Maggie MacKeever (14 page)

“I’m afraid I do.” Cheeks aflame, Sara studied her hands. “Thomas could not keep so tantalizing a piece of gossip to himself. I suppose the whole household knows.”

“Not a bit of it!” Once more Lady Easterling rose to the occasion with a generous effort to dispel her friend’s embarrassment. “He told me because he had to tell someone, and I’m in the habit of gossiping with the servants, for which you must be thankful, no matter how many times you have told me I should not! Georgiana don’t know about you and Jevon. But if you want to keep her from reading you a terrible scold, Sara, you’ll find somewhere else to keep your assignations.”

“Assignations!” Miss Valentine pressed cold fingers to her burning cheeks. “How dreadful you make it sound! It was nothing of the sort.”

“You had a cinder in your eye, I’ll warrant,” Lady Easterling interrupted scathingly, “and Jevon was getting it out. Tell me another! In point of fact, you have been telling a great many taradiddles lately, Sara. I distinctly remember you saying you no longer had a
tendre
for Jevon.”

Grimly, Sara reflected upon the perversity of a fate which, just when one thought one’s situation nigh surpassed human bearing, stepped in and made matters worse. The volatile and outspoken Lady Easterling was the last person with whom Sara would have chosen to share secrets. “I don’t,” she said.

“You don’t!” Jaisy’s blue eyes widened. “And yet you kept an assignation with him? Sara, I am shocked!”

“It
wasn’t
an assignation!” wailed Miss Valentine.

“No, it was a cinder!” Lady Easterling retorted, with an acerbity reminiscent of her aunt. “Gammon! Still, it is not for
me
to point out that no respectable female would go about keeping clandestine engagements, even if it was with my own brother, which might be thought to fairly bring me close to the business.
I
am not a person to thrust down another person’s throat my opinion of what has chanced—even when that other person has behaved toward me in a manner that is cruel in the greatest degree!”

“Oh, do cut line, Jaisy!” Sara interrupted irritably. “If I have offended you, I apologize for it. Remember, Georgiana has warned you off Carlin. I would not care to see you rouse her displeasure by overt disobedience. Your aunt can make life very uncomfortable.”

“My poor Sara!” Lady Easterling bestowed a series of condoling pats upon Miss Valentine’s knee. “Obliged to knuckle under to an old gorgon like Georgiana. Never mind! All that will soon change.”

“You have not heard a word I said,” sighed Sara, prey to the frustration rampant among individuals who hold conversation with brick walls.

“Oh, pooh! Of course I have, and now I understand that you do not deliberately seek to mislead me, but are simply wrong.” Having achieved this conclusion, which permitted her to be in charity with her friend, Jaisy beamed. “You are not to worry, Sara! I promise you that everything is on the road to being settled up all right and tight.”

All right and tight, was it? Sara wished to scream. If only Thomas had not come into the garden at so untimely a moment, preventing Jevon’s relation of his conversation with Carlin, and their subsequent decision concerning what steps were best taken; if only Jevon had sought her out in the meantime to continue their interrupted conversation. Sara could only conclude that Jevon had other, more pressing business. Such as, perhaps, a pretty little opera dancer. Upon the unexpected intrusion of this suspicion, Sara bit her lip.

“It’s just as well you don’t have a
tendre
for Jevon,” said Jaisy very aptly. “Although you shouldn’t admit it, Sara, because to tryst with gentlemen for whom one doesn’t care a button must seem a trifle
loose!
But I know how it is with Jevon: he was there and so were you—” Airily she snapped her fingers. “And
voilá!
No one but Thomas would make a piece of work of it. It is rather a pity Thomas saw you, because he is not of a mentality that understands how amusing it can be to while away one’s leisure hours with a little flirtation. Not that one usually goes so far as out into the garden. Perhaps you were not aware that you were misbehaving, although I don’t think a lady should forget that she’s a lady, no matter
how
long she’s been left on the shelf! At least Jevon should have known better, unless he wasn’t thinking of you as a lady—” She frowned. “Now that I think on it, it was very shabby of Jevon to try and offer you a slip on the shoulder! How horrified you look, Sara! But what else could he have meant?”

“Nothing!” interrupted Miss Valentine, and then quickly amended the statement. “I mean, he meant nothing of the sort! This is a tempest in a teapot, Jaisy. Your brother and I are merely friends.”

