Maggie MacKeever (23 page)

Chapter Twenty

Lady Barbour was not, as she had told her family, passing an idle afternoon among the shops in Oxford Street. The Pantheon Bazaar was not privileged by her patronage, nor did three-sided shop-windows displaying color prints, or lovely glass, or tantalizing bonnets and fripperies catch her big blue eyes. Lady Barbour had not lost interest in satins and silks and India muslins, silk stockings and fur tippets; as much as any other fashionable female she delighted in this wide flagstoned avenue with its crystal-globed streetlamps, the divertissements of which it took at least an hour to survey from end to end. But Lady Barbour had no part, this day, in the confusion of Oxford Street. Instead, she was in the British Museum.

“This is a very
queer
sort of place!” murmured Lady Barbour to herself, as she gazed doubtfully upon a pair of enormous stuffed giraffes which stood like sentinels at the top of the stair. In defense of the museum, it was not so queer a place as her ladyship thought it, though housed in a miserable building and appallingly unorganized. Lady Barbour had no fair basis for comparison, being previously unacquainted with such institutions.

That this gap in her experience was being bridged was not by Sidoney’s choosing; Sidoney’s mind was beyond improvement, even by long exposure to the practical Miss Whateley and the knowledgeable Miss Phyfe. As if in proof of this allegation, she withdrew from her reticule a much-creased note. Couched in ardent language, it suggested a rendezvous. “But why in a
museum?”
inquired Sidoney of herself. No answer was forthcoming. She sighed and decided to fill the time until her appointment with a quick look around.

A bust of Hippocrates did not rouse her admiration, nor the celebrated Portland vase; and she was not especially impressed by a huge pair of stag’s antlers. Works of art held no allure for her, nor natural curiosities from all parts of the world. Like so many of the people with whom she was associated. Lady Barbour was in the dumps.

“And so I should be!” she observed to the skeleton of an excessively large fish. “I ask you, who has a better right? What with Morgan caught out with Darby in a Bacchanalian scene, and those depraved pamphlets she insists on handing out—well! Morgan
deserves
to fall into Darby’s clutches, for she is as preoccupied with sin as he is himself. But I cannot callously abandon a member of my family to such a wretched fate, even one who has encouraged Callie’s infatuation with an ineligible
parti!
Oh, I daresay that somewhere in all this there is a most salutary moral, except that I cannot
find
it. It is quite enough to cause one a fever of the brain.” The fish proving uncommunicative, she then tottered off to inspect the noble Parthenon marbles, recently brought to England from brigand-infested Greece.

The marbles were kept in a huge shed. Also surveying them was a gentleman whose back was turned to Sidoney. She frowned. There was something very familiar about that back. In a very ladylike manner she cleared her throat. The gentleman spun around. His features were obscured by a loo mask. Then he clasped Sidoney in his arms and subjected her to a very ardent embrace.

Ardent embraces were well and good in their place, such as the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall and during midnight carriage rides, but Sidoney was not equally enthusiastic about pursuing matters romantic within the staid walls of the British Museum. She informed her admirer so, as she irritably freed herself. “But—” he said.

“But nothing! You go beyond the line of being pleasing, sir!” Lady Barbour snapped. “It is very nice that you have a decided
tendre
for me—at least I assume you must, else you would hardly suggest a rendezvous in a museum! I do not immediately perceive why you have done so—No, do not try and explain it to me! My understanding is not great and I already have more than enough over which to cudgel my poor brain. At all events, I must count myself honored. And I do wish you might take off that mask, because it looks absurd!”

The chevalier’s posture had become very rigid, as if Sidoney’s unkind remarks roused indignation in his manly breast. “Fair one, you are unkind. You treat me in a cavalier fashion. You have offered me false coin.”

“I have offered you nothing!” retorted Lady Barbour, indignant herself. “You may find this difficult to credit, but I have a strong sense of propriety. While it is quite diverting to be waylaid in pleasure gardens and dark carriages—especially after one has had a
teeny
bit more to drink than one should
—
it is quite a different matter to be set upon at the British Museum. Somehow it is not quite
decent
to be thrown into transports of passion and exhibit violence of feeling in broad daylight. Indeed, it is most unbecoming. I tell you this so that in the future you won’t make a cake of yourself.”

