Maggie MacKeever (10 page)

Lest Miss Whateley retreat once more behind her stoic silence, quick measures were required. “Fudge!” responded Dr. Kilpatrick bracingly. “Surely you may speak freely to your physician. For that matter, I think I must insist on it. We cannot have you laboring under so strong a sense of injustice that you go about fair gnashing your teeth.”

At this aptly inelegant description of her condition, Miss Whateley achieved a wan smile. “You are very kind, sir. I suspect that my stepmama would say I have disgraced myself.”

Not for nothing was Dr. Kilpatrick a student of human nature. “Your stepmama,” he said bluntly, “is a saphead! Now I am in equal disgrace, so let us let the subject drop. I have no more patients to tend today. Would you enjoy a tour of Saint Bart’s?”

Callie was eager to abandon a topic on which, despite the doctor’s assurances, she had already said a great deal more than she should. She informed Dr. Kilpatrick that she would enjoy a tour of Saint Bart’s above all things. Dr. Kilpatrick obliged, without pausing to reflect that his own obsession was hardly more soothing to a troubled spirit than Miss Phyfe’s preoccupation with the plight of the common man.

For all the misery thus glimpsed, Miss Whateley did enjoy her inspection of Saint Bart’s; and the kindly attitude of her escort toward those patients they encountered elevated him in her opinion, as her own lack of squeamishness elevated her in his. “The ambulant patients are required to help with the work of the ward,” he explained, indicating a large chamber with rough wooden floor and whitewashed walls along which the ill were accommodated in lines of parallel beds. “They are allotted a pint of water gruel or milk porridge for breakfast; eight ounces of meat or six ounces of cheese for dinner; and for supper, broth. In addition, each is allowed twelve ounces of bread a day, and two pints of beer.”

Whether this allowance was generous or no, Miss Whateley was not qualified to judge. She tactfully allowed that the patients of Saint Bart’s seemed to be comfortably bestowed.

Miss Whateley, decided Dr. Kilpatrick, was a very pretty-behaved female. It was a pity that both Morgan and her bird-brained stepmama were inclined to pull long faces over her unprepossessing appearance. Certainly, no one could deny the chit was plain but no serious student of human nature would be deterred from study of a most unusual specimen by something so rubbishing as that. Furthermore, Alister himself was no Adonis. It was hardly his place to cast stones.

With these reflections the good doctor did not acquaint Miss Whateley, nor with his fascination concerning her relationship with her skitterwitted stepmama. Instead, he explained to her the use of traction, by way of weights and pulleys, for reducing fractures of the leg; and demonstrated the apparatus of hanging ropes used by the patient in moving his own weight, rather to the dismay of the patient involved therein. From weights and pulleys he then progressed to an enthusiastic discussion of the relative merits of nitrous oxide and sweet vitriol, either of which when inhaled produced first exhilaration and then drowsiness.

To these dissertations, Miss Whateley listened with every evidence of keen interest. Nor was that interest feigned. Here was an enthusiasm she could understand and approve, an enthusiasm far more practical than Miss Phyfe’s desire to reform England’s entire political system. In Callie’s personal opinion, Morgan was as addlebrained as her cousin Sidoney. Callie would not have been surprised to discover that the current earl was of equally unsound mind.

It was as Dr. Kilpatrick explained the relative merits and demerits of nitrous oxide and sweet vitriol, and Miss Whateley wondered if perhaps the entire Phyfe family might not be mad as Bedlam, that they arrived at the Church of Saint Bartholomew the Less, where Miss Phyfe was lecturing the steward on the necessity of reform, in hope of persuading him to lend his efforts to the National Truss Society for the Relief of the Ruptured Poor. The sound of their mingled voices caused her to pause mid-speech.

How well they got along! she thought, as the doctor and Miss Whateley came into view. And how intelligently Callie conversed.

 Alister appreciated intelligence. Perhaps here was a solution to one of her perplexities. A physician was no brilliant match, but Miss Whateley could hardly be expected to marry brilliantly. To use the word with no bark on it, Miss Whateley could hardly be expected to marry at all, so lacking in social graces was she. Yet here was Alister, chattering away enthusiastically. Alister, if not brilliant, was not ineligible. Sidoney would have to be persuaded that it was no disgrace to have a physician in the family.

