Maggie MacKeever (24 page)

“Marriage to Kingscote,” sighed Lily from behind the handkerchief, “would suit me to a cow’s thumb. That is, it would if he—”

“Nourished a wild and ungovernable passion for you,” interrupted the gentleman, “and displayed it to you at every opportunity. My dear girl, have you not considered that a man of the duke’s er, age and experience might have wished to give you time to fix your affections, might have hesitated to exhibit ardor lest you grow frightened by his lack of restraint?”

From behind the handkerchief peered one skeptical blue eye. “Twaddle!” said Lily.

“You are,” persisted the buccaneer, who seemed to nourish an odd ambition to convince Lily to look more kindly upon her
fiancé,
“very young and innocent.”

To this viewpoint Lily responded with what sounded very much like a snort. “I am not so green as all
that,”
said she, and in proof presented an accounting of all the hopeful gentlemen who had made her declarations, culminating at length with the impecunious poet who’d written sonnets to her earlobes and with whom she had very nearly eloped.

“Ah!” said the buccaneer. “It is this poet with whom you mean to fly to Gretna Green?”

“Lud, no!” Such a hubble-bubble notion made Lily giggle most delightfully. “What nonsense you do talk, sir! I only mentioned him to make my point—though he did pop the question with a great deal of address!”

“Kingscote did not exhibit a comparable finesse?”

“He said everything that was proper.” Lily’s amusement dissolved into an onslaught of hiccoughs. “Oh, let us speak no more of it! Kingscote made a grave mistake when he cast the handkerchief in my direction, and I made a grave mistake when I picked it up. Now I must undo the error because he is too much the gentleman to cry off. He will be most annoyed with me at first, I daresay, but in time he will come to understand that I have acted for the best.” Here the buccaneer muttered something beneath his breath. It sounded very much to Lily like he called her a pea-goose, but what reason could he have to say such a thing?

One reason occurred to her. Lily imagined Kingscote’s reaction were he to learn that she had unbosomed herself to a complete stranger. “I do most earnestly conjure you,” she cried, “not to repeat what I have said. There is no hope now for
my
happiness, but at least Angelica and Kingscote may yet find solace in one another.” This thought offered Lily herself so little consolation that she sniffled. “Oh, I wish I were dead!”

No gentleman presented with a Millikin damsel—including even Angelica—in so lachrymose a mood had ever yet refrained from the temptation of taking her into his arms. The buccaneer, beneath his mask, was not different from any other gentleman. He took Lily in his arms, which was no easy task in light of her powdered wig and wide panniers. Nor, once she was settled neatly against his chest, did the buccaneer cease this unseemliness. Lily hiccoughed once again, which quite naturally inspired him to kiss her very ardently.

“That was very nice!” wept Lily, once the buccaneer had disentangled his mask from the improbably painted stuffed bird that adorned her headdress. “I do not compliment you idly, because I have kissed a great many gentlemen, and so you understand I
know!
Why is your chest shaking in this odd manner, sir? Are you laughing at me?”

The buccaneer was doing exactly that. “Oh, Lily—if I may call you Lily, since our acquaintance has progressed so far so fast? Thank you!—you are so very droll! No no, don’t pucker up on me! Instead tell me why a kiss that you adjudged very nice should cast you into woe. Ah! You were wishing that someone else was kissing you in my place! I play second fiddle to your
fiancé.”

“My
fiancé,”
Lily responded sadly, “has never kissed me at all, which will give you a very good notion of how matters stand with us. But enough of my little problems! You have not given me your promise.”

‘To say nothing? I swear I shan’t.” The dashing buccaneer grasped Lily’s hand and raised it to his lips. “You have not said with whom you mean to elope. I am positively athirst with curiosity.”

If Lily had read the signs correctly, and there was certainly no reason why she should not have, curiosity was not the emotion that stirred her buccaneer, who was currently raining kisses on her wrist. Not even briefly did Lily consider administering for this presumption a stinging rebuke, and not only because her companion’s salutes were balm to her neglected soul. She was flattered by the buccaneer’s attentions and by no means insensible to his air of breeding and his polished address. He was obviously a man of substance and sound mind; he was also obviously quite enamored of herself. That it was unusual for a gentleman to form a lasting passion in but a few scant moments did not occur to Lily, nor should it have: this was not the first gentleman to gaze upon Lily and abruptly discover that his heart had been wrenched from his breast and pinned by Cupid’s arrow to his sleeve.

