Maggie MacKeever (25 page)

“Don’t!” said Valerian, encouragingly. “Hesitate, that is!
I
don’t mind.”

Apparently his host’s acquaintance with Miss Smith was slight, decided Simon, as he related how the lady had tried to delude him into believing she was unaware that he paid her court. Valerian exhibited neither shock nor dismay, merely inquired why Simon had paid his court to her. “I wished to divert her attention from my father! Why else?” snapped Simon. Valerian looked very much as if he might try and teach his grandmother to suck eggs. At this notion, Simon grinned and said reluctantly: “Oh, very well! She amused me, and was quite unlike any other female I’d ever, er, known.”

Nobly Valerian refrained from a digression into the fascinating topic of his guest’s amorous vagaries.
“You
don’t think she’s an ugly duckling then?” he inquired. Simon looked puzzled. “Neither do I! Go on.”

Obviously Simon would much rather not have done so. “We had a slight disagreement,” he admitted, even more reluctantly.

“Offered her a slip on the shoulder, did you? No, no, don’t tell me about it! I’m not fond of the notion of pistols for two and breakfast for one, especially when you’re doubtless the better shot. It’s not my affair if you pretended to her hand, or whatever you
did
pretend to, so long as you didn’t succeed.” Valerian cast his astonished visitor an astute glance. “And if you’d succeeded, I think, you wouldn’t be here, so that’s all right!”

Valerian Millikin had a most original outlook. Since Simon was no more eager to engage in pistols at daybreak than Valerian had been, he did not argue that Miss Smith’s rebuff made his own actions no less reprehensible. “It was all very cow-handed of me,” he confessed. “However, you need not concern yourself with Miss Smith’s honor; she provided a very adequate defense. First she said she’d
never,
and I expressed disbelief; then I told her I didn’t mind if she had in the past been a trifle indiscreet, and she accused me of pestering her.” From Valerian’s direction came a strangling noise. “Yes, it was unhandsomely done, but what else could I think? She’d just asked me for money! And then to see her again last night, rubbing shoulders with the
ton
at a masked ball—this whole business is too smoky by half. I wish you would tell me, Millikin, just who is she?”

Direct explanations, alas, were foreign to Valerian, who could not remember when he’d been better amused. “If it was a masked ball, how can you be sure it was her you saw? Maybe you mistook some other female—”

“Hardly.” Only a coxcomb would have pointed out that one did not amass a legendary success in the petticoat-line by mixing up one’s lovelies. “I am not likely to mistake the female who boxed my ears!”

“Boxed your ears?” echoed Valerian.

“Indeed!” Simon rose abruptly from his chair.
“
Why she did so I am not certain unless she is by nature a termagant! And I think she must be, because last night she kicked me in the shin.”

“She
what?”
Valerian’s voice had grown faint.

“I had meant to apologize,” Simon said bitterly, to a lively looking hedgehog that was an excellent specimen of the taxidermist’s art, “but she gave me no opportunity. Nor could I find her anywhere after, though I searched high and low. Now you understand why I am so anxious to locate Miss Smith. There needs to be between us a settling of accounts.”

Valerian understood very well, perhaps even better than his guest: Simon Brisbane had been sent to the roundabout by a lady for probably the first time in memory. What would be the result of these various awkward misapprehensions Valerian could not begin to predict. To be sure, he could have straightened out this tangle, was in fact the most proper person to do so; but it was no part of Valerian’s philosophy to involve himself in straightening out the tangles of people who were sublimely incapable of managing their own affairs.

Nonetheless, Angelica was the only of his siblings for whom Valerian felt a fondness. Though it meant breaking his own rule of uninvolvement, he was prompted to offer a word in her defense. “I can see you’re a trifle put about by all that’s chanced,” he said sympathetically. “But I assure you there’s not an ounce of vice in the chit!”

Of this assurance Simon stood in no need, and so he ruefully said. Fancy-pieces did not ordinarily cavil at profitable alliances; certainly they did not turn mad as fire; never did they admit to an excessive liking for improper advances and then turn around and bestow upon the purveyor of their pleasure a clout on the head. In this line, Simon could have said much more, because he had come to realize that he had gravely wronged Miss Smith, but his host had fallen into a fit of the whoops and between guffaws struggled for breath. Simon administered the only remedy he knew: he clapped Valerian hard on the back.

