Maggie MacKeever (22 page)

To this ominous pronouncement, the author of which looked inordinately pleased with herself. Lord Davenham responded with an ironic expression. “You cannot seriously think that I will allow you to blackmail me, Miss Bagshot.”

Melly had not expected his lordship to be thrilled by the prospect, had indeed anticipated something much stronger than this lukewarm response. “Not you precisely, sir; you ain’t done anything to be blackmailed
for.”

“Ah.” Lord Davenham drew forth his snuffbox. “But other members of my family have been less prudent.”

Fascinated, Melly watched the Duke take snuff. “You know they have! And you
wouldn’t
have known if I hadn’t told you, so I’d think you might show a girl some gratitude. Why is it that people who have the Ready-and-Rhino are so reluctant to share it with those of us who
don’t?
Not that I mean to call you a nip-farthing, sir! Though it stands to reason that if you
wasn’t
clutch-fisted, I wouldn’t have to put Lady Davenham to the touch!”

The Duke tucked away his snuffbox. “Just what is it you mean to blackmail my wife about, Miss Bagshot?”

“If that don’t beat all!” Enchantingly, Melly chuckled. “Now you’re trying to pull the wool over
my
eyes! Not that I hold it against you, sir! But I know you know about Lady Davenham and Sir Malcolm, because I told you myself!” Anxiously, she nibbled at her lower lip. “Would Lady Davenham dislike scandal, do you think? Sir Malcolm hinted she might not—not that a girl can trust the rogue.”

Lord Davenham was rueful. “You harbor a great animosity toward my family, Miss Bagshot.”

“Poppycock! Not a bit of it!” In her eagerness to refute this allegation, Melly clutched his lordship’s sleeve. “Oh,
why
is everyone so reluctant to part with their blunt? You are being positively cheese-paring, and Sir Malcolm accused me of trying to feather my nest. I would not act so shabby, was I snugly placed.” Sadly, she watched Lord Davenham remove her hand from his sleeve. “As for disliking you—why, I even offered to fix it up all right and tight. I’ll admit I ain’t figured out how to go about it yet, but I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“Such as how to, er, put the screws to my wife. I am very disappointed in you, Miss Bagshot.” Lord Davenham maneuvered his sprung whiskey out of the leafy copse.

“Everyone is disappointed in me!” muttered Melly. “I don’t know what people expect. Yes, and I don’t want to make anyone unhappy, but I don’t want to be made unhappy myself, either! I
like
Lady Davenham, even if she did call me bachelor’s fare! I even designed her a first-rate carriage dress! But I don’t know anyone else who I
can
blackmail.” She sighed “Now I suppose you’ll threaten to clap me in jail, which would be all of a piece with everything else.”

The elusive Lord Davenham was not so predictable. “No,” he said. “You must do as you please. Miss Bagshot.”

“The deuce!” ejaculated Melly, rearing back on the carriage seat, the better to gaze dumbfounded upon her escort. “Don’t you
mind?”

As
usual, nothing in his lordship’s features gave a clue to his thoughts, which in this instance beggared description anyway. “The Davenants have survived other scandals,” he said coolly. “It is a matter of principle. Nor would I be so high-handed as to try and dictate to you. I did point out, did I not, the mulberry trees?”

Silently, Miss Bagshot consigned all mulberry trees to the nether regions, and his lordship with them. “Sir Malcolm ain’t the only one who don’t know all there is to know about females,” she said aloud. “If that’s the way you talk to your wife, it’s no wonder you’ve had the antlers planted on your brow. You’ve as good as said she
could!
What you should do is put your foot down—it’s only when you don’t care a rush for someone that it don’t matter what they do. Or maybe you
don’t
care. Because if you
did,
you wouldn’t let me make Lady Davenham food for scandal, even if you wasn’t plump in the pocket, which Sir Malcolm assured me you are!”

As Lord Davenham recalled, it was Miss Bagshot who had urged him to adopt an indifferent air, not that his lordship had followed her advice, or any other. Unaided by anybody, he had arrived at point non plus. He guided his horse back through the park. “Have you ever seen an opium-eater, Miss Bagshot? Once started on that course, it is difficult to stop. The same is true with anything one
shouldn’t
do, because it generally turns out to be a great deal more pleasurable than what one
should.”
The same could be applied to his own policy of non-involvement, he supposed. Not that the consequences of said policy had proven the least bit pleasant. Ruefully, he smiled. “What a high stickler I sound. What I mean, my dear, is that I trust your better nature to prohibit you from embarking upon so disastrous a course.”

