Maggie MacKeever (6 page)

Less prone to romantical high nights, the Milhouse sisters were maundering on about the sadly shabby contents of their communal jewel chest. Lord Darby’s mood this day was neither philanthropic nor amorous. Therefore, he bade the sisters good luck in their quest, touched his heel to his horse’s flank and took his departure. Lazily, he scanned his fellow equestrians, in search—as always—of amusement.

Miss Phyfe, meantime, was taking such good advantage of her present captive audience—there was some consolation for the disruption of her routine in that Lady Barbour always attracted potential converts— that in her enthusiasm her voice had grown both husky and breathless, and her shabby bonnet was fetchingly askew. In point of fact, Miss Phyfe herself looked altogether fetching, a circumstance of which she was wholly unaware.

Despite the opportunity hereby granted to sow dissension among the leisured class, Miss Phyfe was not resigned to her plight. If only Sidoney were capable of bringing off Miss Whateley’s come-out herself—but Sidoney could no more manage the affair than pigs could fly, alas. That affair or any other, Morgan amended. She wished she had the funds to render herself independent of the earl, and other members of the family.

“Some authorities claim that poverty and crime result from a deliberate refusal to work,” she went on aloud. “Others insist that positions are available to any who want them. Such nonsensicaltheories will be found wanting when jobless soldiers begin to straggle home from the Napoleonic Wars.”

To this severe assertion, delivered to no one in particular, Miss Phyfe received no response, Lady Barbour having recovered sufficiently from her doldrums to animadvert in her incomparable style. Stern words about the necessity of reform could hardly compete with inanities uttered in a tone suggestive of an imminent attack of giggles. Miss Phyfe’s undiminished zeal focused, therefore, on the defenseless Miss Whateley, thereby prompting that young lady to conclude she had traveled all the way to London merely to exchange conversation that rendered her mute with exasperation for conversation that left her thoroughly depressed.

Miss Phyfe had not that effect upon all her auditors. Lord Darby, while riding through the Park in search of divertissement, had espied the cabriolet. Among the gentlemen flocked around the vehicle were several of his cronies. Lord Darby approached, not averse to making the acquaintance of yet another accredited beauty.

Lady Barbour wore a walking dress of jaconet muslin with a ruff, a delicious confection of a bonnet and a blue levantine pelisse; and it was patent after mere seconds of observation that she was a beautiful peagoose. As quickly as it had been attracted, Lord Darby’s attention strayed. Like Dr. Kilpatrick, he had become inured to beauty, and particularly to beautiful peageese. He glanced at the other occupants of the cabriolet. The youngest he immediately disregarded, shy young misses not being a rakehell’s preference. The other he eyed curiously.

He knew who she was, of course, even though their paths had not previously crossed; the
ton,
to which they both belonged, was very largely a closed community. So this magnificently disordered creature was the seditious Morgan Phyfe. Lord Darby had no eye for fashion, and thus noted not that Miss Phyfe’s raiment was unstylish, but instead that in her careless disarray was a strong quality of
déshabillé.
Long familiarity had not dulled Lord Darby’s appreciation of lovely ladies
en déshabillé.
He edged his horse closer, his intention to eavesdrop.

No current on-dit animated the lady’s classic features, he discovered; no crim.con. tale accounted for the flush on her delicate cheeks. Instead she was going on at great length about the sad inequities of the English political system. How passionate she was, and on so odd a topic—and how that passion made her listeners squirm. Lord Darby was a man appreciative of passion in all its myriad guises. He was as well not a man accustomed to squelching impulse. And so he laughed aloud.

Thus interrupted once more in mid-speech,tion’s source, on her face a distinct annoyance. That face Lord Darby contemplated with all the interest of the connoisseur. Quixotic was the word for Miss Phyfe, he decided, diverted by the combination of perfect oval features with a zeal for parliamentary reform. Almost, he envied her purpose and commitment, the intense enthusiasm she felt for her subject. It had been a long time since Lord Darby had felt enthusiasm about anything, he realized, as his contemplative gaze lingered on Miss Phyfe’s seditious and eminently kissable lips. He continued his assessment and found her complexion flawless, her nose perfectly straight, and her brown eyes remarkably handsome.

