Fair Fatality

by Maggie MacKeever

  Sara steeled herself to endure taunts for as long as need be, which hopefully would not be long at all, because she was resolved to spend no unnecessary moment as an object of begrudging charity. But what was she to do to earn her independence? Georgiana had gone on at great and gruesome length about the trials and tribulations endured by females engaged in trade. Ever since, Sara had been haunted by a persistent vision of herself harnessed to a coal truck, doing the work of a pony in the pits. She would not come to that, she hoped. Few less onerous occupations remained open to a female who had been turned off without a reference, as she had been. It was typical of the dowager duchess that, having refused her ex-companion the one boon that would have insured her future drudgery would be genteel, she had sent her packing in positive luxury. Gloomily, Sara surveyed the crystal chandelier that hung from the berlin’s ceiling, the table with drawers, the ormolu clock. For Georgiana’s quixotic generosity, Miss Valentine was not at all grateful. Truth be told, she would much rather have been turned out into the streets. Georgiana had wished to remove her as far as possible from the male members of the family, Sara supposed. Confucious snarled. Sara sank into a reverie.

  It was as Sara contemplated the prospective alliance of a certain male member of Lady Blackwood’s family with a pretty little opera dancer from Drury Lane that the coachman thought he spied a waiting figure in a distant leafy copse. Sara was roused from her brown study — or more precisely, black — by a wild lurching of the berlin. With one hand she clutched the portmanteau, and the other her head, on which was perched the most frivolous of all her bonnets, a confection of ostrich plumes, ribbon and lace. Angry voices smote her ear. Highwaymen! she thought, recalling horrid tales of such legendary gentlemen of the road as Dirk Turpin and Jack Shepherd. The carriage had been waylaid. Her few remaining treasures would be wrested from her, her beloved bonnets, her mother’s pearls.

  Even meek and self-effacing ladies have a sticking-point, and Miss Valentine perforce reached hers. She would defend her few remaining treasures to the death, if necessary — but by what means? She had no pistol with which to arm herself, no dagger, épée. Even as the berlin lurched to a stop, her eye alit upon the portmanteau, from which issued snarls and growls and other sounds similarly indicative of profound hostility. Miss Valentine lifted Confucious out of the portmanteau and dropped him on the berlin floor with permission to bite anyone who appeared in the carriage doorway. Then she scrunched shut her eyes, and put her hands over her ears, and prayed.

  Even as she did so,the carriage door swung open, and distantly she heard the sounds of great strife. At length peace again descended. She removed her hands from her ears, and cautiously opened her eyes. Her prayers had been to good advantage, it appeared. Sprawled half in and half out of the carriage, arms clasped over the back of his head and face hidden against the carriage floor, was a man. That he was not dead was made evident by the curses he now voiced. Furthermore, though his coat sleeve was sadly shredded, she saw no trace of blood. “Oh, good dog!” said Sara to Confucious, who stood triumphantly astride his prey. And then she realized that the intruder’s curses were uttered in familiar tones. Hastily she snatched Confucious away. The intruder rose and set his abused person as best he could to rights, without a single smidgeon less than his usual sang-froid. Not until he politely requested that Miss Valentine provide him with a strip of muslin torn from her petticoat did she recover herself.

  “Oh, Jevon!” wailed Miss Valentine, as she hastened to comply, tucking the snarling Confucious for safekeeping under her arm. “You are hurt! I shall never forgive myself! I thought you were a highwayman!”

  Gallantly, Mr. Rutherford directed his gaze elsewhere than upon the shapely ankle revealed by Miss Valentine’s assault upon her petticoats, an act motivated not in the least by disinterest, and accomplished not before he glimpsed an ankle worthy of contemplation by the most discerning connoisseur. Mr. Rutherford promised himself a leisurely and luxurious contemplation of both that ankle and its mate at a none-too-distant date. With that pleasant prospect in mind, he said: “You have fallen in the habit of leaping to conclusions, my precious. No thanks to that misbegotten cur, I am not hurt.”

