Maggie MacKeever (17 page)

“I see it has!” responded Lord Darby comfortably. “You had better tell me all about it so that we may determine what is best done.”

Miss Phyfe looked guilty, for she doubted Lady Barbour would appreciate the suggested breach of confidence. Nonetheless, she complied with his lordship’s suggestion, after making a confused disclaimer in which the phrases ‘tale pitching,’ ‘gabble-grinder’ and ‘prattle-bag’ played a large part.

In silence, Lord Darby heard her account. All around them other voices rang out, cheering the major’s suggestion that tyranny be opposed by the same means it was exercised, offering toasts upon all manner of outrageous topics from the reign of peace and liberty to the rights of man. “You have had a sad time of it, my darling!” he said, when she had done. “I am sorry for it.”

“And so you should be!” retorted Morgan, in whom a recitation of her travails had wrought no surcease. “I cannot think but that you could have prevented a great deal of this fuss and botheration had you only tried. Sidoney’s attention span is not of long duration, nor her affections of any great depth, and I do not say so to be unkind. Or because I am jealous! But because it is
true.”

“Jealous?” queried his lordship. “Why the devil should you be?”

If Lord Darby did not comprehend the many causes for resentment that might be harbored by the needle-witted member of the family for the relative who possessed a great deal more beauty than sense, Morgan would not enlighten him. “Sidoney is a silly widgeon!” she said. “But she promises me she means to have both you and her masked admirer, and I think you could cut out the scoundrel very easily, did you but make the effort.”

“I make no doubt of it.” Amusement lit Lord Darby’s disenchanted eye. “But who, then, could I trust to cut
me
out?”

Miss Phyfe looked bewildered. “Cut
you
out, sir?”

“Definitely, my darling. Have I not already told you that I have no special fondness for beautiful peageese? Certainly I don’t wish to find myself leg-shackled to one, and it has occurred to me that Lady Barbour has already been married twice. Apparently she has a knack for the business.”

“Oh, you need not worry about that!” Morgan was quick to offer reassurance. “You are as unlike Sidoney’s husbands as—as chalk from cheese!”

“That is the point,” his lordship responded apologetically. “I would not wish to be the means by which your cousin decided to broaden her experience. That is the worst of it with peageese; one never knows in which direction they will leap.”

Miss Phyfe’s spirits were even further depressed by this indication that the gentleman on whom her hopes were pinned did not care to oblige her. She sniffled. “Then you won’t help me.”

Lord Darby was stricken with a queer sensation beneath his ribs by the sight of the passionately enthusiastic Miss Phyfe thus cast into the dumps. Pondering this indication that that jaded organ remained capable of such delicate nuances of feeling, Lord Darby reached into his pocket and extracted a handkerchief, which he handed to Miss Phyfe. “Not to the extent of making a dead-set at a peagoose, I won’t!” he said bluntly. “But all the same, I will help you, Miss Phyfe.”

“You will?” Eyes wide, she gazed at him over the handkerchief which she’d pressed to her nose. It smelled of him, she thought: clean and crisp and masculine. On that latter reflection—unsuited to any well brought up gentlewoman, especially one who deplored frivolity—her cheeks turned pink.

Miss Phyfe was hardly the first female to be stricken by the charm of “Devil” Darby with a very fervent wish that she did
not
know the difference between wrong and right. Of those myriad other females Morgan sternly reminded herself, as she strove to be brisk and businesslike. “I knew I was not wrong to rely on you, Darby.”

Nor had she been, though the assistance Lord Darby had in mind to render bore scant resemblance to the efforts requested of him by Miss Phyfe. “Terence!” said he.

“Terence, then!” Resolutely Miss Phyfe wrenched her gaze away from his lordship’s knowing eyes, and his handkerchief from her nose. “What is it, Terence, that you mean to do?”

How cautiously she spoke his name, as if it were some strange fruit which she feared to firmly bite; and how curiously stirred he was by her hesitance. Lord Darby resolved anew that he would not cease his efforts until Miss Phyfe’s intense enthusiasms were diverted to himself. Enjoyment of that enthusiasm, he suspected, would be an experience the likes of which— despite his enviable experience—he had never known.

