Maggie MacKeever (16 page)

“I mix cream and ground almonds, lemon peel and cinnamon,” responded Miss Phyfe’s captive audience. “Then I add sweetener and isinglass, allow it to set and garnish it with currant jelly, stewed pears or quinces. It is, in my opinion, the only successful way to make a blancmange.” Before either lady could draw her into the conversation, Sidoney departed.

The carriage waited, a fine vehicle with decor of gold and crimson velvet, its exterior painted green. Tenderly, a footman assisted her to enter it. Sidoney sank gratefully down on the comfortable seat, leaned back her head and closed her eyes.

All told, it had been an exhausting evening, and not only because she’d drunk more champagne than was wise. At least she had managed to hint to Laurie the best way to go about his business; and who would have suspected that the viscount had it in him to be a pupil so apt? It almost made Sidoney sad to think she had not guessed that his nature was warmer than his so proper manner, because
had
she guessed, she might have long ago indicated that she would not take an occasional display of said warmth amiss. But there was no use crying over spilled milk. Now she must concentrate on putting into motion her plans for London’s most notorious rakehell.

Through moonlit streets the carriage rumbled, past silent squares and ancient buildings that cast long mysterious shadows, mean and narrow streets, blind alleys backed by masses of gray brick and stone. Sidoney was oblivious to her surroundings. In her comer of the carriage, in the midst of a pleasant dream, she gently snored.

From that dream she was abruptly awakened by a pair of hands that grasped her shoulders and shook her ‘til she shrieked. “Eek!” cried Sidoney, and then, “Oh, it’s you! But how come you to be
here?
Not that I am not prodigious glad that you
are—
I seem to be losing all my
beaux—
I mean, unhand me this moment, sir!”

Naturally no bold adventurer would do such a craven thing; this particular adventurer merely tightened his grasp. “I have been watching you sleep,” he murmured in that odd, gruff voice. “You are enchanting, Lady Barbour. Even when you snore.”

“Snore? Oh, I do not!” A thousand pities that the darkness hid Sidoney’s expert blush. “Do you mean that you have been here all the time? You are shameless, sir!”

“Quite!” Even in the darkness his eyes glittered through his mask. “And determined also. You may as well resign yourself to your fate.”

“My fate? Egad!” Sidoney clasped her hands to her breast. “What manner of man are you to take such advantage of a defenseless maiden, sir?”

That a lady twice widowed could hardly lay just claim to the title of maiden, the adventurer did not remark; nor that no lady was defenseless who had a coachman and a couple lackeys within earshot. “I am a man without any honor whatsoever!” he replied, and promptly swept her, if not off her feet, at least off the carriage seat. Then, having embraced her in a fashion that must satisfy the most romantically minded lady, he pushed her away from him, leaped out of the slowly moving carriage and vanished into the night.

Chapter Fourteen

“I disremember when I have been so surprised by anything!” said Lady Barbour, and for emphasis waved the sausage speared on her breakfast fork. “As you may imagine! And then to discover that he’d hid himself away in the coach—although I do not immediately perceive how
that
came about—but when dealing with such a rascal there is no point whatsoever cudgeling one’s brain! And so you see, Morgan, that you need not feel guilty about stealing Laurie’s affections away from me.”

Miss Phyfe retained a firm grip on her fork, but it was no sausage she was tempted to stab. “I do not know how you have taken this absurd notion that Viscount English has a preference for me,” she repeated irritably. “I must have told you a hundred times already that he has
not!”

“So you have and I do not know why you bother!”
retorted Lady Barbour somewhat indistinctly, as she nibbled delicately at her sausage. “Unless you truly do
not
know, which is a trifle farfetched even for a lady who is so abysmally ignorant about gentlemen! Not that I refer to Laurie, because
he
isn’t in the petticoat-line, as
I
should know better than anyone! You must not be jealous of me, Morgan; Laurie
was
my beau until you came along.” She frowned. “And I’m dashed if I know how you do it, because you haven’t the slightest appearance of a
femme fatale!”

It was Sidoney who had that distinction, her beauty only slightly less deadly than her tongue. Miss Phyfe pushed away her plate. “We were talking about your masked chevalier. Sidoney, you must realize that allowing yourself to become involved in a clandestine liaison does you no credit.”

