Maggie MacKeever (17 page)

“Monsieur!” uttered Madame le Best, emerging from her atelier, laden down with swatches and samples and snippets of ribbon and lace, perfectly on cue.
“Regardez!”
Soon she was engrossed with Sir Malcolm in a discussion of the relative advantages of a sprigged poplin and the patriotic Spitalfields silk, white flower-bordered China crepe scarves, India muslin at thirteen shillings a yard, and silk gloves at four and sixpence. Interesting as was that conversation to Madame and Sir Malcolm—especially to Madame; if business continued in this exhilarating manner, she could soon expand her operation—it left Miss Bagshot feeling very hipped.

“Lady Davenham is very lucky,” she remarked, when her aunt withdrew again into the atelier. “She will cut a nacky dash. I have always wanted to, but my aunt don’t like the notion. She even took away the gown I made myself—in the highest kick of fashion, it was, with a
very
narrow skirt. As if my leaving the shop and going to the Horti-what’s-is Society with Lord Davenham had anything to do with my skirts!”

A discussion of Miss Bagshot’s skirts was the last thing Sir Malcolm wanted to embark upon, at least in this particular moment. “Don’t try and play off your airs on me,” he said, though not unkindly. “I know you and Vivien are embarked on a May-game.”

“We are?” Molly’s brown eyes widened. “Fancy that!”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, my girl!” Sir Malcolm continued. “Vivien is no pigeon for your plucking. Do not pretend that you do not know he is rich as Croesus.”

“Croesus?” Miss Bagshot looked adorably confused.

“Minx!” responded Malcolm, appreciatively, as Madame le Best once more demanded his attention, and shot a darkling glance at her niece. Chastened and abandoned, Miss Bagshot bent once more over her lace.

But Melly was not of a temperament that remained long subdued, and she was very soon congratulating herself on the progress of her schemes. Perhaps there was a place for this wealthy Croesus person in her plans. As she ruminated, Melly continued with her tatting, and listened to her aunt extol the virtues of a toque of Ionian cork intermixed with fawn satin, finished with tassels and plumes. Then she set aside her tatting and hastily rose from her chair because Sir Malcolm was preparing to take his leave. Deftly, she interrupted his progress, exactly as he had intended she should. “If you do not mind, who is this Croesus person, sir?”

Sir Malcolm was not put off by this indication that Miss Bagshot was on the dangle for a fortune. He derived considerable amusement from the hopeful expression on her elfin face. “There is no such person,” he confessed.

“Bless my soul!” ejaculated Melly, disappointed. “And you accused
me
of playing a May-game.”

Sir Malcolm grasped Miss Bagshot’s elbow and urged her away from the doorway, where they had very effectively prevented three fashionably clad females from entering the showroom. “Shame, Melly! You must not tarnish others with your own brush. And you must not set your cap at my cousin, even if he
is
as rich as— er, very rich!”

“That’s easy enough for you to say!” Her aunt being occupied with the recently arrived customers, Melly could enjoy a comfortable prose. “Your pockets ain’t to let. I’ll wager if you hadn’t a feather to fly with, you wouldn’t have any scruples about feathering your nest.” She strove for innocence. “But surely Lord Davenham ain’t as rich as all
that,
or he wouldn’t be letting you buy his wife gowns. Not that it’s any bread-and-butter of mine! I like Lady Davenham, even if she did call me bachelor’s fare.”

Sir Malcolm did not explain that Lady Davenham had called Miss Bagshot much worse. “Let us put our cards on the table,” he said bluntly. “You have made a dead-set at my cousin, knowing he is well heeled. But Vivien is not one for the ladies, as you no doubt have already discovered. If you are smart, you will give him up.”

Miss Bagshot glanced cautiously at her aunt, who with the newcomers was absorbed in the
Gallery of Fashion.
“Yes, but I ain’t smart,” she retorted. “Anyone will tell you I am bird-witted—you need only ask my aunt! However, I ain’t so bird-witted I don’t know you’re trying to persuade me to cut my losses, and I
can’t.
Much as I would like to oblige you, sir. As you would understand, had you ever been short of the Ready-and-Rhino.”

The fact that he was well supplied with that commodity so inelegantly referred to by Miss Bagshot inspired Sir Malcolm to attempt a different approach.
“I
have a fortune!” he suggested craftily.

