Maggie MacKeever (7 page)

No appreciation of the past revisited brightened the viscount’s somewhat bloodshot eyes. The ancient church of Saint Dunstan’s failed to catch his interest, as did Wren’s fairest creation, beautiful Saint Bride’s; as did even the Old Metre tavern, which Dr. Johnson had once patronized. For what ailed Laurie, no tavern could provide a cure. Then he espied a vision that did cause his eye to brighten, albeit resentfully.

She stood outside Childs Bank, clutching numerous pamphlets and sheaves of paper to her bosom while she tossed with a pieman for his wares. “Here’s all ‘ot! Toss or buy! Up and win ‘em!” cried the pieman. Quickly, a small crowd gathered to watch the fun. If the pieman won, he’d receive a penny and keep his pie. If he lost, the pie was forfeit. Miss Phyfe spun the coin and won. Then she espied Laurie and waved. “You came.”

“I was not aware that I had an alternative, Miss Phyfe. The note you sent around hinted that matters were in a very sad case. I am very sorry to hear it—but just what matters are you referring to?”

She cast him a cautionary glance. “I will explain all as soon as we are private.”

Private with Miss Phyfe? The notion did not appeal. Viscount English watched her attempt to retain hold of her papers and pamphlets while at the same time devouring her pie. She was not wholly successful, in the process dropping several papers and smearing pastry on her gown.

Miss Phyfe seemed very much at home with lavender-girls and organ-grinders, thought Viscount English as he stooped to retrieve the fallen sheets; certainly more so than with the
ton.
He should not be surprised to discover that she patronized Childs, the oldest private bank in England and the most illustrious. Childs now dealt with women of dangerous convictions where once it had dealt with kings.

How
dangerous those convictions were, the viscount had not previously realized. He stared at the sheet of paper which he held. Ravening flesh? Drinking blood? “Miss Phyfe! You—This—Good God!”

Cheeks aflame, Miss Phyfe snatched back the sheet. “Pray exercise some of your fabled discretion, sir!” she snapped. “Lest you wish to read in the next addition of the newssheets that you have kept an assignation with me in Fleet Street.”

What the world would say to such a bizarre on-dit boggled the viscount’s imagination. Meekly, he trailed after Miss Phyfe past the Temple Bar, where the heads of executed persons had been exhibited until late in the previous century; patiently, he retrieved the seditious literature strewn in her wake; desperately, he wondered how to affect a polite retreat. If only he had not acknowledged receipt of her missive. No doubt she meant to try once more to enlist him in the cause of parliamentary reform.

She paused opposite Chancery Lane, in front of Saint Dunstan’s. For a startled moment, Viscount English thought she intended their conversation to take place within the church. Instead she indicated a ramshackle structure on the other side of the road. The viscount was not at all enthusiastic about venturing into a building thus verging on collapse.

“Fiddlestick!” responded Miss Phyfe, when introduced to this viewpoint. “I promise your precious aristocratic person will be quite safe. Gracious God, English, you have never heard of Prince Henry’s Room? It dates from 1611 and was the old council chamber of the Duke of Cornwall, son of James I. It is also” —and she smiled somewhat satirically—”the home of Mrs. Salmon’s Waxworks. I’ll warrant you’ve never heard of Mrs. Salmon’s Waxworks, either. We’ll be private enough there.”

With each passing moment, the viscount grew less and less enthusiastic about that prospect. Since his desperate cogitations had presented him with no polite means of beating a hasty retreat, he followed Miss Phyfe into Prince Henry’s Room. This must be one of the oldest buildings in all of London, he thought. Viscount English had no special reverence for antiquity. Nor was he enamored of rubbing shoulders with provincials, of whom an amazingly large number had chosen to visit Mrs. Salmon this day. Morgan had been correct in saying that they might be private here; amid so many other, greater, curiosities no one paid them the slightest heed.

Warily, Viscount English regarded Miss Phyfe. “No!” he said, before she could speak. “I will not do it, so you may save your breath. It is not that I have no conscience, because of course I do, and I’m not certain that you don’t have a point, although I’m
quite
certain you’re choosing the wrong way to go about the thing! But I have much more pressing matters to deal with than parliamentary reform.”

