Maggie MacKeever (5 page)

Viscount English was a Member of Parliament, if one that had thus far performed no courageous act. However, ladies devoted to the common good did not easily despair.

“So you have come around to my way of thinking at last, English!” Morgan said, optimistically. “It puts me very much in charity with you, for I am well aware is not easy for a man of your position to defy the popular distaste for public discussion of such things as freedom of opinion and parliamentary reform. Indeed you may encounter some degree of opprobrium; and will probably do no good to your political career! On the other hand, your privileged position prohibits that you need ever risk your physical freedom or your life, as do reformers of the working class.”

These appalling misconceptions Viscount English was quick to set right; he did so with a terse denunciation of his hostess’s seditious practices.

Though too impatient of convention to take offense at this unseemly behavior on the part of a guest, Miss Phyfe disliked to be warned against circulating inflammatory material against the present “happy” constitution. Even more did she dislike being accused of conspiring against the king. Therefore, “Poppycock!” she said. “I think you must be foxed. Or if you have
not
shot the cat, then perhaps exposure to my cousin Sidoney has rendered you equally all about in the head.”

Certainly, the viscount had not shot the cat; he would not achieve that extreme state of intoxication no matter how great his consumption. Even when in his cups, the viscount would be guilty of no serious misconduct. Laurie Frobisher, the Right Honorable Viscount English, was a perfect gentleman, even if he had violated his own code by informing his hostess that he disliked her politics. Lest he transgress further, he abruptly departed the room.

Inured to the abrupt departures of those whom she sought to provide enlightenment, Miss Phyfe contemplated her remaining guests. The evening had gone off well enough, she decided, even if Miss Whateley had spent the larger portion of it cowering behind a potted palm. Despite her dislike of dissipation, Morgan enjoyed playing hostess, a
rôle
which she interpreted as giving her
carte blanche
to try and persuade her captive audience to her own enthusiastic point of view.

Since Miss Phyfe entered into her
rôle
with gusto, it was not long before the last strain of music had been silenced and the last guest had taken his leave. Abandoning the scene of the late revels to her servants, Miss Phyfe mounted the stairs. Once inside her sitting room, she moved to her pine bureau bookcase—japanned bright red and gold—and lit a brass cruise lamp. Since this ingenious device gave off from each of its four burners a flame equal to two ordinary candles, the illumination thus provided cast a warm glow upon the room.

It was a pleasant chamber, enlivened by an entablature with a striking ox-skull frieze. Chintz fabric painted with designs of slender trees graced windows and furniture. Miss Phyfe dropped into a plump wing armchair.

As she did so, a gentle knock sounded at the door. Without awaiting invitation, Lady Barbour drifted into the room, trailing clouds of semitransparent draperies and looking so ravishing
en déshabille
that anyone glimpsing her must immediately realize why her two elderly husbands had not been long for this world. Singularly innocent of any similar rapture, Morgan watched Lady Barbour settle daintily on the love seat.

Once settled, Sidoney yawned. “What a very fatiguing evening, Morgan! I disremember when I have so enjoyed myself.”

That Lady Barbour’s enjoyment had not been the evening’s purpose, Miss Phyfe refrained from pointing out. “Viscount English seemed quite taken with you,” she offered.

“Laurie? Pooh!” Sidoney arched one perfect golden brow. “I may be a peagoose, Morgan, but I see what you are hinting at. Well, you may forget it, my dear! I am persuaded I shall go on much more happily if I do
not
immediately rewed. Indeed, I have not the most distant guess why everyone hints I should! After all, I
am
very snugly placed. And even if I
were
to decide someday that I should like to be tied-up, I certainly wouldn’t wish to be leg-shackled to Laurie!”

Such adverse sentiments, as applied to one of London’s most eligible bachelors, caused Miss Phyfe some bewilderment. A great number of young ladies would have given all they possessed, including diverse teeth and limbs, for the opportunity which Lady Barbour disdained. “Whyever not?” inquired Morgan. “There’s not an ounce of harm in English. He’d never cause you a moment’s alarm.”

That any gentleman should so mistreat Lady Barbour was beyond the bounds of credulity. Sidoney made a
moue.
“That is just the point, my dear. Not that I should
wish
to be mistreated, but I am very tired of being always coddled and cosseted! As if I could do no wrong! Which you and I both know is a great piece of nonsense.”

