Maggie MacKeever (19 page)

As befit a gentleman of his experience, Lord Darby refrained from explaining these things. “You will not believe either that you are adorable, or my darling, so I will not waste my breath explaining how it is that you do not fill me with disgust.” She looked so disappointed that he was obliged to swallow another smile. “Tell me how it came about that your cousin was so uncivil to you.”

Three parts disguised as was Miss Phyfe, she remained very much aware of the effect of those world-weary gray eyes. She wrenched her gaze away and focused instead on the striking ox-skull frieze in an unsuccessful attempt to compose herself. “Sidoney has decided I nourish some evil design to curtail the population of the world. She also thinks that such an ambition indicates a want of openness and an unsteadiness of character. I know I should not speak of such things to you, Darby, but you did ask. And if
you
accuse me of having gleaned my information firsthand, I think I may scream!”

“Devil” Darby had not gained his reputation through any such arrant mishandling of the gentle sex. He was not shocked by Miss Phyfe’s statements, having in the attainment of said reputation heard much more staggering revelations. Nor, as result of said attainments, did he even briefly entertain the notion that she had engaged in sordid intrigues. Furthermore, his lordship was not unacquainted with the theories that Miss Phyfe had espoused. “
I
,” he protested, “am not such a cabbagehead.”

Oddly, this indication that Lord Darby deemed her a lady of high moral accomplishment—or scant physical attraction—did not accord well with Miss Phyfe. “Which is not to say I
couldn’t
have,” she stated belligerently. “If I wanted to! But I didn’t! That is, glean it firsthand.”

With unimpaired patience, Lord Darby grasped Miss Phyfe’s chin and forcibly wrenched her gaze away from the ox-skull frieze. “My darling Morgan, I know that. Come, tell me how all this upset came about.”

Once more, Morgan was caught fast by his lordship’s irresistible visage. Abruptly, she ceased to struggle. He moved his hands to gently cup her face. If not succinctly, she presented a fairly faithful accounting of how her latest turn-up with Sidoney had come about.

“And now I must draft out my pamphlet anew!” wailed Miss Phyfe halfway through her account. “You need not tell me it is an unsuitable topic for a female to discourse upon, because I don’t like it above half myself, but people should be told.”

“You err, my darling,” serenely interrupted his lordship. “I promise you would like it very much
more
than half! You were saying that Lady Barbour tried your civility a great deal too high.”

“So she did.” Morgan continued to gaze upon her caller’s dissipated features. The fact that she did so is no evidence of weak character. Lord Darby continued to firmly—but not uncomfortably—hold her face in his hands. “I may be foxed, sir, but I do not think I should be telling you these things.”

His lordship’s smile had quelled many a more serious misgiving. “Moonshine! If your hen-witted cousin thinks so poorly of you, mayhap she’ll take her leave.”

“Alas, no.” Morgan sighed. “Sidoney has accepted numerous engagements for the remainder of the Season, and won’t dream of crying off. Oh, it is all such a dreadful muddle. I don’t mind for myself—not that I
enjoy
being accused of shameful conduct—but I am very sorry for Callie. Sidoney has taken it into her head that Alister explained things to me that he should not have—Alister is a physician, you see. Now she is going about claiming that the poor man lured Callie into the Royal Exchange for immoral purposes, which she seems to think he intended to put into effect in Garraway’s Coffee House. It is a great pity because the business was progressing very nicely. There’s scant hope of a happy outcome now. Sidoney considers Alister the most ineligible of
partis.”

Lord Darby had scant interest in even prepossessing young ladies, among which numbers Miss Whateley must surely be the least; and none whatsoever in the progress of her romance. “And did he? Explain things he shouldn’t have to you?”

Lord Darby, mused Miss Phyfe, would have vast experience with information gleaned firsthand. It was not an encouraging thought. “Who? Oh, Alister! The only things of a medical nature that Alister has explained to me are certain folk remedies. To cure jaundice, one should eat nine lice on a piece of bread and butter. Sheep’s dung dissolved in boiling milk and taken internally will cure gallstones. And a drunkard is very quickly rendered sober by putting a live eel in his drink.”

“I should think he might be!” responded Lord Darby.

