Maggie MacKeever (11 page)

Nor would it be politic, at this point, to reveal that he meant to take the enactment of Athalia’s schemes out of her own hands. Time enough for her to learn that later, when he had contrived a way to remove himself from her reach. Athalia, when enraged, utilized utensils far more deadly than frying pans.

Amiably Johann suggested the celebration of this potentially lucrative partnership with a flash of lightning. It was no heavenly display of fireworks to which he referred, but a mundane glass of gin.

Athalia promptly agreed. At last Johann had come to appreciate her. Flown with visions of wealth and luxury— which to Athalia meant no more than a proper bed to sleep in, and four square meals a day—she set out to fetch the refreshment.

CHAPTER NINE

Such great strides was Miss Mannering making toward her avowed intention of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear that even Edwina Childe was impressed by her progress. She had misjudged the girl, she decided, as she observed Delilah, seated across from her at the mahogany dining table. At least her company manners were unexceptionable.

As was her dress, an exquisitely simple creation of plain black silk, cut rather more décolleté than was usual for so young a lady, but to distinct advantage. Whatever unspoken use the heiress meant to make of her new finery, one thing was certain: Miss Mannering had no need to pad out her bodice with handkerchiefs.

Thus far the meal had gone off without a stumble. The food had been excellent, from salmon and fried smelts and veal patties through minced veal garnished with fried crumbs, potatoes in a form and stewed mushrooms to, currently, cheesecakes. Sibyl had been the model of decorum, as befit a lady to whom the role of bear-leader had fallen, and even Sandor appeared preoccupied. Perhaps this once Edwina might be permitted to get through an entire seven-course dinner without being subjected to the hostilities to which she was constitutionally unsuited. Hopefully, she grasped her fork.

Miss Mannering approved of the dining room, with its fine stucco decorations, its elegant mahogany furnishings. If she had any complaint, it was merely that young Lieutenant Baskerville had chosen to dine in the officers’ mess. Delilah was curious about Neal, of whom she had seen little since he’d come to her rescue; though he stayed frequently at this house, he was required to be at parade by eight o’clock of the morning, and was gone before she emerged from her bedchamber. Delilah wondered what sort of female was this Miss Choice-Pickerell to whom he was betrothed, and of whom Edwina spoke with such enthusiasm, and Binnie in such repressive tones. Miss Mannering was a young lady with a superior understanding. She was aware that Binnie didn’t like Miss Choice-Pickerell above half.

Delilah was also curious about her guardian, on whom she had not before this meal laid eyes since the infamous occasion on which she had accused him of being foxed. He had not thus far addressed above two words to her, though he did the honors of the table with infinite, if absentminded, grace. The duke, thought Delilah, would do everything with princely magnificence. “I believe I owe you an apology, sir,” she said prettily. “It was very unladylike in me to accuse you of being cast-away.”

His Grace roused sufficiently from his abstraction—into which he had been plunged by several startling and highly provocative remarks made him by the fair Phaedra, during their most recent tête-à-tête—to eye his ward. Edwina, her fork suspended halfway to her mouth, held her breath. Binnie too waited, prepared if necessary to conduct herself like a tigress in defense of her cub. She had grown very fond of Miss Mannering, fonder than she would have thought possible during the space of a few days.

The duke decided to be amused. “No apology is necessary,” he replied, with unprecedented tolerance. “I
was
cast-away.”

“I know that,” retorted Delilah, “but it was unbecoming of me to remark on it. I do not wish to run counter to conventional behavior, sir. To comment on your addiction to the bottle was altogether displeasing conduct. It cannot help but have given you a very low opinion of me.”

The duke took an even closer glance at his newest responsibility. She looked the veriest urchin, he decided, with her freckles and flaming hair. An urchin who was regarding him rather anxiously, with cheeks that were pink. “Don’t regard it!” he said kindly. “
I
do not! Tell me, how do you like Brighton, Miss Mannering?”

“Oh! Very well!” Delilah plunged headlong into a discussion of the town and the local wonders that she had been privileged to view. The air was unusually bracing, she believed; the waves that pounded at the soft white cliffs were beautiful to watch, and one soon grew accustomed to the absence of trees. The fogs, of course, were dangerous; one must choose with care the time of day when one went walking by the sea. And in line with walking, Miss Mannering had recently witnessed the poet Byron limping along the Steine.

