Maggie MacKeever (28 page)

Much of Miss Clough would have liked to pursue this topic, a lifetime of association with her aloof father had taught her to be practical. “What about Nikki?” she gently inquired.

“Um?” Mr. Thorne was engaged in counting Clytie’s faint freckles. “Ah! The reason that I came here was to seek out your papa. I have just come from Nikki, who was in a dreadful taking because Rolf had filched back her jewels.” Marmaduke looked reluctantly admiring. “I didn’t think my nephew had it in him. Anyway, Nikki has taken it into her head that she’s a thorn in everyone’s side and has decided to leave town.”

“Leave town? Duke, we cannot let her!” Clytie was appalled. “We must do something, and quickly. How can you be so calm?”

Mr. Thorne did not consider that he
was
calm, a state of nerves which had nothing to do with Lady Sweetbriar. “Do not take on so,” he soothed, catching and holding the hands which Clytie was absentmindedly pounding against his chest. “I
have
done something, as I will explain, do you but cease to abuse me.”

“Abuse—oh!” Made aware that she was pummeling the gentleman whom she revered above all others, Miss Clough blushed. “I apologize. But I have grown very fond of Nikki, and there is no one whom I would rather have as a stepmama. Yes, and I felt no differently even when I thought she was a villainess.”

“Nikki a villainess?” Mr. Thorne looked amused. “Absurd child! Now you know otherwise, I think.”

Miss Clough grinned. “I think I do. And I know also that Nikki will suit my papa perfectly, do we but prevent her running away from him. He has gone to tell her that she is not marrying him for his fortune, have I said?”

“You have not.”

Miss Clough having exhibited no desire to wreak further physical violence upon his person, Mr. Thorne felt safe in releasing her hands. One of his own hands he placed into his pocket, and withdrew a lady’s purse. “Nikki will not go far without funds,” he said.

Miss Clough clapped her hands together. “You
are
a scoundrel, Duke!”

“And you,” said Mr. Thorne, succumbing to temptation, “are a darling.” Miss Clough offered him no resistance, indeed went eagerly into his arms. No little time was passed by them in very personal pursuits. The shadows grew longer and the garden cooler until it would have been a hardy visitor indeed who chose to wander along the gravel paths.

Had such a visitor existed, had he passed near the garden shed, the whoops that suddenly issued from behind it might have given him pause. Certainly they affected Mr. Thorne in that manner. “What the devil?” he inquired of Miss Clough, who—minus bonnet and trippet—was dissolved in giggles on his chest. “My darling, this is not the way to encourage a gentleman.”

“Gracious!” gasped Clytie, and availed herself of Duke’s handkerchief. “Of course I wish to encourage you, Duke. That was not what made me laugh! I had just thought—” She struggled heroically to restrain her mirth. “You have not realized that Nikki is going to be your mama-in-law!”

The prospects for Lady Sweetbriar becoming Mr. Thorne’s mama-in-law were not especially encouraging at this moment, however; it looked very much as if Sir Avery Clough would be denied admission to her little house. Certainly he had stood for several moments rapping on the front door without raising a response. But Sir Avery was a man of considerable patience and resource. When his knuckles began to ache, he raised his voice instead. “Nikki, if you do not open this door, I will break it down!” The door did swing inward in response, at least sufficiently for a suspicious dark eye to be applied to the resultant crack. Sadly, the eye blinked. Then the door opened wide, and Lady Sweetbriar darted forward, clutched Sir Avery’s arm, and tugged him inside.

Having slammed and bolted the door, Nikki leaned back against it, and sought to catch her breath. “Calamity after calamity! That
abominable
man! Every time I think of him I vow I could spit nails.”

Sir Avery gazed thoughtfully upon his fiancée, whose posture still suggested that she sought to forcibly bar the door. Nikki wore an ankle-length carriage dress of a textile he recognized as anglo-merino, nearly as fine as muslin, manufactured at Norfolk from the king’s merino flock. Sir Avery remembered the gown, its pretty bodice with the antique frill. He did not think that Nikki was used to wearing it with a poppy-red scarf wound around the neck, which in combination with her melancholy expression gave the unsettling effect of a lady whose throat had been cut. “Cheer up, my dear,” Sir Avery said bracingly. “I assure you things are not in so very bad a case.”