Enchantingly, Melly giggled. “As if I didn’t know the minute I first clapped my eyes on you that you was a well-breeched swell. And I’m sure if I was to toss my bonnet over the windmill for anyone, I’d rather it was you! But you wouldn’t make a settlement on a girl—and why should you, the way females are always casting you out lures? They
are
always casting you out lures, ain’t they? That’s what I thought.”

Whatever else might be said of her, Miss Bagshot was an original; never had Sir Malcolm’s advances been repulsed in so regretful a way. In fact, Sir Malcolm’s advances had never before been repulsed at all, save by Lady Davenham, and since Thea was his cousin, she didn’t really count. “What if I did offer you a settlement, Melly?” he inquired.

“Are
you offering me one?” Miss Bagshot responded skeptically. “You must be one of the warmest coves in England if you can stand all this nonsense of settlements and gowns! Yes, and that puts me in mind of something else: you ain’t a fitting person to rake me over the coals. All
I
did is give my aunt the slip. Though I ain’t one to cast aspersions—it
is
aspersions? Grand!—you should be very grateful that Davenham ain’t horn-mad.” She frowned. “He is such a
nice
person. Anyone else would be fit to murder you. I don’t know how you can be a party to planting the antlers on his brow.”

It occurred to Sir Malcolm that this discussion was best not overheard. Madame le Best was still engrossed in her
Gallery of Fashion
and thus made no outcry when her niece slipped out the shop door. “I have not given you a rake-down yet,” said Sir Malcolm, when they had achieved the noisy confusion of Oxford Street. “But I shall at any moment if you don’t cut line! You seem to have forgotten it is
your
misconduct I came here to discuss.”

“How was I to know that? You never said! I thought you were wishful of refurbishing Lady Davenham’s wardrobe.” Melly contemplated Sir Malcolm’s stern expression and decided that his temper had been sufficiently strained. “I hope you don’t mean to get to dagger-drawing, because I wouldn’t like for us to be at daggers’ points! I have a great regard for you, sir, and I would like to oblige you, except that I am in the basket, and I ain’t wishful of finding myself leg-shackled to some nodcock, like my aunt means to arrange.” She sighed. “We are at point nonplus. I had better go back inside.”

Twice in one day, Sir Malcolm had failed to charm. He hoped anew that this was no ominous portent. “Not just yet! In other words, you seek the means by which to be independent of your aunt. And you have discovered that Vivien could easily provide those means. But my cousin is no fool. How did you think you may persuade him to finance your independence?” A memory of the papers strewn across Lady Davenham’s writing desk struck him; he smiled. “Especially when, unless I am very much mistaken, it is Thea who handles the accounts.”

“That makes it even better.” Melly clapped her hands together, then raised them to her pretty chin. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. I mean to make a nuisance of myself!”

“A nuisance?” So that they might not be parted by the throng of pedestrians, Sir Malcolm drew Miss Bagshot back into the shadow of an alleyway.

“Oh, yes.” Melly was delighted by the speed with which their friendship had advanced. “You hope I won’t take up with Lord Davenham, and he hopes I won’t take up with you, or so you say—well! It’s clear as noonday that neither of you would care a rush about
who
I took up with if you wasn’t afraid of being dipped in the scandal-broth.”

“And therefore you mean to make a nuisance of yourself until one of us buys you off?” Here was a novel resolution of financial difficulties. Sir Malcolm was so entertained by Melly’s strategy that he hated to tell her it would not serve. “But the Davenants do not care for scandal-broth.”

“Davenants?” Melly looked suspicious. “I thought you was a Calveley! You ain’t trying to hoax me, are you, sir? I wish you would not! Because whatever you call yourself, you’re pitching it too rum. Though you might not mind, and Lord Davenham would probably never even know the difference, I’ll wager anything you like that Lady Davenham would dislike the scandal-broth very much!”

That wager, Sir Malcolm was not prepared to take. “You will wager
anything,
Miss Bagshot?” he wickedly asked.

“Not
that!”
Bewitchingly, Melly dimpled and blushed. “Do not change the subject! I wouldn’t care a rush if the gabble-grinders washed all my dirty linen in public, nor would you, but Lady Davenham is different. Was you a gentleman, you’d make certain she was spared.”

With a careless finger, Sir Malcolm flicked Melly’s rosy cheek. “But I am not a gentleman!” he said. “Give up this foolishness; there’s a good girl!”

In her desire to further Sir Malcolm’s education, Miss Bagshot had not considered that her own might be broadened apace. Hastily, lest he be tempted to further transgressions, and consequently further muddle up her thoughts, Melly stepped back into the alleyway.

