Maggie MacKeever (23 page)

“Miss Bagshot already
has
made a nuisance of herself!” Thea responded bitterly. “Oh, I wish Malcolm had never come home. We rubbed on well enough until he started making sheep’s eyes at a wretched little minx. And now
this
imbroglio—it is more than flesh and blood can stand!”

“Poor Thea.” Noting that his wife was fairly gnashing her teeth, Lord Davenham took her hand. “I warned you, did I not, that it would not be the
beau monde
Malcolm wished to embrace?”

Lady Davenham gazed upon the hand which clasped hers and experienced a most untimely impulse to burst into tears. “If you say you told me so, Vivien, I think I will scream.”

“I would not say that, my dear; I, too, was wide of the mark. Though Miss Bagshot may not be of the
beau monde,
you are.” Since his friendly overture had only increased his wife’s irritability, Lord Davenham released her and rose from his chair.

Here, an altercation ensued: his lordship had forgotten the hound sprawled across his feet. Vivien tripped, Nimrod snarled, Thea burst into nervous laughter. “But, Vivien!” she gasped, as she tucked up her feet to avoid Nimrod’s angry teeth. “Malcolm does not wish to embrace
me!”

Lord Davenham picked up his snarling hound, carried him at arm’s length across the chamber, and shut him in the dressing room. “You must not,” he said, as he turned back to his Duchess, “try and pull the wool over my eyes. What was I saying? Ah, yes! Miss Bagshot doesn’t think you would care to be plunged in the scandal-broth, and therefore trusts you may be persuaded to buy her off. But you must not take it personally. She bears us no animus.” He smiled. “Indeed, she would much rather blackmail Croesus—but she
knows
us.”

Ratafia consumption had not elevated Thea’s spirits, and Vivien’s obvious lack of concern for her dilemma had an equally adverse effect. She was nothing to her husband, Thea thought sadly; no man who cared a fig for his wife could be amused by her prospective blackmailer. Vivien hadn’t even expressed interest in what she was to be blackmailed
about.
Thea raised her chin. Very well, then, let him think the worst!

It had not escaped Lord Davenham’s notice that his Duchess was looking very belligerent. “My dear, you are making a piece of work about nothing,” he soothed. “Miss Bagshot will not carry through her threats.”

“Hah!” ejaculated Lady Davenham, further annoyed by the conviction with which her husband predicted Miss Bagshot’s actions. Clearly, Vivien was quite
épris
. “I hope you may not be disappointed in the minx, becauseI have not the slightest intention of financing her bid for independence.” Sadly, she contemplated her spouse. “Can you not understand it is
Malcolm
whom she wants?”

Though Lord Davenham could hardly be thrilled by his wife’s obsession with their cousin, he was prone neither to displays of temper nor blunt speech. “Yes, I think it is,” he said, as he sat down on the edge of the four-post bedstead. “I hope you do not mind too much.”

Why should she mind? wondered Thea, and opened her mouth to ask. Then she remembered that she was embarked upon a blatant flirtation with Malcolm. Did Vivien look the least bit dog-in-the-mangerish? Thea looked at him with narrowed eyes and decided he did not.

“I shall not wear the willow!” she said, upon a hiccough. “I hope that you may be equally sanguine.”

Lord Davenham leaned back against a bedpost and looked whimsical.If Miss Bagshot were to attach Malcolm, his own problems would be partly solved. “I think I might.”

In despair, Thea threw up her expressive hands. “I vow I shall never understand you!” she cried. “Miss Bagshot signifies little to you, you claim—yet you took her with you to the Horticultural Society, and driving in St. James’s Park. I wish you would tell me what the chit has that I do
not.”

This hint that his wife did not hold him in total disinterest sparked a distinct glitter in his lordship’s dark eye. Then he checked himself. Thea did not realize the significance of her own words—or the effect they would have upon a gentleman whose amorous inclinations had been too long restrained. “That settles it. First caterpillars and now Miss Bagshot—you have had too much ratafia, my dear.”

Lady Davenham was not accustomed to being dictated to. As she approached the ratafia decanter, there was a glitter in her own eyes. Lord Davenham reached the dressing stand first, and deftly moved the decanter aside. “I think that we must talk seriously, Thea,” he said ruefully. “I have it on very good authority that, though I do not wish to appear high-minded, it is time I put my foot down.”

