Maggie MacKeever (13 page)

In any event, the viscount was not permitted to bathe himself in self-reproach just then. So long had his silence continued that Lady Barbour took note. “You are very poor company!’” she muttered. “Did you come to talk to me, Laurie, or merely to
stare?”

Caught out in yet another ungentlemanly act, the viscount flushed. Clad in a round gown of figured muslin fashioned with a pink handkerchief across the breast, Sidoney looked good enough to make a meal herself. No sudden conversion to cannibalism prompted this odd reflection, rather the viscount’s empty stomach and her ladyship’s untouched plate. “You are not eating,” he said.

Sidoney shuddered. “Nor would you had you
my
head! I may never eat again—and assuredly I will never again drink Arrack punch! It is
most
insidious. How very queer you look. You must promise to tell no one else of this, but I went to Vauxhall yestereve, and I fear I overindulged just a
teeny
bit in the grape!” That surprise formed no portion of her companion’s strange expression. Lady Barbour did not notice, her understanding being even further limited by possession of the devil of a head. “It was such a splendid adventure! At least until I came home. Morgan cut up very stiff, which I do not think was at all necessary. It’s not as if I make it a
practice
to come home a trifle foxed!”

The viscount contemplated informing his companion that Miss Phyfe had been well within her rights, even if in their execution she had been both unsympathetic and unkind. He then decided that voicing such sentiments would in no way endear him to her ladyship. In point of fact, a lady with so enchanting a countenance as Lady Barbour could be forgiven far worse transgressions than boskiness.

In line with that latter reflection, the viscount turned sly. “Tell me about it!” he invited.

Lady Barbour glanced at him, perplexed. “I should think you would know more about it than I; I’m sure I’ve heard it said that you’re a three-bottle man! Or was it not the Arrack punch you wanted explained? I see it was not! What a goosecap I am! But I do not remember precisely what Morgan said, except that it was all most
uncivil, so I suppose I must be grateful that I
was
a trifle cast-away!” She frowned. “Except I
do
recall that Morgan said I must try and improve the tone of my mind.”

Improve the tone of Sidoney’s mind? The viscount was distracted from his original purpose—which had to do neither with Miss Phyfe’s remarks upon being presented with uncontestable evidence that her house-guest had shot the cat, nor with Lady Barbour’s opinion of punch—and horrified also. He wondered if an epidemic of skitterwittedness had struck the female portion of London’s population. In Lady Barbour the malady was charming. In Miss Phyfe it was more than flesh and blood could tolerate.

Happily for those of her admirers who appreciated a lovely pea-brain. Lady Barbour’s mind was beyond improvement. “It is quite enough to turn one’s stomach,” she uttered, indicating the volume open before her. “Even someone’s stomach who wasn’t already feeling a teeny bit queasy as result of too much Arrack punch! And to think that Morgan reads nothing but this stuff. ‘To follow industry and learn to live on their income and be attentive to their duty constitute the principal part of education in all the inferior ranks’—It is no wonder that my cousin has such very
odd
ideas!”

Odd ideas, in truth! The viscount was astonished that even the misguided Morgan Phyfe could be so cruel. In a very masterful manner he grasped the volume under discussion—Mr. Adam Smith’s
Wealth of Nations—
and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Odder than you realize!” said he, with a wary eye upon the footman who bent to retrieve Miss Phyfe’s abused book. “But what can we expect from a female who contrives to overthrow her king and government?”

Lady Barbour stared at her longtime admirer and arrived at a somewhat belated conviction that Laurie’s conduct this morning was in itself quite queer. “Overthrow the king and government?” she echoed. “Mercy on me!”

Had it not been Sidoney who told him her cousin’s mission? The viscount could not perfectly recall. He dismissed that puzzle, other things being of more immediate significance. “That isn’t the oddest of her ideas,” he continued. “I stopped by the drawing room on my way to you here.”

Sidoney was trying very hard to follow a conversation which thus far appeared to have no purpose, an attempt distinctly hampered by her aching head. “But I wasn’t
in
the drawing room!” she pointed out reasonably.

“I know that now, but the footman didn’t!” The viscount’s tones were a teeny bit tart. “Miss Phyfe
was
there, and Darby with her!”