This artless outburst might expressly have been designed to inspire a worldly gentleman with unendurable tedium. Edwina’s appetite abruptly deserted her. Anticipating that Sandor would give the volatile Miss Mannering a sharp setdown, she contemplated her fork.

His Grace had suffered a momentary impulse to do precisely that, but so animated was Delilah’s manner, so vivid her freckled countenance, that he could not bring himself to give her a trimming. Sandor was not a cruel man, merely selfish. In tones of utter disinterest, he remarked that the Regent himself was often to be glimpsed parading on the Steine.

“Oh, I’ve seen him,” replied Delilah, unenthusiastically. “I cannot think he set a good example when he appointed a Tory as prime minister, after spending all those years raising the hopes of the Whigs. Surely princes of all people should act like gentlemen! And then there was Mrs. Fitzherbert— well! I can perfectly understand why Tom Moore wrote
Intercepted Letters,
and why he published it anonymously. Not that he remained anonymous long! Everyone must surely know he wrote those sharp articles.”

‘They do,” Binnie said quickly; Sandor was not only an intimate of the Regent, he was also an ardent Tory. “It has gained him notoriety, and ruined his prospects. By that brutal piece of folly, Moore is put quite beyond the pale.”

“Oh.” Delilah looked thoughtful. “I suppose he must be glad that he did not go to prison for it, as other detractors of royalty have done.”

Conversation faltered as the duke pondered whether it was worth the effort to take offense on the part of his princely friend. He decided it was not. The intrepid Miss Mannering had said nothing that was not true, and in so doing had revealed an intelligence far more acute that he would have expected from so very young a miss. Wondering what other surprises she might hold in store, he decided to further draw her out. The prince was preparing a phantasmagoria at the Pavilion, he explained; was busily concerned with his apparatus for the production of a storm of thunder and lightning and rain, during which he intended to make a personal appearance as a ghostly phantom. Edwina, immensely cheered by this indication that Sandor was in an exceptionally genial mood, plunged with gusto into the cheesecake.

Binnie was a great deal less happy that the duke had taken so marked a fancy to Delilah’s company. Few young ladies received from His Grace such flattering overtures; she could not recall a single young lady on whom His Grace’s approving glance had been seen to fall, with the single ill-fated exception of His Grace’s young wife. In point of fact, Delilah reminded Binnie of Linnet. There was no physical resemblance; Delilah was neither cowardly nor scatterbrained; but despite the many differences the outcome was the same. Delilah acted with sublime unconcern, Linnet had been prompted by innate foolishness—but both rushed in where angels feared to tread.

And the duke was reacting to Delilah just as he had to his young wife. Obviously Sandor had serious intentions; why else would he have begun to pay Delilah immediate court? Or perhaps, unusual as such a thing would be in him, Sandor was merely being polite. In any case, Binnie could only hope Delilah was keen enough of wit to realize that Sandor was old enough to be her father, and of irascible temperament beside, and would not make a desirable spouse.

Binnie studied her cousin. It was very unlikely, she concluded, that so very green a damsel would prove the exception to His Grace’s legendary success with the fairer sex. Countless were the casualties of that insolent, seductive glance.

Completely unaware that her benefactress cherished such a lowly and unfounded notion of her character—Delilah was not one to be flattered by being drawn into conversation with a gentleman, even with a duke—she rattled on happily. From the Regent they progressed to Napoleon, and the fear held by many Englishmen earlier in the year that the emperor of Austria, the Corsican Upstart’s father-in-law, would hesitate to take up arms against his daughter’s husband. Utter nonsense! said Miss Mannering. Such doubts did Francis II great injustice. Never had he placed his daughter’s well-being above his own.

“Perhaps I should not say so!” she continued. “Because I have come to think young ladies are not supposed to have
opinions.
And it is a matter of considerable import that I acquire town-bronze.”

The duke eyed her curiously. “Why?”

“Because I wish to form an eligible connection! Perhaps I should not have said
that
either. Still, there it is! I have decided that marriage is the perfect situation for me.”

“Oh?” The duke decided that he had been seeking diversion in all the wrong places. Were it amusement he required, he should have looked not to fair barques of frailty but to damsels who sojourned in tinkers’ camps. “Have you in mind a candidate?”

“Well, yes,” Delilah said slowly. “I rather think I do.”

