Maggie MacKeever (13 page)

Lord Davenham who had just spent the greater portion of an evening watching his wife attempt to coquette with their cousin, thought that in her he beheld the pot calling the kettle black. But Vivien was not of a mean and little nature, and therefore did not point this out. “I don’t think there
is
anything wrong with the fleshpots.” he responded judiciously. “Providing one doesn’t abdicate one’s responsibilities in order to sample them. Tell me, did you take Malcolm to task over this young woman?”

“Her name is Melly.” As result of her husband’s confessed desire to himself forage among the fleshpots, Lady Davenham was deep in a fit of the blue devils. Scant wonder he displayed so little enthusiasm for marital intimacies of late, she decided: Vivien did not wish to be married to her at all. “And, yes, I spoke to Malcolm about the chit. He laughed and seemed not the least bit affected by my displeasure over his conduct. All the Davenants are incorrigible! It is enough to cast one into despair.” Abruptly she rose from the bench.

Because it did not occur to Lord Davenham that his wife was prone to think of herself as a changeling thrust into the Davenant cradle, he naturally assumed that in this sweeping denunciation she included herself. Matters, he decided, had gone much further than he’d suspected. Obviously, more was at stake here than a simple matter of a tempting décolletage. “My poor Thea!” he said gently. “Is it so very bad?”

Having informed her he regretted their marriage, he now dared ask if she
minded?
Thea chose to let him think she’d misinterpreted his remark. “Oh, no!” she responded ironically, giving Nimrod’s basket a wide berth. “Malcolm merely hovers on the brink of a ruinous entanglement—for what that chit may lack in sense, I’ll wager she makes up in guile! The next thing we know, Malcolm will have to leave the country again,
and he has just got home.” She made a dismissive gesture. “But I should not have troubled you with this. You have more important matters on your mind, like ants and snails.”

It being very difficult to carry on a reasonable conversation with a lady whose back was turned, Lord Davenham also quitted the bench.
“Not
ants and snails:

caterpillars!” he said. “One cuts tufts of them off the trees at the break of day—they hang gathered into knots through the cold of the night, you know.”

Caterpillars! Her husband was so indifferent to her feelings that in one breath he revealed dissatisfaction with their marriage and in the next engaged in discussion of a particularly repellent variety of bug. Apparently, she stood even lower in Vivien’s opinion than an insect. Thea could not decide whether she wished most to fling herself weeping upon Vivien’s chest, or assault him with his trowel. In an attempt to control her emotions, she exited the rustic shelter.

Unaware that his lady contemplated committing mayhem upon his person, Lord Davenham followed her outside, in the process of which he exchanged his trowel for a pruning fork. “I do not mean to be unsympathetic!” he explained. “I am very sorry to see you thrown into such a pucker. Perhaps there is something I may do.”

Certainly there was some manner in which his lordship might ease his wife’s distress. Thea eyed the potting shed. Then she swung around to observe her spouse. Again it struck her how very handsome Vivien was, in the way of all the Davenants, with his unruly black curls and flashing dark eyes. Sometimes Thea thought Vivien was even more handsome than Malcolm, for where Malcolm’s manner was bold and suggestive, Vivien was less easy to define. His very elusiveness was an intriguing trait. Confidences as rendered up by Lord Davenham were as diamonds offered by a lesser man.

Confidences did not appear to be forthcoming, alas. As she watched her husband strip excess foliage from the rhododendron with his pruning knife, Lady Davenham yearned to brush back the dark locks which had tumbled forward on his brow. Would he welcome such a wifely gesture, were she bold enough to make it? Thea could not bring herself to find out. “I don’t know what you
can
do!” she responded sadly, interpreting her husband’s absent-minded assault upon his rhododendron as symbolic of his dissatisfaction with his wife.

Lady Davenham’s spirits might have been elevated had she but realized that Lord Davenham imagined the rhododendron as his cousin, Malcolm, being pruned where it would do most good. Yet Vivien was fond of Thea, and could be no part of her unhappiness. “You have always said that you do not require my assistance, Thea,” he said, more calmly than he felt. “That you are perfectly capable of managing for yourself. I have seen no reason to interfere with you, because I have had other matters with which to deal, and you have managed very well—until now! You must not accuse me of being ineffectual, my dear. I am not so preoccupied that I have failed to notice in which direction the wind blows.”

“Oh?” Thea frowned. “Which way
does
the wind blow, pray?”

