Maggie MacKeever (3 page)

Fennel’s golden eyebrows arched. “Rosemary and Byron?” he said, and cast the lady a look of great respect. “Well, if
that
don’t beat all! Wouldn’t have thought it of her, I confess!”

“No, no!” interrupted Lily, as Angelica swallowed yet another exasperated expulsion of breath. “Rosemary and Chalmers! They had an argument.”

“Oh, if
that’s
all.” Fennel suffered an obvious disappointment. “So what if they did? Married people are always having arguments. It ain’t like you, puss, to be making mountains out of molehills.” He paused, judiciously. “Come to think of it, it’s
just
like you! Rosemary wouldn’t thank you for it, Lily.”

Thus put on her mettle, Lily drew herself up to her full height, a scant two inches over five feet. “It’s unkind of you to infer that I make fusses over trifles,” she responded frigidly. “Even if sometimes I do! Because on my solemn word of honor, this time it’s
not
a fudge! Chalmers was scolding poor Rosemary in the most distressing manner, and poor Rosemary looked absolutely sick with fright. Angelica, you must do something! We cannot permit Rosemary to suffer such agonies.”

To this appeal, Angelica might have offered numerous responses. She might have inquired how Lily, passing in the hallway, had glimpsed Rosemary’s face—but Angelica already knew Lily to be susceptible to the lure of keyholes. Also, Angelica might have pointed out that it was not a sister’s place to interfere between husband and wife—but Angelica already knew that, if necessary, interfere she would.

No response seeming adequate, Angelica contemplated Rosemary, engaged in conversation with Lady Jersey. Rosemary wore a pale blue satin Empire dress veiled with Brussels net. Her bodice was decorated with three tiny bands of blue piped with white, each having three groups of points, one at each end and one in the middle; her elegant little sleeves were puffed; her skirt was embellished with two rows of double petals piped with white, the bottom a deeper tone of blue than the upper. She was breathtakingly elegant. She was also languid and melancholy and looked as if she might at any moment fall into a lethargy.

“What
agonies?” inquired Fennel, who remained unconvinced that Lily was not once again diverting herself by weaving a Canterbury tale, a pursuit that he personally considered a very poor sort of amusement, though he was not one to spoil sport. Fennel was a keen devotee of such pastimes as came under the heading of having a bit of frolic, pastimes for which, he had begun to realize, London offered him hitherto unencountered scope. “What was this argument about?”

Lily screwed up her features. She possessed an astounding capacity of memory and could recall perfectly everything she heard or read, a feat made none the less remarkable by her failure to comprehend more than half of it. “Chalmers said first that he’d not seen that gown before, and Rosemary said it had been hanging in her closet for months. Chalmers said, very politely, that he didn’t believe her, since he knows the contents of her closet as well as Rosemary does, having purchased it for her, and that gown wasn’t among the items for which he’d paid. Then Rosemary said the gown was part of her trousseau, and she’d never before had occasion to wear it. Chalmers said that horse wouldn’t run either, since he knew very well the gown was no part of her trousseau, and she’d had countless occasions to wear it before. He accused her of running into debt, even after he’d told her he wouldn’t tolerate such nonsense.” Lily looked perplexed. “It is the oddest thing, Angelica! Chalmers didn’t seem the least concerned about paying for
our
dresses, but he doesn’t wish Rosemary to have new clothes—which is very shabby of him, to say the least!”

Angelica contemplated the cost of her own gown, a simple sea-green affair with a high waist and narrow skirt, trimmed only with a few knots of matching ribbon, and castigated by a despairing Rosemary as distinctly frumpish; and then her sister’s well-known extravagance. For Lord Chalmers, Angelica felt a sneaking sympathy. “Was that all?” said she.

“All?”
echoed Fennel, indignant on his sister’s behalf. Rosemary had, after all, married for money. To do so and then be denied that commodity, in such short supply among the Millikins, must cause Rosemary a very justifiable frustration with which Fennel could easily sympathize. “By Jove, it’s the outside of enough.”

“There’s more!” Lily was pleased to have sparked such animation. “Chalmers said it would serve Rosemary well if she found herself at
point non plus
, and if she’d spent more than her pin money, after he’d warned her against it, she needn’t apply to him for help. And then he wanted to know why Rosemary wasn’t wearing the Chalmers sapphires since they’d so nicely complement her dress. Rosemary said the catch was loose and she’d taken it to the jewelers’ to be fixed. Chalmers said he didn’t believe that either, so she started to cry!”

