Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

“Nikki
is
prone to fall into scrapes, I fear.” Mr. Thorne was contemplative. “Fortunately your father was too much the gentleman to betray her when she tumbled into his lap.”

“Tumbled—” In response to the vision conjured up by these words, Clytie closed her eyes.

“She was wearing boy’s clothing, so it is not so bad,” Mr. Thorne soothed. “If anyone else had penetrated her disguise, the story would be long out. My point is that your father must know what Nikki is. You need not fret that he is being taken in.”

“Indeed.” Miss Clough’s tone, in response, was wry.

Conversation between them briefly faltered, after Mr. Thorne realized he did not know Miss Clough’s direction, and she supplied the address. Somberly Clytie regarded her gloves. Marmaduke’s efforts at reassurance had had an opposite effect. Lady Sweetbriar’s influence over Sir Avery must be remarkably strong, thought Clytie, to persuade him to overlook the unusual circumstances under which they had met.

“You are blue-deviled, Clytie.” Miss Clough roused from abstraction to discover herself under close scrutiny by Marmaduke. “I fear I have not calmed your fears. I shall divert you instead. What would you like to talk about? Shall I tell you of St. Petersburg, and my apartments overlooking the Neva? The river is always busy with barges and sailing boats and tiny skiffs with striped sails. On the farther shore are the Convent of Smolnoi, and the Tauridas Palace. Or would you prefer that I confine my comments to more immediate matters, such as the delightful contours of your nose, and your pretty eyes?”

That Marmaduke Thorne should truly have a preference for her was impossible, decided Miss Clough. They had known each other so short a time; it was for some reason other than admiration that he sought her out. “Oh, St. Petersburg, please!” she responded, with what she considered praiseworthy aplomb.

Mr. Thorne’s appreciation was expressed in his laughing, sidelong glance. “Coward! I do not mind it. You will discover that, when it comes to what I want, I can be a very patient man.” He lowered his voice. “And I want you, Clytie.”

“There is no doubt of it; you
are
mad as Bedlam!” Miss Clough felt her cheeks flame. “Will nothing persuade you that I do not like to hear such stuff?”

Mr. Thorne considered the question. “Frankly, my darling, no! But even in Russia it is ill-bred to argue with a lady. St. Petersburg it shall be. You will be interested to learn that in that city the metal roofs are painted in colors chosen to withstand the rain and snow....”

Much later that same evening, when Miss Clough lay sleepless in her bed—it need not be explained, perhaps, that the speculations which rendered Miss Clough wakeful had little to do with which colors of roof paint best withstood the rigors of a St. Petersburg winter—Lady Sweetbriar’s repose was set also at naught. Nikki had been dreaming very pleasantly of a rosewood architect’s table, inlaid with brass, which she had almost decided to purchase on behalf of her fiancé. Perhaps, were his surroundings rendered more congenial, Sir Avery might be persuaded to spend less time pottering among the musty artifacts gathered together at the British Museum, in favor of the more earthly treasures housed under his own roof. In the way of dreams, he was moving very gratifyingly toward that objective, when some slight noise distracted Nikki’s slumbering mind, and she awoke with an oath.

As always, when awakening in Fitzroy Square, Nikki was briefly disoriented. Then another slight sound caught her attention. Nikki squinted into the darkness, and frowned. Houses made all manner of strange noises at night, she knew; creaks and groans and other unearthly things—but this was no eerie protest of settling timber. Nor was it the scamper of mice behind the wainscoting, a sound Nikki recalled from childhood.

Instead, Nikki thought she heard a sniffle. Intently, she listened. Yes, there it came again. Definitely it was a sniffle. Sniffles hinted strongly at noses, to which bodies were attached. Though Lady Sweetbriar was an arrant flirt, she wasn’t accustomed to the presence of strangers in her bedchamber. Slowly, noiselessly, Nikki reached into a compartment of the bedstead and withdrew a loaded dueling pistol, the existence of which cast an illuminating highlight on either her childhood or her married life.

Her eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, and she could see the intruder’s outline. It had none of the appearance of a piece of furniture, much as he might seek to blend in with the background. “You, there, by the tallboy!” Nikki said sternly. “If you move, I shall shoot you. And in case you do not know it, I am a dead shot.”

When Nikki’s voice shattered the silence, the intruder started, then froze. “'Twas a mistake!” he responded, in muffled tones. “I came to the wrong house.”

