Maggie MacKeever (2 page)

Yet had she not just done so, no matter how circuitous the manner? A more animated gentleman than Lord Davenham might have clicked his heels together and shouted hosannahs to the skies. Vivien merely made a steeple of his fingertips, in which posture he looked very much like a pensive buccaneer. “You amaze me, Thea! Never in all the years of our acquaintance have you suggested such a thing. Not that it would have been proper to suggest it before the knot was tied, though I wouldn’t have minded—but I am delighted with your suggestion, no matter what its inspiration. Shall we retire abovestairs?”

Lady Davenham, grappling with the concept of her husband as a thwarted adventurer, was earning a headache for her efforts. Consequently, she did not grasp the thrust of his conversation, nor understand why he should suddenly suggest that they retire. “Whatever for?” she crossly inquired.

Alas for Lord Davenham’s hopes, so abruptly dashed. Not for the first time he consigned a certain governess to writhe in eternal flames. “Have it your own way, my dear; I thought you
wished
to retire. If you do not, I wish you would not hint at it.” He let fall the hand which he had extended toward her. “I will not tease you further! Instead you must tell me if you agree that
primula vulgaris
and candytuft and heartsease will add sufficient liveliness to the flowerbeds.”

“Flowerbeds!” Lady Davenham was aghast at the misunderstanding. Never, during five years of marriage, and a lifetime of acquaintance, had Thea thought of retiring with Vivien abovestairs in the middle of the day. Now that the notion did present itself, she could not banish it from mind.

Well, and why
should
she banish it? Thea was not quite so passive by nature as her husband thought her; but she felt too uncertain of herself to force her presence on him. Yet was not the purpose of this marriage the getting of offspring? Shyly, she glanced at her spouse.

He was looking not at her, but into a far corner, and the brooding expression on his strongly marked features made Thea catch her breath. “Dibbles and beetles. Pick-axes and rolling stones and caterpillar shears,” uttered his lordship into the silence. And then: “Beg pardon, my dear? Did you speak?”

Lady Davenham had definitely spoken, but it would not have been seemly to repeat her exasperated remark. Experience should have long ago taught her, she decided, that when a Davenham’s demeanor was most romantic, his thoughts were most mundane. Vivien might look as if he contemplated catching her up in his arms and bearing her in triumph to the connubial chamber, but he had in reality probably been passing through a mental inventory of his potting shed.

Potting sheds! Modesty forbade Thea suggest her husband’s interest might be more fruitfully focused on herself. Abruptly she rose from the settee. “Malcolm is approaching thirty. It is time he fixed his affections. Everyone will be mad for him—everyone always has
been, and though he may have changed since our last meeting, I doubt it is as much as all
that.
Do you remember, Vivien, when he sent us the performing bear? How angry everyone was with him, especially the owner of the beast! But how exciting Malcolm made everything seem, even when it was not
.
And how flat everything seemed after he had left, even though nothing had really changed.” Rather wistfully, she smiled. “Which leads me to the conclusion that one should take one’s excitement in small doses, if at all.”

Had his concentration not been largely directed toward transporting his thoughts from abovestairs into his gardens, Lord Davenham might have deduced any number of surprising conclusions from his wife’s remarks. But upon Lord Davenham’s impeccably clad shoulders many responsibilities rested, and Thea did not require his assistance in carrying on a discussion, of necessity having learned to converse quite adequately with herself.

Thea moved to stare unappreciatively at her reflection in the pier glass opposite the fireplace. Mirrored in the glass was the feminine version of the dashing Davenhams: dark eyes and flyaway brows, adventurous nose and sensual mouth set in a perfect oval face crowned with riotous thick-curls. Her neck was slender and graceful, and as for the rest of her—well, nature had intended Thea to be voluptuous, and though she might drape herself from neck to fingertip to toe (in this instance, an excessively prim carriage dress of white poplin with a deep blonde flounce), and dine for days on bread and water, she still could not disguise that fact.

Irritably, Thea smoothed her hair. Try as she did to repress those curls, drawing them back into a braided circle, their rebellious nature would not be quelled. Already errant tendrils had escaped to cluster softly upon temples and brow. And why the deuce, she wondered, hadn’t Vivien told her she had a smudge?

