Maggie MacKeever (26 page)

“Not you!” Lord Darby gasped, clutching his sides. “Morgan!”

“Morgan?” In an attempt at comprehension, Lady Barbour gripped the arm of the settee and twisted up her mouth. “Why should you engage in a brangle with Morgan when
I
deflated your pretensions? Not, in the long run, that you will be a penny the worse of it! While
I
, on the other hand, am destined to fall into a lethargy. Good Gad, Darby, are you
laughing
at me?”

Lord Darby was beyond explanations. “Peagoose!” he. gasped.

“Peagoose?” echoed Sidoney indignantly. “I call that
most
uncivil! All I did was ask why you should rip up at Morgan when
I
’m the one who rejected your suit. Which is not an unreasonable question! But the way you are going on, a person would think you didn’t like me above
half!”

In some instances, cruelty was kind; and Lord Darby had his own well-being additionally in mind. “A person would be correct,” he therefore admitted. “It was not to see you that I came to Phyfe House today.”

Sidoney’s lovely features contorted as she struggled with this alien concept. “Morgan!” she cried, rising from the settee. “It is to Morgan that you have lost your heart!”

Warily, Lord Darby eyed his hostess. His lordship had no small acquaintance with the fury of women scorned. “It is,” he said bravely.

Lady Barbour clasped her hands to her breast, inhaled deeply. Lord Darby braced himself against a withering expulsion. But Sidoney was not of a begrudging nature, despite her selfishness. “Then I beg you will tell me, Darby, how the
devil
my cousin has contrived to take the shine out of me!” she said plaintively.

So relieved was his lordship by this unexpectedly reasonable reaction that he might well have explained how he had lost his heart to the seditious Miss Phyfe, might even have shared with her his conclusions about the certain masked adventurer who three high-flying sisters so diligently pursued. Revelation was forestalled, however, by the arrival of a footman carrying a silver tray. On the tray rested a note.

Eagerly, Lady Barbour fell upon that very dirty missive, ripped it open, read it once and again. Then she allowed the note to fall to the floor and, before the astonished eyes of both footman and rakehell, collapsed weeping and wailing upon the settee.

Lord Darby knew how to deal with hysterical females. He hauled Lady Barbour erect and shook her soundly. When that sovereign remedy failed to curtail her gnashing of teeth and beating of breast, he fastened his hands around her neck.

Happily, some instinct of self-preservation prompted Sidoney to cease vaporing at that point; and she raised to Lord Darby’s face huge tear-drenched eyes that must effectively douse any gentleman’s murderous impulse. “It’s Callie! My poor Callie!” she whispered and then collapsed, weeping on his lordship’s chest.

Chapter Twenty-three

Miss Phyfe wearied early that day of discussions of reform; universal suffrage and the abolition of the property qualifications had inspired in her a monstrous headache. She abandoned her companions in the midst of a lively speculation concerning whether or not Lord Liverpool and his Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, were secretly encouraging revolutionary talk in hope that the more moderate radicals and Whigs would draw away from the more extreme, thus weakening the whole movement for reform. The wilder the talk, the greater the alarmed reactions and the easier to enact all manner of repressive measures. Soon, according to the Friends of Parliamentary Reform, all Englishmen would live in a totalitarian state.

With such weighty matters as these was Miss Phyfe concerned as she wended her way homeward to Harley Street. Her efforts had accomplished little, she reflected gloomily, as she stood before her nomadic cousin’s several-storied rosy brick house. She sighed and mounted the short flight of steps to the pedimented door flanked by neat white pillars, glumly contemplated the brilliant polished knocker in the form of an um. Sidoney would by this time have worked herself into a rare taking, unless Morgan missed her guess.

The perspicacious Miss Phyfe’s judgment had not been adversely affected even by her dully aching head. This rather regrettable fact was made known to her the instant she stepped into Phyfe House. Down the hallway she followed the sound of Lady Barbour’s voice. With no lively tread did Miss Phyfe move, but rather dragged herself from step to step, clutching with both hands at the delicate vase-turned baluster and finely molded handrail. No sudden debilitation caused this queer behavior, but overwhelming reluctance. Nonetheless, Sidoney was a guest in Phyfe House. Morgan had no choice but to determine why her cousin was determined to set the household at sixes and sevens. She reached the upper hallway, traced Sidoney’s shrieks and moans to their source, the drawing room. Curtly bidding several hovering servants to be about their business, Morgan flung open the door. On the threshold she paused, amazed. Had not Lord Darby disavowed all affinity for peageese? What business, then, had the greatest of all peageese to be weeping on his bosom?

