Maggie MacKeever (14 page)

“She does?” To Lily, her brother’s account had begun to sound ominous. “Fennel, what did you say?”

“Said it was all a fudge! I never liked the chit
that
well. And for the old dragon to claim Phoebe wishes to put a period to her life on my account is so much twaddle, because Phoebe was sitting there the whole time, and she didn’t look the least bit plunged into grief. You know what, puss? It’s my notion the old dragon is playing a deep game.”

Lily ruminated upon this viewpoint. “Why should she?”

Fennel’s grin widened. “For high stakes, and that’s the cream of the jest! The dragon’s taken it into her head that the family’s well-heeled!”

Though this remark might have stricken one member of the family with dread, that member the perspicacious Angelica, Lily found the suggestion that the Millikins might have a shilling with which to bless themselves delightfully absurd. Fennel regarded his chortling sister tolerantly. “Stands to reason, I collect!” he remarked. “Rosemary’s married to Chalmers, who’s rich as Croesus, even if he is reluctant to part with his blunt; and the
on-dit
around town is that you’re plump in the pocket. So the dragon conjectured I was likewise blessed.”                          

“Me?” Lily gasped ungrammatically, the rules of English usage being among the numerous things beyond the grasp of the Millikin intellect. “That’s ridiculous!”

“
I
know that, but the dragon don’t.” Fennel laughed aloud at memory of the interview. “I tried to tell her how it is with us, but she accused me of spinning her a Canterbury story. As if I
could!
And then she said I was a scoundrel of the first water, and I said she should take a damper because she was coming it too strong! Thought she’d swoon from the shock, but she didn’t! Instead she said she understood perfectly well how it was, that I had a decided partiality for Phoebe and was only pretending to be tiring of her company because I was afraid my family wouldn’t approve.”

“Mercy, Fennel!” Lily no longer looked amused. “Why shouldn’t the family approve?”

“Dashed if I know!” Fennel pondered the matter. “Maybe because Phoebe ain’t quite the thing. You know what Rosemary is! Deuced high in the instep! And I don’t know why she should be, because she only married into the nobs. For that matter, the way
she’s
going on I don’t see she has any reason to rip up at us!”

“Poor soul!” murmured the kind-hearted Lily. Since Fennel did not know to whom she referred, he made no comment. Wearing her vaguest look, Lily studied him. “You could always elope! I have always thought elopements the most romantic of all things! Rosemary couldn’t kick up too much of a dust once the knot was tied—and you wouldn’t care even if she did, because you’d already have your Phoebe. It is the perfect solution, Fennel! I marvel that you didn’t think of it!”

“You needn’t!” retorted Fennel. “I don’t want to elope!”

“Well, I do consider that poor-spirited! There would be a little talk, I expect, but it is very cow-hearted of you to stick at a little scandal when by it you could be happy as a grig!”

“But I don’t
want
to be married!” Fennel protested, with praiseworthy patience. “Don’t see how you could take so maggoty a notion into your head! Or I do see, because it is very like you, but you can forget it! I’ll be hanged if I marry Phoebe!”

“Now that,” Lily responded sternly, “is very shabby! I don’t think Rosemary would approve your setting up the girl under your protection any more than she would your marriage. Moreover, you have no money, so you could not provide for a wife. I think you should reconsider, Fennel!”

Fennel did so, and thought his only prudent course of action might be to remove himself from London immediately. But Fennel no more possessed the virtue of prudence than did any of his siblings, so he dismissed that milk-livered notion immediately and embarked upon the difficult task of persuading his indignant sister that he had no aspiration to frolic among the muslin company. Lily cast him a reproachful glance. “You needn’t try and bamboozle
me.
”

“As if I would! Listen, puss: even if I wanted to elope, which I don’t, I couldn’t; the dragon wouldn’t stand for it. I’m telling you the truth, on the square!” Again, that irrepressible grin. “I haven’t told you the best part! The dragon says that unless I wish to come under the gravest censure, I must do what is highly fit and proper, and marry Phoebe. And if I
don’t
come up to scratch, she vows she will bring a breach of promise suit!”

Lily, whose miffs were of as short duration as her powers of concentration, had regained her habitually happy frame of mind. Still, she was not convinced that the dragon’s oath was as amusing as Fennel found it. “What,” she inquired with interest, “is a breach of promise suit?”

