Maggie MacKeever (2 page)

“Oh, it has!” breathed Cristin, in her pretty way. “How happy I am to have come upon you, Jynx! I have particularly wished to speak with you. But I must introduce you to my uncle and my aunt!”

“You must not, I think,” said Lord Roxbury, who at that moment had caught up with his quarry and halted her progress by the simple expedient of grasping her reins. Jynx stared at him in astonishment. “Miss Lennox is engaged elsewhere.” Without heed of Cristin’s cry of distress, or the dark-haired lady’s obvious indignation, or their companion’s even more apparent amusement, he led Miss Lennox away.

“Heavens, Shannon!” said Jynx, who was possessed of a considerable fund of good humor and good nature. “What prompted that?” It was not an unreasonable query; Lord Roxbury was admittedly disdainful and superior, but she had never before known him to be deliberately rude.

“That,”
retorted Shannon, in the grip of strong emotion, “was none other than Adorée Blissington, and her rakehell brother, and I do not intend to have your acquaintance with them on my conscience. Believe me, Jynx, they are not at all the thing.”

“Lady Bliss?” echoed Miss Lennox, craning her head to look back at the phaeton. An altercation appeared to be in progress: the black-haired lady was expostulating at some length to the gentleman, and the young lady appeared to be on the verge of tears.

“None other.” Lord Roxbury attempted to regain his composure, a feat that was in no way aided by his companion’s unladylike posture, which displayed to extremely effective advantage the perfect fit of her riding habit. “Do stop gawking, Jynx!”

Even this crude stricture she accepted with equanimity. “I wonder what Cristin does with them,” she murmured, twisting her head from atop her shoulder to look thoughtfully at Shannon. “We were at school together, and Cristin is a good sort of girl. As silly as she is lovely, of course, but unexceptionable— if, that is, any Ashley can be considered unexceptionable, with their twin vices of gaming and improvidence.” She looked wistful. “I might have found out, if you had not interfered.”

“Interfered!” All things considered, Lord Roxbury was having a most trying afternoon. “I fancy the chit is the daughter of the oldest Ashley brother, who ran up a staggering number of debts and then—in true Ashley tradition—sat down and shot himself. We will speak no more of it, if you please! As much as mention Lady Bliss to your aunt, and Eulalia will demand my head on a platter. And so she should!”

“In a pig’s whisker.” Miss Lennox wore an unusual expression of intent and abstracted meditation. “Since when are you afraid of Aunt Eulalia?”

Never before had Lord Roxbury seen that look on his companion’s tranquil face, and he did not care for it. “I’m not,” he said brusquely. “But in this case Eulalia would have the right of it.” Jynx shot him a glance that was almost quarrelsome. “Too,” he added, in softer tones, “I would not care to have my wife associate with a lady who is a great deal less prudent than she should be.”

Even Miss Lennox’s legendary pose was not proof against this sally. Her sleepy eyes opened wide; her placidity was replaced by a look of sheer astonishment. “Your
what?”
said she.

“You expressed a wish to gallop,” countered Lord Roxbury, uncomfortably aware of the speculative gazes that were fixed on them. “Since we have already disgraced ourselves, we might as well treat our audience to an exciting finale.” And, he added silently, divert that audience’s attention from the shocking fact that his dear friend Miss Lennox had come disastrously close to making the acquaintance of his current flirt.

“There may be hope for you yet, Shannon!” remarked Miss Lennox, rather enigmatically, and gathered up her reins.

Gallop they did, to the startled consternation of all who witnessed this reckless feat, and the
on-dits
flew after them like a swarm of angry bees. Some claimed that Lord Roxbury was responsible for the scandalous act, for it was well known that Miss Lennox was not one to willingly bestir herself to any arduous exercise; others averred that Miss Lennox herself had been the instigator, but declared that Lord Roxbury was at fault, for he had clearly ripped up at her, and his thundercloud demeanor had been sufficient to rouse the most somnolent of young ladies to flight. On one point only did all agree, that the pair had patently taken leave of their senses.

If so, the miscreants had derived great enjoyment from their temporary insanity. Lord Roxbury drew rein, and led Miss Lennox into a leafy copse. She adjusted her hat, which had slid so far forward that the ostrich plume tickled her nose, and regarded him. Lord Roxbury gazed upon her flushed countenance and heaving breast and smiled.

“If you meant to distract me,” remarked Miss Lennox, who had long professed herself immune to the most glorious of masculine smiles, another attribute that Lord Roxbury undoubtedly possessed, “it did not serve.”