Lord Darby glanced up at that moment. How very strange, thought Morgan; he appeared to be clasping Sidoney around the throat. “Hell and the devil confound it!” moaned his lordship, who commanded an excellent view of the doorway. “My darling—”

“Your
darling!”
interrupted Lady Barbour, who faced the other way. “I think you must be queer in the attic, Darby, because you just got through saying I
wasn’t.
This is a very odd way of fixing your interest with a lady—or mayhap you think it whets one’s curiosity when you blow first hot, then cold. Well, it doesn’t! Instead, it makes one very cross! Especially after I have told you it will do you not the slightest good to enact me a Cheltenham . . . oof!”

This latter comment was occasioned by Lady Barbour’s abrupt descent onto the oval-paneled settee, and she paused to catch her breath and push her golden curls out of her eyes before regarding the gentleman who had flung her there. If this was the manner in which common people lived, Sidoney thought she preferred to be cosseted and coddled. For a moment she had even thought Lord Darby meant to strangle her. Instead, he had called her his darling and then flung her away. It made no sense. And then she glimpsed Morgan, standing on the threshold.

“Ah!” cried Lady Barbour, with the glee always afforded her when two and two contrived to total an unremarkable four.
“Now
I see! How silly I am! It was
you
he was calling his darling, Morgan! You must not allow yourself to be misled by appearances, you know. Look, Darby even brought you a present—although why he gave it to
me
to open I shall never understand.”

Lady Barbour’s conversation grated even more than usually upon the sensibilities of the victim of a throbbing brow. Morgan sympathized with Lord Darby, whose hands had so recently been clasped around Sidoney’s neck, and whose expression indicated an urgent desire to do so again. Alas, Morgan could not allow manslaughter to be enacted in Phyfe House. Closing the door firmly behind her, she entered the drawing room.

Lest he succumb to the violence of his suppressed emotions—one of his companions he wished to throttle, and the other to embrace—Lord Darby removed himself from the immediate vicinity of both. Arms folded across his chest, swarthy features grim, he lounged against the monumental chimneypiece. “What present is this?” Miss Phyfe inquired, as she ventured further into the room.

Lady Barbour was not so poor-spirited as to throw a spanner in the workings of romance, even if her depraved cousin had stolen away all her
beaux
. “This
present!” She indicated the parcel which currently rested on the tea urn stand. “It is Mr. Rudolph Ackerman’s
The Microcosm of London,
complete with color aquatint plates. Mr. Pugin drew the architecture and Mr. Rowlandson the figures. We are agreed that you will like it excessively.”

Agreed, were they? Miss Phyfe was in no mood to appreciate this sudden camaraderie. “I thought you didn’t like Darby!” she snapped, clutching the parcel to her breast. “If memory serves, you have been going on at great length about extricating me from the clutches of a monster of depravity.”

“Yes, but that was before I perfectly understood you were
equally
depraved!” protested Sidoney, voluble in her own defense. “Do not deny it! Between pestering Darby to take you to Vauxhall and then kissing him, and your odious pamphlets and your plot to overthrow the king—to say nothing of drinking from the same wineglass as Laurie! It is no wonder Darby thinks you are the very woman to suit his taste. You do not believe me; I can see it in your face. He told me so himself! That he has quite lost his heart!”

“Indeed?” Miss Phyfe contemplated the monumental chimneypiece where Lord Darby fidgeted with the porcelain figures on the mantelpiece and engaged in silent soliloquy, with his ill-disposed Creator. “Then why tell you about it, pray?

Sidoney looked puzzled. “I do not precisely recall. I think because I had thought he had a partiality for me
,
which is not to say that I am puffed up with my own conceit, because before
you
started stealing marches on me, everybody did! Which brings to mind that I meant to ask you
how—
” But Miss Phyfe had abandoned her cousin midspeech. Sidoney turned around backward on the settee, the better to observe the fireplace.