Rubbing her dusty nose against her sleeve, Thea abandoned the glass. “I do not expect you to do the pretty, Vivien, at least not beyond attending to the observances of civility,” she ironically remarked. Not for an instant did Lady Davenham imagine that the Duke could be persuaded, whatever her expectations, to bestir himself. “I know you don’t enjoy the social whirl. And I shall not be a penny the worse of it, because I
do, so
you need not worry that I shall be fatiguing myself to death!”

So pregnant was her ladyship’s pause that Lord Davenham roused from his preoccupation with his garden, which was a much more soothing subject for cogitation than the sudden aversion his wife seemed to have taken to himself. Had she not expressed a dislike of excitement? Perhaps she did not mean it. Still, he must not embarrass her with unwelcome overtures.

She was looking at him in a somewhat hostile manner, Lord Davenham noted. “Of course!” he said.

“Of course
what?”
Lady Davenham acerbically inquired.

“Of course whatever it was you asked me, my dear.” Vivien disentangled himself from the sofa and drifted back to the window. “I do not wish to be disagreeable. Tell me, do you truly like those rhododendrons? I am of two minds.”

A stranger listening to his amiable prattling might think Lord Davenham had no mind at all. Lady Davenham was not so easily deceived. “I do not understand you, Vivien,” she remarked, narrowing her fine eyes. “Did I not know better, I would think you didn’t like our cousin.”

“Ah, but you
do
know better, do you not?” With an expert flick of his wrist. Lord Davenham opened his snuffbox, sampled its contents, made clear his intention to let a tedious subject drop.

Lady Davenham rested her lovely hands on the curve of a heart-backed chair and eyed her enigmatic spouse.
Would
she be disappointed in her dashing cousin Malcolm? It might be better if she were.

Chapter Two

The notion that he might disappoint his cousin Thea—or any other female on the face of God’s green earth—had never entered Sir Malcolm Calveley’s head. A very handsome head it was, the Davenant family features set off nicely by sun-bronzed skin, and curly side whiskers, and dark hair worn long around the ears. Upon those dark curls currently rested a high-crowned beaver hat, and around Sir Malcolm’s enviable shoulders was a silk-lined Polish greatcoat with lapels and cuffs of Russian lambskin.

Not inappropriately, it was of that country Sir Malcolm was speaking. “Barbarous, I do assure you!” he avowed. “But fascinating, all the same. One must admire a people prepared to set their whole countryside alight in preference to welcoming the Corsican. Oh, yes, I was there! I have traveled from Moscow to Antwerp, from Lisbon to Toulouse.”

So fascinated was the coachman by the revelations of the passenger who shared his box—a seat most frequently occupied by young bloods interested in horseflesh, not well-traveled swells—that he-turned his attention briefly from the road, “Cor!” he admiringly said.

Sir Malcolm, who had all his life been accorded admiration from unlikely sources, instinctively recognized a spirit whose thirst for adventure had never been quenched. “And in Germany and Portugal, as well!” Sir Malcolm continued. “I was in Vienna for the Congress. Vienna is my favorite of all cities. She is like a woman no longer in her prime, fighting valiantly against the ravages of time, bittersweet with the knowledge of mortality, determined to be gay.”

Philosophical digressions were not the sort of fare served up to him by the young bloods who ordinarily shared his seat, and the coachman was not certain he cared for such an exotic repast. In an effort to turn the conversation-into more familiar channels, he said, “Ho! A woman, eh?”

No gentleman so cosmopolitan as Sir Malcolm could fail to recognize an invitation to exchange confidences. But Sir Malcolm did not repay the ladies who looked upon him with favor by discussing them with every chance-met acquaintance. And since almost all his adventures involved ladies who had favored him, this chivalry somewhat dampened his conversational style.

Still, the coachman awaited his reply. “Many women!” he obliged. Fondly, Sir Malcolm recalled several of those ladies, with whom his acquaintance had been, if brief, intense. Then he gratified the coachman with an explanation of how he had occupied himself during the Hundred Days when Napoleon had grown dissatisfied with being Emperor of Elba, and had returned to France, only to meet his final defeat on the battlefield of Waterloo. “And now,” he concluded at length, “I have come home.”

