Maggie MacKeever (7 page)

Sternly Lady Regina reminded herself of the pecuniary embarrassments which beset her family, of the vast contrivances entailed in merely hiring this box, of her feckless father who was even then doubtless overindulging in one of his clubs. All depended upon Regina making an advantageous match. She could not follow instinct and bid her wealthiest suitor to the devil, alas.

“I do not dislike Lady Sweetbriar,” she responded coolly. “I merely do not care to become her intimate. Dote as you may upon your stepmama, Rolf, you cannot deny that her habits are not altogether elegant, or claim that one may call her painstakingly discreet. You do not care for my opinion, I credit! I shall say no more.”

Clearly a presentation of his stepmama’s better qualities—kindness, habitually sunny temper, generosity except as regarded the family jewels—would in no way advance Nikki in Lady Regina’s opinion. Pondering how best to deal with the ticklish situation in which he found himself, Lord Sweetbriar gazed about the great horseshoe auditorium. From pit to gallery to the five tiers of subscription boxes, the theater was crowded with people in formal evening dress. Rolf himself had risen magnificently to his surroundings in long-tailed coat and white waistcoat and frilled shirt with high points, silk stockings and breeches with knots of ribbon at his knee. Tucked into the folds of his intricately arranged neckcloth was a jewel, and in his hand a quizzing glass. Across the auditorium, Lady Sweetbriar caught her stepson’s brooding attention and waggled her fingers at him in what Lady Regina could only consider a positively vulgar way.

“I have wished to talk to you, Mr. Thorne,” Regina murmured, when the other members of the party were distracted by the resumption of the entertainment onstage. “About your nephew. I fear he has fallen into the clutches of a designing female. You will find it difficult to credit that such a thing might happen, but I assure you it is true. And I fear there is a very strong danger of ill consequence.”

“You astonish me.” Mr. Thorne’s expression was enigmatic. “Pray continue.”

Lady Regina was nothing loath. As reward for his interest, she allowed Mr. Thorne a view of her perfect profile. “She is a female of equivocal character—the slyest thing in nature, in fact. She is a complete flirt—the most hardened flirt in London, I vow! Prone to paroxysms of imprudence and—and heaven knows what else.” Aware that her voice had risen, Regina took a deep, steadying breath. “I am certain she harbors designs upon the Sweetbriar fortune. I most earnestly conjure you to assist me, sir, in preventing her from squandering it.”

No longer was Mr. Thorne’s expression enigmatic, but distinctly bored. “I think you may refine too much upon the matter, Lady Regina,” he said bluntly. “Ordinarily I would not say such a thing to a young woman, but since you introduced the subject I will make an exception: my nephew is not the first to have a ‘light o’ love.’ Since you have become aware of the situation—which you should
not
have; I can only assume Rolf is even more of a clunch than I realized—you must try to swallow it with good grace.”

“Swallow!” Lady Regina experienced grave difficulty in achieving that feat. “A—a—
Rolf!”

Thus bid to attend his beloved, in a tone that caused heads in several nearby boxes to turn, Lord Sweetbriar approached. This act roused no demur from Lady Regina’s mother or her sisters, even though his lordship’s action quite blocked their view of the stage. “How could I have been so deceived in you?” demanded Lady Regina, in a throbbingly dramatic whisper. “All this time you have professed devotion to
me
you have had—oh! I can say no more!”

For that circumstance, Lord Sweetbriar rendered thanks. Bewildered, he glanced at his uncle. As opposed to boredom, Mr. Thorne’s expressive features now registered amusement, of an unholy kind. “You are wondering what has caused this contretemps,” Marmaduke suggested. “I must tell you that the truth has come out. You must not try and evade the issue, nephew! It is too late for that.”

“It is?” With no lessening of confusion, Rolf stared at his ashen-faced beloved, who responded with a visible shudder and a lowered gaze. “Dashed if I know what you’re prosing on about.”

“Why, your partiality for designing females, nephew.” Despite his huge enjoyment of the kick-up he had unwittingly brought about, Marmaduke contrived to sound sincere. “My boy, it simply will not do. I am not a fellow prone to moralizing, mind, but it has become appallingly clear to me that someone must show you how to go on. And I have had some experience in these little matters. In short, it is cruelly unfeeling to ask a young lady of breeding to play second fiddle to your—you will forgive me, Lady Regina—your fancy-piece.”

