Maggie MacKeever (31 page)

“I fear, Miss Millikin, that I must disabuse you on a couple of points.” The buccaneer immediately proceeded to do so. It was not kindness that had inspired him to accede to Lily’s suggestion of an elopement; he was not at all good. Furthermore, Lily did not seem to realize that her good name was besmirched beyond whitewashing. In short, the gentleman concluded, as he helped himself to tansy-cake and washed it down with ale, she was hopelessly compromised.

“I
do
know it!” responded Lily. “The fact that I have ruined myself was one of the things that decided me to go back to London. Even my family cannot expect Kingscote to accept spoiled goods. He will cry off, and we shall both be spared unhappiness.” Her blue eyes filled with tears. “I shall never, ever marry! And so I am very much obliged to you, sir, and very sorry that I have put you to a great deal of inconvenience, but that is the way with these fits of folly!” The buccaneer appeared to have been struck very forcibly by these remarks. Lily looked at him askance. “You would not want to elope with a woman who is going mad for another man, surely?”

“Why not?” inquired the buccaneer, with a fine insouciance. “Think you to play fast and loose with me? If so, my child, you had best think again. You have in a manner of speaking made your own bed, and now you must lie in it! In a word, you are mine to command!”

“Oh!” Lily clasped her pretty little hands. “I think I should warn you, sir, that I am not a biddable female. And I
am
a respectable female, although you would never credit it from my conduct, for I have behaved like a shocking loosescrew.” She took a deep breath. “This is all fudge, you know! You may be very far gone in infatuation—certainly you
act
like you are!—but ours is only the briefest of acquaintances and you cannot be hankering after me so very terribly. Even if you were, sir, it would be to no avail. Truly I do not wish to cut up all your hopes, and I wish even less to be
disagreeable —
but nothing you can say or do will induce me to look more kindly upon your suit!”

This prettily delivered set-down, the buccaneer took in very good part. “Nothing?” he repeated, and drew Lily into his arms.

“Nothing!” Lily asserted once again, though with a note of doubt. “It would be most ungentlemanly of you to try and take advantage of me!” It soon became obvious, alas, that the buccaneer was no gentleman. “Oh, dear! Sir, I wish you would not—I will not trust myself to express—if you do not cease that this very instant I shall lose all sense of decorum! This is a very poor sort of amusement, sir—I mean, I like it very well of course; I would not wish you to think—oh!” Speech having failed her, she burst into tears.

This had not the effect Lily anticipated; the buccaneer did not release her but instead picked her up bodily, crossed the room, and sat down near the fireplace in the most comfortable of the small chamber’s chairs. Nor did he allow Lily to remove herself from his lap, as she tried half-heartedly to do. “This is
most
indelicate,” she said, as she abandoned the struggle for freedom and nestled against his shoulder. Then she expressed a feeble wish that she might somehow contrive to check his starts.

“You cannot!” he replied, against her hair. “Nor shall you wring my withers, so you may cease from further tears. I am a man of
very
violent passions, and I indulge them with great latitude.”

“Heavens!” said Lily faintly, though without any appreciable effort to remove herself from the vicinity of such a brazen rogue.

“Quite.” One of his arms encircled her slender shoulders, the other hand stroked her curls. “You perceive me absolutely enraptured.” And then he proceeded to entertain the inspiration of his rapture with professions of ardor and protestations of loyalty unto death. She stood without rival, he proclaimed; she was the very woman calculated to suit his tastes.

Unfortunately this last comment recalled to Lily the gentleman by whom her own feelings were engaged, and the extreme reprehensibleness of her feelings, for she had entirely forgot her true love for the past several moments, which was behavior outrageous even in a Millikin. Lily tried once more to free herself. “Pray let me go!” she wailed.

“No.” The buccaneer’s tone was almost angry and Lily suffered a sudden surge of alarm. “Have I not said already I do not mean to let you go? I am a man of wild and ungovernable passions, if you will recall. You are the woman for whom I have a marked preference, the woman who has by act if not by word promised to favor me. Now you think you may say a mistake has been made and bid me quit you? I would not have thought you so missish!”

“I am
not
missish!” Lily protested indignantly. “Were I missish I would hardly allow you to embrace me. You will say I had no choice, but I
could
have swooned!”

“Ah!” The buccaneer’s arms tightened around her. “Then you are not indifferent to me?”

