Maggie MacKeever Read Free Page A

you so concisely pointed out, we may expect to rub along together very comfortably.”
    “So I did,” Jynx uttered serenely. “I suppose I exhibited a shocking lack of conduct. Aunt Eulalia is forever saying that I have no delicacy of feeling. You will be accustomed to ladies who are a great deal more skilled in the casting out of lures.”
    “True.” The viscount thought of the notorious Lady Bliss. “You may have noted that I didn’t offer any of them marriage. What’s this, poppet? Have you already repented of your choice? If you mean to cry off, do it now. I shan’t be left waiting at the altar!” He squelched an impulse to sweep his newly acquired fiancée summarily into a passionate embrace. “Have you decided that we shouldn’t be comfortable?”
    “Not at all,” protested Jynx, with every evidence of sincerity. “I have no wish to cry off. Nor would I leave youat the altar, Shannon! It would be a very shabby way in which to treat a friend.”
    Lord Roxbury was greatly moved by this declaration, but he contented himself with dropping a chaste salute on the tip of the haughty Lennox nose. “Then the next thing is for me to speak to Sir Malcolm,” he said cheerfully. “I suppose he’ll consider my suit.”
    “I know he will.” Miss Lennox toyed idly with her riding whip. “Papa professed himself very agreeable when I broached the matter to him.”
    “He did?” There was a distinctly abstracted expression in Lord Roxbury’s green eyes. “You did?”
    “Naturally.” Jynx was intent on her own train of thought “You don’t think I’d marry without papa’s consent? Tell me, Shannon, why did you decide to marry me?”
    “There is,” the viscount pointed out, apologetically and with no little curiosity, “the matter of an heir.”
    “Ah!” To complete his bewitchment, she blushed. “There is one more matter that remains to be discussed.”
    Thus ended his hopes. No reason, now, to wonder how he was to arouse warmer affections in a young lady who had professed herself so adverse to romance. “Do you know, poppet,” Lord Roxbury remarked ruefully, “I rather thought that there might be?”
    Miss Lennox grimaced, flicked her riding crop against her booted leg, then raised her lazy eyes once more to the viscount’s handsome face. “Dear, dear Shannon,” she murmured. “I trust you will not insist on tight-lacing?”
    Tight-lacing?” echoed the befuddled viscount.
    “Corsets,” explained Miss Lennox, succinctly. “I abhor the things.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Having been assured by Lord Roxbury—after he had recovered from the paroxysms of mirth into which her remarks had cast him—that he hadn’t the least objection if his viscountess looked a great deal more like an opera dancer than a female of frail fragility, Miss Lennox was able to greet the following day with her usual aplomb.
    It was ten o’clock of a Wednesday morn, and the Lennox family was assembled in the dining room of their grand old Jacobean house in London’s Lennox Square. Three people were seated around the Grecian table of semicircular design, its supports ornamented with lion masks and rings: Sir Malcolm Lennox, who owned this munificence and a great deal more besides; Sir Malcolm’s sister-in-law, Eulalia Wimple, who had taken over household matters upon the death of his wife, five years previous; and Sir Malcolm’s sole offspring, and heiress to all he owned, Jessamyn. Of the three, Jynx alone appeared to enjoy her meal. But then, Jynx had the rare ability to enjoy herself even in the midst of a dreadful storm.
    And a storm was in truth raging, as it did every morning in the Lennox household. This day’s turbulence was of such awesome proportions that Sir Malcolm had taken refuge behind that morning’s edition of the Times. Jynx regarded him with some amusement, spread a lavish amount of marmalade on a muffin, and then turned her attention to her aunt.
    Eulalia was a tall and stately woman, in her fifth