Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

Thus put firmly in his place, Lord Darby proceeded to firmly entrench himself. “Your comments upon our last meeting inspired me to look into the matter, as I have told you, Miss Phyfe. I have been doing a monstrous amount of reading. My man fears for my eyesight.”

Heaven forbid that his lordship came to harm, thought Morgan, and then took herself to task. She would not again be diverted. Best that his lordship’s sallies be confined to politics. “And what have you been reading, sir?”

How predictable she was—and yet she was not. And how the Polite World must be whispering behind their gloves and fans and handkerchiefs, because for Darby to engage in so long a conversation with an unmarried female was a singular mark of favor.

In anticipation of Miss Phyfe’s reaction when that gossip reached her ears, Lord Darby’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, a veritable hodgepodge. My favorite was ‘Politics for the People, or Hog Wash,’ although you are currently without rival in the area of seditious pamphlets, Miss Phyfe. Even if you are quite unscrupulous about pilfering a phrase. Then there was Mr. Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France,
which was not especially helpful, because I was quite put off by his insistence on referring to the masses as a ‘swinish multitude.’ Nor was
Charge to the Grand Jury of Middlesex,
in which Mr. William Mainwaring said there’s no such thing as equality. Or
Short Hints upon Leveling,
which inclines to the scriptural view that the poor will always be with us. I beg your pardon, Miss Phyfe. Did you speak?”

She had not, other than to emit an annoyed expulsion of breath. “I think that you are making mock of me!” she snapped.

“Oh, no,” his lordship responded gently. “I would not need to read such a prodigious amount of dreary stuff to do that, my — Miss Phyfe. Let us say instead that I have come to a belated sense of my purpose in life.”

Darby would be an eloquent voice in behalf of reform, could he be persuaded to make the effort. Instinctive caution warred in Morgan’s breast with her crusading zeal. “Are you truly interested in worthwhile literature? I myself have an excellent library.”

That it was neither worthwhile literature nor parliamentary reform that had aroused his interest, his lordship did not explain. “You wound me!” he protested. “Why do you doubt my conviction that the electoral system is corrupt? That the franchise should be granted to all men?” He made a fist. “We must have annual elections and secret ballots. And if the weight of public opinion doesn’t suffice, then we must persuade Members of Parliament to do their duty—forcibly!”

Lips parted, Miss Phyfe stared at his lordship’s swarthy countenance and bright eyes. Then she laughed again. “Gracious God! Surely I do not sound like
that!”

Lord Darby lowered his raised fist, which had occasioned no little comment from the opera-goers in attendance at the theater this evening, to say nothing of the opera-goers present in Lord Phyfe’s box. “Not precisely, my little hornet; your voice is more melodious.” She continued to chuckle, so genuinely and innocently amused that his lordship’s own good humor abruptly fled. Not Miss Phyfe’s enjoyment of his sallies caused this abrupt change of mood, but an unprecedented pang of conscience.

That England’s most jaded rakehell should still possess a conscience surprised no one more than “Devil” Darby. Ruefully, he regarded the lady responsible for his momentary discomfort. No female of Morgan’s stamp had ever before put herself in Lord Darby’s way. But here she was, so simultaneously enticing and naïve. There was but one course open to a rakehell thus presented with an alluring maiden whose cool demeanor hinted at a nature very warm. Ironic that a lady so knowledgeably adamant in her demands for the comeuppance of those villains responsible for miscarriages of justice should be totally innocent of her own imminent (did his lordship have his way) downfall.

Again his conscience twinged. Very well, he would issue fair alarm. “Conscience prompts me to warn you once more about tempting me to break my rules, Miss Phyfe.”

What rules were those? Morgan wondered, but refused to ask. Instead she made a politely noncommittal rejoinder, upon which his lordship took an equally polite departure from the box.

Chapter Eight

“I vow it makes me all out-of-reason cross!” announced Miss Phyfe. “Sidoney is running mad over a notorious rakehell; while English, whom I had trusted to divert her, is making a cake of himself instead. I do not know how he thinks he may fix Sidoney’s interest by taking up with three—” She glanced at Callie. “... Er—sisters whose combined ambition seems to be to see him drowning in the River Tick. I shall have to extricate him, I suppose. And meantime Sidoney has set her cap at Darby, and I must try and prevent her tossing her bonnet over the windmill. To own the truth, Alister, I have good enough reason to seem worn-down.”