“You did not enjoy your gallop?” interrupted the viscount, as he placed his hands around her slender waist and helped her to dismount. “I made sure you would.”

“It was glorious.” Jynx did not remark upon the fact that his hands still clasped her waist. “Aunt Eulalia will have recourse to her vinaigrette when she learns of it. I wish that she might have a spasm.”

“You need not,” offered Lord Roxbury, noting the delightful way in which her lovely hair escaped from beneath her hat, “give further consideration to your Aunt Eulalia.”

“Oh?” Jynx raised her sleepy eyes to his face. “Shannon, you can’t truly wish to marry me?”

“That’s a damned silly question,” retorted the viscount, roughly. He had just, upon such close inspection, been visited by a sudden suspicion that though Miss Lennox might be no great beauty, she was possibly a great deal more. “I shall marry you with the greatest pleasure on earth, poppet.”

“Oh,” said Miss Lennox, rather doubtfully.

Barely in the nick of time, Lord Roxbury recalled the fate of a former suitor who had courted this young lady too ardently, and released her hastily. “As you so concisely pointed out, we may expect to rub along together very comfortably.”

“So I did,” Jynx uttered serenely. “I suppose I exhibited a shocking lack of conduct. Aunt Eulalia is forever saying that I have no delicacy of feeling. You will be accustomed to ladies who are a great deal more skilled in the casting out of lures.”

“True.” The viscount thought of the notorious Lady Bliss. “You may have noted that I didn’t offer any of them marriage. What’s this, poppet? Have you already repented of your choice? If you mean to cry off, do it now. I shan’t be left waiting at the altar!” He squelched an impulse to sweep his newly acquired fiancée summarily into a passionate embrace. “Have you decided that we
shouldn’t
be comfortable?”

“Not at all,” protested Jynx, with every evidence of sincerity. “I have no wish to cry off. Nor would I leave you
at the altar, Shannon! It would be a very shabby way in which to treat a friend.”

Lord Roxbury was greatly moved by this declaration, but he contented himself with dropping a chaste salute on the tip of the haughty Lennox nose. “Then the next thing is for me to speak to Sir Malcolm,” he said cheerfully. “I suppose he’ll consider my suit.”

“I know he will.” Miss Lennox toyed idly with her riding whip. “Papa professed himself very agreeable when I broached the matter to him.”

“He did?” There was a distinctly abstracted expression in Lord Roxbury’s green eyes.
“You
did?”

“Naturally.” Jynx was intent on her own train of thought “You don’t think I’d marry without papa’s consent? Tell me, Shannon, why did you decide to marry me?”

“There is,” the viscount pointed out, apologetically and with no little curiosity, “the matter of an heir.”

“Ah!” To complete his bewitchment, she blushed. “There is one more matter that remains to be discussed.”

Thus ended his hopes. No reason, now, to wonder how he was to arouse warmer affections in a young lady who had professed herself so adverse to romance. “Do you know, poppet,” Lord Roxbury remarked ruefully, “I rather thought that there might be?”

Miss Lennox grimaced, flicked her riding crop against her booted leg, then raised her lazy eyes once more to the viscount’s handsome face. “Dear,
dear
Shannon,” she murmured. “I trust you will not insist on tight-lacing?”

Tight-lacing?” echoed the befuddled viscount.

“Corsets,” explained Miss Lennox, succinctly. “I abhor the things.

Chapter Two

Having been assured by Lord Roxbury—after he had recovered from the paroxysms of mirth into which her remarks had cast him—that he hadn’t the least objection if his viscountess looked a great deal more like an opera dancer than a female of frail fragility, Miss Lennox was able to greet the following day with her usual aplomb.

It was ten o’clock of a Wednesday morn, and the Lennox family was assembled in the dining room of their grand old Jacobean house in London’s Lennox Square. Three people were seated around the Grecian table of semicircular design, its supports ornamented with lion masks and rings: Sir Malcolm Lennox, who owned this munificence and a great deal more besides; Sir Malcolm’s sister-in-law, Eulalia Wimple, who had taken over household matters upon the death of his wife, five years previous; and Sir Malcolm’s sole offspring, and heiress to all he owned, Jessamyn. Of the three, Jynx alone appeared to enjoy her meal. But then, Jynx had the rare ability to enjoy herself even in the midst of a dreadful storm.