In so doing, Simon stood very close to his host, almost as close as he had stood recently to another individual with brown hair and blue eyes and unexceptionable features. Now that Simon considered the matter, there was a very distinct resemblance between Valerian Millikin and Miss Smith. He swore a mighty oath.

“On to us, are you?” Valerian wheezed for breath. “It took you long enough! But don’t think that because I’m related to Angelica I’ll try and tell her to look on you more kindly.”

Simon opened his mouth to retort that nothing would induce him to do such a thing, and then realized that such a statement might not be quite true. His sentiments toward the erstwhile Miss Smith were very complex and equally confused; he knew only that it grew increasingly imperative that he speak with her. He studied Valerian and arrived at another conclusion: Valerian Millikin was a very queer sort of relative.

“I’m not one to kick up a dust over trifles,” said Valerian, who had with good accuracy followed Simon’s thoughts. “And I told Angelica how it would be if she didn’t check her curiosity—asking you to explain orgies, forsooth!” He frowned. “Come to think of it, I also told her I’d carve out your liver and fry it for daylight if you misbehaved.”

The intensity of his host’s gaze recalled to Simon the passion for dissection harbored by physicians. Diffidently he pointed out that, despite Miss Smith’s tendency to manhandle him, she
had
professed to enjoy his addresses very well. Whether those addresses were to continue, Simon could not say; but he rather doubted Miss Smith would be grateful were Valerian to destroy the source.

“That’s all well and good,” objected Valerian who though he had no notion of carving out his caller’s liver had not the least reluctance to giving him a good scare, “but I can’t have you making any more improper suggestions to Angelica, because I don’t know but what she might take you up on them.” He studied Simon, whose expression had grown increasingly sardonic. “Brief fits of madness, you know! It’s nothing to signify; the whole family’s prone to them, except me.”

That Valerian Millikin was thus immune to madness Simon took leave to doubt. “The family?” he asked craftily. “There are others beside you and Miss Smith?”

“I think,” said Valerian, “that you might call her Angelica, not because you’ve trifled with her, but because Smith isn’t her name.” He ruminated. “It’s not what I like but I suppose you must be told something of the situation, for Angelica’s sake, because it’s clear the pair of you aren’t thinking exactly straight! Lord, yes, there are others—a passel of them, and I’ll warn you right now that you’ll never persuade Angelica she’s not responsible for Marigold’s brood.” Then he looked speculative. “Or you might; I couldn’t! If you mean to have Angelica you should try; Marigold is a hell-cat and she don’t like Angelica above half. But Angelica promised our father on his deathbed that she’d look after Marigold and the brats.”

From this rather muddled explanation, Simon did manage to glean some facts. That Miss Smith—or Angelica—was sister to Valerian Millikin did not surprise him, due to the strong resemblance. Valerian’s other statements, however, surprised Simon very much indeed. Why had Angelica, a lady of good birth, sought employment? Was she in truth the sole support of a consumptive parent and starving siblings? Why did Valerian not offer assistance? And why did he refer to the consumptive parent by her Christian name? Only one theory presented itself: Marigold was not mother to Valerian, nor by extension Angelica. “The brats?” he said.

Valerian shrugged. “Angelica chooses to claim them;
I
don’t. Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s not what I should wish to drink.”

From these remarks, Simon derived certain other conclusions. “On the wrong side of the blanket, I conjecture?” he inquired delicately.

“Call it what you will!” Valerian replied with a fine and wholly unassumed indifference. “I’ve already said more than I should.” Pointedly, he glanced at the wall clock.

It availed nothing; Simon was deep in thought. The tenor of those thoughts was remorseful; he had gravely misjudged Angelica and treated her even more shabbily; she had sought not to ensnare his father but to provide sustenance for her own father’s impoverished by-blows. How good she was, how selfless and noble; never before had Simon been privileged to know so saintly a female—or if not precisely saintly, because he could not forget that she had appeared to enjoy his most outrageous sallies very well, at least generous. “My poor, poor darling!” he exclaimed.

Nor for a moment did Valerian think that it was to himself Simon spoke. He cleared his throat and stated politely that he had appointments to keep.

“As do I.” Simon had taken good stock of his host. “Since you will not acquaint me with your sister’s whereabouts, I must needs apply to Bow Street.”

