Maggie MacKeever (38 page)

“Never mind! I’ll perform the ceremony.” The vicar’s cheeks were pink. His gaze then fell upon Miss Lennox who, looking her worst, was leaning languorously on the viscount’s arm. It was not surprising that the vicar assumed he viewed a shocking prospective
mésalliance
, since Shannon had taken time to change his clothing, and Miss Lennox had not. “My lord, if I might have a word with you?”

Shannon was feeling a trifle benumbed, now that the long-awaited event loomed so near. He gave Miss Lennox over into Adorée’s tender keeping, and let the vicar lead him aside. “My lord,” murmured the vicar, in confidential tones, “I fear you are about to make a grave mistake. A gentleman of your station in life doesn’t need to
marry
such a tatterdemalion wench.” He chuckled. Lord Roxbury looked blank. “Man to man, I tell you it’s not necessary! Though I may be a man of the cloth, my lord, I also possess a fair knowledge of the world, and I tell you it won’t
do.
But I see how it is; the wench is holding out for a ceremony. Well, for a small fee I can provide for you a ceremony that will be a great deal less binding than marriage—in fact, not binding in the least!”

Unfortunately, as the vicar’s image of himself as a gentleman of the world had grown, so had his tone increased. As a result his words had been heard by all—save Percy and Cristin, who were lost in one another, and Jynx who, leaning against Lord Erland, had once more fallen asleep. Lord Roxbury, so incensed by this vulgar proposition as to very nearly suffer a fatal seizure, opened his mouth to utter a scathing retort. By Lady Bliss, he was forestalled.

“Illegal ceremonies!” she shrieked. “Peterkin, you wouldn’t! You couldn’t! You
didn’t!”

“Now, now, Adorée!” The vicar’s brow was beaded with sweat. “It wasn’t that way at all. On my word, it wasn’t! Courtenay never knew! I needed the money, you see.”

Lady Bliss stomped her pretty little foot, and her gray eyes flashed. “If it wasn’t just like Courtenay to hire a cut-rate minister! Peterson, if you tell me my marriage was invalid, I think I shall scream.”

“Don’t do that!” protested the vicar, who now was pale. “My wife, you know! We wouldn’t want her to know about this—and I repented, truly I did, and I never did it again. Beside, what difference does it make, since no one ever knew?”

“It makes a very great deal of difference to me!” wailed Adorée. “I may be misguided, but I am not wicked, and now you tell me that I really am a soiled dove and that I should not mind!” She sniffled. “And here I am surrounded by lovebirds, and they shall all be respectable, while
I
am placed beyond the pale. Oh, it is all so terrible! For married women can do all sorts of things that unmarried women cannot!”

This outburst had roused Cristin and Percy from their mutually esteemed trance. Bewildered, they stared. Lord Roxbury also stared, though an acute observer might have noted a certain tendency of his lips to twitch. The curate, too, goggled, and looked very much as if he wished to sink through the floor. Only Miss Lennox slept on, and from time to time gave vent to a gentle snore.

As the focus of attention, Lady Bliss was magnificent. In her clinging violet gown, with the earl’s opera cloak flung about her shoulders and trailing on the floor, her pretty cheeks flushed and her gray eyes bright with tears, she made a breathtaking tragedy queen. “I didn’t think much of Courtenay,” she sobbed, “but at least I had been married, and I have always thought every woman should be married at least once, even if she didn’t like it very much! Otherwise, how is she to
know?”

“Never mind, my—er, love!” hastily interposed the earl. “If that is what you wish, then married you will be. And I promise you will like it very well indeed!”

Adorée looked very much as if she wished to swoon. Since Dominic’s arms were currently filled with Miss Lennox, and since no other arms would do, she refrained. “Nicky! What
can
you be thinking of?”

“Tansy!” The earl smiled.

“By Jove!” uttered Percy. “And I thought you were the highest of sticklers, Nicky! Dashed if you aren’t in a reckless humor—or three parts disguised!”

“
I
,” Cristin interrupted sternly, “think it’s a very good idea. Now we will all be respectable!”

Percy could not fail to appreciate this eminently logical point of view. For the haste with which he’d spoken, he apologized handsomely. “Dashed if Jynx didn’t bring it all about! Fixed up right as a trivet! You know, Cristin, she’s a very good sort of girl!”

Lord Erland paid no attention to his cousin’s queer notion that he was incapable of managing his own
affaires de coeur.
Steadily, he regarded Adorée. “It is not,” she said-faintly,
“necessary
that you should marry me.”

“If it was,” retorted the pragmatic earl, “I wouldn’t!”

“Oh!” Lady Bliss’s scruples, having previously been bludgeoned to death, did not rise to plague her now. “In that case, Nicky, you may call me anything you please!”

“Generous!” uttered the viscount, in scathing tones. “Now
may we get on with the business at hand?”

Lord Erland looked down at Miss Lennox, snoozing quite contentedly in his arms. “Certainly! It is very bad of us to interfere with your wedding night. First, however, I think you might wake your bride.”

At last, Lord Roxbury and Miss Lennox were wed. Their union was witnessed by Lord Erland and Lady Bliss, Lord Peverell and Miss Cristin Ashley. It was a moving ceremony, all agreed, even though the vicar was so nervous that he dropped his prayer book several times. Miss Lennox made a lovely bride, in spite of the black stuff gown, and the fact that she yawned throughout the ceremony. Afterwards, the party adjourned to a nearby inn, named most appropriately The Angel with One Wing, and soothed the landlord’s suspicions regarding the circumstance that of them all only Lord Roxbury had any luggage, and finally—if not entirely properly—sought their beds.

Life settled down to a much more peaceful pattern then. Eulalia Wimple continued to reside with Sir Malcolm Lennox, who discovered he could not be comfortable without her nagging him; Innis Ashley was occasionally heard of, indeed came to be of considerable value to England, since his further follies were confined to France. Cristin proved so good a manager that her mama-in-law became quite reconciled to her, though not to Lord Erland, who for the remainder of her long life she blamed for everything.

Adorée became a noted political hostess, and so exemplary a wife that her past indiscretions would have been forgotten save for her tendency to enlarge upon them at whim. The Viscount and Viscountess Roxbury devoted themselves to a serenely placid existence and the presentation to the world of a large number of charmingly lethargic offspring. And when the viscountess was stricken by an intermittent yearning for excitement—directly attributable, she claimed, to her adventures with the Ashleys—she arranged a reunion of Lady Bliss and company, and invited a certain Bow Street Runner to tea.

Copyright © 1979 by Maggie MacKeever

Originally published by Fawcett Crest (0449500101)

Electronically published in 2006 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any  resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.