But Lily was not without foresight, despite the Millikin belief that contemplation of consequence was vulgarly lowbred. Politely she requested to be informed of her swain’s identity.

Just as politely, he refused. He was not disfigured, he promised, nor was his countenance generally considered displeasing to the feminine eye; but there were reasons why his identity must remain undivulged. Those reasons would in time be made clear. And in case Lily was interested, he was a bachelor.

Whether Lily would have persisted in her quest for the buccaneer’s identity remains unknown. Angelica passed by the alcove, looking very distrait. Lily rose so quickly that she very nearly came a cropper via her wide skirts. Once equilibrium was restored, she moved to the entry arch. Close on her heels was the buccaneer.

And close on Angelica’s heels was a tall gentleman with auburn hair and green eyes and a harsh face on which dissipation had left its stamp. He caught Angelica’s arm and spun her around to face him, looking excessively angry. Not without reason was Angelica adjudged the most clever of all the Millikins: she kicked her captor in the shin. Wincing, the gentleman instinctively grasped his wounded limb. Angelica glanced around desperately. Lily gestured. Angelica sped into the alcove and ducked behind the sofa.

Once more Lily contemplated the auburn-haired man who now stood again upright. Looking absolutely murderous, he turned his head this way and that, searching the throng. Briefly his green eyes touched Lily, who was with her buccaneer very effectively blocking the alcove’s entry arch. Then he turned on his heel and disappeared into the crowd. Lily released her pent-up breath.

“If I may venture a guess?” murmured the buccaneer. “Have I just witnessed an encounter between your sister and her ineligible
parti?”

The case had grown more desperate than Lily had guessed; she had never dreamed that Angelica’s admirer might be a hardened rakeshame. The inexperienced Angelica would never deal effectively with such, as witnessed by that recent brief encounter, which smacked of a shocking degree of familiarity. One did not go about kicking gentlemen with whom one was not on the most intimate of terms, surely? Lily had never done such a thing. Furthermore she doubted that even Rosemary, as a married lady, dared take such liberties.

Angelica must be saved from folly; Lily must quit the field. She glanced shyly up at her companion, who was certainly more sympathetic than Messr. Meadowcraft or Gildensleeve, Steptoe or Pettijohn. “We have passed a charming evening, have we not?”

The buccaneer had during that evening gained a fair understanding of the workings of Lily’s mind, had a good idea and an even greater hope of what she might next say. “The most charming evening I can ever recall. I fear, Lily, that it is midsummer moon with me.”

Why, oh why, wondered Lily, could it have not been midsummer moon with Kingscote? Now that she had made up her mind to leave the stage to Angelica, she wanted more than anything to remain before the footlights. But Angelica could not be abandoned. Nor could she be left much longer cowering behind the sofa.

Lily swallowed hard and plucked at the buccaneer’s sleeve. He bent his head toward her, placed his hand over her own. Said Lily in a faint little whisper: “Sir, would you care to fly to Gretna Green with me?”

Chapter Twenty

On the morrow, Valerian Millikin returned from his duties at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to be greeted by his elderly housekeeper with the intelligence that a madman had taken possession of his specimen room. In that direction Valerian proceeded, his curiosity pricked. An auburn-haired gentleman—clad in a greatcoat with many capes, pantaloons, Hessian boots, a curly-brimmed beaver hat and an expression of profound displeasure—restlessly paced the floor. “Aha!” said Valerian.

Upon this friendly salutation, the caller elevated his glittering green gaze from an especially fine boar’s tusk to glower at the doorway. “Dr. Millikin? Pardon my bursting in on you like this but it is a matter of some urgency. But I anticipate myself.” He strode forward. “I am Simon Brisbane. You may not recall the occasion, but we met some years previously.”

Valerian could be extremely civil when it pleased him to do so, as it did in this case. He begged that his guest be seated, he summoned his housekeeper and demanded refreshment; he entertained Simon with a great deal of lively conversation concerning his experience at St. Bart’s. With total frankness, he expressed his unflattering opinion of the matron there, whose duty it was to order food for the patients, who each day received a pint of water gruel or milk porridge for breakfast, eight ounces of meat or six ounces of cheese for dinner, and for supper broth. Each patient was allowed twelve ounces of bread and two pints of beer daily.

