Maggie MacKeever Read Free Page B

Lucille unwisely. “Have you thought, Maman, of the trouble, the expense?”
    “Bother the expense!” retorted the dowager duchess, further startling her audience, for she was a notorious nip-farthing. She shot her daughters a spiteful glance. “The chit will be no trouble to me. You’ll attend to the thing, Lucille; Drusilla will play chaperone. The role of duenna may curtail some of her wild habits and extravagance.”
    Drusilla, who prided herself on making a dashing appearance, a feat that she accomplished at the cost of being forever dunned by unpaid dressmakers and milliners, looked as if she’d swallowed a bitter pill. Lucille contemplated the numerous details attendant upon a young lady’s entrance into Society, and had recourse to her vinaigrette.
    “It occurs to me,” remarked the duke, pulling on his gloves, “that no one has inquired after Mirian. Has she explained why she left us so abruptly, Maman? I trust she is in good health?”
    “Were Mirian in good health,” snapped Sapphira, “I doubt the chit would be coming here! I regret to inform you, my son, that Mirian is dead.” The duke received a hawk-like stare. “Or perhaps you already knew?”
    “I?” Giles raised a brow. “How could I?”
    The dowager duchess ignored this not-unreasonable inquiry. “The girl appears to know little about Mirian’s connection to us, and only learned of it after her mother’s death. Some papers, I believe. It seems Miss Clio cares little about the past. Doubtless the chit is something of an opportunist.”
    “As Mirian was!” Drusilla was unable to longer contain her indignation, “Mark my words, this girl will turn out to be no better than her mother was.”
    “You seem to be very nearly in convulsions,” observed Sapphira unkindly. “Try some of your sister’s patent remedies—heaven knows she has enough to set up as a pharmacist! I wish the two of you might try and learn some self-control.”
    “It is odd,” ventured Constant, with some vague hope of restoring the peace, “that anyone should fail to divulge a connection with so old and venerable a line. This Mirian was raised by you, Duchess? A distant relative, I apprehend?”
    Sapphira grimaced at her son-in-law, a stout and pompous individual with thinning hair and unfortunate pretensions to dandyism. “You apprehend very little, Constant!” she responded rudely. “Mirian was my orphaned niece.” She rose stiffly from her chair. “Enough of this nattering! My patience is exhausted. I swear I wouldn’t give a ha’penny for the lot of you. Lucille, see me to my room!”
    It was not in Lucille’s nature to argue with her overbearing parent. Too, she welcomed the opportunity to escape to her own chamber, there to ruminate over this distressing development and fortify herself with Dover’s Powders, Cerelaum, and Morrison’s Pills. With an apologetic glance at her siblings, she silently offered Sapphira her arm. With an equal lack of comment, the others watched their progress.
    “I have plans for the chit,” announced Sapphira abruptly from the doorway. The Dowager Duchess was not one to deny herself the last word. “And I’ll brook no interference! I might remind you all that I hold the purse strings.” On this ominous note, she exited.
    Constant, at least, needed no reminder that he owed Sapphira the very bread he ate. Gloomily, he stared after his mother-in-law, then turned his head to meet the duke’s knowing gaze. Well Giles could afford to be amused! Having a fortune of his own, Giles wasn’t constrained to dance to Sapphira’s tune. The rest of them were not so blessed. Sometimes Constant wondered, uncharitably, if Giles tolerated the presence of his quarrelsome family merely for the diversion that it afforded him. It must be acknowledged that this suspicion was extremely perceptive: the duke had more than once remarked to the most intimate of his cronies that the efforts of various of his relatives to ingratiate themselves