Maggie MacKeever (12 page)

“I
do
wish to please you. Miss Phyfe,” the rakehell said.

He had pleased Sidoney very well, by Sidoney’s own admission. “Me and half the other ladies in London!” Morgan snapped.

His lordship’s disenchanted eyes twinkled. “You overestimate me, my darling—yes, I know you are
not
my darling —I would not place the figure
quite
so high. But you are making a piece of work about nothing. It might be an altogether different case had I called your cousin’s bluff when she threatened to find someone else to take her to Vauxhall.”

“She did
what?”

“Precisely.” His lordship’s tone was wry. “As I have had good cause to remark on several occasions, the lady is a cabbagehead. However, her curiosity has now been satisfied, and I doubt she will wish to visit Vauxhall again, so there was no harm done. Let us talk of something more pleasant, now that these various awkward misapprehensions have been cleared up.”

Would that they
had
been cleared up! Warily, Morgan eyed her guest. “Let me make sure I understand you, sir! You did not
wish
to go to Vauxhall with Sidoney?”

“No more than I wish to go to the devil, and I was given as little choice!” Lord Darby grew impatient. “My dear Miss Phyfe, my notion of purgatory is an interminable evening spent in company with a beautiful muttonhead, which even Lady Barbour’s keenest admirer cannot deny she is.
Now
may we have done with this?”

In Morgan’s experience—not that her experience was great—no gentleman would, even for purposes of deception, speak of his ladylove in tones of emphatic loathing, as his lordship had just done. Therefore, she must acquit his lordship of dangling after Sidoney.

Alas, that was only half the problem. “I think,” Morgan said gloomily, “that you should be kept under restraint!”

It was Lord Darby’s turn to look perplexed. Why should Miss Phyfe wish to see him chained and fettered? Politely he dared ask.

“Because you make conquests even where you would rather not!” Miss Phyfe retorted sharply, then sighed. “I’m sorry! I realize it is not your fault. I suppose I had better tell you exactly what Sidoney said.”

From confusion his lordship had progressed to distinct unease. “Yes,” he said unenthusiastically, “I think you must.”

Without further preliminary, Miss Phyfe obliged with an account of her confrontation with her skitter-willed cousin on the previous evening—or, to be precise, during the wee hours of this mom. As Lady Barbour had anticipated, Morgan had been greeted upon her return to Phyfe House with the intelligence that Sidoney had gone out. As Lady Barbour might have also anticipated, Morgan had waited up to personally witness her wayward cousin’s return. It had been a long vigil, and her patience, had accordingly suffered. Nor had Lady Barbour’s condition, when she at last put in an appearance, soothed Morgan’s frayed nerves. She had been utterly aghast to discover that her cousin was, not to put too fine a point on it, as drunk as a lord. Lord Darby, who had never been drunk in all his life—which was the single point of common interest that he shared with Viscount English, and which was also his sole claim to virtue—here inserted an explanation that excessive boskiness was frequently resultant upon a person’s first acquaintance with Arrack punch.

“Then you should not have allowed Sidoney to become acquainted with it!” retorted Morgan, most unfairly. At that particular moment she would herself have benefited from an introduction to Arrack punch. “Oh, what a dreadful muddle this is. Because though you may not like it, I am very much afraid that Sidoney is very far gone in infatuation, sir!”

Lord Darby was growing very weary of talking about Lady Barbour and equally tired of watching his hostess perambulate restlessly about the drawing room. It was not her actions that fatigued him—Lord Darby could have watched his exasperated darling perambulate until the proverbial cows came home, and with each additional turn she took around the room find something new to admire, such as the tantalizing glimpse of exquisite ankles afforded by her swishing skirts, and the charming manner in which her chestnut tresses tumbled forward on her lovely cheeks each time she turned her head to scowl—but the lack of attention with which those perambulations were performed. Thus far, she had narrowly avoided collision with a card table of Italian walnut, an oval-backed chair, and an embroidered pole screen. “Miss Phyfe, pray stop fidgeting!” he begged.

She flushed, sat down quickly upon the settee. “Forgive me! I have quite forgotten my manners. Will you be seated, sir?”

Now that Miss Phyfe was no longer blocking his pathway, his lordship in his own turn paced. “There is no need to be so infernally polite!” he retorted. “Do not look so stricken; I am not cross with
you.
It is this infatuation that you speak of, and if you are correct. Miss Phyfe, it is rather more than flesh and blood can bear.”