“I wish I could believe that.” Sighing, Lady Sweetbriar stepped away from the door. “Not that I mean to accuse you of telling rappers, Avery—though if you have not been, you are the only one. Rolf and Clytie have both been telling whiskers, and as for Duke—the wretch!” In a very suggestive manner, she yanked the scarf from her neck and tightened it in her hands.

The sight of his fiancée looking very much as though she was prepared to strangle Mr. Thorne brought an ironic expression to Sir Avery’s aristocratic face. “You have been telling a few rappers of your own, I think.”

“So I have.” Trailing her scarf on the floor behind her, Lady Sweetbriar approached the staircase. “But I did tell you from the first that I was a designing female! Not that telling you so excuses me for behaving scaly. Avery, there is something I must confess.”

Careful not to tread on the scarf, Sir Avery likewise mounted the stair. “I wish you would not,” he said. “All has worked out for the best. Sweetbriar is to marry his starched-up chit, and he has decreed that she must be civil.” He looked saturnine. “The jingle-brain
likes
you, my dear, even if you do wish to blow his brains out.”

“Blow out—” Casting her eyes heavenward, Nikki very nearly missed her step. Sir Avery caught her arm. Mournfully she looked at him. “You are prodigious good, Avery. If only—but I understand perfectly why you would rather
not!”

“Who says I would rather not?” Sir Avery escorted Lady Sweetbriar into the drawing room, and settled her in an overstuffed chair. “You are being foolish beyond permission, my dear.”

Undeniably Nikki had been foolish; no one knew it better than she. Sadly she studied her fiancé, who had dropped onto a nearby chair. Sir Avery’s muscular legs were stretched out before him, his arms folded across his chest. “You don’t know the half of it. I have been more foolish than you realize. If only there were some way in which I might atone—but there is not.” Sadly Nikki contemplated the fine, lean lines of Sir Avery’s calf and thigh. “I have made my bed and now I must sleep in it, and just to think of such a thing makes me very dismal, because I shan’t like it above half.”

“My dear.” Sir Avery watched Lady Sweetbriar gaze somberly upon his pale yellow pantaloons, his own expression wry. “This is unnecessary.”

“You would not say so, if you had on your conscience what I have on mine.” With effort, Lady Sweetbriar elevated her gaze. “I have been a—a
blockhead,
Avery! But I did not wish to apply to you for assistance, and there was no other way. Yes, and I would probably do the same thing all over again, did the situation arise. Except that I would never turn my back on Duke! It makes me very cross to think that he filched the last little bit of money I had in the world. I suppose he will not even visit me in jail, the wretch. Oh, Avery, I am so sorry about this—but I know Lady Regina will persuade Rolf to bring charges against me. I had meant to go away and spare you all the fuss, until Duke made off with my purse.” She sniffled into the red scarf. “That Duke should be the one to bring me to point nonplus makes it all the worse. He
knew
how important that purse was, because I told him so. And he is the oldest of all my, er, friends!”

“Don’t put yourself in a pucker, Nikki.” Sir Avery crossed his handsome legs at the knee. “You are kicking up a dust over trifles. Oh, yes, this business is a mere trifle. You had better tell me exactly what that stiff-rumped female said to you, I think, or we will never see an end to this business.”

“She is stiff-rumped, isn’t she? I have always said so.” For emphasis, Lady Sweetbriar waved the scarf. “Nonetheless, she has a point. There
has
been a sad want of openness about my behavior. I
have
exhibited a shocking unsteadiness of character. You
can’t
wish to marry such a conniving and unscrupulous female.”

Because Lady Sweetbriar had fixed him with a distinctly hopeful dark eye, Sir Avery smiled. “Can’t I just!” he said.

“Can
you?” breathed Nikki, and then her expectant expression faded. “But I am forgetting that you don’t know what I’ve done. Avery, I popped the Sweetbriar jewels. Those I have been wearing are only paste, and now Rolf has filched them, and when Lady Regina finds out—” She shuddered. “I don’t want to go to Newgate!”

Despite these dire disclosures, Sir Avery’s voice was calm. “My dear, I promise you will not. Why did you not tell me you were so badly dipped, Nikki? Could you not bring yourself to trust me?”

