Maggie MacKeever (22 page)

It was while she was enjoying a heated exchange of views with a seafaring individual outside Lloyd’s Coffee House that she espied a familiar, graceful figure, a world-weary countenance. In the most disgraceful manner, Miss Phyfe’s heart leaped. Then she espied Lord Darby’s companion, and it sank like a stone. What perfidy was this? Could Darby, having set her at loggerheads with Sidoney, now intend to arrange that she stood on similarly bad terms with Callie? Morgan broke off in mid-argument and set forth to find out.

“What perfidy is this?” inquired Miss Phyfe of his lordship, as soon as she was within speaking distance. Miss Phyfe was not a lady inclined to beat around the bush. “I know that you are incorrigibly fond of females, Darby, but this is really all too much!”

In response to this blunt accusation. Miss Whateley looked uncomfortable and Lord Darby amused.
“Oh,
fiddlestick!” enunciated the damsel.

“Don’t eat me!” begged his lordship. “Your disapproval comes too late. I have already broken my own rules. My darling, you cannot seriously suspect me of trying to lead Miss Whateley astray?”

Upon receipt of this endearment, Morgan flinched and glanced at Callie, but that young lady was looking very distracted and seemed not to have heard. “I will admit that Callie is not in your usual style,” Miss Phyfe conceded stiffly. “At least I
assume
she is not. All the same, if you should not object, I would like to know what the deuce you are doing with her here, if not trying to lead her down the primrose path.”

“The primrose path!” came an irate voice behind Miss Phyfe. “The downward path to perdition, you mean! Morgan, how
could
you permit Miss Whateley to go jauntering about in company with a man of nefarious reputation? You are to be condemned for such carelessness!”

Was this her old friend who spoke? The doctor who observed human nature from a safe distance, eschewing personal relationships? His homely features were alarmingly contorted; his fingers clenched at Callie’s arm in what had to be a painful grasp. “Gracious God!” said Miss Phyfe.

Thus reminded of the disfavor in which he stood with his Creator, Lord Darby attempted to set certain misapprehensions aright. “Come down off your high ropes, man!” he said to Dr. Kilpatrick. “I have no intentions toward the chit.”

“No intentions!” By this disclaimer, Alister was further, incensed. “Then you
should.
But nicety of judgment is clearly not to be expected from a man of the world. And if you
don’t
have intentions toward Miss Whateley, I should like to know what the devil you are about!”

“As should I,” murmured Miss Phyfe, who had, in astonishment at the doctor’s conduct, almost forgotten her own displeasure. “Explanations would seem to be in order, Darby.”

“I
told
you to send him to the rightabout!” muttered Dr. Kilpatrick. “But did you? No! I’ll tell you what it is, Morgan: you’ve become as skitterwitted as that cousin of yours. I know I prescribed frivolity to you, but I never said you should encourage rakehells to dangle after Miss Whateley.” Rather absently, he patted that damsel on the arm he so firmly clutched. “Poor puss! But no one can blame
you.”

Miss Phyfe was, as result of these accusations, feeling very put about. “This is absurd!” she said. “I did not encourage Darby—”

“Hah!” interrupted the doctor. “That’s not what
I
heard!”

“You heard incorrectly, then.” Lord Darby looked serene. “Happily, I do not require encouragement, having what Miss Phyfe will doubtless tell you is a highly overrated opinion of my own virtues.”

“Virtues!” echoed Miss Phyfe scathingly. “I have yet to see the slightest evidence that you can lay claim to such, sir. Indeed, your- behavior from the moment of our first meeting has been outrageous!”

“So it has.” Still his lordship was undismayed. “And you, my little hornet, have enjoyed every moment of it. There is not the slightest use disputing with me over that. As any number of people will be delighted to tell you,
I
should know!”

“Oh!” Miss Phyfe stamped her foot. “You are insufferable!”

Lord Darby stooped to retrieve several pamphlets which, in her agitation, Morgan had let fall. Absent-mindedly, she had been forcing her seditious literature upon unwary passersby throughout the preceding scene. “I am perfectly willing to have a turn-up with you, as I have previously said. However, our present surroundings are not much less public than Hyde Park.”

Thus recalled to those surroundings, in which they were attracting no small amount of comment, the adversaries enacted a brief truce for as long as it took them to establish themselves in a dark corner of Lloyd’s Coffee House.

