Free Maggie MacKeever by Lady Bliss Page A

shaking her till her untidy hair came tumbling down. “Good God, Shannon!” said Jynx, not in terror but bewilderment; the viscount was disposing in a most ruthless manner of the remainder of her hairpins. “What ails you?”
    Lord Roxbury was by no means a fool, and thus did not attempt to explain the nature of his latest—and, he suspected, fatal—malady. “ I don’t wish to cry off,” he announced rather grimly. “If you will recall, we were talking about you.”
    “But, Shannon!” Jynx’s hazel eyes were raised to his face, and in them was not ennui but great curiosity. “Why ever should you think I’ve changed my mind? And why have you taken down my hair?”
    “Because I like it so.” Lord Roxbury’s fingers were tangled in the chestnut curls. “And you have not answered me.”
    Her betrothed, decided Miss Lennox, was in a decidedly queer mood. Her wisest course of action appeared to be to humor him. “Shannon,” she soothed, “any female in her right mind would wish to marry you! You have the distinguished manners belonging to your rank, a general affability which places everyone at ease and gives a particular charm to your society; you have been endowed by nature with a superior mind, which has been highly cultivated and improved by education, and you can converse on any subject.”
    “Thank you!” responded Shannon, rather sarcastically. It was amazing how Jynx could simultaneously make a compliment and deliver a set-down. “You have forgotten, in this list of virtues, to mention my social position and my personal appearance—neither of which, I believe, is negligible!”
    So startled was Jynx by this unusual display of temper that she drew back to stare, an act which caused the bright moonlight to fall in a most illuminating manner on the low-cut bodice of her sea-green evening gown. Lord Roxbury groaned. “Shannon, what the devil is the matter with you? Of course I’m aware of your exalted social standing and your looks— what female isn’t?I hope you do not mean for me to present you with a catalogue of your assets daily after we are wed!”
    It was not his own assets with which the viscount, at that moment, was concerned. He drew Jynx down against his shoulder and struggled to regain his self-control. “I would not ask you to so fatigue yourself, poppet. Forgive me, please.”
    “Don’t I always?” Miss Lennox found the viscount’s chest quite receptive. It occurred to her that she’d been less than generous. “Truly, you are handsome, Shannon—as you must very well know! A good number of the young ladies of my acquaintance are breaking their hearts over you.”
    “But your heart is inviolate, isn’t it, Jynx?” A foolish question; he had always known it was. “Tell me, where were you this afternoon? I waited quite an hour.”
    “Oh, heaven!” moaned Jynx. “I had engaged myself to you. Shannon, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to be gone so long, but I became—er—involved, and I forgot you. Have I sunk myself below reproach?”
    “Not at all.” Viscount Roxbury gazed upon the disparate elements of the face that was turned up to him, and wished that he might see the generous mouth dimple again. And then he thought, with a bit of surprise, that it would be the happiest man in existence who wakened those sleepy eyes. “It’s certainly not the first time, poppet, that you’ve kept me kicking my heels.”
    Nor would it be the last, reflected Miss Lennox, who did not deem it prudent to inform her fiancé that she’d been pitchforked smack into the middle of a most exhausting imbroglio. A fine thing, when a lady who disliked above all things to bestir herself was forced to energetically take up the cudgels on another’s behalf. And she anticipated precious little help from those she sought to defend. Silently Jynx heaped curses upon the head of the scatterbrained Lady Bliss and her equally imprudent retinue.
    Lord Roxbury derived some consolation for his exacerbated