Maggie MacKeever (13 page)

He found her walking up and down the little garden in obvious agitation, Confucious snapping at her heels. Some few silent seconds passed as Jevon paused to conquer the revulsion roused in him by the sight. It was not his ladylove who inspired disgust, naturally; but Confucious, who was bundled up in some knitted garment, and wearing similarly fashioned mittens on his paws. “Good God!” Jevon ejaculated in disgust. Further moments elapsed while he fought off the dog, which had been roused to animated fury by the sound of Jevon’s voice. At length Miss Valentine succeeded in scooping the dog up into her arms, but not before Confucious had set his few remaining teeth firmly in Jevon’s gleaming boot.

“My valet will have a spasm,” said Jevon, ruefully surveying the abused article. “You should have let me set that misbegotten cur loose in the streets when we had the chance.”

“I wish I had!” Only in the nick of time did Miss Valentine avoid being nipped. Hastily she set down Confucious on the shell-shaped bench. The bench being too high off the ground for him to escape, Confucious settled back, frustrated and snarling, to await release. “But much as I dislike the little brute, I cannot connive at his murder. Too, were Confucious no longer with us, I would probably find myself out of a place, because Georgiana would blame me for the loss. And then I truly
would
be at point nonplus!”

“No, you wouldn’t!” promptly responded Jevon, not one to miss a cue. “My darling, trust me!”

“Your
what?”
Miss Valentine stared, then blinked and blushed. “Jevon, I thought we had agreed you would talk no more flummery to me.”

“Did we?” The combination of wide gray eyes and rosy cheeks, Mr. Rutherford discovered, left a fellow feeling a trifle bemused. “Do you dislike it so much?”

“Dislike it? Good gracious, no! I do not wish you to feel I expect you to throw the hatchet at me, Jevon, because you must get
tired
of such things!” Sara sighed. “I will confess that I find it very pleasant to laugh, what with Jaisy in a pucker and Georgiana in a bustle, and both of them ringing peals over me!”

“My poor Sara!” Jevon clapsed her hands. “If it becomes too much to bear, you may come away to me.”

“I thank you!” snapped Miss Valentine, and jerked her hands away. “Or I
would
thank you not to say such things! You may flirt with me, Jevon, but you may not make mock!”

Happy it was for Mr. Rutherford that he was supremely self-possessed, else he might have taken to heart the rejections that Miss Valentine steadfastly dealt. “My darling Sara, pray forgive me. I did not mean to tease you, but sought to indicate my eagerness to be of assistance.”

“Eagerness? You, you lazy creature?
I
have not forgot your promise to help me persuade Jaisy that she must not dangle after Carlin!” Sara pressed gloved fingers to her hot cheeks. “Now I must apologize for ripping up at you.”

“You need not.” Once more, Jevon took possession of her hands. “We shall consider one another forgiven. Now you must tell me what inspired the contretemps I overheard abovestairs, and I will relate to you the very strange conversation that I had with Carlin earlier this day, and we will decide what is best done.”

Miss Valentine obliged with an accounting of Carlin’s unflattering comments overheard by Lady Easterling. “She cannot seem to make up her mind,” Sara concluded, “whether Carlin is the greatest blackguard alive or a gazetted fortune hunter, whether he spoke with all seriousness or in jest; and consequently cannot decide whether she should fly into a passion or sink into a decline, as befitting a lady who’s received a crushing blow. First she professes he has played fast and loose with her, offering her false coin; then she proclaims that she is broken-hearted that the object of her affections should hold her so unwarrantedly low!”

During these revelations, Mr. Rutherford had with practiced ease placed an arm around Miss Valentine’s slender shoulders and drawn her against his side. “My poor darling!” he responded comfortably.

“Indeed!” said Sara. “Your sister applied to me regarding the truth of Carlin’s remarks and I was obliged to admit they were not wholly without basis, which piqued her vanity. She was very much chagrined and disappointed in me, Lady Easterling announced; and then, if you please, she turned me off!”

“She did
what?”
echoed Mr. Rutherford, swinging Miss Valentine around so that he might look into her face.

“Not that she can.” Sara was quick to reassure him. “Although I should have liked to leave Georgiana’s employ and have as many bonnets as I wish, I daresay Jaisy would have been no easier to please.” She frowned. “Jevon, you are shivering! Why did you come out without a coat?”

