Maggie MacKeever (20 page)

These profound utterances met with little enthusiasm from the other occupants of the Chalmers drawing room. Fennel, who was striking Byronesque poses before a mirror, glanced at Lily in the glass and abjured her in a brotherly fashion to refrain from enacting them a Cheltenham tragedy; while Rosemary, already much too familiar with Lily’s selfless motives for encouraging Kingscote to dangle at her shoestrings, denied her younger sister even that much heed.

“After the opera!” she said dramatically. “A midnight flit to Calais—Brummel, of all people! They say he lost £5,000 in a gambling hell on Jermyn Street—and then that odious Meyler denounced him as a swindler to everyone who entered White’s. Who would credit it? Of course poor Brummel had no choice but to flee. Had there been a scandal, he would have been asked to resign from his clubs—but heavens! The Beau!”

Fennel saw nothing so remarkable in that yet another dandy had run under the hatches, not even the most illustrious dandy of them all. He gave his narrow white cravat one last twitch, coaxed down a curl upon his noble brow, and turned away from the mirror. Since Rosemary seemed so interested in the ruin of Brummel, Fennel informed her that Mr. Christie was to auction off the belongings of the gentleman of fashion most recently departed to the Continent. One would be able to avail oneself, Fennel had been told, of Sevres vases and snuff boxes and chocolate cups, and a letterscale on a black plinth with Cupid weighing an ormolu heart.

“Fiddle!” responded Rosemary. She was not feeling kindly disposed toward her brother, who had given her a dreadful start earlier that day by using a poker to break off the heads of several bottles of soda,
à
la
his hero, a proceeding that had resulted in a din so awful Rosemary thought her creditors en masse battered at the front door. “First Byron and then Brummel—I declare I don’t know what the world is coming to when gentlemen must flee the country in such a havey-cavey manner due to pecuniary embarrassments.”

Fennel was fond of his sisters, even the starched-up Rosemary, but that Rosemary should get into her airs again was too much to be stomached by a young man who already, and for very good reason, felt a little out of sorts.
“That
won’t wash!” said he. “You’re badly dipped yourself! Don’t pull a long face over me, because it won’t do you any good; I know very well you’re a trifle scorched—you told me so yourself!”

Lily, whose unhappy thoughts had progressed from her failure to kindle Kingscote’s ardor to a contemplation of how Lord Chalmers’s affections might best be sparked, was here urged by her good heart to intervene. It was not kind of Fennel, she remarked, to point out again that Rosemary was first of all the Millikins to try and outrun the constable; nor was it admirable in Rosemary to play the hypocrite. If Mr. Brummel and Lord Byron had deep doings, as they so obviously had, it was not to be wondered at, since gentlemen of fashion were expected to fall into debt. However, ladies of quality were not expected to run similarly aground. Moreover, Lily did not see why Rosemary and Fennel should both glower at her in that unfriendly manner. And were those
sapphires
hung round her sister’s neck?

“What else would they be, silly?” Smugly, Rosemary patted the gems. ‘The Chalmers sapphires, my dears! What do you think of them?”

“A trifle old-fashioned, ain’t they?” inquired Fennel, while Lily expressed an opinion that a heavy necklace of large sapphires was not quite the accessory for mid-afternoon. “I must say,” added Fennel, before Lily’s ill-advised opinion could earn them both a rake-down, “it was very clever of you to get them back, Rosemary! How did you manage it?”

“Hush!” Rosemary cast a cautionary look at the door. “Do you mean to publish it to the world?”

Mention of publication recalled to Lily another little matter, one from which she had derived much amusement. Lily, quite worn-down by the difficulty of determining with whom she should elope, was very much in a mood for additional amusement. “Fennel, what about Phoebe?”

Fennel looked, in that moment, much less like an aspiring poet than like a hunted fawn. “Phoebe?” he echoed weakly. “Who’s this Phoebe? What maggot have you taken in your head now, puss?”

“Why, Fennel! How can you accuse me of such a thing?” Lily clasped her little hands in genuine distress. “It’s true that I may sometimes get the cart before the horse, but I don’t generally make things up out of whole cloth, and I remember very clearly you told me about Phoebe yourself. You said she was a fine vulgar miss and that her mama was a dragon who—”

“Yes, yes!” Fennel interrupted, hastily. “Never mind that— I recollect it now! Nothing to worry your head about, puss!”

