Maggie MacKeever (25 page)

Unaware of this disgraceful behavior on the part of one so soon to benefit from her cleverness, Morgan proceeded down the stairs. She was feeling very pleased with herself. Such an excess of good will and fellow feeling was wasted within the confines of Phyfe House. Therefore, Morgan fetched her shabby cloak and bonnet and set out for the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, there to enjoy with Henry Hunt and William Cobbett and Major Cartwright a very lively discussion of such weighty topics as universal suffrage and equal electoral districts and the abolition of the property qualification.

Chapter Twenty-two

The day had considerably advanced when Lady Barbour emerged from her bedchamber, where she had barricaded herself in order to savor to the fullest the sorrows of her lost romance. Upon entering the chamber she had proceeded immediately to her bureau dressing table and passed several moments in study of her image in the mirror fitted onto the stand. Then she passed several more moments contemplating the contents of the fine mahogany wardrobe.

From the wardrobe, Lady Barbour proceeded to the ancient bedstead. A broken hearted lady could be forgiven for treating this venerable article with less than the respect it deserved, for hurling herself on the mattress defined by walnut headboard and turned foot posts (carved and inlaid with box and ivy), even for weeping heartbrokenly into the bed hangings of lilac and pale primrose silk (embroidered with naturalistic flower groups in flat stitches). As it turns out, Lady Barbour’s conduct did not require forgiveness, at least not on that point, although the tenderhearted might suffer a total surcease of compassion upon discovering that Sidoney settled herself comfortably on her bed with no more dramatic intention than to leaf through
The Lady’s Magazine
and
La Belle Assemblée
and
Journal des Modes.
In this manner she occupied herself for some time, pondering the alternate advantages of hooks and eyes made of flattened copper as opposed to gilt barrel-snaps, buttons and strings. It was as she was frowning over the information that more and more females were reverting to that hitherto masculine garment, drawers, that a servant appeared to apprise her of a visitor.

Looking very gleeful for a brokenhearted lady, Sidoney glanced once more into her mirror, decided that her dress of cambric muslin with waistcoat bosom struck exactly the right mood. She would be dignified but detached, a little distant, as befit a lady with many tribulations to bear. Was she not fated to unhappiness? She might as well grow accustomed to the tragedienne’s
rôle.
In this spirit, and with suitable expression, she tottered into the drawing room, and took up a drooping stance in front of the monumental chimneypiece.

“Oh! I disremember when I have been so unhappy!” lamented Sidoney. Her blue eyes alit on a parcel carried by her caller.
“Is that a
present?
For
me?
You shouldn’t have! I am vastly honored! What is it? Let me see!”

To grapple with a lady over possession of a parcel was hardly dignified; and to bid the lady to the nether regions would have been less so. From both actions, Lord Darby refrained. Sardonically, he watched Lady Barbour dive upon his parcel and tear away the wrappings.

“Mercy on me!” cried Sidoney, amazed. “It is very kind of you to think of me, I’m sure, but whatever made you think I would care for this sort of thing, Darby?”

“That, Lady Barbour, is Mr. Rudolph Ackerman’s
The Microcosm of London,
with colored aquatint plates. The architecture was drawn by Pugin, and the figures by Rowlandson. The publication has achieved a great success.” Lord Darby strolled to one of the windows and with an idle hand smoothed the golden fringes of the damask drapes. “And it was not for you that I brought the
Microcosm,
Lady Barbour, but for Miss Phyfe.”

“Oho!” Sidoney was pleased to have that little mystery cleared up. “Then you should not have given it to me to open, you know! Indeed, that you did so makes no sense. But we have all been in such a whirl—for which, now that I consider it, you are partly to blame. You have been going about embracing my cousin in the most shameless manner, although I cannot
wholly
fault you for it, because she
did
pester you to take her to Vauxhall! All the same, you have had a monstrous bad influence on her. Morgan was not used to enact Bacchanalian scenes and be preoccupied with sin! Do not try and defend her! When I discovered what it was my cousin means to enlighten everyone
about,
I was ready to sink!” Enchantingly, she frowned. “And even though I may be a slow-top, I distinctly recall that on our last meeting I forbade you to see Morgan again.”

Lord Darby had, during this oration, accorded profound attention to the draperies’ design of serpentine ribands and large semi-naturalistic flower sprays. Now he turned his attention, with an expression even more disenchanted than usual, to his hostess. “Yes, you did say something of that nature. But in my experience ladies often say one thing and mean the opposite.”

