Maggie MacKeever by Jessabelle Page B

of her concern? Poppycock! Had Lady Camilla not so disliked quarrels, she might have set herself at loggerheads with her fiancé over this slight. It would serve Pennymount very well if she did allow him to divorce her, and thus forever ruin his credit. Adolphus had hit the nail smack on the head when he called the earl cold and unfeeling. Milly frowned at her escort, who gave much less an impression of indifference than of passion held scarce in check.
    Passion? Could Pennymount’s habitual ill temper be inspired by repressed ardor? Lady Camilla’s heart sank. He was no different than her other suitors, then; and she could expect him to any moment fling himself upon his knees and start spouting poetry at her. It was very disappointing, especially after she had gone to such lengths to discover a gentleman who did not admire her. She could only pray the earl’s ardor might not burst its bonds.
    Lord Pennymount, meanwhile, was not unaware of his fiancée’s unusual silence, nor of her keen regard. He returned the latter. Then he ungallantly remarked that when his prospective bride frowned in that goosish manner, her eyes distinctly crossed.
    Lady Camilla giggled. “You are being very silly.  Everyone knows that geese cannot frown! But I am glad to see you are come out of the sullens, because I was growing very weary of talking to myself. I do not expect you to make sheep’s eyes at me—and if you did, I probably wouldn’t like it above half!—but people are bound to remark it if we do not occasionally converse. Not that I care for such things in the ordinary way, but you do, so I must!At least while we are betrothed. I daresay that if you do not wish to talk to me after we are married, it won’t signify in the least!” In response to this amiable conversational sally, Lord Pennymount merely growled.
    “What has put you so sadly out of curl?” Lady Camilla turned her head to stare at him.  Her perplexed gaze alit upon Lord Pennymount’s bandaged wrist. “Oh! You’ve hurt yourself!”
    Lord Pennymount gazed also upon his wounded wrist. It was no dissatisfaction with Lady Camilla that prompted his sullenness this day. Clad in a lilac gown of French washing silk, long-sleeved and high-collared and pleated with lace above the three narrow flounces at the hem; and wearing a high-crowned Angouleme bonnet of straw that tied at the side, Milly looked fine as fivepence. However, it was not Vidal’s prospective second countess who occupied his thoughts.
    “How dare the jade set herself against me?” he inquired aloud, apparently of an overhanging birch tree. “It is not bad enough that she must wash our dirty linen in public, she must continue to make it her object to put me to the blush! I vow it is no wonder if I laid violent hands on the wench—aye, and would do so again, did the opportunity present itself.”
    Lady Camilla decided that her fiancé only seemed to be addressing the graceful birch boughs, a decision which greatly relieved her, for no young lady wishes to settle in matrimony with a gentleman who goes about talking to trees. “Are you speaking of your wife?” she cautiously inquired.
    “My wife!” Lord Pennymount looked as if he might strangle on the words. “It is you who are to be my wife. Jessabelle is my cross to bear. You asked if I have hurt myself!” he uttered, in a fine melodramatic manner that might have been envied even by Mr. Edmund Kean, and waved his injured arm. “Well you may ask! And very shocked you would be, my dear, were I to tell you how it came about!”
    Since the earl clearly did not wish to explain to her how his wound had been sustained, Lady Camilla obligingly let the subject drop. Truth be told, she disliked to be shocked almost as much as she disliked to be scolded, both of which came secondly onto to her disgust of flowery effusions. All the same, Pennymount might have occasionally pretended to admire her a little bit, she thought wistfully. It wasn’t as if she