“No, no!” Lady Sweetbriar’s expression was horrified. “You must not think that! I trust you more than anyone, Avery. Nor must you think I set out to bamboozle you, because I did not. There has been plain dealing between us; everything has been quite aboveboard.” She recalled the manner in which she had contrived to meet him. “Or almost! But it was bad enough of me to marry you for your money. The least I could do was wait until the knot was tied.”

Sir Avery looked very sardonic. “But you are not marrying me for my money,” he said.

Nikki’s glance was reproachful: “I know that! But I
didn’t
know it when I popped the gems. You are not a very ardent fellow, Avery—at least you have not been since the occasion of our first meeting, though you were all a lady could wish
then!
When you made no effort after that to, ah, sweep me off my feet, I thought it must have been a fluke. And so I thought I didn’t love you, which is entirely your own fault, because you gave me so little opportunity to discover otherwise.” She clenched her fists. “Do you know, I am not convinced Reuben has not had some part in this? It is just the sort of thing he would like best, because he always wanted me to be miserable, and I have never been more miserable than this! I would not put it past him to try and make me miserable even from beyond the grave.”

Sir Avery unclasped his knee. “You need not be made miserable, Nikki.”

“No?” Lady Sweetbriar’s glance was arch. “You are not properly conversant with the penalties for selling what isn’t yours, I think. Neither do I know exactly what the penalties are, but I am sure they are very ba.! Lady Regina will do her worst for me, you may be sure.”

“I think not. Any scandal that involves you must reflect upon her, as your stepson’s wife.” Sir Avery gazed with keen appreciation upon his fiancée, whose posture was suggestive of a wilting flower. “All this fuss over some jewels. It is your decision, but I would advise letting the jingle-brain and his starched-up chit have the wretched things. I will buy you others that are much more fine.”

No wonder Sir Avery had seemed so tolerant, Lady Sweetbriar sadly thought; he had somehow failed to comprehend the enormity of her sin. “You do not understand; I cannot give them back—though could I, I would, because I never want to set eyes on the wretched things again! Were you paying attention, Avery, you would have heard me say I
popped
the accursed gems.”

“It is you who do not understand.” Sir Avery was amused by the fierce concentration with which Nikki frowned at him. “The jewels Sweetbriar filched from you are paste; the ones
I
have in safekeeping are not. You must do with them as you wish, but I would suggest giving the things back. They have already been much more trouble than they’re worth.”

“You
have—” Lady Sweetbriar wrinkled her nose. “I’ll be hanged if I know what you’re talking about, Avery!”

“No, my dear, you will not be hanged, or go to prison either, so you may relieve your mind on that score.” Sir Avery sounded faintly apologetic. “I had an agent buy them up, once I realized you were run aground. Several times I almost told you I had done so, but the occasion never seemed quite right. Then I decided to give them back to you as a bride gift.”

“What a good,
good
man you are!” Looking very melancholy, Lady Sweetbriar sniffled into her scarf. “I know I do not deserve it—or you! Do not fear, I will not hold you to our betrothal. You will not wish to throw the handkerchief in my direction now. Not that you probably ever did, but you could not help yourself, so thoroughly had I deceived you.” In a very dejected manner, she blew her nose. “Now you want nothing more to do with me. I cannot like such a thing, because I would like to have a great deal more to do with you, but I fully enter into your feelings. Lady Regina was right. I
am
a dreadfully designing slyboots, and no gentleman who had
not
been bamboozled could ever wish to marry me!”

To this very moving speech—which had been accompanied by a full battery of sideways glances and wistful sighs—Sir Avery responded promptly. “Come here,” he said. Looking curious, Lady Sweetbriar rose and approached the chair. Sir Avery grasped her wrist and pulled her down onto his lap. “I am quite satisfied with you just the way you are, Nikki. You must not feel guilty about bamboozling me, because I have never been more pleased with anything in my life.”

“Truly?” Lady Sweetbriar was briefly diverted from snuggling very comfortably against his chest. “I think you must be trying to flummery me. Not that I am complaining, mind. As long as you realize you do not
have
to do the civil! But if you truly want to, that is quite another thing.” She paused to ascertain if Sir Avery did in fact appear to be doing other than following his inclinations. He did not. Due to the nature of those inclinations, Nikki dimpled and giggled and fluttered her eyelashes. “Deuced if you don’t have a
dandy
lap!”