Maggie MacKeever (7 page)

So perfectly did a sigh punctuate her thoughts at that moment that Lady Davenham briefly believed she had herself expelled breath. Then she realized she had not. She glanced away from the beaver hat to discover that a mischievous-looking damsel had perched upon the nearby japanned chair. The girl wore a plain calico morning dress. Her eyes were big and brown, and her blonde curls were dressed in full ringlets on either side of her enchanting face.

“It
is
a nacky bonnet, ain’t it?” she sighed anew. “Or maybe I should more properly call it a hat, or a capote, or a toque. For the life of me I can’t recollect the difference, not that I think it matters one whit!” She giggled, and looked guilty, and clapped her hands to her lips. “There I go, jawing on again, after my aunt said I must not. But a person gets deuced dreary talking to herself. Beg pardon if I’ve said something I shouldn’t, I’m sure! My name is Melly Bagshot, ma’am.”

“And I am Lady Davenham,” responded Thea, smiling at the deplorable manners of this beguiling minx. “Madame le Best is your aunt?” It was only an idle query, but all Melly required to launch into a spirited explanation of her hotfoot departure from Brighton, complete with details concerning Captain and Lady Birmingham, pricked thumbs and missed parades and dinners in the regimental mess hall. “Gracious!” Thea said faintly, when Melly paused for breath.

“Oh, I am sadly bird-witted,” confided that unrepentant damsel. “I only get out of one pickle to tumble into another, and Aunt Hel ain’t at all happy about it, I can promise! But that’s the way it
is
with me. There’s wild blood in the Bagshots.”

“Bagshot?” echoed Lady Davenham, “Is your aunt’s name not le Best?”

Melly grimaced. “Oh, it is! My aunt’s French! She lost all during the Revolution—or her family did.
My
family, that is! We have come down in the world, you see. You may trust my Aunt Hel to turn you out in prime style, ma’am. But bless my soul, here I am jawing on, just like I said I
shouldn’t.
Please don’t tell my aunt that I’ve been misbehaving, or she’ll
never
let me set foot out of this blasted shop!”

Thea was enough of a Davenant to recognize a damsel prone to larks and frolic, and to understand how such a damsel must deplore being restrained. With no little sympathy, Thea glanced at Madame le Best. Melly cautiously followed suit. Her attention was immediately caught by the gentleman with whom Madame conversed. “Bless my heart!” she said.

Lady Davenham could not help but be amused by the admiration on her companion’s elfin features; it was an expression she had glimpsed on numerous female faces of late. “The gentleman is my cousin, Sir Malcolm Calveley,” she explained. “He has recently returned to England after several years abroad.” Whether Malcolm had benefited from that sojourn, Thea was still not prepared to say.

Lady Davenham’s cousin? Melly thought not. In her experience, gentlemen did not usually accompany their cousins to milliners’ shops. She eyed her companion with new respect. Then Melly looked once more at Sir Malcolm. There was a gentleman who would well understand a girl’s little weaknesses, she thought; it would have been the sunniest of all days had he fallen in
her
way. “It’s almost more than flesh and blood can stand!” she sighed.

That sigh interfered greatly with Madame le Best’s concentration, interrupted in mid-speech her dissertation upon the relative advantages and disadvantages of Indian and Chinese and French gauze. No sooner did she pause than Sir Malcolm grasped the opportunity to beckon to his cousin. As he did so, he noticed the damsel seated next to her. As was his habit, he smiled.

“Monsieur has described to me exactly the gown milady requires,” Madame le Best enthused, as Lady Davenham approached. “Monsieur exerts himself to bring milady into fashion. Milady is very fortunate to have a—ah!—cousin so
sympathique—
and very wise to allow him to guide her in setting herself up in the latest mode.”

“The latest mode?” echoed Thea, doubtfully. “I don’t think—”                                   

“Do you not trust me, my Thea?” inquired Sir Malcolm, withdrawing his attention from the pretty damsel who had responded with a roguish glance to his appreciative smile.
There
was no frustrated thirst for adventure, he reflected, with amusement. “You will take the shine out of every other female at your rout.”

“Oui,”
agreed Madame le Best, with what she fancied was a Gallic gesture. “It is assured!”

