Maggie MacKeever (28 page)

And because Valerian was human, at last he had erred. No less than had her daughter Lily did Marigold savor being told she was not in the style of every living gentleman. Valerian had entirely too high an opinion of himself, Marigold decided; he needed to be brought down several pegs. Therefore she did not remove her hand from his sleeve but stepped still closer and said humbly: “I am truly sorry, Valerian, that I spoke so freely. It will give you a disgust of me; it must bring me under the gravest censure; you will be surprised by my boldness. I have no excuse—save that I hoped you might—but that you do not, I perfectly see!”

“Were your vision so perfect, you would see I don’t like you above half!” responded Valerian with devastating candor. Marigold looked stricken. Since Valerian clearly recalled her playacting abilities, and since he was most appreciative of her repertoire, he softened this set-down with one of his rare and beautiful smiles. “I also recall that you are the most complete flirt! You always did try and outjockey me.”

Marigold was not of sufficiently energetic constitution to persist against unbeatable odds. Too, she was not insensible to the effect of Valerian’s smile, with the likes of which she had never before been gifted. “Yes, and you would never let me win, which is deuced unhandsome of you, you scamp! What would it hurt if just once you let me get the better of you? Since you will not, let us consider the imbroglio that your sisters have brought about. I hope you are prepared to give me some advice, because I am of too delicate a constitution to tolerate any more disastrous developments!”

Although it was not his custom to hand out advice, Valerian decided to make an exception. He wished to see his favorite sister happily settled; and to that end he would make any sacrifice, even though life would seem very flat once he’d tidied matters up and was no longer subject to these continual alarms. Thought of alarms prompted him to put forth an opinion that since Marigold was patently unable to control her offspring, she should remarry. The offspring. Valerian believed, would go on a great deal easier with a man’s hand on the reins. Thereby reminded that Marigold’s hand still rested on his sleeve, Valerian patted it.

This simple act had a startling effect on the participants. Valerian looked shocked. Marigold, who had a great deal more experience with that malady of which the symptoms were giddiness and palpitations and an oppression on the chest, looked rueful and roguish and altogether delightful. “Now
this,”
she murmured, “truly is a bolt from the blue!”

Indeed it was, and it had not escaped attention that Valerian Millikin and his stepmama were staring at each other with mingled wonder and dismay. “How can you ignore what has happened?” wailed Rosemary. “Angelica has eloped, my sapphires have been stolen! We must do something! Let us call in Bow Street.”

Valerian’s mind had not ceased to function, even though he had been struck all of a heap. He pointed out the folly of such a course, which would not only insure that the world knew of Angelica’s elopement, but might additionally involve her imprisonment for theft. At this particular moment—while Simon voiced a strong curiosity as to with whom Angelica had eloped—yet another caller was ushered into the room. Simon greeted his henchman with an oath.

“I am lamentable sorry for it, Master Simon!” apologized Durward, his long nose atwitch. “I don’t know how he did it, but Sir Randall eluded me. It’s my belief he’s gone off to meet with the young lady, and I’ve a good notion where!”

Valerian roused from the entranced state induced in him by Marigold’s ethereal person and huge blue eyes and heady perfume, and retreated from her several paces. “Angelica and Sir Randall? Don’t go leaping to conclusions, Brisbane!” But Simon and his henchman were already through the door.

“My sapphires!” wailed Rosemary, and surged to her feet. “The dragon!” uttered Fennel, and pulled her back down on the sofa. “Where are you going?” cried Marigold, following Valerian to the door.

“To find Angelica!” snapped Valerian, who was feeling a trifle fuzzy-headed, and who was consequently out of charity with the inspiration of his distress.

Marigold, who was feeling no less fuzzy-headed, had no wish whatsoever to be separated from the source of her distress until she could decide what was best done about this bizarre development. She wrinkled her pretty nose and sniffled, all the while gazing imploringly at her stepson.

Valerian knew very well that he was being outjockeyed, but suddenly to be outjockeyed by a conniving stepmama whom he didn’t like above half seemed much less terrible than the alternative possibility that she might burst any moment into tears. “Have it your own way, then,” he muttered. “But this doesn’t change anything!”

