Maggie MacKeever (3 page)

The maidservant dropped an awkward curtsy. “What is it I might be doin’ for you, sir?”

Mr. Sanders did indeed recognize the look in the maidservant’s eye, and well he should; the ladies had been running wild for him ever since he’d stepped out of short pants and into the world. It was not a weakness he could appreciate in them. Before he could speak, Sara stepped forward. “Take us to our room, girl!” she commanded in tones as cold as ice.

The maidservant looked, instead, as if she would shut the door in their faces. Mr. Sanders nudged his ladylove aside. “I’ve a room engaged,” he said with a lazy, charming smile that turned the maidservant’s knees to jelly on the spot. “And I’d like to avail myself of it, even though the hour is so late.”

The maidservant shot a spiteful glance at Sara. “Anything else you might be wishful of, sir? Mayhap something to warm you? ‘Tis a chill night.”

Sara gasped with outrage at this inference that her luscious person might not generate sufficient warmth to satisfy any man. Vivien smiled again with genuine amusement. “Perhaps some brandy,” he suggested diplomatically. Truth be told, he was more than a little tired of this game of hearts that fate seemed determined that he play. He was especially tired of it this evening and watched the maidservant go about his bidding with relief.

Miss Divine also watched the maidservant’s departure. Vivien was being very cool toward her. Perhaps she had been a trifle rash. Sara could hardly help it if the suspicion that the charmer of her heart and soul was tiring of her company had turned her into a shrew. She had known when she met him that only a female with more hair than wit would trust Vivien Sanders one inch. Sara had not made that mistake; she did not trust Vivien; but she had made the greater mistake of allowing him a genuine place in her affections. As a result, she was fast in the toils of that green-eyed monster, jealousy. On the one hand, she knew perfectly well that no woman in all of England could compete with her own looks. On the other, she wished to scratch out the eyes of every female who caught Vivien’s eye.

Not only ardor roused this determination. On a more practical level—and Sara was very practical—Vivien was a man of substance equal to his looks. “I’m sorry, Vivien!” she whispered. “I know I have been behaving very badly. But ‘tis only because of my great regard to you. I know you must forgive me that!”

But Mr. Sanders, at two-and-thirty, was no green lad. This was far from his first venture into romance. Therefore, he was not so quick to reassure Sara as she wished. “Yes, you have been behaving badly,” he said merely, and greeted the maidservant’s return with scarcely disguised relief. The wench lighted them up the stairs. In silence, they followed her down the hall.

The maidservant opened a door. Regally, Sara swept past her and into the room. Mr. Sanders murmured an inquiry, received an answer, then also stepped within.

Now was the moment. Sara turned and gazed at Vivien with dark, mournful eyes. Her lower lip was atremble. A perfect tear trickled down her cheek.

She waited. Nothing happened. Vivien watched her with a sardonic air. “Bravo, my love! Tragedy personified. To what end, pray?”

The tear disappeared as if by magic. Sara stamped her dainty foot “Oh! You are the most exasperating wretch!”

Sara
was
a lovely creature, as anyone must attest, ivory-skinned and raven-haired, slender and elegant—and very spoiled. And she was on the verge of flying into the boughs again, as must be evident to anyone who knew the signs.

Vivien knew the signs, none better. “I’ll leave you now,” he said coolly, and walked toward the door.

Sara ran after him. “Where are you going?” she cried. “Surely not after that slattern—even you would not stoop so low!” She glimpsed his expression then, and knew she’d gone too far. “I didn’t mean that, Vivien! You know I did not! I was just so angry—I cannot bear the thought of your so much as glancing at another woman. You will not dislike that in me, I know!”

Sara was mistaken. Vivien very much disliked that in her. He interrupted her apologies. “I’ll thank you, madam, to be a little less busy about my affairs.” Sara fell back a step, as if he’d struck her, pressed a hand to her heart. Vivien turned away and walked through the door. In the hallway outside he paused and listened. Had he remained in the room, his cruelty—or so she would have termed it—would have caused her to languish about as feebly as if he’d wounded her to the heart. His absence seemed to have a beneficial effect. He could hear her muffled curses through the thickness of the closed door.

