Maggie MacKeever (27 page)

“I know!” soothed Miss Phyfe. “I have often felt like throttling her myself.”

Though his lordship’s ruffled feathers had been smoothed by this confession, her ladyship’s were not. “Mercy on me!” she wailed. “And I was even prepared to render up the observances of civility and felicitate you both! Though if I were
honest
I would tell you to take care that Darby does not wriggle off your hook, Morgan! To think you might have had Laurie—well! For his sake I must be thankful you did
not!
And I hope you may not have to repent of your choice.”

Were Morgan to be allowed to return to matters of more immediate import, Sidoney must be coaxed out of the sullens. With a rueful glance at Lord Darby, Miss Phyfe moved toward the settee. “English never wanted me, Sidoney.”

“No?” Lady Barbour was severe. “Then you should not have persuaded him that he
did.
Why did you do so? I do not expect you to share all your secrets! Although I
would
very much like to know how you have contrived to cast me in the shade. Because I do not scruple to tell you, my dear, that you are not in the highest flight of beauty. Ask Darby, if you don’t believe me! A man of
his
reputation should know best!”

This far from subtle reference to his scandalous history, Lord Darby ignored. “Oh, yes!” he responded serenely, as he surveyed Miss Phyfe. As usual, her magnificent person was unfashionably garbed, and her glorious curls were escaping their pins. His fond gaze caressed her oval face and classic features, lingered on her lips—and how delightfully her blushes lit up her translucent skin. “Morgan is in all respects a nonpareil.”

Lady Barbour stared at her unfashionable cousin, whose current expression was one of openmouthed shock. “Goodness! You
have
lost your heart!”

With great application of willpower, Miss Phyfe wrenched away her startled eyes from Lord Darby. He was amused by her efforts to cope with the pea-brained Sidoney, she thought. Morgan would pluck that crow with his lordship at some later date, when their exchange might proceed without the inhibiting influence of an audience.

“Sidoney,” she said, with a notion of persuading that lady to depart the drawing room, “English is devoted to
you.
He has always been. But you said nothing would induce you to look more kindly upon his suit.”

“I did?” Lady Barbour wrinkled her nose. “Well, perhaps I did, but what does
that
signify? Everyone knows I’m a peagoose! But not such a peagoose that I don’t know when someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes! Oh, I do not wish to discuss it!
I
am of such little importance that he could not even remember to bring me back my punch—yet with
you
he shared a wineglass!”

“About that wineglass,” murmured Lord Darby, from the fireplace.

“And,” added Sidoney triumphantly, “he said you might have as many flirts as you wished!”

Miss Phyfe massaged her temples, the sorely abused condition of which had benefited not at all from the preceding exchange. “Sidoney, no gentleman who truly cares about a lady would encourage her to have flirts.”

“No?” Lady Barbour glanced at Lord Darby, that font of wisdom concerning matters of the heart.

“No,” he said.

“Oh!” murmured Sidoney, perplexed.

Quickly, ruthlessly, Morgan took advantage. “You were under the impression that the viscount— er—fancied me; and you told him you would show him how to go on. Though he
didn’t
fancy me, he couldn’t deny himself the opportunity of—ah—learning to know you better.” From the fireplace came a great crack of laughter. “Terence, do hush! So, Sidoney, you see—”

“No, I don’t!” interrupted Sidoney. “And you call
me
paper-skulled! I had always thought you needle-witted, Morgan! The
clever
member of the family!”

Came a silence, in which the only sounds were his lordship’s stifled laughter and Miss Phyfe’s labored breath. “Am I to deduce that you still do not favor Laurie?” she inquired, when again capable of speech. “In that case,
why
have you been raising such an abominable kick-up?”

“About you and Laurie? Because you wouldn’t
suit!”
Her legs having become cramped by her extremely unladylike position, Sidoney adopted a more decorous position on the settee. “But it does not necessarily follow that he would do for
me.
I am fond of Laurie, but fondness does not blind me to the fact that he is a prodigious high-stickler and wonderfully stiff-necked!” She heaved a great sigh. “My heart belongs to another, alas. Life is monstrous unfair. Because I would not
mind
so much being fated to be miserable if only I had once seen his face, or at least heard his name!”