“What I am,” snapped Lily, who was discovering in herself a great many erroneous notions about romance, “is tired and cross and very weary of these transports! I have erred; I admit it. I have grievously misled you; I admit that too! There isn’t the least use in you working yourself up into frenzies, or enacting me threats. Certainly I must count myself honored, and I do, but these dramatic flights will avail you nothing. It distresses me beyond measure to refuse you but I must. Now we shall say no more about it and you will take me home!”

“Disabuse yourself of that notion, my child,” retorted the buccaneer. “And refrain from enacting me further displays of bravado. Why are you suddenly turned so timid, Lily? I have no wish that you should be afraid of me.”

“Gammon! When you have practically abducted me? Not that you were wholly to blame for that, since it
was
my idea. But I thought that you would accompany me and when you did not I realized—” Lily gulped. “Sir, it is true that I am not indifferent to you, which is no doubt very depraved in me since I do not even know your name! And it is also true that I liked kissing you; indeed I have never liked it so well! But I have never kissed Kingscote, you see, and so I do not know how that would be, and now I never will, because nothing could be more revolting to propriety than this dreadful scrape. It would serve me very well if no one ever spoke to me again. Oh! I did not mean to wound you,” she added, because the buccaneer’s chest had begun to shake alarmingly. “Pray do not do violence to your feelings! You must not take it as a reflection on yourself that Kingscote would suit me to a cow’s thumb!”

“But I do!” gasped the buccaneer. “I must!” He succumbed to a fit of merriment.

While her captor was thus indisposed. Lily sat up. The sound of the buccaneer’s laughter struck a chord of memory. Nor, now that Lily pondered the matter, was the buccaneer’s laughter all that seemed familiar. The gentleman’s height and build, the color of his hair . . . Abruptly she tweaked the mask aside. “What the
devil?”
Lily inquired.

“You must thank Fennel,” said the duke, as he clasped her hands. “He intimated subtly that you felt my courtship lacked romance. In point of fact, he intimated it so subtly that it took me some time to catch his drift. When I did so, I took immediate steps to remedy the situation. I trust, Lily, that I did not act too late?”

Lily had been too grossly misled to allow His Grace to wriggle so easily off the hook. Yet she would not pretend an indignation she did not actually feel. “Wretch!” said Lily merely, with an arch glance and a fine flutter of eyelashes.

By this gentle indication that Lily would take his deception in good part, the duke was encouraged to draw her once more against his chest. “I trust also,” said Kingscote, “that you will forgive my masquerade? I feared that you had got in the habit of thinking me elderly.” Here Lily interrupted with an opinion that eight-and-thirty was the best of all ages to be. Her failure to previously realize this fact she attributed to a shocking lack of perception on her part, perhaps because of her scanty prior acquaintance with wealthy peers, which she begged Kingscote would excuse. “Gervaise!” said he.

“Gervaise,” repeated Lily, “I like it very well that you should wish to embrace me, but I fear I cannot breathe! Thank you! Do you mean you went to all this trouble just to please me—the carriage, the masquerade?”

“I did,” confessed the duke. “I will admit I expected to feel very foolish, but instead I enjoyed myself excessively.”

“Gervaise!” whispered Lily, overwhelmed. “You
do
love me!”

“Widgeon!” responded her lord-to-be, and kissed her once again, after which he transported her not to Gretna Green but to his mother’s house, no great distance away. For the sake of romance, the duke had greatly exaggerated the consequences of Lily’s solitary journey. Since no one knew of the misadventure except Kingscote’s loyal servants, no voice was raised in protest on the occasion of Lily’s triumphant wedding ceremony in St. George’s, Hanover Square.

Thus did the elder Misses Millikin achieve their fondest wishes, and Fennel as well. But what of Hyacinth and Violet, Amaryllis and Camilla, and young Hysop? What, indeed, of the lovely Marigold? Lest the reader fall into the common error of leaping to assumptions, this much may fairly be said: nothing in this world is predictable, and the Millikins less than most—but that’s another tale.

Copyright © 1980 by Maggie MacKeever

Originally published by Fawcett Coventry (0449500748)

Electronically published in 2006 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No portion of this book may be reprinted in whole or in part, by printing, faxing, E-mail, copying electronically or by any other means without permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Belgrave House, 190 Belgrave Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94117-4228

     http://www.RegencyReads.com

     Electronic sales: [email protected]

This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.