“Because,” responded Mr. Rutherford, who had indeed ventured out-of-doors without benefit of gloves or curly-brimmed beaver hat or greatcoat, “I was so anxious to speak with you, my precious!”

“Oh,” responded Sara doubtfully. “Well, it is very good of you to be so concerned about your sister, but I do not understand why we could not have spoken as easily inside.”

“No?” As has been made apparent, Mr. Rutherford intended to pursue this courtship with all due respect to his beloved’s various bird-witted opinions; but even the most rigidly imposed self-control may snap. In the case of Mr. Rutherford, moreover, self-control was both newly acquired and rudimentary. “I’ll show you!”

As concerns embraces undertaken in chilly gardens, when one participant is in his shirtsleeves and the other in a state of shock, this example was more satisfactory than most. Mr. Rutherford ceased to shiver, perhaps because of the proximity of another human body, and very nicely fashioned it was; Miss Valentine seemed happy enough to perform this humanitarian service for her old friend, because he no sooner released her than she voiced an incoherent murmur that prompted him to do it all over again.

But romance was not destined to flourish that day in the little garden behind Blackwood House. Confucious had gone too long unnoticed by Mr. Rutherford and Miss Valentine, who were so engrossed in one another that they did not even notice when he began to bark.

Stricken deaf as were Miss Valentine and Mr. Rutherford—a not-unheard-of side effect of Cupid’s dart—this affliction did not similarly smite the other occupants of Black-wood House. Some moments later, when Jevon reluctantly ceased to kiss his Sara, a respite intended to be temporary and undertaken only so that his beloved might draw breath, he became aware of a disapproving presence behind him.

“Lady Blackwood wishes a word with you, sir,” announced Thomas, in tones no more friendly than the damp and chilly air.

Feeling very much as the aristocracy of revolutionary France must have whilst awaiting the guillotine, Miss Valentine went about her chores. The greater portion of the following morning she spent in the nether regions of Blackwood House—the kitchens with huge elm worktables and charcoal-burning ranges, countless copper pots and pans upon the wall, coconut matting spread upon the stone-flagged floors; the cool larder with its brick floor and slate shelves. Lady Blackwood suspected that her cook sold more than grease and dripping and old tea leaves, as was her perquisite, to the buyer of kitchen stuff who appeared regularly upon the scullery step. Therefore, Sara had to count the silver spoons, and insure that miscellaneous pieces of old brass, or damask cloths, or even loaves of bread and hunks of good meat, were not making their stealthy way out the back door, thereby enriching the cook’s pocketbook. A very plump purse that was, Sara shrewdly reckoned. The cook was a petty tyrant in her own right, every month receiving a commission from the tradesmen with whom she dealt. Any tradesman who failed to cooperate in this example of mutual back-scratching found that the cook’s complaints about the quality of his merchandise had lost him the custom of Lady Blackwood.

Enterprising as was the cook, Sara found no real cause for complaint in the busy kitchens, unless one counted the knowing glances that were cast at her, or the whispers and giggles passing behind her back. Georgiana had meant for her to be put to the blush, Sara thought, as she wearily climbed the stair. The dowager duchess had not expected that Sara would discover skullduggery afoot in the nether regions of Black-wood House. Probably she would next be scolded for having interfered with the creation of that evening’s
entrées.

Perhaps she was starting at shadows, Sara told herself, perhaps imagining those sly glances and whispered comments. Perhaps Thomas had told no one that he had caught Jevon Rutherford embracing his aunt’s hired companion; perhaps he had realized that the incident was of no real significance. Jevon was in the habit of embracing every woman who crossed his path. Moreover, he had been so cold that he was shivering. Miss Valentine’s compliance with his odd methods of resuscitation had been undertaken wholly to insure that he did not freeze to death, and so she would inform anyone who dared broach the subject to her, which thus far no one had, a state of affairs which she dared not hope would last.

Sara’s bedchamber, as befit her lowly status, was located in the attics of Blackwood House, which were bitterly cold in the winter and boiling hot in summertime. It was a mean little chamber, with off-white walls and bare floorboards, furnished with oddments. Sara sank down on the iron bedstead and took stock of her domain. In one corner stood a washstand and basin; in another sat a simple wooden chair, and beside it an old dressing table with a looking glass. If the furniture did not match, at least it provided her a modicum of comfort. Most important, this little chamber afforded a degree of privacy.

