Free Maggie MacKeever by An Eligible Connection Page A

him no sense of kinship; Sandor thought that Neal had gotten himself betrothed in a fit of folly, so eager to gain his freedom that he would even marry in hot haste. Miss Choice-Pickerell might be at the very top of the trees, but she was not the duke’s notion of a comfortable little wife.
    This reflection did not, despite his cousin Edwina’s views on the subject, recall to His Grace his own brief marriage. So far was he from being heartbroken by the demise of his ill-fated young wife that he had not spared her a thought for a shocking number of years. Had the duke been of a contemplative temperament, which he was not, he might have admitted that his marriage to a flighty, rather cowardly, definitely skitterwitted damsel had been a mistake. He had been fond of her, as any man might feel kindly toward a charming child; but he was a man singularly devoid of the more noble emotions, and what few finer sentiments he possessed were not wasted on a lady so long in her grave.
    In an increasingly dour frame of mind, the duke retired to Raggett’s, there to go down heavily; and then to his own home on the Royal Crescent, where he indulged in a vituperative exchange with his cousin Binnie. Since that lady was so preoccupied with her own melancholy reflections as to let him think he’d won, it was in a slightly more cheerful humor that His Grace sallied forth to join his Regent in a dinner party at the Pavilion.
    Edwina Childe might approve a scheme of interior decoration that incorporated such fanciful details as peach-blossom ceilings and walls decorated with mandarins and yellow draperies fluted to resemble the tents of the Chinese; the duke did not. Nor did he appreciate china fishermen that stood in alcoves, with lanterns as their catch; or tall pagodas of porcelain; or lamps shaped like tulips. He did not express his disapproval to the Regent, whose feelings had already been wounded by the on-dits circulating about him, tales of drunken feasts and gay girls in secret passages of the Pavilion itself, stories that he played the callous tyrant in his family life; but he did vent his annoyance, in most explicit terms, to Mr. Dennison.
    That gentleman awarded his friend an amused glance. “You say that every time you come here, Sandor. In view of your opinion of the place, I wonder you don’t simply stay away.”
    This reasonable observation did not endear Mr. Dennison to the duke, but, since Mark was his oldest friend, Sandor offered no rebuke. Instead he contemplated in a sardonic manner the painted and carved dragons that hung from silvered ceilings, crawled down pillars, darted from overmantels. And then they were drawn into a political discussion with the Duke of York, who could not distinguish in his mind the difference between a Tory and a Whig, and who consequently argued both sides of an issue at the same time.
    Mark, a wary eye on the darkening countenance of the duke, took the first opportunity to extricate his friend from this confusing conversation and lead him into a corridor. “What the deuce is eating you tonight, Sandor? More than a dislike for Prinny’s Oriental style of decoration, I think.”
    His Grace gazed down the passage, which was fashioned of painted glass, decorated with flowers and insects, fruit and birds, and illuminated from the outside, the effect being that the unwary visitor abruptly found himself in a Chinese garden. Chinese gardens, decided the duke, were among the numerous things that did not suit his taste. Then he gazed upon his friend. “Rather I should ask you that,” he retorted. “I’m only cursed ill tempered; you’re looking fagged to death.”
    Due to his long acquaintance with the duke, Mark was aware that this impertinent remark was in the nature of an apology. He smiled. “It’s nothing to signify.”
    Once Sandor’s interest was aroused, it was not so easily deflected. “Miss Prunes and Prisms, I conjecture. It has me in quite a puzzle why you should be so smitten