Lady Davenham reminded herself that Malcolm’s appearance at her rout was the first step toward settling him with an eligible wife, and that Malcolm had threatened
not
to appear unless she obliged him concerning this matter of a gown. “Have it your own way, Malcolm,” she said, resigned, as she permitted Madame le Best to guide her toward the atelier. “You generally do!”

Generally he achieved his object with a great deal less effort, Sir Malcolm reflected, as the milliner disappeared with Thea into the workroom, there to subject her to a stern lecture upon the underpinnings most flattering to the current mode—a long chemise of linen, reaching well below the knees; light flexible stays; a cotton petticoat. in warm weather and fine flannel in the cold, and then the gown or slip; or, if one was
very
daring, nothing but tights—and, in general, to give her ladyship a world of good and wholly unappreciated advice.

As his cousin was initiated into the mysteries of the atelier, Sir Malcolm surveyed the showroom, a small abstracted frown on his sun-bronzed brow. No dislike for furnishings in the Chinese taste prompted that indication of dissatisfaction; after life abroad, he was finding England very tame. If only Lord Davenham’s attention might be diverted from his garden to his wife, then his wife’s attention might be diverted from Sir Malcolm, who consequently would be free to pursue his own preferred diversions, among which were not
levées
and
soirées
and routs.

As Sir Malcolm frowned upon the showroom, Melly in turn contemplated him, from the corner of the chamber where she had withdrawn in hope of placating her aunt. Sir Malcolm was positively cudgeling his brain, she decided, else he would have long since become aware that a very merry pair of eyes peered at him over the top of a volume of
The Gallery of Fashion.
Melly didn’t think Sir Malcolm was generally oblivious to such things. A resourceful lass, she closed the book and callously let it drop, conduct that would have appalled her aunt, who had carefully collected each of the monthly issues of
The Gallery,
and who was very proud to possess the entire nine volumes, containing in all two hundred fifty-one hand-colored aquatints.

“What the deuce?” inquired Sir Malcolm, startled by the noise of the falling book. Setting aside the puzzle of whether or not Thea still nourished a
tendre
for him, and the resultant puzzle of whether or not he had to consider her sensibilities—Sir Malcolm always considered the sensibilities of the ladies who on his behalf had been stricken by Cupid’s darts—he turned to discover the distraction’s source.

By a mock-bamboo bookcase stood a girl, and at her feet a book. She had clasped her hands to her breast in an attempt to look dismayed—an attempt wholly set at naught by the dimples in her cheeks and the twinkle in her big brown eyes. Sir Malcolm, result of long experience, immediately recognized a lure cast out. Gallantly, he bowed, and with a bewitching smile restored the damsel’s book.

“Why, bless my soul!” giggled Melly, with fluttering eyelashes and an arch glance. As Sir Malcolm parted his lips to respond in kind, a stem voice issued from the atelier.

“Eh, bien!”
said that voice. “Monsieur,
regardez!”

“If that ain’t just my luck!” Melly sighed.

In Madame’s hand were several sketches, and on her face a darkling look. She nudged Lady Davenham, whose doubtful attitude was doubtless result of Monsieur’s conversation with Madame’s own scapegrace niece.
“Allons!
We shall make Monsieur’s eyes pop right out of his head.”

Roused by Madame’s sharp elbow from speculation upon the cause of her cousin’s sudden interest in her wardrobe, and appalled by Madame’s misinterpretation of that interest, Lady Davenham gasped: “But I do not want—”

“Zut!”
hissed Madame, vowing to award Melly a proper trimming immediately after the showroom was cleared of customers. “Of course you do.”

Malcolm rejoined them then, scrutinized Madame’s sketches. Covertly, Thea stared at him.
Could
the milliner be correct in her assumptions? Lady Davenham honestly did not know.

Chapter Seven

Despite Lady Davenham’s assurances that old
on-dits
would remain buried, Lord Davenham was even then discovering that the ancient scandal concerning Sir Malcolm Calveley had arisen moldering from its crypt.
“What
old tittle-tattle?” he inquired, somewhat plaintively, of the gentleman who sought to acquaint him with that distasteful fact. “I thought we were talking of growing plants without using soil, by feeding them on solutions of water and mineral salts. Are you quite sure you’re of sound mind, my dear James?”