Chapter Twenty-three

Lady Chalmers and her brother were not left long to savor their solitude; scant moments after the eldest of the Millikin siblings had departed, in company with his stepmama, in the wake of Durward and Simon Brisbane, the youngest of the Millikins ran into the drawing room. Hot on his heels were Violet and Hyacinth, the twins Amaryllis and Camilla. Overwhelmed by superior forces, Hysop took refuge behind the needlepoint sofa.

Rosemary gazed upon her siblings, who were all gazing upon her with varying degrees of concern. “I think,” Rosemary said sadly, as she dropped her face into her hands, “that I shall put a pistol to my own head.”

Dead silence greeted this remark. Since the Millikins were by nature very voluble creatures, that silence struck Rosemary as very strange. Even stranger were the footsteps that echoed in the silence, as if booted feet strode across the floor. On due reflection, Rosemary recognized those footsteps, as familiar as her own. Bravely she raised her face from her trembling hands.

As she had guessed, the footsteps belonged to her spouse, who was looking yet again like a thundercloud. “Never have I see a more affecting scene!” he said, with harsh sarcasm. “I conjecture I am to take it to heart that I have laden you so heavily with reproaches you are fit to blow your own brains out! I am the greatest beast in nature, I suppose, because I wished to prevent you squandering my fortune! You may think me cruelly unfeeling, Rosemary—you may think me anything you wish!—I begin to despair of our ever reaching agreement!”

“Oh, I say!” remarked Fennel, in whom the Millikin lack of
nous
was accompanied by a tendency to tread fearlessly where angels dared not. “That’s coming it rather too strong, Chalmers! Had you not kept Rosemary without money for common necessaries, she wouldn’t have run aground! It was very stupidly done of her, I don’t deny that, but the deuce! Ain’t
you
ever been a trifle scorched?”

This appeal to fellow-feeling went very wide of its mark. Lord Chalmers, having never had deep doings, had never been dipped; and he had no compassion to waste on those who were so foolish as to fall into debt. Rosemary sniffled. Lord Chalmers cast her an acerbic glance. In so doing, he noted the various wide-eyed siblings grouped artistically around his wife. Chalmers was not especially appreciative of beauty, even of a bedazzling surfeit of Millikins. He suggested that his wife’s siblings were embarrassingly
de trop.

“No, no!” With one hand Rosemary clutched Fennel, with the other Violet. “I beg you, do not leave us alone!”

This plea was not without effect. The Millikins all looked astounded that Rosemary should fear to be closeted privately with her spouse; but no one looked more astounded than Lord Chalmers himself. Could Rosemary truly think him the greatest beast in nature? What basis had she for such grievous misjudgment? And then Lord Chalmers recalled that at the termination of their last
tête-à-tête
he had turned his wife over his knee. As a result of that recollection and his consequent suspicion that he had been a thought high-handed, Lord Chalmers looked even more thunderous. He reached into his pocket, extracted a handful of glittering gems and dropped them into his wife’s lap. “Jupiter!” breathed Hysop, from the hearth.

“The sapphires!” Rosemary had gone corpse-white. “How— why—oh, dear! I don’t imagine you’ll believe that
I
didn’t pop them! At least not this time!”

Lord Chalmers had opened his mouth to respond that he knew very well, despite Rosemary’s peccadilloes, that she had not pawned the Chalmers sapphires. According to the owner of the shop where the necklace had been taken—a discreet individual who had no sooner recognized the stones than he’d sent urgent word to Lord Chalmers, who had immediately set out to buy back the gems, after which he had made some most enlightening calls upon various tradesmen to whom his wife owed long-overdue sums—the necklace had been brought in by two most disreputable-looking men.
“This
time?” he echoed.

“The deuce!” sighed Rosemary.

“Now you’ve truly put your foot in it,” commented Fennel, while his younger sisters and brother watched keenly this enactment of marital drama. “I’ll tell you what it is, Rosemary: you’d best make a clean breast of it!”

“Yes, do!” invited the baron, regarding his wife with an unloving eye. “I am a busy man, Rosemary; this whole affair has put me to a great deal of inconvenience.”