Not only Morgan seemed thus afflicted, Dr. Kilpatrick thought; and the focus of his observation was not the patient whom he treated for chilblain. “Send him to the rightabout!” he said impatiently. “Darby, that is. I make no doubt you can.”

Miss Phyfe looked less convinced and considerably annoyed, due not to Alister’s suggestions, but to the recollection of certain other comments. Various speculative remarks made by the Polite World to one another, behind glove and handkerchief and fan, during a recent evening’s entertainment at the theater had reached Morgan’s ear. Galling, the discovery that her conversation with Darby had occasioned such notice.

Yet she could not fairly condemn the Polite World for speculation upon the marked sign of favor he had made her, the surprising length of time he had remained at her side. Morgan herself was somehow curious as to why he had singled her out for such particular attention. Perhaps he meant to make Sidoney jealous. Or perhaps he sought to amuse himself by making a most unlikely conquest.

These conjectures Morgan quickly abandoned as futile; her knowledge was of the political arena, not love’s more exotic stage. For whatever reason Darby’s world-weary eyes had come to rest on her, she had done her utmost to encourage his interest, and would do so again. No noble desire to protect her hen-brained cousin from his lordship’s dangerous attentions animated Morgan, or even an ignoble wish to deliver him a well-deserved set-down. Morgan would never be motivated by impulses so mundane.

Quite naturally, she did not care to inform her skeptical companions of her resolution that England’s most notorious rakehell must be persuaded to bestir himself on the behalf of parliamentary reform. “Then there are all the ramifications of getting Callie fired off,” she added,
sotto voce.
Miss Whateley had wandered to the other side of the consulting room. “I sometimes despair of seeing the thing accomplished. The child makes no effort to be conciliating, or even pleasant. Yet Sidoney is determined she must make an eligible connection. Lud! Even did an eligible suitor present himself—not that one is likely to—the child’s forbidding aspect would doubtless frighten him away.”

Dr. Kilpatrick cast a judicious eye upon Miss Whateley, who had paused beside his grubby window to look out into the even grubbier street. She did not look especially forbidding to him, but rather as if she too had endured some sleepless nights. Though the good doctor was not to know it, quite a few Londoners were currently suffering that affliction.

“Lady Barbour is set on the chit’s marriage?” he repeated, thus unwittingly naming the affliction’s source. “Why?”

Morgan frowned. “I’m not entirely certain. Were it not that she seems fond of Callie, I would think she simply wants the child off her hands. Sidoney was never overly fond of responsibility—or of considering anyone but herself! Oh, but it makes me very cross to recall how well I went along before Sidoney’s arrival. Sometimes I think she deliberately makes it difficult for me to engage with my various committees. Not that I shall fail to do my duty, no matter how difficult she may make it.”

To these histrionics, Alister did not react, having in the pursuit of his profession become inured to such. Having tended to the chilblain, he bade its possessor depart, then regarded Miss Phyfe appraisingly.

“Do not dare to prescribe frivolity to me!” she warned. “Else I am very like to box your ears. I have engaged in a great deal of frivolity of late, which has led me to the conclusion that reform is more sorely needed than I had realized. The poor struggle to eke out a shabby existence, during which they either starve or develop chilblain, while lilies of the field neither reap nor sow but withal have a great deal of fun.” She fussed with her shabby gloves. “You could help me readdress the balance, Alister, if only you would.”

Dr. Kilpatrick was no diplomat. “Possibly, but I shan’t.” He glanced at the hospital’s steward, who had just entered the room.

“Wretch!” retorted Morgan. “It’s easy enough to understand how you inspired” Sidoney with such an intense dislike.”

The steward interrupted then and attracted Miss Phyfe’s attention to himself. This individual was a figure of some importance at Saint Bart’s: he granted leave to the hospital nurses, and permission for patients to stay out or sit up late at night; he granted permission for dead bodies to be dissected or dismembered; he meted out punishment to those patients who absented themselves from chapel. It was this latter matter which concerned him now, and concerning which he wished the advice of Miss Phyfe, not in regard to punishment but to the chapel itself.

