Maggie MacKeever (24 page)

Upon this further demonstration of her stepmama’s skitterwittedness, Miss Whateley withdrew her attention from the quadrupeds. “But, Mama—” she said.

That Miss Whateley said no more resulted from the application of her mentor’s elbow to her ribs. “I am glad to find you returned at last to your senses, Sidoney!” remarked the devious Miss Phyfe.

Chapter Twenty-one

Cautiously, Viscount English entered Miss Phyfe’s sitting room, gingerly looked around at the simple sloped-top writing desk, the cabriole-legged love seat and chintz window-hangings painted with designs of slender trees. Then he espied Miss Phyfe, ensconced in the similarly tree-bedecked wing armchair, engaged in a gloomy contemplation of the ox-skull frieze. At her elbow was a mahogany pillar and claw table. On the table stood an opened bottle and a half-filled wine glass.

Without waiting for an invitation the viscount sat down on the love seat. Miss Phyfe contemplated him. Laurie did not care for the determined expression on her face. “I do
not
want to be involved in parliamentary reform!” he said quickly, to set the record straight.

Miss Phyfe brandished her wineglass. “You are a Tory, then. Using the excesses of the French Revolution as an excuse, you close your ranks against change. Yet change is coming  nonetheless.” She sipped from her glass. “But this is fair and far off. If you don’t want to lend your assistance to the cause, you shouldn’t have told Sidoney the opposite.”

Wistfully, the viscount eyed the bottle at Morgan’s elbow; he would have greatly liked to assist in Miss Phyfe’s efforts to deplete her nomadic cousin’s private stock. But she offered him no refreshment, and a gentleman could hardly ask. “I’m not certain I
did
tell her that. You know how Sidoney is once she takes a notion into her head.”

“I do, indeed,” murmured Miss Phyfe, setting down her glass. “Cockle-brained!”

“You are unkind!” the viscount said sternly. “Sidoney cannot be blamed if she is somewhat less than needle-witted. At all events, she decided that I admire you.”

“Me?”
Morgan’s jaw dropped. “I do remember her saying something of the sort. Why did you not disabuse her of that absurd idea?”

Viscount English affixed his gaze to the Savonnerie carpet. “She promised to show me how to go on,” he murmured, pink of cheek.

Fascinated, Miss Phyfe regarded her guest. Never had she expected that the exceedingly honorable viscount would exhibit such an aptitude for deceit.
“She
was to show you how to make
me
the object of such persistent gallantry as must induce me to look more kindly upon your suit? It might well have answered the purpose, were Sidoney not such a ninnyhammer! You had better hear the latest developments, I think.”

Since Viscount English was offered little choice in the matter, he settled himself more comfortably on the love seat and listened without comment to Miss Phyfe’s recitation of the previous day’s events. Morgan’s activities interested him little, and Miss Whateley’s even less, though he was concerned to learn that the young lady was on the verge of contracting an alliance that would inspire her fond stepmama to conniption fits, “That damned fellow!” he muttered, upon being informed of Lord Darby’s part in the proceedings. “Every time one turns around, there he is, and most often where he should
not
be. I hope you sent him off with a flea in his ear.”

Everyone seemed determined that she should send Lord Darby to the rightabout, reflected Miss Phyfe.

“Darby has been very helpful,” she replied. “Or at least he has tried. And overall his efforts have been more successful than
yours
! Let us talk without roundaboutation, English. How much have you had to pay those three silly females to dog your footsteps? Of course I have noticed them; only a blind person would not! Doubtless they are even now gathered on my doorstep. Then there is this masked adventurer of Sidoney’s. You have made a sad botch of it.”

The viscount contemplated pointing out on whose advice he had undertaken to play the rogue. “Masked adventurer?” he echoed.

“I was not finished relating the latest developments when you interrupted!” scolded Miss Phyfe. “Kindly try and refrain from further interruptions until my account is done, else we will never straighten out this muddle. To continue, Miss Whateley and I espied the carriage while on our way home from the Royal Exchange. We were both very curious about what had taken Sidoney to the British Museum. Imagine our astonishment when we witnessed Sidoney embracing a masked man. He must be a very paltry sort of adventurer, I think, because he no sooner spied us than he disappeared.” She paused and over the top of her glass studied her guest.

