Maggie MacKeever (11 page)

“I like that!” observed Thea, with more than a touch of sarcasm in her voice. “I may stand here shivering for a half-hour in the cold and you are unaware—but let that wretched hound so much as sniffle and your solicitude knows no bounds. I conclude Nimrod stands higher in your estimation than I.”

Despite a very strong temptation, Lord Davenham did not point out that Nimrod had not draped himself in garments expressly designed to distract a man’s thoughts from such mundane considerations as opened windows and cold night air. “If you didn’t want the window open, why did you say you did?” he inquired, as he picked up Nimrod and permitted the wheezing hound to nestle against his chest.

“I didn’t!” snapped Lady Davenham, nettled at the sight of Nimrod enjoying a demonstration of the affection that she had failed to inspire. As it he sensed her displeasure, Nimrod bared his teeth. Abruptly, Lady Davenham decided that she would be more comfortable among her guests, despite the brevity of her gown.

“Mettlesome fillies!” explained Lord Davenham to his hound, as Lady Davenham walked away.

Chapter Ten

Though Lord and Lady Davenham had not especially enjoyed the rout held in their cousin’s honor, Sir Malcolm had found the proceedings tolerably entertaining. Despite his ability to divert himself in any given situation, however, Sir Malcolm was not unaware that certain other members of his family were not similarly blessed. Indeed, that fact would have been difficult to overlook. As best Malcolm could remember—no easy feat, for it was well before the hour of noon, and he had the devil of a head—Thea had spent half the evening framed with Vivien in a window, and the other half flirting very determinedly with himself. At least Malcolm
t
hought she had been flirting.
Tendre
or no, Thea’s notions of amusement did not march with his own.

Nor, for that matter, did Vivien’s. Malcolm had a very clear memory of the head of the adventurous Davenant clan, cradling the pestilential Nimrod against his chest, and murmuring beneath his breath about mettlesome fillies as with perfect aplomb he made considerable inroads on the champagne punch. Malcolm could only conclude from this bizarre behavior that Vivien was more of a Davenant than anyone had hitherto suspected. Difficult to credit Lord Davenham yearning after bits o’ muslin and lightskirts—but there it was. Malcolm had it, as it were, straight from the horse’s mouth. And none knew better than Malcolm the perils of adventurous instincts frustrated, as his own had been of late. In point of fact, it was exactly that circumstance which had brought him out at an hour when he would have been much more wisely still abed, suffering Hopgood’s sovereign remedy for a throbbing skull. The cool air was exercising its own beneficial effect. Sir Malcolm looked around.

Wide and flagstoned Oxford Street was abustle, even at this early hour—which was not so early as Sir Malcolm imagined it; working folk had long since gone to their places, and the street peddlers had set up on their favorite comers, and apprentices had taken their shop shutters down, thus presenting to public view displays of silks and muslins, jewels and silver, china and fine glass. In these tempting arrays. Sir Malcolm had scant more interest than in his fellow pedestrians. He paused by a streetlamp enclosed in a crystal globe. How the deuce was he to divert Vivien’s attention from his gardens to his wife, wondered Malcolm, and Thea’s attention consequently from himself? Obviously, it would take more than a new dress. As if in search of inspiration, Sir Malcolm glanced once more along the length of Oxford Street. If inspiration did not beckon him, adventure did. This day it had disguised itself in the person of Mistress Melly Bagshot.

“Well, bless my soul!” observed that damsel, tripping gaily forward and taking a firm grip on Sir Malcolm’s sleeve. “If this ain’t the greatest piece of luck! I have been fretting myself to flinders cooped up in that shop, and now finally my aunt has sent me on an errand, and here
you
are, just as if you was
waiting
for me! Oh, I know you wasn’t doing any such thing—not that my Aunt Hel would believe it! She kicked up
such
a dust when she thought I’d made a dead-set at you. Not that I
mean
to cast out lures, and so I told her, which put her in a dreadful tweak!” Having delivered herself of these artless confidences, Melly dimpled up at him.

Though his one previous encounter with her had not been lengthy, Sir Malcolm immediately recalled where he had met Miss Bagshot. So remarkable a feat of memory, in a gentleman suffering from the effects of a slight overindulgence the evening before, a gentleman moreover whose encounters with winsome lasses had been legion, partially explains his success with the opposite sex. Sir Malcolm never forgot a pretty face. And Melly’s elfin features were prettier than most. “Fortune has smiled on me,” he said.