“I wasn’t
worried,”
responded Lily, oblivious to Rosemary’s frowning countenance and Fennel’s frantic glance. “Not about that, anyway! I merely wondered if you were able to convince the dragon that your pockets are to let—because the more I think about it the less I like this threat of a breach of promise suit!”

Nor was Rosemary elated by mention of such a thing. Even as her brother verged on departure, she grasped his ear, led him to the needlepoint-covered sofa, and ordered that he sit. Fennel’s long experience with sisters had taught him the futility of argument. He sat. “Tell me of this breach of promise suit,” Rosemary said grimly.

Fennel obeyed. “It was only a bit of frolic!” he protested. “Just a lark! If the dragon hadn’t taken the notion we’re well-heeled, no one would be a penny the worst of it! Phoebe wasn’t adverse to a little flirtation.”

“Flirtation!” pronounced Rosemary, in such dire tones that Lily sped across the room. “How unspeakably odious! Now we
are
undone! Fennel, how
could
you have gone frolicking among the muslin company?”

“Take a damper!” responded Fennel, looking most uncomfortable. “It was no such thing. On the square, Rosemary! I ain’t
that
full of frisk, even if the dragon does accuse me of being a gay deceiver and trying to hedge off.” He dropped his gaze to the floor. “It’s the very devil of a business! I don’t know whether I’d do better to murder the dragon, or to blow my own brains out.”

“How very like you to botch the thing!” Rosemary retorted unsympathetically. “And then to maunder on about doing away with yourself, as if it would answer the purpose. Well, I assure you it wouldn’t! Oh, I could weep with pure vexation! Fennel, you are a cabbage-head.”

Lily, who had hovered undecided by the couch, waiting to see which of her siblings was in most need of her sympathetic ministrations, was horrified to hear Fennel express an opinion, that if Rosemary did not cease moralizing over him, he would forthwith blow out
her
brains. “No, no!” gasped Lily, and threw herself upon her brother. “Fennel, you must not! I’m sure it would be a thing no one could blame in you, because it is most aggravating to be forever nattered away at—and I know all about that because I have been badgered incessantly about Kingscote! As if I
could
find it amusing to keep him dangling, like Chalmers accused me of doing. You were correct, Rosemary: he is an unfeeling brute!”

Rosemary’s spouse had given her no cause to take exception to this accusation, his latest excursion into the realm of insensitivity having been a graphic description of angry workmen currently engaged in destroying threshing-machines and attacking mills and pulling down houses, bands of whom were marching about the countryside waving flags marked “Bread or blood.” Still, she felt no obligation to enter upon a denunciation of her nipfarthing spouse. “ ‘Hedging off,’ Fennel?” she said with determination. “I think you had better tell me the whole!”

This Fennel did, once he had disentangled himself from Lily and assured her that he would wreak no physical violence upon Rosemary, an assurance that did not inspire Lily to relinquish her vise-like grip on his arm. He told Rosemary of his initial encounter with the merry Phoebe Holloway outside the Pantheon Bazaar, of their subsequent trysts, of his last meeting with Phoebe’s mama, who clung with the tenacity of a bulldog to her intention of involving him in a breach of promise suit. “At first I thought
she
was queer in the attic!” Fennel offered in conclusion. “Thought I couldn’t be sued for promises I didn’t make. Now I’m not so sure! The dragon made some very nasty suggestions about the indignity of being brought to court, and what the family might have to say to it.”

What sentiment might be expressed by the family, were Fennel to be prosecuted for failure to keep his promises, whether those promises had been made or not, was quickly aired by Rosemary. “This is all Angelica’s fault! As if it were not bad enough that she should indulge in a sordid little intrigue, she must allow you to do likewise!”

“Flim-flam!” interjected Fennel. “It was no such thing.”

“Oh? Then why is this odious female threatening a public washing of dirty linen?” Rosemary paced the floor. “She could hardly do so were there no dirty linen to wash! One thing is certain, you cannot apply to Chalmers for assistance. It’s been all I can contrive to get myself clear.”

Fennel, in the unenviable position of having given Rosemary his head for washing, as well as his dirty linen to Mrs. Holloway, seized on this red herring gratefully. “How
did
you get clear? If I could similarly come up with sufficient of the ready, the dragon could be bought off. She said she doesn’t
wish
to make trouble, but that it ain’t right Phoebe should go without some compensation for her loss. Which seems fair enough, though I don’t think I’m any great loss!”