“My
what?”
Lord Sweetbriar’s voice was scarcely softer than a shout. “But I ain’t—”

“Tsk, nephew, of course you have! I have it on the best authority, the word of Lady Regina herself.” In a very avuncular manner, Mr. Thorne patted that mortified young woman’s hand. “You must break with your ladybird, my boy—yes, I know it will be difficult. It always is! Had you contrived to keep the affair secret—but you did not. In the future, you will perhaps be more discreet.” Having delivered himself of this outrageous speech, Marmaduke directed his attention to the stage.

Before either of Mr. Thorne’s auditors was capable of speech, some few moments elapsed. Lord Sweetbriar, whose sensibilities were slightest, broke the silence. “Ladybirds!” he marveled. “If that don’t beat all.”

Lady Regina slowly unclenched her fists, with which she had been tempted very strongly to push Mr. Thorne over the railing of the box, with the additional wish that in the subsequent tumble he might break his neck. He had been toying with her, she realized; he had taken her measure within moments of their meeting, and had found her suitable material with which to amuse himself. Marmaduke Thorne was ignoble and base, a man visibly used up by dissipation. Regina could only be grateful she was immune to his good looks and charm.

“Mr. Thorne mistook my remarks,” she responded repressively. “I sought merely to explain the impediment that stands in the way of our union.”

“Impediment?” Lord Sweetbriar was wrapped up in the novel vision of himself as a man of the world. “What impediment is that?”

Had Lady Regina not been knowledgeable about the unattractive consequences of such a grimace, she might well have ground her teeth. “What impediment do you
think
it is? There is only one ruinous entanglement that I know you to be involved in, Sweetbriar!”

Ruinous entanglement? Enlightenment dawned. “Nikki!” ejaculated Rolf. Anxious to share this revelation with his uncle, he twitched at that gentleman’s sleeve. “It’s Nikki that Regina ain’t wishful of playing second fiddle to, Uncle Duke.”

“Nikki?” Mr. Thorne grasped his nephew’s quizzing glass and turned it on that unfortunate man. “You astonish me, nephew.”

So embarrassed was Rolf by his uncle’s erroneous conclusion that even his ears turned red. “Not Nikki!” he protested. “I never even thought of such a thing. It ain’t decent, somehow—and anyway, she ain’t my style. If you don’t believe me, you may ask Nikki herself. It’s just that Regina don’t cotton to the notion of Nikki as a mama-in-law.”

“No?” The quizzing glass swung to Lady Regina. “Why ever not?”

“Nikki
does
sail close to the wind,” suggested Lord Sweetbriar, when his beloved vouchsafed no response. “You of all people should know that, Uncle Duk.! Yes, and she don’t care a fig for what people may say about her, or stop to think that they’re bound to talk when she acts before she thinks.”

“Acts before she thinks.” Furious as she was at being made a mockery, Lady Regina could no longer withhold speech. “You are very generous, Sweetbriar. I wonder what Mr. Thorne would say to your stepmama’s latest indiscretion—embracing a gentleman in the British Museum!” Triumphantly she awaited a response.

Mr. Thorne directed the quizzing glass at the opposite box, and through it inspected Lady Sweetbriar. Again she wriggled her fingers. “Nikki seems to be wearing a prodigious amount of pearls,” he remarked.

Lord Sweetbriar reclaimed his quizzing glass. “So she is,” he lamented. “About those pearls, Uncle Duke—”

“Gracious!” Lady Regina tittered angrily. “You are both to be felicitated on your tolerance. Your attitude is even more dismaying than your nephew’s, Mr. Thorne. I tell you that Lady Sweetbriar has been kissing Sir Avery Clough publicly, and you comment only on the magnificence of her pearls.”

“But it is Nikki’s pearls which are at issue here, is it not?” The action on the stage having temporarily suspended, Marmaduke rose. Once more he glanced at the opposite box; once more Lady Sweetbriar beckoned. “As for the other, Nikki always did like kissing,” he added, and then took his leave.

“Now you’ve done it,” complained Lord Sweetbriar, as he gloomily watched Mr. Thorne depart the box. “I’ll have the devil’s own work to persuade Uncle Duke to help me convince Nikki she must give back the jewels, now you’ve set up his back. Maybe I should just let her keep the blasted things.”

Lady Regina had passed a trying interval, during which she knew she had not shown to good advantage, and her spirits were not elevated by her mama’s speaking glance. Reluctantly she abandoned speculations upon how she might repay the odious Mr. Thorne for treating her like a not-very-likeable child. “It is not my place to advise you,” she said quietly. “If you wish to disregard your papa’s last wishes, so be it.”