Alas, here Morgan’s zeal received a sharp check. Lady Barbour would hardly welcome as Callie’s suitor a man whom she had taken in intense dislike.

Chapter Nine

“Nothing, but nothing, is as I expected it would be!” lamented Lady Barbour, and she hiccoughed. “It is enough to make a person as cross as a cat—as any number of cats! Not that London has changed, especially; I did not mean that. But I did not expect to have to listen to a great deal of talk about factories and lunatic asylums and the pot walloper franchise!”

“The pot walloper franchise?” Her companion looked distinctly taken aback.

Lady Barbour screwed up her features enchantingly. “It is a franchise peculiar to certain boroughs—only a few, perhaps a dozen at most—wherein heads of households, by virtue of being such, have the vote in parliamentary elections, providing they aren’t on poor relief. You see what close association with Morgan has done to me! Next I shall go about trying to persuade everyone that the common man should have the franchise—though why he should want it I don’t understand! It sounds such a dreary thing to have. And for that matter, I don’t understand either why men should have the dreary thing and women shouldn’t, because I’ve scant indication that
your
sex is wiser than mine, sir! Not that
I
am any good example, but look at my cousin. Morgan is very clever.” Sidoney giggled. “How furious she will be to discover that I have neatly pulled the wool over her eyes!”

“Ah.” Lady Barbour’s companion did not look especially thrilled by that prospect. “You seem certain that your cousin
will
discover it.”

“Oh, yes!” Sidoney was most delightfully abashed. “I am not needle-witted, you know, and Morgan
is!
She’ll realize soon enough that I didn’t cry off from that dreary musical evening because of a headache. I daresay no sooner will she return, from it than the servants will tell her I have gone out. And even if they don’t tell her, she will find out! In short, sir, I am not at all good at cutting a sham.” Upon which ominous utterance she paused to refresh herself with Arrack punch.

Of this potent beverage, Lady Barbour had already drunk far more than was discreet, and with it had taken not a single bite to eat, as result of which indiscretion her ladyship was more than a trifle cast-away, had in fact quite definitely shot the cat. Still, there is some excuse for her deplorable boskiness, and justification also: if one was going to become as drunk as a wheelbarrow, there was no better place to do so than the Pleasure Gardens at Vauxhall.

Foxed as she might be, Lady Barbour retained sufficient grasp of her faculties to know she adored Vauxhall. From the moment she had entered the turnstile in Bridge Street, had glimpsed the Grand Quadrangle all a-shimmer with thousands of variegated lamps hung among the leafy trees, festooned from branch to branch—well! The Grand Walk, provided with a stately avenue of elms; the South Walk, spanned by three triumphal arches; the Druid’s and the Lover’s Walks; the Dark Walk, where no modest maiden would dare to venture; waterfalls and ruins, Turkish minarets and Arabian-columned ways—here was the raw stuff of adventure, and it only added to her excitement that the crowds who thronged Vauxhall’s shady byways were not the sort of people with whom one ordinarily rubbed shoulders.

Alas, Lady Barbour’s escort was noticeably less enthused. With a marked lack of approval she regarded him. No pang smote Sidoney’s breast upon contemplation of that swarthy visage, those world-weary eyes. “You are the most unobliging man! I am not at all accustomed to gentlemen who act as though they would rather not be with me, you know. It is not kind of you to be so ungallant, and I think very poorly of you for it.” She frowned at her empty punch cup.
“Very
poorly indeed!”

This far from subtle indication that her ladyship would not be adverse to additional liquid refreshment, Lord Darby ignored. He did not care for the responsibility of a companion who was more than three parts disguised. “But I do
not
wish to be here!” Lord Darby pointed out. “As you very well know. If you will recall, I agreed to escort you to Vauxhall only when you informed me that if I did
not,
someone else would oblige!”

“I said that?” Sidoney looked amazed. “That was very cleverly done of me, even if I
do
say so myself! I am not usually so devious. I have not the most distant guess why I was so determined that
you
should bring me here, nonetheless. I suppose I thought you would be the perfect escort—after all, you
are
England’s most notorious rakehell!” Her lovely brow wrinkled. “And it is very bad of you to turn out to be so dreary and disapproving and dull!”