Miss Bagshot was not altogether certain she
possessed
a better nature, or that she wholly grasped his lordship’s high-flown sentiments. These things she freely admitted, adding: “It becomes clearer and clearer to me why Lady Davenham took up with her cousin; you neglected her, sir. She
deserves
to have a flirt! And the most wicked thing I have ever done is set my cap at Sir Malcolm and try to cut her out.”

“Was that your intention, Miss Bagshot?” In the distance Lord Davenham’s groom waited impatiently. “A gentleman is not expected to prose on about his wife, but it would not be easy to steal a march on Thea. She is a diamond of the first water, you must realize.”

This suggestion of inferior quality caused Melly to bridle, and then stare. There was an abstracted expression on Lord Davenham’s unmeritedly adventurous features, a wry twist to his lips. The significance of this expression was not lost on Miss Bagshot, thorough flirt that she was; and she did not for an instant suspect that she was its inspiration. “Bless my heart! I thought I got into dreadful pickles, but this is worse than any of my scrapes!”

Lord Davenham’s abstracted expression turned to puzzlement, which he enacted with curved mouth and arched brow. “I have merely got turned off without a character,” Melly gently explained.
“You,
sir, are in love with your own wife!”

Chapter Twenty

Lord Davenham retired to his club after picking up his groom and setting down Miss Bagshot in Oxford Street. By the time he returned to Davenant House, the hour was considerably advanced, and the majority of the servants asleep. The Duke repaired to his dressing room, dismissed his valet, and prepared to similarly end a long and thought-provoking day. Then he noticed the candlelight issuing from the bedchamber next door. Even so aloof a gentleman as Lord Davenham must experience some curiosity as to why his wife remained awake at so belated an hour, especially after being made privy to repeated statements regarding horns planted on ducal brows. He opened the connecting door.

It was a large chamber, dominated by the ancestral four-post bedstead, the wood canopy of which was carved with all manner of scrolls and moldings of classical form. The headboard, treated in a similar style, included a coronet of rank; the summit was ornamented with panaches of flowers. The enveloping curtain and frill were of chintz edged with tassels and fringe. Upon hearing the door open, Lady Davenham thrust her head through the curtains. “Hah!” she said. And then she glanced back behind her into the shadows. “Oh, do be still!”

Upon this indication that his Duchess was not alone in the ancestral four-poster, Lord Davenham hesitated. “Perhaps I should leave,” he suggested, in polite tones that were very hard achieved.

“The deuce you will!” snapped Lady Davenham, who, after considerable thrashing about, had arranged herself in a not-quite-decorous position on the edge of the bed. “I have a crow to pluck with you—or have you forgot you were engaged with me this evening? You put me all out of patience, Vivien!”

It occurred to Lord Davenham that ladies surprised in compromising situations were less likely to attack than to cajole. He strolled across the room and peered into the four-poster’s depths. Arranged upon the pillows, in a position of maximum comfort, was Nimrod. Upon espying his dilatory master, the dog snarled.

“I did forget our engagement,” admitted Lord Davenham, as he plucked his loyal hound from off his pillows, deftly avoiding Nimrod’s teeth. “And I am very sorry for it. But, Thea, it is not the first time.”

Lady Davenham, already sunk in a brown study, did not take kindly to this remark. She watched her husband stroll about the chamber, inspecting the black Jacobean cabinet, the wardrobe, the dressing stand, and stool. Any other man would have looked absurd, she thought, clad in a nightshirt, cradling a wheezing hound. Sight of Vivien instead made her pulses pound erratically, and her heart leap straight up in her throat. That buccaneer face, with the lock of hair so endearingly tumbled forward on his handsome brow; the overall impression of passions held strongly in leash—

Too
strongly in leash, at least as concerned herself. By no means did Lady Davenham intend her husband to discover she found him damnably attractive. “Vivien!” she snapped, as he twitched away the window hangings and peered behind the cheval glass.
“What
are you about?”

Lord Davenham did not imagine that a confession of his suspicions would improve his strained relationship with his wife, especially since he was not convinced that his suspicions were wholly without merit. Solicitously he settled Nimrod near the cozy fire that blazed upon the hearth, then arranged himself upon a chair. “I dined at my club,” he offered. “William Huskisson was there —Liverpool’s Minister of Woods and Forest—and we had a very interesting conversation about currency depreciation. But you are used to enjoying yourself without me, my dear.”