The masked man stood so motionless that he might have fit in very well with the museum’s display of examples of the taxidermist’s art. “You must forgive my excessive ardor,” he murmured gruffly. “It is clearly midsummer moon with me.”

That a gentlemen should on such short acquaintance take so marked a fancy to her did not strike Lady Barbour as strange. Gentlemen were prone to do so—or had been before Morgan’s interference. Sidoney regarded her masked admirer narrowly.

“About what,” he inquired quickly, “are you cudgeling your brain? It cannot be so very bad, surely?”

“It cannot?” Lady Barbour made a
moue.
“That shows how little you know! What with ineligible
partis
and sordid intrigues! Morgan was ever one to go off in odd humors. I daresay she’d steal
you
also, if she was given the chance.”

To this suggestion that another female could outshine his companion—clad this day in a gown of lilac silk edged with lace, a Tyrolese cloak with lace borders, a bonnet bedecked with lace and ribbons and ostrich plumes—the masked man responded gallantly. “Stuff!” he said.

As result of this gallantry, Lady Barbour felt more in charity with her companion than at any other time during this interview. “So you may say!” she responded, fluttering her eyelashes demurely at him. “Nonetheless, it’s
true!
Look at English! My most devoted admirer! He never cared for me half so much as he does Morgan. He didn’t bring me back my punch, and he didn’t wear the willow when I cried off. He even expected me to grow stout and plain. Yet he is so
aux aegis
over Morgan that he will allow her to have as many flirts as she wants. And she seems to want a great many! Devoted as I am to Morgan, I cannot but think poorly of a lady who behaves so shabbily.”

Her companion’s posture had relaxed sufficiently to reveal that with these words he sustained a shock. “Hang it!” he said.

“Oh, no! You must not condemn my cousin!” So perturbed was Lady Barbour by the violence of his reaction that she clutched his arm. “It is not her fault that she is behaving shabbily. I have been puzzling my head over it for some time; I was used to thinking Morgan old-cattish, you see! Not at all the sort of female who would throw her hat over the windmill! I do not mean to infer that she has done so. There could be some innocent explanation of that sordid scene I interrupted—not that it was so sordid as all
that!
Although, had I not interrupted, it well might have been.” She paused, frowned, nibbled at her lower lip. “Mercy on me! I have quite forgot what it was I meant to say.”

The masked gentleman took advantage of Lady Barbour’s grip upon his person to lead her away from the Parthenon marbles brought by Lord Elgin. “Your cousin’s shabby behavior,” he prompted gruffly. “The reason therefore.”

“Ah!” Impressed by this display of a well-disciplined memory, Lady Barbour smiled. “There can be only one explanation. All these weighty matters with which Morgan has occupied herself—prisons and factories and parliamentary reform—have conspired to turn her brain. Which makes me very grateful that I
am
a slow-top, because I doubt that anything could conspire to turn mine!”

To this pleasantry, the masked gentleman made no response, instead seeming most interested in an exhibition of amphibious animals in great variety. Lady Barbour cocked her lovely head to one side and studied him. She was amazed at how well she felt she knew him, despite the brevity of their previous encounters. “I do not mean to be vulgarly inquisitive,” she ventured, “but
why
do you wear that mask?”

He appeared uncomfortable. “There are reasons; do not press me. I would tell you if I could.”

Briefly, Sidoney was silent, pondering alternate explanations of why a grown man might choose to go about in broad daylight wearing a loo mask. Perhaps he still sought to avoid the three females who had pursued him at Vauxhall; although the mask rendered him less anonymous than conspicuous, and his pursuers obviously knew his identity despite his disguise. Lady Barbour wished she might be summarily favored. Perhaps he was a felon in flight from justice. Or perhaps he was deformed. It occurred to Sidoney that, in encouraging the advances of a masked stranger, she had not been very wise.

The realization did not disturb her; no more than anyone who knew her did Sidoney expect wisdom from herself. Even so, in this instance, she would try for it. Miss Whateley and Miss Phyfe were going on badly enough without Sidoney’s additional efforts to land them all in the scandal-broth.

She tugged on her companion’s sleeve, thereby distracting his attention from the amphibian exhibit. “We cannot meet again,” she said. “I can think of only one thing at a time, you see.”

It was evident that the chevalier did
not
see. Nor could this failure be blamed on the limitations of his loo mask. “What the deuce — That is, I do not perfectly take your meaning, my lovely!”