In case his lordship was inspired to revert to such stern measures, Miss Phyfe added quickly, “I am not
that
drunk. Indeed, every moment I grow less so. And I suspect that very shortly I shall be feeling very angry with myself. I do not know what it is about you that invites indiscretion, Darby!” He smiled lazily. “Wretch! I did not refer to your, um, preferences but to the fact that I should not be discussing this sort of thing with you.”

“So you keep saying. But who better?” His lordship continued to smile. “You have not yet told me how you came by that knowledge which sent your nitwit cousin into the boughs.”

Lord Darby, decided Morgan, had a nice way with a word. No delicacy of phrasing prompted this conclusion, but his reference to her cousin as a nitwit. “I read a great deal,” she said, then blushed. “Surely you cannot share Sidoney’s convictions that I have—”

“Blotted your copybook?” Lord Darby supplied helpfully. “Of course not, you absurd child.”

Miss Phyfe, at eight-and-twenty, did not think she cared to be regarded as an infant. Nor did she especially appreciate the assertion that she was absurd. She especially disliked the inference that his lordship was amused by the notion that she might misbehave, which indicated his own lack of interest in such pursuits—and her own vagrant wish that his lordship might misbehave with her was clearly the utter epitome of foolishness.

Doubtless it was the fault of the wine she’d imbibed. Resolving to henceforth eschew the grape, Miss Phyfe attempted to save face. “I have allowed myself to be carried away by the violence of my feelings!” she said, briskly. “I beg you will disregard what I have said to you. I am very fond of my cousin and I should not speak unkindly of her, even when I am driven half-distracted by her fits and starts.”

“And justifiably so,” murmured his lordship.

“Perhaps.” Morgan’s tone was repressive. “I suspect that it does me no credit. A truly generous person would swallow Sidoney’s provocations with good grace, which I have
not!
But she will come about again. Sidoney never stays angry long. I only hope that when she does get over being miffed she won’t try and reform me!”

To this poor effort at humor, Lord Darby responded with no smile. He had lamented the unpredictability of peageese, he recalled. And right he had been to do so, as witnessed by the conviction that had taken hold of Lady Barbour’s brain. It was not altogether fair of his lordship to deplore Lady Barbour’s association of her crusading cousin with depravity. His own thoughts moved along similar lines. He did not suspect that Miss Phyfe was depraved, of course. He merely wished that she
might
be.

“To think that my most pressing concerns were once thinking up slogans for parliamentary reform!” Morgan was inspired by the somewhat ominous silence to chatter on in a manner she privately thought inane. “I never dreamed frivolity would prove so exhausting! And
this—
”

She broke off. Somehow, and very deftly. Lord Darby had released her face and grasped her shoulders and pulled her down against his chest. A very nice chest it was, moreover, reflected Miss Phyfe. “What
are
you doing, sir?” she gasped.

Though Morgan could not know, what Lord Darby was doing was being accomplished with a great deal less than his usual finesse: he was feeling very uncertain, and a little anxious, and thoroughly ridiculous, none of which emotions were welcome to a rakehell at this stage of his progress. “Frivolity!” he muttered, and then he wisely abandoned further attempts at verbal communication and ruthlessly embraced Miss Phyfe.

In that endeavor, at least, Lord Darby’s abilities remained undiminished. “Gracious!” gasped Miss Phyfe, several moments later when she was again able to speak. So moved was his lordship by this astute observation that he kissed her once again. Miss Phyfe was not heard to voice any protest. Nor was Miss Phyfe seen to make any attempt whatsoever to free herself from his lordship’s ardent embrace.

“Aha!” cried Lady Barbour from the doorway where she stood.

Chapter Seventeen

“Dead to shame, I promise you!” hissed Lady Barbour that same evening. “A false deceiver, the slyest thing in nature! Can you
blame
me for being in a perfectly morbid state?”

Viscount English vouchsafed no response. His silence derived from no censorious attitude toward his companion, but the exigencies of the stately dance in which they were engaged. The movements of the gavotte were not designed for the easy exchange of confidences.

Lady Barbour was not so readily discouraged. “Of course you cannot blame me!” she answered herself. “Anyone must be in quite a taking to discover such a monstrous unsteadiness of character—and very much disgusted, too! And not only is Morgan going on in so very bad a way, she has also led Callie astray! Well! I hope I may not be called cruelly unfeeling, but no matter
what
I may be called I will not allow Whateley’s daughter to enter into a ruinous entanglement with a commoner!”