“It has?” Melly opened wide her big brown eyes. “Fancy that! I wish Fortune might smile on me. I can tell you it ain’t comfortable to stand on bad terms with someone when you’re in their debt. Dashed if I know how a relation of mine turned out to be the highest of sticklers—not that there’s any harm in the Bagshots, mind you, other than a little wild blood. But there I go, jawing on again! Tell me about your, er, cousin’s party, sir. Did you attend? Was it
very
grand?”

No member of the adventurous Davenant clan could claim unfamiliarity with wild blood, or fail to feel compassion for a damsel thus penned in by circumstance. “Oh, very grand!” replied Sir Malcolm, as he removed Melly’s fingers from his sleeve and placed them on his arm. “You will enjoy hearing all about it while I escort you wherever you wish to go.”

Melly greeted this gallantry with a practiced flutter of her lashes, and a dimpled smile. “Where I should like to go is back to Brighton, sir, and I do not think you could accomplish that! Although I daresay it is just as well, because my aunt would doubtless get on her high ropes was I to take French leave—my papa did so before me, you see! And without my aunt’s assistance, I’ll never get another place. You wouldn’t know about such things, but one can’t, not without references.” She sighed. “And one don’t get references when one has been turned off.”

Whether due to the cool air or the delightful Miss Bagshot, Sir Malcolm’s thoughts had begun to clarify.
“You
were turned off?” he inquired.

“Oh, yes! Several times!” Melly looked sad. “This last time was the worst, and mayhap I don’t wish to return to Brighton after all, because was Lady Birmingham to get wind of it, she’d doubtless cut up prodigious stiff! Lady Birmingham can make a body
most
unhappy, as I should know, because I sewed for her. Bless my heart, if she wasn’t such a curmudgeon, Captain Birmingham wouldn’t have come into the sewing room, and I wouldn’t have pricked my thumb, and now I wouldn’t be out of a place!”

“Ah.” In accordance with his philosophy of savoring whatever Fate placed upon his platter, Sir Malcolm was enjoying this particular repast very well. “I think I would like to hear more about this pricked thumb. Miss Bagshot.”

By this display of interest, his companion’s spirits were revived. “Do call me Melly!” she begged. “It’s a trifle awkward for me to be a Bagshot when my aunt calls herself ‘le Best,’ not that I can fault her for changing her name because she’s wishful of attracting the nobs. But you was asking me about Birmingham! Mercy on me, that
was
a dreadful pickle.” She giggled. “I am always in a pickle, sir.”

“Melly, you amaze me,” murmured Sir Malcolm.

Upon hearing her name upon his lips, Melly flushed becomingly. “You are teasing me!” she protested. “I may be bird-witted—oh, yes! I admit it! But I know when I am being humbugged. You ain’t the least surprised that I am in a pickle—no, nor should you be, because unless I miss my guess, you are often in a pickle yourself. Upon my word, I envy you; no one will try to impose a check upon
your
spirits, or forbid you outright to cut larks. But you was wishful of hearing about Birmingham!” She launched into a description of her adventures in Brighton. So very droll was her delivery, and so very accurate her rendering of Lady Birmingham’s histrionics, that Sir Malcolm laughed outright, and informed Miss Bagshot that she should go upon the stage.

This kind suggestion, however, won Sir Malcolm the opposite of its object’s thanks. Melly removed her hand from his arm and drew herself up to her full height, an impressive gesture, even though she was only five feet tall. “No, I should
not
go upon the stage, sir, and it ain’t kind of you to suggest it! No offense, but I’ll wager you know very well what happens to girls who tread the boards, and I mean to play my cards better than that. Bless my heart, I could remain a seamstress, and come to the same end.”

The damsel protested too much, thought Sir Malcolm, an error of judgment which may be forgiven him only because no damsel quite like Melly had ever come his way. “You must not try and bamboozle
me,
Melly,” he responded wickedly.

In response to this inference that she had already embarked upon the pathway that had led many an unwary damsel to a ruinous end, however much said damsel may have enjoyed the process, Melly gasped. “I will have you know, sir, that I do not tell taradiddles—or if I do, I ain’t telling one
now!
I suppose you have gotten in the way of thinking you are quite at the top of the tree, and it ain’t any wonder, because you need only walk into a room to set a girl’s heart aflutter— but you don’t know all there is to know about all of us yet!”

