Maggie MacKeever (28 page)

“By Jove!” Lady Easterling briefly forgot her own unhappiness in concern for her friend. “I don’t call it very charitable to wish that poor Sara may be bit!” Once more Lord Carlin nudged her. “Confound it! I don’t know how to tell you this, Georgiana, but Sara has eloped!”

Oddly, the dowager duchess did not seem particularly startled by this blunt announcement. “You amaze me!” she said, in tones that indicated the opposite.

“Dashed if I understand you!” retorted Jaisy, inspired by her aunt’s nonchalance with a sense of grave injustice. “I thought the news that Sara had eloped would put you in a tweak. Instead you ain’t even miffed. And you was always boring on at me about propriety! It’s you as is heedless of the conventions, aunt! If you don’t
mind
that Sara should run away with Arthur, you should have let them do the thing up properly.”

During this imprudent outburst, the dowager’s eyes had narrowed and her lips had thinned. “Arthur!” she repeated, in tones so ominous that Jaisy shrank closer to Kit. “What have you been about, miss?”

Though Lady Blackwood’s wrath was an excellent excuse to snuggle closer to Lord Carlin, who it must be remembered had a weakness for damsels in distress, Jaisy walked in trepidation of no one. “I have a great kindness for Sara,” she said, with immense dignity. “She wanted Arthur, and so I arranged she should have him, because no one deserves to be happier more than Sara, after all the years during which you have bullied her and made her miserable.”

Lady Blackwood’s raddled features had assumed an alarmingly ruddy hue. “Cawker!” she ejaculated. “Jackanapes! Nodcock!”

“A
mincing court-card!” agreed Jaisy. “A man-milliner! And you wished to marry him off to
me!”

“Not Arthur!” Georgiana snapped.
“You!”

Was her aunt in her dotage? wondered Jaisy. Or was the fact of Sara’s elopement with Arthur too much for her to grasp? “Not me, but Sara!” she generously explained. “That’s what I have been trying to tell you. They’ve flown to Gretna Green.”

As if to release her pent-up frustration by an expenditure of energy, Lady Blackwood rose from her crocodile couch. “I was not referring to elopements,” she retorted, “but to who was the greatest pudding-head!”

“Pudding-head!” echoed Jaisy, incensed. “As if it were not bad enough that Fate had drawn my cork and spilled my claret, now you accuse me of being crack-brained! It is very bad! But even though I
have
been napped a rum ‘un, Georgiana, you stand to be outjockeyed yourself, because you can’t make me marry a silly chub who’s run off with someone else, no matter
how
much you cudgel your brain. I refuse to do it! So you needn’t try to prevent Sara reaching Gretna Green!”

The dowager’s response to these intelligences was awesome; so incensed was her demeanor that Lord Carlin wondered if she was indeed prone to seizures and spasms, and Lady Easterling retained her own composure only with great effort.

“Oh, I say!” came a sleepy voice from the doorway, making them all start nervously.
“Has
Miss Valentine eloped? Hanged if she isn’t an enterprising minx!” Arthur then became aware that of the three pair of eyes fixed on him, none was especially sympathetic. “Have I intruded on a private conversation? I didn’t mean to! The racket woke me up and I came to see what caused the fuss! Look, I will go away!”

“Oh, no you won’t!” Lady Easterling detached herself from Lord Carlin and grasped Arthur’s bright yellow sleeve. “What the devil are you doing
here?”

“Where the devil
else
would I be?” Arthur twitched his arm away and anxiously inspected his sleeve. “If you’re referring to the farrago of nonsense you shoved under my door— and your penmanship is abominable; half of it I couldn’t even make out!—and the half I
could
was caper-witted enough! Elope! You’re queer in the attic! A man don’t elope with his fancy-piece!”

“Fancy-piece!” echoed Lady Easterling and her aunt, in uniform consternation, which was the sole occasion on which they were ever in accord. Shaken but still game, Arthur stood his ground. “Call her whatever you like, the facts remain. Miss Valentine is a designing woman, an adventuress, a Jezebel—and ‘twas you yourself who told me so, Jaisy, because I thought she
did
have a cinder in her eye!”

Could
it have been a simple cinder that had prompted Sara to invite Arthur’s attention? Jaisy wondered belatedly. If so, she had done her friend a grave injustice. “Oh, no!” she breathed.

