Maggie MacKeever (14 page)

“Lunatic asylums and factories and the pot walloper franchise!” moaned Lady Barbour, who was not hesitant about repeating a handy phrase. “Morgan, it is very bad
of
you! And yet you dare berate
me
for taking a trifle too much punch!”

“Poppycock!” responded Miss Phyfe. “I do not have the slightest notion what you are nattering on about. I have not so much as mentioned the franchise—or your abominable behavior!—this past half-hour.”

Sidoney shuddered, setting atremble the plumes of the elegant bonnet which perfectly complemented her white muslin walking dress and her spencer of lilac sarcenet. “You have been talking about prisons, which is just as bad! I don’t know why I must hear about such things—dark underground sleeping cells without ventilation except for a hole in the ceiling! Rooms where prisoners must cook and wash and sleep without ever venturing out! I’ll tell you what, Morgan, you had much better leave it to Laurie to fix up right and tight!”

“English?” echoed Miss Phyfe, frowning. “I had no idea
he
was concerned with prison reform.”

Lady Barbour regarded her needle-witted cousin. “Sometimes, my dear, I think that you are too clever by half! I have noticed that clever people are often so caught up in their own concerns that they don’t notice what’s right in front of their faces, and this proves I am correct! You need only ask, and I’m sure Laurie will do anything you wish.”

“Then I wish he would cease to toss my books about!” retorted the skeptical Miss Phyfe.

“Your books? Oh,
that
book!” Lady Barbour giggled. “You must not mind that Laurie threw away your
Wealth of Nations;
I had told him it was very dreary stuff! Which it is! And not at all the sort of thing to which I would have thought you would subscribe, because I thought you were in favor of educating the lower classes. You
are?
No, don’t try and explain! I am too bacon-brained to follow your reasoning. Besides, Laurie was feeling a trifle out of humor because he’d just seen you and Darby—” She recalled the presence of her stepdaughter and awarded that damsel a cautious glance. “—er. By-the-bye, Morgan, I promise you wouldn’t like Vauxhall.”

“Vauxhall?” echoed Miss Phyfe, astonished. “I should think not!”

Briefly, conversation between the ladies lapsed. Lady Barbour congratulated herself for having subtly whetted her clever cousin’s interest, and wondered how she might with equal subtlety drop a hint or two concerning the ineligibility of a certain notorious rakehell; while Miss Phyfe pondered how best to use to advantage her latest convert to the cause of parliamentary reform. That she had made a convert did not enthuse her as much as once it might have done. Until recently, Morgan had sincerely believed that a life devoted to the perpetuation of good works was infinitely preferable to an existence squandered in pursuit of purposeless frivolity, which was an excellently practical conviction for a lady who lacked the wherewithal to pursue amusement. Now she could not rid herself  of the suspicion that some vital ingredient was missing from her life. The nature of that ingredient, Morgan could not guess. Perhaps she suffered no more serious complaint than the lassitude that frequently accompanied the onset of spring.

As her chaperones thus reflected, Miss Whateley studied each of them in turn. She was very curious about the statement her stepmama had left uncompleted regarding Morgan Phyfe and the most notorious of rakehells. Equally was she intrigued by her stepmama’s reference to Vauxhall. And what had Sidoney said about Viscount English? Callie was prepared to eat her stepmama’s elegant bonnet if that very proper gentleman had the slightest enthusiasm for parliamentary reform.

She bit back an impatient exclamation. Clearly, Miss Phyfe had not a sufficiently strong grip on the reins. Callie herself was going to have to take a hand. Indeed, if what Sidoney had hinted regarding Lord Darby had any basis at all in fact, it was not only Sidoney whose starts needed to be checked.

As result of these conclusions, Miss Whateley’s plump features looked almost pinched. She had scant patience with her stepmama’s fantastic notions, and even less desire to devote her energies to the curtailment of her stepmama’s wilder fantasies. To her own surprise, Miss Whateley was deriving a vast amount of enjoyment from her visit to the Metropolis. Not Almack’s or the opera thus inspired her, formal dinners and soirees and perambulations in Hyde Park; those engagements she could have easily done without. But Callie had contrived to be very well entertained while the attention of her elders was focused elsewhere.