Lord Sweetbriar looked contemplative. “I always did wish to disregard his wishes, but I never dared. Now I think I might. If Papa haunts anyone, it will be Uncle Duke, since he’s come home. After all, Uncle Duke and Nikki were once—at least I
think
they were, from something Nikki let fall—but that’s fair and far off!” His brief bravado deserted him. “Still, I suppose you’re right. One should respect the wishes of the dead.”

Lady Regina had found a topic of more immediate interest than the Sweetbriar jewels. “Your uncle and your stepmama—er?” she delicately inquired, her gaze fixed demurely on Rolf’s cravat.

“‘Er’?” Lord Sweetbriar struggled toward comprehension. “Ah! So I’ve always thought. Don’t poker up; she wasn’t my stepmama then. Though you may not approve of her, Nikki ain’t done nothing so desperately bad as you make out.” He shook his head. “Now Uncle  Duke’s taken a miff. I don’t know why you can’t understand that people
like
Nikki. I like Nikki myself.”

Lady Regina had heard quite enough about the female she was rapidly coming to consider her archenemy. “Then perhaps you should marry Nikki!” she snapped.

“Marry Nikki? Have you gone queer in the attic?” Lord Sweetbriar inquired. He then realized that this was hardly a tactful manner in which to address the damsel whom he wished to make his bride. “I mean, of course I wish to do no such thing. It’s
you
I’m devoted to. Tried to make you a present of my hand and heart.”

Lady Regina could only be glad Mr. Thorne was not present to hear his nephew’s impassioned declaration; the odious Marmaduke would no doubt have remarked that her affection dwelled less upon Lord Sweetbriar’s various appendages than upon the family purse.
“No,
Sweetbriar, I do not require you to get down on your knees!” she hastily remarked. “We have had this conversation before, I think. Nothing has changed in the interim. I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of marriage with a man who favors his stepmama over me.”

They had reached that same impasse? Lord Sweetbriar sighed. “But I
don’t
favor Nikki!” he protested. “Most of the time I’d like to wring her neck.”

“So you say.” Lady Regina’s voice was sad. “Myself, I hold that actions speak fairer truth than words. So far none of your actions, sir, have betokened a preference.”

“Then you may blame yourself.” Rolf’s own patience was wearing understandably thin. “You’re the one who keeps preventing me going down on my knees!”

Lady Regina forbore to explain that she wished a more tangible token of esteem than the sight of her admirer engaged in a ridiculous posture. Silently she gazed at the opposite box, wherein Mr. Thorne had joined Nikki. They were laughing and joking together like the greatest of friends, Regina thought. And so they might! Were Rolf’s suspicions correct, more than friendship lay hidden in their mutual past. It occurred to Regina that Mr. Thorne’s return to London might be used to her advantage. Precisely how, she was not certain, but given Lady Sweetbriar’s flirtatious nature, and Mr. Theme’s way with the fair sex, and the excellent terms on which they stood—Lady Sweetbriar might even be persuaded to remove from London, were her betrothal broken off.

Lady Regina turned to Lord Sweetbriar, who was deep in a fit of the sulks. “I have been behaving very badly,” she confessed. “Pray forgive me, Rolf. The truth is that I am a little envious. Your stepmama always seems so happy, while I—” She sighed. “I will not equivocate! You know how it is with Papa.”

“Indeed I do.” For all his self-absorption, Lord Sweetbriar had a good heart. “Drunk as a wheelbarrow,” he added, in demonstration of the fact that good hearts are not inevitably accompanied by tact. “You know, it’s queer that you should dislike Nikki so much when your own papa is worse! At least Nikki ain’t a drunkard. Oh, Lord, I didn’t mean—that is, I
did
mean it, but—”Anxiously Lord Sweetbriar wracked his brain one final time, lest he be denied all further opportunities to converse with his beloved, let alone prove his devotion, as from her grim expression threatened to be the case. “Tell you what! If I make you a present of Nikki’s jewels,
then
will you stop saying I ain’t sincere?”

“Oh, Rolf!” Lady Regina was far too clever to display triumph. “I had not expected—you must not imagine— yes, I rather think I would.”

Not only Lady Regina Foliot took note of the enjoyment Lady Sweetbriar appeared to derive from the company of Mr. Thorne during Mme. Catalini’s rendering up of Mozart at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. Miss Clough had also been present, and had paid considerably more attention to the drama being enacted in the Foliot box than the entertainment underway onstage. Clytie thought, from what she saw, that Mr. Thorne had delivered Lady Regina a set-down before he joined Lady Sweetbriar’s party. Of course he had not noticed Clytie. Foolish to think he might. The impudent Mr. Thorne was distinctly profligate. It was this suspicion which prompted Miss Clough to seek out her father at the British Museum.