Maggie MacKeever (12 page)

“Is it?” the duke inquired ruminatively. “Your duty, Sibyl?”

Unflinchingly, Binnie met his cold gaze. That she’d painted herself into a comer she knew very well. Oddly, the realization did not trouble her.
Did
she love Mark? It might explain her strange moods of late. “Are you grown deaf, Sandor? I just said so. Witness me eager to do your bidding in all things.”

The duke decided that it would be unchivalrous of him to take further advantage of the indefensible position in which his cousin had placed herself. He had no wish to trick her into marrying Mark, when all was said and done. Without the acerbic tongue of Miss Prunes and Prisms, he suddenly realized, life on the Royal Crescent would be decidedly flat.

However, he could not deny himself one last taunt. “Trying it on much too rare and thick, my dear! Take care that I do not put your professed willingness to the test.”

This sounded very much like a challenge. Binnie did not, strong as was the temptation, look away. “We will go on much more prosperously, Sandor, if you will refrain from pitching straws.”

Whether His Grace might have heeded this good advice remains unknown—although it is safe to conjecture that he would not have, since good advice had as little effect on him as water on a duck, and furthermore there was a distinct glint in his cold eye. Miss Mannering had followed the preceding remarks with an ever-increasing contemplativeness. She had decided that the duke was a very vexatious gentleman, and deliberately so; she further concluded that Miss Baskerville was sublimely incapable of managing her own affairs. “How queer!” she said. “Now I understand that while it is improper for me to be impertinent, it is acceptable behavior in gentlemen. It is all of a piece with everything else, is it not? For ours is definitely a man’s world. Take mistresses, for example. One never hears of a kept
gentleman!”
Edwina, who had hoped that with Delilah’s interruption some degree of tranquility might be restored, moaned.

There was a profound silence, broken only by Caliban’s distant howls. The hound, whose mealtime presence had proven distinctly disruptive—it being difficult to restrain so large and enthusiastic a beast from sampling every dish—had been temporarily confined in his mistress’s bedroom. Miss Baskerville, observing the duke’s brooding expression, was with all her might battling an untimely impulse to fall into the whoops; Edwina, expecting from His Grace an annihilating outburst, had closed her eyes to pray.

As it turns out, His Grace was unaware that the irrepressible Miss Mannering had delivered a Parthian shot; he was not even thinking of her. Mention of mistresses had recalled to him the fair Phaedra, and the revelations she had made when he expressed an intention to end a relationship that had endured several years.
Could
what she claimed be true? Sandor feared it could. He recalled the interval when Phaedra had been absent from her usual haunts, ruralizing at some unknown destination, for a period of months. At the time he had thought little of it. Now it appeared he should have been a great deal more interested.

Why wait so long to tell him? Because one thing could be verified didn’t mean the rest were true. The reason for her silence was explained easily enough: Phaedra had seen the wisdom of adding a second string to her bow.

She had frankly admitted she meant to keep him dangling, not out of any affection, but because Sandor’s apparent devotion kept her husband interested in her, if hostile. The duke cursed the day he’d become involved with a lady who ran with the hare and hunted with the hounds. Were her startling claims factual, were the colonel to suspect—Sandor shuddered. He was in the most damnable dilemma possible. What he could do to extricate himself, he did not know. Phaedra had withheld the most pertinent information of all.

“Are you quite speechless with anger?” inquired Miss Mannering, curiously. “In that case you must be
very
furious. Truly I do not mind if you scold me, because I
have
been impertinent. I thought, you see, that you might not be aware that you were behaving scaly. But I am sorry if you took my words amiss!”

Blankly, the duke looked at her. What the deuce was the chit nattering on about? “Do not regard it,” he said, for the second time that evening, a circumstance that caused Delilah to reflect that her mentors had a queer notion of ladylike behavior if they accepted her outbursts so calmly. And then he set out to amuse her with a description of the King’s Head in West Street, where during the Restoration Charles II was said to have slept.

Relieved beyond description, Edwina returned her attention to the cheesecake. She now understood that Miss Mannering was an excellent creature who improved amazingly upon acquaintance. Any young lady who could deal so well with Sandor had Edwina’s unqualified blessing. Linnet had dealt similarly well, as Edwina recalled. Clearly Sandor preferred very young ladies.

