Maggie MacKeever (30 page)

“It’s not true, then,” Clio asked with little hope, “that Drusilla is to marry Sir Morgan?” Giles might have said those nuptials would never come to pass, but Drusilla had strenuously claimed the opposite.

“Certainly not!” Sapphira snapped. “I would hope Morgan has more sense!” Clio looked confused, and the dowager sighed. “I know I’ve encouraged you to think he is the grossest libertine, and little wonder you did not question me, since Morgan is hardly one to explain himself! However, Giles will tell you that Morgan is engaged in working with him to improve social conditions among the lower orders. Morgan makes the investigations, consequently earning for himself a reputation for enjoying low life—which he probably does!—and Giles labors to have reform enacted.” Her expression was irate. “Fools, the pair of them!”

The doctor, who bent over Drusilla, rose when she exhibited reluctant signs of life. “We can do no more here!” he announced.

“You must come to visit,” Celest said to Clio, giving her hand a final pat. “Bring your Tess.”

“You’ll be well enough!” The doctor’s shrewd eyes rested on Clio’s face. “I’ll have a tonic sent around. Mind you take every drop of it!” He bowed to the duke. “I trust I need not assure you that we will neither mention a word of this!” With his wife in tow, he made an abrupt exit, muttering all the time about madmen and villains and the inexplicable behavior of the aristocracy.

The Duke of Bellamy, who was looking far from his usual composed self, drew Clio into the hallway and closed the door just as the dowager launched forth on a tirade concerning vipers clasped to her maternal bosom and snakes in the grass who thought to feather their nests. “My dear,” he said somberly, “I cannot tell you how deeply I regret that you should have been so mistreated in my house.”

“Pray don’t regard it!” Clio replied hastily. The revelations of the past hour had left her totally overset. “Tell me instead about Tess! You said both she and Evelyn were safe—how?”

“They are.” The duke, she thought, looked almost boyish with his hair disarranged and his immaculate attire so disheveled that his rumpled cravat had slid around under his left ear. “I do not know the whole of it, but your swain is with them.”

“My swain?” repeated Clio, reaching up to straighten the crumpled neckcloth.

Giles caught her hands. “Cedric. I hope you will forgive me for meddling in your elopement, but I feared you would do something foolish. I was not convinced that you wished to marry him, you see.”

It did not occur to Clio to question how the duke had gotten wind of her plans. She stared at his cravat.

“Did you?” the duke persisted, “wish to marry him? If so, I’m sure your sister may be brought to agree—though I would think you could aim much higher, cousin.”

Clio had no notion where this conversation was leading, or how Giles knew of her relationship to Tess, but she didn’t wish him to labor under a needless burden of guilt. “I don’t care above half for Ceddie,” she admitted frankly. “It was for Tess’s sake—oh, I don’t know how to explain!”

The duke gave her no chance to try. “If Cedric has not engaged your heart,” he murmured, “then perhaps there is hope for me.”

“Oh, no!” Clio tried to disengage her hands. “I mean—my mother! You must not let yourself be deceived by my resemblance to her!”

“I thought that was it!” Giles drew her closer, despite her protests. “Clio, I am not the least deceived, nor do I cherish you because you bear a faint resemblance to Mirian! I was little more than a lad then and she was older than I. My fondness for your mother was hardly of a variety that would lead me, remembering her, to ask you to marry me!” She blinked and looked up at him. Giles smiled. “The truth, Clio, is that I have tumbled head over heels in love with a smart saucy girl with fine eyes and dark hair and the manners of a wild schoolboy!”

“Giles!” Clio’s head was spinning; she felt as if she could die from sheer happiness. At that most unpropitious of moments, the study door flew open, and Sapphira stalked into the hall. “Constant is gone!” she announced, ignoring the fact that her son had clasped young Clio in an ardent embrace, “What the devil do you mean to do about it, Giles?”

“I? Nothing,” replied the duke, with marked irritation. He looked down at Clio, who stirred in his arms.

“Nothing!” repeated Sapphira in stark disbelief.

“I would prefer,” Giles said impatiently, “to avoid a scandal. Constant is doubtless already on his way out of London; let him go! He won’t dare show his face here again.”

His words reminded Clio of her sister, who was also presumably absent from the city. “Please?” she asked shyly. “Tell me where Tess is?”

