Maggie MacKeever Read Online Free PDF

inviting you to tryst with me these past many years. And you have been sending me unwaveringly to the rightabout. Therefore, I can only conclude that you have taken a dislike to my person, or that you have an inexplicable aversion to trysts.”
    “And it would not occur to you, I’ll warrant, that any female might hold your person in distaste?” inquired Miss Valentine, who despite herself was beginning to be amused.
    Jevon gave this novel notion his full attention, then awarded Sara his enchanting grin. “Odd as it may sound in me, no. You do not hold me in dislike, Sara, and I am very curious as to why you should wish me to think it.”
    Miss Valentine herself had no idea of why so bizarre an impulse had taken possession of her mind, and hastily changed the subject. Diffidently, she pointed out that she was indeed engaged in a moonlight tryst.
    “So we are!” responded Jevon and raised her hand to his lips, an act of gallantry that roused Confucious to a vicious outburst. Hastily, Jevon restored Sara’s hand to her lap. “If you should not object, my precious, I still would like to know what has cast you into the dumps.”
    Upon this untimely reminder, Sara’s spirits once more sank. “Georgiana,” she said glumly. “Ungrateful as it is in me, I am tired to death of dancing to her tune. I should not say so, I know! But she has made Jaisy my responsibility, and Jaisy has warned me against trying to prevent her cutting a dash. I am prey to the most horrid misgivings, even if Jaisy is being amazingly good.”
    “And so you might be!” responded Jevon promptly, an unfilial attitude explained by his prior acquaintance with the foibles of his younger sister. “There’s no need to put yourself in a pucker, nonetheless. Georgiana will see the little baggage doesn’t go beyond the line—or you will on her behalf. Jaisy isn’t a bad sort of girl, just a little strong-willed.”
    For such easy panaceas, Sara had no patience. “Jaisy,” she said bitterly, “means to set herself up in the latest mode. She expects to make an eligible connection as quick as winking, she informs me, and offers to wager that in no time whatsoever she’ll be quite top-of-the-trees. She even wanted to set up her own stables, but Georgiana squelched that idea by refusing your assistance.”
    Sanguine as Jevon was, the notion that his harum-scarum sister might have involved him in her kick-ups filled him with a great relief that her attempt had failed. “Good!” he said.
    “I might as well have gone for a governess! Now I am expected to play bear-leader to Jaisy, as well as cater to Georgiana’s whims,” mourned Sara, on a sigh. “Although I daresay I shan’t have to do so much longer, because Georgiana has threatened to turn me off without a reference should Jaisy deport herself unbecomingly—in which case I am resolved to go upon the boards, because if nothing else, employment with Georgiana has taught me to play a part very well!”
    Jevon was not surprised to learn that his aunt Georgiana had behaved so shabbily; Jevon’s fondness for the dowager duchess did not blind him to her myriad defects of character. All the same, Sara’s speech startled Jevon no little bit. He drew back, the better to regard her, for he had been stricken forcibly by her declared intention to tread the boards. Sara, who had no notion that Jevon had taken her nonsense seriously, stared back at him.
    Perhaps because of her startling avowal, perhaps because her avowal had recalled to his mind a certain little opera dancer with whom he anticipated passing an entertaining interval, Jevon found himself reassessing his old friend. He had always found her pleasant to look upon, had enjoyed engaging with her in a comfortable prose; now he realized that Sara Valentine was a deucedly pretty woman, and discovered in himself a temptation to forgo the opera dancer and engage instead with Sara in a flirtatious tête-à-tête. Not accustomed to employing reticence so