“Oh!” Conscience-stricken, Rosemary clutched the sapphires to her bosom. “You
have
suffered a revulsion of feeling—not that you ever did care a fig for me! All I wished to do was make a stir in the world and set myself up in the latest mode— I had no notion that it would cost so dear.
But it did! And then I was under the necessity of keeping you from finding out just how very badly I was scorched, because you already thought very poorly of me. I tried very hard to make a recover, but it did not serve. Now you will publicly denounce me, and it is no more than I deserve! I am the first of the family to try and outrun the bailiffs; I might as well also be the first to be dragged into the divorce court!” Upon saying which, she burst into tears.

With no little consternation, Lord Chalmers eyed his sobbing wife, ringed about with sisters who patted and soothed. “Good God, Rosemary!” he said, rather feebly. “I didn’t say anything about divorce!”

“Not yet,” wept Rosemary, “but you will when you hear about Mr. Thwaite!” After this dire utterance, she lapsed into total incoherency.

It was left to Fennel to render up such explanations as seemed advisable. He contemplated his brother-in-law’s choleric countenance and decided only the whole truth would suit.

“You ain’t going to like this!” said Fennel, with a flash of his occasional perspicacity. “Rosemary may be a chowder-head but you
are
devilish high in the instep! It stands to reason she was afraid to tell you about her fix—moreover, she trusted Angelica to see her clear of it. But what must Angelica do but take a maggot in her head and filch the sapphires herself—you look confused!”

Whatever degree of confusion Lord Chalmers may have exhibited was but a drop in the bucket to the turmoil that he felt. He had scant reliance on Fennel as a lucid source of information, but Fennel was obviously the most lucid individual in the room. Lord Chalmers requested politely that, if explanation Fennel meant to render, he should start at the beginning. Fennel professed himself happy to do so.

Fennel started with his own arrival in London, proceeded through the pawning of the sapphires and Rosemary’s attempts to redeem the gems, and concluded with his own fruitless visit to Mr. Thwaite in Newgate Street. “You mustn’t think too bad of Rosemary!” Fennel concluded. “She don’t mean no harm, it’s just that she has more hair than sense.” He cleared his throat. “And I’ll take leave to tell you that Rosemary hasn’t defied you from a want of affection, Chalmers! To say the truth, she’s been wild with horror of the notion that you should cast her off—and it beats me why she should dread being accused by you of boldness if she admitted she was é
prise!”

If Lord Chalmers was aghast at these disclosures, and he was, he was no more aghast than Rosemary. “Fennel!” she shrieked, and sank back on the sofa, deprived almost of consciousness.

That Lady Chalmers did not, in this most apt of all moments, take refuge in a swoon was due to the advent of the butler. That individual stood stiffly in the doorway and announced with disapproval that A Person sought converse with her ladyship. Before her ladyship could respond, the visitor in question pushed aside the butler and stepped into the room. Fennel recognized that plump and garish figure, the equally garish and most improbably colored hair, the avaricious eye. Fervently he wished that he might sink through the floor.

Though the arrival of Mrs. Holloway had a debilitating effect on Fennel, Rosemary was revitalized: her days to play the baroness were numbered, after all. Lady Chalmers stiffened her spine, folded her hands in her lap, and inquired with a nice condescension what Mrs. Holloway required.

Mrs. Holloway was not easily intimidated, and the sapphires that rested also in Rosemary’s lap had not escaped her greedy eye. Nor was she a woman to waste time with polite absurdities. She reiterated her intention, did not Fennel come across with the ready on the spot, to bring against him a breach of promise suit. Said Fennel, squirming under his brother-in-law’s lowering eye: “Nothing of the sort! No promises were made, my word on it! It was just a flirtation!”

“Flirtation!” Mrs. Holloway placed her fists on her ample hips. “A seduction, more like! I disremember when I’ve been so lamentable put-about. That my poor Phoebe should be led astray by a harum-scarum young man—I mean to see she’s not a penny the worst of it!”

Lord Chalmers may not have been beloved of the muslin company, but he had taken Mrs. Holloway’s measure on first glance. “And several pennies to the better, I perceive!” he murmured. “That
is
the purpose of this visit?”

“No, no!” protested Rosemary, as Fennel mumbled in a nettled fashion about rosy cheeks and cherry lips and promises he’d never made, and his siblings looked on in unabashed fascination. “Do not concern yourself, Chalmers! This, er, lady is under the impression that Fennel has his own money, that the family is well off. I asked her to call so that I might explain to her how it is the opposite.”