Having reduced the rhododendron to stubble, Lord Davenham set down his pruning knife. “I beg you will not insult my intelligence.” With considerable effort, he produced his vague smile. “If you want Malcolm, I will contrive to extricate him from the clutches of the milliner, because had you not been bethrothed to me from the cradle you would doubtless have had Malcolm in the first place. But you must not expect me to pretend to be deaf, mute, and blind.”

In response to these gentle accusations, Lady Davenham’s lips parted and her cheeks flushed. So profound were her husband’s misapprehensions that she did not know where to begin to set him right. Nor was she sure she
wished
to set him right, since even the conviction that she was overly fond of their dashing cousin had failed to rouse his ire. Too, Thea was very truthful, and she honestly did not know whether or not she still nourished a
tendre.

As she hesitated, the moment passed; Lord Davenham brushed past her and strode along the graveled path. Thea picked up her skirts and hurried after him. “Where are you going?” she gasped.

Did Thea fear for Malcolm’s safety? Think that Vivien would seek to relieve his spleen via a bout of fisticuffs? Though the notion was not without appeal, Lord Davenham was not so immature. Nor was he so lacking in consideration as to cause his wife needless distress—despite his urge to shake her until the teeth rattled in her demonstrably empty head.

Lord Davenham stepped up his pace lest he succumb to this base impulse. Over his shoulder, he said: “I am going to prepare for a meeting of the Horticultural Society, my dear. I read in the
Transactions
that a new shipment of plants from foreign lands has recently arrived. I am anxious to speak with Knight —the Society’s president, you will recall. He has been carrying out some unusual experiments with pineapples and nectarines. But I am forgetting Nimrod.” He retraced his steps and picked up the wicker basket, giving his wife a wide berth.

Lady Davenham’s supposed partiality for her dashing cousin Malcolm signified precious little to her spouse. This new indifference was almost more than Thea could bear. Muttering bitterly beneath her breath, she stalked into the house, and up the staircase, and into the connubial bedchamber. There she locked the door behind her, threw herself down on the bed and beat her fists against the mattress.

Chapter Twelve

Master Samson Puddiphat, though by temperament prohibited from indulging in hysterics, would heartily have sympathized with a lady so beset as to take recourse in assaulting her pillow. By the indirect inspiration of Lady Davenham’s tantrum, Puddiphat was being similarly provoked. Miss Bagshot did not
mean
to be provoking, Puddiphat told himself, as he carefully maneuvered his saber through the showroom doorway.

“It’s lucky for you my aunt ain’t here!” said Melly, hands on her slim hips, which were swathed this morn in a patterned daytime silk. “Something to do with a presentation gown. I don’t know where you’ve got this hubble-bubble notion that you should clap my aunt in jail, Samson. Her prices ain’t
that
high!”

Puddiphat concentrated on a chair japanned in lilac and gold, lest further contemplation of Miss Bagshot’s impatient and mischievous face deprive him anew of his powers of speech.
“Don’t
want to slap your aunt in jail!” he protested.

“Oh.” Looking very thoughtful, Melly stroked the fabric of her gown, a high-waisted
robe en caleçons
with fitted bodice and skirt so narrow that walking was difficult, the product of Melly’s own needle. Melly meant to cut a dash, if only behind her aunt’s back. “Then you are looking for my—” She recalled her aunt’s strictures on this subject. “—that man! I don’t know why you think you’ll find him
here.
Didn’t I tell you he showed us a clean pair of heels?”

“Did
he?” Cautiously, Puddiphat elevated his gaze from the floor to his white leather gloves. “By Jove! Poor little thing!”

“Poor little thing?
Papa?”
An astonished expression flickered across Melly’s piquant features. “Bless my soul!”

“Not your papa!” Puddiphat glanced sharply at Miss Bagshot, then dragged his gaze away. “As you well know. It’s not fitting. Miss, that you should try and hoodwink an officer of the law. There are severe penalties for such things—or if there aren’t, there should be!”

“Mercy on me.” Melly sank down upon one of the japanned chairs. “It’s
me
you wish to clap in jail! This is the worst pickle I have ever been in.”

So stricken was Puddiphat by this declaration that without awaiting invitation he dropped down onto another of the japanned chairs. Hastily, Melly dragged the magazine-laden table out of his saber’s reach.
“Not
a pickle!” he protested. “I swear!”