Where scant days past Morgan would have argued that nothing could be more immediate than the plight of the common man, she now refrained. “I did not ask you here to talk of that.” She sought to get a firmer grip on her pamphlets, by which she intended to present to all of London a stinging denunciation of lilies of the field. “Although I do not scruple to tell you that I consider your attitude very selfish! It is a rather more personal matter that I wish to discuss.”

Miss Phyfe’s uncustomary shilly-shallying caused the viscount to frown. He could not imagine what topic could render so blunt-spoken a female suddenly tongue-tied. Then he did imagine it. “The deuce!” he snapped. “I mean, I must count myself honored, Miss Phyfe. But a lady of your station, no matter
how
dangerous your principles —I assure you, this sort of thing simply will not do.”

Perhaps Miss Phyfe’s excellent understanding had been adversely affected by her several sleepless nights; she did not immediately grasp the viscount’s inference. Her brow furrowed, as did Laurie’s, watching her. As must any gentleman, he abhorred the notion of a kick-up. He hoped she would not make a scene.
“What
sort of thing?” she at length asked.

“You astonish me. Miss Phyfe.” Viscount English cast a harried look about. “I mean to say
we
know it is all quite aboveboard, and
I
know that you would never stoop to—ah—but it remains that making assignations is not quite the thing.”

“Assignations!” Miss Phyfe looked stunned. “Have you taken leave of your senses, sir?”

Laurie made no answer to this not-unreasonable inquiry; he was nigh overwhelmed with relief. Difficulties enough already plagued the viscount without the added difficulty attendant upon being caught up in Miss Phyfe’s seditious affairs.

Miss Phyfe was also briefly silent, result not of her astonishment at the viscount’s interpretation of her overtures, but in reassessment of her anticipated strategy. As Sidoney had indicated, English
was
abysmally discreet. As Sidoney had also indicated, she had no interest in discreet gentlemen. That conversation with her cousin had repeated itself in Morgan’s aching head throughout several sleepless nights. All too clearly, she recalled Sidoney’s unfavorable opinions of polite courtiers and honorable wedlock. Even more clearly, she recalled Sidoney’s response to the kingdom’s most notorious rakehell. Well did Morgan understand the lethal effect of those world-weary gray eyes.

“Here’s a pretty kettle of fish!” she said aloud. “English, you are my last resort. You will recall the occasion of our last meeting, I trust.”

Of course the viscount recalled the occasion. His memory had been scarcely affected by several sleepless nights of his own and countless drops extraordinaire. “You accused me of having shot the cat,” he offered. “I warned you that you’d stand trial for treason if you conspired against the king.”

Briefly distracted from her mission, Miss Phyfe clutched her pamphlets closer. “Ravening flesh,” she murmured wistfully. “Drinking blood.”

Had it gone so far, then? Viscount English recollected he’d read those precise words he’d read on one of the sheets that his companion hugged to her breast. “I am appalled. How dare you voice such pernicious sentiments, Miss Phyfe?”

Somewhat bleakly, Morgan regarded the viscount. Sidoney could be forgiven for finding the gentleman a trifle dull. Nonetheless, he remained the most eligible candidate for Sidoney’s hand. Though Sidoney might disavow any interest in another marriage, only by that marriage would Morgan’s own sanity be preserved. Therefore, the viscount must be persuaded to change his habits.

“Oh,
I
didn’t say them, though I wish I might have! It was Darby, and a nice way he has with a phrase.” Perhaps
too
nice, she thought.

“Darby?” Laurie was dumbfounded to learn that that most notorious of rakehells sandwiched revolutionary agitation in between his amours. “The devil!”

“So they say,” responded Morgan, dryly. “Perhaps now, sir, you begin to get my drift.”

The viscount, alas, got nothing of the sort. Visions of bloody revolution filled his head, scenes of outright butchery more harrowing even than those witnessed not long past in France. The regent would be beheaded, and the royal dukes; old, blind George III and his plain Queen Charlotte locked up in the Tower; the aristocracy would to a man fall victim to Madame Guillotine. And caught up smack in the middle of all this horror would be the muddleheaded Sidoney. If she escaped decapitation as an aristocrat, she would be executed as a traitress. So wretched a fate must not be allowed to descend upon that beautiful pea-brain, even if the viscount
had
resolved his wisest course must be to refrain from seeing her again. “You may count on me!” he said.