“This is all my fault!” said Miss Whateley, before hostilities could resume. “I encountered Lord Darby On my way here, and he very kindly offered me his protection.”

“His protection!” echoed Dr. Kilpatrick.
“I’ll carve the fellow’s gizzard out!”

“Not
that
sort of protection!” reproved Miss Whateley. “I cannot imagine what has gotten into you today, Alister. Lord Darby thought I should not journey alone through the streets and, consequently, escorted me here. That is what I meant when I said he offered me his protection. Any other explanation is patently ludicrous. His lordship is not likely to offer a slip on the shoulder to a green girl.”

“Thank you. Miss Whateley!” murmured his lordship, very grateful for this brilliant defense.

Miss Whateley awarded him an unappreciative glance. “And even if he had it would signify nothing other than that he is in his dotage. Now I beg you, Alister, let the subject drop!”

Miss Phyfe, privileged to observe his lordship’s expression, was forced to squelch an untimely impulse toward giggles. “That will teach you to be chivalrous,” she murmured, as she lay her burden of pamphlets down beside her on an empty chair. “I gather that I owe you an apology.”

“You owe me nothing,” Lord Darby responded promptly. “I would not have you act toward me from a sense of indebtedness, my dear.”

Cautiously, Morgan regarded him. “You wouldn’t?”

Lord Darby’s tender smile would have melted a mountain of ice. “I wouldn’t. Frankly, I want from you only what you want to give me.”

Thrown into confusion by this sally, Morgan was grateful that Lord Darby did not pursue the conversation; instead, he attracted the attention of a servant and ordered refreshments all around. What a practiced deceiver he was, she thought, surreptitiously watching his lordship’s swarthy face. Doubtless he found it amusing to keep as many females as possible dangling at one time, thus staving off boredom by having countless strings to his bow.

But Morgan did not intend to be the means by which any man alleviated ennui, not even the most accomplished of all rakehells. That he should hold any serious sentiments toward her was unthinkable. He was merely in search of amusement. He had found it excessively amusing to kiss her, unaccustomed as she was to such pursuits. And how abominably easy she had made it for him to do so. So overwhelming was “Devil” Darby’s charm that even the strongest-willed of ladies could not hold him at arm’s length.

“In the pathetics, my darling?” he murmured now, as the servant placed steaming mugs of coffee on the table around which they sat. “Tell me about it.”

To this generous invitation, Miss Phyfe returned a quelling glance. “You need not concern yourself about me, sir. I go on quite well enough.”

“I do not like to argue with you, Miss Phyfe.” Lord Darby picked up his mug from the table, which bore out Lloyd’s reputation for lack of cleanliness. “Rather, I
do
like to argue with you, but not on such topics as this. At all events, I think I must in this case. I am very much concerned with your sentiments, Morgan.
It was in hope of pleasing you that I fashioned myself Miss Whateley’s chaperon, as you may have guessed.”

Morgan reminded herself of her newly formed resolve to hold his lordship at arm’s length. “How kind,” she responded coolly, and grasped her own coffee mug.

“Oh no! I am never kind.” Lord Darby propped an elbow on the table and rested his dissipated brow against his palm, the better to contemplate Miss Phyfe. “You can’t possibly believe that I kissed you only to spite your bird-witted cousin.”

Miss Phyfe didn’t know
what
she believed, a circumstance that must render so strong-minded a lady thoroughly out of sorts both with herself and the cause of her confusion. At that cause she now glared. If only she could think of some sharp setdown, some annihilating statement that would put him firmly in his place.

Alas, she could not, no matter how resolutely she stared down at the dirty tabletop. “You are impertinent, Darby.”

“Terence,” said he. “Of course I am impertinent. And you need not think I shall allow you to hold me at arm’s length as you have obviously decided that you must. Oh, I am fully conscious of how reprehensible you consider my conduct, and that you suspect me of making you an object of my foolery. I am not, though I do not marvel at your failure to take me seriously.”

But Morgan
did
take his lordship seriously—entirely too much so. Even simple conversation with the rogue was dangerous, she thought. And then she thought that he was wholly to blame for her sudden conception of her very worthwhile existence as a cake that had gone flat.

