Maggie MacKeever (21 page)

“Tongue-valiant!” The dowager’s hands clenched. “I wasn’t referring to myself!”

“Oh, weren’t you?” Tess raised her brows. “I thought—but obviously I misunderstood! What was it you meant to say?”

Sapphira struggled with her temper, then set off on another tack. “I brought Clio to London for a purpose.”

“Yes, to give her a season,” enthused Tess. “Upon my soul, you have done the thing most handsomely: balls and routs and tea parties and heaven knows what else! Clio is very grateful, I’m sure.”

The dowager duchess was not accustomed to being confronted by commoners who exhibited not the slightest loss of nerve, and she found she did not care for this novelty. “Clio,” she announced baldly, “is to marry Giles.”

“Oh?” Tess looked interested. “Have you told her so?”

“I have.” Sapphira admitted grudgingly that Tess had her wits about her.

“What did she say?” inquired the countess, bright-eyed.

“What’s
that
to do with anything?” snapped Sapphira. “Talking don’t pay toll! The chit will do her duty by the family, as will my son.”

“Forgive me for saying so,” begged Tess, “but I fear you may be guilty of counting your chickens before they’re hatched. Clio is the most undutiful wretch in existence, and I am not at all certain that her affections have become fixed on the Duke of Bellamy.” She frowned. “Nor am I sure I should wish them to be! Didn’t I hear someone say he is incapable of resisting any woman who wants him? Or perhaps it was Sir Morgan! Such a man would not do for Clio.”

The dowager was struck dumb by this piece of impertinence.
“Not,”
added Tess, “that I don’t wish to see Clio form an eligible connection and settle in matrimony, because of course I do!”

To say that Sapphira knew she had met her match would be to stretch credulity to the breaking point; however, she was beginning to understand why Sir Morgan fancied this pert miss. Thought of the inevitable outcome of
that
affair raised her spirits considerably.
“You
wouldn’t know, of course,” she countered, with a condescending smile, “but persons of quality do not make love matches. Such things are for commoners.”

“Ah! That explains it then!” Tess took the snub in good part. “I have seen little indication that the Duke of Bellamy is desirous of fixing his interest with Clio, but I now understand that I must not expect him to wear his heart upon his sleeve. How good it is of you to explain it all to me!” She cocked her pretty head to one side. “Why did you, by the way?”

Sapphira was not prompted to announce that she feared her son was becoming fonder of Tess than was suitable, and consequently said nothing. Tess, not at all quelled by this disapproving silence, launched blithely into an erudite soliloquy that ranged from an advocation of social and political emancipation for the weaker sex to a criticism of the great Wellington’s military tactics in the Peninsula, in particular his underestimation of the enemy’s obstinacy.

“But I am rattling on!” she added, and rose. “You will wish to be alone so that you may arrange the coming nuptials! I wish you every success, though to say the truth I don’t see how you are to bring it about! Things seem indeed in a bad way, now you have no doubt set up Clio’s back by telling her your plans. She was ever one to act contrariwise!”

The dowager duchess, totally unaccustomed to being led round the mulberry bush, turned a violent shade of red.

“Heavens, who would ever have thought we’d have such a comfortable prose together? Certainly not I!” said Tess, and smiled. “Don’t despair! You may count on my assistance, if it comes to that.” With this generous offer, she exited.

It was not to be expected that the dowager duchess would accept this impudence without demur, and she resorted to her long-established, and very unpleasant, habit of taking out her ill-temper on whoever was unfortunate enough to come within her range. Her children were denied her, all of them being for one reason or another absent from the house, a fortuitous event for which they would have been unanimously grateful, so it was the servants who bore the brunt of her wrath. Since this took the form of issuing contradictory orders and ripping up at everyone who crossed her path, it was little wonder that Bellamy House was soon reduced to a state of chaos.

Into this disorder stepped Sir Morgan, admitted by the second footman, who had been promoted to such duty by the fact that his superiors were otherwise occupied: the butler had locked himself in his pantry, there to partake of a fortifying nip, while the senior footman had hysterics in the kitchen. “Ah?” Sir Morgan took in the situation at a glance. “Kicking up a dust, is she?”

“Yes, sir.” Charles’s pleasant countenance was wooden. “The young ladies are out, sir, and I believe the Duke has gone to his club.”