Lord Darby thought he might terminate her ladyship’s vaporings, the better to pursue his own romance. “About that masked adventurer,” he offered, only to be quelled by a sharp glance from the object of his ardor.

“What about him?” inquired Sidoney, only to be in turn silenced by the appearance of a disheveled, breathless footman on the threshold.

The effect of this arrival on Lady Barbour was astounding. She fell backward on the settee, clutching her breast and sobbing and drumming her heels.

‘“What the blazes?” inquired Miss Phyfe.

Lord Darby looked abashed. “That is what I was trying to determine when you joined us, my darling.” He joined Miss Phyfe in an effort to prevent Lady Barbour’s wreaking damage upon herself and her surroundings during her enactment of high-flights. “It had something to do with Miss Whateley, and a note.”

“A note? Miss Whateley?” Morgan experienced a cold grue. “But that wasn’t supposed to be until tomorrow! The fool!”

“Tomorrow?” echoed Lord Darby, as Lady Barbour recovered sufficiently to prop herself up on an elbow.

“You
are
needle-willed, Morgan!” Sidoney exclaimed. “Else you would not have grasped the situation so quickly! It is nice to be proven right about something, although I do not perfectly comprehend how you guessed Callie has been kidnapped! If only I had not forgot! But you know I can think of only one thing at a time, and all I could think of with you and Darby carrying on in so depraved a manner was that you would enact me another Bacchanalian scene! And I was very curious to see how you went about pilfering my
beaux!
So if I have been a
teeny
bit remiss as concerns my poor Callie, it is all your fault!”

Miss Phyfe ground her teeth. “Kidnapped?” repeated Lord Darby, at a loss.

Upon viewing frustration enacted by his seditious mistress, and bewilderment displayed by London’s most knowledgeable rakehell, the breathless footman immediately came forth. All was not yet lost, he informed them; he had taken it upon himself to lay an information at Bow Street.

“Bow Street!” said Lord Darby, even as Miss Phyfe leaped to her feet, clutched
The Microcosm of London
to her bosom and sped toward the door.

Observed Lady Barbour, “If you are going to one of your eternal meetings now, Morgan, I will consider it the oddest of
all
your humors, and excessively ill-done. Think of poor Callie and the danger she is in! Think of
me!”

“Rather,” said Lord Darby, whose superb intellect had quickly recovered from the receipt of several successive shocks, “I suspect she is thinking of Viscount English.”

Lest she be abandoned, Lady Barbour trailed his lordship into the hallway and down the stairs in Morgan’s wake. “Laurie? Why, the hussy! I thought it was
you
she wanted! Now I think she must be insatiable!”

“Ninnyhammer!” snapped Morgan, as she struggled into a pelisse held for her by the Scottish housekeeper, a process made very awkward by the parcel she still clutched. “I don’t want to bed the viscount, merely to save him from imprisonment in Newgate!”

Chapter Twenty-four

At the top of Snow Hill, next to Saint Sepulchre’s Church, stood one of London’s principal coaching inns. Thirty coaches daily departed for parts of England and Scotland from the Saracen’s Head.

This was not the time of day when the innyard was abustle with grooms and ostlers and postboys, passengers weary of traveling or eager to set out. An air of somnolence was settled on the yard. Flies buzzed around the horse trough, which was filled with clear water, the ground around it sprinkled with fragrant hay. The booking clerk dozed in his office. Not even a snore issued from the gallery of bedrooms that encompassed the yard on both sides,

Within the Saracen’s Head, all was not so serene. The coffee room was almost deserted, except for the innkeeper and a dapper little man—most noteworthy for a startling striped waistcoat of various conflicting hues—who was toasting his toes at the wood fire, smoking a pungent pipe and sampling a heady concoction known as a dog’s nose. Within the private room across the hall, however, was a much less amiable scene.

This was a pleasant little low-roofed chamber, furnished with a number of high-backed, leather-cushioned chairs of fantastic shapes. On the walls were a great variety of old portraits and roughly colored prints. At the upper end of the room, near the window, stood a little table covered with a white cloth. At that end of the room also stood two gentlemen. They made an odd appearance, for one brandished an ancient blunderbuss, the other wore a loo mask. “Court card! Coxcomb! Man-milliner!” accused the blunderbuss-bearing gentleman, among other very great incivilities.