Upon receipt of this startling piece of information, Lady Barbour looked blank. Perhaps Darby had called to see her, only to be intercepted by Miss Phyfe? “And,” added Laurie, “he was clasping her hands in the most forward manner and talking to her about Vauxhall!”

“Vauxhall?” Sidoney blinked. “But he just took
me
there!”

“I know he did—I mean, I suspected he had!” The viscount looked somewhat harassed. “Appearances indicate that he would like to deal likewise with Miss Phyfe. I ask you, Sidoney: was there ever such a rogue?”

Apparently there had never been, and Lady Barbour set about once again revising her opinion of “Devil” Darby. He was not such a pudding-heart as she had thought him; no pudding-heart would attempt the awesome task of persuading the high-minded Morgan Phyfe to disport herself gaily at frivolous Vauxhall. “Perhaps Morgan was trying to persuade him to speak out on behalf of parliamentary reform,” Sidoney offered doubtfully.

Those reservations, the viscount shared. “Hah!” he said. “Rather
he
was trying to persuade
her!
And from the look on Miss Phyfe’s face, I’ll wager she doesn’t put up much protest.”

These blunt observations roused several emotions in Lady Barbour’s shapely breast. Accustomed to being very much admired, Sidoney found it difficult to credit that any gentleman would prefer flirtation with another female than herself. Yet England’s most notorious rakehell had apparently done exactly that, preferring not just any other female, but precisely the female Sidoney would have thought least to his taste. And not only “Devil” Darby displayed a startling interest in Morgan. Here was Laurie, kicking up a dreadful fuss because he’d seen Darby paying Morgan very distinguishing attentions. Apparently Laurie, too, was taken with Miss Phyfe. Sidoney summoned forth a vision of her unfashionable and eccentric cousin and struggled to comprehend how Morgan had suddenly become all the crack.

Viscount English similarly struggled, not for comprehension but composure; he could not have failed to note that Sidoney had grown distressed. Alas, he did fail to realize that distress must be the condition of any lady seeking to reduce several different concepts into fodder acceptable to a one-track mind. He sought to reclaim her attention. “There’s no need for you to puzzle your head over this business! I’ll have a word with Miss Phyfe.”

To this generous offer, Lady Barbour responded without enthusiasm. “Stuff!” she said. “Do you know nothing about females, Laurie? All you need do is tell a woman she may not have something, and she wants it above all else! And I do not think it wise to tell Morgan she
may
have Darby because she is so unpredictable she may take us at our word! So it is best to say nothing at all, I think. What an awkward business! I disremember when I have been so amazed! No, do not interrupt me, because it is imperative that I
think!”

In that exercise the viscount also engaged, and to precious little more benefit, despite the advantage of an intellect considerably more advanced. In the viscount’s defense, it must be pointed out that Cupid’s arrow is a great leveler, and Sidoney’s remarks had led him to assume that she herself was not indifferent to the notorious “Devil” Darby. It was a very great pity that he was not a French aristocrat of the
ancien regime,
decided Laurie. He would have liked nothing better than to arrange that a
lettre de cachet
confine his rival forever in the Bastille.

The topic of rivals also engaged Lady Barbour’s mind, and very startled she was to discover the existence of such. Very deflated she was also to learn that her most devoted suitor had fallen under another woman’s spell—and what a spell it was, comprised of lunatic asylums and pot walloper franchises and parliamentary reform! Herself, Sidoney deemed such matters abominably dull stuff, but the viscount must know his own heart best. Morgan must be persuaded that marriage to the viscount was her best means of achieving a Utopian state. But before that could be accomplished, she must be extricated from the clutches of England’s most notorious rakehell.

“You’re certain,” Sidoney inquired, “of what you saw? There could be no other explanation of Darby’s conduct?”

How eager she was to excuse the rogue. And
how
anxious to deny his interest in any lady but herself. “None,” Laurie responded. “I am not wholly without experience in such matters.”

