Maggie MacKeever by Strange Bedfellows

gasped.
    “Do not press me! I can say no more.” Though Fergus had proven more gullible than she had anticipated— and a great deal less up to snuff!—Mab thought it would be foolish to press her luck. For that reason, she refrained from asking the baron’s opinion of failing memories. Too, Mab was feeling a little lonely, as must any young lady disappointed in romance.
    Perhaps there was yet hope for Fergus. Perhaps his apparent disinterest was merely result of a very high sense of decorum. “We are alone, Fergus!” she coyly pointed out.
    Somewhat blankly, his thoughts still occupied with enemy agents, Lord Parrington gazed around the solar. “So we are. Ah, you mean that we should not be, and you are perfectly correct. Pray forgive me for placing you in so equivocal a position, Mab! I would not have done it for anything. You will permit me to take my leave.”
    The baron’s leave-taking was not what Lady Amabel had in mind, as she quickly made apparent by clutching his coat-sleeve. Lord Parrington looked astonished by this temerity. “Gudgeon!” said Mab, though fondly. “I meant that you should kiss me!”
    To this generous invitation, the baron returned a startled look, young ladies who invited gentlemen to kiss them not being something of which he had been brought up to approve. He did not long adhere to that lesson, however. “May I?” he echoed, staring fascinated into Mab’s upturned face. Rosy-cheeked, she nodded. “May I, by Jove!”
    It was, Lady Amabel decided, a very nice kiss, if hardly of the caliber recently—and frequently—bestowed upon one another by Lord and Lady March. One must bear in mind that years of practice had led to the expertise currently enjoyed by Marriot and Nell. Fergus showed promise of someday attaining a similar artistry, if only he could be pried out from beneath his mama’s foot. Mab thought she would like to devote herself to that project, once this troublesome business of Marriot’s was tidied up.
    But of trouble Lady Amabel had as yet seen little, and one of its harbingers at that moment stepped into the solar. At the bacchanalian scene being there enacted, Henrietta gaped.
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    From the solar Lady Amabel proceeded next to the master bedchamber, where she scratched loudly at the door. When that portal opened, Mab dashed into the room, slammed the door shut behind her, and with her pretty person barred the entry, as if imminent invasion might be repulsed by outstretched arms and heaving breast.
    “Gracious!” said Lady March, who wore a confection of cambric muslin held together by orchid ribbons, and over it the ancient fur cloak. “Whatever has happened to put you in such a tweak?”
    “If you had discovered you had to live with Fergus’s mama, you would be in a tweak also!” Mab sought to catch her breath. “She is a gorgon! A tartar! And what she will say to this piece of business, I shudder to think! If only your odious cousin had not stepped into the solar at just that moment—but it is too much to hope she will remain silent!”
    “I fear you are correct. Henrietta has never remained silent about anything in all her life. Do you think you might tell me what we are talking about?”
    Amabel looked rueful. “Have I not said? What a pea-goose you must think me! But when I think of how difficult it was to persuade Fergus to kiss me, I vow I could spit nails!”
    “He kissed you?” Lady March echoed, astonished. “Mab!”
    “You must not censure him! Fergus is not in the petticoat-line, I assure you—indeed, he might never have kissed me at all, had I not intimated that he should.” Mab sighed. “In point of fact, I had to ask him outright!”
    “You had to—” In an attempt to clear up her confusion. Lady March shook her head, thus adding to the disorder of her chestnut locks, which were already in riotous disarray. “If your young man isn’t, er, romantic,why are you so set on having him, Mab?”
    “Had you ever seen