“Your foot?” Lady Davenham glanced down at that appendage, and consequently discovered that the ratafia had had more effect than she’d realized, because her head swam. She clutched at Vivien. Taken off guard, Lord Davenham stepped backward and both the Duke and his Duchess tumbled on the ancestral bedstead. “What
about
your foot?” persisted Thea, when she had caught her breath, the loss of which had not resulted from her exertions, but from the memory of her cousin’s advice regarding the seduction of her spouse.

“Ummm?” responded his lordship, who was currently a great deal more interested in various lush portions of his wife’s anatomy.

Now that she had, if inadvertently, accomplished the first step in the seduction of her husband, to wit his presence in the ancestral bed, Thea decided that his interest must next be gained. Though the interior of the four-poster was shadowed and she could not clearly make out his expression, Thea suspected that Vivien’s mind was not on her words. How to wake him from his air-dreams, focus his attention on herself? She must introduce one of his enthusiasms into the conversation. “I have been thinking about reaping machines,” she said. If only she had asked Malcolm about practical details.

“Reaping machines?” Lord Davenham was disconcerted to discover how far his wife’s thoughts were from romance. Resolved to be amiable, the Duke propped himself comfortably among the pillows so recently adorned by Nimrod. “Have you figured out how to put the cart before the horse?”

Since his lordship had made himself comfortable, her ladyship felt free to do likewise, and arranged herself amid the pillows by his side. Foolish, after several years of marriage, and a lifelong acquaintance, to feel so giddy, she scolded herself. “It seems to me that if you arranged your cutting knives on one side of the horse, the machine could be drawn with greater comfort,” she remarked. “If a pully at one side of the road-driving wheel was connected to another pulley above—”

“I have not the least distant interest in pulleys,” interrupted Lord Davenham, thereby delaying the invention of the first efficient reaper for fifteen years. “You must not change the subject, Thea.”

So much for seductions, Lady Davenham thought glumly; she had lured her husband only into reading her a scold. “I don’t know why I bother,” she said bitterly. “Doubtless you would be happier in your potting shed. You need not deny it; you have already told me Davenants are not suited to marriage. I was used to think we dealt well together, Vivien. Now I think I must not know you at all.” Her voice quivered. “And if you hankered after adventure, you should have told me, instead of foraging for it among the fleshpots!”

So startled was Lord Davenham by these accusations —and so rapt in contemplation of what fleshly activities his wife envisioned him embarked upon in his potting shed, in company with caterpillars and moles and snails—that he was briefly silent. His cogitations were interrupted by Thea’s sniffles and Nimrod’s distant howls. “But it was you who hankered after adventure, my dear.”

He had not denied her accusations, Thea noted sadly; not that in good conscience he could. Still, one would have appreciated a consideration of one’s feelings, however vain. “That was before I knew what it was
like
to have adventures!” she retorted. “I may be enough of a Davenant to relish the idea, but I’m not enough of one to enjoy the thing itself. You and Malcolm may find blackmail amusing;
I
do not.” Especially, she added silently, when she had done nothing of which to be ashamed. “Talking won’t pay toll! Vivien, I will not mince words. We have both been going on in a very bad way.”

With this sentiment, at least, his lordship was in accord. “So we have! My dear, about those fleshpots—”

“The devil with your fleshpots!” snapped Thea. “Can’t you for an instant put them from your mind?” It occurred to her that seductions were not hastened by cross words. “Never mind that. I do not wish to introduce a topic that is repugnant to you—but have you forgotten that Malcolm will inherit if you do not make a push to get an heir?” The shadows hid her blush. “Legitimate, that is!”

In response to this intimation that he was so far sunk in depravity as to be peppering the countryside with illegitimate Davenants, Lord Davenham grinned. In point of fact, his lordship had been heroically restraining mirth for the past several moments. “Oh, no! I haven’t forgotten!” he gasped.

Clearly, she had grown repugnant; the simplest mention of an heir caused her husband strain, as indicated by his voice. Abandoning all notions of seduction, Lady Davenham sat up, hugged her knees, and hiccoughed. She looked altogether bewitching in that posture, as the firelight revealed; her dark hair was all a-tangle, her big dark eyes pensive, her lower lip swollen from where she had nervously bitten it.

She did not remain long in that position. Lord Davenham reached out, caught her arm and pulled her back down amid the pillows. Then he propped himself up on one elbow and looked down into her face. His own features had nothing in them now of whimsy or vagueness.