And why not? Definitely it was a solution. Delilah wished to form an eligible connection, and no one was more eligible than the Duke of Knowles. What signified an age difference of a paltry eighteen years? Delilah was a mellowing influence.

Binnie’s thoughts followed similar lines, but they inspired her with no similar enthusiasm. What was wrong with her? she wondered. Why should she care if her cousin entered into yet another disastrous marriage? With Delilah she need not be concerned; Delilah could demonstrably handle Sandor very well.

This conclusion brought Binnie neither amusement nor relief. Perhaps she was in her dotage. But surely ladies were not prone to turn touchy and difficult until somewhat more advanced in years?

Delilah, for all her youth, had not been born yesterday; she knew it was due to no efforts of her own that the duke had undergone a rapid change of mood. Delilah pondered the implications of the scene that had just taken place. Surreptitiously she glanced at Binnie, who appeared to be engaged in silent communication with her empty plate; and at Edwina, who beamed a blessing. Unaware of what prompted this friendliness, Delilah returned the smile. No victim of false modesty, she congratulated herself on an excellent evening’s enterprise.

CHAPTER TEN

Had Miss Mannering been privy to a conversation that occurred between Lieutenant Neal Baskerville and his fiancée later that same day, she might have been even more intrigued. It was not the nature of the conversation that was cause for conjecture—alas, the conversation of Miss Choice-Pickerell roused scant interest even in its object—but the manner by which her discourse glaringly illuminated their prospective relationship. Cressida very clearly intended—or so Neal deduced from her remarks—that her bridegroom would dwell under the hen’s foot.

She did not say so, naturally; Cressida was far too refined to utter any statement that smacked so strongly of vulgarity. Nor, to give her all due credit, had Cressida considered the matter in that particular light. All the same, had the manner in which her marriage would be conducted been broached to her, and had she deemed it prudent to respond, she might have stated an intention to firmly hold the reins. Leisured young men were notoriously unable to manage for themselves. Consider how many of them had gotten themselves in deep water—Cressida was an avid reader of the gossip columns—if not worse! Neal might protest at first, but in time he would come to be grateful for her firm hand at the helm.

They were engaged that evening at a private soiree, an affair so very crowded that no visitor of rank would arrive to find the staircase empty and consequently drive away from the door. The highest accolade had been bestowed upon the proceedings: it was a shocking squeeze. The guests went about looking languid, the better to mask gratification at being present at so fashionable and successful an affair; while the hosts strove with equal vigor to avoid looking very smug. All enjoyed themselves immensely, except Lieutenant Baskerville. By the thought that he might be—
would
be—engaged with Miss Choice-Pickerell for all the remaining evenings of his life, the lieutenant was extremely depressed.

Cressida was unaware of the cause of his abstraction, though she could not help but realize he was holding himself at a distance. Neal’s behavior did not especially bother her; she already knew him prey to strange humors. In comparison to the unbecoming fervor of which he was occasionally guilty, she preferred to see him subdued. Indeed, she meant to see the feckless lieutenant continually subdued, once the knot was tied.

Those rapidly approaching nuptials were the topic of Cressida’s discourse. She chattered on, under the mistaken assumption that her husband-to-be cherished an interest in such topics as her choice of bride-clothes. She conducted an animated discussion as to where they would reside—not in Bloomsbury among such rich merchants as her father; she thought Neal would rather dwell among the
ton;
she was sure he would be pleased to learn her father was on the lookout for a suitable house. Neal was not, though he forebore to explain that he would much rather have chosen his own home. In short, Cressida was to the last degree tiresome in examining all the details of their alliance and asking questions without end.

To those questions, she received only vague replies. Briefly perplexed by his lack of enthusiasm, Cressida decided that the lieutenant was discomfited by her frank discussion of such details. She chided him for it. She was aware, Cressida stated, that the Upper Ten Thousand—of whom Lieutenant Baskerville by birth was one—considered certain subjects taboo; but she could only consider it very silly if a young man could not discuss his own marital arrangements without embarrassment. It was not as if she asked him to wear his heart upon his sleeve.

