Maggie MacKeever (25 page)

“Mousetraps!” gasped that damsel, flushed and panting from her exertions and looking altogether adorable. “I ain’t wishful of stepping into one myself. No, and I ain’t wishful of becoming a fubsy-faced old maid, either. And I am
prodigious
tired of people kicking up a dust over trifles!” Recalling her manners, she dropped a curtsy. “Hullo, all. I’m sorry for bursting in on you this way.”

“That is quite all right. Miss Bagshot.” Lady Bligh waved away the servants, the Davenants apparently for their various reasons being bereft of movement and speech. “I assume you are the young woman who tried to diddle Bow Street?”

Miss Bagshot looked mournful. “Why is it that when a girl tries to look out for herself everyone assumes the worst? I suppose
you
are rich as this Croesus fellow, too, ma’am. It ain’t fair. All
I
wanted was a competence!”

Recovered from the shock of receiving in her drawing room the damsel who had recently received distinguishing attentions from the male members of her family, Lady Davenham sat up very erect. “I refuse to pay one penny,” she grimly announced. “Do your worst, Miss Bagshot!”

Melly dragged her big brown eyes away from Sir Malcolm’s handsome face. “I was afraid you’d feel like that. Are
all
the nobs so clutch-fisted? It is very hard! But if you want your dirty linen aired in public, it’s no skin off
my
nose!”

Vivien had been mistaken in Miss Bagshot, after all; Thea cast him a swift glance. The Duke still stood gazing out the window, as if eschewing all part in the scene. “I do not
have
any dirty linen!” she snapped.

“And I thought
I
told clankers!” responded Melly, shocked. “I ain’t never told a taradiddle as whopping as
that!
Yes, and you shouldn’t be calling me names, because though I may be a dreadful flirt, I ain’t planted the antlers on anybody’s brow!”

“Antlers! ”gasped Lady Davenham.

Though Sir Malcolm was enjoying this exchange mightily, he suspected his cousin was not. “No antlers, Melly,” he said kindly. “It was all a hum.”

“A hum?” In response to Sir Malcolm’s brilliant smile, Miss Bagshot clutched herself in the vicinity of her fluttering heart. “I’ll wager I couldn’t have gone through with it, anyway.”

Lord Davenham had understood Miss Bagshot better than the damsel understood herself, thought Thea, further depressed by this evidence of her husband’s acumen. Vivien did not want a wife, certainly not one who wore her heart upon her sleeve. Thea sought to restrain her tears.

In her efforts at self-control, the Duchess was assisted by yet another diversion: an anxious-looking person wearing a blue greatcoat and scarlet waistcoat, blue trousers and saber and boots with steel spurs, appeared in her drawing room doorway. “Ah!” said Lady Bligh, who had keenly observed the recent proceedings. “Enter Bow Street.”

“Bow Street.” Lord Davenham stirred. “You’ve come about my rhododendron. Good man!”

“Your
rhododendron?” Miss Bagshot’s elfin features were indignant. “I like that! I wouldn’t have thought you was the sort of gentleman who gave a girl a present and then took it back!”

Not only had her husband never invited her to a meeting of the Horticultural Society, but he had never on his wife’s behalf uprooted one of his precious plants. “Oh, Vivien!” Thea softly cried.

By this indication that she had distressed Lady Davenham, Miss Bagshot was herself upset. “You must not take it so much to heart,” advised Melly, as she sank down beside Thea on the settee. “No gentleman who’d do such a shabby thing is worth a fig. He
knows
how much that rhododendron means to me because I told him myself that I’ve always been wishful of growing one. Yes, and I told him also you deserved to have a flirt because he neglected you so shockingly!”

“Did you?” echoed Thea, faintly.

“Yes, and she told me also that she would fix it up all right and tight.” Lord Davenham appeared to find nothing remarkable in the spectacle of Miss Bagshot patting his wife’s bands. “Now, about my rhododendron.”

“Yes, sir.” Puddiphat closed the drawing room door and clasped both hands upon his saber, terrified of inflicting damage on his surroundings, which were the grandest he’d ever seen. “Tell me about it.”

“It was a relatively young rhododendron.” His lordship gestured vaguely. “About so wide and so tall—” He broke off as the door again opened and two of his footmen, profusely perspiring, hauled the terracotta tub into the drawing room. “My man, you are the best of good fellows! When I awoke to find it gone, I thought I would never see this rhododendron again.”

“Gone.” Laboriously, Puddiphat strove to make sense of the bizarre situation in which he found himself. “Stolen, sir?”

