Maggie MacKeever (13 page)

Lord Chalmers did not do so immediately, but paced around the room, the walls of which were lined with shelves. On those shelves, on tables and in cabinets, were countless specimens, dry and in spirits and stuffed, a brief sampling of which included individual peculiarities of plants and animals, monsters and mummies; skulls of the five great divisions of the human race; examples of the development of the brain and spinal marrow from the knotted cord of Crustacea upwards through fishes, reptiles and birds to the brain and spinal cord of mammalia; teeth, from, the beaks of birds to the tusks of boars; instances of the effects of disease on brains, hearts, lungs, stomachs, intestines, spleens and kidneys. Although Lord Chalmers’s demeanor was that of a man keenly interested in the wonders so lavishly displayed, this guise was misleading; the lord’s concentration was turned inward. He was pondering the antics of the various young ladies in residence beneath his roof.

At least Angelica’s conduct was explained, if not entirely to his satisfaction. He supposed he should be grateful for the resolution of one problem out of three. With Rosemary’s megrims he did not intend to acquaint Valerian; since the eldest of the Millikins was not on terms of even nodding acquaintance with his younger sisters, Valerian could hardly offer an explanation of why Rosemary grew daily more distant and distrait. That left only Lily.

It was not Lily’s conduct that posed Lord Chalmers a dilemma; Lily had done nothing untoward, although her habit of daily waxing more loquacious about a different one of her admirers—most often Messrs. Meadowcraft or Gildensleeve, Steptoe or Pettijohn—was a trifle exasperating. Lord Chalmers’s dilemma as to Lily focused not on the young lady herself, but on the most determined of her suitors, whom she appeared to regard in an avuncular light, and who was also Chalmers’s friend. Naturally he was disposed in the duke’s favor. All the same, he did not wish to be unfair. Nor did he want to prejudice Valerian in one direction or the other. Wondering how best to broach so delicate a matter to so plain-spoken and disinterested a mediator, the baron paced the floor.

Valerian watched, content to let the silence deepen; despite Chalmers’s assurances, Valerian suspected that whatever confidences were granted him would not be free of ulterior motive. Since Valerian had no intention of exerting himself on anyone’s behalf, regardless of whatever strong motivation toward such exertion was presented him, he was not at all distressed.

He watched and pondered the situation between Lord Chalmers and his wife, as explained by Angelica. Rosemary appeared to have taken to life among the aristocracy like a swimming-bird to water, playing ducks and drakes with her husband’s fortune as if to the manner born. Chalmers, conscious of his rank, yet the perfect gentleman in all he said and did, would not relish his wife’s irresponsibility. A tantalizing situation! Valerian wondered what would come of it.

That he wondered must not be interpreted as evidence of fraternal concern. Valerian was not even momentarily tempted to apprise Chalmers that his family sapphires were in hock. If Rosemary could not bring herself to confess the whole to her husband, which was clearly her only reasonable course of action, Lord Chalmers’s enlightenment was not Valerian’s responsibility. Enlightenment was bound to visit Chalmers, eventually. Meanwhile the situation daily grew more entertaining.

Nor, as he had bluntly informed her, did Valerian intend to offer Angelica any assistance in her attempts to row Rosemary out of the River Tick. Valerian was above all dispassionate, an impartial observer who derived vast amusement from the antics of his fellow-men; he had no compunction about manipulating them into position, but beyond that it was his rule to never interfere. Though Valerian set events in action, he didn’t make the error of anticipating the outcome. Valerian’s pleasure derived from the development of a situation, and he observed the behavior of his subjects as sharply as he attended his laboratory animals—but Valerian subscribed to the scientific theory, and as any scientist knows, tampering with the process negates the validity of the experiment.

Unaware that his host compared him to a laboratory rat in a particularly tricky maze, Lord Chalmers spoke. “I have hesitated to speak of this,” he said, rather unnecessarily from Valerian’s point of view, “but in all conscience I must. It concerns your sister Lily.” He went on to explain that the young lady had the opportunity to form an extremely eligible connection, to settle in matrimony with a gentleman of superior breeding and wealth, about whom not one adverse comment could be made, unless it was that he was old enough to be her father. “He has not made an offer yet,” concluded Lord Chalmers, “but I’m sure he will. He is most attentive, escorting her everywhere she may wish.”