“I ain’t exactly sure, but I think it’s something to do with making a promise and then shabbing off. Nothing to worry about, I assure you! I’m sure I didn’t pop the question! Can’t be sued for declarations I didn’t make, eh?”

Lily puzzled over the matter, and supposed that he could not. All in all, she thought that Fennel had not played his cards excellently well.

“Fits of folly!” he agreed cheerfully, when taxed with this judgment. “No harm done! Now tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Lily was happy to do so, and regaled her brother with merry accounts of her gay life, as well as titillating tidbits of gossip, chief among which was a very mysterious affair between Lord Buckingham and Sir Thomas Hardy and Lady Hardy, which had led to a duel between the two men. From this Lily progressed to family affairs, speculation upon the strained relationship between Lord and Lady Chalmers, further speculation upon the inexplicable behavior exhibited by Angelica, and a possible explanation thereof.

“Lawks!” said Fennel, when gifted with Lily’s theory that their eldest sister was embarked upon a clandestine romance.
“Angelica?”

“Yes.” Lily looked concerned. “At first I thought it was a very good thing because poor Angelica so seldom has any
fun.
But it has been going on for weeks now, and I fear the matter has grown serious. I can only think the gentleman is most unsuitable. Fennel, else she would not behave so furtively! He could be a fortune hunter, or worse!”

Here Fennel displayed a flash of the shrewdness with which the Millikins were very occasionally blessed. He pointed out that fortune hunters seldom dangled after ladies who hadn’t a shilling with which to grace themselves.

“Yes, but if people think we are well-heeled—your Phoebe’s mama thought so, remember, and so do Meadowcraft and Gildensleeve, Steptoe and Pettijohn—they will think Angelica is also!” Lily grasped her brother’s arm. “We must prevent Angelica from falling prey to some rogue! I have thought and thought, and there is only one solution: we must marry her off quickly to someone who is eligible.”

So taken by surprise was Fennel at the hitherto unconceived notion that the ugly duckling of the family should marry anyone, that he didn’t even protest that Lily was putting sad creases in his sleeve. “You are certainly concerned about this, puss.”

“Concerned? Of course I am! First I thought that I might marry her off to Meadowcraft or Gildensleeve, Steptoe or Pettijohn, but upon reflection I decided that not one of them would do. Meadowcraft and I have had much conversation about Angelica, and he admires her greatly, but his mind is of a mean and little structure and I suspect he praises Angelica only to please me. Gildensleeve and I have had a great deal of joking about many things, and he is most amusing, but his accounts are in the most dreadful tangle. Steptoe and I are wondrous great together and we talk serious matters over by the half-hour—rather he talks and I listen, because I do not understand such stuff—but he is a vain, silly fellow and thinks too highly of himself. Pettijohn says everything kind and civil to me, but he won’t do, either, because his cousins assure me he is most often sulky as a bear.”

Distracted from the main topic of conversation by this spate of words, Fennel made free to inquire which among her suitors Lily favored. In his opinion, neither Meadowcraft nor Gildensleeve, Steptoe nor Pettijohn, was up to snuff.

“No,” sighed Lily. “Beside, I have decided it must be a peer. I suppose I will have to settle for Kingscote.”

“Kingscote?” echoed Fennel. “He’s old enough to be your father, puss!”

Lily looked startled. “Not for me, silly! For Angelica! Kingscote is wealthy and well-connected and
clever!
And he assures me that he admires Angelica’s mind.”

In Fennel’s admittedly limited experience, gentlemen did not marry ladies out of admiration for their mental faculties, but he hesitated to point this out to Lily, whose heart was so obviously set on a match between Angelica and the duke. He did point out, gently, that he had not noticed His Grace exhibiting any marked preference for Angelica.

“I don’t know how he can,” retorted Lily, “when she’s never around! I vow I am almost out of patience with her. No matter how I scheme to bring them together, Angelica always slips away, and I am left to entertain Kingscote. It is no great trouble, you understand, because he is a very amiable gentleman—but sometimes I despair of ever bringing the thing off.”

Another flash of intuition struck Fennel, an unprecedented event in that the Millikins were seldom clever twice in one week, let alone in one day: he thought that it was not with the purpose of becoming acquainted with the elusive Angelica that the duke made Lily such flattering overtures. Delicately, he inquired whether Lily had informed the gentleman of his proposed fate.