Here was no damsel who had to be told how to get up a flirtation, thought Sir Malcolm, interpreting Miss Bagshot’s retreat in the light of the considerable education he already possessed. He followed her into the alleyway, caught her by the shoulders. Melly gasped. Sir Malcolm needed no further invitation; he kissed her. When he had concluded that highly pleasant undertaking—during which, for the record, he thought of no one, save Miss Bagshot—it was his turn to gasp. Melly slapped him, hard, across the cheek.

“It is very bad of you to
tempt
me! I have just got through telling you I must have a settlement!” she wailed.

With no little wonder, Sir Malcolm touched his stinging cheek. “Did I tempt you, Melly? You have a queer way of showing it!”

By the intelligence that she had injured her victim’s self-esteem as well as his cheek, Miss Bagshot was aghast. “Bless my soul, of course you tempted me! Any female who ain’t tempted by you ain’t worth her salt. If I had a competence, I wouldn’t have to worry about being offered false coin, or played fast and loose with—but I ain’t got a groat with which to bless myself, and you
do
have a, er, cousin—and so I think we should get out of this alleyway, sir!”

Sir Malcolm was amenable. Continued seclusion with Miss Bagshot would doubtless result in further injury to himself. He wanted nothing more than to embrace her again, conduct of which she had already made her opinion painfully clear. At that opinion, Malcolm marveled. No female had ever struck him before. “We are at a stalemate,” he observed. “Permit me to escort you back to your aunt’s shop.”

“Now you are out of frame.” With the natural perversity of her species, Melly took Sir Malcolm’s arm. “I wish you was not! Mayhap you’d understand better if you’d never had a garden of your own. Lord Davenham was telling me about a cove who had five hundred
acres
of gardens with Temples of Venus and Virtue and Concord, and bridges and pavilions and pyramids. When I think of that, it don’t seem at all unreasonable that I should want to grow my own rhododendrons.”

“What you want is not the rub, but how you are going about getting it.” Sir Malcolm suffered an impulse to present Miss Bagshot with one of Lord Davenham’s rhododendrons, potted in a terracotta jardinière. “I am curious, Melly:
Were
you possessed of a competence, and
if
I kissed you again, would you react any differently?”

Here was an encouraging conversational gambit; Melly fluttered her long lashes and looked unutterably coy. “That is a very silly question!” she reproved. “Ain’t I just got through telling you that very thing? Although you shouldn’t be wishful of kissing me, what with Lady Davenham—but I ain’t one to scold! Some people don’t like to put all their eggs in one basket! It takes all kinds, I say, to make up a world.”

Sir Malcolm almost explained to Miss Bagshot the reason for his highly compromising interest in Lady Davenham’s wardrobe. Recalling the damsel’s garrulous nature, and her acquaintance with Lord Davenham, however, he refrained. No purpose would be served by alerting Vivien. “Then you do not hold me in dislike,” he murmured ironically.

“Bless my heart!” By this arrant misconstruction of her sentiments, Melly was shocked—so shocked that she stopped dead in her tracks, causing in the pedestrians crowded behind her a chain reaction that ran the entire block. “Nothing of the sort! I’ll prove it if you like.”

Sir Malcolm drew Miss Bagshot out of the general flow of traffic, and away from the pedestrians who wished to seek personal redress for bumped elbows and bruised toes. “I daresay,
ma chérie,
that I would like it excessively.”

“Your
what?”
inquired Melly curiously. “Oh, you was speaking French! And I daresay I would like it, too, but that ain’t what I’m talking about. You mustn’t laugh at me; this is serious. Sir Malcolm, I
know!”

“You do?” Sir Malcolm was intrigued less by the ominous tone of Melly’s voice than by her rosy cheeks and big brown eyes and tenderly fashioned mouth. “Upon my word.”

Melly would have liked to move closer, the better to conduct this conversation with the confidentiality it deserved, but for several reasons she could not. Melly did not believe a girl should cuddle with a gentleman in the midst of a public thoroughfare in broad daylight, and especially not outside the plateglass window of her own aunt’s shop. Furthermore, in this instance, she did not believe the gentleman should be made aware that she wished to cuddle with him at all.

“You need not fear I’ll ride grub!” she therefore said, in ordinary conversational tones.
“You
know, lay an information against you with the magistrates. Although Bow Street is already on to you, so you must take care. I know I should not warn you, but it only seems fair—and if I did not need the money, I wouldn’t have any part of it, because I like you very much, no matter
what
you’ve done!”