His precise intentions, Lord Darby did not deem it a timely moment to divulge. “First,” he murmured, “I think a certain adventurer must be unmasked.”

Chapter Fifteen

Lady Barbour did not like to be at odds with those around her, especially when to do so meant she had no one at whom to direct her amiable discourse. The Scottish housekeeper was obviously no fit confidante, due not so much to her lowly station as her ill-disciplined tongue; on the sole occasion when Sidoney had attempted to be civil to the creature, Hannah had so far forgotten her place as to label her ladyship a nowt and a haverel, or in other words a blockhead and a garrulous half-wit. As for the young lady most often privileged to listen to Sidoney’s gentle conversation, Miss Whateley remained in disgrace. Which left only one other candidate. Lady Barbour tripped down the hallway to her clever cousin’s sitting room.

Morgan was not in possession of that chamber. “Fiddle!” uttered her ladyship, who was feeling very restless this day. She walked toward the pine bureau bookcase with bright japanned decoration of red and gold. Perhaps she might find some amusing little book with which to while away an hour. Amusing little books not being the sort of literature favored by Miss Phyfe, she at last selected Dr. Price’s pro-American pamphlet,
Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty,
and carried it to Morgan’s writing desk. This was a simple article of furniture, with a sloping top; it had patently seen hard use. Lady Barbour surveyed the papers and books piled precariously atop the desk, which in appearance was no more tidy than Morgan herself. It was here that Morgan composed her seditious speeches and pamphlets, Sidoney supposed.

“Although I cannot immediately perceive what
pleasure
she derives from it!” Lady Barbour said aloud; Sidoney was accustomed, in the absence of a fit and proper audience, to talk to herself. Thought of pleasure recalled to Lady Barbour the largest impediment to her own attainment thereof: her unobliging stepdaughter.

Who
was
this wretchedly cold fish who was escorting Callie to such tedious places as the Tower and the Mansion House and the Guildhall? If a trifle laggard, Sidoney’s maternal instincts were intact. Callie had intimated that no words of a promising nature had been uttered by her escort, but Callie was hardly a fit judge of what was promising and what was not.

Stepmotherly interference was clearly required. Sidoney fancied she could deal admirably with Callie’s suitor, however reluctant he might prove to be.

At this point in her cogitations, it occurred anew to Sidoney that she did not know the identity of the gentleman whom she intended to see caught in the parson’s mousetrap before he could say “cheese”; and also that the omission was very strange. Callie had ever been a secretive chit, but it was hardly
kind
to keep her doting stepmama in such abysmal ignorance. “I’ll warrant Morgan knows!” Lady Barbour remarked. As she spoke, she thwacked Dr. Price’s
Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty
against the writing desk and thereby knocked a stack of papers to the floor.

“Drat!” Sidoney knelt to tidy up the mess. As she retrieved the scattered pages, she glanced over their contents. First she blanched, then blushed, put aside the pages in horror, then retrieved them to read further. During these queer gyrations, she kept up a dialogue with herself.

“Mercy on me!” cried Lady Barbour. “This exceeds all belief! Who would have ever thought—and Morgan dared load
me
with reproaches—oh, this will never do!” She rose, clutching the papers to her breast. “Libelous publications and seditious activities are
one
thing!” she muttered, descending the stair in haste. “But
this
cannot be borne!” And then she had to stop and explain her own queer behavior to Hannah, who called her both a flibbertigibbet and a chowderhead before revealing that Miss Phyfe had gone to Saint Bart’s. Sidoney ordered up a carriage and set out for Saint Bart’s without bonnet or pelisse to shield her from the elements.

It was a lovely day. Sunshine sparkling off delicate tree limbs and dancing on tall old buildings cast picturesque shadows on the paving stones. Lady Barbour had no thought for nature’s benevolence. She was equally oblivious to her surroundings. She read the pages so firmly clutched once more, with pink-cheeked fascination.

Soon they were in Giltspur Street, and Saint Bart’s lay straight ahead. Lady Barbour nearly tumbled out of the carriage in her haste to descend.

Miss Phyfe was at length located in the chapel, where she had repaired with the hospital’s steward so that they might enjoy a comfortable prose together. Currently, most of the prosing was being done by Miss Phyfe.