“All that is very interesting,” interrupted Simon, in a manner that under the circumstances was very tolerant. “However, I have not come here to be enlightened as to conditions at St. Bart’s!”

“Exactly so.” Valerian settled himself more comfortably and prepared to be amused. “You mentioned a matter of some urgency?”

“I did.” Simon gazed into the teacup with which he had been presented by Valerian’s housekeeper as if it contained some alien brew, which indeed it did, for Valerian and his housekeeper were partial to teas of herbal variety. As unobtrusively as possible, Simon set the teacup down on a display case situated very near his elbow, in which was arranged a fine selection of skulls. Then he turned on his host the full force of his green stare. “My father has told me it was you who drew his attention to Miss Smith.”

“Miss Smith?” Valerian echoed blankly. “Oh,
that
Miss Smith! What of it, Brisbane? Don’t you approve of the wench?”

“
Approve of a straw damsel bent on worming her way into the affections of an elderly gentleman?” Simon’s tone was scathing. “It would seem she duped you also. Since you are sincerely devoted to my father, I cannot credit that you were privy to Miss Smith’s scheme.”

“What scheme was that?” inquired Valerian, hoarse with suppressed mirth.

Simon frowned. “I’m not sure, precisely; she was marvelously inconsistent. Had she not kept hinting at secrets that do not exist, and then that her silence should be bought, I might acquit her of being a designing female. Still, there was a want of openness about her behavior, and she spun me the most appalling taradiddles about consumptive parents sewing seams by candlelight—I beg pardon, did you speak?”

Since it did not seem politic to repeat his muttered wish that Marigold would in truth succumb to a consumption, Valerian waved aside the interruption. “If you don’t like the chit,” he said, “why didn’t you just send her packing?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like her,” responded Simon, with quirked brow. “And I did send her packing. You look confused. Suppose I tell you the whole of it.”

“Yes, do!” Valerian was thoroughly delighted at the prospect of being regaled with the history of his sister’s acquaintance with a hardened rakeshame, as presented from the rakeshame’s point of view.

Simon thought it odd that his host should be so cheerfully eager to be regaled with the misdeeds of a young female acquaintance, but no odder than any other aspect of this affair. Sir Randall had carried on in a dreadful way when informed that his amanuensis had been dismissed, had accused his son of being so hot-at-hand as to make her take fright, had when presented with his son’s opinion of the lady’s intentions castigated his offspring as being still damp behind the ears. Were mishap to befall Miss Smith, Sir Randall had warned, the responsibility for that mishap would rest squarely on Simon’s head. More than that Sir Randall would not say, except to admit in utter exasperation that Valerian Millikin had recommended Miss Smith, and then to request acerbically that his son repair to the nether regions in a hand-cart. After delivering himself of these denunciations, Sir Randall had taken himself into the garden, there to seek solace from his menagerie. When last glimpsed, Williams had been wending his way thither, bearing before him an epistle on a silver tray.

Very much belatedly, Simon wondered what that epistle might portend. Sir Randall carried on a voluminous correspondence, from which Durward’s surveillance was exempted, much to Durward’s chagrin. Could Miss Smith have known of that exemption, have chosen that way to communicate? If so, her effort was for naught. Sir Randall had given his solemn and most vituperative word that he had no intention of shackling himself to any female, legally or otherwise, no matter how many hatchets were cast at him. Simon’s relief at this promise was short-lived, due to Sir Randall’s additional remark that his son was a cabbage-head.

Had
he misjudged Miss Smith? Was she
not
an adventuress? These questions had gained a paramount importance. So Simon explained.

“I seem to be laboring under some confusion of ideas,” he admitted humbly. “If Miss Smith is a female of quality, as my father insists, I have behaved abominably—yet in my own defense I must add that she never
acted
like quality! Good God, my reputation is far from blameless, and she certainly knew that. What did she expect me to think when she went about asking me questions about orgies and the like?” He paused. “I hesitate—you are after all acquainted with the lady—it is a delicate subject and I hesitate to be frank!”