“I think you must have done.” Concealed behind the draperies of her bed, Lady Sweetbriar performed a complicated juggling act with pistol, candlestick, and flint. At length she held the pistol in one hand and a lighted candelabra in the other. “There is nothing in this house worth stealing. Let’s have a look at you.” Candelabra outstretched, she inched forward on the bed.

Lady Sweetbriar’s bedroom, as revealed in the flickering candlelight, was as blandly decorated as the rest of her hired house. The chamber was hung with pale blue satin, and the furnishings had been chosen with similar restraint, from the veneered wardrobe to the gabled tent bed, its lower posts masked by draped curtains and united by curved rods. One note of incongruity, amidst this studied mediocrity, was struck by the feminine garments flung in wild disarray around the room. Another, even harsher, discord was created by the gentleman surprised in the process of ransacking the tallboy, his hand still in one drawer.

“Lud!” remarked Lady Sweetbriar, as she curiously surveyed her disheveled chamber, from her perch at the foot of her bed. Then she hopped up and set the candelabra on a dressing table veneered with satinwood and decorated with festoons of flowers.

As she approached him, the intruder shrank back, very much as if he wished to confine his bulk in one of the tallboy’s narrow drawers. “I think you had better tell me what this is all about,” Lady Sweetbriar sternly remarked. “In case you are inclined to argue, I think I should also tell you that I was having a very pleasant dream when you interrupted me, as result of which I am feeling fit to blow your brains out.”

This blunt statement caused the intruder to twitch violently beneath his many-caped greatcoat, the hat that was pulled down over his eyes, and the neckcloth drawn up over his mouth. “A mistake!” he repeated, in desperate tones. “I swear it!”

Lady Sweetbriar decided it was no professional criminal with whom she dealt; a seasoned cracksman would never be made so ludicrous. “Your mistake lay in awakening me,” she said severely. “Rather, that was your
second
error. Your first was in deciding to take up a life of crime. Don’t you know that a man can be hanged for theft?”

It was obvious, from the intruder’s wild convulsions, that this consideration was new to him. “Not theft!” he protested, his muffled voice perilously close to a squeal. “I never meant to
steal
anything!”

Lady Sweetbriar glanced pointedly around her disordered chamber, at the garments strewn so carelessly about. “If you did not mean to steal from me, then why—” She realized that those mistreated articles of feminine apparel were of a delicate nature. “Zounds! If
that
is the case, you are the most precipitate of all my flirts! You cannot expect me to condone such conduct, surely? If all the gentlemen who took a marked fancy to me behaved in so bizarre a manner, then where would I be?”

By the inference that admiration of Lady Sweetbriar had led him to his present undignified position, the intruder was not set at ease. “I ain’t one of your flirts!” he gasped.

“No?” Nikki laid a finger to her cheek, intrigued. “A stranger, are you? An unknown admirer? How vastly flattering! For I am near thirty, and almost beyond such things. I appreciate the honor you do me, sir, and the risk you have taken to secure some token—but a
gentleman
would content himself with a posy from the lady’s hand, or a handkerchief or a glove.” The intruder, made belatedly aware that he clutched an extremely intimate item of underclothing, dropped it like a hot coal. “And anyway,” concluded Lady Sweetbriar righteously, “I am betrothed.”

“Didn’t
want
a token!” muttered the intruder, staring at his feet—or so it seemed, his face being obscured by hat and neckcloth.

“If you didn’t want something by which to remember me, and you didn’t plan to rob me, then why did you come here?” An explanation presented itself to Lady Sweetbriar, as result of which she took firmer grip on her gun. “You didn’t think I—you couldn’t think to— Gracious! I
should
blow your brains out!”

There was in Nikki’s expression a strong hint that she might do exactly that, which may be what inspired the intruder to shift his weight nervously from one foot to the other and then back again, lending himself the appearance of a large, squat tree swaying in the wind. “Don’t put yourself in a pucker! I
didn’t
think it!” he begged. “Dash it, I wish you’d put away that gun!”

The necessity of defending her own honor, however, had called forth Nikki’s latent dramatic instinct. “Accosted in my own bedchamber,” she lamented, the hand that did not hold the pistol pressed languidly to her brow. “The world is a dangerous place for a female alone and unprotected, alas.”