Lady Barbour contemplated the dishes set out on the mahogany dining table and helped herself generously to broiled fish. “I would not call it a liaison precisely. We have met only twice.”

“You cannot deny,” snapped Morgan, “that the nature of those meetings was clandestine.
Think,
Sidoney—if you can! You know nothing about the man! He could be a fortune hunter, or a basket-scrambler, or worse.”

As Lady Barbour had anticipated, her clever cousin Morgan was not of a disposition to appreciate adventure. Said Lady Barbour, “Pooh! He is an excellent creature who improves amazingly upon acquaintance, and I am certain there is some very good reason why he goes about in a mask. I think I must ask him about it the next time we meet. Not that I would wish to appear
inquisitive,
but if he doesn’t wish to explain it to me, he need only say so.” In anticipation of that next encounter, she smiled.

Carefully, Miss Phyfe set down her fork, lest she succumb to temptation. “I wonder at you, Sidoney. I have always known you were imprudent, but never did I expect to see you
aux aegis
over a—a dashed loose screw!”

“Well!” Lady Barbour threw down her own fork, which bounced right off her plate and fell to the floor. “To roundly denounce a gentleman you have never met does
you
no credit, Morgan. You are grown positively priggish! And officious! And also unjust, because I have never yet put my foot wrong.”

Miss Phyfe gazed gloomily across the table at Miss Whateley, who during this exchange had stolidly eaten her way through a huge repast including not only sausage and broiled fish but also eggs and kidneys and bacon, muffins and fruit. She was currently toying with a pepper pot and paying not the slightest attention to her elders’ enactment of a vulgar scene. “What about Darby?’ retorted Morgan. “I thought you’d set your cap at him.”

“I haven’t set my cap at anyone,” Lady Barbour retorted. “I don’t
need
to! Or at least I didn’t need to before
you
started casting out lures. I do wish you would tell me how you do it—but I understand why you will not! I daresay I wouldn’t either, were our positions reversed. All the same, I do not mean to allow you your head in this, for your own sake. Laurie you may have; Darby you may
not!
And there is not the least use disputing with me because my mind is quite made up.”

Morgan wished nothing less than to argue, but in this instance she thought she must. “Which of them is it you want? Darby or this masked corsair? Of the two, Darby must be the lesser evil, I think.”

Sidoney arched a brow. “You
would
think so, which just proves how little you know! Darby doesn’t have three high-flyers pursuing him, like the other did at Vauxhall, which, now that I consider it, is an excellent reason for going about incognito. Not, poor fellow, that it seems to
serve.”

Miss Phyfe callously contemplated subjecting her cousin to an exotic means of torture via the toast rack. “So you
don’t
want Darby?”

Annoyed as Lady Barbour might be with her disapproving cousin, she had not forgotten her resolve to rescue Morgan from Darby and thus advance the viscount’s cause. “Oh, yes I do. I have decided that nothing less will suit me than that I should have them
both!”

The toast rack, decided Miss Phyfe, was not sufficiently gruesome; before her danced visions of thumbscrews and rack. “Sidoney, you are a peagoose!”

“And you, my dear Morgan, are clearly jealous,” responded Lady Barbour, with a brittle little laugh. “Content yourself with having filched Laurie out from under my nose, because I do not mean to allow you to likewise steal away my other beau.”

“And I thought life in the country was tedious,” observed Miss Whateley suddenly to her pepper pot. “Mama, I think you must have windmills in your head.”

Lady Barbour’s cheeks turned a lovely shade of crimson. “Why, you ungrateful little chit! Go to your room at once.”

“With pleasure, Mama,” Miss Whateley replied.

Callie was not the only one to leave the dining room at that point; Miss Phyfe also fled. Lady Barbour availed herself of another muffin and reached for the marmalade dish. She was saddened that her stepdaughter and her clever cousin were uniformly poor-spirited. It would be very pleasant, she thought, to talk about her adventures at greater length.

Of Lady Barbour’s adventures, Miss Phyfe had already heard more than enough. Wishing that she had been born an orphan without any family to plague her, Morgan crammed a shabby bonnet on her head. Pausing only to inform the Scottish housekeeper that she was off to one of her meetings, Morgan departed Phyfe House. “I’m thinkin’ Auld Wearie will be next to come avisitin’! And I canna turn awa’ the de’il himself, och noo!” called Hannah, by way of wishing her godspeed. Morgan settled back in the cabriolet she’d ordered brought around earlier, with a sigh of relief.

