Maggie MacKeever (17 page)

It was not only Lord Chalmers who failed to appreciate the feminine mystique. Fennel concluded that a certain duke was similarly unblessed with sisters, else he would have known better than to make so romantically inclined a young lady as Lily a declaration that was devoid of flowery passages, passionate professions of devotion that must extend beyond the grave and avowals of a similar nature, transports that could not help but cast a fanciful maiden into a state of blissful idiocy. In defense of such omission, Fennel pointed out that Kingscote had long been a confirmed bachelor, and therefore probably lacked practice in such endeavors.

“Then he should have practiced!” retorted Lily. “Indeed he
would
have practiced, had he any real fondness for me. Not that it signifies! Because I mean to marry for love, and I cannot love a man who is
old!”

Fennel saw no profit in argument. Though he thought marriage with Kingscote would suit Lily very well, there was no purpose to be served in setting up her back. “What did you say to him?”

“Oh! I expressed myself with the greatest of delicacy. It is unfair of you, Fennel, to infer that I did not! In such situations, I
always
say what is polite.”

Fennel was possessed of an uncharacteristic desire to tear at his hair, his own little problems having already strained his good humor. “But
what
did you say? Don’t look daggers at me, puss! I ain’t accusing you of behaving shabby!”

“I said I must count myself honored, that I was very much obliged, but that I must have time to think.
You
know the sort of thing, Fennel!”

Certainly Fennel did; he had for years listened to rehearsals of similar speeches. “What did
he
say?”

“He begged I give him leave to hope, so I did,” Lily scowled at her handkerchief, which she was in the process of ripping to shreds. “Not that
that
signifies, either, because he may hope till doomsday and it shan’t do him the least good! I shall not let myself be bullied, and so I intend to tell Chalmers and Kingscote and anyone else who may ask, and I don’t care a groat if it
does
mean I shall be locked in my room!”

Horrified by this intimation that Lily was about to throw the first temper-tantrum of her life, Fennel hastily sought to pour oil on troubled waters. “You wouldn’t like it! Trust me, puss! You’d get curst bored with your own company. Better you keep Kingscote dangling until we figure a way out of this coil!”

“If there is a way out,” Lily said sadly. A brief silence descended while the Millikins engaged in ponderous thought. Then Lily sat bolt upright. “Fennel, I have the very thing! Chalmers will not be driven to relent by tears and threats of suicide; Rosemary has  already tried that. Moreover, I perfectly see that to put a period to my existence would be to sink myself quite below reproach! So I shall delude Kingscote into thinking I
will
marry him—and then I’ll elope!”

“Hold fast!” pleaded poor Fennel, clutching his aching brow. “I thought you didn’t
want
to marry Kingscote! And if you
do
want to marry him, what have you been nattering on about this half-hour? Anyway, thought you meant to have the knot tied at St. George’s, Hanover Square, with half the city in attendance! Not that
I
should like it, but you must suit yourself! And I daresay Kingscote don’t care!”

Restored to happy spirits by the evolution of an escape from the worst of all her scrapes, the number of which was remarkable in a lady of tender years, Lily was kindly disposed toward even her thick-headed brother. “Gudgeon! Not Kingscote.”           

“Then who?” inquired Fennel, not unreasonably.

“I have not decided, exactly.” Lily looked pensive. “I must think! Is it not the perfect solution, Fennel? Angelica is not the only one who can be clever! Because when I am discovered to be gone, she can then console Kingscote.”

In such event, thought Fennel, the duke would not be in need of consolation so much as vengeance upon the young lady by whom he had been so thoroughly diddled. To say so would achieve as little as a discussion of the drawbacks of the scheme. Far better, he realized, in one of his sporadic bursts of intuition, to delude Lily into a belief that he would stand her ally, so that she might continue to confide in him. “That’s hit the nail square on the head!” he therefore applauded. “Take your time in making your decision, Puss! Remember you mean to make a love-match.”

