Maggie MacKeever (23 page)

So profound a lack of comprehension was remarkable even in a Millikin, and Rosemary awarded her brother a sharp glance. He was looking mussed; his gaze was owlish, his smile both lopsided and foolish. “Fennel! Are you
foxed?”

“Foxed? In mid-afternoon? Not a bit of it!” The room had begun to spin around him, and Fennel sat quickly down beside his sister. She winced. “Maybe a trifle bosky,” he admitted, “but were you in my position so would you be!”

Had Rosemary taken a little nip to fortify herself against each of the troubles gathering around her head, she would have been drunk as a wheelbarrow for the past sennight. That she had refrained from so doing was out of consideration for her thankless spouse. Already exasperated by his wife’s inability to remain within a budget, Chalmers was like to positively froth at the mouth did he discover that she additionally indulged a fondness for strong liquor. “What position
are
you in, Fennel?” she asked cautiously. “Was not Mr. Thwaite able to see you comfortably bestowed?”

“Comfortably!” Fennel enacted brotherly contempt. “A curst bloodsucker! It beats me, Rosemary, how you thought to bring everything off safe by allowing the gull-gropers to get their talons fast in you.”

Rosemary suffered a dire presentiment, which she sought to brush aside. “Talons? Fiddle! Perhaps you did not properly explain—”

“Hah!” sneered Fennel, with curling lip. “It was he who explained, and most thoroughly. You signed a piece of paper, didn’t you? Chowderhead!”

“Nothing of the sort!” responded Rosemary, though with little hope that this might prove to be the case. “ ‘Twas a mere formality!”

“In a pig’s eye!” Fennel retorted bluntly. “You’ve run from Queer Street into the River Tick, and there’s no getting away from it. Your Mr. Thwaite is a dashed rum customer! And you’ve let him back you smack up against the wall. There’s nothing for it now but to tell Chalmers what you’ve done, because if you don’t, Thwaite will!”

“Oh, Fennel, I cannot!” Rosemary wrung her hands. “Chalmers is already out-of-reason, cross with me—were he to learn I’d pawned the sapphires, he truly would cast me off!” Suddenly she leaped up from the
longue.
“I have it! I’ll pawn the sapphires again and repay Mr. Thwaite!”

“No, you won’t!” said Fennel. In response to his sister’s perplexity, he explained to her the facts of life as concerned the exorbitant rate of interest charged by money-lenders. “In short, you’re hard up against it, Rosemary. But I’ll tell you what you can do: give me the sapphires and I’ll buy off the dragon. That way at least one of us needn’t go on puzzling our heads!”

To this suggestion, Rosemary responded in decidedly unappreciative terms. Fennel might easily have taken offense, especially at the intimation that he harbored bats in his church-loft, had Rosemary not simultaneously hurled herself upon his lap and wept all over him. “There, there!” he soothed, and patted her shoulder. “We’ll figure some way out of this fix.”

“I hope we may!” sniffled Rosemary. “But I doubt it very much. Chalmers will divorce me and that vulgar girl will marry you and we shall
both
be miserable. Oh, if only I had never set eyes on those wretched sapphires!”

Fennel wasn’t certain what such an omission would accomplish, but he offered once again to take the offending article off his sister’s hands, or neck. Belligerently Rosemary refused. Fennel did not press the matter at that moment, though he did cast an extremely thoughtful glance at his sister’s jewel-chest.

“If I am to be made miserable,” Rosemary said at length and removed herself from Fennel’s chest, leaving him further mussed as well as damp, “there is no reason why you should also suffer. Do you tell your dragon to call on me, Fennel, and I will explain to her how it is that our pockets are to let.”

By this nacky notion Fennel was so impressed that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. Then he misdoubted that Lord Chalmers would approve the invasion of his ancestral home by a female who was rather less than respectable. In point of fact, Fennel suspected that if Lord Chalmers learned of Phoebe’s mama’s visit, he would subject his wife to the very devil of a scold.

“It doesn’t signify,” interrupted Rosemary, despondently. “Chalmers and always come to cuffs, even when I try to be conciliating.  Still, I would not mind his cheeseparing ways if only he were kind.” Rosemary realized that her brother was eyeing her askance. “You doubt me? I cannot blame you for it. But I would feel no differently about Chalmers even if he squandered every bit of his fortune on play. Sometimes I wish he would! At least then I shouldn’t have to keep up appearances!”

