Maggie MacKeever (2 page)

Delphine regarded that charming appendage, which was adorned by a dab of flour. Even the countess’s detractors—and these were not inconsiderable, due to her ladyship’s tendency to discuss with authority not only Napoleon’s deprecations against the English and the economic ramifications of his Continental blockade, but also the progress of the war in the Peninsula and the repercussions of the newly passed Regency Bill—had to admit that she had a beautiful, refined appearance and a deceptively demure manner. Delphine barely repressed another rude expulsion of breath. Lady Tess might claim an awesome amount of book learning, but she didn’t know the first thing about dealing with a determined miss like Clio.

“I fear,” said the countess gloomily, “that my sister possesses a strong streak of the Mildmay stubbornness.”

At this prodigious understatement, Delphine did snort, but the untimely sound went unheard, the cook having chosen that moment to thwack down on the table a cup of tea so strong that a cat could trot on it, laced with cream and barley sugar and a liberal, if surreptitious, dosage of cognac. “She’d create a regular sensation,” announced that worthy, squeezing her ample bulk into a chair, “if she was to have her debut. ‘Tis a proper shame Lady Mirian —no disrespect intended, my lady—didn’t see to her come-out.”

“True,” sighed Tess, who had never even briefly entertained a longing for a come-out of her own. “I often wondered why she did not, for Clio is of an age, and can only conclude that Mirian did not wish to resume relations with the Bellamys. Apparently she did not even care to visit London for fear of encountering one of them! And now Clio is determined to be clasped to the Duchess of Bellamy’s bosom. What a wretched state of affairs!”

“Voyons!”
Delphine had a strong aversion to conversations that merely belabored the obvious. “You might as well bow gracefully to defeat. That one will go to London, with or without your consent—and with or without your escort! Me, I suspect that she would prefer it to be without, lest you put a damper on her style.”

“Daffy!” Lady Tess was horrified. “It would be disastrous if Clio were to go alone to London and be suddenly thrown into the whirl of fashionable life. She hasn’t the least notion of how to go on.”

“Then you’ll have to guide her, won’t you?” suggested Cook. “And see that she doesn’t take up with a fortune hunter, or worse! Drink your tea, my lady. And wipe your face, if you please!” It was Cook’s private opinion that Lady Tess was wasted in this bucolic setting. For all the mistress’s lameness, she was far from an invalid. Sure and wasn’t the Countess of Lansbury the finest horsewoman this countryside had ever seen?

Lady Tess swiped ineffectively at the offending flour with her apron, then laughed. “How absurd you all are— for I must assume you are hinting at the same thing, Daffy! If truth be told, I have little more notion than Clio of how to go on in Society.”

“No,” agreed Delphine, then added, with the assurance of one whose parents had been so high in the domestic hierarchy that they had gone willingly with their aristocratic master to the guillotine, “but
I
do. There’s nothing for it,
ma cocotte,
but that Mistress Clio shall have her trip to London, and we shall accompany her. Else you will have the little wretch running away.”

Since London was equated in Tess’s mind with the accident that had left her lame, it is little wonder that she greeted her abigail’s announcement with less than enthusiasm. “You have a damnable habit, Daffy, of hitting the nail on the head. I suppose I must allow Clio her debut.” The countess propped her elbows on the table and dropped her chin into her hands. “I will admit to
you,
my friends, that the prospect fills me with dread!”

It was a prospect, judging from her sour expression, that inspired the abigail with little more enthusiasm. Not so the little kitchenmaid, whose somewhat hazy notions of the metropolis included such disparate elements as jewel-encrusted aristocrats and pumpkin-shaped coaches and circus elephants. “London! What larks!” she breathed.

Chapter 2

Bellamy House was a typical London town house,
rising five stories high into the soot-clouded air, an edifice of gray brick enlivened by crimson window-arches and roofs. Steep, dark staircases led from the gloomy basement kitchens into the cramped and crowded servants’ quarters on the uppermost floor.

Not only the attics were crowded. Into the front drawing-room were crammed long and narrow gilt-framed looking glasses of baroque style; a couple of sofas, curved and carved in flower designs; several smaller ones, vaguely Empire in shape; armchairs and side chairs to match, constructed of rosewood and upholstered in dark red; and numerous additional chairs and tables of indistinctive character. An Aubusson carpet with superlative roses lay on the floor. From brass poles with enormous china flowers at the ends descended heavy velvet drapes and curtains of Nottingham lace. Presiding over this impressive chamber was the Dowager Duchess of Bellamy, a white-haired old woman with a malevolent countenance and the beaklike nose that had once been referred to by the irreverent Beau Brummell as “the Bellamy curse.” This feature branded irrefutably the duchess’s offspring, all of whom attended her, and all of whom looked to some degree uncomfortable.