Briefly, Sidoney was distracted by the tantalizing question of how the viscount had become conversant with the manner in which a rakehell went about conducting his amours. Nobly, she brought her concentration back to the present. “There is no use in being bitter!” she reproved. “Even if what has chanced
does
beat everything! I always thought Morgan would have preferred agitating for parliamentary reform to engaging in tête-à-têtes with profligates. Which just goes to show the folly of taking things for granted, because here’s Morgan blundering into trouble as if she was no more needle-witted than I am—and everyone knows I’m incapable of managing my own affairs. But
this
business I can manage easily enough, and you may trust me for that!”

Laurie trusted his companion not at all on any matter concerning the slightest application of common sense. “What maggot have you taken into your head now?”
he asked.

Only from the most devoted of her suitors would Sidoney have accepted this unchivalrous mode of address; and even so she had to remind herself that his particular suitor had but recently witnessed his ladylove being clasped by a gazetted rakehell. Carefully, she set down the heavily laden plate that she’d come within aim’s-ace of hurling at his head. “I have not the most distant guess why you should speak so to me!” she responded frigidly. “I do not claim to be needle-witted—I admit
that I am a trifle addlebrained—but I do
not
have maggots in my head. If that is the way you talk to Morgan, it is no wonder that she is letting Darby persuade her to accompany him to Vauxhall.”

What his conversation with Miss Phyfe had to do with anything the viscount did not know and, perhaps unfortunately, he did not inquire. “I didn’t mean that you
truly
had maggots in your head!” he protested, thinking meanwhile that his own head felt as if it housed a thriving colony. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant, and very uncivil it was, and it makes not a particle of difference if you call them maggots or windmills! You can’t be so conversant as all that with how a rakehell conducts his amours or you wouldn’t be accusing me of being touched in the upper works.” Lady Barbour’s lower lip protruded enchantingly. “It would serve you excellently if I
didn’t
show you how to go on.”      

Miss Phyfe had voiced a similar intention to guide his behavior, Viscount English recalled, as result of which things could scarcely be in a worse case. The outcome of Lady Barbour’s efforts, he trembled to anticipate. “I beg you will not trouble yourself.”

“Pooh!” Lady Barbour shrugged. “It will be no I trouble at all. I am fond of you, Laurie, and I do not wish you to be unhappy, even if you
are
so unfeeling as to call me a cabbagehead! Somehow I will straighten out this tangle, I vow.”

Once more the viscount interrupted, with a faint notion of preserving intact his own almost blameless skin. “There is something I must tell you, Sidoney,” he said. “I have behaved less than honorably, I think.”

“You,
dishonorable?” Lady Barbour chuckled at this absurdity. “The most disgraceful thing you’ve ever done is forget to bring me back my punch, and that was because you’d fallen into conversation with Morgan. Naturally you would prefer to talk to Morgan than myself—although, if you were hankering after an intelligent female, it has me in a puzzle why you should have ever dangled after
me!
Which you did! But that’s all in the past, and I shan’t remind you of it, except to say that you should be grateful that I’m not
petty!
A petty person would be resentful that your admiration has become fixed elsewhere, whereas I mean to put forth my best effort to insure that you win the lady of your choice. Now not another word or I shall be very displeased!” Grown thirsty from this dissertation she picked up and drained her coffee cup, then grimaced because the contents had grown cold.

The viscount gazed down the length of the dining room table, in severe conflict with himself. The table was laden with numerous pieces of a tea and coffee service decorated with exotic birds and flowers within borders of mazarin blue and gilt. The viscount’s conscience was burdened with no fewer sins. Yet he offered no more audible confession of transgression than the epergne and salt cellars, teapot and candlesticks—all of which very adequately demonstrates that the epidemic of skitterwittedness currently devastating London claimed as its victims not only members of the female sex.

Chapter Twelve

Viscount English was not alone in observing that skitterwittedness in London had suddenly grown rife; Miss Whateley was provided similar occasion for reflection later that same day. This opportunity took place within the establishment of Messrs. Morgan and Sanders, fashionable furniture dealers, located in Catherine Street, off the Strand.

Miss Whateley also indulged in rumination concerning France’s ill-fated
ancien regime.
No mere
lettre de cachet
would do for Callie, however. She thought her garrulous stepmama would be silenced by nothing less drastic than Mme. Guillotine.