Maggie MacKeever (25 page)

The bedroom was in chaos, with articles of feminine apparel strewn everywhere—gloves and shawls and stockings, headgear, chemises and petticoats. The doors of the wardrobe gaped open; intimate articles of clothing spilled out of the narrow tallboy drawers. Mr. Thorne hastily averted his gaze from a pair of very daring opera drawers fashioned from elastic India cotton.

Gowns were flung carelessly upon the gabled tent bed. Bandboxes were piled haphazardly upon the dressing stand. In the midst of this confusion stood Nikki, gazing somberly upon an opened portmanteau.

That somber glance she transferred to Mr. Thorne, once she realized he had followed her no farther than the doorway. “What are you doing in the hallway, Duke?” she inquired, puzzled. “I wish very much to speak with you, and I am in a very great hurry, so I wish you would not dawdle there.”

“I am not dawdling but, ah, preserving your reputation, Nikki.” Mr. Thorne was very pleased to have thought of this excuse. “You will recall that you are betrothed.”

That recollection did little to lighten Lady Sweetbriar’s expression, the solemnity of which caused Mr. Thorne’s premonitions to recur in fall force. Nor did Lady Sweetbriar’s next words ease his apprehensions. “I
was
betrothed!” she sighed. “I doubt Avery will want to marry me once he discovers I have—And I had just settled on a claret-ground set of seven vases painted with mythological subjects in the manner of Hondecaeter— But there’s no use crying over spilt milk! At least I furbished up Avery’s house for him. He may thank me for that, if for nothing else. It was so exciting, Duke, the way we met.”

“What was exciting?” inquired Mr. Thorne, from the doorway where he was still lodged. “The match between Cribb and Molyneaux?”

“No.” Lady Sweetbriar giggled. Then she recalled her woes. “Now it’s bellows to mend with
me.
You are being tediously provoking! Do you mean to stay forever in my hallway, Duke? This concern for my reputation seems somewhat excessive. After all, we are alone in the house, and you have been in my bedchamber before. Even if it was a very long time ago.” She picked up and shook out a petticoat before cramming it absent-mindedly into her portmanteau. “I wish you would not be so stodgy. I have a great many things I wish to do in very little time, and it makes a person very cross to have to shout!”

It was the things Lady Sweetbriar wished to do that had caused Mr. Thorne’s reluctance to cross her threshold, especially those things that concerned himself. But how could a gentleman inform a lady of whom he was fond that he wasn’t so fond of her as all that? Duke hesitated. Nikki plucked out the petticoat which she had just packed into her portmanteau, and frowned. Perhaps actions might prove more eloquent than words, decided Marmaduke. He strode purposefully into the room, and swept Lady Sweetbriar up into his arms. With practiced skill, he kissed her. Then he briskly set her aside.

“Well?” inquired Marmaduke, his expression saturnine, his arms folded across his chest.

“Well?” echoed Lady Sweetbriar, looking astounded. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Duke? I tell you disaster has struck, and you take it as leave to kiss me? Or perhaps you thought you would cheer me up?”

If so, his efforts had not been successful, reflected Marmaduke as Lady Sweetbriar applied her petticoat to her damp eyes and reddened nose. “I begin to think I detect my nephew’s hand in this,” he murmured, ignobly cheered by his old friend’s woe. Marmaduke did not enjoy seeing Nikki made unhappy, of course; but he rejoiced at her lukewarm response to his embrace.

Irritably, Lady Sweetbriar flung aside her petticoat; her patience was running thin. “What the devil has Rolf to do with you kissing me?” she snapped.

“Everything.” Apace with her ladyship’s ill-temper, Mr. Thorne’s spirits rose. “He intimated that you had a partiality.”

“A partiality?” Nikki emptied a drawer of a tallboy onto her bed. “Naturally I have a partialiaty
.
Rolf is a—”

“I know what Rolf is.” Mr. Thorne watched Nikki rummage through the purses and reticules of straw and beads, steel and fabric, which she’d strewn across her bed. “He has stolen a leaf from your book, I think. Because I do not think that you have a partiality for me.”

“For
you!”
Lady Sweetbriar’s dark eyes opened wide in astonishment. “The deuce! That is, I am very fond of you, Duke, and when you first came home I wondered—but I soon saw my mistake.” She shook her head. “Rolf told you I still hankered after you? Why, I wonder? Either he is more of a gudgeon than I realized, or he is playing some deep game.”