“Hospitals should not exclude incurable cases!” she said now. “Yes, I know it is the way things are done. The wealthy and the working classes tend to their own. Of the sick poor, the truly ill may, if lucky, be admitted to a voluntary hospital supported by charitable contributions—or, if unlucky, to the workhouse. Voluntary hospitals won’t accept patients that cannot be cured. The governors won’t bear the expense of funerals and don’t want to incur censure by consigning the dead to pauper graves. So the workhouse it is. And the workhouses aren’t designed for the care of the sick. And if you cannot cure a patient, you send him to the workhouse to die. It is a system very sadly in need of reformation.”

That the system was not of his devising, the steward made haste to point out. Then he additionally pointed out that their
tête-à-tête
had been interrupted by a golden-haired lady who was clutching a sheaf of papers to her bosom with a distrait air. Miss Phyfe turned to inspect the newcomer. Her delicate jaw dropped. “What on earth?” she said.

“Libelous publications and seditious activities are
one
thing!” Lady Barbour announced. “But
this
is insufferable! I am shocked beyond measure, Morgan! I vow I almost swooned of it—and you know I am not given to vaporing! And to think that you dared hint
my
behavior left much to be desired! At least I don’t go about telling people about things I shouldn’t even know—and I
didn’t
know them until I read
this!”
She brandished the papers under Miss Phyfe’s startled nose. “Despite having been married
twice!
Speaking of things that do no credit, and putting feet
wrong!”

From Lady Barbour’s distrait demeanor and garbled speech, Morgan deduced two things: first, that Lady Barbour had been poking her lovely nose into places that she shouldn’t; and second, that this conversation was best continued without benefit of an audience. She therefore suggested to the fascinated steward that duty called him elsewhere. Then she turned back to her cousin. “You’ve been snooping,” she said.

“Snooping!” Lady Barbour turned pink with indignation. “It was no such thing! I merely wished to talk with you, but you weren’t there, and so I decided to read something instead. And a very good thing it is I did so, because otherwise I wouldn’t have found out—and how
you
found out I would like to know! I can only think you have been indulging in all manner of peccadilloes and squalid intrigues, which I must tell you is
shockingly
unseemly conduct!”

Miss Phyfe wrested away her papers from Lady Barbour’s grasp, scanned them with a wary eye. Her suspicions confirmed, her own cheeks turned pink. “You must agree that it is a great disadvantage for the poor to have so many mouths to feed. And I did
not
learn these theories through—er—personal experience.”

“I should hope not! But even if you
didn’t
engage in peccadilloes—of which I am not convinced, even though it doesn’t sound at all like you to do so, although it would excellently explain how you have been stealing away all my
beaux
if you know a great deal more than any respectable female should about gentlemen in the petticoat-line!—your conduct must still be condemned, because you have obviously let someone
tell
you about such things.” Lady Barbour reclaimed the papers forcibly. “Which behavior is open to
very
unfavorable interpretations! Moreover, I cannot but think that you are meddling in matters which do not concern you. I mean, the number of children in a family should be left to the Almighty, should it not?”

“Even if the family is too poor to feed them?” inquired Miss Phyfe. “When fewer members in a family might mean the difference between starvation and adequate food for all? Poppycock! The limitation of population—”

Lady Barbour shuddered. “I beg you, no more! Lud! I knew you were involved in a campaign to educate England with your speeches and your pamphlets, but I have been absolutely wild with horror ever since I discovered just what you are educating them
about!
And to think I trusted
you to
show Callie how to go on!” She frowned, “Just where is Callie? I thought she was with you.”

Miss Phyfe exhibited no great eagerness to talk about that damsel. “She is with me. You are making a fuss about trifles, Sidoney.”

“Trifles!” Lady Barbour clutched the papers once more to her breast. “I doubt our cousin the earl would consider these embarrassing revelations as such. Only just fancy his astonishment when he discovers you have been advancing information of the most compromising nature! And he
will
discover it, because I mean to dispatch these pages to him immediately unless I have your promise you will have nothing more to do with this odious stuff.”

Miss Phyfe was not so easily intimidated. Nor was she especially worried about the dispatch of her papers to a nomadic relative who had no fixed address. With a certain perverse pleasure she pointed out this latter circumstance.