In his lordship’s blunt speech, Morgan found several causes for discontent. She dealt first with the most pressing. “I have not the slightest concern with whether you are cross with me or not, Darby.”

His lordship was definitely out of favor with his Creator, he reflected, as he contemplated the specimens of classical sculpture that adorned the canopied niches of the monumental chimneypiece. “Forgive me, Miss Phyfe. I forgot to whom I spoke.”

Not surprisingly, this ineptly phrased apology—so unfortunately evocative of the countless females to whom Lord Darby had in his misspent lifetime spoken—did little to ease Miss Phyfe’s resentment. She added: “Nor do I think it kind of you to suggest that
I
am all about in my head! I am not the member of this family to be thus afflicted, and it is very poorly done of you to suggest that I am seldom correct, especially after you have just gone to great lengths to hint that I might persuade you to pledge yourself to a subscription to the cause of freedom. I marvel at your ethics—or lack thereof!”

Lord Darby marveled at Miss Phyfe’s ability to fashion mountains out of molehills. What her pernicious doctrines had to do with Lady Barbour’s infatuation, he could not think.

But perhaps he had leaped to a conclusion that was as conceited as it was understandable, due to his past glorious career. “I did not mean to impinge your judgment, my darling,” he said with praiseworthy patience. “I am sure it is excellent. But we have rather strayed from the point. You were telling me about your confrontation with your cousin last night.”

For a gentleman allegedly immune to Sidoney’s charm, Lord Darby was extremely curious, Morgan thought. “You were saying that she is
aux aegis,”
he prompted. “I trust you will not convict me of vulgar curiosity if I inquire her infatuation’s object.”

It was nothing so innocent as curiosity for which Lord Darby would be convicted by Miss Phyfe. “Hah!” she uttered, with a hollow laugh. “Who else but yourself?”

Visibly, his lordship quailed. “Devil take the wench!” he uttered. “Are you
certain,
Miss Phyfe?”

And surely even a gentleman set on dissembling would not shudder to learn his sentiments were returned? Morgan’s spirits lifted in a manner that was positively disgraceful. “I could hardly be mistaken. She was not precisely coherent, due to her deplorable condition, but she distinctly told me that she had had a splendid adventure, and that it would accomplish me nothing to scold because she meant to have many
more.
And then she talked a great deal of nonsense about adventurers.” Morgan spread her hands helplessly. “Who else could she mean?”

“I do not know.” Lord Darby turned away from the fireplace and regarded his hostess with a frown. “I hesitate to tell you this, Morgan, but you must know—yes, I know I called you ‘Morgan,’ but you do not like ‘my darling’ and ‘Miss Phyfe’ is so devilish formal!—I suspect some mischief is afoot. Among the numerous remarks made by your bird-witted cousin to
me
last night was that I was dreary and disapproving and dull, and that what is sauce for the gander should also be sauce for the goose.”

“Lud!” Miss Phyfe decided to ignore his temerity in the matter of address. “What brought that about?”

Lord Darby cleared his throat. “I believe it had something to do with my reputation,” he hinted delicately. “My conduct did not live up to Lady Barbour’s expectations.”

That his lordship could fail to please a lady could only mean that his lordship hadn’t made the least effort to gratify. Miss Phyfe felt as if she had indeed sampled a heady brew. “Then
that’s
all right!” she said, and blushed. “I mean, if not you, then
who?”

Lord Darby understood both this disjointed speech and what had prompted it, realizations which caused him to stride briskly across the room. “Who the devil
cares?”
he said. “My darling—”        

“I thought you weren’t going to call me that!” protested Miss Phyfe, as she struggled to maintain some semblance of propriety. Her efforts were in no way abetted when Lord Darby sat down beside her on the settee. “I must care about what Sidoney does, because so long as she stays in Phyfe House she is my responsibility.”

His lordship was not paying proper attention; his knowledgeable gray eyes were fixed on Morgan’s flushed face. “Then invite her to leave!” he suggested helpfully.

Morgan laughed a trifle breathlessly; Lord Darby was making skillful repairs to her coiffure, which was, as usual, coming unpinned. “Wretched man! As if I could.”

“Oh, you could easily enough. But you won’t.” Almost absently his hand moved to her cheek.