This concept was too intricate for Sidoney to immediately grasp. Prettily, she pouted. “You mean that I
did
want you to see Morgan again? And that is why I said I
didn’t?
What excessively complicated thinking! Moreover, I know I don’t wish my cousin to be rubbing shoulders with a noted profligate, no matter
what
I said. Not that I mean to condemn you, Darby. I daresay you can’t help being depraved.”

An astute gentleman despite his legendary excesses, Lord Darby foresaw that this interview would not be brief. He moved from the window to an oval-backed chair and, paused with a meaningfully raised brow. Graciously, Sidoney indicated that he should be seated and settled herself on the silk-paneled settee. On this same settee she had rested when she had first arrived in Phyfe House, after the ill-tempered housekeeper had called her a flibbertigibbet and before she had lost her heart to a masked adventurer—before Callie had developed a
tender for
an ineligible
parti,
and Morgan had embarked upon the primrose path. Nostalgically envisioning those halcyon days, Sidoney gazed somberly upon the classically painted panels inserted in the settee’s back.

Lord Darby looked no less somber as he watched Lady Barbour’s die-away airs. “Is your cousin at home? Or Miss Whateley?” he inquired, eager to terminate his current sojourn in purgatory.

“Callie?” Sidoney’s blue eyes opened wide. “You want
Callie?
Good Gad! You are not only depraved, Darby; you are also lunatic!”

“Come down off your high ropes!” retorted his lordship, whose patience was not limitless. “I don’t care a button for your girl.”

“Oh!” Lady Barbour was rigid with wrath, less at the inference that “Devil” Darby would dally where he had no fondness than the suggestion that Miss Whateley was the offspring of her own young flesh. “You are truly
depraved, sir! And I had thought Dr. Kilpatrick was unsuitable! All
he
did was escort her to the Tower and the Guildhall, the Mansion House and the Royal Exchange! Is
no
one exempt from your rakehelly advances, sir?”

“Yes!
You
are!” Lord Darby refrained from enacting bloody mayhem with the fire screen. “I wanted to talk to Miss Whateley, not to seduce her. And the same is true of Miss Phyfe.”

Looking very skeptical, Lady Barbour nibbled on her lower lip. “If you don’t want to seduce Morgan, then you should not go about kissing her, I think; because she is very likely to misunderstand. You may find it difficult to credit, but my cousin has not had much experience with gentlemen in the petticoat-line. I suppose you could not help yourself, although it has me quite in a puzzle to understand how Morgan suddenly developed a fatal charm. Yet I know she has!
You
kiss her at every opportunity, and Laurie was drinking out of the same wineglass as she was only hours past. It is all very nice for Morgan to be so popular, but I wish she would not try and fix her interest with all my
beaux!”

Miss Phyfe and Viscount English had drunk from the same glass? Lord Darby was intrigued. He could conceive of only two explanations for so intimate an act. Either Miss Phyfe and Viscount English were embarking on a singularly mismatched romance, or they had joined forces to combat the troubles buzzing around Miss Phyfe’s head. Why Morgan should require the viscount’s assistance in that task remained unclear; Lord Darby’s own nobly offered aid should have been more than enough to satisfy any female. However, Miss Phyfe wasn’t just any female, as he had so unexpectedly found out. “I assume that neither Miss Phyfe nor Miss Whateley is at home?” he inquired repressively.

Lack of enthusiasm on the part of her audience had as little effect on Lady Barbour as on the seditious Miss Phyfe. “No,” she said, “and though I am very cross with her for not telling me where she was going, I am just as glad Callie
has
gone out. She has grown almost as tedious as Morgan, prosing on about morbid anatomy and cowpox inoculations and foxglove! Whatever that may be! I
do
know where Morgan has gone, because she told the housekeeper: to a meeting of the Friends of Parliamentary Reform. And when I think of the horrid places Morgan goes—well! It was prodigious unfair of her to scold
me
for meeting an admirer in the British Museum.” Having thus recalled her tragic destiny, Sidoney crumpled. “And oh! I am so very sad! Because I shall never see him again!”

That enviable fate, Lord Darby wished he might share. Unfortunately, if he wished to gain enlightenment about the circumstances which had driven Miss Phyfe to share a wineglass with Viscount English, his hostess’s antics must be endured. “Tell me about it!” he invited, being of the persuasion that bitter medicine is best imbibed in one large, quick draught.

