Maggie MacKeever (13 page)

Cressida’s glance was sharp. “I had forgotten her. You brought the girl to Brighton, Neal: what is she like?”

“Oh, the most complete romp.” Neal’s tone was utterly indifferent. “Not the sort of chit that you would take to, Cressida.”

Miss Choice-Pickerell thought this an odd comment, and so she observed; her alliance with Neal required her involvement in his family affairs. In none of her new duties, she explained, did she intend to be remiss. Perhaps, in lieu of Neal, she might provide Miss Baskerville assistance. She fancied that help as rendered by herself was nothing to cavil at. Cressida might not by birth be a gentlewoman, but she was very conversant with the restrictions imposed on young ladies of the first consideration. “You have not told me,” she added, “how old the girl is.”

“Seventeen,” Neal replied, greatly abstracted. “A thoroughly rag-mannered chit.”

Then it was one o’clock, time to descend to the ground floor supper room for a cold collation, an endeavor accomplished not without a great deal of pushing and shoving on the staircase. The remainder of the evening passed without further incidents worthy of comment, save for an encounter between Neal and his prospective father-in-law, who announced his belief that he knew the lieutenant too well to stand on ceremony with him, and bluntly inquired if after his marriage Neal would be in a position to be beforehand with the world, a piece of presumption that Neal considered beyond everything—until the elderly Choice-Pickerell stated firmly that Neal must sell out his commission. He did not fancy a son-in-law who looked like an ornamental monkey in his dress uniform of red breeches with gold fringe and yellow boots, he explained. Nor did he see much point in a regiment that was eternally stationed on home leave.

To these blunt observations, Neal responded noncommittally. The hour was very late when he finally escaped. Since his rooms at the barracks held out no more allure than did his chamber in Sandor’s house, he repaired to Raggett’s, there to plunge more deeply than he could afford, and to imbibe more freely of the brandy bottle than was advisable. Then he adjourned to the Cider Cellar, an underground resort off the Steine, and continued the process of drinking himself insensible. His awareness of his progress grew rather hazy after that, but at length he found himself walking by the sea. The night had grown foggy, and Neal’s facilities were additionally obscured by brandy fumes. When a large shape loomed up out of the mist, he thought at first that he was being attacked by some aquatic monster. It knocked him down.

The lieutenant defended himself valiantly—or as valiantly as could be expected of a young man upon whose chest rested a heavy weight, and whose reflexes had been dulled by overindulgence in the grape. Due to the dullness of those reflexes, it was several moments before he realized that he was not being devoured alive, but thoroughly washed by a large, wet, affectionate tongue. Not only was that caress familiar, but also the tones that fell upon his ear.

They were feminine, and cross. “Do come away, Caliban! What must the poor man think?” Hands patted him anxiously. “I do hope nothing is broken, sir! Caliban didn’t mean any harm, though I don’t expect you to believe
that.
Pray try and sit up! Because if you cannot then I must run and fetch help for you—and a dreadful fuss that would make, though it’s no more than I deserve for giving everyone the slip. How I’m to form an eligible connection after making a byword of myself, I don’t know! Still, I shall think of something. Do speak to me, sir!”

Neal checked his various limbs and found all intact. “What the deuce?” said he.

“Why, Lieutenant Baskerville! I should have known you were no stranger, because Caliban is not ordinarily so enthusiastic about people he hasn’t met. Do come away, you wretched beast, and let the lieutenant get up!”

The weight, accompanied by various grunts and groans from its owner, was removed from Neal’s chest. He sat up. Before him were Delilah and her dog, both looking disheveled and breathless. Delilah had a firm grip on the collar of her pet.

Neal rose and brushed ineffectively at the sand that clung to his dress uniform. “What are
you
doing here, Miss Mannering?”

“Caliban needed some exercise,” Delilah responded promptly and blushed.   “And so did I! I don’t know if you can understand, but it is very wearying to be always confined, and thinking about behaving property. Quite naturally I must do so, if I am to settle in matrimony, but sometimes I simply
have
to cut a wheedle. It is a sad failing in me! And so I wait till the household is asleep and then slip away to come out here where it is very peaceful, and Caliban and I have a romp. Since no one knows, it can’t give anyone a disgust of me.” She paused, anxiously. “Talking won’t pay toll, will it? Now I’m truly in the suds! Unless I can convince you
not
to snitch on me?”

“Baggage!” Neal grasped Caliban’s collar. Considering this an overture of friendship, the hound responded exuberantly. “Never fear, I’ll stand buff.”

“You
are
a regular Trojan!” Delilah beamed. “Since you are here, Lieutenant Baskerville, would you care to join Caliban and me on our walk? The fog is not so very bad, and one is perfectly safe so long as one watches one’s step.”