The duke was not immune to that pleading glance. “Tess and Evelyn,” he replied in bemused tones, “are safe in Morgan’s keeping. You need not worry about them.”

He might have known that his assurances were for naught. “Sir Morgan!” gasped Clio, convinced that her sister was at that very moment being ravished by the Wicked Baronet. Sapphira wore a similar expression of dismay, though for entirely different reasons, as she speedily made clear.

“I am not at all pleased,” the dowager duchess stated with laudable restraint, “about the things that have been going on under my nose. I can do nothing about
that,
but I can and will see that Morgan doesn’t fall prey to a greedy adventuress!” She glared at her son. “Giles, have the carriage brought around!”

The Duke of Bellamy was not the least inclined to explain to his ill-tempered parent Tess’s true identity, or to Clio Morgan’s noble heart, nor did he at all wish to set off on a fool’s errand; but one glance at Clio’s worried face was sufficient to inform him that she would have little time for romance until her sister’s safety was assured. “Very well, but in the morning!” said the sorely tried duke. “First, I have some far more pressing business to conclude.”

Chapter 24

Sir Morgan’s country home was a sprawling house of warm red brick with thick walls, a high-pitched tile roof, and countless additions in various disparate styles of architecture, among them Gothic doorways and mullioned windows, a sixteenth-century octagonal tower, and Tudor gables. Surrounding the mansion were extensive gardens containing apple trees and lilac bushes, oaks and elms and beeches, terraces and angled walks and whimsically clipped yew hedges, enclosed by high brick walls covered with climbing plants. Lady Tess thought she had never seen a lovelier home, or one that was more comfortable.

She stood at the window of Sir Morgan’s bedchamber and gazed down on the south terrace, where Evelyn introduced a reluctant Ceddie to Sir Morgan’s menagerie of pets, which included gold and silver pheasants, pigeons, a poodle and a parrot and a greyhound, as well as a well-stocked aviary and two great vicious-looking mastiffs that served as guard dogs.

With only the smallest of sighs, the countess turned to study Sir Morgan, sprawled in what appeared the soundest of sleeps across the huge and canopied ancestral bed. The end of her adventuring had come, and Tess was feeling decidedly flat. It was only exhaustion, she firmly told herself; she had spent the night jealously guarding Sir Morgan’s rest, despite the doctor’s assurances that his wound was nothing to signify. What did that old fool know? But it was true that Sir Morgan had seemed in the best spirits, even catching her and kissing her as she hurried from one room to another, and was now resting easily enough. She curled up in a large armchair near the fireplace and closed her eyes.

In point of fact, Sir Morgan had slept little more than the countess, having passed the night plotting dastardly schemes for her downfall. He did not expect to accomplish this feat without a certain amount of difficulty, but Sir Morgan had a gambler’s temperament, an equable disposition, and a cool nerve. He also possessed a certain ruthlessness.

Through half-closed eyes, he watched the countess settle in her chair. She looked the merest girl in his housekeeper’s best gray dress, which was considerably large for her slight figure, with her silvery curls in riotous disarray. Sir Morgan did not care for the exhausted shadows around her lovely eyes. Time, he decided somberly, to end this charade. And then he thought, inconsequentially, that even in sleep she retained that look of faint surprise.

Lady Tess, however, was deep not in sleep but in despondency. Forced at last to admit to herself that she had grown entirely too fond of the Wicked Baronet, she could not escape the conclusion that such emotion was the greatest folly. He might like her well enough—she could not doubt he did—but she was not the sort of female for whom any man might hold warmer feelings.

She was a crippled bluestocking, a dowdy and unfashionable spinster fit only to tend her garden and read her books. Sir Morgan had courted her with an eye to the diamond necklace; he would forget her as soon as their paths diverged; and to dream of a connection of a more particular nature was sheer madness. She opened her eyes to find him regarding her rather lazily.

“You’re awake,” she said, and silently cursed her sudden awkwardness. Above the waist, Sir Morgan wore only a bandage on his shoulder, and the effect of this blatantly displayed masculinity was heady indeed.

“So I am,” agreed Sir Morgan. “Come here!”

“What is it?” Tess hurried to his side. She could not quench the fear that Sir Morgan was mortally injured, a fear confirmed by his irritable demand that he be nursed by no one but herself. “Are you in pain?”