Currently those eyes were fixed on his person. In them was an unmistakably unappreciative expression. So unaccustomed was Lord Darby to this reaction—at least from a chance-met female, though the gentlemen of his acquaintance were prone to such—that he began to wonder how he had unwittingly caused offense.

Though she would have thrown herself into the Serpentine before making so lowering an admission, it was not offense that Lord Darby had caused Morgan Phyfe. No female alive could gaze unaffected upon the dark and dissipated countenance of this most devastating of rakehells. Morgan felt as if she had been turned upside down and inside out.

Naturally this sensation made her very cross. “Hah!” she uttered. “Lilies of the field!”

This comment was not at all what Lord Darby had come to expect of chance-met females. Though he was no coxcomb, diverse members of the fair sex
had
been running mad for him since his salad days. Here was no woman to toad-eat a man, hang upon his lips and half-smother him with her caressing ways.

A smile lurked in his lordship’s disenchanted eyes as, ruthlessly, he forced several other gentlemen out of his pathway. “Lilies of the field?” he repeated, when he reached the cabriolet. “Do you refer to my little peccadilloes, Miss Phyfe? I personally would not deem it a proper topic of conversation between virtual strangers, but you must know best. Not that
I
care a button about propriety, so you may please yourself.”

So taken aback was Miss Phyfe that her classic jaw dropped open. Indeed, so astonished did she appear at being addressed in such a manner that Lord Darby briefly regretted his presumptiveness. Not the act itself troubled him, but the suspicion that he had brought down upon himself yet another tedious encounter with yet another romantically inclined female. Lord Darby could not help it that his own overpowering masculinity reduced the most clear-minded lady’s mental faculties to a condition resembling cornmeal mush. Had he been the coxcomb that he wasn’t, he might have admitted that to be irresistible was not to be blessed.

Miss Phyfe’s mental faculties, however, were a great deal more finely honed than any other clear-minded lady of his lordship’s experience. She snapped shut her jaw and set about collecting her scattered wits—a process greatly abetted by the pain attendant upon biting her tongue—and then gave every evidence of resistance.

“Thank you, sir, I shall please myself!” she said. “And it pleases me to inform you that I disapprove
most
strongly of gentlemen such as yourself. You are nothing more than a herd of idle courtiers fattening on the spoils of the public.”

With what a smug expression she watched him, as if she expected him to make a hasty and confused retreat. Lord Darby had no desire to thus withdraw. Genuinely fond though he was of the ladies—indiscriminately so, some unkind detractors claimed—he had recently noticed in himself a certain ennui. Lord Darby regarded the world and all in it with keen irony, including his conquests, and especially himself. That few females similarly amused him was one of the several disadvantages of his remarkable progress.

Lord Darby was a man who enjoyed amusement. “You have a succinct way with a word, Miss Phyfe! ‘A herd of idle courtiers fattening on the spoils of the public’ is quite good, although I think you might make it stronger yet. Perhaps an allusion to ravening flesh or drinking blood.”

Had she misread the nature of the man? Miss Phyfe’s brown eyes opened wide. “I would not have expected such strong stuff from a man of your reputation, Darby. Why is it I did not know before that you are in favor of parliamentary reform? But never mind that! I have been wishing for someone to speak out for the cause in the House of Lords.”

Lord Darby had not achieved his spectacular success by allowing himself to be backed into corners by designing females. “You’ve got the wrong sow by the ear, Miss Phyfe. When I do attend the House, I am less inclined to speak than to snore.”

This genial sally sparked no appreciative smile from his opponent. Instead, she scowled. “Reform will never be achieved until reformers and reformist MP’s make a united assault on a particular injustice. I suppose you were not serious, either, about drinking blood and ravening flesh?”

“Well, no.” Lord Darby exercised his ability to make every female upon whom he gazed feel as if she was the sole source of his delight. “I fear I am incurably light-minded, Miss Phyfe,”

Again Miss Phyfe quite lost her train of thought, as result of which she grew still further incensed. “I am beginning to understand that, sir! I think you must be the very epitome
of frivolity!”

“You disapprove of frivolity?” Here was a notion as intriguing as its proponent, with her deliciously flushed cheeks and askew bonnet and flashing eyes. Lazily Lord Darby smiled. “It is a pity. I would deem you admirably suited to that pursuit.”