Past Hyde Park Corner up Park Lane her journey took her, up Oxford Street and past Tottenham Court Road; down High Holborn, past narrow side streets where tiny shops were bolstered up by planks. Past Saint Sepulchre’s the carriage traveled, to Newgate Street. Here, in medieval times, the city’s butchers had dwelt, their stalls set up in the middle of the road. Morgan alit, issued the coachman instructions and walked to the western end of the street, known in time past as Blow Bladder Lane, due to the butchers who had used inflated sheep bladders to make meat carcasses appear deceptively large. Morgan thought, as she stepped into an ill-lit tavern, that Blow Bladder Lane was a perfect setting for a discussion of parliamentary reform.

No sudden disillusionment with her Jacobin principles prompted that latter thought, as no sudden thirst prompted Miss Phyfe to step into a common public house. She had ventured forth into this most unsuitable setting to listen to Major John Cartwright—author of such classic pamphlets as
Take Your Choice
(advocating universal suffrage) and
The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated
(professing that every man should have a vote)—expound upon the subjects nearest to his heart.

As fate would have it, after she had gone to such effort, Miss Phyfe heard not a single word that Major Cartwright spoke. An onslaught of deafness was not to blame for this omission. No sooner did Miss Phyfe step into the ill-lit tavern than she glimpsed a familiar dissipated profile. “What the deuce are you doing
here?”
she inquired.

“Seeking to please you, Miss Phyfe!” he immediately replied.

Morgan allowed him to assist her into a chair, and smiled. “I wonder what Elizabeth would make of
you!”
she said. “Elizabeth contends that the world is packed with sinners already suffering the consequences of their sins, destined to far greater torment if they don’t repent. You do not appear the least bit repentant, Darby. Nor do you appear to be suffering overmuch. I daresay it would take more than Bible reading to make you realize the error of your ways.”

He, too, smiled. “I daresay. But I have already indicated my eagerness to allow you to reform me, Miss Phyfe. I am willing to attend any number of committee meetings and to listen to any number of seditious speeches—although you needn’t expect me to attend the Society for Carrying into Effect His Majesty’s Proclamation Against Vice and Immorality, because I enjoy my vices very well and among them
isn’t
playing the hypocrite.”

“But you have just said you were willing to reform!” Miss Phyfe pointed out.

“And so I am—to a degree.” Lord Darby gazed upon the lady so simultaneously passionate and naive as to have innocently delivered him a leveler, and looked more than usually saturnine. Certainly his lordship stood in grave danger of mortal injury. But his lordship had not gained his current remarkable reputation as result of excessive concern for the safety of his skin. “I would be quite content to curb the worst of my excesses, providing that those indulgences left me
you
are willing to share.”

Normally, Morgan was in favor of blunt speech. His lordship’s manner of blunt speech, however, took her breath away. In an effort to regain her self-possession, she looked away from Lord Darby’s saturnine features to the much less interesting face of Major Cartwright.

The Major was holding forth with enthusiasm upon his favorite topics, which included annual elections, secret ballots, payment for members of the Commons and a redistribution of seats. Additionally, he urged the emancipation of Greece from Turkish rule, and the destruction of absolutism in Spain. These sentiments found great favor with his audience, comprised mainly of watchmakers and weavers, bricklayers and butchers, musicians and warehousemen and similar examples of the common man.

Miss Phyfe also agreed with the Major’s sentiments, but other considerations were currently much dearer to her own heart. “If you truly wish to please me, you are going about it in the wrong way, Darby,” she complained. “Attending committee meetings is very
nice,
but it does little to help me avoid commitment in Bedlam Asylum, as result of an overheated brain! While you have been attending committee meetings, sir, my paper-skulled cousin has fallen in love after the briefest acquaintance with a dashed loose screw. Or at least I assume he is, because I cannot conceive of anyone
but
a loose screw skulking about in a mask. At any rate, he is a scoundrel. Oh, I could weep with sheer vexation. This wretched business has cast me nigh into despair.”