“I see,” replied Sir Morgan, who had already been informed by Giles of these various engagements. “Be about your lady’s bidding, Charles—what is it this time?”

“Oysters, sir,” said Charles gloomily.

Sir Morgan gave a crack of laughter. “In April? I wish you luck! Go on, man, before she changes her mind and requires your head on a platter instead! I know my way around.”

“Very good, sir.” Charles departed for the nether regions, wondering if her ladyship would settle for mussels. It was more likely, he thought sourly, that the old battle-axe would throw them in his face.

Thus occupied, the footman did not note that the Wicked Baronet made not for the front drawing-room, but for the stairs that led to the family sleeping quarters. Nor was any other servant more observant, and Sir Morgan made his way down the upper hallway completely unchallenged. At length he gained the chamber he sought, glanced perfunctorily about him, and boldly entered.

The scene that greeted him, though certainly charming, consisting as it did of Lady Tess submerged up to her chin in a sudsy copper tub and frowning at a small pamphlet, was certainly not what he had expected. “What the devil are you doing
here?”
he remarked. “Charles said you had gone out.”

“Charles was obviously mistaken,” responded the countess, glancing up briefly. “Do you think you might shut the door? There is a decided draft.”

Sir Morgan obeyed and in the process exhibited himself not the least a gentleman, since he closed himself not out but in, and furthermore locked the door.

“This is the most fascinating reading!” claimed Lady Tess, tossing aside the booklet. “Most improper, I suspect, and I don’t believe a word of it.” She eyed Sir Morgan speculatively as he settled into the delicate chair. “You look remarkably at home in a lady’s boudoir. I don’t suppose you’d care to turn your head and hand me that towel?”

Sir Morgan looked at the towel, warming in front of the fire. “No. Not until you tell me where the necklace is hidden.”

“I rather thought you might feel that way.” Tess studied her knees, rising through the fluffy soapsuds like rounded mountaintops. “You came to reclaim it, of course! How disappointing for you to find me here.”

“Not precisely a disappointment,” commented Sir Morgan, so lost to propriety as to positively relish the sight of a lady bathing by firelight. “Rather, it is a pleasure that I had not anticipated.”

“Palaverer!” retorted the countess, with no evidence whatsoever of either annoyance or embarrassment. “Well, I shan’t tell you where it’s hidden, and you won’t find it no matter how you look. Go on and search! You have my permission.”

Sir Morgan seemed more inclined to look at Lady Tess than for stolen necklaces. “Think,” he suggested, “what would happen were we discovered in such compromising circumstances! You would be sunk quite below reproach.”

“So would you,” Tess pointed out, displaying admirable
sang-froid.
“You have doubtless had experience in such situations, so I will trust you to see that we are
not
caught.”

“You must be,” persevered Sir Morgan, “extremely uncomfortable. If you stay in that bath much longer, your skin will shrivel until you look like a prune.”

The countess regarded her tormentor, more than a little satanic in the flickering firelight that turned his golden eyes red. “How unchivalrous you are! You are not in the least grateful to me for saving you from charges of theft—not that I expected you to be! However, you might thank me for making a break in your life of uniform dissipation. I’ll wager you haven’t even thought of the fleshpots for several days!”

“How true.” Sir Morgan rose and proceeded to search the room, peering into drawers, poking into the wardrobe, even disassembling the bed. “You might be startled to learn what I
have
been thinking of, little one!”

“I doubt it.” Tess propped her arms on the edge of the bath, rested her chin on them, and watched his efforts. “You shan’t put me to the blush, you know.”

Sir Morgan directed toward her a look that would have made most ladies turn hot with confusion. “You underestimate me! If I wished, I could more than put you to the blush, little one.”

“Ah, but we both know you
don’t
wish,” Tess answered without the slightest hesitation. “I do wish you wouldn’t reduce my room to a shambles! I’ve already told you that you won’t find the gems.” She smiled. “Poor Sir Morgan, to be put to such expedients and shifts! You would not make a very successful housebreaker, I fear.”

Sir Morgan was fast losing hold of his temper, a fact that was no whit alleviated by the countess’s thorough enjoyment of the situation. “You are the most aggravating—and cork-brained—female I have ever met! Will you tell me where you’ve put that accursed necklace, or must I throttle the information out of you?”