It was the viscount’s turn to gaze upon the ox-skull frieze. “Fancy that!” he said.

“Yes, do,” responded Morgan wryly. “Sometimes I wonder if Sidoney is of entirely sound mind. She is being excessively tiresome, announcing in one breath that she has bid
adieu
to all romance and in the next that she has frittered away her chances and other such skimble-skamble stuff; and in the next breath after that, accusing me of trying to take the shine out of her by enacting Bacchanalian scenes!”

Viscount English was not enamored of prospective hysterics as enacted by his hostess. “I believe,” he murmured pacifically, “that Sidoney has a strong sense of propriety.”

“What Sidoney has,” snapped Sidoney’s long-suffering cousin, “is windmills in her head!
You
are the one that is wonderfully stiff-necked. If only you were not equally cow-handed! But I think we may still contrive to get clear. Providing you will lend me your assistance, English.”

An outright refusal would doubtless send his hostess back to vaporing, a contingency to avoid at all costs. Yet, despite his dislike of hysterical females, a fellow had his sticking point. Resolutely, the viscount stated his refusal to condone the overthrow of his king. Nor, he added even more firmly, did he wish to see heads rolling in the streets.

Reluctantly, Miss Phyfe stifled an impulse to deal thusly with the viscount. “You and Sidoney will deal
 
excellently together!” she observed. “You
both
have windmills in your heads. And now I most earnestly conjure you to hear me out, because I have come up with a scheme to settle both Callie and Sidoney, and I need your help if I am to bring it off safe.”

Viscount English dared not fail to listen, despite a secret suspicion that it would be much more prudent to take immediately to his heels. Gentlemen, alas, did not take French leave. In point of fact, gentlemen did not do a great many of the things Laurie had done lately. But honorable precepts counted for very little when Cupid weighed down the other side of the scale.

He thought of Sidoney. What a fascinating creature she was, with her bewitching countenance and her delightful lack of artifice and her adorable pea-brain. He dared not abandon her to Miss Phyfe’s devices. To date, he was not impressed with the outcome of Morgan’s schemes. He dared make known this sentiment.

Said Miss Phyfe, in response, “Poppycock! I am not to blame if you are cow-handed and Sidoney a cabbagehead. Do try and pay attention, English! I have devised a plan by which Miss Whateley’s business may be nicely tidied up.”

Viscount English did not appreciate this uncomplimentary dismissal of his efforts. “The devil with Miss Whateley! You may have a disposition to meddle;
I
do not!”

Morgan rubbed her weary brow, which had begun to ache. “Nor do I, English, I assure you. I wish nothing more than to see this affair settled. Queer as it may seem to you, I do not enjoy my cousin’s conversation, which currently consists primarily of laments for her lost romance. I cannot determine if she fears that he will put a period to his existence, or that he will
not.
Whichever, she predicts that she will fall into a lethargy herself, from which she will emerge only to take her place amid the other ape-leaders on the shelf.”

Indignantly, the viscount rose from the love seat. “The deuce!”

Doggedly, Miss Phyfe continued. “Once Miss Whateley’s business is settled, Sidoney will be free to concentrate on her own romance. With your help, I think I may kill two birds with one stone. If you do
not
help me—” Her pause was ominous. “—then I will have to find some other means to save Sidoney from herself.”

Reluctant as he was to provide Miss Phyfe assistance, Laurie dared not refuse, lest Sidoney be married off willy-nilly to some fortune hunter or worse. Sidoney’s infinite gullibility he found endearing. Toward Miss Phyfe’s persistent wrongheadedness, his reaction was less kind.

“Well, English?” inquired Miss Phyfe.

The viscount plucked the wine bottle from off the claw and pillar table at Morgan’s elbow, and likewise the wineglass. “Open your budget!” he invited without enthusiasm, and resumed his position on the love seat.

Miss Phyfe did so, at length; and as she spoke, Viscount English steadily drank. The scheme she outlined was both convoluted and very cleverly thought out. Additionally, it broke several laws.

“Piffle!” she responded, when the viscount voiced his reluctance to make the closer acquaintance of the magistrates at Bow Street. “There isn’t the slightest chance of that. We will not really be doing anything illegal; it will only
appear
as if we are. Sidoney is the only one who might call in the runners, because the rest of us will be in on the scheme; you know as well as I that Sidoney in all her life has done nothing so reasonable! No, it is safe enough. And even if it weren’t
—
nothing ventured, nothing gained!”