“Exactly so!” observed the dowager duchess, dryly. “You see—”

“I see you will resume bullying me to marry Arthur!” cried Jaisy. “And I won’t! Pack me off to the country like you have done my poor Sara—do whatever you want! Because no matter
what
you do I won’t be married to a nodcock!”

“Oh, I say!” Arthur interjected indignantly.

“What
I
was going to say,” Georgiana interrupted, “is that I am very pleased with Arthur for not going through with a singularly bird-witted elopement. Indeed, I do not recall when I have been so pleased with anyone. I believe I must reward you, Arthur. What manner of reward do you wish?”

Only briefly did Mr. Kingscote indulge in visions of lifetime allowances and raiment in such a very high kick of fashion as to make all the other would-be dandies stare. “I wish,” he said, with fingers crossed,
“not
to be married to a rag-mannered baggage that will be forever ripping up at me, to say nothing of boxing my ears!”

Lady Blackwood regarded her
protégé,
all generous impulses obviously fled. “She is a
wealthy
baggage. You would do well to reconsider.”

“No, he wouldn’t!” interrupted Jaisy. “Because I would make it my sole aim in life to make him miserable! Anyway, you gave your word, Georgiana. To retract now would not be honorable.”

“Honorable!” hooted the dowager. “Balderdash!”

“I
won’t
marry her!” insisted Arthur, adopting a bellicose stance that went ill with his lime-green kerseymere pantaloons, frilled shirt and padded yellow coat. “I’ll put an end to my existence before I marry such a madcap!”

“You will, will you?” inquired the dowager duchess pettishly. Jaisy sought relief for her indignation in tears.

Into the resultant fray, Lord Carlin leapt. His silence throughout the preceding encounter is indicative of no lack of interest therein, but quite the opposite. Lord Carlin’s lack of comment resulted from preoccupation with the busy activity underway in his brain. Whether Sara Valentine was or was not an adventuress did not particularly concern him, nor whether Arthur Kingscote was the fashionable fribble he appeared. Lord Carlin was too busy exploring the possibility that Lady Easterling might be married against her will to a man she obviously could not regard as highly as a wife should regard her husband, a man who was obviously incapable of preventing her from landing continually in the briars; and exploring his own emotional response to it.

What was it Jevon had said about wanting what one could not have? It occurred to Lord Carlin that perhaps not only females suffered this weakness. Obviously the dowager duchess did not intend that he should have Jaisy, being busily involved in bestowing her elsewhere.

But did Lord Carlin want her? This was the point that so occupied his mind. Certainly he thought of Jaisy at queer times of the day and night, and very pleasant were those ruminations centered upon the rag-mannered little baggage who had made at him a dead-set—but what was this? Arthur Kingscote was going on at great and bitter length about the occasion on which Jaisy had boxed his ears.

“Cut line, cawker!” said Kit, so suddenly that Jaisy uttered a little shriek. “I have heard quite enough of this nonsense. Lady Easterling not only boxed
my
ears, she kicked me in the shins and put horrid creases in several of my sleeves. Do you hear me boring on about my mistreatment at her hands? You do not. And do you know
why
you do not hear me say such things?”

Lord Carlin’s attitude was so very pugnacious that Arthur tugged at his cravat, suddenly grown tight. “Because you liked it, I suppose!”

“No! Because to speak thusly of a lady is ungallant!” Lord Carlin paused and frowned. “At least I
think
that’s why.”

Not the least bit interested in Carlin’s reasons for taking up the cudgels in her niece’s defense, Georgiana returned to the attack. “Do stop sniveling!” she advised Jaisy. “Since Arthur doesn’t want to marry you—yes, Arthur, you may have your wish!—we must think of something else. But you needn’t think your interference in my business will go unpunished, miss!” Jaisy wept all the harder, envisioning herself subjected to rack and thumbscrews.

As did Arthur, who, freed of the sword which had hung over him, could now afford to be generous. “Oh, I say!” he protested. “No reason to be hard on the chit!”

“No reason!” Lady Blackwood turned on him a look that made Arthur wish his kind words had never left his mouth. Lord Carlin meanwhile reached a decision, and reached out for the sobbing Jaisy and drew her to his side. “No need,” said he. “Jaisy has misbehaved and she is very sorry for it— aren’t you, puss? And in the future she will be entirely too busy with
my
business to meddle elsewhere.”