“Oh, I shan’t rush my fences!” With energy astonishing in a young lady but so recently teetering on the brink of a decline. Lily scrambled to her feet. “You know perfectly well, Fennel, that if I set my mind to it I can fall in love with anyone!” Having reassured her anxious brother on this head, Lily retired in good order to her bedchamber, there to decide who among her chief admirers was to be befallen by so singular a mark of favor as a flight to Gretna Green in company with herself. Meantime Fennel stretched out upon the needlepoint sofa and pondered the most diplomatic means of intimating to a certain duke that his courtship was in dire need of a liberal spicing of romance.

Chapter Fourteen

Lady Chalmers, all unaware, had followed her eldest sister’s example of discretion, and procured for her own use the services of a hackney-coach, a vehicle that offended both her notion of the dignity of her station and her innate fastidiousness. However, there was no alternative. Rosemary had no wish that her husband should learn of her destination, as he was bound to do had she proceeded there in her own dashing cabriolet, which among its other elegancies bore the Chalmers crest. Already Lord Chalmers was suspicious of his wife, as witnessed by his newfound tendency to stick as close to her as a court plaster, to live practically in her pocket, to exhibit what in a less inimical man might have been called a dog-in-the-manger attitude.

Rosemary made no such mistake. It was no sudden fondness for her, she thought, that caused her spouse to cling like a barnacle to her side; and her own suspicions were borne out by his habit of pinching at her under the guise of what he fondly called “having a comfortable prose.” Since this activity most often consisted of animadversions by the baron on such subjects as the Regent—whose debts and extravagant domestic expenditures had the previous year been brought to light and denounced in parliament, where this year it had been announced that he meant to erect in Rome a monument designed by Canova in honor of exiled Stuarts, an ambition which had led Brougham to suggest that his Regent might profit from that family’s sorry example of being ousted from the throne; who was hated by the working people for a way of life that included chandeliers, in the music room of the Brighton Pavilion, costing in excess of £4,000, and dinner parties where guests chose among one hundred and sixteen dishes—Rosemary could only conclude that her husband had the wind up in regard to her debts, and meant her to be miserable. It was a conclusion further borne out by Chalmers’ predisposition to make subtly accusatory remarks, the gist of which Rosemary failed to grasp, and the delivery of which was ominous. Her husband must dislike her very much, she thought, to expend such strenuous efforts toward cutting up her peace.

Lord Chalmers had succeeded very well in that ignoble intent: Rosemary was very miserable indeed. Her health had suffered to such extent that she had resorted to daily dosages of Godbold’s Vegetable Balsam, for asthma and consumption, and Velno’s Vegetable Syrup, for all else; her rest was every night disturbed by alternate nightmares of being dragged away to debtors’ prison, of being publicly denounced by Chalmers on the floor of the divorce court. Rosemary had a horror of scandal quite commensurate with her exalted rank. She also had a horror of separation from the husband whom, despite his inhumanity, she adored; and a more immediate horror yet of finding bailiffs in the house. Since the bills that she received daily had by now reached staggering proportions, this was not an unlikely contingency. How she had managed to run so deeply into debt, Rosemary did not know. As Fennel had so succinctly stated it, she was in a cleft stick.

Nor, in this ticklish situation, were the various members of the Millikin family in residence beneath Lord Chalmers’s venerable roof proving to be of any practical assistance. If anything, they might have deliberately combined their efforts to make matters worse. True, Angelica had given Rosemary some money with which to stave off her disgrace— but such money as Angelica provided was only a drop in the well of Rosemary’s obligations, and had acted upon her creditors like the smell of blood on ravenous hounds. At any moment, the slavering pack would close in for the kill. How Angelica had come by that money, Rosemary did not know, or even care. She was not feeling kindly toward her eldest sister who, according to Lily, had so far abandoned her responsibilities as to engage in a clandestine romance, conduct that Rosemary felt was most prodigiously unfair.

Then there was Lily, who stood little higher in Rosemary’s affections, due to that young lady’s fits and starts, which had so exacerbated Lord Chalmers that he had read his wife a dreadful scold. Secretly Rosemary sympathized with Lily; Rosemary knew well the less pleasant aspects of a loveless marriage, being engaged in such a match, at least on her husband’s part. Too, Rosemary was a little piqued that Lily stood fair to make even a better match than she had done herself: Chalmers was a mere baron, Kingscote a duke. At least Lily was no longer going about muttering of thwarted romance and promising to sink into a decline. Rosemary supposed her sister had realized she would be obliged to knuckle down.