“My darling,” he said, suddenly gruff. “If you do not cease to glower at me in that deplorable manner, I am going to kiss you again. Here and now.” Hastily, Morgan looked away.

Miss Whateley, meantime, was attempting to explain to Dr. Kilpatrick what had inspired her to set out unprotected through the London streets this day. “My stepmama is
such
a ninnyhammer!” she lamented. “I wished to apologize to you for her dreadful behavior at Saint Bart’s. For some reason that I do not comprehend Sidoney has taken you in rabid dislike. It was quite by accident that I encountered Darby. In bringing me here, he was only trying to be kind.”

“Kind? Moonshine!” snapped Alister. That keen student of human nature was not delighted to make the acquaintance of jealousy firsthand. Nor was he wholly convinced that his jealousy lacked foundation. In the opinion of Dr. Kilpatrick, Miss Whateley was an excellent candidate for a rakehell’s warm attentions, which is an excellent demonstration of the old maxim that love is blind. “You should have sent the scoundrel about his business instead of encouraging him to dangle after you.”

“Encourage? Dangle? Oh!” Even so sensible a young lady as Miss Whateley had her breaking point, and her companion’s insistence that she had deliberately encouraged the interest of a rakehell was definitely the last straw. “As if it were not bad enough that I must listen to my stepmama and Miss Phyfe prose on about spinsters and parliamentary reform, now
you
must start to bully me, Alister!”

“But, Callie!” protested the doctor, aghast.

Morgan had not entirely grasped the significance of this conversation, her attention being very sternly concentrated on the Lutine Bell—salvaged from a wrecked frigate of that name—the great hammer of which pealed out tidings of vessels lost and found at sea. She did not hear Callie mention parliamentary reform, and Alister’s protest, and concluded that the doctor’s escort of the damsel was not as encouraging as it had initially seemed.

“Never mind!” she interjected into the silence. “I will take you to view the Houses of Parliament if Alister will not. They are open to the public on Saturdays, as you may not know. It is very interesting to inspect the paintings and carvings, frescoes and mosaics depicting various epochs of national life. The Gilded Chamber of the House of Lords is generally accorded most magnificent, although I find the plain and practical House of Commons more to my taste—although I cannot applaud the want of decorum so often displayed therein! Amazing, it is not, that the welfare of the realm has been discussed there since the time of Edward III?”

“Amazed” was not the word for Miss Whateley’s countenance. She ground her teeth together. Then she gave up the struggle. “I don’t
want
to visit Parliament!” wailed Callie, and burst into tears.

“Gracious God!” ejaculated the astonished Miss Phyfe. “I thought—”

“You didn’t think!” Dr. Kilpatrick interrupted sternly, as after various contortions he brought forth a pocket handkerchief. “Or you
wouldn’t
think Callie wants to go see Parliament. Or to have anything to do with your tedious reforms.” He held the handkerchief up to Callie’s face. “Poor puss! Blow, there’s a good girl! I didn’t previously realize just how unhappy you have been, what with want-witted females forever plaguing you. I’ll tell you what I think: you should bid them all go to blazes and come marry me!”

Feebly, Miss Whateley pushed away the handkerchief which was grievously curtailing her intake of air. “Oh, Alister! I should
adore
to marry you!”

“You would?” The doctor looked gratified. “You should have said so before, because then we could have seen this business settled with a great less fuss.”

Unfortunately, the business was far from settled, as Miss Phyfe was duty-bound to point out. She directed a stern glance at Lord Darby, who appeared to be struggling against unseemly mirth. It would seem an amusing situation, she conceded, to an impartial observer. Few gentlemen proposed marriage to a lady in the next breath after adjuring her to blow her nose. Darby himself would no doubt go about the business with much more finesse. Irritably, Morgan put aside that speculation, the truth of which she’d never know.

“Much as I dislike to cast a damper on all this jollity, I must,” she said. “Callie is underage, and her legal guardian is highly unlikely to approve the match.”

“Then you must persuade her to like it, mustn’t you?” inquired the doctor, who was gazing in a doting fashion upon Miss Whateley’s unprepossessing face. “Because we mean to be married by fair means or foul.”

Miss Whateley, for her part, had not the least concern with whether her stepmama did or did not approve her choice of spouse. “There!” she announced triumphantly. “I
said
he wasn’t a cold fish!”