The viscount thought he had already ventured a great deal, and for precious little gain. On the contrary, he had forfeited his honor, along with the ability to gain a good night’s sleep. “I still don’t like it!” he muttered. “There must be an easier way to go about the thing.”

“If there were, I promise you I would have found it!” snapped Miss Phyfe. “Heaven knows I’ve puzzled over this business long enough. Are you with me, or not? Because if you are not, I will have to make other arrangements.”

Caught between two equally unpalatable alternatives—he might oblige Miss Phyfe and thereby run the risk of being taken in charge on a criminal offense and examined by the Bow Street magistrates; or he might refuse Miss Phyfe and thereby abandon all hope of ever achieving the object of his insomnia—the viscount conceded. “Have it your way! You have more reason to avoid the authorities than I. There are severe penalties for trying to unseat a king.”

How Viscount English had come by the conviction that she harbored unseating intentions toward her monarch, Morgan could not imagine. “To blazes with the king!” she replied, weary of the subject. “You
do
realize, English, that you will need to wear a mask.”

That he would be thus disguised was, in Laurie’s mind, the one happy aspect of this entire wretched scheme. Laurie did not possess the reformer’s contempt for law and order so blatantly displayed by Miss Phyfe. At least whilst engaged in defying the upholders of justice, his face would not be revealed.

Morgan was aware that her fellow conspirator had no great enthusiasm for his task. It was no more than she had expected of him. The viscount’s enthusiasm she did not require, merely his promise of assistance, and his person embellished by a loo mask.

That promise had not yet been given; briskly, Morgan rose. “We will drink to success!” she announced, as she sat down beside the viscount on the love seat, wrested the bottle from his grasp and filled the solitary wineglass. “On the morrow our plan goes into effect. It will be as easy as winking!”

Had that been a noise at the door? Laurie wondered, as he drank. He turned to glance behind him as he handed Morgan the wineglass, but saw nothing untoward. Graciously, Miss Phyfe allowed him to finish off the wine, and then the viscount took his leave.

Miss Phyfe also departed her sitting room, although in a much more cheerful frame of mind than her recent houseguest, whose morbid thoughts revolved around King’s Bench and Fleet Prison, the Newgate gallows and gibbet. Though Morgan was no nearer a resolution of her own difficulties concerning the nation’s most notorious rakehell, she could at least insure that her houseguests fared better in the game of hearts.

It occurred to Miss Phyfe then that her experience in the game of hearts was hardly such as qualified her to set up as Cupid’s assistant. It also occurred to her that the viscount’s objections to her scheme, on the basis that he would be of little use to anyone were he taken into custody by Bow Street, were not without foundation. But she had stood helplessly by for too long. Now it was time to act.

As Miss Phyfe in this manner pondered, she passed along the upper hallway until she arrived outside Miss Whateley’s door. She flung open that portal. “Callie, you need no longer fret yourself to flinders. I have hit upon the perfect scheme.”

Miss Whateley, seated near her window reading Dr. Jenner’s
Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccine,
a treatise upon the use of cowpox infections to inoculate against smallpox, presented no picture of a damsel thus upon the fidgets. Nevertheless, she marked her place with her finger and expressed polite interest.

Once more Miss Phyfe outlined her plan. Her audience, this time, was more appreciative. During Morgan’s account, Miss Whateley’s plain features took on such great animation that her plump cheeks turned rosy and her eyes positively gleamed.

“You astonish me!” announced Miss Whateley, when her well-wisher’s accounting was complete. “And to think I had allowed my spirits to become utterly sunk! You do not mean to tell Alister of your plan, I hope. I doubt that he would give us his blessing. He is very high-minded, you know. Did you realize that he is involved with the Foundling Hospital? I do not understand how Sidoney can disapprove of so very
good
a man.”

For Lady Barbour’s disapproval, Miss Phyfe had a ready explanation: “Sidoney is a chowder head.” Before Miss Whateley could wax more loquacious about the good doctor, or more graphic about the Foundling Hospital, Morgan left the room. No sooner had the door closed than Callie flung aside her book, fell upon her bed, buried her face in her pillow and succumbed to whoops.