Lady Davenham had the odd impression of lying with a stranger, so very unlike himself did Vivien look. “What are you going to do?” she whispered shyly, around the constriction that had risen in her throat.

His lordship smiled. Thea blushed at her own foolishness.

“Has it been so long that you must ask me?” With that intentness so unlike him, Lord Davenham tangled his fingers in the curls at the nape of his wife’s neck. “I had thought to explore this matter of tardy offspring.”

Blushing furiously, she reached up and shyly clasped her husband’s shoulders and drew him toward her. As he caught her up against him, Lord Davenham laughed aloud.

Had there been a note of triumph in that laughter? Thea thought there might. And for that matter, who was seducing whom, and why?

But tomorrow was soon enough for questions. Lady Davenham surrendered herself to her husband’s caress, with a happy little sigh.

Chapter Twenty-one

The matter of offspring also concerned Madame le Best, in the sense that she wished her ne’er-do-well brother had had none. These sentiments she was explaining to the damsel whom she had come to regard as a millstone around her neck. “You have tried me too far!” hissed Madame, in tones that were angry, if pitched low so that the customers would not hear. “You gave me your promise that you would do only as I told you and keep a still tongue in your head.”

Miss Bagshot looked up from the issue of
La Belle Assemble,
which she had been laboriously perusing, in particular the advertisements. Obviously, her aunt was once again in a pelter. “But I didn’t
truly
promise,” said Melly in her own defense. “I had my fingers crossed!”

Madame glanced at her customers, who were carrying on a spirited discussion of the relative merits of a spencer of rose-colored satin and another of cream-colored broche silk, both with cord trimming to match. The ladies appeared perfectly content. Madame envied them that peace of mind. She scowled upon the niece in whose conduct she found so much for which to blush.

“You seem to think you are having a holiday,” Madame said bitterly. “Driving all around London in company with peers. Sometimes I despair of ever marrying you off. When I present you to someone suitable, you’re either rude or pushing, or you aren’t here at all.”

“I
thought
that was your lay!” Melly also frowned. “What if I ain’t ready to be married, Aunt Hel?”

“Not ready to be married?” repeated Madame le Best, in awful tones. “What nonsense is this? I suppose you would rather go on headlong to your ruin!”

The sunny-tempered Miss Bagshot marveled that a member of her family could be habitually sulky as a bear. “Stuff! I ain’t doing anything of the sort.”

“Oh, no!” retorted Madame, more bitterly yet. “You are only determined to make a byword of yourself, racketing about with Baronets and Dukes. Don’t deny it! I know all about the Tower and Astley’s and St. James’s Park. You were seen.”

“Bless my soul!” Miss Bagshot craned her lovely neck to observe the customers. “Who’s the prattle-box? Not that I care about tale-pitching, nor should you, Aunt Hel. It don’t hurt a girl’s credit to be seen with a Duke.”

“Credit!”
Madame fairly shrieked the word, then with belated discretion lowered her tone. “You’re a fine one to talk of credit. Every time my back is turned, you blot your copybook. There’ll be no more of it, do you understand?”

Certainly Miss Bagshot understood; she was not a feather-head. Her aunt was bent on acting as her jailer. “For someone who is so wishful of seeing me tied up, you choose a queer way to go about it. If I was to do as you wished, I’d never go anywhere—I’d dwindle into a fubsy-faced old maid.” That unflattering description perfectly fit her aunt, Melly realized. “There’s nothing
wrong
with being an old maid, mind. Marriage ain’t for everyone. Look at Mama!
She
was used to rue the day she stepped into parson’s mousetrap.”

That day Madame had also rued, and seldom more than at this moment. “And now I learn you are conniving with that—that Bow Street puppy—to send Calveley to jail. How
could
you, Melly? One of my best customers! Cabbage-head!”

Much as Melly disliked brangles, she could not let this injustice pass. “Sir Malcolm,” she said sternly,
“ain’t
a cabbage-head. He is a regular out-and-outer! Just the sort of gentleman who makes a girl wish she
was
one to toss her bonnet over windmills. Don’t fly into alt, Aunt Hel; I ain’t going to! No, and I ain’t going to hand Sir Malcolm over to Bow Street, either.” She looked very pleased with herself. “I have other fish to fry.”