“You go about kissing all your friends in the garden?” inquired Lady Easterling. “That sort of thing may be all right for Jevon—not that there’s an ounce of harm in my brother, but he
has
been just a little spoiled by his countless successes with the opposite sex—but it won’t do for you!”

Mention of Mr. Rutherford’s many conquests roused a sensation very much like heartburn in Miss Valentine’s breast. “Set your mind at ease!” she advised roughly. “I am not likely to number among Jevon’s conquests.”

The absurd notion that Miss Valentine should join the ranks of Jevon’s ladybirds—high-flyers one and all, and diamonds of the first water—sent Lady Easterling into a fit of the giggles. “Silly Sara! You ain’t the sort of female that Jevon would take under his protection, even if you
was
wishful of setting up as a gentleman’s companion, which I can’t imagine that you are! It would be different if you still had money of your own, because then Jevon could marry you; but since you don’t, he couldn’t, and then there’s Georgiana to consider and she’d probably disinherit him again.” She paused for breath, rose and shook out her skirts. “All told, Sara, it’s a very good thing that you don’t still have a
tendre
for him!”

Miss Valentine regarded her own skirts, soiled from her sojourn into the nether regions of Blackwood House, and de-pressingly plain. “Yes, isn’t it!” she responded.

That Miss Valentine’s confirmation of her heart-whole condition had lacked conviction, Lady Easterling failed to notice, as she failed to notice that Miss Valentine resolutely refused to meet her eye. Good humor restored by this amiable encounter with her friend, Jaisy crossed the mean little room and grasped the doorknob. If Sara’s brain grew occasionally overheated—witness, for example, her bird-witted conviction that Carlin wouldn’t be brought up to scratch—it was the fault of the dowager duchess. Many,
many
bonnets would Sara have when Jaisy was wed. Lady Easterling looked forward to performing her rescue. Sara could provide her with feminine companionship, Jaisy thought, and see that the household ran smoothly, and in all due time oversee the nursery, all of which tasks she would perform admirably, providing she didn’t continue to indulge this new-found weakness for romance.

Trysts? Sara? The imagination boggled. “It all just goes to show,” announced Jaisy, “that Easterling was right about betting against dark horses!” And on this excellent piece of advice, she blithely took her leave.

Lady Easterling, completely unaware of having destroyed Miss Valentine’s mood, next proceeded to the morning room, where she found Arthur Kingscote surveying his image in a Venetian mirror. Very eye-catching Arthur’s person was, draped about in a light brown coat and pale salmon waistcoat, nankeen pantaloons fastened at the knee with two gold buttons, pink stockings, Hussar boots, an intricately fashioned cravat and astonishingly high shirt points. “Don’t you look a quiz!” said Jaisy.

Arthur flushed and started, as if caught in some rude act, then turned from his reflection to regard the intruder. “Lady Blackwood requested that I turn myself out in a style more befitting the future—ah! Said she’d stand the expense. To refuse would have been churlish!”

Self-centered as she was, Lady Easterling occasionally achieved a flash of intuition. That somewhat erratic sixth sense now led her to question the cause of Arthur’s embarrassment. “A style more befitting to
what?”
she inquired. “I don’t mind telling you that Georgiana ain’t likely to approve you turning yourself into a deuced man-milliner.”

“Hang it!” responded Arthur, with another anxious glance into the mirror. “My tailor assures me that this is all the crack. What would you know about the niceties of masculine apparel, anyway? I say, Jaisy, have you ever seen anything so splendid as Oxford Street? To pass from one end to the other must take quite half an hour. I saw the most curious advertisement, three immense pyramids rolling down the street, their outsides painted all over with hieroglyphics and queer portraits, and in the midst of it, English letters a yard long announcing that there is a superb panorama of Egypt now on view. May we go see it, do you think?”

“No, I don’t.” Lady Easterling had viewed all she wished of Egypt in her aunt’s drawing room.
“Why
has Georgiana decided you must turn yourself into a Tulip of fashion? And don’t bother trying to tell me she was being kind, because Georgiana ain’t done a voluntary kindness in all her life!”

Arthur looked as if his intricate cravat had suddenly conspired with his high shirt points to bring him to the edge of strangulation. “Er!” he said.