Lord Davenham inclined his head. “Stolen. In the dead of night. When I was otherwise engaged.”

“Bless my heart!” cried Melly, wondering what in the Duke’s simple statements had caused his Duchess to blush. “Then it was Sir Malcolm who was the thief!”

In response to this accusation, that gentleman winced. “Let us say instead that I had overindulged slightly in the grape. You wanted a rhododendron, and Vivien had several. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“And so it was!” Miss Bagshot released Lady Davenham, the better to clasp her own bands to her breast. “A perfectly nacky notion! Dashed if you
don’t
tempt a girl to toss her bonnet over the windmill!”

Though the exalted company in which he found himself might not blink an eyelid in response to a damsel’s declaration that she hovered on the brink of ruin, Puddiphat was not so sanguine. He recalled he had a duty to perform. “Sir Malcolm,” he studiously intoned, “I hereby take you in charge and notify you that you will be taken into the safe-keeping of—”

“Poppycock!” Brutally, Lady Bligh shattered the moment of which Puddiphat had so long dreamed. “You haven’t a particle of evidence against the man.”

Lord Davenham strolled across the room and took up a position behind the settee which held Miss Bagshot and his wife. Though he did not understand her attitude, which seemingly swung from wild enthusiasm to a marked disinclination to look at himself, he would defend his wife. “I do not like to argue with a guest in my home, but I must point that a very
large
particle of evidence is existent.” He indicated the terracotta tub. “Not that I mean to make an issue of the business, since the rhododendron has been returned.”

“You are very good, Cousin!” responded Sir Malcolm, in ironic tones.

“Oh no, he ain’t!” interrupted Miss Bagshot, gazing wistfully upon the tub. “Because if I ain’t allowed to keep the thing, I’d as lief not have had it in the first place. Nor would I have had poor Samson haul it all the way across town lest my aunt toss it out.” And then Melly remembered why she had done so. “Like she has
me!”
she wailed.

Now it was Lady Davenham’s turn to pat Miss Bagshot’s hands. “There, there!” she said. “Do you mean your aunt has cast you out? What a shocking thing!”

“She ain’t cast me out
yet!”
sniffled Melly, who saw nothing exceptionable in accepting comfort from this source. “But she promised that she
will
if I cut one more lark—and I ain’t capable of
not
cutting larks, you see! And so I came here thinking I’d put you to the touch, but then I couldn’t go through with it—and now I don’t know
what
to do!” She dissolved in tears.

Puddiphat alone remained unaffected by this touching scene, perhaps because he had previously discovered the only route to coherence lay in ignoring Miss Bagshot. He fixed his gaze on the Brussels carpeting.
“Ample
ground for suspicion!” he observed, to the room at large. “Sir Malcolm Calveley, I take you in charge—”

“Have you a warrant?” sternly inquired Lady Bligh.

“I have
said
I do not wish to make an issue of the business,” Lord Davenham added plaintively. “If I were to take offense at all of my cousin’s mischief, he would spend the remainder of his life in jail.”

“Vivien!” said Sir Malcolm, greatly moved by this unexpected defense. “I did not know you held me in such high esteem.”

Lord Davenham wore his most whimsical expression. “I don’t. But you
are
my heir.”

“And you think I wish to step into your shoes?” Sir Malcolm’s shrewd eyes moved from Lord Davenham to his Duchess. “Set your mind at rest, Cousin: I don’t!”

“You mistook my meaning, Malcolm.”
Of one thing was Lord Davenham certain, amid all this confusion: he would no longer stand idly by while his vacillating wife flirted with other gentlemen. In a very absent-minded manner, the
Duke touched Thea’s dark hair. “You shall not, whether you want to or no.”

“Sets the wind in that quarter?” So intrigued was Melly by this exchange that she forgot her tears. “Fancy that! And I was going to ask you, ma’am, just whose chest you prefer I cast myself on!” She removed herself from Lady Davenham’s bosom, which had made an excellent stopgap. “Dashed if that gown don’t look splendid on you. Did you know I designed it myself? Though it was Sir Malcolm as named it London Soot.”

Puddiphat was growing very frustrated, as result of his recognition of a plot that had thickened, and his failure to make a subsequent arrest. “There are severe penalties for interfering with Bow Street!” he roared.

Into the sudden silence came Lady Bligh’s voice. “Oh no there aren’t!” she said.