“But you ain’t unprotected!” The intruder whipped up his flagging courage. “You’ve got that cursed gun.”

“So I do.” Lady Sweetbriar abandoned her dramatic pose. “I also have
you,
you rogue! And I think I must turn you over to the authorities unless you tell me what you are doing in my house.” She paused. The intruder fidgeted but vouchsafed no response. Nikki’s dark eyes narrowed. “Or perhaps I may guess.”

Of all her ladyship’s statements, this one struck the intruder as most ominous. He held up his hands, as if to fend off a blow. “Now, Nikki—”

The intruder was not quick enough; his movements were hampered by his many-caped greatcoat, and his vision by his hat. In a twinkling Lady Sweetbriar had knocked the hat aside, and yanked down his neckcloth. “Have you gone off your hinges, Rolf?” she acerbically inquired. “I came within an ace of shooting you! Yes, and I still may, because it makes me cross as cats to think you would try and filch my jewels.”

“They
ain’t
your jewels, precisely,” Lord Sweetbriar felt constrained to point out, then regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. His stepmama still held her pistol, and her expression was murderous. “Don’t be looking daggers at me, Nikki;
I
didn’t make up that blasted will! If it was up to me, you could have the cursed baubles, but it ain’t.”

“Fiddlestick.” Though Lady Sweetbriar’s tone was rudely skeptical, she did remove the pistol from her stepson’s midriff. “Are you a trifle bosky, Rolf? I think you must be or you would not try and pull the wool over my eyes. You of all people should know I am awake on all suits.”

“I didn’t—” Rolf’s further protests were cut off by his stepmama’s eloquent reading of his character and conduct, which included every unflattering adjective her ladyship could call to mind, from “abominable” to “reprehensible,” and concluding with “crack-brained.” “Hang it, Nikki, I
didn’t
come after the jewels!” inserted Rolf, when she paused to draw breath.

Lady Sweetbriar’s dark glance was sharp. “You wouldn’t try and teach your own stepmama how to suck eggs, would you, Rolf? If you didn’t wish to filch my jewels, and you are not a secret admirer, why were you skulking about my bedchamber in the dead of night?”

Mention of secret admirers caused Lord Sweetbriar to become belatedly conversant with the implications of his presence in a lady’s private quarters, and to realize that his current position was compromising indeed. If Nikki herself did not believe his excuses, what chance had he of persuading anyone that his conduct did not smack strongly of depravity? Especially with Nikki looking quite seductive in her gown and petticoat of fine calico, and her Duke of York nightcap
^?
“I ain’t an admirer!” he stated firmly. “Tell you what, Nikki, we’ll talk about this some other time. You go back to bed.”

“We’ll do no such thing.” With her pistol, Lady Sweetbriar indicated that Rolf should sit upon a delicate rosewood chair. With such alacrity did he obey that the chair responded with an alarming squeak. “We will stay precisely as we are until you have explained to me why you are acting like a loony, Rolf.”

It had not escaped Lord Sweetbriar’s somewhat limited powers of comprehension that his stepmama was sadly out of curl. Nor did he fail to grasp the awkward misapprehensions that would arise were the servants to discover his stepmama holding him at gunpoint. Nikki would not shoot him, he knew, but she was very capable of raising such a ruckus as would bring the whole household down on his aching head.

Some explanation must be given of his conduct, clearly. Rolf cudgeled his brain. Nikki had already given him a good indication of how she would react to the truth. Therefore Rolf would not admit that he had indeed come to reclaim the Sweetbriar jewels. Unfortunately, he had failed to allow for such details as the darkness, and his unfamiliarity with the chamber, and the possibility that Nikki might not leave the baubles lying carelessly about. Alternate explanations eluded him. “I wished to talk to you!” he lied.

Lady Sweetbriar was no pigeon for anyone’s plucking, having at an early age gleaned an understanding of the harsh ways of the world; certainly she would not be led astray by tarradiddles presented her by the jingle-brained Rolf. She had parted her pretty lips to inform him of this when a possible explanation of his conduct presented itself to her. “I knew it!” She perched sadly on the side of the tent bed. “I told Clytie that stiff-rumped female would wish you to have nothing to do with me.”

“Stiff-rumped—” Lord Sweetbriar scowled. “If you are speaking of Lady Regina in such terms, I cannot allow it. Dash it, Nikki, she ain’t done nothing for which you should hold her in such low esteem.”