Because Morgan was fond of her skitterwitted relative, she repressed an impulse to emphatically agree. “Gammon! You’ve been spoiled from the cradle, Sidoney.”               ‘

“That is
just
what I mean!” Lady Barbour was impressed anew with her clever cousin’s ability to quickly delve to the heart of a subject. “I should like very much to discover how other people live. You needn’t tell me I shouldn’t like it; I daresay you would be right. But at least I should
know.
I don’t believe it’s true that an old dog cannot learn new tricks. And if anyone is deserving of learning new tricks, it is me, because I have been married twice already and I have been excessively
bored!
Not that I didn’t care for my husbands, because of course I did!”

“But—” interjected Miss Phyfe.

“But I did not come here to talk about Laurie!” continued Sidoney on a swift intake of breath. Morgan reflected that one or the other of them was laboring under a certain confusion of ideas. Surely Sidoney had not said she would refuse to consider a highly nattering alliance because her prospective bridegroom was not prey to imprudence? “And don’t, I beg of you, speak to me of Newgate Prison and pauper lunatic asylums and children pulling wagons in the coal pits, because to hear of such things makes me very sad, and I don’t know what you think that
I
may do! In point of fact, I don’t know what
you
think to do about them yourself, because for all your complaints I don’t see that anything has changed. Still, I do not mean to quarrel with you, even if you
did
allow Callie to pass the evening behind a potted palm!”

Miss Phyfe suffered a spasm of the exasperation inevitably attendant upon a conversation of this sort. “What was I to do?” she snapped. “Forcibly drag the child out into the room?”

“You
could
have ordered the palm removed! And to do so would not even have caused comment, because it was monstrous ugly!” Obviously deep in thought, Lady Barbour tugged at a delicate earlobe. “As for Laurie, I will not deny that he is a man of fashion and substance, his manners polished, his conduct painstakingly discreet.
Too
discreet! I know he did not wear the willow for me—fancy, he thought I would grow plain and stout! And nothing would induce me to look more kindly upon his suit, providing he decided to dangle after me again, which I very much doubt he will, because he quite forgot to bring me back my punch!”

Chapter Fire

Exhausting as had been their revels, the ladies did not fail to display themselves in Hyde Park on the following afternoon. To do so between the fashionable hours of four and six was
de rigueur
for anyone who wished to make a stir in the world, and Miss Whateley’s lack of that ambition was not shared by her stepmama.

“Mercy!” Lady Barbour said in a low voice. “I vow I am at wit’s end! I have been cudgeling my brain in an effort to discover how to instill in you some confidence, and all to no avail, because what must you do when my back is turned but
hide!
My dear, it will not
do!
Were you a beauty, we might simply introduce you to the
ton
and trust nature to take its course; but you are
not
a beauty, and the way you are going on, nature will require a prodigious amount of assistance! Oh, I wish you would
say
something! You have no more conversation than a ... a
mouse!”

Lack of conversation was not a failing shared by Lady Barbour, reflected Miss Whateley. “The park has a long history,” she offered, less to oblige her stepmama than to distract her from elaborating upon her theme. “Mentioned in the Domesday Book, it once formed part of a forest inhabited by wild boars and wolves. Later it became a royal playground until Charles I opened it to the public.”

Hyde Park still
was a
playground. Lady Barbour thought, as with a vague blue eye she surveyed the undulating parkland with its countless varieties of trees. Fashionable ladies drove out here by the hundreds in elegant equipages, as did the Fashionably Impure; and gentlemen wandered from lady to ladybird at whim. Thought of ladybirds recalled to Sidoney her stepdaughter, but not because Miss Whateley possessed the qualities essential to a successful courtesan. Quite the opposite. Which is an excellent example of Lady Barbour’s thought processes.

“That is
not
the sort of conversation I meant,” she reproved, with an absurdly stern glance. “Better you should say nothing at all than that you should
bore
everyone to death! Goodness, but this is an awkward business. Without looks or countenance or
cooperation,
you are very likely to be left upon the shelf.”

Miss Whateley was growing very weary of hearing herself spoken of in such ungenerous terms. Though Callie supposed it must be very pleasant to admire one’s own image in a looking glass, she saw no particular value in prettiness. Particularly prettiness such as possessed by her stepmama, with its attendant lack of common sense.