From what little Viscount English had seen of Miss Whateley, the chit might count herself fortunate to enter into any manner of entanglement whatsoever. For this ungenerous reflection he took himself to task. Miss Whateley could not help her appearance, and if her manner was similarly graceless, it was still very uncivil of him to think unkind thoughts. His conduct had been hardly praiseworthy of late, and the reason for the degeneration of his lofty principles stood not far away.

She wore a gown of French gauze, open behind, over a blue silk slip; and she looked so extraordinarily lovely that she caused one’s heart to ache. If only Sidoney could refrain from talking, she would have been physical perfection personified.

Expecting Lady Barbour to refrain from speech, however, was no less optimistic than expecting pigs to fly. Perhaps he should attend more closely, thought the viscount, lest he miss tidings of import.

“Whateley was prodigious good to me,” said Sidoney, with a regretful glance. “And not only by leaving me Callie’s money. Not that it was
truly
her money, or I wouldn’t have accepted it, naturally. She was merely used to think of it as such! And when I consider that Morgan has encouraged
commoners
to dangle after her, I can only applaud Whateley’s foresight!”

If memory served the viscount, Whateley had been little more than a commoner himself, and none had better cause
to
remember Whateley, who was indirectly responsible for the viscount’s rejection by his ladylove. There was no point in dwelling upon past defeats, especially when the future promised to be little rosier. The gavotte having concluded, Laurie escorted Sidoney off the dance floor.

Even then she did not cease to talk. “First Morgan goes traipsing off to her factories and her prisons, and as if it were not bad enough that she must do so, then she must tell us about all the wretched things she’s seen! I’m sure it’s very sad if the Wakefield House of Corrections is overcrowded, and the dayrooms at Berewick Borough Gaol unsuitable, and Carlisle County Gaol unsafe in all respects; but to tell me about such things is of no use at all, except that it makes me very blue-deviled. Sometimes I think Morgan must
wish
me to be blue-deviled, because there is no other reason why she should talk to me about soup kitchens!”

This nonsequitor roused Viscount English from his own fit of the blue-devils. “Soup kitchens?” he echoed.

“That is exactly what I said!” Sidoney cried triumphantly. “Because I don’t see what soup kitchens have to do with anything. It is all of a piece with Morgan’s other queer starts. It is no exaggeration to say that in every respect my usage has been barbarous!” Expectantly, she paused.

From her companion, no comment was forthcoming. That, too, accorded perfectly with Sidoney’s deflated spirits, being yet additional proof that she had lost her skill in the game of hearts. Not that Sidoney would demean herself by deliberately trying to steal away another female’s beau, even if that other female’s notions were a great deal less nice than her own. At least she had given the viscount a great deal of food for thought.

Lady Barbour’s revelations were not the subject of the viscount’s ruminations; mention of prisons had sent him off on an altogether different track. He did not expect himself to be incarcerated in the Wakefield House of Correction, or Carlisle County Gaol, or even dreaded Newgate; his descent from honor was not so grave as all that. At least he trusted it was not. The viscount was a little vague on what misdemeanors might result in a peer standing his trial.

Nonetheless, Viscount English might as well have been imprisoned, for he was no longer a free man. Once Laurie had gone airily about his business, sparing no thought for those less advantageously placed. Now he understood what it was to be a fugitive, hounded by the forces of law and justice. Not that the forces of law and justice sought out Viscount English, but the efforts of the sisters Milhouse were no less diligent. In point of fact, Laurie suspected those determined ladies could give lessons to Bow Street. How the viscount had become the sisters’ quarry, he remained uncertain. What was much more certain was the difficulty of escape. Perhaps he should cease to struggle and take them all into his keeping. Three such avaricious females would dissipate even his large fortune in an amazingly brief time, at which point he would have an excellent reason to put a period to his existence.

That her companion was looking a trifle out of sorts had not escaped Lady Barbour’s notice, and she sympathized. She knew that it was most disheartening to discover that the object of one’s affection was running mad over someone else. “One must not take such things too much to heart!” she suggested delicately. “I daresay things are not
quite
so dark as they might seem.”