“And?” prompted the fascinated Fennel, while Angelica sank down upon a needle-pointed chair.

Lily shrugged. “Then I came away. It didn’t seem proper to stay.”

It had hardly been proper to listen in the first place, reflected Angelica; still, there was no point in scolding Lily, who was by nature immune to chastisement. As did her brother and sister, Angelica stared at Rosemary.

That combined gaze had its effect; Rosemary, looking rather annoyed, abandoned Lady Jersey to cross the room and confront her siblings. “Why the deuce,” she demanded irritably, “are you gaping at me?”

“A sad fix you’ve got yourself in this time!” Fennel responded sternly. “It’s exactly what you deserve for trying to puff up your own consequence! I ain’t saying the family’s up to snuff, because it’s plain as a pikestaff that we ain’t, but none of us have ever before had to try and outrun the bailiffs. And it’s no good your trying to pull the wool over my eyes, my girl!”

Clearly it was not, but how had they learned of her difficulties? Unerringly, Rosemary’s gaze fell upon Lily, lost again in a romantic daydream—to wit, that she should somehow simultaneously marry off Angelica, relieve Rosemary’s financial distress, and secure for Fennel his captaincy, in the process bringing herself to the attention of her own unknown true love. “I should have known!” Rosemary uttered scathingly. “Is this how you repay my hospitality, Lily? By listening at the door?”

Lily looked wounded. “Rosemary, I could not help but hear! And what I heard put me quite in a puzzle, because Chalmers has been so generous to us, and I am very grateful to him for it, so I told Angelica.”

Rosemary turned pink, then white, then pinched herself to make sure she was not caught up in some nightmare. “Chalmers,” she said, in a more reasonable tone, “is the highest of sticklers. Oh, dear! I admit I have done some absurd things—but I did not wish to stoop to—and I cannot help it if he has formed an unfavorable and unalterable opinion—but I’m sure he will soon come about again!” She paused for breath, and found her audience regarding her skeptically. “Pooh! You need not think I am trembling lest he denounce me publicly. But Sally Jersey is taking her leave! Chalmers will be even more displeased if I fail to attend to my guests!” She fled.

Contemplatively, the Millikins gazed after her. Lily ventured the opinion that Rosemary must be forgiven her odd behavior, obviously being a little out of sorts. This arrant understatement, Angelica let pass. “I don’t understand,” she remarked. “Surely Chalmers isn’t so very high a stickler that he’d denounce Rosemary for a few debts.”

It was seldom Fennel achieved enlightenment more rapidly than the most clever of his sisters. He was delighted to do so in this instance, a process achieved by visualizing what he himself would do in Rosemary’s place. “Not for a few debts,” he said wisely. “But if Chalmers discovered Rosemary had popped the family sapphires, he very well might divorce her outright.”

Chapter Three

“Rosemary did
what?”
inquired the most senior of the Millikin progeny, a physician by profession, and Valerian by name.

Angelica cast her brother an anguished glance. “Popped the sapphires! Left them with a pawnbroker. Oh yes, she admitted it. And now she must reclaim the gems before Chalmers’ suspicions are further roused, but she hasn’t the money to do so, and has no means of getting it.” Agitated, she paced the floor of Valerian’s small and shabby sitting room. “It is the most wretched calamity, and I don’t know
how
I am to deal with it.”

“Tell Chalmers!” Valerian responded promptly. “Why should
you
have to deal with what’s-her-name’s—Rosemary’s!—difficulties?”

This statement gave Angelica pause in her perambulations; she regarded her eldest brother ruefully. Valerian, at four-and-thirty, possessed the same brown hair and blue eyes as did Angelica, and there was a strong family resemblance between them. Both had a look of their own mother, the first of their father’s wives, a lady of great good sense, many years deceased. Why was it, wondered Angelica, that a gentleman with blue eyes and brown hair and unexceptionable features could be attractive, when a female similarly endowed was only plain? “Shame on you!” she said, with amusement. “Forgetting your own sister’s name.”

Valerian stretched out his long legs and contemplated a boot. “Half sister,” he corrected. “Why should I remember the chit’s name when I haven’t set eyes on her for years? And from what you tell me, I’m glad I haven’t! She sounds a mooncalf.”