“The deuce you say!” ejaculated Fennel.

“Oh, yes, I am quite
éprise!”
Rosemary admitted hollowly. Then, ashamed of her cravenly admissions, she proclaimed herself exhausted by the events of the afternoon and requested that she be left in solitude. Fennel left her, having reaped much food for thought.

Solitude achieved, however, Rosemary did not immediately sink back down upon her
longue,
there to contemplate her prospective existence as the least gay of
divorcées.
Instead she seated herself at her pretty writing desk. That Rosemary’s siblings could not but be caught up in the scandalous backlash of her divorce was a circumstance she sorely rued. She could not change the ways of the world, unhappily; but she could at least warn Marigold that disaster would soon strike.

Chapter Nineteen

Fennel was not the only Millikin to overindulge in the grape on that most inauspicious of days; Lily, that very evening, discovered in herself a great fondness for champagne. Since this discovery smote her in the midst of a masquerade ball, which Fennel complained was crowded as the very devil before deserting his sisters to drink himself under the table with all possible dispatch, Lily was able to indulge her thirst without any difficulty. As were doing a great many other guests, she soon took note. These were not the sort of people with whom Lily would expect her sister Rosemary to associate; they were definitely not persons of the first quality. But Lord Chalmers had insisted on their attendance, had roused Angelica from her sickbed and rousted Fennel from the wine-cellar and borne them all before him victoriously.

Why he had done so was a puzzle to Lily, who harbored no illusion about her brother-in-law’s philanthropy. Were Chalmers acting wholly out of a concern for the well-being of the Millikins in residence beneath his roof, Lily would eat her head-dress—and since Lily’s head was dressed in the style of the late Queen of France, complete with towering powdered wig decked about with flowers and fruit and wildlife, this would have been no mean feat. All the same, Lily was pleased enough to attend this masquerade, even though the company
was
a little fast, and so she stated to her escort, who was clad in the garb of a buccaneer. Immediately he responded that she must trust him to keep her safe from harm.

“Very well!” Lily’s flirtatious glance was rendered no less effective by the mask she wore. “If you should not object, air, I should be most pleased—because I feel a fit of folly coming on, and though I do not
wish to
make a byword of myself, no Millikin yet has chosen the road of decorum and dignity. Oh!” Her hands flew to her mouth. “Now I have told you who I am. How careless of me!”

“Don’t tease yourself.” Her escort signaled to a servant for additional champagne. “I had already guessed your identity.”

“Oh?” Lily’s pretty nose wrinkled as she breathed bubbles from her glass. “Do you know me, sir?”

“Everyone knows Miss Lily Millikin!” He made an elegant little bow. “Quite half London is mad for the Fair Incomparable. You have broken countless hearts, my cruel lovely!”

“Oh yes, I’m all the crack!” admitted Lily. Where once this nonsense would have gratified, it now turned flat. “It is a very sad fix to be in.”

“A sad fix?” echoed the buccaneer, who seemed most extremely affected by these remarks. “That is an odd comment, surely, from an acknowledged beauty? Or is it something else that has put you in the pathetics?”

Lily emptied her glass in one unmaidenly gulp and with it gestured rather dramatically. In so doing she only narrowly avoided collision with several of her fellow guests. “Sir, you can have no idea! Were I to make you a candid confession you would understand the delicacy of my position, and why I wish I were well out of this whole business.” She sniffled, enchantingly. “But this is a very loose way of talking, and you will not wish to hear any such things!”

“You err, Miss Millikin; your unhappiness has quite wrung my heart.” The buccaneer took her arm. “Furthermore, I nourish a burning wish to know what has made you so unhappy. Come here, into this alcove. Now tell me all about it! Surely a young lady so first-rate that all the gentlemen sigh and die for her cannot have cause for complaint.”

“Not
all,”
she said, bitterly.

The buccaneer escorted her to a sofa, seated her with fine attention to the wide panniers of her skirt, then positioned himself at her side. “Miss Millikin, I find that difficult to credit.”