“I have been thinking
very
hard!” announced Lady Barbour. Testifying to the severity of her cogitations was a lovely frown. “And I feel that I
must
speak, even if it might be wiser to say nothing at all. As I told Laurie, to tell a female she can’t have something is to make her want it above all else—but that isn’t taking your good sense into account!”

Miss Phyfe carefully set down the miniature bookcase she had been inspecting—fashionable chairmakers and cabinetmakers often displayed beautifully detailed and finished small-scale models of their designs—and instead surveyed her cousin. “Sidoney, I would be very much obliged if you would try and be more precise! What is it that I can’t have, if I’m correct in assuming that’s what you’re getting at?”

Lady Barbour frowned at her stepdaughter, who was closely following this conversation, and gently suggested that the girl might like to inspect a sofa table of amboyna and kingwood veneers that stood some distance away. Miss Whateley declined. She declined also to inspect a commode with boulle panels, and an Egyptian chair painted black with gilt ornaments. “Cut line. Mama!” she said bluntly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Stepmama!” wailed Lady Barbour, feathers once more atremble. “And if this is the kind of face you show your
beaux—
not that I have observed you
have
any
beaux!—
it is no wonder you are well on your way to becoming an ape-leader. But we shall not talk about that just now, even if I
do
find it a source of considerable chagrin! Morgan—”

“The child,” interrupted Miss Phyfe, who was not so altruistic that she would refrain from tossing another victim to the lions in order to save her own skin, “is hardly an antidote, Sidoney! You need not talk as if she is at her last prayers.”

Lady Barbour was impatient of these efforts. “The chit is dowdy-looking!” she said bluntly. “And she has no conversation. Count on it, she’ll be left on the shelf. But you needn’t try and pull the wool over
my
eyes, Morgan, because I have not at all forgot what I meant to talk to you about!”

Long acquainted with the brevity of her cousin’s attention span, Morgan persevered. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” she hinted slyly, “if Callie isn’t in the process of making a conquest.”

Even Lady Barbour’s determination to perform a rescue could not withstand this sally. “A conquest, you say?” she echoed, her golden brows in upward flight. “Good Gad!”

“Precisely,” murmured Miss Phyfe.

Recipient of their attention—one startled and the other smug—Callie fidgeted. “You refine too much upon it,” she muttered. “He has only taken me to see the Tower and the Mansion House and the Guildhall.”

That a gentleman should take her graceless stepdaughter anywhere was nothing to cavil at, thought Lady Barbour. Mindful of Miss Phyfe’s strictures concerning kindness, she did not voice this remark. “My dear Callie, what a very extraordinary circumstance! And you said nothing to me of it! What a devious minx you are, to be sure. Tell me—” She hesitated, and her bonnet plume quivered once again, this time with the intensity of the anticipation she felt. “Has he said anything that I might like to hear?”

Not surprisingly, Miss Whateley was not kindly disposed toward the lady who treated her like an especially unwieldy millstone. “Oh, any number of things!” she replied. “He said that the Tower is the most venerable pile in London; the oldest part was built under order of William the Conqueror. The Mansion House is much more modern, having been completed in 1753. The Guildhall has been standing since the twelfth century, although it was partly destroyed by the Great Fire and repaired by Wren, then greatly altered by George Dance in the eighteenth century.”

Though Lady Barbour habitually lamented her stepdaughter’s lack of conversation, she was not overjoyed by this demonstration. “Oh!” she grimaced. “Dull stuff!”

“Do you think so, Mama?” Miss Whateley looked innocent. “Perhaps you would be more interested in the banners of the twelve great livery companies which hang in the Guildhall. In order of preference they begin with the Mercers and end with the Clothworkers.
Or
the figures of the giants Gog and Magog, which stand at the western end of the hall. They were carved in 1708 by a local craftsman and stand over fourteen feet tall. Or—”

“Enough!” Lady Barbour snapped. “I beg I may hear no more of such humdrum stuff. Obviously this gentleman of yours is a curst cold fish—which just proves what I was saying, Morgan; you know absolutely nothing about gentlemen who are in the petticoat-line!”

So much for red herrings, thought Miss Phyfe. She supposed she should be grateful Lady Barbour had not inquired more particularly into the identity of the gentleman who was escorting her stepdaughter on the outings she adjudged humdrum. “And you
do,
Sidoney? Shame! I am surprised that you admit to it so freely, and in front of Miss Whateley to boot.”