“Is
this
how you seek to please me, Darby?” Miss Phyfe inquired, from the belligerent position she had taken up in front of the pole screen. “By enjoying
tête-à-têtes
with the various female members of my family? I begin to think Sidoney is correct in claiming your tastes are depraved!”

She was not angry, then? Or had Lord Darby mistaken that twinkle in her brown eye? “Thoroughly reprehensible!” he agreed. “Someone must take me in hand, guide my footsteps away from the pathway I tread—or join me on it! You decide; I shan’t quibble. Witness me eager to please.”

What Miss Phyfe witnessed was a diabolically attractive rakehell, and the thought of his reformation kindled as never before her crusader’s zeal. “To date, your efforts to please have hardly thrown me into transports! Perhaps you may atone.”

Definitely, she was not angry; a veritable windfall was Miss Phyfe. With a little smile, Lord Darby tossed aside
The Microcosm of London
and grasped her hands. “I should adore to throw you into transports, my darling! Name your price.”

“Egad!” shrieked Lady Barbour, nearly tumbling over the back of the settee. “How
dare
you speak so to my cousin, Darby! And Morgan, how can
you
permit such impertinence? Or perhaps you do not realize the rogue is offering you a slip on the shoulder? Give him a sharp setdown, I beg! Think of all his amorous vagaries!”

Miss Phyfe
was
thinking of those vagaries, somewhat wistfully. “Sidoney,” she murmured, “do hush! I believe you may have guessed how best you may please me, Terence.”

“I believe I may.” Lord Darby’s disenchanted eyes held an expression very warm. “You want me to speak out in favor of parliamentary reform.”

Was
this
how Morgan had stolen away all her
beaux?
wondered Sidoney. By countering slips on the shoulder with invitations to speak out on behalf of the common man? It was all very confusing. She rested her arms on the back of the settee, and leaned her chin on them, and prepared to achieve enlightenment.

“I am not light-minded,” Morgan said, apologetically. “You must have noticed that. I cannot stand idly by and allow injustice to perpetuate itself. We
must
have annual parliaments and annual elections, so that MPs will become true delegates of their constituents. We must improve our prisons and our asylums. We must remove our children from the factories.”

“Your
children?” wailed Lady Barbour.
“Factories?”
Gracefully, she sank into a dead faint.

“Gracious God!” ejaculated Miss Phyfe, scarlet-cheeked at her bird-witted cousin’s inference.

“Leave her be!” advised Lord Darby, when she would have gone to assist Sidoney. “We will go a great deal forwarder without interruptions, I think. You were saying that you were not light-minded. I know that. I do not care. I hope you may be similarly tolerant toward a lily of the field.”

Feeling absurdly shy, Miss Phyfe fixed her attention on his cravat. “That was very stupidly done of me,” she admitted gruffly. “But you made me feel so awkward and
confused,
which made me very cross with you.”

Lord Darby released her hands and clasped her shoulders. “Are you still cross with me?”

“No.” Boldly, Morgan placed her hands on his strong chest. “Nor am I confused.” And then silence descended upon the drawing room.

Lady Barbour could not bear the suspense. Her swoon had not been well planned out, in that the back of the settee obstructed her view. Cautiously, she raised up. Before the monumental fireplace, Morgan and Lord Darby stood locked in fervent embrace.

“Oh!” whispered Lady Barbour. Her heart was quite wrung with envy, not because she wished to be embraced by his lordship, who looked to go about the business with a vigor she could not approve, but because an unkind Fate had decreed she would never again be embraced by anyone. Unhappily, Sidoney sank back on her heels.

“Goodness!” murmured Miss Phyfe, when she was released. Then she espied Lady Barbour, peering soulfully at her over the back of the settee. “One would expect you to feel embarrassingly
de trop,
Sidoney!”

“Is that what I’m feeling?” inquired Lady Barbour, with keen interest. “Let me assure you, it is excessively unpleasant! But I know my duty, and it would be most remiss in me to leave you alone with a rakeshame. Yes I know
I
have been alone with him, but that is not the point. because I would as lief not have been. Moreover, I may be a slow-top but I know very well how to repulse advances I do not
want!”

“The devil!” murmured Lord Darby, having despaired of intervention from a more divine source. “I didn’t—”