Had Lord Darby been less kindly disposed toward womankind, he might have very fairly pointed out that Lady Barbour was not the only current victim of tedium. For his lordship, inebriated peageese had long ago lost all allure. Indeed, he was at a loss to explain why he had allowed Lady Barbour to inveigle him into acting as her escort. Certainly he could think of many more pleasant ways to pass the evening than acting the bear-leader to a skitterwitted damsel who verged on becoming maudlin.

Miss Phyfe would be fit to throttle him when she learned of this escapade. An odd way by which to divert a lady’s passion, perhaps; but not without great and subtle cunning had “Devil” Darby become a hardened rakeshame.

Yet it had been less to provoke Morgan than to contrive that Sidoney fell into no serious scrapes that he had allowed Lady Barbour to coerce him into this expedition to Vauxhall, which was cunning so very subtle that even Lord Darby was not certain he grasped its import. Never before in all his long career had he expended such effort on behalf of a female—effort, moreover, that was much more likely to earn him a scowl than a smile. Yet, he thought that on Miss Phyfe a scowl was no less fetching than its opposite.

Why should it be so? Because she was a darling, he supposed. Lord Darby’s own reminiscent smile abruptly faded as he realized the unprecedented tenor of his thoughts. No gentleman of his lordship’s experience could fail to realize the significance of such doting reflections. England’s most notorious rakehell was in grave danger of being caught.

Though Lady Barbour was not of an intellectual caliber to grasp the significance of Lord Darby’s preoccupation and his stricken expression, she sensed that neither betokened appreciation of herself. “At least you might pretend to like me just a little!” she wailed. “Because it is very dreary to be embarked upon an adventure with someone who doesn’t like you above half, as
you
should be the first to confess! Not that I mean to infer that you would
force
someone to engage in an adventure—oh, drat!”

“There, there!” soothed Lord Darby, wondering if this wretched evening would ever end. It would be an excellently befitting purgatory were he condemned to pass eternity in company with a pea-brained female whose conversation was incomparably absurd. “I know exactly what you mean. I
have
had a great many adventures. But for you to similarly aspire, my lady, is not at all the thing.”

Lady Barbour propped her elbows on the table and rested her head on her fists. “It’s all of a piece with everything else!” she mourned. “A gentleman may have as many adventures as he pleases, but a lady must stay contentedly at home. Do you know what I say to that, sir? Of course you do not! And I shall tell you, even if you would rather I did not. I say: Stuff! What is sauce for the gander should serve just as nicely for the goose!”

Lord Darby experienced a distinct unease at these remarks. His companion’s sincerity was beyond question. As was her deplorable condition. Skillfully, he persuaded her that she did not wish to devour a syllabub laced with wine, and helped her to rise from her seat. Lord Darby subscribed to the theory that an individual as drunk as a wheelbarrow must benefit from some gentle exercise.

Lady Barbour was nothing loath; one would encounter scant adventure while sitting in a dinner box and listening to the orchestra perform. She adjusted her Turkish turban of bright blue fringed with gold, and likewise her loo mask. Then she clutched Lord Darby’s arm and announced her willingness to proceed.

Out from beneath the covered colonnade he led her, away from the dining boxes and the pavilion where the orchestra played. Their presence and Lady Barbour’s condition were much less likely to be marked once they left behind the temples and pavilions of the Grove.

Lady Barbour displayed no reluctance to thus depart the more heavily populated areas of Vauxhall, enclosed by the principal walks and the garden’s western wall. Perhaps England’s most notorious rakehell required more secluded surroundings in which to embark upon the pursuits for which he had gained such fame. Thus far Sidoney had seen in him nothing to warrant his remarkable reputation.

Perhaps he reserved his more outrageous sallies for those unfortunate creatures known as sylphids and soiled doves? If so, Sidoney must intimate that she had great compassion for her fallen sisters—and a great curiosity about the man responsible for having brought so many of the unfortunate creatures low. She cast him a languishing glance. “If anyone deserves adventure, it is I! For have I not spent the large portion of my youth pining away in the country, longing for the gaieties and divertissements of the Metropolis? Now that I am finally here, I am hampered by my graceless stepdaughter and my crusading cousin and furthermore by
you!
It is very bad. I disremember when I have disliked anything so much.”