Vivien sighed. He was not a cruel man. Nor was he one to be tied to a woman’s apron-strings. Not even the apron-stings of so divinely avaricious a creature as Sara. Theirs was a liaison based on a mutual attraction that both had known would soon fade. At least, Vivien had known. Apparently Sara had not. Another curse assaulted his ears. It sounded nearer the door. A tantrum at this moment was more than Vivien could endure. He turned and made his way down the hall to the room the dazzled maidservant had told him was that of his friend Peregrine.

Chapter Four

Tabby tossed and turned on the hard mattress. What a day it had been. Fancy encountering Perry again like that. And a good thing it was she had, else Tabby might have spent this night without a roof over her head. How her uncle would have laughed to see his pupil turned into a man-milliner. Tabby smiled.

It was then she heard the door open and footsteps enter the room. For one horrid moment Tabby wondered if Perry had thought up some dastardly plot against her virtue. Then she realized the absurdity of that notion. Still, the fact remained that there was an intruder in her bedchamber. Tabby thought of all the sporting gentlemen who had frequented the inn this day. Judging from the sounds that had issued from the building, several of those gentlemen had been, if not as drunk as an emperor, at least as drunk as a lord. And now one of those same gentlemen had invaded her bedchamber. Tabby couldn’t think what to do. She drew herself up into as small a space as possible on the far side of the bed.

The footsteps paused. Tabby heard a muttered curse, saw a flare of light. Some strange intruder this, who lit a candle to go about his nefarious business. Tabby scrunched down farther beneath the covers, wishing she’d had the foresight to pull them up over her head. She heard movement, and then nothing. Tabby couldn’t bear the suspense. Very cautiously, she opened her eyes and looked out into the room.

A very handsome green-eyed gentleman was seated in the room’s one chair. As Tabby watched, he raised a brandy snifter to his lips. Tabby thought he seemed to be listening. Apparently satisfied with what he heard, or failed to hear, he then shrugged out of his well-fitting jacket, cravat, and linen shirt before Tabby’s horrified eyes. She should protest, she knew. But what on earth was she to say? The gentleman was obviously in his altitudes. He bent to draw off his boots. Tabby closed her eyes and prayed.

Due to the effects of brandy on an empty stomach, Mr. Sanders was not entirely sober, though not so far into his cups as Tabby thought. For his condition he must not be censured, for he had endured the devil of a day, and this was a hard-drinking age. Speculating upon how smuggled French brandy, for such it surely was, might have come into the possession of the owner of the inn, he bent to address his boots.

It was not a prudent posture. Vivien’s head swam. Moreover, he was hallucinating that he was staring at a battered portmanteau. Vivien knew perfectly well that his friend Perry would never own such a shabby article. Slowly, he straightened, picked up the candle, surveyed the small room. His bewildered gaze fell upon a drab gown hung carefully from a hook on the wall, and other items of unmistakably feminine apparel. Where the deuce was Perry? Vivien stepped closer to the bed. At first he thought it empty. Then he glimpsed a tangle of brown curls.

Mr. Sanders surveyed those rumpled curls with no little incredulity. Whoever would have thought that Perry—? The sly dog! But Vivien could hardly spend the night in the same chamber as his friend’s peculiar. He would have to wake her to discover Perry’s whereabouts.

Gingerly, Vivien reached out and touched the bedclothes in the vicinity of what must be the damsel’s shoulder, or so he adjudged by the position of her curly head. “Pray pardon me, miss,” he murmured, “but 1 must— ouch!” The sentence was broke off when she abruptly darted out from beneath the bedclothes and her elbow collided painfully with his nose.

Vivien tenderly inspected that injured article before he grabbed for his assailant. She eluded him. Naturally, he went after her. In this manner, they passed a couple of times around the small room. Then his quarry made the tactical error of moving into the corner where the wash basin stood. Vivien caught her by the arms.

What he should have done at that moment was explain that he hadn’t the slightest design upon the damsel’s virtue, or what remained of it, of course. But the thrill of the chase was upon him, and the effects of the brandy had not yet worn off. Furthermore, she looked quite fetching, with her gray eyes open wide and her brown curls cascading over her shoulders and her plump bosom heaving as she gasped for breath.

To all this provocation, Mr. Sanders responded as any rakehell must. He bent his head and kissed his captive thoroughly. And to this embrace, Tabby responded also as befitted her upbringing and character. She reached behind her and grasped the water pitcher and emptied it over Vivien’s head. He released her, cursing. Tabby darted across the room.