The dowager duchess grinned. “How
nice
of you,” she said with heavy sarcasm, “to attend me so promptly! ‘Twill be to your edification, I vow, for I’ve news of a singularly wonderful nature to impart.”

There was little reaction to this promise, which sounded very much like a threat to those acquainted with the duchess’s little ways. Sapphira, her spirits rendered ebullient by a double dose of opium, surveyed her family. Disappointing, the bunch of them. With a fine sense of drama, she settled back into her Bath chair to wait.

The dowager duchess was not long required to hold her tongue. “Well?” demanded Drusilla, second of her children, a lovely brown-haired woman with a bitter voice. “What is this news? Witness us tremble with breathless anticipation!”

Sapphira awarded this temerity with a look of sharp dislike. “You continue to drink far more than is good for you,” she remarked, “and to gamble wildly. Any losses you may sustain, my girl, are your own! You needn’t think I’ll come to your rescue.”

“I don’t!” muttered Drusilla, and shifted in her chair. Bellamy House was by rights the residence of the present duke, Giles Wynne; but the Duke of Bellamy had, since the death of his wife in childbirth several years previous, evidenced more interest in political affairs than in domestic arrangements. It was a situation that little recommended itself to the duke’s sisters, both of whom would have given much to get out from their mother’s domineering thumb. Alas for the hopes of Drusilla and Lucille: Giles, immune to interfamily warfare, seemed perfectly content to let his mother rule the roost. Not, thought Drusilla sourly, that his objections would have any effect. Confrontation with the dowager duchess was remarkably like collision with a stone wall.

“We are,” announced Sapphira, adjudging the moment ripe, “shortly to welcome a visitor.” Having secured a unanimous attention, she settled herself more comfortably in the invalid chair. The dowager duchess was a martyr to rheumatism, a fact which those of gentle sensibilities thought to explain her legendary ill-temper. Sapphira’s family labored under no such delusion. The dowager duchess was, bluntly, a vituperative tyrant, prone to nasty whims and eccentricities, and her favorite pastime was to set her long-suffering children chasing their own tails.

“A visitor?” whispered Lucille, eldest of the Bellamy progeny, a pale and faded lady whose chief characteristic was an overwhelming desire to antagonize no one, particularly her vicious parent. “Who,
Maman?
Shall I order a room prepared?”

Sapphira awarded this daughter no more opprobrium that she had the other. “No,” she replied, with disheartening glee. “I’ve already seen to it. The chit shall have Mirian’s chambers.”

This pronouncement caused the sisters to exchange a glance and brought even the duke from his reverie, which dealt, predictably, with matters of government and finance and the controversial Corn Laws. “Mirian’s rooms?” he queried, as Drusilla asked suspiciously,
“What
chit?”

“Told you I’d arouse your interest!” grunted Sapphira, gnarled fingers clenched around the arms of her chair.

“And you have,” agreed Giles calmly, from his stance by the fireplace. He was a man of five-and-thirty, of medium height and excellent physique, and only Brummell was so unappreciative of his friend’s haughty demeanor as to term him a “mighty icicle.” “Having done so,
Maman,
do you think you might elucidate?”

Sapphira gazed, with a doting expression, upon her son. Giles was a handsome man, his air of distinction only enhanced by The Nose, with his father’s brown hair and her own dark eyes and their combined stamp of breeding and elegance. Some might call him high in the instep, but his mother disagreed. It was only proper that the sixth Duke of Bellamy should be aware of his consequence.

She nodded. “As you say. The chit is Mirian’s daughter, and I have engaged myself to bring her out.”

The reactions to this blunt statement were no less than she wished. Though Lucille said nothing, her hands fluttered in distress; Drusilla swore inelegantly; Lucille’s husband, Constant, wore a look both calculating and chagrined. Only Giles maintained his customary air of boredom. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Do you mean to tell us why, or are we to be kept in perfect ignorance as to what is going on?”

Sapphira shrugged, then clenched her teeth against the pain. “I’d a fondness for Mirian,” she retorted. “I’ve a notion to see this girl of hers.”