As result of their acquaintance, Melly was not long impressed by Puddiphat’s rage. “I must cast myself on
someone’s
chest!” she explained to Thea. “There is nothing else to do, now that I have run away from my aunt—sloped off! Just like my papa, I’ve shown Aunt Hel a clean pair of heels— though I ain’t supposed to talk of that!”

Not without good benefit had Puddiphat read
Physiognomical Fragments
and other related works; he knew very well the physical characteristics of individuals inclined toward burglary. Small ears and sharp vision and slender fingers—unfortunately, that description applied to several of the people in the room. Puddiphat could only trust to his instinct. “Sir Malcolm Calveley, I take you into custody—”

“Bless my soul but you’re deuced persistent, Samson!” observed Miss Bagshot. She turned to Lady Davenham, whom she was beginning to look upon as a bosom bow. “Samson wishes to become a Bow Street Runner, and that is why he’s so determined to clap someone in jail. I shan’t help you, Samson. No matter what Sir Malcolm may have done!”

“I do not
think
I have done anything more criminal,” said Sir Malcolm, though not with a great deal of conviction, “than digging up my cousin’s rhododendron.”

Puddiphat had not needed Miss Bagshot’s announcement to alert him she was set on leading Bow Street down the garden path. “—on suspicion of being a cracksman known commonly as Blood-and-Thunder!” he concluded triumphantly.

For a moment, the fact of Sir Malcolm’s arrest was not absorbed by the assorted company. This oversight occurred as result of Miss Bagshot’s failure to accord the proper respect to the official emissary of Bow Street. “I’ll wager you’ve done a great deal worse than dig up rhododendrons!” she said sternly, before being stricken by the impact of Puddiphat’s words. “But Sir Malcolm
ain’t
Blood-and-Thunder! It’s my papa as was a cracksman—I think. I ain’t seen him in years, and neither has my aunt. And no matter what Aunt Hel says, I won’t let Sir Malcolm take the blame, so you may arrest him immediately!”

“Your papa?” echoed Puddiphat, stunned.

“You are surprised!” Melly said wisely. “I was myself. I ain’t even thought of him in years; it was a long time ago that he hopped the twig. And a good job he did of it, too, for my mama could never trace him one step. She always thought he’d gone to the Continent.” Melly sighed. “I promised Aunt Hel I wouldn’t let the cat out of the bag, and here I’m doing that very thing— which just goes to show what promises are worth, which is why I wanted a competence.”

Sir Malcolm was looking very thoughtful. “The deuce!” he said.

“Precisely,” murmured Lady Bligh, as she gracefully rose. “It is a singular stroke of good fortune that I am here, you know. Since Puddiphat has no warrant for your apprehension, I think we may safely assume that you need
not
consider yourself in custody.”

Puddiphat took serious exception to this blithe assumption. Sir Malcolm Calveley was to appear before the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street, he insisted, and have his deposition taken there. Lady Bligh glanced back at him, her hand on the drawing room door.

Through that door, which now stood slightly ajar, waddled Nimrod. The ancient hound was in no good humor, having been excluded from proceedings that had sounded from the hallway to be highly emotional. In search of a fitting object on which to vent his outrage, Nimrod settled on the nearest candidate. He waddled and wheezed his way toward that object, then sank his remaining teeth into Puddiphat’s boot. Though sparse, the hound’s teeth were sharp. Puddiphat howled and clutched his wounded member. Lady Bligh was not one to bypass such an opportunity. Deftly, she plucked the saber from its scabbard and with it prodded Puddiphat.

“As I was saying, Calveley,” she continued, adjusting her turban, “you need not present yourself in Bow Street before resuming your travels. You
are
going to resume your travels? I thought you might. No, Puddiphat, Sir Malcolm is
not
Blood-and-Thunder.” She flourished the saber. “But you may take
me
to Bow Street and explain to John how I have prevented you making a Jack-pudding of yourself.”

Chapter Twenty-three

As
Lady Bligh escorted Puddiphat back to Bow Street Public Office—and a highly diverting spectacle they made, the Baroness prodding her unhappy companion along and scolding all the way—Sir Malcolm Calveley escorted Miss Bagshot into the gardens behind Davenant House, there to watch the rhododendron being restored to its rightful place.

“I don’t understand!” sighed Melly, in lament not for her lack of comprehension, but for the loss of the rhododendron. “If you ain’t Blood-and-Thunder—and you
can’t
be Blood-and-Thunder if my papa is—why are you leaving the country? Come to think on it, why did you leave the country in the first place? Wasn’t you under a cloud? It was that what set Puddiphat on to you.”