Maggie MacKeever (21 page)

Lady Grey stirred. “I thought you looked familiar! Now I realize it is the hat. How
dare
you come here and brazenly demand to see Geoffrey?”

Quizzically, Margot regarded her fellow visitor. “My hat? Have you one like it, then? I shall be very angry in that case, because my milliner assured me it was one of a kind.”

“No, I haven’t one like it!” Gus looked very haughty. “Not would I wish to, because I consider it the most vulgar hat I have ever seen. You do not recognize me? Allow me to refresh your memory. I was with Geoffrey on the esplanade when you sent him that note—Mrs. Quarles!”

“I sent Geoffrey
several
notes!” countered Margot, and smiled. “To not a one of which did he deign to reply. You are Lady Grey, of course. I must felicitate you for having brought Geoffrey up to scratch.”

“Thank you!” Gus returned the smile with what she fancied an equal insincerity. “I shall take care he doesn’t wriggle off my hook despite
your
best efforts to the contrary!”

“My best efforts?” Margot opened her eyes wide. “You mistake the matter. I don’t want Geoffrey back. He is much better off leg-shackled to you! I was just a passing fancy, while
you
have obviously sent the poor man tumbling head over heels!”

Had she done so? Gus could not help but be gratified. “Do you really think so?” she inquired.

“Anyone must think so!” Margot responded cheerfully. “Geoffrey is to be congratulated on his good sense. The pair of you will run on very well together, and you may take my word on that, for I have had some small experience in such things.”

From all accounts, Mrs. Quarles’s experience was not small. “If you think so highly of Geoffrey, you have a strange way of showing it!” retorted Gus. “I am aware of your evil designs. I suppose you mean to create more food for scandal by coming to this house!”

Margot had meant no such thing. Her designs, in this instance, had been selfless; she had wished to know what Sir Geoffrey had to do with her daughter. For this tardy maternal concern to be so grossly misunderstood made her very cross. “I’m not who’s providing grist for the gossip mongers’ mills!
You
are the one who wishes to brangle, whereas I am merely doing what I must.”

“Indeed?” Lady Grey arched her brows. “You find that you must bring unhappiness into so many lives? Rather than what you must, Mrs. Quarles, you do what you can!”

Made even more cross by this unkind allegation, Margot stamped her foot. Prudently, Lambchop moved out of harm’s way. “What would
you
know about it?” she cried. “You who have never dared defy the laws of propriety to follow the dictates of your heart? You tempt the gods themselves with your arrogance. Beware! One can never be certain of what lengths one may be drawn into, and you may take my word on that!”

Lady Grey was stung by the inference that she lacked courage. “I am not so starched-up as you seem to think!” she retorted.
“Not
that you make a case for freedom from the shackles that hamper a respectable lady! Rather, you seem to be quite incapable of handling your own affairs!’’

There was some truth in this allegation. That fact did not endear its utterer to Margot. “I shan’t allow you to get a rise out of me!” she snapped.
“That
would be a choice item of tittle-tattle—the pair of us on Geoffrey’s doorstep, at daggers drawn.”

But that is precisely what they were. The fascinated footman stirred. He’d be blamed for this upset also, he supposed, even though he didn’t know what he could have done to prevent it taking place. He didn’t know what he might do now, except to suggest that the ladies might wish to repair to the drawing room.

“What an excellent notion!” said Margot, at the very same instant Lady Grey said, “No!” Margot regarded her quizzically. “Only over my dead body,” Gus said grimly, “will you set foot across this threshold!”

“Over your—” Margot arched her brows. “High flights, ma’am!”

She took a step forward. Augusta grasped her arm. The ladies struggled in a genteel manner, while the horrified footman begged that they would not.

No one could explain later what next transpired. One theory was that Lambchop had grown bored and deemed it time again to indulge in play. Another argued that Lady Grey’s half-hysterical manner roused some sympathetic chord in his canine heart. At all events he raised up on his back legs, placed his great paws on Gus’s shoulders, and gave her face a lick. Gus did not respond favorably to this friendly interest. She screamed. That scream inspired Lambchop to further efforts to ingratiate himself. So energetic was the dog in his caress that he knocked Lady Grey right off her feet.

“Good heavens!” cried Margot, and grabbed at Lamb-chop’s collar, while the footman scrambled to retrieve Gus’s vinaigrette. “Get off her, you wretched brute!” The hound recognized the voice of authority. He sat down.