Not surprisingly, Lady Blackwood took strong objection to this further meddling on the part of his lordship. Nor was she reluctant to express her displeasure. For a space of several moments, pandemonium reigned. Into this affray walked Sir Phineas. He gazed about him in astonishment. The dowager duchess stood behind her crocodile sofa, her hands clenched into fists, her raddled face distorted with rage, exchanging insults with an equally irate Lord Carlin, who clasped a wide-eyed and tearful Lady Easterling to his side. Also witness to the skirmish, if removed as far as possible from the combatants, was Arthur Kingscote, a very incongruous figure in conjunction with the Egyptian hieroglyphic wallpaper.

Sir Phineas was in no frame of mind to appreciate so bizarre a scene. “Silence!” he bellowed. Instantly, he was obeyed. “What in blazes is going on here?”

Before the dowager could speak, Lord Carlin did so, and in terms that temporarily divested her of the ability; Lord Carlin was not without skill in arms, though he lacked experience in the art of outright warfare. No mean foilsman, he had never crossed blades with a lady—but now that he had been inspired to set up his standard, unsheathe his
épée
and throw away its scabbard, he had not the least compunction about not only fleshing his sword but administering a
coup de grâce.
“I was just informing Lady Black-wood,” he said calmly, “that I am going to marry her niece.”

“Marry!”
echoed Jaisy, recovering the use of her tongue in the same instant as Georgiana lost her powers of speech. “Oh,
may
I?”

Lord Carlin looked down into the lovely face turned up so anxiously to his. “Yes—but only if you are very, very good.”

“I will be, I swear it!” Lady Easterling promised, with reckless bliss. “As good as good can be! And to think I thought you wasn’t
trés sympathique!”

“My darling!” responded his lordship, profoundly stirred by his lady’s reckless promise, which he interpreted as evidence of innate nobility.

“Pish tush!” observed the dowager, singularly unmoved. “What if I refuse consent, eh?”

“You wouldn’t!” Jaisy cried. “Even you couldn’t be so unfair!”

Could she not? Unpleasantly, Lady Blackwood smiled. Once more, Lord Carlin forestalled her malice. “It doesn’t signify,” he said to the damsel encircled so comfortably by his arm. “Jevon gave me
his
blessing some time past. Any objections put forth by Lady Blackwood to our union can only be construed as sour grapes. But why are you looking so unhappy, puss?”

“I was thinking of poor Sara!” sighed Jaisy, unwittingly relieving her newly acquired
fiancé,
who feared she had guessed his ungrateful reaction to the blessing Jevon had so prematurely bestowed. “Perhaps if she
isn’t
embarked upon a kissing spree, we can have her with us. Which leaves only poor Jevon, and I do not see any way he may be made happy, because once he has married his opera dancer Georgiana will cut him off without a farthing and everyone else will deny him the
entrée.”

“Opera dancer?” echoed the dowager duchess, and sank down abruptly upon the crocodile couch. “I should think I might!”

It was Sir Phineas’s moment before the footlights. He stepped forward without the slightest hesitation, and without the least stage-fright.
“That
contingency you need not consider, Georgiana!” he said sternly. “Although had it come about, you would have only yourself to blame—and maybe this will cure you of making mischief!”

Curiously revitalized, the dowager sat erect. “I doubt it!” she said wryly. “Furthermore, I suspect you have been meddling yourself.”

“I have.” Before her baleful gaze, Sir Phineas did not flinch. “And if you do not like it, I quite frankly do not care a fig. You may take your business elsewhere, and it is all the same to me—because, Georgiana, you give me a bellyache!”

So astounded by these uncharitable remarks that they ceased to stare besottedly at one another, Lady Easterling and Lord Carlin braced themselves for an outburst of the dowager’s wrath. When it was not forthcoming, they exchanged perplexed glances and approached the crocodile couch. Georgiana was bent double, her raddled face hidden in her hands.

Sir Phineas, too, crept closer, his plump face concerned. From the dowager’s contorted person issued the same bizarre sounds as had previously astonished an eavesdropping Moffet.

When she considered her audience sufficiently conscience-stricken—and were she not in so excellent a humor she would have seen to it that they all paid dearly for their various displays of impertinence—the dowager straightened. “Green-head!” she remarked to Sir Phineas, whose anxious features were first within her view. “Why should I take my business elsewhere after you have done precisely what I wanted you to do, and achieved that of which I had almost despaired? Perhaps you would consider an introduction to Jevon’s opera dancer as suitable reward? You may console the wench in his stead!” She gazed upon the countenances clustered around her, Carlin and Jaisy looking uniformly bewildered, Sir Phineas’s features grown alarmingly red.