“That’s all you know about it!” Melly responded darkly. “My aunt wasn’t half so grateful as Sir Malcolm said she’d be to have me back. Instead, she took quite a pet and accused me of telling clankers, when it wasn’t me as told them, but
him!
I’m sure I might as well be in jail for all the freedom I’m allowed, so you may as well cease shilly-shallying and take me before the magistrates.”

Valiantly, Puddiphat sought to correct Miss Bagshot’s misapprehensions. “Don’t want to take you in! You haven’t done anything!”

The young lady’s sulky expression did not alter. “Tell my aunt that!” she snapped.

Puddiphat’s memories of Madame le Best were not such that he wished to converse further with her on any topic, especially the conduct of her niece. Though Puddiphat was not precisely needle-witted, he was sufficiently acute to recognize a suspicious and dangerous character when he saw one. “A suspicious and dangerous character!" he said. "Thought so at the time!”

Miss Bagshot looked bewildered. Puddiphat added: “Daresay you won’t like it, but I followed you. The Tower. Carlton House. London Bridge. Newgate.”

By this proof that incarceration in her aunt’s showroom had not yet robbed her of all her allure, Miss Bagshot’s sulks were somewhat eased. “It’s no skin off my nose if you want to make a cake of yourself by following me about—you won’t be the first to do so.” She smiled. “Nor the last, I hope!”

Anxious as he was to please, Puddiphat could not let this misconception pass. “As sure as check!” he offered, to spare his companion’s feelings. “But I wasn’t following
you.”

“You wasn’t?” Melly’s eyes opened wide. “Fancy that! Were you on the trail of some desperate criminal, perhaps? I wish you had told me, Samson. Seeing Bow Street make an arrest would have been even more exciting than Astley’s. Did you get your man?”

That apprehending desperate criminals was no large part of his duties, Puddiphat saw no reason to explain. “Don’t know
what
he is!” Puddiphat confessed. “But I mean to find out.”

Perhaps because her own wits were not razor-sharp, Melly had a little difficulty puzzling out the meaning of his words. “It is Sir Malcolm you was following! He
said
we was fugitives from justice, but I didn’t pay him any mind. Bless my heart! What’s he
done?”

“As to that, Miss, I’m not certain,” Puddiphat unhappily confessed. “Tell you what: your aunt’s right to cut up stiff about your rubbing shoulders with such.” It then occurred to him that this was hardly a diplomatic approach. “Don’t blame you a bit. Hard on a high-spirited little thing like you to be cooped up! Thing is. Miss, you could help Bow Street.”

“I could?” Miss Bagshot was not averse to a vision of herself as heroine of the hour, having spared London from the depredations of a hardened criminal.
Then
her Aunt Hel would see the folly of condemning her to remain indoors. “Fancy that!”

Having exhausted all the visual potential of his white leather gloves, Puddiphat transferred his gaze to the Chinese wallpaper. “Tell me about this Sir Malcolm,” he invited.

Miss Bagshot understood that she was in a ticklish situation: she did not think Sir Malcolm Calveley would thank her for bringing him to the attention of Bow Street. However, as matters stood, she was not likely to encounter Sir Malcolm again. Amusing as had been the afternoon passed hi his company, Melly could not deceive herself that it had resulted from anything but a whim. Sir Malcolm would have many whims, all involving females. Melly had simply been in the right place at the right time.

On the other hand,
did
Melly set Bow Street on to Sir Malcolm, he was very likely to seek her out again, if only to read her a dreadful scold. And if he did not seek her out, how was she to further his education? One could not base a friendship upon two encounters, especially the sort of friendship upon which one intended to persuade a gentleman to presume.

“Oh, he’s dangerous enough!” Melly equivocated, recalling the manner in which feminine hearts fluttered when Sir Malcolm stepped into a room. “First my papa, then my aunt, then me—and now Sir Malcolm. I ain’t perfectly clear in my mind why you wish to arrest anyone at all!”

Puddiphat removed his gaze from the Chinese wallpaper, which had made him very dizzy with its recurring motifs of dragons and pagodas and mandarins, and looked at Miss Bagshot. Melly dimpled. Puddiphat focused on his blue-clad knee, his head now properly a-spin. “Want to become a Runner!” he explained, after a lengthy pause punctuated only by snickers and giggles from the atelier, where the seamstresses were taking full advantage of their employer’s absence. “Like Townsend and Sayer, Armstrong and Keys.” He thought of the Runner responsible for his newly learned familiarity with milliners’ shops, who during their last encounter had called him a nodcock. “And Crump. For your information, Miss, Bow Street personnel
can’t
be properly termed military men.”