“I am, and none but you can ease it.” Sir Morgan grasped her wrist and pulled her down on the bed. “You have much to answer for, Countess! I fear you’ve dealt me a killing blow.”

“I?” Tess frowned as she touched his brow. “You don’t
feel
feverish. Perhaps I should send for the doctor so that you may be bled.”

Sir Morgan refrained from stating his doubt that the good doctor would be willing to undertake the measures necessary to cool his overheated blood. He propped himself up on his sound elbow and clasped the countess’s hand between his own. “We must talk. Why the devil did you cut such a rig in London, Lady Tess?”

She looked down at their hands, his skin so dark in contrast with her own. “It seemed the easiest thing. I did not want to go to town, but feared Clio would fall into a scrape if allowed to set out alone.” Her smile was rueful. “Instead
I
fell into a scrape, and Clio behaved remarkably well. I only hope she does not mean to have Ceddie, though from what he says it does not sound like they will make a match.”

“They won’t,” Sir Morgan replied promptly, his golden eyes fixed unwaveringly on her face. “Giles and your sister will suit very well—as you would know, had you paid the least attention! The pair of them positively reek of April and May.”

“I am not the most observant of chaperones, it seems!” Tess sighed. “As to the other—how long have you known?”

“Who you are? From the beginning! You will recall that I had met you as a child? I am not so easily bamboozled, little one! But surely you are not so shy of appearing in Society that you must try and pretend to be a servant.”

“Not
shy,
precisely.” The countess frowned. “I have no taste for such meaningless pleasures and senseless conventions, and I knew I could not but appear a figure of fun.”

Sir Morgan was aware of the effort it had cost her to make that admission and therefore refrained from remarking that it was positively bird-witted. “You
did
enjoy it,” he pointed out gently. “You will enjoy it even more once Clio is off your hands.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” retorted Tess, looking even more surprised. “You cannot think I mean to return to London? No one knew who I was! Once the truth comes out, as I am sure it must, everyone will say I behaved outrageously.” She shook her head. “I will return home.”

“You must, of course.” Sir Morgan’s hands tightened on hers. “I trust you will not stay long there—unless, that is, you have decided to marry your stuffy curate!” Her indignation was reassuring. “My love, everyone knew you were the Countess of Lansbury, even Giles—though not, I admit, the rest of his family. We thought it best they were kept in the dark, both Sapphira and Drusilla having infinite capacities for mischief.”

“Knew?”
asked Tess, greatly startled. “How?”

“I told Giles about you myself, after the incident at the inn.” Sir Morgan’s golden eyes twinkled. “He knew who you were immediately he saw you; not many ladies answer your description.” She looked very much as though she’d like to know what that description was, and he promptly obliged. “A beautiful, stubborn, untidy female with clouds of silver hair, flyaway eyebrows, and lashes so thick that they make her lovely blue-green eyes look smudged.”

Judiciously, he studied her. “A tall lady, delicately fashioned but nonetheless most pleasing to behold, with elegant features, a long and slender neck, lovely skin; a woman made to be caressed, yet as unaware of her passionate nature as of her loveliness.”

“A woman,” interrupted the countess, pleased in spite of herself by all the flummery, “who limps!”

“Giles in turn told Brummell,” continued Sir Morgan, undaunted by this untimely reminder of her infirmity. “We thought it best. The Beau has a strong bent toward sardonic humor, and while I knew he would never keep such a good tale to himself, he could be trusted to divulge it with discretion. No matter how charming a mere companion might be, my love, she would never be admitted to Almack’s.”

“But
why?”
cried Tess, her delicate cheeks flushed. “Lord, what people must have thought of me!”

“They thought you charming,” said Sir Morgan, “if a trifle eccentric. You were a novel change from the countless encroaching mushrooms who ape the nobility!” He chuckled. “You could hardly hope to keep your identity secret! You are of exceedingly high lineage, you succeeded to your title through an act of Parliament, and your godmother is no less than the Duchess of York.
She
has been exceedingly diverted by your progress, Brummell having kept her informed, and demands that you be brought to Oaklands so she may see the beautiful bluestocking for herself.”

“Oh, dear.” Tess looked mortified. “I see I have been excessively foolish.
You
had to tell Giles to inform Mr. Brummell. Why?”