It was at this moment that Mr. Sanders arrived on the scene, to discover a
melée
under way at Sir Geoffrey’s front door. So very startling was the scene that, despite his excessively bad temper, he stopped for a moment to stare. Then he recognized the shaggy beast perched athwart his fallen sister as the same hound that had recently attempted to savage both Perry and himself; and also the female who was pulling at its collar and swearing like a trooper, to no avail.

Vivien swore also, as he set out up the walk. His approach to the problem was more direct: he lifted the hound bodily in his arms and set it aside. Then he thrust the leash at Margot. “See if you can’t control your cursed dog!”

Margot did not bother to explain that Lambchop did not belong to her. She watched as Vivien pushed aside the footman, who had been attempting to revive Lady Grey with her vinaigrette, and pulled his sister roughly to her feet. “I thought I told you that you were not to come here!” he growled. “You may imagine my dismay when I called at your house and Grimsley told me where you’d gone. Can I not leave you alone for a moment, Gus?”

Lady Grey wished her brother would leave her alone for several moments while she recovered from what had surely been a close brush with death. “Don’t scold me!” she whimpered. “You must perceive that it is imperative I speak with Geoffrey.”

Margot could not help but feel sorry for Lady Grey, so disheveled and so pale. “I was right,” she commented. “You
are
an ill-tempered brute, sir! Why shouldn’t your sister speak with Geoffrey if she wishes without asking your say-so? After all, they are betrothed!”

Vivien turned angrily to her. “Ma’am, you try my civility too high! Since you will have the truth, I’ve no wish to see my sister hobnobbing with females of your sort.”

Lady Grey found herself in the strange position of rebelliously wishing to defend Mrs. Quarles. “I cannot think that this is a proper conversation!” she said. “And when it comes down to it, Vivien, it is not kind of you to speak so to Mrs. Quarles, when you have spent a number of years hobnobbing with females of
just
her sort!”

Mr. Sanders looked even more furious. Margot smiled. “Don’t put yourself in a pucker on my account, Lady Grey! The truth of the matter is that Mr. Sanders has the wrong sow by the ear. But we mustn’t quarrel. We’re here for the same purpose, are we not? To speak with Geoffrey.”

Vivien had an unpleasant suspicion that he was not showing to advantage in this exchange. “Where
is
Elphinstone?” he snapped, in an attempt to regain control. “I’ve a few words to say to him on my own account.”

The footman had withdrawn again into the hallway, where several of his fellow servants had also been drawn by the commotion. “The family,” he repeated, “is not at home.’’

“So you said before!” Margot awarded the man her most dazzling smile. “How very inconvenient! Where do you think they might have gone?”

This question the footman could answer. “London! Alongside of Miss Tabby—an elopement, by all accounts!”

Margot was stunned by the implications of this statement. “Lud!” she breathed.

“An elopement!” wailed Lady Grey.

“How
could
he?” Vivien growled. “And who the devil is ‘Miss Tabby’?”

Margot took firmer grip on Lambchop, who showed signs of reawakening energy. “You will recall the young woman whom you mistook for me,” she said.

Vivien did, indeed. “Your sister?” he said slowly.

“Your
sister!”
echoed Lady
Grey, horrified.

Margot could hardly blame her. “It is not as it appears. We have been estranged. Tabby’s relationship with Sir Geoffrey has only recently become know to me.”

Tabby. The little governess. Did Geoffrey’s perfidy know no limits? Gus tottered toward Margot. “He has played us both false, the fiend!”

“Apparently so.” Margot was hard-pressed to keep her balance, with Lady Grey clutching at her one arm and Lambchop hanging on the other, straining at his leash. “It would seem we have both been misled.”

Vivien thought the woman singularly cold hearted. “Yes, and so will your sister be!” he pointed out. “Or is the estrangement between you so great that you do not care for that, Mrs. Quarles?”

The man chided her for lack of family feeling? Margot supposed she deserved his scorn. “I care a great deal, Mr. Sanders!” she retorted. “I would not wish my poor Tabby to be mistreated by anyone. Indeed, I feel very keenly that I must be partially to blame for this dreadful occurrence. Due to my neglect, Tabby has little knowledge of the world.”