Valerian heard out this account with growing disappointment; it smacked of the mundane. “That’s all well and good, but why drag
me
into it?”

Lord Chalmers was developing no great liking for his eldest brother-in-law during this first of their encounters; in truth, Chalmers privately hoped that this first encounter would be the last. Still, Valerian
was
head of the family, and as such the final authority on the disposition of his younger siblings. This, the baron explained. Since Valerian appeared most unappreciative of the honor thus bestowed on him, Chalmers additionally explained that he could not honorably urge a damsel in residence beneath his roof to encourage his friend. On the other hand, if his friend was doomed to disappointment, Lord Chalmers was by honor bound to try and check the growing strength of his attachment. It was, the baron confessed, a very pretty puzzle, to the solving of which he could not see his way clear.

Tactfully, Valerian refrained from commenting that he failed to see why the baron was involved with the puzzle in the first place. “You’ve overlooked one vital point: what does the chit think?”

“Lily?” It had occurred to Lord Chalmers neither that Lily might have a viewpoint in the matter nor, if she did, that her opinion might signify. “She seems to like him well enough.”

“Very near perfection, is she?” inquired Valerian. “To attract so very superior a gentleman, the chit must be. As I recall, they
all
were. Except Angelica, that is.”

For this slur upon the only sensible member of the Millikin family, Lord Chalmers liked his eldest brother-in-law even less. “I have always found Angelica a very superior young lady,” he said stiffly.

“Oh, Angelica is perfection!” Valerian responded immediately. “I’ve thought so for years. All the same, it won’t do for
you
to think so, because you’re married to what’s-her-name. You’re not hankering after Angelica, I hope? I wouldn’t like to have a divorce in the family. Which, now that I consider it, is probably the only point on which that feather-headed Marigold and I would agree.”

Bewildered by this abrupt attack, Lord Chalmers protested that he was satisfied with his current wife, and that no thought of divorce had ever entered his mind. “Content, are you?” queried Valerian, looking inquisitive. Hastily, Lord Chalmers turned the conversation into less personal channels: “We were speaking of Lily.”

“So we were.” Contemplatively, Valerian crossed his long legs at the knee. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about it, Chalmers—in fact, if you expect me to do anything, you’re all about in the head!—but I can tell you now the chit will have nothing to say to him.”

Lord Chalmers did not credit that even Lily would be that bacon-brained. His concern was not with Lily’s acceptance of Kingscote’s suit; if that suit were proffered, he could not imagine Lily would turn it down. What
did
concern him, he explained in clear and simple language, was that Lily and the duke might not be well-matched.

“Don’t worry your head about it!” Valerian rose. “From what I hear of the chit, she’d never do anything so sensible as to accept someone so eligible. Her last infatuation was with a penniless poet who wrote sonnets to her earlobes, you know.” It was evident from Lord Chalmers’s expression that he had
not
known. “There, that’s settled! Anytime I can be of service, don’t hesitate to call on me!” Valerian whisked himself out the door, allegedly to deal with an urgent case of measles that awaited in his anteroom, actually to relate this encounter with his starched-up brother-in-law to his elderly housekeeper, with such irreverent gusto that they both succumbed to whoops. In a far from cheerful mood, Lord Chalmers found his own way out into the street.

Chapter Eleven

Although Lord Chalmers had not included Fennel among the Millikins in residence beneath the venerable roof of Chalmers House who had given their host cause for worry, he might well have done so; Fennel’s sojourn in London had not been devoid of excursions and alarms, although Fennel did not view his progress in that light. Fennel considered that he was having a great deal of a lark, and found it all jolly good fun.

These matters he was explaining to Lily. As fog had not, nor did the threat of rain keep the Millikins confined within doors; no impending downpour, no bleak and brooding clouds, no oppressive atmosphere could quench the exuberance of the younger members of that family. Since Lily’s suitors were much less intrepid, Fennel and Lily—en route to Astley’s Royal Amphitheater, which Lily had liked so well on her first visit that she had persuaded Fennel to take her back again— were
tête-à-tête.

