Maggie MacKeever Read Free Page A

than is good for you,” she remarked, “and to gamble wildly. Any losses you may sustain, my girl, are your own! You needn’t think I’ll come to your rescue.”
    “I don’t!” muttered Drusilla, and shifted in her chair. Bellamy House was by rights the residence of the present duke, Giles Wynne; but the Duke of Bellamy had, since the death of his wife in childbirth several years previous, evidenced more interest in political affairs than in domestic arrangements. It was a situation that little recommended itself to the duke’s sisters, both of whom would have given much to get out from their mother’s domineering thumb. Alas for the hopes of Drusilla and Lucille: Giles, immune to interfamily warfare, seemed perfectly content to let his mother rule the roost. Not, thought Drusilla sourly, that his objections would have any effect. Confrontation with the dowager duchess was remarkably like collision with a stone wall.
    “We are,” announced Sapphira, adjudging the moment ripe, “shortly to welcome a visitor.” Having secured a unanimous attention, she settled herself more comfortably in the invalid chair. The dowager duchess was a martyr to rheumatism, a fact which those of gentle sensibilities thought to explain her legendary ill-temper. Sapphira’s family labored under no such delusion. The dowager duchess was, bluntly, a vituperative tyrant, prone to nasty whims and eccentricities, and her favorite pastime was to set her long-suffering children chasing their own tails.
    “A visitor?” whispered Lucille, eldest of the Bellamy progeny, a pale and faded lady whose chief characteristic was an overwhelming desire to antagonize no one, particularly her vicious parent. “Who, Maman? Shall I order a room prepared?”
    Sapphira awarded this daughter no more opprobrium that she had the other. “No,” she replied, with disheartening glee. “I’ve already seen to it. The chit shall have Mirian’s chambers.”
    This pronouncement caused the sisters to exchange a glance and brought even the duke from his reverie, which dealt, predictably, with matters of government and finance and the controversial Corn Laws. “Mirian’s rooms?” he queried, as Drusilla asked suspiciously, “What chit?”
    “Told you I’d arouse your interest!” grunted Sapphira, gnarled fingers clenched around the arms of her chair.
    “And you have,” agreed Giles calmly, from his stance by the fireplace. He was a man of five-and-thirty, of medium height and excellent physique, and only Brummell was so unappreciative of his friend’s haughty demeanor as to term him a “mighty icicle.” “Having done so, Maman, do you think you might elucidate?”
    Sapphira gazed, with a doting expression, upon her son. Giles was a handsome man, his air of distinction only enhanced by The Nose, with his father’s brown hair and her own dark eyes and their combined stamp of breeding and elegance. Some might call him high in the instep, but his mother disagreed. It was only proper that the sixth Duke of Bellamy should be aware of his consequence.
    She nodded. “As you say. The chit is Mirian’s daughter, and I have engaged myself to bring her out.”
    The reactions to this blunt statement were no less than she wished. Though Lucille said nothing, her hands fluttered in distress; Drusilla swore inelegantly; Lucille’s husband, Constant, wore a look both calculating and chagrined. Only Giles maintained his customary air of boredom. “Interesting,” he murmured. “Do you mean to tell us why, or are we to be kept in perfect ignorance as to what is going on?”
    Sapphira shrugged, then clenched her teeth against the pain. “I’d a fondness for Mirian,” she retorted. “I’ve a notion to see this girl of hers.”
    That the dowager duchess should nourish a warmth for anyone seemed, at the least, impossible; but Drusilla and Lucille both recalled that Sapphira had once been fonder of the thankless Mirian than of themselves. “A season!” protested