Upon receipt of this ignominious suggestion, Miss Phyfe’s breast swelled with wrath. “Then even the knowledgeable ‘“Devil”‘ Darby may be mistaken!” she retorted sharply. “I abhor levity above all else.”

“You may think you do.” His lordship’s appreciative eye alit upon his victim’s heaving bosom, the allure of which was considerably enhanced by the lady’s habitual disregard of such mundane matters as seeing buttons firmly fastened in their buttonholes.

His lazy smile took on a distinctly feral quality. “You may think you abhor levity; I suspect otherwise. And I should deem it a great honor to put my
convictions to the test. No, no, I shan’t allow you to take a rise out of me,” he added, as she parted her lips to speak. “That
would
be most improper, at least in the middle of Hyde Park. But if you are determined to come to cuffs, Miss Phyfe, as your indignant countenance suggests, I would be quite happy to have a turn-up with you in rather less public surroundings. You need only say the word.”

A great many words occurred to Miss Phyfe, as indicated by her sparkling eyes and clenched fists. Lord Darby waited with no little curiosity to see which would gain pride of utterance.

Lord Darby’s curiosity was destined to remain unsatisfied. Lady Barbour belatedly became aware that among the gentlemen clustered around the cabriolet was one who paid not the least attention to herself. The poor fellow must be tired of listening to Morgan ramble on about parliamentary reform and other such seditious stuff. “Pooh! Dull work!” she remarked over her shoulder to Miss Phyfe, simultaneously dimpling at her own bedazzled
beaux.
“Not another word, Morgan, I beg! You must perceive that no one wishes to hear about lunatic asylums and factories and other such dreariness!”

“On the contrary, Lady Barbour,” interrupted the gentleman to whom Morgan had been speaking. “Odd as it may seem in me,
I
do.”

“You do?” Sidoney awarded the gentleman her full attention, and consequently received his full impact. Her blue eyes blinked, then twinkled. “Oho!”

By the indication that anyone should willingly endure her verbal assaults, even Miss Phyfe looked stunned. Then her expression grew, in turn, suspicious, astonished, crimson cheeked. “Surely you aren’t
flirting
with me!” she snapped.

“No, no!” Lord Darby replied softly, meanwhile returning Lady Barbour’s twinkling glance. Lady Barbour was ripe for mischief, he thought. However, it was not Lady Barbour whom he wished to engage in that pursuit. Initially he had been intrigued by the paradoxes presented in the divertingly seditious, delightfully untidy, perversely pleasing person of Miss Phyfe. Then he had been amused by the intense enthusiasm with which she espoused her revolutionary precepts. Now he thought he would like to divert the passion bestowed by Miss Phyfe upon her revolutionary precepts to a much less worthy object, namely himself. “I am not throwing the hatchet at you—but only because you are too high-minded for such unworthy pursuits. Else I think I might very well flirt with you, Miss Phyfe. So we must be grateful that you are so serious.”

For the worthy turn of her thoughts, which deterred the nation’s most shameless rakehell from seeking to strike up a flirtation, Miss Phyfe experienced not the least degree of gratitude. She was consequently furious with herself.

He knew, of course, exactly how she felt, which added further to her uncertainty and her embarrassment. Morgan had a horrified suspicion that nothing would ever be the same again for her, and all because of a swarthy face and a pair of disenchanted gray eyes. “Serious?” she echoed, to break the silence that between them stretched taut.

“Yes, my little virago, serious.” Lord Darby noticed that Lady Barbour’s twinkling look was growing a trifle strained. No gentleman to disappoint a hopeful lady, he gathered up his reins. “Were you less disapproving, I might be tempted to break my own rules.” In fact, he had already done so, and Lord Darby’s philosophy was to go on as he began.

Chapter Six

Feeling rather foolish, Viscount English turned into Fleet Street, cast a wary glance at the ancient tall houses which overlooked the avenue, the shop windows that would be lit with candles come evening, the street criers selling hot green peas and oysters and gilt gingerbread. Once the whole neighborhood had been an ecclesiastical stronghold, home of the Whitefriars and the Carmelites, the Knights Templar and the Bishops of Salisbury. Later it had been beloved of actors and authors and poets who frequented its many taverns and coffeehouses. Now it was home to newsmongers and journalists. But the viscount could not just stand and gape at such alien surroundings. Though he would much rather have not, he proceeded along the street.