So very comfortable was Mr. Thorne rendered by these disclosures that he cleared a space for himself amid the various articles of feminine apparel tossed on Nikki’s bed. “I suspect Rolf sought to divert me from Lady Regina,” he said.

“And so he might.” Lady Sweetbriar paused in the act of folding a poppy-red scarf. “You have been behaving almost as badly as I. Throwing the hatchet at both Lady Regina and Clytie—why is it I never realized just what a rogue you are? Not that it will serve you, Duke. How very comfortable you look. Instead of taking your ease, you might make a push to help me pack.” With a quizzical expression, Mr. Thorne picked up and folded her much-abused petticoat. “This is almost like old times!” Nikki sighed.

For several reasons, Mr. Thorne did not especially care to enter upon a discussion of time past. “Why are you packing, Nikki?”

As diversion, this gambit was remarkably successful; Lady Sweetbriar flung out a dramatic arm. “The game,” she cried, “is up.”

For an awful, appalled moment, Mr. Thorne thought he had been caught out lolling on Lady Sweetbriar’s bed, clutching her petticoat, a situation far more compromising than that she had contrived for his nephew. Cautiously he poked his head out from among the bed hangings, glanced in the direction of her pointing finger—and swore.

Though Mr. Thorne was no happier to view his brother’s likeness than had been his nephew, Marmaduke was quicker to realize that it was a portrait that he saw. Unappreciatively he gazed upon Lady Sweetbriar. “Confound it, Nikki. A sight like that could make a fellow cast up his accounts.”

This viewpoint had not occurred to Lady Sweetbriar, long accustomed—both in the flesh and on canvas—to the unlovable aspect of her late spouse. “I hope it got the wind up Rolf,” she muttered, as she crossed to the portrait and swung it to one side, revealing the cavity behind. “Because the wretch broke into my house again, and this time he
did
make off with my jewels. Now I am truly in the basket—which is why I wished to see you, Duke. Yes, and it was very good of you to come so quickly.”

As he extricated himself from the feminine fripperies strewn across Lady Sweetbriar’s bed, Mr. Thorne mourned the sense of well-being which had been so short-lived. “I do not understand you, Nikki. Only moments past you said you would not let me help you, even though your pockets are to let. Now you hint that I might. I would be very glad to do so, if only you would make up your mind.”

Whatever Lady Sweetbriar had expected from her old friend Marmaduke, it was not this selfish, bullying attitude. Had he changed so much during the years they had been separated—or had she? Anyone must change, after several years of marriage to a nipfarthing cheeseparer, she supposed. But Duke had not endured such a marriage, and he was no less altered than she.

“I hinted no such thing.” Nikki said crossly, as a glimpse in her dressing-stand mirror told her she looked as hagged as she felt. Would the poppy-red scarf which she still held cheer up her spirits as well as her white dress? It did not. “It was not to tell you that I haven’t a feather to fly with that I summoned you, Duke, but to warn you that you must not let Regina beat you at the post. If she has not already done so. Yes, and to tell you also that you must content yourself with Rolf’s money, can you but gain access to it, for which I do not hold you out a great deal of hope! Just days ago, I’d have laid a monkey that I would never be out-jockeyed by the chit.”

So very much had Mr. Thorne altered, that the conversation of his onetime ladylove was in a fair way to giving him a headache. “But I don’t want Rolf’s money,” he protested, plaintively. “I wish I knew what you are talking about.”

Lady Sweetbriar had gone back to packing, in her highly individualistic manner, which consisted of placing an item in the portmanteau only to remove it seconds later and toss it aside. “Do not try and bamboozle me, Duke!” she scolded. “For I am the greatest bamboozler of all. I have known all along that there was something havey-cavey about your return to England. You didn’t deceive me with those tarradiddles about Bonaparte invading Russia.”

Wearing a very satiric expression, Marmaduke strolled across the bedchamber, halting before his brother’s painted likeness. Unfondly, Duke gazed upon the portrait. Then he swung it aside. “You have not been paying attention to the newssheets, Nikki. Napoleon has departed St. Cloud for Moscow.”

Lady Sweetbriar’s delicate jaw dropped open. “Lud! You were telling the truth, after all.” But the Corsican’s designs on Russia held little interest for her at that point. “I am very sorry if I misjudged you, Duke, but what else was I to think? Your conduct was bizarre. Moreover, Rolf distinctly told me you were after Reuben’s blunt. Lady Regina is welcome to him! Never did I think a stepson of mine could turn out to be so low.”