Nor did Rosemary, and so she said, which resulted in a set-to with Lily, who considered that her brother had quite enough misfortune with which to contend without Rosemary’s addition of insult to injury. As a result of this spirited defense. Fennel turned to her. “You’re a dashed good girl, puss! Kingscote’s a lucky fellow. Come to think of it, so are you—not a fellow, that is, but lucky! Eh?”

Due to Fennel’s various misfortunes, Lily did not reward this delicate attempt to learn the condition of her emotions with the truth. Though Fennel was responsible for Lily’s efforts to show the duke how well she suited him, and for His Grace’s subsequent offer of matrimony, that was all spilt milk under the bridge, and Lily had no desire to add her own unhappiness to her brother’s budget of woes. “Oh, yes, very fortunate! So fortunate that I sometimes do not quite believe in it! Just think, I might have been left on the shelf. Now let us talk about you and Phoebe.”

Fennel was immeasurably relieved to hear that Lily had grown resigned to her eminently eligible catch. If Phoebe’s mama carried out even half her threats, Fennel would have no time to instruct Kingscote in the proper way to court a damsel prone to romantical high-nights. Seeing that his attention had strayed, the damsel nipped him smartly with her fingernails. “To say the truth,” muttered Fennel, “I’d as lief
not
talk about the silly wench!”

“I’ll warrant you wouldn’t!” snapped Rosemary, from a gilt chair near the fireplace, where she had arranged herself with regal dignity that was marred only by the circumstance that in the process she’d somehow smudged her cheek. “But if we’re to wrap this disgraceful peccadillo up in clean linen, you must!”

“It
wasn’t
a peccadillo!” insisted Fennel. “We didn’t—”

“I beg you, say no more!” cried Rosemary. “Pray remember that you are in a lady’s drawing room! Other females of your acquaintance may not be so nice in their notions, but
I
have no interest in low vulgar talk.”

Fennel had opened his mouth to deliver a scathing, and justly merited, denunciation of Rosemary’s posturing but Lily pinched his arm. “You may tell
me
all about it later!” she promised. “Just now, I think we should decide what you are to do.”

“What
can
I do?” moaned Fennel, as Rosemary contemplated whether it was worth her effort to scold Lily for being an incurable busybody. “The dragon gave me the choice of buying Phoebe off or marrying her—that is, if I don’t wish to be dragged into court. And I don’t wish, more’s the pity, because I don’t see what else is to be done!”

“Marry
her?” screeched Rosemary, so wild with horror at the suggestion that Lily was spared a tongue-lashing, which would doubtless have accomplished as little as its innumerable predecessors. “Fennel, you cannot!”

“It’s sure as check that I don’t want to,” Fennel admitted handsomely. “I don’t like the chit above half! But how the deuce am I to buy her off without any money? Don’t worry, I shan’t apply to Chalmers! He’s such a curst high stickler he’d haul me over the coals and then tell me I must pull my own fat out of the fire! But if Chalmers won’t fork over the rhino for me, who else—” His blue eye lit on Lily. “Kingscote!”

That Fennel suffered a certain dilatoriness of memory, Lily already knew; but she bitterly regretted that the dilatoriness should exhibit itself just then. Since Rosemary was as high a stickler as her starched-up spouse, and consequently couldn’t be trusted to look with approbation upon a huggermugger elopement with a gentlemen as yet undetermined, Lily could hardly in Rosemary’s hearing remind Fennel that she had no intention of marrying Kingscote. Too, though Lily might be embarked upon a course that made of the duke a dupe, such was her feeling for her
fiancé
that she could not relish the thought that anyone else should make him look a fool, as appeared to be Fennel’s intent. Therefore, Lily stated an opinion that to seek assistance of His Grace in this matter would be a trifle indelicate.

“Lily is correct!” said Rosemary, with surprised approval, when Fennel exhibited a tendency toward argument. “Now do hush, the pair of you, for I’ve hit upon the perfect thing. Even Angelica would say so, did she but know if it, which I am determined she will not, because I cannot but consider she is entirely to blame! None of this would have happened had she not kept Fennel on so loose a rein. What Marigold would say I dare not even think!”

Fennel blanched at the intimation that his mother might be informed of his predicament, which would doubtless inspire her to convulsion fits. “No need to tell Marigold!” he protested. “Or Angelica. By the bye, where is she?”