“She is,” agreed Angelica, in whom fondness for her siblings was untainted by any blindness regarding their shortcomings. “They
all
are! Rosemary is, as Fennel calls her, a chowderhead, as is Fennel himself; Lily’s a lovely pea-goose. As for the others—Hyacinth and Violet; Amaryllis and Camilla, the twins; Hysop, the youngest—they’re also feather-heads.
Just
like their mother.” She looked shamefaced. “Oh, Valerian, I know I should not say it, but sometimes I wish Papa had never married Marigold! We rubbed on well enough together, the three of us, until he brought her home.”

Valerian greeted this mention of his stepmother, a lady scarcely five years older than himself, with an expression of profound distaste. The lovely Marigold, from whom her offspring had inherited their bedazzling beauty, was of a jealous nature, and had consequently resented all reminder of the previous Mrs. Millikin, most especially her stepchildren. So active had been Marigold’s resentment that Valerian had at the earliest opportunity left home. Nor had he returned although, while his father lived, they had managed to meet, without Marigold’s knowledge, albeit infrequently.

Toward his stepmother, Valerian bore no malice: with the influence of his father, and the beneficence of his wealthy godfather, Valerian had done well enough. He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians, and on the honorary medical staff of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

It was a pity, Valerian thought, as he regarded the remaining member of his family for whom he possessed the least affection, that Angelica had not been able to similarly escape. She was looking shockingly worn down.

Angelica sighed, then rubbed her arms; the fire smouldering in Valerian’s grate did little to dispel the chill of the room. “But he
did
marry her, and he wrung from me a promise to look after all of them, so there’s no use bewailing what’s done. Oh, Valerian, it’s so good to see you again.”

“So it is. I’ve missed you, sis.” Valerian reached out and grasped her arm. “But don’t think to involve
me
in this imbroglio! I haven’t the blunt to buy back what’s-her-name’s accursed sapphires, and I wouldn’t, even if I did. Anyway, I have more important things to do.”

“Just like Papa!” said Angelica. “Spending all your time taking care of poor people who never pay you a blessed penny. I didn’t mean you should buy back what’s-her-name’s—I mean, Rosemary’s—sapphires. Why should you? After all, she is my responsibility.”

With this viewpoint, Valerian saw no reason to argue; Valerian considered his own responsibility not to his father’s muddle-headed younger progeny, but to mankind in general. Still, he didn’t see why responsibility for said muddle-headed youngsters should fall upon Angelica either, despite a promise made under duress to their father on his death-bed. He drew her down onto the arm of his chair. “I’m not saying I won’t help you,” he offered generously. “You’d better tell me the rest of it.”

“There’s not much more.” Angelica settled comfortably against Valerian’s shoulder. “Rosemary swears she put Chalmers off the scent, which I doubt; Chalmers isn’t one to be easily sidetracked. Incidentally, she’s convinced he has a ladybird tucked away somewhere, being unable to comprehend why any gentleman should devote so much time to something so dreary as government.”

“Ninnyhammer!” was Valerian’s verdict. “What’s the chit like, Angelica? How is it she ran into debt?”

“I fear Rosemary, is a trifle spoiled.” Angelica spoke as guiltily as if she were responsible for that failing, which she certainly was not. “She’s wildly extravagant and undisciplined, and when Chalmers was fool enough to tell her how she was to go on, she quite naturally took a distempered freak and ran counter to his decrees. Oh, I make no excuses for her! To allow herself to be drawn into the hands of moneylenders, no matter how innocently, is reprehensible in the extreme, and does her no credit. All the same, she
has
made a Jack-pudding of herself, and much as I deplore it, I cannot leave her to suffer the consequence! The poor child is convinced that Chalmers, were he to learn the truth, would at the least roundly denounce her, and at the worst publish her misconduct to the world.”

“Balderdash!” uttered Valerian.

“Perhaps. But there’s no persuading Rosemary that she doesn’t hover on the brink of some vile scandal, and it’s true that were her indiscretions to become known the consequences would be unpleasant. Meanwhile,” Angelica added somberly, “Fennel has taken it into his head to emulate Byron, is going around in the oddest clothing and trying his hand at poetry, and is yearning after a macaw. And Lily has taken it into
her
head that Chalmers should divorce Rosemary, since they obviously don’t suit, and then marry me!”