Maggie MacKeever Read Online Free PDF Page B

far as the ladies were concerned, Jevon secured his companion’s attention by slipping an arm around her shoulders and encouraging her to rest her head against his chest. So startled was Miss Valentine by this gallant invitation that she complied, and found her position remarkably comfortable.
    Fortunately for Sara’s strength of character—so very blue-deviled was Sara that she might well have encouraged her old friend to pay her court, disgraceful as such behavior would have been in both of them—fate, in the guise of Confucious, intervened at that point. Released by Sara when Jevon had drawn her so improperly close, Confucious took prompt advantage of the opportunity to sink his remaining teeth in that gentleman’s hand.
    “The devil!” exclaimed Jevon.
    “Oh, dear!” wailed Sara, and wrested Confucious away from his victim. Frustrated, the dog snapped at her. Equally frustrated, and feeling foolish to boot, Sara cuffed him, then, remorse-stricken, cradled the beast.
    Upon this touching tableau, Jevon gazed with a great deal less tolerance than was his habit. Jevon was not accustomed to being balked in the pursuit of flirtation. Certainly he was not accustomed to seeing the embraces which he craved bestowed on a misbegotten cur instead. Privately condemning Confucious to perdition, he drew a deep breath. “Darling Sara—”
    “Pitching it too rum!” Miss Valentine interrupted, in rather stifled tones. Miss Valentine was suffering a positive mortification of spirit, due to a suspicion that her friend’s unprecedented overtures resulted from her own heedless comments, which could all too easily be construed as an invitation to a tryst. She dared not look at him, lest she read pity on those incomparably handsome features—for if not from pity, why should so great a connoisseur of feminine loveliness as Jevon Rutherford embrace a poor specimen like herself? And now what must the wretch do but lay gentle fingers on her cheek? “I wish,” said Sara crossly, as she struggled to restrain Confucious, who was struggling so violently in her arms that she feared he would have a heart-attack, “that you would go away!”
    Jevon Rutherford was far too wise in the ways of women to believe Miss Valentine wished any such thing, and equally too sagacious to accuse her of uttering outright clankers; but no gentleman alive knew better than Jevon Rutherford that the better part of valor was sometimes a strategic retreat. Accordingly he departed the garden, leaving Miss Valentine to further reflection upon her sorry lot, while Confucious settled down to renewed slumber, during which he snored and twitched and drooled profusely upon her muslin skirts.
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Chapter 4
    Having left Miss Valentine and Confucious to their various somber reflections, Jevon Rutherford returned to Lady Blackwood’s drawing room, there to engage in some meditation of his own, centering upon his sudden impulse to pay his addresses to a lady whom he’d known for twenty-seven of his two-and-thirty years. In retrospect, the impulse seemed a very good idea—one of the best ideas, in fact, to ever take possession of Jevon’s handsome head. He wondered why he had never realized that his dear Sara was a deucedly attractive female. Doubtless he had been distracted by the countless women who had put themselves in his way. Having discovered in himself the vague stirrings of what Jevon recognized from long acquaintance as a distinguishing preference, he had immediately begun to pay his court, only to be interrupted by his fair one with a most decided and peremptory indication that he was fatiguing her to death.
    That Jevon Rutherford was in a state of profound abstraction did not fail to penetrate the consciousness of the other occupants of Lady Blackwood’s drawing room, a chamber done up in the Egyptian style, with an abundance of lotus columns and turning lilies and papyrus stems. Lady Blackwood was enthroned on a couch in the shape of a crocodile. Upon