“To own the truth, so do I.” Lily heaved a great sigh. “It is hardly proper for
me
to say I’m fine as fivepence, but it would be very silly to pretend that I am not! Yet it avails me absolutely nothing to be at the top of the tree, because the gentleman to whom I am betrothed is totally indifferent.”

“The devil!” ejaculated the buccaneer.

“So you may say! I have tried and tried, but nothing I can do will throw him into transports, and as for the notion that he should be carried away by the violence of his feeling—well! It is too much to ask, I guess, that a man who has been everywhere and done everything should be less than
blasé.
Doubtless he has grown immensely unsusceptible to feminine attraction—in which case I don’t perceive why he should wish to marry me!”

“My dear Miss Millikin!” said the buccaneer.

“I should not speak so frankly to you.” Lily signaled a passing servant and procured more champagne. “It is not at all the thing. Even so, if I do not tell someone I must surely scream, and I cannot confide in my sisters, who have troubles of their own, or my brother, who is entirely at fault! I beg you will forgive my impropriety.”

The buccaneer stated his opinion of propriety, with a harsh lack of the same. Lily regarded him with awe. “Upon my word, that was a most colorful turn of speech!”

“Yes but don’t repeat it or you
will
be in the suds! What I meant to say, Miss Millikin, was that I should be honored if you would confide in me. Shall I promise you never to repeat a word?”

“Oh, I don’t care about that!” Lily drank deeply from her glass. “I shan’t be here anyway—although I shouldn’t wish any scandal to attach itself to my
fiancé.
I like him very well, even if he does regard me with a want of affection. I do think it all very hard! We might have dealt delightfully, even if he is so much older than myself. Still, he is the very pink of perfection, and I am a mere dab of a girl, even if I am a nonpareil! No doubt he has already come to repent of his choice. So I shall slip away and leave Angelica to take the field, as she should have done in the first place—providing, that is, that Angelica recovers from the sickness of the heart attendant upon her infatuation with an ineligible
parti
!”

Because the buccaneer wore a full face mask, his expression could not be glimpsed. Nonetheless, there was a tension in the way he held his body that hinted at strong emotion held in check. Also, in his voice was a touch of distress. “Angelica? Do you think you might start at the beginning, my dear?”

Lily was nothing loth. She poured the whole tale of her association with the Duke of Kingscote into the buccaneer’s receptive ear; she explained how she had meant His Grace for her elder sister, and how when His Grace and her elder sister had not proved obliging she had become betrothed to him herself. “That came about when Fennel said I was not in Kingscote’s style; of course I had to set about proving I was the very woman calculated to suit his taste! Then he offered for me and I could not dash his hopes.” The buccaneer inquired why she had entered into an engagement which she didn’t seem to fancy overmuch. “I do not like to be unkind, you see, and I needed time to think. Now that I
have
thought and thought, I see only one solution. I must fly to Gretna Green.”

“Elope?” The buccaneer sounded even more startled. “What is this? Have I misunderstood?
Do
you wish to marry your Kingscote?”

“What I wish has little to do with it!” Lily responded sternly. “Though my understanding is not great, I perfectly comprehend that Kingscote would not be happy with me, nor I with him. He has never even professed to be my very ardent admirer, no matter how strongly I intimate he should—and I can hardly ask him outright to do so, because he would probably think I wished him to administer to my vanity.”

The buccaneer removed Lily’s empty glass from her careless fingers and set it on the floor. “Is that
not
what you want, Miss Millikin?” he inquired quietly.           

Lily’s eyes, behind her mask, filled with tears. “No, it isn’t! It is most unkind of you to hint that I wish my vanity puffed up, especially when all I care about is that
he
should care about me! And I think that he must not, because he has not offered me a single attention that is a little too pointed, or subjected me to any such gallantry.” She turned her head away, so that the buccaneer found himself eye-to-eye with an improbably colored stuffed bird, and added delicately: “I have had the opportunity to observe at close range a marriage between two people who do not suit. It is not what I wish for myself, or for Kingscote. So you understand that you misjudge me. Not that I hold it against you, sir! You clearly do not know me well.”

“Clearly I do not,” said the gentleman, rather drily, and extended a handkerchief. “I fear, Miss Millikin, that I am grown a trifle obtuse, but on one point I am exceedingly confused. If I may be so bold as to inquire, what
are
your sentiments regarding Kingscote?”