Nothing, but nothing, was as Rosemary had expected it to be when she so blithely embarked upon a marriage of convenience; absolutely everything had from that day forward gone wrong. Latest among Rosemary’s adversities had been an epistle from the pawnshop where she’d left the Chalmers sapphires, intimating politely that were not the interest due on that item paid promptly, it would be forfeit—an intimation, however politely phrased, that had inflicted its recipient with a spasm from which she had been revived only with vinaigrette and hartshorn wielded by her husband, who had then demanded an explanation of this latest queer start. Rosemary had rendered an explanation, as best she could on the spur of the moment. Even to her own ears it had sounded weak. Apparently it had sounded similarly to her unfond spouse, who had delivered himself of a few pungent and unappreciative remarks concerning vaporish females before taking himself off to Westminster. Or so he claimed. Rosemary believed his destination was more probably a lady-bird of sympathetic and scheming nature, who would immediately seek to further widen the abysmal gap between Lord Chalmers and his wife.

Yet, in justice, her husband had scant time for such recreations between his duties with the government and his assiduous attentions to Rosemary. It was such a puzzle! Rosemary, hitherto convinced that Lord Chalmers had a fancy-piece tucked away somewhere, had lately begun to wonder if perhaps he disliked females in general, and not just herself. But that was a profitless line of speculation; she approached her destination, a destination recommended by no less than Madame Eugénie. Perhaps it had not been the wisest action to confess the extent of her pecuniary embarrassments to the modiste, but Rosemary had not known where else to turn. Madame Eugénie might have in the past exhibited an aggravating determination to be paid, but there was no denying she was shrewd. Nor had Rosemary’s faith in the Frenchwoman been misplaced: Madame Eugénie had uttered some unflattering comments on ladies who sought to satisfy extravagant tastes on extremely slim purses, but she had come across handsomely. In accordance with the modiste’s advice, Rosemary was en route to confer with a certain Mr. Thwaite in Newgate Street.

As in this manner Rosemary pondered her predicament, the hackney-coach proceeded along the Strand, a broad thoroughfare lined with pleasantly proportioned buildings and superior shops, which connected the fashionable West End with the mercantile City. Progress was not rapid, due to the throng of drays and carts, saddle-horses, carriages and chaises; the shopkeepers who now and then ran out onto the pavement to personally usher into their establishments their more important customers. At last the coach won clear of the crush at the Temple Bar, crept beneath the shadow of Newgate Prison, drew to a halt before one of the houses in Newgate Street.

In some wonder Rosemary looked about her. The City, with its warehouses and tenements, was not an area familiar to most members of the
ton,
the main exception being young bloods who considered it rare sport to mingle with the lower orders in the City’s countless public-houses. The vista before her further outraged Rosemary’s fastidiousness. The street was ankle-deep in dust, thick with vendors and merchants and ladies of dubious character. The gutters overflowed with accumulated refuse. The dustman’s clapper pealed, as did the muffin-man’s bell; strident cries of sweet lavender, chairs to mend, cherry-ripe, cockles and mussels, smote Rosemary’s ear. Slops flung from an upper story window caused her to leap quickly aside, only to collide with an old-clothes man, hunched into a long greasy caftan and wearing a tower of hats, who was pushing a barrow-load of unsavory rags. She gasped and escaped into the building that housed Mr. Thwaite.

The interior of that building was little more appetizing than the street outside, the stairway littered with a mountain of rubbish. Rosemary extracted her vinaigrette from her reticule and inhaled deeply of the pungent scent. For the first time, she doubted the quality of Madame Eugénie’s wisdom.

But having been driven by desperation to come so far, Rosemary could not now turn back. As the modiste had shrewdly pointed out, Lady Chalmers would not wish to patronize a moneylender frequented by persons of rank, lest she suffer the embarrassment of there encountering some acquaintance. Certainly no one of her acquaintance would frequent such a hovel as this, thought Rosemary. She had reached the top of the staircase. Screwing up her nagging courage, Rosemary tapped at a certain door.