  “Oh.” Miss Valentine looked confused. “Then what do you want with my petticoat?” Mr. Rutherford smiled. She blushed. “This!” he said simply, and bound the strip of muslin around Confucious’s muzzle. Then he deposited the dog in the portmanteau, snapped it firmly closed and wedged it between the bandboxes on the opposite seat. Having thus disposed of Confucious and banished him additionally from the remainder of our tale — the concerned reader may be relieved to know Confucious took no harm from his incarceration, though his temper did suffer accordingly, as result of which he bit the shrewish wife of Miss Valentine’s distant relative at his journey’s end — Mr. Rutherford arranged himself very comfortably beside Miss Valentine, closed the carriage door and bade the coachman drive on.

  Miss Valentine eyed him rather crossly, her initial astonishment being speedily replaced by annoyance over her dreadful fright. “You are the most impudent rascal who ever existed!” she announced. “How dare you waylay my carriage and frighten me into fainting fits! And where are you taking me, by the way?”

  If Miss Valentine had hoped Mr. Rutherford brought reprieve, her hopes were cruelly dashed; he informed her that their destination was still Kent. “I wished to speak to you,” he added. “Since you have been determined to avoid me, this seemed the only way. No, do not interrupt! I understand perfectly why you have been so cool.”

  Fervently, Miss Valentine hoped that her companion overestimated his powers of perception. Though that he should have guessed the extent of her obsession with him caused her cheeks to flame. “I doubt you do!” she replied icily.

  Thoughtfully, Mr. Rutherford regarded her. “I do not go about buying bonnets for all the ladybirds in London,” said he. “If you will like it, Sara, I would be happy to in the future buy bonnets for no one but you.”

  He had meant to offer her a slip on the shoulder all along, Sara realized, and in the train of that realization came a dreadful rage. “How dare you ask me to play second fiddle to a — er — a female of low repute! No doubt I won’t be able to convince you that I don’t care a button for you, because you must know otherwise — but you may offer me all the bonnets in the world and I shan’t become your — er —”

  “Ladybird,” supplied Jevon helpfully. “Bit o’ muslin, light o’ love!”

  “All those!” To her horror, Sara felt her eyes fill with tears. “Even if I have been turned off without a reference! And it is very unkind of you to even suggest such a thing to me, or remind me how far I have come down in the world!” She sneezed.

  Mr. Rutherford drew a handkerchief and applied it to Miss Valentine’s reddened nose. “But I didn’t suggest it! I suspect that piece of moonshine originated with my sister — who, I may remind you, is the pea-brained member of the family. As for the female for whom you saw me purchasing a bonnet in the Pantheon Bazaar, that was by way of giving her her congée.”

  Miss Valentine was determined that Mr. Rutherford should not realize his admission had rekindled hope in her foolish breast. “She seemed prodigious grateful to be given her ticket-of-leave!”

  “Yes, well.” Jevon looked apologetic. He could hardly explain that females generally were grateful to him, whether he was embarking upon a flirtation, or winding up an association of a more particular sort, whether he was dispensing fashionable bonnets or merely disarming smiles. The latter, he now employed. “My darling Sara, you are mutilating your handkerchief.”

  Her handkerchief? But Jevon had placed it in her hand. Sara took a closer look. “It is mine. How came you by it? I remember now! You kept it all this time?”

  “I not only kept it, I carried it next my heart.” Thus did Mr. Rutherford put forth a pretty premise, which had the additional virtue of being the truth. “Now will you let me try and explain how all these misunderstandings came about?”

&
nbsp; To deny a man who had carried her handkerchief next to his heart permission to bare his soul would have been cruel in the extreme. Miss Valentine was not the least bit cruel. “Certainly!” she said gruffly. Mr. Rutherford took immediate advantage of her generosity to clasp her hands in one of his own and with the other to tilt up her chin so she must look into his face. By this latter indulgence of a wish to study her beloved features, Jevon almost defeated his own purpose. Few females could gaze upon his own bedazzling features and remain sufficiently clear-headed to heed anything so mundane as mere conversational gambits.

  Miss Valentine was not among that scant number, and references to Lord Byron and Beau Brummell and painful tumbles from the heights passed her right by. Nor did she react to Mr. Rutherford’s admission of jealousy as regarded Mr. Kingscote, save to suggest that perhaps her old friend had taken leave of his senses. “I think I must have!” admitted Jevon, handsomely refraining from pointing out that Sara’s own conduct had scarcely been more rational. “But I was trying very hard to court you in the proper manner, and you remained so devilish cool.”