Such presumption must not be permitted, Morgan told herself. She was a high-minded and most respectable female, no easy prey for a hardened rakeshame. But how difficult it was to remember his reputation whilst staring into that dissipated, disenchanted face. Morgan made a monumental effort. “Lord Darby—”

“Terence!” he murmured, and with his other hand drew her close.

“Terence,” said Morgan quickly, and with every iota of self-possession at her control, “if you truly wish to please me, there is one way you may do so.”

She was no different from the others, then; even if she did not ask for jewels and high perch phaetons, she subscribed to the system of free enterprise. Abruptly he released her. “How is that, Miss Phyfe?”

Morgan was aware that she had somehow blundered, and her spirits sank. “Were you to keep an eye on Sidoney, you might keep her from tumbling into a scrape—since you must know not only all the people she might tumble into a scrape with, but also where and how!”

Here was an unusual twist in the old game of give-and-take; never before had any lady requested that “Devil” Darby employ his experience on another lady’s behalf. His lordship’s interest revived. Almost apologetically he reiterated Lady Barbour’s contention that he was dreary and disapproving and dull.

“Poppycock!” retorted Miss Phyfe. “I can only conclude that you treated her very shabbily. Or perhaps Sidoney is playing a deep game, although I would not think the way to attach a gentleman would be to pretend one found him dull as ditchwater, not that I am at all experienced in such things. But you
are,
sir! Oh very well, Terence! And therefore I must earnestly conjure you—”

“You need not,” interrupted Lord Darby, and clasped her hands. Miss Phyfe frowned. “I have said that I want to please you, have I not? If it pleases you to bid me dangle after Lady Barbour, so be it.”

Curiously, this triumph left Miss Phyfe feeling like a hopeful cook whose
pièce de résistance
had suddenly gone flat.

Chapter Eleven

Lord Darby was not the only gentleman to pay an unseasonably early visit to Harley Street. Viscount English also ventured early along that fashionable thoroughfare, heart of aristocratic London for those who lived and frolicked in that area bounded by Saint James’s and Grosvenor Square. And as Lord Darby had before him, the viscount trod purposefully toward a house fashioned by Sir Christopher Wren from rosy brick, embellished with hipped roof and sash windows and neat white pillars on either side of the pedimented door.

Lady Barbour was in the dining room, and there the viscount was conducted by the nervous young footman who opened the front door, but not before that zealous servant had taken him on a most enlightening detour via the drawing room. Why “Devil” Darby should fervently clasp Miss Phyfe’s hands the viscount could not imagine, no matter how severely he cudgeled his brain.

In that occupation Lady Barbour was similarly engrossed, or so her posture suggested: elbows propped on the mahogany dining table, she cradled her lovely brow. Before her were a plate of congealing food, a cup of coffee and an opened book.

A book? How very odd! The viscount thought would not have expected the hen-witted Sidoney to be a devotee of the written word. He glanced meaningfully at the footman. Recalled to awareness of his mission, that young man cleared his throat and announced the visitor’s presence.

Lady Barbour clutched her brow and winced; slowly, she elevated her gaze. “Laurie!” she whispered. “You are out very early. Not that I regard it. Truly, I am prodigious glad to see you. Come sit down.”

She was glad to see him? The viscount was vastly encouraged. As instructed he seated himself at the mahogany dining table of massive dimensions, in one of the splat-back chairs. Having never been in this chamber before, he glanced around curiously.

It was a refined and dignified room, the plaster decoration confined to a molded cornice, the walls hung with light green paper which showed to good advantage the many pictures hung thereupon, the deep windows set off by richly paneled shutters. Against one wall was a fine example of an early sideboard, in the cupboards and drawers of which would be stored various appurtenances of the dining room, including wine cooler and chamber pot.

Viscount English had scant interest this morn in such appurtenances, nor in the vase-shaped knife box displayed on the sideboard, nor even in table linen of white damask designed with a somewhat unusual hunting scene. His visit to Phyfe House was no action undertaken on the spur of the moment. Laurie had determined to make a clean breast of certain matters which had not only stained his honor but weighed heavy on his heart. He didn’t intend to speak of three high-flying sisters with a fondness for high perch phaetons and the wares of Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, of course; but he was definitely inclined to think that in certain other respects confession alone could cleanse his tarnished soul.