Obviously he did not, else he would not have unwittingly offered insult. Not quite certain how he had done so, Sir Malcolm put forth an apology. He was not thoroughly recovered, he decided, from the previous evening’s overindulgences.

“Oh, pooh! I ain’t one to bear a grudge!” Cheerfully, Melly reclaimed his arm. “You was going to tell me about your, er, cousin’s party.”

“My, er, cousin?” Sir Malcolm deftly maneuvered Miss Bagshot amid their fellow pedestrians. “I suspect it is you who now misjudge me. Lady Davenham is indeed my cousin. And you would not have liked her rout.”

“I would not?” With no little respect, Melly eyed her escort, who, in addition to being the most agreeable gentleman she had ever encountered, was speedily being revealed as also the most depraved.

“It was very dull,” explained Sir Malcolm. “Except for those few moments when my cousin’s arthritic hound assaulted a gentleman guest—my
other
cousin, that is: Lady Davenham’s husband.”

“Mercy!” murmured Melly, fascinated by this glimpse of the diversions enjoyed by the
ton.
“If that sort of thing ain’t to your taste, why do you attend?”

Sir Malcolm, sufficiently recovered from his excesses to feel hungry, essayed into a baker’s shop and procured a hot roll for himself, and for his companion a cherry tart. “I didn’t wish to disappoint Thea. It was on my account that she and Vivien came to London and opened up the house—they reside in the country.”

Melly had always known that the nobs lived by different standards than the lesser folk, but this hint at what those standards were caused her to stare open-mouthed. “Doesn’t this Vivien person
mind?”

“Mind? No, why should he?” Sir Malcolm wondered if he might somehow make Vivien so jealous that he would be asked to depart Davenant House. “Although I’m sure he would rather have remained in the country. But Thea is given little enough opportunity to visit the Metropolis, and it would be cruel of me to curtail her enjoyment.”

Perhaps, thought Melly, she was sufficiently bird-wilted as to have failed to properly understand. “This Vivien person,” she suggested, “ain’t similarly enjoying himself.”

“One never knows with Vivien,” admitted Malcolm. “Fond as I am of my cousins, I will be the first to confess he is a queer fish. Now eat your tart; there’s a good girl.”

Sir Malcolm chose a strange way to show his fondness for this Vivien person, reflected Melly, as she obediently devoured her tart; perhaps the nobs thought it nothing to carry on with another man’s wife. Sir Malcolm was a regular out-and-outer, in comparison to whom Captain Birmingham and all the other gentlemen of Melly’s acquaintance had been mere novices in the gentle art of leading damsels astray. Not that Melly had been led astray yet. But it was just a matter of time, due to the wild blood of the Bagshots. Contemplating that inevitable day, Melly brushed pastry crumbs from her chin.

Happily unaware that Miss Bagshot suspected him of engaging in an especially adventurous
ménage à trois,
Sir Malcolm applied his pocket handkerchief to the evidences of cherry tart that still adorned her pretty face. An enchanting face it was, he thought, with its big brown eyes and dimples and delightful little nose: a face to put him strongly and disagreeably in mind of Lady Davenham’s current mission. “My cousin,” he remarked, “has decided it’s time I take a wife. Her rout was for the purpose of reintroducing me to the
ton
so that I may choose an eligible candidate from among their ranks.”

Melly was amazed by the degree of Lady Davenham’s sophistication. What kind of female could dally with her lover beneath her husband’s nose and at the same time scheme to marry him off? Along those same lines, what sort of man would dally with another man’s wife under her husband’s nose? And what sort of husband would tolerate all this dallying? Such nuances of behavior were beyond the scope of Melly’s comprehension. However, she understood perfectly how it felt to have relatives who schemed.

“It’s enough to put one smack in the pathetics!” she sighed.
“I
know! My aunt’s wishful of getting me leg-shackled so that she may wash her hands of me. Oh, she don’t admit it, but I know what she’s about.”

Upon Miss Bagshot’s piquant features sat an expression so incongruously somber that Sir Malcolm laughed. “You do not wish to be leg-shackled, Melly?”

“No, sir, I do not.” Melly looked severe. “But you must not be taking the wrong notion again, even if my blood
is
wild! When I toss my bonnet over the windmill, it will be because I have formed a lasting passion, and I do not mean to form a lasting passion for someone who will play fast and loose with me, or offer me false coin! A girl must think of her future, because no one else will if she
don’t.
Not that I wish to speak out of place, like my aunt says I do, but you looked like you was wishful of saying something you ought not!”