Lady Margery's Intrigues by Marion Chesney Read Free Book Online

something stronger. “Are you by any chance, Lady Margery, making a collection of originals?"
    “Yes,” said Margery feebly, knowing that if she told the Beau she thought that Mr. Jamieson was a devastatingly handsome man, she would not be believed.
    “Very well,” said her escort. “But I will leave you after I introduce you. One second of Freddie's wit is enough for me.”
    It was an inauspicious beginning. Lord Freddie stared at Margery with gloomy disinterest, obviously categorizing her as just one other part of a curst dull evening.
    Lady Margery waited until the Beau had moved out of earshot and then began her plan of attack. “I see,” she remarked in a brisker voice than she had used on her other two targets, “that you are obliged to drink negus. I confess I do not like my wine adulterated with hot water!”
    A faint look of animation crept into Freddie's fishlike eye. “You're right,” he said gloomily. “Dashed poisonous stuff.”
    “I think I shall serve myself a glass of burgundy,” pursued Lady Margery.
    Now she had Freddie's full attention. “By George, Lady M ... M...”
    “Margery,” she prompted gently.
    “Lady Margery. Do you mean to say you have found a vein of gold among this dross?”
    “Exactly.”
    Freddie eyed her suspiciously. Was she going to take him straight to the stuff or was she going to start babbling about music?
    He underrated his companion. “Follow me,” she said in a firm voice, and Freddie followed, his eyes burning with an unaccustomed fire. Any girl who could wring a decent bottle out of his aunt's establishment was not in the common way.
    Margery led him to the far corner of the room where there was a little table screened by some tired and dessicated palms. She rapped her fan across the back of her hand three times, her signal to Mrs. Divine's heavily bribed butler to conjure up a bottle of the best. To Freddie, it seemed to appear on the table in front of him, complete with two glasses, as if by magic.
    Margery had hoped that her arrangement with the butler would not have been necessary. But after one look at Mr. Jamieson's singularly lackluster stare, she had been glad of her scheme to fall back on.
    Freddie demolished two glasses in a twinkling and then looked across at his companion with something approaching benevolence. “I say, Lady Margery, that's a ‘ceedingly fine wine. Thought all you gels preferred negus or ratafia.”
    “I don't normally drink much wine,” said Margery with a friendly, open look, “but I do know that a gentleman detests ladies’ drinks.”
    “You're a right one, ‘pon rep if you ain't,” said Freddie cheerfully, downing another quick glass. “I must say this stuff simply rolls off the palate.”
    “Whoooshes over it, more like,” thought Lady Margery. “He swallows it as quickly as if it were medicine.”
    Freddie began to relax. He had never felt so warmly towards a girl before. Girls, in his experience, were apt to lead him firmly away from the bottle rather than directly to it. His companion, he noticed, had an engaging conspiratorial grin. With her cropped curly hair, she reminded him vaguely of a chap in his form at Eton. And when a girl reminds a young man vaguely of the chap he knew at school, then it is a sure sign that the shy young Englishman is well on the way to falling in love.
    Freddie was nearing the end of the bottle and already looking hopefully round for more, but Margery did not want him to forget one iota of this important meeting.
    She moved into the attack. “I have often found, Mr. Jamieson, that gentlemen who appreciate good wine are often good dancers.”
    “Quite so,” said Freddie, who was in fact an excellent dancer. “I don't wish to seem vain, ma'am, but even the Prince Regent himself commented that Freddie Jamieson could shake a nifty leg. His ‘zact words, ma'am. Shake a nifty leg.”
    “Shall you be at the opening ball at Almack's?"
    “I wasn't planning to go,” said Freddie.