“Thank goodness for that.” Miss Phyfe retorted frankly. “I had not expected you would be so amenable. Certainly you have not shown yourself to be amenable as regards rather more important matters—but that’s neither here nor there. Now we must plot out your strategy. I think you must admit, English, that thus far you have sadly muddled the business.”

What had
he
to do with revolution? And what business was it that Miss Phyfe harped upon? Viscount English did not like to admit his ignorance. “Ah!” he said.

Miss Phyfe interpreted this utterance as concession; one could not expect a gentleman to freely own up to his cow-handedness. “ Already you have gravely blundered. Sidoney needs careful handling. You should not have accused her of growing stout and plain, or neglected to return with her punch. And you
should
have worn the willow for her all those years ago, or at least have pretended that beneath your serene exterior ached a broken heart.”

Mightily, Laurie strove to grasp the situation into which he had been so abruptly thrust. “I didn’t—”

“I know you didn’t!” retorted Miss Phyfe, annoyed. “I wish you wouldn’t interrupt.”

The viscount, however, felt a need to defend himself. He pointed out that it was Miss Phyfe’s fault he had failed to bring Lady Barbour back her punch.

“Pish tush!” responded Miss Phyfe. “This is the thanks I get for trying to save Sidoney from disaster; you try to shift the blame from your shoulders onto
my
own. I shan’t take offense! Doubtless you will find it difficult to take advice. But take my advice you will, if you want Sidoney. You haven’t made too good a showing to date, and the odds are even greater against you now!” She paused and looked thoughtful. “That is, you
do
want Sidoney, do you not?”

At this, the only rational sentence which Miss Phyfe had uttered in some moments, the viscount eagerly grasped. Offensive as was the question to his notions of propriety,
did
he still want Sidoney? The sleepless nights he had recently begun to suffer would seem to indicate he did. Miss Phyfe would not be put off by an indication that his sentiments were none of her affair, he thought. Resigned, he answered in the affirmative.

“Capital!” said his companion. “Then you will not mind making a push to attach her interest immediately, before it is too late.”

“Too late?” Viscount English was tormented once more by images of headless bodies and streets awash with blood. “I wish you would reconsider, Miss Phyfe!”

No wonder Sidoney was adverse to marriage with the viscount; he was sadly lacking in spirit. Perhaps an accounting of his various defects, as related to Miss Phyfe by Lady Barbour, might dispense with this tedious vacillating. Without preamble, Morgan informed the viscount that he was a good deal
too
discreet to suit his ladylove, who had grown very weary of being coddled and cosseted. Sidoney did not wish precisely to be mistreated, but would not be adverse to a degree of imprudence. She wanted to see how ordinary people lived.

Since Viscount English had not the slightest notion of how ordinary people lived, he doubted that he could provide her ladyship enlightenment. Perhaps it would be more honorable, he suggested, if he simply retired from the lists.

“There you go, talking fustian again!” Morgan was growing very annoyed by the viscount’s chivalrous precepts. “Have you no
backbone,
man? I cannot think much of your honor, if it means you must stand back and allow the object of your affections to fall prey to a hardened reprobate.”

What reprobate was this? The viscount had thought they were talking about revolution. No wonder Miss Phyfe’s agitation for parliamentary reform had accomplished her so little, if this was the way she set about the thing. “What the deuce are you talking about. Miss Phyfe?”

“Darby!” responded Morgan, no more amiably. “Do
try
and concentrate your mine! I have told you Sidoney would not be adverse to a display of imprudence, and the devil is like to give her a great deal of it. I vow I could throttle the pair of them! There is the situation in a nutshell, English: Sidoney is a wealthy ninnyhammer who makes a perfect victim for a rake, and she has very obviously decided to set her cap at Darby. Nor will the knave discourage her, I think. Sidoney cannot be warned against him outright, because she would stand on very bad terms with anyone who dared hint that any gentleman could be so deficient in good taste as to fail to wholeheartedly fall in love with her. So unless you would see Darby play fast and loose with my poor cousin, you will help me bring, her off safe.”

In Viscount English’s experience, it was more likely Lady Barbour who would treat Lord Darby in a cavalier fashion. Still, he could not like the idea that her name might be vulgarly bandied about. Though it stung his pride to think that a rakehell might fix the affections of a lady who had scorned his own honorable advances, the viscount could not reconcile it with his conscience to abandon her to her richly merited comeuppance.