That the dowager duchess should nourish a warmth for anyone seemed, at the least, impossible; but Drusilla and Lucille both recalled that Sapphira had once been fonder of the thankless Mirian than of themselves. “A season!” protested Lucille unwisely. “Have you thought,
Maman,
of the trouble, the expense?”

“Bother the expense!” retorted the dowager duchess, further startling her audience, for she was a notorious nip-farthing. She shot her daughters a spiteful glance. “The chit will be no trouble to
me.
You’ll attend to the thing, Lucille; Drusilla will play chaperone. The role of duenna may curtail some of her wild habits and extravagance.”

Drusilla, who prided herself on making a dashing appearance, a feat that she accomplished at the cost of being forever dunned by unpaid dressmakers and milliners, looked as if she’d swallowed a bitter pill. Lucille contemplated the numerous details attendant upon a young lady’s entrance into Society, and had recourse to her vinaigrette.

“It occurs to me,” remarked the duke, pulling on his gloves, “that no one has inquired after Mirian. Has she explained why she left us so abruptly,
Maman?
I trust she is in good health?”

“Were Mirian in good health,” snapped Sapphira, “I doubt the chit would be coming here! I regret to inform you, my son, that Mirian is dead.” The duke received a hawk-like stare. “Or perhaps you already knew?”

“I?” Giles raised a brow. “How could I?”

The dowager duchess ignored this not-unreasonable inquiry. “The girl appears to know little about Mirian’s connection to us, and only learned of it after her mother’s death. Some papers, I believe. It seems Miss Clio cares little about the past. Doubtless the chit is something of an opportunist.”

“As Mirian was!” Drusilla was unable to longer contain her indignation, “Mark my words, this girl will turn out to be no better than her mother was.”

“You seem to be very nearly in convulsions,” observed Sapphira unkindly. “Try some of your sister’s patent remedies—heaven knows she has enough to set up as a pharmacist! I wish the two of you might try and learn some self-control.”

“It is odd,” ventured Constant, with some vague hope of restoring the peace, “that anyone should fail to divulge a connection with so old and venerable a line. This Mirian was raised by you, Duchess? A distant relative, I apprehend?”

Sapphira grimaced at her son-in-law, a stout and pompous individual with thinning hair and unfortunate pretensions to dandyism. “You apprehend very little, Constant!” she responded rudely. “Mirian was my orphaned niece.” She rose stiffly from her chair. “Enough of this nattering! My patience is exhausted. I swear I wouldn’t give a ha’penny for the lot of you. Lucille, see me to my room!”

It was not in Lucille’s nature to argue with her overbearing parent. Too, she welcomed the opportunity to escape to her own chamber, there to ruminate over this distressing development and fortify herself with Dover’s Powders, Cerelaum, and Morrison’s Pills. With an apologetic glance at her siblings, she silently offered Sapphira her arm. With an equal lack of comment, the others watched their progress.

“I have plans for the chit,” announced Sapphira abruptly from the doorway. The Dowager Duchess was not one to deny herself the last word. “And I’ll brook no interference! I might remind you all that
I
hold the purse strings.” On this ominous note, she exited.

Constant, at least, needed no reminder that he owed Sapphira the very bread he ate. Gloomily, he stared after his mother-in-law, then turned his head to meet the duke’s knowing gaze. Well Giles could afford to be amused! Having a fortune of his own, Giles wasn’t constrained to dance to Sapphira’s tune. The rest of them were not so blessed. Sometimes Constant wondered, uncharitably, if Giles tolerated the presence of his quarrelsome family merely for the diversion that it afforded him. It must be acknowledged that this suspicion was extremely perceptive: the duke had more than once remarked to the most intimate of his cronies that the efforts of various of his relatives to ingratiate themselves with Sapphira made better watching than a farce.

“I, too, will take myself off,” said the duke, almost as if he had access to his brother-in-law’s thoughts, “having an engagement at White’s with a large cold bottle and a small hot bird. You two will find much to discuss, I’m sure.”

Constant glowered impotently as Giles strode unconcerned from the room. He had little love for the elegant duke, envying his title and his impeccable taste and the bottomless pocketbook that had procured for him that exquisite cravat, the superbly fitting long-tailed coat of blue cloth and breeches of fashionable yellow, those highly polished top boots. He further envied the duke’s success with the fair sex. Though Giles had, since his young wife’s death, been immune to the lures cast out by marriageable ladies, and though he was both fastidious and discerning, he was by no means a monk.