If the young bloods who vied for the honor of sharing his seat were more prone to talk of “blazing hours” and “bits of blood,” the coachman still had a very good idea of life among the nobs. “Responsibilities!” he wisely observed.

“Responsibilities?” Sir Malcolm looked amused. “Oh, no. Responsibilities are not for such as I, my friend. Let us say, rather, that it is curiosity which brought me home.” Then he lapsed into silence, still wearing that half-smile.

As smiles went, it was not one which encouraged further presumption, and the coachman concentrated on his team. A great bit of an oddity was this well-breeched swell. He had an easy way about him, but the coachman would wager his many-caped coat that behind those careless manners lay a temper quick as a spring trap. He did not think he wished to know what had prompted his passenger’s queer little smile.     

Sir Malcolm was not the only passenger on the Dover-to-London stage; the stage, brightly painted and inscribed with the name of its proprietor, as well as the principal towns it served, carried several passengers inside, and several more outside. Bundles and packages were piled high on the roof, luggage stowed in the boots. They were making, thought the coachman, very good time. He glanced at his companion, and dared put forth an opinion that the roads in England were far superior to any found in France.

“And English horseflesh, too!” Sir Malcolm gazed in a knowledgeable manner upon the specimens before him. “Cleveland bays, are they not?” Then he gave his opinion of the traditional six-horse hitch. Gratified to discover that his passenger was not so very much of an oddity as to fail to appreciate the noblest of all beasts, the coachman presented his own viewpoint, and very soon all the outside passengers were engaged in a lively discussion of elegant tits, neck-or-nothing riders and spanking turnouts. A convivial soul, the coachman did not immediately perceive that it was not his opinion to which the others deferred; when he
did
realize that his place had been usurped by the passenger with whom he had generously shared his box, he grew seriously disturbed—so very disturbed, in fact, that he dropped his hands and gave even his wheelers their heads.

The team dashed along at full gallop; earning shouts of encouragement from the outside passengers, clinging like monkeys to their precarious perches, and shrieks of dismay from those within. The coachman thought that the swell beside him was sure to be stricken with envy at his skill and daring. Thought, but could not be certain. It was as he turned his head to ascertain whether or not Sir Malcolm admired him that disaster struck.

As a matter of record, Sir Malcolm did
not
admire the coachman. He would fail to admire anyone who landed his horses, vehicle, and passengers all in a ditch. Cursing colorfully in several languages. Sir Malcolm struggled to extricate himself from the very prickly bush into which he’d been thrown. “Hopgood!” he roared, an expression not of intention, but a demand for the assistance of his valet.

That diminutive individual emerged from the ditch to gaze with disapprobation upon the hectic scene. The other passengers were no less vocal than Sir Malcolm, and the coachman was equally strident in his own defense.

Hopgood had a very adequate grasp of foreign tongues, and more than a hypothetical knowledge of his master’s temper. He immediately lent his efforts toward removing Sir Malcolm from the prickly bush. “Oh, sir! Your coat!” he mourned. “I knew this would happen, indeed I did, when you told me we was to leave the Continent. If you’ll take my advice as shouldn’t give it, sir, you’ll let me arrange that we should return straightaway to France.”

Sir Malcolm suffered leaves and twigs to be brushed from his Polish greatcoat, and tender adjustments made to his tightly fitting coat of superfine. “I have no wish to return straightaway to France, Hopgood. Perhaps you are not aware that you have been grumbling since we left Calais.”

Of course Hopgood was aware of the nature of his own comments; additionally, he was aware that his master’s temper was wearing thin. “Beg pardon, sir, I’m sure!” he responded, simultaneously tut-tutting over the indignities dealt to Sir Malcolm’s high-crowned beaver hat.

Sir Malcolm gazed upon his fellow travelers, emerging from the ditch. There appeared to have been few serious injuries suffered, judging from the spirited manner in which they were discussing hanging the coachman from the nearest adequate tree limb. It was an emotional scene.

No gentleman of Sir Malcolm’s restless nature was a stranger to emotional scenes; experience had given him deep-rooted dislike of them. Snatching his high-crowned beaver hat away from Hopgood’s solicitous care, he clapped it on his head and said, “We passed through a village a few miles back. Doubtless someone there can provide us with assistance.”