As she was thinking ungratefully of her employer, Sara’s door swung abruptly open, and Sara started so violently that her forehead encountered the iron bedstead. “Sara! I wish to talk to you!” Lady Easterling announced, somewhat unnecessarily, from the doorway.

“You are doing so, are you not?” retorted Sara, wearily. “What is it, Jaisy?”

Undeterred by this ungracious attitude—indeed, oblivious to it—Lady Easterling tucked herself up quite comfortably at the other end of the bed. “It’s about Carlin,” she said.

“Oh?” Miss Valentine murmured. “Do you know, I rather thought it might be?”

Irony had imperceptible effect on the self-centered Jaisy. She frowned. “I have decided that Carlin could not have been serious.”

Sara was possessed of a very unkind impulse to immediately throttle her childhood friend. As if it were not bad enough that Sara must dread the dowager duchess’s reaction to the garden incident, and blush to contemplate the opinion of her held by her partner in that misbehavior, she must now contend with a positively mule-headed chit. “Jaisy—”

“You need not explain.” Lady Easterling looked wise. “I have thought very hard about it, and I do not hold it against you that you said Carlin was serious when I know he could not have been. Nor do I mean to scold you for speaking out of pique, even though it
was
a very shabby thing! Why, had I not realized you was hamming me, I might have gone off Carlin altogether, and just think how wretched he would have been. But all’s well that ends well, I always say, and you must get up very early in the morning to beat
me
at the post! Oh, do not look so horrified, Sara. I have said I do not hold it against you, and neither will Carlin when I have explained it all to him. In fact, I daresay he will agree with me that you shall have as many bonnets as you please!”

“You are mistaken, Jaisy,” said Sara, quietly and without enthusiasm. “I should be very happy to learn that Carlin has made you a declaration, but I am very much afraid that it is not to be.”

“Afraid, my Sara? Moonshine, my dear!” On the rare occasions when awareness of someone else’s problems penetrated her rather shallow mind, Lady Easterling could be remarkably kind. “When one throws one’s heart over, one’s horse must of necessity follow! I think you must be dicked in the nob, or you would not say Carlin may fail to make me an offer. Anyone will tell you his affections have become fixed.”

Had she not again been struggling with an impulse toward physical violence, Sara almost might have pitied Lady Easterling, who had never before been crossed in love, and who was destined for a rude awakening. Regretting that she must be the means by which that awakening was achieved, Sara resolutely continued: “No, Jaisy, anyone will
not!
You have been casting out lures in the most appalling manner, and Carlin has not picked up the handkerchief. He has paid you no attention beyond the barely civil, and sometimes not even that; he has never given you the slightest reason to think he has a partiality. Frankly, Jaisy, you have been bold as a brass-faced monkey! While Carlin is the highest of sticklers. That he spoke unflatteringly of you is a thing no one can blame in him. You must console yourself with the reflection that he was not overheard.”

Lady Easterling’s lovely face had undergone several changes of expression during Miss Valentine’s outburst, and upon it currently was a thoroughly bewitching look of rage. The delicate cheeks were suffused with blood, the huge blue eyes sparked fire; the lush lips, pouted, parted: “The devil fly away with you, Sara Valentine! Who are
you
to tell
me
what Carlin thinks? A female who never took, who retired after several seasons and now is left upon the shelf! Not that I understand why you should be an ape-leader, because if you was to put forth a little effort you could be a nonpareil, but that’s fair and far off. It is clearly midsummer moon with Carlin, and to that I shall hold fast!”

Wounded by Jaisy’s unkind words about herself, Sara snapped back, “You seem to have a fixed and unalterable determination to hound that poor man into his grave! I tell you frankly, Jaisy, that nothing can appear more revolting to propriety.”

Lady Easterling leaned forward, her aspect so irate that Miss Valentine shrank back against the iron bed-frame. “And
you
set yourself up as a pattern-card of respectability? Well, I may be capricious and rag-mannered and eccentric, but I haven’t been caught out trysting with my brother in the garden! Not that I
would
tryst with Jevon, no matter what example that horrid Byron set! One’s own sister, just imagine! Don’t poker up, Sara—you know what I mean.”