Horrified, Binnie interrupted. “A young man, of course,” she remarked judiciously. “One of respectable background and lineage. Bear in mind, Delilah, that you will not want to subdue your spirits, or curtail your activities, as must be the case with an older gentleman. I think that thirty years of age must be the absolute outside, and you would do much better to choose a prospective bridegroom closer to twenty-five.”

Rather startled, Delilah glanced at her mentor, and discovered that Binnie looked concerned. “Do not trouble yourself, ma’am! I do not mean to be imprudent. And I am very much obliged to you for showing me how to go on.”

Delilah’s ingenuous remarks, and Binnie’s pointed ones, had diverted Sandor’s attention to his cousin. It occurred to him that he had not crossed swords with Binnie for almost two days. She was looking rather worn-down, but her pallor could have been caused by her ugly dress. Even Aphrodite, in that hideously drab creation, would have looked pale.

“If you expect Sibyl to guide you among the pitfalls of romance,” he remarked, proceeding with a vengeance to make up for his previous neglect, “you are very likely to come a cropper. Sibyl is far more likely to teach you how to arrive at your last prayers. I can’t begin to enumerate the gentlemen whom she has brought to the sticking-point, only to turn them away.” He had the satisfaction of seeing his cousin flush. “I only thought it fair,” he added, “that I drop a hint or two. Gentlemen who dance attendance on Sibyl, Miss Mannering, are invariably left at point non plus. I would not wish you to develop my cousin’s habit of reducing your beaux to mere shadows of their former selves.”

“Gracious God, Sandor!” uttered the much-maligned Miss Baskerville. Edwina, resigned to yet another skirmish, put down her fork. “What have I done to set up your back?”

“Nothing!” he responded promptly. “That is the problem. It’s naught to me if you are so fearful of having to repent of your choice that you make no choice at all, but it is hardly fair to Mark to keep him dangling.”

There was some basis for this accusation; Binnie had employed her protégée as an excuse for avoiding her most persistent swain. Thought of her protégée recalled to her the presence of that young lady, whose manners she was obliged to reform.

Very much aware of the indefensible position in which he’d placed his cousin, and totally devoid of any scruples that would have demanded he refrain from taking advantage of that position, the duke quirked a brow. “I would not mind so much,” he continued, “if Mark was not in the habit of discussing your megrims. It is a subject with which I already possess considerable experience, and consequently I find Mark’s loquacity a dead bore. It is scant wonder, Sibyl, that you are left upon the shelf. You have only yourself to blame.”

Considering this too much to bear, even for a lady of self-effacing manner, one to whom an untutored young damsel looked for good advice, the duke leaned back in his chair and waited for Miss Baskerville to lose her temper. She would roundly denounce him, he decided, would say that for him to criticize her conduct was for the pot to call the kettle black. And when she paused for breath he would scold her for uttering such great incivilities, and warn Miss Mannering to beware lest she dwindle into a similarly sour-tempered old maid.

But Binnie was aware of what was expected of her by her cousin the duke. “Why, Sandor!” she said sweetly. “I did not know you wished me to marry Mark. You should have said so sooner; I would have gone on quite differently. I thought you would not want me to marry anyone, for it would mean you must exert yourself to find a new housekeeper—and I know how very much you dislike to exert yourself.”

“The devil!” said the duke, with every evidence of great shock. “You
have
played fast and loose with Mark. If you have led him to cherish hopes that you do not mean to fulfill—shame, Sibyl! I had thought you a woman of principle!”

This provocation Binnie also ignored. “Indeed I am! Why should you think me indifferent to Mark?
Do
you wish me to marry him? If so, I must seriously consider it. Naturally it is my duty to oblige you, cousin.”

The duke eyed Miss Prunes and Prisms and wondered what she’d do if he called her bluff. Meanwhile, Edwina regarded them both gloomily. She knew that Binnie would be happy to immediately remove herself from this house—Binnie believed a wish for that removal prompted Sandor’s harassment of herself, and Edwina usually agreed—if only he would give over her dowry into her own hands. Since Sandor refused to make Sibyl a present of her money, and since Sibyl refused to marry to please anyone but herself, they had for several years been at an impasse. Edwina was heartily sick of it. Quietly, she nudged Delilah, who was so fascinated by the proceedings that she’d propped her elbows on the table, all the better to miss not a single word.