Lady Barbour, it must be remembered, had only the previous evening overindulged in Arrack punch, the aftereffects of which had left her even more than customarily chuckle-brained. “I do
what?”
she snarled.

Miss Phyfe smiled. “Know what you said
I
didn’t! About gentlemen in the petticoat-line. Callie, I think your stepmama would like you to take a closer look at that satinwood cabinet on the far side of the room. You see the one. And take particular note of the brass trellis doors and the ebony stringing.”

“I know what it is!” Lady Barbour observed acutely, as Miss Whateley grinned. “You are hoaxing me. What a very queer sense of humor you have, Morgan. This is
serious!”

“I daresay I must be!” responded Miss Phyfe wickedly. “But I am puzzled, Sidoney; when did you have the
time?”

After great concentration, Sidoney decided that her clever cousin Morgan insinuated that successive marriages to two elderly gentlemen must leave a lady scant opportunity to become acquainted with
roués.
“What a complete hand you are! Of course I do not know a great deal about such matters; it was one of the things I came to London to find out! And to fire Callie off, of course! But even if I am not especially experienced, I am obviously a great deal more experienced than
you.
After all,
I
didn’t allow Darby to clutch my hands!”

Upon this indication that her
tête-à-tête
with London’s most notorious rakehell had been observed, Morgan blushed bright red. “No! You only inveigled him into escorting you to Vauxhall!” she snapped, then remembered Miss Whateley. “Callie,
do
go somewhere! That rosewood side table in the Egyptian taste is very fine.”

Though Lady Barbour might have previously wished her stepdaughter’s departure, no sooner did Miss Phyfe voice a similar request than she abruptly changed her mind. “No. Let Callie stay. She is quite old enough to learn that people are not always what they seem. Pay attention, Callie, because before you is a perfect example of how
not
to go on!”

Rather, Miss Whateley suspected that before her were two such examples. She was far too fascinated by the hostilities to interrupt and point that out.

Hostilities they were, in truth, with both ladies glaring at one another as if only the dictates of good manners prevented their tearing one another’s hair out. Callie wondered if the source of the quarrel was any clearer to the participants than it was to their audience. As best she could determine from the vituperative exchange, Lady Barbour was convinced that Miss Phyfe wished to go to Vauxhall, in hope of encountering some mysterious masked chevalier. Miss Phyfe need not bank on
that,
promised Lady Barbour, even if she had in some arcane manner bewitched both Lord Darby and Viscount English.

Said Miss Phyfe, upon being informed she was the favorite of the moment, “Gracious God, Sidoney!
Try
not to be such a ninnyhammer, do!”

Quite naturally, Lady Barbour was not thrilled by this further malignment of her mental faculties, especially by the lady on whose behalf she was prepared to make such great sacrifice. Heaven knew she did not
want
to dally with Lord Darby, but she knew no other way to divert him from her cousin. It never occurred to Sidoney that she could not cast Morgan into the shade, did she but make the effort.

“I’m
not the ninnyhammer!” responded Lady Barbour, and for emphasis struck her fist upon a mahogany table with curved legs. “I’ll warrant it has never occurred to you, Morgan, that clever people can be skitterwitted, too! And it should have done, because you
are,
else you would not be teasing Darby to take you to Vauxhall.”

Miss Phyfe pressed her fingers to her brow, which had begun to ache. “I do
not,”
she repeated doggedly, “wish to go to Vauxhall.”

“Stuff!” Lady Barbour was busy effecting rather frantic repairs to the mahogany tabletop. “If you
don’t
want to go then you shouldn’t pester him to take you, and above all you shouldn’t let Laurie overhear! That was
most
careless of you. Especially when he’s quite willing to help you overthrow the king and government, not that I understand the necessity for such drastic steps.”

Miss Phyfe, thus informed of the extent of her radical aspirations, stared. “But—”

“But Laurie was always used to dangle after me!” Lady Barbour concluded wisely. “I know! And I’m sure I don’t know how it’s come about, how now he has transferred his affections to
you!
Not that I mind! You mustn’t think I do! Because
I
am quite set on Darby, myself.”