-up in the first place. Anybody could have seen all along that I favored you. Hang it, I wasn’t trying to marry Nikki.”

“I never said you were,” Regina wondered had things gotten so out of hand. Sweetbriar had been dangling at her slipper strings for months, yet now he showed every indication of not coming up to snuff.

There was a valuable lesson to be learned from all this, supposed Regina. She had sought to revenge herself upon both Mr. Thorne and Lady Sweetbriar, and had wound up in the suds herself instead. It was enough to make a damsel consider changing her ways. “All I ever wanted,” Regina said sadly, “was a mama-in-law who wouldn’t put me to the blush.”

“Devil take it!” Having at last gained the upper hand, Lord Sweetbriar was not about to give it up. It was long past time that his beloved was delivered up a few home truths. “It ain’t Nikki who’s put anyone to the blush, it’s
you.
I’ll wager that in all her life Nikki never made a public rowdy-do. People will be talking about your family soon enough, but not because of Nikki. All
she
did was kiss a couple fellows, neither of which counted, because she is betrothed to Sir Avery, and as for Uncle Duke—” Guiltily Rolf glanced at Sir Avery, who in response quirked an ironic brow. “—Well. And since I am her stepson, it don’t signify if she did sit on my lap.”

Lady Regina’s horror at being thus addressed was not abated by her suspicion that his lordship’s complaints were not without basis in truth. “It may not signify for you,” she said bitterly. “You may not expect so blasé an attitude from your wife.”

“Wife?” Lord Sweetbriar looked confused. “I don’t
have
a wife! Oh, you mean when I do. When I have a wife, Nikki won’t need to sit upon my lap, because someone else will be.”

After due reflection, Lady Regina decided that Lord Sweetbriar’s somewhat incoherent speech had indicated a strong desire to cuddle his own wife. So overset were Lady Regina’s spirits that she herself would have greatly benefited from some cuddling at that point. However, Lord Sweetbriar had given no indication of wishing to cuddle
her.
To make matters even worse—which hardly seemed possible—his comments about laps and wives had attracted notice. “Pray moderate your manner!” Regina murmured, eyes modestly downcast.

“Why should I?” Lord Sweetbriar was feeling pugnacious. “You didn’t moderate yours. Scolding me for dangling after Clytie, when all the time you was dangling after Uncle Duke! Nor that I blame you for it. Uncle Duke’s a nonpareil.” He frowned. “Now I remember: it was
you
who said he coveted my papa’s fortune, and I don’t know why you should’ve, because he don’t!”

This comment penetrated Miss Clough’s self-absorption. “He don’t—doesn’t, that is? Are you certain, Rolf? Nikki distinctly told me Mr. Thorne is a villain.”

“Did she?” Lord Sweetbriar’s stern brow lightened when he looked at Miss Clough, Lady Regina was not pleased to note. “Nikki has been telling a prodigious lot of rappers lately.” He glanced back at Regina, his expression again severe, remarkably so for a young gentleman who’d been telling a fair number of rappers of his own. “Eyes like stars, just fancy. Face beyond compare. Moonshine!”

“But, Rolf.” Surely was Regina patient, Sweetbriar would come around. “Your stepmama tried to throw a rub in our way.”

“Can you blame her for it? You was determined to have her baubles, and she wasn’t wishful that you should discover they was only paste. Hang it, I’d have done the same thing in her place.” Rolf eyed his beloved. “And so, I’ll warrant, would you.”

Lady Regina did not care to discuss the point, on which she suspected they would reach no agreement. Regina could not imagine herself ever engaged in so underhanded an enterprise. Marrying a gentleman for his fortune was a straightforward business, not at all like replacing family heirlooms with paste imitations, as must be obvious to anyone who had a sense of what was nice. But if she was going to marry any gentleman at all, Regina would have to make a push. And push is precisely what she did, if in a ladylike manner, as result of which Lord Sweetbriar found himself rubbing shoulders with various Egyptian antiquities.

Hastily he stepped away from an especially repulsive mummy. “Your stepmama,” persevered Lady Regina, “tried to trap you into a compromising situation with Miss Clough.”

So she had. In retrospect, Nikki’s cunning amused as it appalled. What was that drivel she had had him spouting? “I am mad for you! Absolutely enraptured!” he recalled. “I have an income of—Dashed if I can remember the rest of it. Clytie would know.”

“I daresay you can remember.” A diabolical plan had presented itself to Lady Regina, one in which there was no place for Miss Clough. “Do you but try.”

Rolf was not reluctant; he screwed up his brow. “I have a great regard for you. There is no other woman with whom I could ever think of settling in matrimony.” He paused. “Sounds dashed silly, don’t it? It ain’t quite so bad when a fellow’s down on his knee.”

Egyptian antiquities not being of consuming interest to the individuals who this day visited the Towneley gallery, Lady Regina and Lord Sweetbriar were temporarily without an audience. Lady Regina therefore grew so bold—and desperate—as to give his lordship another shove. “Show me!” she said.

“Show?” Lord Sweetbriar also ascertained that they were alone. Then he awkwardly dropped down onto one knee. “What came next? I have it! Darling Clytie—er, Regina! Say that you will be my bride.”

Lady Regina pursed her lips. Was this any moment to quibble over a proposal addressed to Miss Clough? She looked down into Lord Sweetbriar’s face. Something in his expression told her it was not. “Yes,” she said.

“Yes?” Stiffly, Lord Sweetbriar clambered erect. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, I will become your bride.” Oddly, Regina felt no triumph at the success of her sly scheme. “I want to marry you. That is—if you still want to marry me.”

Though Lord Sweetbriar’s mental facilities may lately have been focus of various unkind comments, he was wise enough to refrain from explaining to Lady Regina that he had never ceased to wish to marry her, even during the worst of her kick-ups. “There are conditions,” he said firmly. “I don’t wish to be badgered about Nikki. If she is to be your stepmama-in-law, you must be civil to her.”

Be civil to the lady who had employed sleight-of-hand in regard to the jewels Regina had long thought of as her own? She wondered if she could. Consideration of her prospects, were Rolf to hedge off, prompted Regina to hastily respond: “I will try.”

“Nor do I wish to be badgered about my friend Clytie,” continued Rolf, who was deriving definite pleasure from his beloved’s submissive attitude. “And there’ll be no more flirtations with Uncle Duke, or anyone else, mind.”

Lady Regina’s experience with flirtations was not such as enticed her to further such endeavors. “As you wish it, Sweetbriar,” she replied.

As he wished it? Rolf thought he must discover the extent of this newfound docility. “And you will also sit on my lap when the occasion warrants,” he decreed. Regina bowed her head. He stared. “Dash it! You will?”

“Naturally I will, if that is what you require. Say what you may about my papa, he did tell us girls how we must go on. There are so many of us, you see, and so little money—frankly, we must be more amiable than most.” Regina thought her words had had effect. “I know I have been very silly. My sisters were not wrong to claim I grew puffed up with conceit. I can only hope you will not hold my foolishness against me, Rolf.”

Lord Sweetbriar shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Not a bit!” he responded, made uncomfortable by Lady Regina’s humble speech. “I was a teeny bit foolish myself. Thought you wanted Uncle Duke. Thought I didn’t want to be married for my money, too. I mean, look at m’father and Nikki! It don’t work.”

Though this comparison to Lady Sweetbriar could hardly please Regina, she merely flinched. Regina had come too close to losing her wealthiest suitor altogether to quickly take insult. “Nikki wasn’t fond of your father,” she pointed out. “I
am
fond of you.”