Lady Barbour was now looking very gloomy. “Don’t tease yourself!” said Callie. “I would not mind never marrying.”

This attempt at reconciliation did not serve.
“Not mind!”
cried Lady Barbour. And then she became aware that she had drawn the attention of every one of the several gentlemen clustered around the cabriolet, and dimpled, and looked abashed. She would deal with her admirers as soon as her stepdaughter’s misguided notions were set right. Meantime, the gentlemen could listen to Morgan traduce and vilify the constitution and thus improve their minds.

Miss Whateley took advantage of her stepmama’s lapse of concentration to press home her point. “Look at your cousin!” she murmured. “Miss Phyfe manages well enough.”

Lady Barbour did gaze upon her cousin, who was dressed as usual without attention to the dictates of fashion, her riotous chestnut curls escaping the confines of her shabby bonnet. ‘“Well enough, my foot!” Sidoney said. “Although I do not deny that some females would do better to try and avoid the parson’s mousetrap. But you are not one of them, my dear! As for Morgan, she would not manage at all if it were not for the earl, because she is as poor as a church mouse.”

Her stepmama’s brain certainly ran to rodents this day, Miss Whateley reflected.

Lady Barbour sighed. “And I had thought that Morgan would know how to go about acquiring you town-bronze. Instead she is in sore need of taking in hand herself. But it is early days still! You may yet grow accustomed to city life. Though you may lack more flamboyant qualities, you
are
a good, biddable girl! We must not despair so quickly of your making a suitable match.”

With difficulty, Miss Whateley unclenched her jaw. “Oh, do cut line, Mama!”

“Stepmama!” hissed Lady Barbour, with an anxious glance at her courtiers, none of whom seemed to have overheard. “Ungrateful chit! You will tell me you do not care for my high-handedness, but in my position I’ll wager you would act the same.”

Being most unlikely to wed an elderly gentleman with a shy and graceless stepdaughter, Miss Whateley declined the proposed wager. Though she had long since recovered from the shocked discovery that Sidoney had inherited the fortune that should have been hers, Callie would have been less than human had she not harbored a degree of resentment. She did not suspect her stepmama of conniving to avail herself of the larger portion of the Whateley estate. In Callie’s opinion, her stepmama lacked the wit to connive at anything. Callie thought very strongly, however, that elderly gentlemen of doting disposition should be by law prohibited from marrying lovely hare-brains.

Aware that her stepdaughter’s attention had once more strayed, Lady Barbour contemplated the gentlemen clustered round the cabriolet, who were currently engaged in debating with Miss Phyfe the prevalent attitude of the wealthy classes toward the origin of crime, thought to result from the innate malevolence of the criminal, who must be punished ruthlessly to prevent the spread of evil, and never mind if the poor sod hadn’t money to buy a crust of bread. Sidoney had no interest in such dreary stuff, nor sufficient enthusiasm for any of her admirers to interrupt. She awaited their attention, feeling rather flat.

Lady Barbour was not the only person thus afflicted in Hyde Park that afternoon. In a similar spirit of world-weariness, a tall swarthy gentleman engaged in conversation with three dazzling barques of frailty. “No, my darlings,” he said firmly. “I do
not
wish to escort you to gaze upon the wares of Messrs. Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, court silversmiths. Nor am I desirous of inspecting the high perch phaeton which has caught your eye. I’m no pigeon for your plucking, ladies. Nor am I a flat.” Quickly, the ladies—Celestra, Francesca and Annys Milhouse, high-flying sisters as pretty as they were petulant—hastened to reassure him concerning the unmercenary nature of their devotion. It was for the pleasure of his lordship’s company that they habitually waylaid him, they protested, not for the plump proportions of his purse. To these ardent reassurances, his lordship responded with a sardonic request that the sisters cease to try and turn him up sweet.

His name was Terence Darrow, “Devil” Darby to his many enemies and friends; he was the kingdom’s most notorious rakehell. In visage he was not at all handsome, though to his well-turned figure there was an almost feline grace. His disenchanted gray eyes were the best feature in a face most remarkable for the traces of dissipation writ large thereupon. The more romantic of Lord Darby’s admirers—and as Viscount English was to ladies of quality, Lord Darby was to ladies of a different class—were prone to maunder on about his ruined countenance, result of a lifetime deliciously misspent.