Miss Phyfe departed with the steward, callously abandoning her charge—indeed, without the briefest thought of Miss Whateley. Lacking further patients on which to exercise his medical expertise, Dr. Kilpatrick contemplated the damsel, who had removed a handkerchief from her reticule and with it was polishing the dirty-windowsill. “So Morgan has been showing you around London, Miss Whateley. What do you think of the Metropolis?”

This question had been asked many times of Callie since her arrival in the city, and she was growing very weary of the necessity to dissimulate. Too, she was kindly disposed toward Dr. Kilpatrick, if for no other reason than that her stepmama was not. In this instance, she thought she might allow herself the rare luxury of being honest. “What I have seen of the Metropolis, sir, has had little in it to admire.”

This chit had no conversation? Of course between Morgan’s fervent orations and Lady Barbour’s pea-brained natterings, she would be granted little enough opportunity
to
speak. “No? The Tower, the Mansion House, the Guildhall? To say nothing of Carlton House? If architecture does not interest you, perhaps you might enjoy seeing all the different shops in the Royal Exchange, or displays of equestrian expertise at Astley’s Amphitheater in Lambeth.”

“I daresay I might enjoy all those things very well, sir.” Miss Whateley crumpled up her grubby handkerchief and shoved it back into her reticule. “I
do
admire architecture; I
would
enjoy visiting Astley’s and the Royal Exchange. But it is Morgan who is showing me around the city.”

“Aha!” Enlightenment dawned upon Dr. Kilpatrick’s homely face. “Trying to make a convert of you, is she?”

Miss Whateley looked glum. “It would seem so. To date I have been present during a meeting of the Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts, which was very active, and a meeting of the Society for the Relief of Poor Pious Clergymen of the Established Church Residing in the Country, which was not.”

“You are more fortunate than you realize, Miss Whateley,” the good doctor interrupted. “I was inveigled into attending a meeting of the National Truss Society for the Relief of the Ruptured Poor. You look skeptical; it exists, I assure you. But do continue! What other treats has Morgan devised for your entertainment?”

So delighted was Miss Whateley to discover someone who felt as she did about the crusading Miss Phyfe that she forgot altogether to be shy. “I was taken to meet a shoemaker who once stood his trial for treasonous activities, and privileged to listen to his tales of the days when the working men were just awakening to political grievance. He is quite a celebrity, I gather; every November on the anniversary of his acquittal a celebration is held. And I have also met the Quakeress Elizabeth Fry.”

“You have, eh?” Poor child! “ And what did you think of her?”

On Callie’s plain and unprepossessing features was a frown. “She was a grave, quiet female with the odd habit of stopping suddenly in the middle of whatever she was doing, as if in communication with higher powers. It was most unsettling. I believe she conceives of herself as a vehicle of the Divine Spirit.”

Poor,
poor
child! Dr. Kilpatrick privately considered that providing the poor with food to fill their empty bellies was of more immediate importance than the salvation of their souls. “Why go with Morgan if you dislike it so much?” he asked. “She does not
mean
to browbeat one, you know. It only wants a little resolution to make your objections known. You do not strike me as wanting in resolution, Miss Whateley.”

At this, the closest she had ever received to a compliment, Miss Whateley stared. “Sir, I do not know if you can understand, but I would much rather listen to Morgan go on about the pot walloper franchise than listen to my mama go on about my being left on the shelf.”

“Your mama?” echoed Alister.

“My
stepmama.”
Callie amended. “When I call her
so,
it makes her very cross. I should not be so uncivil, I know; Sidoney means well. But to be forever lectured is very wearying! I should never have allowed myself to be persuaded to come to London, but I thought nothing could be worse than to be confined in the country with Sidoney.”

“And now you have learned the extent of your error, because you must listen to Morgan in addition to your stepmama. Poor puss!”

Upon receipt of this, her first endearment, Miss Whateley’s plump cheeks turned pink. “It is not quite so bad as all that, sir! When Morgan is caught up in her worthwhile causes, she has no time to lecture me; and even when she does lecture, I can shut it out! I am very good at not listening to lectures! It is only my stepmama who I cannot ignore. But I should not be talking to you in this manner, even if you
do
stand on bad terms with Sidoney. And I should not have said
that
either! Oh, dear.”