Sidoney would miss her masked admirer, she thought sadly; soon she would have no admirers left at all, at this rate. It was a very lowering reflection. Without admiration she would simply shrivel up and wither away, grow as old-cattish as she had considered Morgan. Not Callie would be left on the shelf, but her stepmama. It was very tragic. Sidoney was not so paper-skulled as to think she might thwart Fate.

“Do not blame yourself; few people
do
immediately understand me!” she responded tragically. “What I meant was that other things are more urgent.”

Still the chevalier did not perfectly take her meaning, it would seem; fervently, he grasped her hands and raised them to his breast. “Nothing is more urgent than what we feel for one another!” he proclaimed. “I cannot exist another moment without you. Fly with me to the border, Sidoney. I will make you happy, I swear.”

“Oh, I make no doubt of
that!”
sniffled Lady Barbour, woebegone. “But I have come to realize that I am not destined to find happiness. Look at my two marriages! Though I should not say so, they were both excessively tedious. And then, look at Morgan and Callie! No, that I am meant to be miserable is as plain as the nose on your face.” It occurred to her that the gentleman’s nose was obscured by the loo mask. “You take my meaning! We must say farewell.”

Lady Barbour had been overoptimistic about her companion’s grasp of the situation. Confused, he shook his head. “Farewell!” he echoed. “Why farewell?
Or
am I mistaken in thinking you just confessed a partiality?”

Sidoney blushed and looked indignant; odd as it was in such a flirt, Lady Barbour was something of a prude. “Fie, sir! As if a lady would wear her heart upon her sleeve. I am not indifferent to you, certainly. I do not go about kissing gentlemen to whom I am indifferent. Notwithstanding, we cannot meet again, because I must concentrate my mind.”

Upon receipt of this admission that her ladyship’s lack of indifference was so great as to interfere with her mental processes, the masked gentleman was seen to exhibit no glee. In fact, unless Sidoney’s excellent ears played her false, he called her a nitwit. It was difficult to be certain, due to the obscuring mask. “What did you say?” she inquired.

“I said,” the gentleman responded gruffly, “that you have played fast and loose with me. You meant it for a lark, I credit. Now you are shabbing off, having tired of your May-game, leaving me victim of a lasting passion and a crushing blow.”

“A lasting passion?” echoed Lady Barbour, bright of eye. “I had not expected you to raise such a dust, not on such short acquaintance. Even though you have kissed me several times, we do not
know
each other very well.”

“I know you as well as I need to.” The chevalier, who still retained possession of her ladyship’s hands, drew her closer. “I know that you are cruel.”

“What a wretched thing to say! If I am cruel, it is not because I want to be.” Without the least evidence of reluctance, Sidoney allowed herself to be drawn into an embrace.

“We have had a pleasant interlude together!” she said soulfully, once the embrace had ended and the chevalier had disengaged his loo mask from her bonnet ribbons and lace. “Now we must say
adieu.”

The masked gentleman stood poised for flight. Sidoney waited in breathless anticipation of romantic high-flights, promises to eternally wear the willow and the like. “Balderdash!” said he, and disappeared amidst a display of all the known quadrupeds. Bewildered, Sidoney stared after him. Then a sharply uttered oath made her turn to regard the stairway. There, between the two stuffed giraffes, stood Miss Whateley and Miss Phyfe. Morgan looked astonished. Callie, as usual, looked deplorably plain.

“You need not scold me!” she announced, as the two newcomers drew close. “To say the truth,
you
dare not, Morgan, because it would be like the pot calling the kettle black! At least I did not allow myself to be embraced by an unconscionable rakehell in my own sitting room!”

Whether ‘twas better to be embraced privately in one’s own chambers, or within public view of this day’s visitors to the British Museum, was a moot point which Miss Phyfe was disinclined to argue. Thoughtfully, she gazed in the direction in which the masked gentleman had fled. Miss Whateley similarly stared.

It occurred to Lady Barbour that her strong-minded cousin might very likely set out in pursuit. To prevent this horrid contingency—horrid not lest Morgan thereby learn the chevalier’s identity, but lest she exercise yet again her fatal charm—Sidoney clutched Morgan’s elbow. “Don’t put yourself in a pucker!” she begged. “I could not bear it. I am feeling very sad already. The melancholy truth is that I shall never see that masked man again—and I do not even know who he is!”