Lily giggled. “Of course not! ‘Twould be most ill-advised. Like leading a horse to water after the barn door has been closed —or do I have that right? Kingscote may have a suspicion, because I make it a point to speak kindly of Angelica and he is a very knowing one. So you see it’s all right, because if he
minded,
he wouldn’t keep coming back again!”

Fennel had been mulling over the addition of a duke to the family. It was not a bad notion, he decided; Kingscote might be in his dotage, but from all one heard he was quite extraordinarily wealthy, and seemed quite civil. Though Fennel was not mercenary, he was worldly enough to realize that wealthy bridegrooms were highly desirable additions to a family whose pockets were perennially to let. Kingscote and Angelica? It suited Fennel very well, providing the gentleman didn’t mind. However, he suspected that the gentleman might.

Accordingly, Fennel dropped a subtle hint. “Kingscote’s a peer! Tell you what, Lily, you ought to marry him yourself!”

“Marry Kingscote? Me?” Lilly looked confounded. “Fennel, you’ve taken leave of your wits!”

Maybe, and maybe not; a conviction had taken root in the virgin soil of Fennel’s brain, and he was not to be easily dissuaded from what he now realized would be an admirable solution to a great many difficulties. Precisely how to bring about so happy a state of affairs, Fennel did not yet know, but he was sure he
could
bring it about, did he but set his mind to it, which he intended to do. In the interim, Lily must not get the wind up. To this end, Fennel pinched his sister’s cheek. “Doubtless you’re right!” he conceded gracefully. “You ain’t in Kingscote’s style.”

That Lily might not be in the style of any gentleman who came within her orbit had not previously occurred to her. She sampled the notion, and found it distasteful. “Poppycock!” said Lily.

Chapter Twelve

Since Angelica was not among the rapidly increasing number of people who were aware of the schemes Lily harbored for her eldest sister and the wealthy and well-connected and clever, if decrepit, Duke of Kingscote, she felt no compunction about absenting herself from Chalmers House, as usual, the following afternoon. When this absence was discovered, Lily came very close to throwing the first temper-storm of her life, and expressed to Fennel a strong desire to lock Angelica in her room. Then, with a pungent remark about barred barn doors and thirsty horses, she set herself, in the absence of her sister, to console the duke, and to prove additionally to her own satisfaction that she was very much in the style most liked by
all
the gentlemen, even one of such advanced years. His Grace, who at even the stupendous age of eight-and-thirty retained possession of all his faculties, and who was therefore well aware of what fate Lily planned for him and consequently better entertained by her efforts than ever he had been before, professed himself sadly cast down by what strongly appeared to be a singular string of ill-luck, and then bore Lily off for a ride in his dashing
vis-à-vis,
a treat both he and Lily enjoyed very well.

Angelica, meantime, had made her way to Sir Randall’s house, had been directed by Williams to the garden, had discovered there not only Sir Randall but his scapegrace son. Both men turned toward her and smiled. Simon Brisbane, Angelica discovered, was no less damnably attractive on second meeting than he had been on first. Sedately she entered the garden, settled herself as requested by her employer on the marble bench, whereupon Sir Randall proffered paper, pen and ink, and announced an intention to embark upon the writing of his memoirs.

In this activity, they were engaged for some time. Sir Randall dictated; Angelica wrote down his words as rapidly as she could; Simon observed the proceedings silently. Angelica was very much aware of the harsh features that were turned toward her, the keen green eyes that were most often fixed on her face. Several times she had to interrupt her employer and ask that he go back a space because she’d lost the thread of his reminiscence.

Sir Randall exhibited no impatience that his amanuensis should display a loss of the ability to concentrate; in point of fact, he did not appear the least bit surprised that her mind should wander in that way. After all, was it not Angelica’s responsibility to keep a firm rein on her bird-witted siblings, as well as to redeem the Chalmers sapphires? Nor had Simon adverse comment to make, though his harsh features bore an expression of distinct amusement. Fortunately, Angelica, her head bent over her paper and pen, did not observe those twinkling eyes, else she would have deduced, and correctly, that Simon knew she was far from oblivious to his presence.