Free Maggie MacKeever by Lady Bliss

of amusing pursuits. He could have chosen among dinner parties and balls and galas, for Viscount Roxbury was welcome in every fashionable residence in London, including Carlton House, a formerly modest two-story mansion which Prinny had transformed into a palace worthy of an oriental potentate;
    he could have presented himself at any of his clubs, White’s or Brooks’, have dined luxuriously with the beaux at Watier’s, have listened to more serious discussions at the Alfred Club at No. 23 St. James’s Street.
    Viscount Roxbury did none of these things. Nor did he venture forth to the Italian opera; nor don knee breeches and white cravat and present himself at Almack’s, there to survey this season’s crop of young marriageable ladies; nor visit Vauxhall Gardens, where among the Turkish minarets and Arabian columned ways an adventurous gentleman might encounter unfettered females of quite another kind. Instead Viscount Roxbury enjoyed a solitary dinner in his own home, which had been built by Sir Christopher Wren, then set out on foot for nearby Lennox Square. His destination achieved, he did not present himself at the front door, but crept about the side of the house in the most clandestine of fashions until he came to a small walled garden. The viscount’s odd behavior did not end then: he proceeded, in a very skillful manner, to climb an old oak.
    The garden lay before him, a charming enclosure lush with lilac bushes and roses and noble trees. Directly below him was a marble bench, upon which a young lady sat in an attitude of gloom. The viscount inched further along the limb, and dropped a handful of acorns upon her bent head.
    “Damnation!” gasped Miss Lennox, and gazed upward. “Shannon! What are you doing up there, you wretch? I suppose you had better come down.”
    Lord Roxbury did so, with such athletic grace that even his fiancée—whose opinion of sporting gentlemen was only slightly more favorable than her opinion of persistent suitors —was impressed. “I didn’t,” he explained, as he seated himself beside her on the bench, “wish to encounter your Aunt Eulalia.”
    “That,” uttered Miss Lennox with great sincerity, “I can very well understand. It was a similar desire that brought me out here.” She wrinkled her nose. “Do you know, Shannon, sometimes I think Eulalia doesn’t want me to marry you?”
    Shannon was inclined to agree. The spoilt darling of London society, he reflected, received scant preference in Lennox House. He took Jynx’s hand. “Or anyone,” she added, before he could speak. “Eulalia has waxed eloquent all the evening about the pitfalls of marriage, of which she seems to consider Prinny the prime example. For my own sake, I could wish that the royal domestic troubles weren’t made so wretchedly public! But what must they do but allow the whole matter to reach the press, so that now Prinny is more unpopular than ever because he’s forbidden his wife to see their daughter more than once a fortnight.” She sighed. “And the Princess of Wales after dinner each evening makes a fat wax statue, and sticks it full of pins, and puts it to roast and melt on the fire.”
    “A fate,” observed the viscount, “that your aunt apparently wishes me to share with Prinny. Do you still wish to marry me, poppet?”
    “A fine thing if I didn’t!” retorted Miss Lennox. “The announcement of our betrothal has already been published. A nice figure I’d look, wouldn’t I, if I cried off again?” It was hardly a speech designed to allay a lover’s anxiety. In defense of Miss Lennox, however, it must be said that she was aware neither that she had a lover, nor that the gentleman was prone to anxiety. “If you wish to break off our engagement. Shannon, you will have to jilt me!”
    It grew rapidly clear to Viscount Roxbury that his fiancée was not in the best of spirits, and that her thoughts were centered elsewhere. He remedied the situation by grasping her shoulders and