Tess eyed him warily; he looked perfectly capable of carrying out the threat. “No, I won’t tell you!” she returned. “And if you don’t lower your voice we’ll both be in the suds.” Sir Morgan’s expression indicated that this wasn’t an altogether distasteful notion, and she continued hastily, “Furthermore, it is very bad of you to threaten me when I am so totally within your power.”

“But I
am
very bad,” said Sir Morgan, moving closer, an unholy light in his eye. “Everyone knows that!”

“Oh no, not
bad!”
protested Tess, sliding back down beneath the suds. She wrinkled her nose. “I confess that I’d as lief not be in anyone’s power, but if I must be, I prefer it to be yours.”

“Generous.” Sir Morgan towered over her, looking dangerous indeed.

“Not at all,” murmured Tess. “I have already ascertained that I cannot get out of my bath alone, and can hardly summon a servant to help me since the bell-pull is halfway across the room.” Meekly, she gazed up at him. “Don’t concern yourself! Daffy is not speaking to me, but I daresay someone will turn up eventually.”

With an extremely vulgar exclamation. Sir Morgan grabbed the towel, ungently yanked the countess to her feet and wrapped her in it, lifted her out of the tub, then stalked wrathfully across the room. “How kind you are!” said Tess, rather huskily, as she donned a beruffled dressing gown, grasped a hairbrush, and seated herself on the bed. “You may turn around now.”

Sir Morgan raised his gaze from the bulbous pincushion that he had been bleakly studying.

“Sapphira and I had a most interesting conversation today,” Tess remarked as she struggled with the hairbrush. “She means Clio for Giles, did you know? But the Duchess of Bellamy gravely overestimates herself if she thinks Clio will be easily brought to heel.”

The Wicked Baronet, who seldom suffered losses, now bore them bravely. With a resigned expression, he took the brush from her hand and attacked the tangles in her long hair. “You are against the match?”

“Not at all.” Tess frowned. “But I am not convinced that Clio has a
tendre
for Giles, and I will not have her forced into a marriage that she does not wish.”

“A noble sentiment,” remarked Sir Morgan, who was not beyond getting back his own, “but what have
you
to say to it?”

“Nothing at all!” parried the countess. “How could I? You are very handy with a hairbrush!”

“Of course!” he responded. “I’ve had a great deal of practice. Nor is that all I’m handy with! Shall I demonstrate?”

“Do you wish to?” Tess turned to regard him with interest. “I had thought, since you were being so circumspect, that it must be in some way improper to conduct a flirtation in a lady’s bedchamber—though I don’t see why! It seems to me the most suitable of all places. Have I said something odd?” she added, as he choked.

“Odd!” Sir Morgan studied her. “You don’t know chalk from cheese, my girl! If you speak in this manner to all your gentleman acquaintances, you will be left without a shred of reputation in no time.”

“Of all the unjust things to say!” Tess retorted indignantly. “As if I should say such things to anyone else, when you are the only rake I know! But what was it you were going to demonstrate? If it was anything like the other lessons I have learned at your hands, I vow I shall enjoy it very well!”

A man of sterner moral fiber would have long past placed himself at a safer distance from his unwitting temptress—would indeed have never set foot within the room. But Sir Morgan was admittedly the most hardened of profligates, and he drew the countess down against his chest. “You would enjoy it!” he agreed. “Were I that lost to reason, Tess. That I am here at all is, to say the least, deuced irregular. I would not see you ruin yourself.”

“Could I?” queried the countess, raising herself on an elbow to look down upon his amused face. “It is true that before making your acquaintance I gave little thought to such things—however, I now think I should like to be ruined.” Her brow creased. “Not that I am sure
precisely
what it entails.”

“I thought not,” said Sir Morgan wryly. “Give me the necklace and I shall endeavor to explain.”

“Bribery!” With an irritated flounce, Tess sat up. “I am
not
going to give you the necklace, no matter what you tempt me with.”

“That is your final word on the matter?” Sir Morgan was grim.

“It is,” Tess said gruffly. “It seems we have no more to say to one another, Sir Morgan! You may leave.”

The Wicked Baronet, however, was as perverse a creature as ever drew breath, and not one to bow meekly to a lady’s requests. He caught Tess’s shoulders, shook her, and then kissed her almost brutally.