“As right as a trivet!” responded his lordship’s companion, a bluff and plain-spoken country squire. “Everybody is talking about it. I thought I should drop a hint or two. Never have I known such a person as you are for keeping yourself well wrapped in lamb’s woo.

The perplexity that had appeared on Lord Davenham’s serenely handsome features, as result of his friend’s allusion to Sir Malcolm Calveley’s reprehensible history, magically cleared away. “Yes, let us talk of wool!” he responded enthusiastically. “Will you attend Coke’s clippings this July? What improvements the man has brought about in his flocks and harvests! I am promised for the Woburn sheep-shearings, under the auspices of Bedford, also. Tell me, James, which breed do you favor? Romney Marsh or Border Leicester?” He looked contemplative. “I have decided to revive the use of black-spotted Jacob sheep as ornamental lawn-mowers in my parks. It was such a charming custom. Legend has it that they first arrived in Britain after the defeat of the Armada—swimming ashore from the shattered galleons, you know!”

“What I know
is
that you are attempting to pull the wool over my eyes.” The squire had been acquainted with Lord Davenham for the larger portion of his lifetime, and therefore knew that his lordship’s evasive manner stemmed from a sensitive nature and an innate desire for privacy. “I will not let you do so. It is ridiculous, in a man of your rank, to seclude yourself like a hermit—yes, and dangerous.”

“A hermit, James?” Hermits did not ordinarily possess wives rumored to be running wild over other gentlemen, Lord Davenham reflected, as he responded to his friend’s ominous predictions with a gentle smile. “I am not so secluded as all that. Have we not just departed the spacious auditorium of the Royal Institution of London, where we listened to an erudite speculation upon the nature and propagation of light? Am I not even now walking with you down Fleet Street, en route to the Temple, on some legal errand of your own? You may note, James, that I have not inquired into the nature of that business.”

“And you wish I would be similarly restrained,” deduced the squire, a short and portly individual with complexion of a ruddy outdoors hue, and a temperament that did not shilly-shally around a point. “I’m sorry I must disappoint you. If you won’t think of yourself, Vivien, at least think of your wife!”

“My wife?” This advice caused a disquieting gleam to appear in his lordship’s eye. “You would do much better to stick to sheep, James. Or if you do not care for sheep, there are always turnips. Townsend recommends them highly as winter feed.”

No one who did not love his lordship would ever attempt to engage him in a personal conversation, so much did he dislike them, but the squire knew where his duty lay. A man with an interest in land management equal to Lord Davenham’s own, James would much rather have conversed about such practical matters as sheep-shearings and crops. However, Vivien was in a spot of trouble, and he must be made to see that it would not be simply wished away.

Rudely, the squire expressed an adverse opinion of Lord Townsend’s turnips. Having thus secured Lord Davenham’s amazed attention, he continued inexorably. “You may as well listen to me and have it over with, Vivien; I shan’t be silenced on this head! People are very curious about Calveley’s sudden return to England —almost as curious as they were about his departure. You can’t stop their speculations by burying your head in the sand.”

“Sand?” His lordship gazed vaguely downward as it he expected to find himself knee-deep in that substance. Perhaps James did not perfectly comprehend that a change of subject was prudent? His lordship dropped a gentle hint. “James, have you ever considered having your swamps drained? It should have been done long ago. I suspect your agent isn’t doing his job properly.”

“The devil with my agent!” snapped the squire, determined to be distracted neither by Lord Davenham’s digressions nor the importunations of the countless street-sellers who thronged the ancient thoroughfare. “Consider, Vivien: Le Roué! The Princess Borghese!”

Lord Davenham did consider, wearing a faint frown. His old friend had the tenacity of a bulldog. “You are speaking of my cousin,” he observed, “although I fail to see what Malcolm has to do with draining your swamp. Unless you are thinking he would make a better agent? My dear James, that settles it. You are
not
of sound mind!”

“Not my swamp!” persevered the squire, with an exasperated glance. “No, nor my agent! It is Calveley I wish to discuss.”

Looking slightly shamefaced, like a street urchin caught out in some rude act, Lord Davenham bought some steaming chestnuts from a street-seller and popped several into his mouth. “I know you wish to discuss my cousin, James, but I do not. In point of fact, I do not want to even think about Malcolm.” Before the squire could voice further objections, his lordship embarked upon a brilliant refutation of the theories they had just heard concerning the nature and propagation of light.