“Hang it!” retorted the masked gentleman, in tones harried and faint. “It’s all a damned hum!”

“A hum!” Menacingly, the blunderbuss advanced. “I see what it is! You persuaded Miss Whateley to fly with you to the border—do not try and deny it! Gretna Green is in Scotland. Coaches bound for Scotland depart this very inn. And once you lured her here, you changed your mind. You intended to ruin and then abandon her. By God, you’ll pay for this!”

During this dramatic oratory—in response to which the masked gentleman backed as far away as possible from the gentleman brandishing the blunderbuss, came up so sharply against the cloth-topped table that he unintentionally sat down upon it, at which point the table immediately collapsed—the remaining occupant of the private parlor stirred. This third party was an unprepossessing young lady, ensconced in a fantastically shaped leather chair.

“This is not as it seems, Alister!” she gasped, clutching at her sides. We were
not
embarked for Gretna Green.”

“Humph!” retorted the blunderbuss-wielding gentleman, who was homely of feature and sandy of hair. “You expect me to believe you after I have just seen you yet keep
another
assignation, this time with a masked man? And I had thought your assignation with Darby was the outside of enough! Lucky for me I was on my way to have it out with your bird-witted stepmama and saw you steal out of Phyfe House.” From the floor the masked gentleman, currently striving to extricate himself from table and tangled cloth, was heard to murmur unfavorably as regarded his own luck. “Yes, well, you shan’t have her!” snapped Dr. Kilpatrick.

“Deuce take it, I don’t
want
her!” retorted the masked man.

“Alister!” breathed Miss Whateley. “Can you mean that you
do
still want me? Even after all this fuss?”

Dr. Kilpatrick looked severe. “I’ll tell you what it is: you’ve growing skitterwitted, puss! If I
didn’t
want you, I wouldn’t try to stop your eloping with another man. Not that I approve of these assignations, and I expect that you will give them up immediately once the knot is tied.”

“Oh, Alister!” Miss Whateley clasped her hands. “You
don’t
just want me to help you prepare your anatomical specimens!”

“His
what?”
inquired the masked gentleman, from the floor.

“His specimens!” Miss Whateley explained. “Alister is very interested in the study of diseased tissues and organs. He believes that such studies can lead to a better understanding of the symptoms and appearance of disease in a living patient.”

Miss Whateley, decided Dr. Kilpatrick, was reacting mighty calmly to the interruption of her elopement. In point of fact, this was one of the very few occasions on which he had seen her laugh. Exposure to the skitterwitted Phyfes had worked an adverse effect on her, he thought. “I don’t need to go so far as
that
to persuade someone to assist my research,” he replied scornfully. “Don’t try and change the subject! You are quick to take up the cudgels in defense of this scoundrel. We will not rub along together at all comfortably if you mean to be forever getting into scrapes with gay and profligate men.”

“I am
not
profligate!” protested the masked gentleman, having finally managed to extricate himself from the wreckage. “Nor, at this moment, am I especially gay!”

“Quiet!” The doctor brandished his blunderbuss. “Well, puss? You must promise me that once the knot is tied you’ll give up this havey-cavey stuff.”

“I promise.” Privately, Miss Whateley conceded that there was a certain advantage to skitterwittedness: the sufferers thereof were apparently expected to engage in queer antics. “And I wasn’t rushing to defend the viscount because I fancied him, Alister.”

“What’s this?” the doctor interrupted, looking very grim. “You
don’t
favor him? In that case, would you mind telling me what made you want to elope to Gretna Green?” His fingers tightened on the gun.

“What a hobble!” muttered the masked gentleman, upon whom the weapon was unwaveringly trained. “I wish you would direct that thing in some other direction, man!”

“Yes, do!” invited Miss Whateley, who had tucked her feet up beneath her in the huge leather-cushioned chair. “I think it very pretty in you to wish to defend my honor, Alister, especially after my stepmama has told me for years that I must resign myself to being left upon the shelf, but there is not the slightest reason why you should do violence to your feelings. It was all Morgan’s idea.”

“Morgan?” echoed the doctor, with a total lack of comprehension. Even in the grip of befuddlement, he did not lower his gun. “I thought Morgan approved the match—if she
didn’t,
why assist us to meet? And if she
does,
why is she assisting in your elopement with someone else? All I can think is that she must be playing a deep game!”