With a thoughtful grimace, Valerian contemplated his guest. Then he smiled. “That’s the dandy! Keep on in that high-handed manner and you’ll deal very well with
all
the Millikins! And if you don’t want to deal with them, tell Angelica so—though if I were you I’d figure out some means of disposing of them first, because she’s as protective of them as a bitch with pups.” This rather unflattering comparison brought another thought to mind. “Come to think of it—”

“Yes, yes!” Simon said hastily, lest Valerian embark upon a frank discussion of his sister’s qualifications for motherhood. “First you must take me to her, must you not? May I recall to you that upon our last two meetings she has kicked me in the shins and boxed my ears?”

“Fudge! You of all people must know how to deal with a recalcitrant female.” Valerian rang for his coat and hat, reflecting as he did so that he’d violated his policy of uninvolvement a great many times this day. Still, Simon Brisbane would run Angelica to earth with or without his assistance—and Valerian could not deprive himself of the fireworks that must ensue when the ugly duckling of the Millikin family was once more confronted by her hardened rakeshame. What would be the outcome of that meeting Valerian could not guess; Angelica was the best of his sisters but still an unpredictable female.

About one thing, however, Valerian’s curiosity could not wait. “Tell me,” he said as in a fraternal manner he accompanied Simon through the door, “
did
you ever explain to Angelica what is an orgy?”

Chapter Twenty-one

“Nothing, but nothing is how I thought it would be!” wailed Rosemary. “Lord Byron has been exposed as a thoroughly infamous scoundrel—he actually admitted that from childhood on he’d been engaged in some very nasty practices,
what I
am not certain but I believe they involved his page and a schoolmate at Harrow and countless other persons in Turkey —while Brummel was forced to flee to Calais. He left behind the secret of his perfect cravats in a note on his desk—starch, of all things! And when Mr. Christie auctioned off his belongings, there was found a snuffbox with a note in it saying it was intended for Prinny if only he had behaved toward the Beau with more civility.” Further words failed her; she wept copiously.

That the travails of Lord Byron and Beau Brummel were responsible for Rosemary’s dolor, none of her audience mistakenly believed, not even the youngest who was looking forward with great glee to the moment when Fennel threw back his bedcovers to find beneath them a toad fresh from the country. An ingenious lad, young Hysop had managed to transport the creature without attracting the notice of either his sisters or his mother. This oversight was not entirely due to Hysop’s cleverness, however—Hysop was still a Millikin, and while he claimed no less intelligence than his siblings he certainly could claim no more, for all his ingenuity. Hysop’s mother and sisters had en route to London paid him little heed, being thoroughly preoccupied with the tantalizing question of just why Rosemary should believe disaster was imminent, as expressed in her last letter to her family.

It was a question that remained as yet unresolved, in spite of—or perhaps due to—the barrage of inquiries fired upon Rosemary from the moment her mother and siblings had set foot in Chalmers House. That moment had not been a great many past, the interim having been filled with the disposal of the luggage and profuse expressions of the family’s delight with the grandeur of their surroundings. The twins, Amaryllis and Camilla, had little enough to say, both being very shy and awkward at fifteen; but their silence had been more than compensated by Hyacinth, seventeen, and Violet, sixteen, both of whom were eagerly anticipating their own debuts.

It was Hyacinth who silenced Rosemary’s sniffles now, with a most acute comment that if Rosemary didn’t stop her sniveling her cheeks would grow all blotched, which Hyacinth doubted that Lord Chalmers would fancy in his wife, because in Hyacinth’s experience gentlemen did
not.
At this strong indication that yet another of her sisters was in a fair way to becoming an accredited heart-breaker, Rosemary ground her teeth.

That action was not lost on Rosemary’s mother, who sat beside her on the needle-point sofa. Marigold raised a languid hand and voiced a husky, lazy request for silence. She was instantly obeyed, as always. Marigold Millikin, at nine-and-thirty, was a frail and ethereal and enchanting creature who looked much too young to possess a daughter already turned twenty. To give credit where it is due, Marigold never tried to deny either her age or her offspring; instead she claimed that her health had been ruined by the production of those offspring, six in eight years. Since this statement was most often made, in the most uncomplaining of tones, to the offspring themselves, they were resultantly guilt-stricken and anxious to atone for their appallingly inconsiderate impatience to be born, and Marigold generally managed to indulge almost her every whim. In one matter alone was she balked: few gentlemen wished to marry an impoverished widow with six lively offspring; and Marigold wished very much to marry again. Granted, one of the offspring was already off her hands and another would soon follow suit; but Marigold was fast running out of patience. She knew her children, none better, for they all bore a great resemblance to herself; no sooner would she rid herself of the last of them than some other would return home in disgrace, as it looked very much like Rosemary wished to do.