And a storm was in truth raging, as it did every morning in the Lennox household. This day’s turbulence was of such awesome proportions that Sir Malcolm had taken refuge behind that morning’s edition of the
Times.
Jynx regarded him with some amusement, spread a lavish amount of marmalade on a muffin, and then turned her attention to her aunt.

Eulalia was a tall and stately woman, in her fifth decade, a
très grande dame
with elegantly coined—if improbably colored—yellow hair, sharp black eyes, and an air of perpetual discontent. Currently, her features were screwed up in an expression of the utmost disapproval, and the black eyes were fixed relentlessly on her niece. “Well, miss?” she snapped. “What have you to say for yourself? Galloping in Hyde Park! Never have I heard of such a thing.”

Obviously Eulalia
had
heard of it, in grand and glorious detail, but Jynx was so amiable a young lady that she did not point out this fact. Actually, so amiable was Jynx that she had never in all her twenty-two years been known to utter a cross word. Nor did she do so now, but gazed serenely on her aunt. “‘Tis naught but a tempest in a teapot, Eulalia. I wished to gallop, and Shannon obliged me.” She bit into her muffin, then licked marmalade from her fingers in a very vulgar way.

“Roxbury,” offered Sir Malcolm, from behind the
Times.
Had Sidney Smith ever been privileged to break his fast in Lennox Square, he would have described hell not as an eternity of family dinners, but as a Lennox
petit déjeuner.
“Well, Jynx?”

“Well indeed. Papa.” Jynx surveyed the array of cold meats, game, broiled fish, sausages, eggs, kidneys and bacon, and helped herself to generous portions of each. “By-the-bye, what do you know of Ador6e Blissington?”

This innocent query, which had been prompted merely by a vague curiosity about why Lady Blissington’s presence in the park should have inspired Lord Roxbury to such desperate diversionary measures as a frantic flight, brought Sir Malcolm out from behind his newspaper. His daughter raised a weary eyebrow, and his sister-in-law erupted into scandalized observations on the young lady’s shocking want of delicacy.

“Oh, do hush, Eulalia!” said Sir Malcolm, irritably. Eulalia, who owed her position in the Lennox household entirely to Sir Malcolm’s forbearance, did so. A pretty pair were Sir Malcolm and his daughter, she thought in disgruntlement, both lazy as the day was long, with no awareness of their consequence, and a reprehensible tendency to find humor in the most unsuitable things. They even resembled one another, Eulalia decided, as she stared at the provoking duo. Sir Malcolm’s hair had long ago turned white, but he as well as his daughter possessed the large hazel Lennox eyes, the arrogant nose and forceful chin.

“Lady Bliss,” repeated Sir Malcolm, having determined from his daughter’s ingenuous expression that she was unaware of the lady’s association with Viscount Roxbury, and of his own futile pursuit. “She’s a charming scatterbrain who lives by her wits, which are not considerable, and the nonexistent proceeds of the discreet card parties she holds nightly in her home. Entrance by invitation only—you know the sort of thing.”

“Illegal, ain’t it?” interrupted Eulalia. “Arrest the jade!”

Sir Malcolm looked pained. Certainly he was a man of the law, a magistrate; equally certainly it was no part of his many duties to imprison a lady to whose favor he had once aspired. “Adorée Blissington is a widow,” he continued, rather hastily. “Her husband, a scapegrace baronet, was killed in a duel over a lady’s honor—not hers. He left his widow penniless.”

“I saw her yesterday in the park,” Jynx remarked, around a mouthful of eggs. “There was a dark-haired gentleman with her. He may have been a relative, from the resemblance.”

“Innis Ashley.” Sir Malcolm’s reply was prompt, and delivered in tones of the utmost distaste. “The youngest Ashley. Adorée’s brother. A thoroughly bad lot.”

“I thought he might be.” Miss Lennox speared a sausage. “One more question, Papa, and you may return to your newspaper. Why is she called Lady Bliss, rather than Blissington?”

Sir Malcolm surveyed his inexcitable daughter, and his all-too-volatile sister-in-law, and grinned. A close observer might have noted that Sir Malcolm also shared with Jessamyn the Lennox dimples. “Because, m’dear, the lady is intoxicating. Bliss is supposedly the state achieved by her admirers, who by this time have reached awesome numbers—or so rumor has it.”

“Rumor, Papa?” Jynx’s sleepy eyes were fixed on her sire’s face.

“Magistrates,” replied Sir Malcolm, with a profound vagueness, “hear all sorts of things.”

“I’ll warrant!” retorted the impenitent Miss Lennox.