Fortunate that she did not, reflected Neal, as he murmured a meaningless response. Startling as it was in a man on the verge of marriage, Neal was eminently heart-whole. Sternly, he berated himself for wishing that by some miracle he might be released from his appointed fate of becoming leg-shackled to a tiresome, prosy, managing female. He had responsibilities. Escape was past praying for.

Cressida wondered what among Neal’s frippery pursuits was of sufficient import to have caused him to become so glum. She achieved, or so she thought, enlightenment. “Ah!” she murmured. “Colonel Fortescue.”

“Eh?” Neal realized that she’d provided him the perfect excuse. “The colonel, yes. I have so aroused his displeasure that he read me a severe reprimand. If I again misbehave, he said, he will act in a way to disgust me with the army altogether. He added, with the greatest insincerity, that he should regret my going out of the regiment.”

“Good gracious!” Although Cressida had no high opinion of the Tenth—the officers whereof were incurably frivolous, associating with no one but their own corps, being more concerned with their blood horses and curricles and little amusements than in the defenses of their country in time of war, an example set them by their commander in chief, the Regent—she was too wise to let her boredom show. “Neal, what have you done?”

“To incur the colonel’s displeasure?” Neal gazed around the crowded room. “I requested leave to pass a week in town. It is to Sandor that I owe thanks for the resultant drubbing, not any act of mine.”

Cressida was rapidly growing out of patience with her fiancé, who was displaying a great deal more interest in their fellow guests than in herself. She attempted to arouse the lieutenant’s compassion by relating the occasion on which his sister had cut her in the streets.

“Never was I so snubbed!” she concluded. “I cannot conceive what possessed Miss Baskerville to turn a cold shoulder on me. The duke was very shocked when I told him of it. He said I was not to regard your sister’s crotchets, which I thought very pretty in him.” Here she paused; Neal had turned on her an enraged countenance.

“You told
Sandor?”

“Of course I told His Grace!” Cressida replied indignantly. “Why should I not have? I am to become one of the family!
He,
at least, thought very poorly of your sister’s behavior tome.”

Obviously Miss Choice-Pickerell was chagrined that her fiancé did not think likewise. Equally obvious were her unflagging efforts to puff up her own consequence. With effort, Neal refrained from comment.

The lieutenant was in a very strange humor, decided Miss Choice-Pickerell. He wore an expression so forbidding that it alarmed her not a little, suggesting as it did that he might wish to declare off altogether from his betrothal. This was a most distressing thought, not because of the scandal in which such a step would involve Neal, but because of the embarrassment it would cause herself. How tiresome of him to be so difficult! She set out most artfully to bring him back to heel.

“You are angry with me,” she uttered sadly. “I am sorry for it. Had I known you would take the part of your sister before my own, I would never have brought the incident to your attention—or to the attention of the duke. I hope he did not scold her for it. Truly, Neal, I did not mean to cause Miss Baskerville any discomfort. I quite like your sister, and can only regret that she does not feel similarly to me.”

It occurred to Neal that he was displaying no more conduct than the rawest schoolboy, a fact that he did not hesitate to lay at his cousin the duke’s door. Now that Neal considered it, all his problems stemmed from that source. Fervently he wished that Sandor might be made to pay for his sins.

Furthermore, he realized that to Miss Choice-Pickerell he had been less than polite. He had not meant to ignore her, it was merely that so many insoluble problems preyed on his mind. Handsomely, he offered her apology.

Cressida permitted several moments to pass in gallantries, a pursuit which she privately considered a tedious waste of time, before indicating pleasantly that romantical effusions must end. “Why did you,” she inquired, removing her hand from the lieutenant’s grasp, “ask leave to pass a week in town?”

“The heiress,” Neal replied. Had Cressida been more interested in such matters, she might have realized his avowals had had a very hollow ring. There were advantages, he supposed, in having a fiancée as cold as an icicle; she was never likely to suspect his courtship was no more than a matter of form. Neal might do so with reluctance, but he would persevere on his chosen course. The die was cast. Edwina and Binnie and Cressida herself depended on him to go about the business with some dignity. “I thought Binnie might need some help with Miss Mannering.”