  “What a rogue you are!” marveled Miss Valentine, in a somewhat breathless tone of voice. “How could I be other than cool when all of London knew you were dangling after that, eh —”

  “Paphian girl!” interjected Mr. Rutherford. “Do go on, my love!”

  “I shall!” She blushed, and tried to frown. “I thought you were being kind because I had practically invited you to tryst with me.”

  “And an excellent notion it was!” said Mr. Rutherford promptly. “I mean to discuss it with you again in just a few moments! As for the other, I feared you would turn skittish if you realized how very desperate my case had grown, and so I sought to throw you off the scent, which I freely admit was very stupidly done of me. Now, if there are no other questions —”

  But of course there were, and Sara meant to see this business settled. Resolutely she ignored the tingles running up and down her spine. “You have still not told me how you came to be here.”

  Though Mr. Rutherford grew a trifle weary of his darling Sara’s incessant questions, to deny her an explanation would be unkind. Too, a better understanding of the great inconveniences he had endured on her behalf might advance his suit. “Jaisy wrote me an addle-brained missive, threatening all manner of dire redress did I marry my opera dancer or alternately seduce you, which alerted me that you might harbor some doubt about the nature of what I wished to offer you; and then Sir Phineas confirmed the worst. And now, my pet —”

  But once more Miss Valentine interrupted. “Jevon!” she whispered, half-swooning with shock. “You cannot mean — You dare not — But you said we were going to Kent!”

  “So we are, where we shall be married very properly from your father’s house.” Jevon’s hands moved to her shoulders. “And now —”

  “But Georgiana will disinherit you!” wailed Miss Valentine.

  “A fig for Georgiana!” Mr. Rutherford retorted violently. “Will you be quiet and let me kiss you!” The matter presented to her in so reasonable a manner, Miss Valentine instantly complied.

  The dowager duchess did not disinherit Mr. Rutherford, of course; and Jevon and Sara dwelt as excellently together as she had always anticipated they would. London’s most eligible ex-bachelor and his Viscountess also dwelt together excellently well, each curbing the other’s less admirable traits, so that in time Jaisy became a great deal less rag-mannered, and Carlin grew noticeably less stiff-rumped. Sir Phineas Fairfax continued as Lady Blackwood’s man of business for the remainder of his life, and continued in his odd way to be devoted to the dowager’s interests. In a manner much more easily understood, he also remained devoted to a certain little opera dancer who graced the stage at Drury Lane, and who, after the cavalier treatment accorded her by her previous admirer, was very receptive to the addresses of a gentleman less charming and disenchanted, and rather more free of foibles. Once safely returned to Queen Anne Street, Confucious never set forth again a-traveling, and established with the smallest kitchen maid a mutually beneficial arrangement by which she advanced rapidly in the dowager’s estimation and he was regularly fed. Mr. Kingscote eventually abandoned such sartorial exuberances as padded jackets of bright yellow and pantaloons of lime green, and settled down in the Midlands with a manufacturing heiress whose conduct was as unexceptionable as her nature was placid, and who never once in all the years of their union even thought of boxing his ears. In short, as Lady Easterling might have put it, no matter how many facers she planted her victims in the process, Dame Fortune arranged that all resolved itself very satisfactorily.

  Biography

  * * *

  Maggie MacKeever

  Maggie MacKeever is a pen name for Gail Clark.

  Gail Clark was born and raised on a diary farm in southwestern Pennsylvania. A strong desire not to teach secondary school English, led her to southern California, which was as far away as she could reasonably expect to get. Once in Los Angeles, after various employment adventures and misadventures, Clark settled into the film industry, and gradually made her way into post-production sound. After further exertions and reversions, she became a sound editor who specializes in dialogue replacement work, a process that involves going with actors and directors to a sound stage where they try to recreate, or improve, their original performances, with sometimes very entertaining results. Clark’s great love, though, has always been writing. She has written television commercials, educational and industrial film narration, screenplays, and historical romances. Her interests include reading, music, weaving, needlework, stained glass, computers, and roses. Clark and her husband Lee live in the Hollywood Hills with their housecats Andy and Mo.