“Do not take on so, Nikki.” Mr. Thorne inspected the cavity which had until recently hidden the coveted Sweetbriar jewels. “So what if Rolf stole back the baubles? Clough will give you more.”

To this optimistic declaration, Lady Sweetbriar responded with a renewed frenzy of packing, at the end of which plumes and ribbons and turbans were added to the existing chaos. “The devil he will!” she wailed. “It makes me very sad to think Avery will not wish to marry me once he finds out what I have done, because I never wished to marry anyone so much—no, not even
you!
But as is the way of things with me, I found it out too late. Confound it, Duke, don’t just stand there. Come and help me pack.”

Mr. Thorne allowed neckpieces and gloves and stockings to be piled into his arms. “Clough won’t wish to marry you once he discovers Rolf has reclaimed the jewels? Nikki, that doesn’t make sense. I can’t imagine Reuben added extensively to the collection, and it was not worth all that much. Certainly it was not worth so much as must signify a button to Clough.”

Upon this reminder of her fiancé’s enviable financial situation, Lady Sweetbriar sighed and added a tippet of pale fur to the stack of her belongings which Mr. Thorne held. It slipped to the floor. She picked it up and draped it round his neck. “I know exactly what the things were worth,” she muttered, “and it is not that which will make Avery wish to wash his hands of me, but what they
aren’t!
If only I could think what to take with me, but it is unlikely I will ever have anything so fine again, and I hate to leave anything behind.”

“What they aren’t?” Between his headache and his premonitions, Mr. Thorne was not at his sharpest. “Nikki—”

“Don’t you scold me, Duke! I do not think I can bear hearing another harsh word.” Perhaps if she were to begin packing again, in a more orderly fashion, the business might more rapidly proceed. Lady Sweetbriar grasped the portmanteau and upended it on the bed. “Lady Regina has already said enough sharp words to last me for a lifetime, and it was very
hard
of her. Moreover, she was right! I have behaved abominably. Only the most unconscionable of females would stand in the way of Rolf’s happiness, and bamboozle poor Avery as I have.” She sighed. “Although I do not mean to oblige that stiff-rumped female by turning up my toes, I quite see it will be best for everyone if I leave town.”

“How do you propose to do that?” inquired Mr. Thorne, with distinct acidity. “You have just got through telling me, at some length, that your pockets are to let.”

“I did not say that, precisely.” Nikki scrabbled through the chaos on her bed, and at length triumphantly held up a heavy purse. “I have managed to set aside a little nest-egg. Do not tell me that in all conscience I should turn it over to Rolf; I know I should! But he doesn’t need it, and I do. Beside,” and she looked very sorrowful, “I have already done so many odious things that one more will scarce signify. My only hope is that someday everyone will grant me forgiveness.”

Mr. Thorne had not been so long parted from her ladyship as to forget her talent for melodrama. “Cut line, Nikki!” he said.

“Well, it
will
be best!” With a half-hearted smile, Lady Sweetbriar dropped the purse back onto the bed. “Especially for me. I don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when Lady Regina discovers the jewels are paste. But that is not why I called you here, Duke, and I do not have time to stand here prosing on.” She grimaced. “You will not like it, I think.”

Mr. Thorne thought likewise. Additionally he thought that, were she allowed to go racketing about the countryside, Nikki would likely tumble into scrapes that were even worse. Casually, he glanced at her little purse. Could he possibly palm it without attracting her attention? Perhaps under the pretense of depositing upon the bed some of the diverse articles draped haphazardly about his person? “Do you want me to help you take French leave? I won’t. The people you have been deceiving deserve better from you than that, Nikki.”

“So they may,” agreed Lady Sweetbriar, whose attention was primarily on her packing, “but
I
deserve better than to end my days in Newgate, which is doubtless what Lady Regina will demand. Tell me truly, Duke;
do
you need a fortune? Is that why you threw the hatchet at Miss Clough?”

“No.” It was the only word Mr. Thorne trusted himself to speak.

Lady Sweetbriar bit her lower lip. “I was afraid you would say that. You are not going to like this, but I persuaded Clytie you are a villain, Duke. I meant it for the best!” Before she could explain her reasoning, Mr. Thorne uttered a harsh oath, flung the remainder of his burden on the bed, and strode out of the room. The effect of his wrathful exit was in no way diminished by the fur tippet which he still wore around his neck.