Thea, who interpreted this last statement as a gentle reminder of her husband’s marital discontent, emerged wholly from the four-post bedstead and crossed to the dressing stand, on which stood a bottle of ratafia and a glass. Of this gentle stimulant, she availed herself, not for the first time this night. Because the floor was cold, she then joined Nimrod on the hearth. “Minister!” she muttered into her glass. “Depreciation!”

It occurred to Lord Davenham that his wife, if not precisely cast away, was distinctly in her cups. “It is an important subject,” he reproved. “Thea, you are scowling. What has put you in a tweak?”

“I am
not
in a tweak!” retorted Thea, in tones so acerbated that Nimrod wakened and snapped at her skirts. Hastily, she moved aside. “I am in a passion. Vivien, I Know All! And it makes me
very
cross to learn that you have been tooling the ribbons in St. James’s Park, with Miss Bagshot beside you on the carriage seat. Oh, I realize that you do not wish to be married, and that I am lower in your estimation than a caterpillar—or was it a snail? But you were supposed to extricate Malcolm from Miss Bagshot’s clutches, not
to cut him out!”

As result of this somewhat inebriated outburst, Lord Davenham contemplated his wife, who was lounging in a disgraceful and highly provocative manner against the wall near the hearth. Thea looked ravishing
en déshabillé,
clad in a froth of muslin and lace, her hair loosened from its tight braid to curl wildly around her face and cascade down her back—so very ravishing that, lest he embarrass her with unwelcome advances, Vivien abruptly transferred his gaze to Nimrod. “Caterpillars?” he said.

Lady Davenham was too well accustomed to her husband’s vagaries to be so easily sidetracked. “As if it is not bad enough you must suddenly decide to kick over the traces, you must do so with a chit whom Malcolm has been kissing,” she continued. “Although I daresay Miss Bagshot didn’t tell you about
that!”

“Ah, but she did.” Thea was less angered by the fact that he had supposedly strayed than by the fact that he had thereby interfered with Malcolm’s romance—or one of Malcolm’s romances, amended Lord Davenham. Rather than jealousy of Miss Bagshot, Lady Davenham’s primary reaction seemed to be irritation with her spouse. Lord Davenham wondered if a hitherto undetected strain of madness tainted the Davenants. His own current overriding emotion was not outrage at his wife’s various perfidies, but a wish to take her to bed.

Looking very wry, Lord Davenham clasped his hands upon his knee. “I have it on Miss Bagshot’s authority that Malcolm sets feminine hearts aflutter without the slightest effort. However, Miss Bagshot doesn’t mean to be played fast and loose with, she promises, so you need not concern yourself.”

That Thea didn’t care a button whether or not Miss Bagshot was thus abused, she didn’t point out, lest she be tempted to similarly confess her ardent desire to abuse the minx herself. “Good God, Vivien, the girl is on the dangle for a fortune! Something to do with a wish to grow rhododendrons without soil, I believe. I warn you, if you try and settle a competence upon her
—
well, much as you may dislike the circumstance, I am still your wife!”

During this outburst, Nimrod had waddled from the hearth to collapse at his master’s feet, which gave Lord Davenham an excellent excuse to avert his face, a very necessary act, lest he give way to his overwhelming impulse. Few ladies appeared to advantage in a state of undress. Thea, unfortunately for Vivien’s peace of mind, was one of them. “But I do
not
dislike the circumstance that you are my wife!” he protested. “Nor do I intend to provide Miss Bagshot with a competence, as I have informed her. I could not similarly vouch for you.”

“For me?” Bored with holding up the wall, and feeling left out of the snug family scene presented by the Duke and his hound, Lady Davenham collapsed onto another chair. “What are you talking about, Vivien? I wish you would explain.”

Promptly, Lord Davenham did so, and not entirely without malice; he was only human, after all. Succinctly, he said, as he pulled Nimrod’s ears, “Blackmail.”

“Blackmail?” Lady Davenham contemplated her ratafia. “Oh, dear.”

“Exactly so.” The Duke straightened, his handsome features flushed. Even a gentleman determined to withstand the temptations of an inebriated, wrong-headed, ravishing wife can remain bent over only so long. “Until someone buys her off, Miss Bagshot means to make a nuisance of herself.”