“Er?” mocked Lady Easterling. Lest Arthur flee her presence, an act that from his frantic expression appeared imminent, she clamped her fingers round his arm. Arthur winced. “Leave off mishandling me!” he begged. “Dash it, you’re creasing my sleeve!”

“Arthur,” Jaisy drew him inexorably to the gilded confidante and forced him to sit down, “if I were you I would worry much more about whether or not I crease your head! I have been thinking, and what I’m thinking is that you’re behaving very queer, and that Georgiana must be behind it.”

This clever piece of reasoning won from Arthur no plaudits. He gazed in a frantic manner around the drawing room. The entablature caught his attention, the striking frieze of ox skulls, the walls with their beautiful relief panels of dancing nymphs.

Lady Easterling’s sunny humor was rapidly evaporating. She secured her companion’s attention with a sharp pinch. “Just why has Georgiana brought you to London?” she inquired. “And given you leave to run up bills at her expense? Georgiana don’t stand the reckoning for Jevon, and
he’s
her heir! Though he may not be much longer if he gets into the way of keeping assignations in her garden—but enough of that. You needn’t think to be stepping into my brother’s shoes, Arthur Kingscote, because I won’t stand for it! Nor will I stand for you stepping into
mine!”

With this sternly delivered denunciation, Jaisy succeeded in drawing her companion’s attention away from the rare plants growing out of lacquered boxes that were tastefully spaced about the morning room, and directing it to her little feet, clad today in satin slippers tied with ribbon-bows. “I beg your pardon!” said he.

“And so you may,” retorted Jaisy, “if what I’m thinking is correct! I give you fair warning, Arthur, that I will not be outjockeyed by Georgiana or anyone else. Georgiana brought you to town to marry me, did she not? You haven’t a feather to fly with, and she means
my
fortune to feather your nest. I shan’t stand for it! I won’t be bartered off to some gazetted fortune hunter who must dangle after a rich heiress because he is impoverished.”

To this passionate declaration, delivered with heaving breast and wildly flashing eye, Arthur responded as would any young man of retiring disposition and great sensibility: he shook like a
blancmange.
“Gah!” he protested.

“Oh, capital!” Lady Easterling uttered scathingly. “You lack conversation as well. What can Georgiana be thinking of, to try and tie me up with a cawker like you? Easterling’s blunt, I’ll warrant! Well, young Arthur, I’ll allow myself to be nibbled to death by ducks before I agree to marry you!”

Even retiring young gentlemen of acute sensibility have a sticking-point, however, and Arthur had reached his. “Cawker!” he repeated indignantly.

“Cawker!” affirmed Lady Easterling, and for emphasis added: “basket-scrambler, toad-eater, jackanapes! Clodpole! Gapeseed! I cannot imagine why Georgiana thinks I may be persuaded to take you instead of Carlin. She must have bats in her cockloft!”

In the opinion of Arthur, who it must be remembered had also overheard Lord Carlin’s forcibly presented sentiments on the subject of Lady Easterling, it was not the dowager duchess who was afflicted with bats, but Jaisy herself. Bitterly, he voiced this viewpoint. For good measure he added his own sentiments on the topic, to wit that he had no desire whatsoever to marry a pea-goose.

“I should think not!” responded Jaisy, upon whom subtlety had as little effect as water on a duck. “Don’t try and change the subject! Try and appreciate the delicacy of my position, if you will. Here I am, on the verge of forming the most gratifying of connections to a gentleman
trés sympathique—
who will adore me
a
la folie
and be willing to expire at my feet—and Georgiana takes it into her head to try and pair me off with a nodcock! And I’m sure she
can
make life very unpleasant, as Sara says. If anyone, Sara should know! Oh, there is nothing else for it but that I shall have to elope. Not that I should mind an elopement, because it sounds very exciting, but I doubt Carlin would think it
quite
the thing.”

In that respect, at least, Lady Easterling displayed laudable perspicacity. So Arthur intimated, and then said: “But there’s no need to puzzle your head over it, because it’s my belief Carlin wouldn’t have you if you was presented to him on a silver platter, with your infernal fortune piled around your feet. Stands to reason:
I
wouldn’t have you either, had I any choice in the matter. No one wants to be married to a female who’s so cursed contrariwise. Oh, you are top-of-the-trees, I don’t deny that—but you’re as pigheaded as you are pretty, and spoiled and selfish, flying into a passion the instant you don’t have your own way, all of which is a dead bore!”