“Devil” Darby was far from Sidoney’s conception of the ideal confidant, but she had endured a dreary hour without an audience. “I met him at Vauxhall!” she wailed. “He said he couldn’t live another moment without me, and I said he must, and he has made no effort to contact me again, so I fear he must have put a period to his existence! He wished me to fly to Gretna Green with him, you see! Of course I could not. Though I daresay it would have been excessively adventurous! He vowed to make me happy, and I make no doubt he
could
have, if only I could have
let
him, which naturally I could not.” She sniffled into the sleeve of her cambric gown. “I know what is due my station, even if I
am
generally accorded bacon-brained! And so I sent him away—even though I would much rather
not
have—only to discover that Morgan took advantage of my preoccupation to steal a march on me behind my back! Though I have not the most distant guess
how
she did it, it is very clear that my chances have been quite frittered away. Who would have thought that
Morgan
would turn out to be the most complete hand, and
me
a fubsy-faced old maid!”

At some other point in time, Lady Barbour’s conception of herself as an old griffin might have made Lord Darby smile. At the present moment, his lordship’s concentration was centered on preventing his hands from fastening around her lovely neck.

“That I am destined to be miserable,” lamented Lady Barbour, “is as plain as the nose on my face. And though I may be bacon-brained, I am not so paper-skulled as to think I may thwart Fate! When I think of all I set out to accomplish, it makes me wish to weep, for I had meant to see Callie comfortably bestowed, and to do something nice for Morgan as well. Although I cannot approve my cousin’s conduct, I cannot blame it in her either. It is all the fault of her dedication to good works. Had she not been disheartened by constant exposure to factories and prisons and lunatic asylums, she would not have gone into such high fidgets when
you
took a marked fancy to her!”

Was there a point to this conversation? Lord Darby could only pray his silent endurance was not for naught. Seeking release for his emotions, he rose from the chair, paced restlessly around the room.

“I had meant to extract Morgan from your clutches,” Sidoney admitted, tugging unhappily on her delicate ear-lobe. “I had thought Laurie would suit her much better than—forgive me!—a rakeshame. Then, when I discovered how properly I had been taken in, I tried to extricate Laurie from Morgan’s clutches, because she was clearly not good enough for him. It did not serve. He promised me he would allow her to have as many flirts as she pleases. Can you wonder that I am looking burned to the socket? I vow I am cast into despair!”

Into this artful pause his lordship cast no pretty compliment intended to assure Lady Barbour that, despite her cousin Morgan’s pilfering of all her
beaux,
she was not yet totally an antidote. Of this omission, Sidoney thought very poorly. She could not comprehend how, in the petticoat-line, his lordship had scored so remarkable a success.

Mayhap all he needed was encouragement. “What a prattle-box you must think me!” she giggled, and patted the settee. “Come sit down, Darby, and tell me what brought you here!”

As Lord Darby had once professed to three high-flying sisters, he was not a flat. Nor had he forgotten that he had somehow incurred an appalling amount of Divine disfavor. Not for all the tea in China would he have shared Lady Barbour’s seat, lest he no sooner sat down than Miss Phyfe entered the drawing room and leaped to her own erroneous interpretations of his conduct.

Of late, his lordship had come to regret the legendary reputation that he had long enjoyed. He had enjoyed earning that reputation, but with the advancing of age a gentleman was tempted to amend his ways. Eight-and-thirty was not so advanced an age as to border on decrepitude, Miss Whateley’s opinion to the contrary. Still, recent events had left his lordship feeling considerably worn-down.

“I came here with the intention of laying my cards on the table. Lady Barbour,” he responded tersely. “You might as well know: I have lost my heart.”

“You
have?”
Sidoney was so astonished that both her golden brows climbed her forehead. “If that doesn’t beat everything! I had thought Morgan the most complete hand, but obviously
you
have an even greater deviousness of mind. Do not try and explain why you kissed my cousin when it was
me
you fancied, because I’m sure I will never understand. And I am very sorry for you, Darby, but I have just got through telling you I have bid romance
adieu.
There is no use trying to change my mind. I have just repulsed the advances of an adventurer of such caliber as to have
three
high-flyers forever in pursuit, and I liked him a great deal better than I like
you!”
His lordship made a choking sound. Lady Barbour’s brows descended. “I
do
hope you do not mean to enact me a Cheltenham tragedy!”