Fennel had no objection to squiring Lily to Astley’s; the entertainment there, based on superb equestrian feats, was just the sort that appealed most to him. Fennel failed to understand what attracted his sisters to Almack’s and the theaters; the former he adjudged very shabby, and the quality of the refreshments—stale bread and lemonade—as very much below par; the latter he deemed an even greater bore. Not for Fennel were the crowded interiors of the King’s Theater in the Haymarket, Covent Garden, Drury Lane; he had as little liking for the bejeweled members of the
ton
who glittered in their boxes as for the actors who minced across the stage. Moreover, even if the decorations of the theaters were splendid, as he’d been assured they were, the wretched places were forever burning down.

Nor was Fennel appreciative of the routs and
soirées so
highly favored by his sisters; he intensely disliked standing for hours crushed against a wall or flattened on a staircase, copiously perspiring, listening to his fellow sufferers bemoan the dreadful squeeze. The gentlemen’s clubs, Brook’s and White’s, to which Lord Chalmers had taken him, won from Fennel no plaudits: Fennel thought it ridiculous that grown men should have nothing better to do with their time than quizzing one another and slandering the majority of their acquaintance, befuddling their senses with liquor and spending ruinous hours at the card tables. Cockfighting and bull baiting did not interest Fennel, who had seen his fill of such gory sport in the country. Boxing he approved, and the occasional horse race; but one could not spend all one’s time watching two bruisers pound one another to a pulp, or waiting to see which bit of blood finished first.

No sympathy need be squandered on Fennel, however, despite his disfavor with the fashionable diversions so dear to the
beau monde;
Fennel had managed to amuse himself tolerably well, as he was telling Lily.

“Thought she was a trifle bosky!” he explained, as with an appreciative eye he observed how Lord Chalmers’s coachman tooled the ribbons of his lordship’s calash with praiseworthy ease, his lordship’s bays being less optimistic about the oppressive weather than were the calash’s occupants. “She was talking like a nodcock, catechizing and sermonizing for quite an hour, saying I’d led Phoebe to make a byword of herself, which is a great piece of nonsense because
I
ain’t the one who threw out lures!”

“Gracious!” gasped Lily, blue eyes alight. “Fennel, describe her to me.”

“Oh, a dragon!” Fennel obliged. “Breathing fire and brimstone, I swear it!”

“No, no!” Lily giggled. “Not Phoebe’s mama, Phoebe!”

Fennel squinted with concentration, trying to envision the features which he’d once thought so remarkable, and which, in point of fact, he’d seen but recently. Try as he might, those features would not come clear. “Dashed if I can!” he confessed cheerfully. “She’s just another girl, puss. Can’t hold a candle to you or Rosemary.”

That the unknown Phoebe could shine with a brilliance equal to that of the dazzling Millikins—always excepting Angelica—had not crossed Lily’s mind. Now that it did so, she giggled again at the absurdity. “You must remember something about her, Fennel! What was the color of her hair? Her eyes? Was she short or tall, plump or slender?”

“Short,” responded Fennel, “and plump. Dark hair and brown eyes. Rosy cheeks and cherry lips, a fine vulgar miss. To tell truth, I don’t know what I ever saw in her!”

Lily could have ventured a guess, having long acquaintance with calf-love. A gentleman’s first attack of that malady, she thought, was apt to be severe; but Fennel seemed to have recovered as abruptly as he’d succumbed. “A brief madness,” she said wisely. “The family are prone to such. Except Angelica, of course! What else did Phoebe’s mama say to you?”

“Oh, all sorts of skimble-skamble stuff.” Fennel grinned. “The entire afflicting interview was occupied with my shabby behavior; she said I’d played fast and loose with Phoebe, offered her false coin, and then when Phoebe’s affections had become fixed that I began to declare off altogether, leaving the chit to wear the willow for me!”

“Goodness!” uttered Lily, round-eyed. “Maybe she was smoking you, Fennel.”

“Trying to hoodwink me, you mean! Saying I’d made a dead-set at Phoebe and trifled with her affections and cast her off like a Paphian girl!” Fennel frowned. “I ain’t sure she’s
not
a Paphian girl, think on it! It’s certain she ain’t a well brought-up young woman. Anyway, she set her cap at me!”

“Fennel!” Lily’s exquisite countenance was positively animated. “You didn’t—
she
didn’t—you know what I mean!”

“I do?” Fennel’s expression indicated the opposite. “Oh,
that!
Of course I didn’t! I didn’t even say anything improper, or I think I didn’t, though it’s curst hard to remember. At least I’m
sure
I didn’t offer the wench my heart and hand, like her mama claims I did.”