“I know who you are!” she said indignantly, from what she fancied was a safe position behind the chair. “The rakehell! Perry warned me about you. And
I
warn you that I shall scream loud enough to wake the dead if you lay another hand on me, sir!”

Vivien had no desire to lay hands on this little spitfire, who he feared had done permanent damage to both his jacket and his nose, not to mention his pride. He wiped the water from his face and eyed his assailant with some bewilderment. This was a queer kettle of fish altogether. Though Vivien had not known quite so many high-flyers as Perry attributed to him during the course of his career, he had known enough to think this damsel’s shabby nightdress an odd garment for a romantic rendezvous. For that matter, Perry was an odd person to rendezvous with. “If you scream loud enough to wake the dead, you’ll also wake everyone else in this benighted place,” Vivien pointed out. “I doubt you want that.”

This suggestion gave Tabby pause. A lady’s reputation resided not in what she did, but in what she might be considered to have done; and what Tabby might be considered to have done whilst closeted with a rakehell would hardly qualify her to serve as governess to the daughters of a baronet. “Very well, then, I shan’t scream!” she said hastily. “But you would oblige me if you would leave this room at once, sir!”

The reprehensible Mr. Sanders, however, was beginning to enjoy himself. It wasn’t often that he found himself alone with a female who regarded him with such obvious disapproval. She was a taking little thing, he thought, this plump little person with her tousled brown curls and censorious gray eyes. Not in his style, of course, nor would he have thought her in Perry’s. “What
have
you done with Perry?” he asked.

“What have I done with Perry?” she echoed blankly. Then her cheeks flamed. “Oh! You think that I—that Perry—” She broke off and buried her cheeks in her hands. Vivien sighed and steeled himself to deal with yet another hysterical female. Then she raised her head and he saw that she was laughing. “How absurd!” she gasped.

Vivien could not help but enjoy her laughter. He’d heard precious little female merriment of late. “I begin to think the both of us are laboring under awkward misapprehensions,” he remarked as he sat down on the bed. “That you are not a lady of equivocal occupation, as I am not a wicked reprobate.”

There seemed a safe enough distance between them. Tabby perched warily on the edge of the chair. “Well, I know I’m not a prime article of virtue,” she said, then blushed again. “That is to say, I
am
a respectable female! But as for you, Perry did say that you are on the downward road to perdition, sir!”

“Ah.” Vivien leaned back on the pillow. “And I’ve given you no reason to think otherwise, having assaulted you, after all. Accept my sincere apologies for that, Miss—”

Tabby wasn’t about to make this winsome reprobate acquainted with her name. “Never mind,” she said.

“Miss Nevermind.” He smiled. “I promise you that I am in no mood for a bit of frolic—and you have made it abundantly clear that neither are you!” She looked skeptical, and he quirked a brow. “I am not half so black as I am painted, truly. It’s all the fault of my accursed face and the wagging tongues of my friends. They provide me with a name, and I must live up to it, lest I suffer their disappointment. In truth, I’m as innocent as a babe newborn.”

Tabby recalled the knowing way in which the babe new-born had kissed her. “What a clanker! Although I should not say so, I suppose.”

“Of course you should,” said Mr. Sanders, with a note of laughter in his voice that plucked at Tabby’s heart. If his reputation was overstated, she thought ruefully, it was not wholly undeserved. He added humorously, “I think we may be said to have bypassed the usual formalities. There, I have made you smile. You forgive me, then. But you have not yet told me how it comes about that you are here and Perry is not.’’

Tabby sensed instinctively that the less this gentleman knew of her the better. She was finding it damnably difficult to gaze anywhere but at his naked chest. “Perry went back to town with his friends. That left his room vacant, and I was in need of one, and so he gave it to me.”

Mr. Sanders found it difficult to credit his friend with so chivalrous an act. “Now you
have
piqued my interest,” he said. “No, I shan’t pry into your secrets. Any friend of Perry’s—and so you must be!—must also be a friend of mine.” So saying, he rose. Tabby rose also and with alacrity ducked behind the chair.

Vivien laughed to see her in that posture, clutching at the chair as if she were a tamer of wild beasts and he a lion. Here was one female whose high admiration he obviously did not excite. “You’re safe with me, Miss Nevermind,” he said, as he picked up his shirt from the floor where he’d previously let it fall. “I give you my word that I shan’t make a violent attack on your virtue.”