Lady Grey was touched by this obvious sincerity. To think she had once been jealous of the young woman who even now was teetering on the brink of ruin. “We must not allow Geoffrey to do this dreadful thing!” she cried.

So his Miss Nevermind was an innocent, after all? Vivien felt a surge of renewed hope. Then he recalled that innocents didn’t generally elope. There seemed only one way to find out what was true and what was not. He strode briskly down the walk toward his waiting cabriolet.

Gus stared after him “Vivien? Where are you going?”

“To settle this business!” Mr. Sanders responded grimly. “Once and for all!” He flung himself into the cabriolet and set off down the street.

Lady Grey took no comfort from her brother’s prospective intervention in the elopement. “Poor Geoffrey!” she wailed. “I know I should not think kindly of him after all he has done to us, but I cannot help but be concerned, Mrs. Quarles! Vivien has a dreadful temper, and if he should encounter Geoffrey now, I dread to think what will be the outcome. Perhaps they may even kill each other— or worse!”

Margot could only agree with these apprehensions. Additionally, she was concerned with Tabby’s welfare. Mar-got was startled to realize that she was even more concerned about Tabby than her post-obit bills.

If this was what it was like to be a parent, Margot was glad she’d come to it so late. Her anxious gaze alighted upon Lady Grey’s carriage. “Ha!” she said.

Lady Grey recognized that her companion had had a brainstorm. She, too, gazed at the waiting vehicle. “Oho!” she agreed. Within seconds, Margot and Gus and Lambchop were setting out on the trail of Vivien’s cabriolet.

Chapter Twenty-three

Tabby winced as she stubbed her toe against a pebble in the dusty road. Perry, following behind her, took this expression of dismay as a personal comment. “You may blame yourself, you know!” he snapped, as he sought a more comfortable grip on her shabby portmanteau. “You were the one as
would
wish to go to London, though dashed if I know why! It ain’t at all the place for a girl like you. It wouldn’t even be the place for you if you was what Viv said, which I didn’t believe for more than a moment, which is why I waited to speak with you after Viv had gone off.” He readjusted the portmanteau. “Which I don’t mind admitting to you, I wish I hadn’t done!”

Tabby could not blame him for this feeling. She, too, wished she’d had some other choice. “Mrs. Phipps is in London,” she explained, not for the first time. “My uncle’s housekeeper. She is living with her sister. I’m sure they’ll take me in until I decide what I am to do.”

Perry stubbed his own toe then and swore. “Dashed if I don’t see why you couldn’t have stayed where you was. Instead of talking
me
into wasting the ready on a hired hack that wouldn’t stand the pace! Now here we are stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a broken axle that must be repaired.”

Tabby refrained from pointing out that the axle had been broken as result of Perry’s wishing to demonstrate himself a notable whip. All she had asked was that he buy her a seat on the stage. But Perry had been shocked at the suggestion that she should undertake such a journey alone. And so here they were. “You know perfectly well that I could not stay with Sir Geoffrey!” she said. “Not with Margot threatening him with blackmail. And I could hardly apply to her for refuge, after I had stolen her letters so she couldn’t blackmail him. Look, Perry! I thought this section of the road looked familiar. There is the inn where we first met.”

Perry brightened, not because he recalled that occasion with any pleasure, but at the memory of the excellent quality of the innkeeper’s ale. His pace quickened. Within moments, they had reached the inn. The innkeeper met them in the doorway. He scowled at sight of these new guests. “You!” he said to Tabby, recalling a great ruckus in the middle of the night. “It’s that sorry I am to tell you I haven’t a room left.”

“No need to be sorry!” Perry wondered why Tabby’s cheeks had turned so pink. “We don’t want a room, just a spot of something to eat and a drop of ale. Just bring it out here to the picnic table.” Perry heaved the portmanteau onto the wooden table and collapsed upon a bench.

Tabby was less quick to follow, stared up at the inn. Behind which window lay the room where she and Vivien first met? She could not tell. Now she would not meet him again, ever. The thought made her very sad. Tabby told herself it was for the best as she sat down on the wooden bench.

Perry could not help but realize his companion was not in the best of spirits. He could not blame her for it, though his own spirits were improving with each sip of the innkeeper’s excellent ale. “Dashed if it ain’t that same rooster!” he said, as the russet fowl poked an inquisitive head around the base of the gnarled oak. Tabby smiled wanly and crumbled a muffin for the bird to eat.