To stroll along the beach in the midst of a damp, chill fog was the perfect exercise for a gentleman with many worries preying on his mind. Neal wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. “I should be delighted, Miss Mannering.”

“You used to call me Delilah.” She squinted up at him. “Why have you become so formal? Or is this one of the compromising positions that your sister warned me against? Surely she could not have meant that I should not be alone with you! You aren’t dangling after a fortune. And since you are already betrothed to somebody else, you cannot be contriving to marry me!”

Neal dared not speak, lest he laugh himself into stitches. “I see what it is,” Delilah sighed. “I’m being vulgarly inquisitive again. Sometimes I wonder if I shall ever be up to snuff!”

That Miss Mannering should be cast into the dumps by any action of the lieutenant’s would have been unbearable. He set himself to soothe her, explained that he was certain his sister’s strictures had not been meant to apply to himself, assured her she might be as inquisitive as she wished without causing him to take offense. “That’s a relief!” she responded, with an air of bonhomie. “Because I’m aware that all this is dashed irregular. Tell me, sir, if you don’t mind—is not the Duke of Knowles a bachelor of the very first stare?”

“Sandor?” Neal was startled by this abrupt turn of conversation. “I suppose. He is generally held to be very near perfection.”

“A man of immense fortune?” Delilah persevered.

Neal kept private his doubts on that score. “At least a man in very easy circumstances. Why?”

“Such a man,” murmured Delilah, “would have no need of sconcing the reckoning. How very fortunate it is that I am not hampered by delicate principles!”

These remarks inspired Neal with misgivings. Delilah mentioned an ambition to settle in matrimony; surely she did not think to lure
Sandor
into parson’s mousetrap? The top-lofty Duke of Knowles to take a tumble for a mere dab of a girl who was wild to a fault? Nemesis, with a freckled face? An absurd notion, and one that delighted Neal. Diffidently, he inquired how she meant to go about the thing.

“Oh, very carefully!” Delilah tripped and Neal took her arm. “I do not think it must be so very difficult to fix one’s interest with a gentleman, especially when the gentleman has already exhibited a definite partiality. He is not aware of it yet, but I shall contrive—because, though I should not say so, I am up to all the rigs!”

Neal doubted this blithe statement not an instant. He even thought Delilah’s enterprise might meet with success. She had no lack of bottom, already having exhibited remarkable courage and staying power. So pleased was Neal with the vision of his high-handed cousin falling prey to Cupid’s sting, in the person of Miss Mannering, that he failed to wonder why Delilah should be interested in the duke’s fortune when she had a respectable fortune of her own.

Still, much as Sandor deserved to receive his comeuppance, Neal could not help a twinge of conscience on the part of Miss Mannering. “Wouldn’t you,” he inquired cautiously, “prefer a younger man?”

“Younger? Oh, no!” Lost in her scheming, Delilah took scant notice of her choice of words. “Only the duke will serve my purpose. But perhaps I should not have laid my cards on the table and admitted to playing the concave suit! I’m afraid, if truth be told, that I shall never be quite the thing.”

Nor would she, though Neal would have cut out his own tongue before admitting it. To a young man so recently exposed to his fiancée’s awesome refinement, Delilah’s lack of sensibility came as a great relief. “You have in these schemes of yours made no mention of happiness. Does that not weigh with you?”

“Happiness?” She sounded puzzled. “Of course it does. I shall contrive that also, I daresay, once I figure how to rid myself of the impediment—but first things first! Before I concern myself with that, I must pull off my coup.”

By impediment, she naturally meant the fair Phaedra, of whose existence she should not have been aware. Delilah appeared aware of a great many things she should not have been—including, it seemed, the exact means by which to lure the duke into her net. It struck Neal that they had accepted Delilah on face value, had made no effort to obtain proofs of her identity. Easy enough for an impostor to step into the heiress’s shoes. Could Delilah be an adventuress, grasping at an opportunity to feather her own nest? Certainly she was like no well-bred young lady he’d hitherto known. Slyly, he said so.

“Oh, I’m a rank deceiver!” Delilah said gaily, and with unnerving pertinency. “Surely you had guessed.”

That she might have meant merely that she was by nature unsuited to the role of lady, Neal did not consider; nor that an adventuress embarked on a bold masquerade would hardly have confessed it so freely. Neal was entirely occupied with the tantalizing prospect of his detested cousin the duke being repaid in one fell stroke for
all
his sins. He stated that it was a lucky thing that Sandor wasn’t in the habit of looking gift horses in the mouth.

“Yes, isn’t it?” agreed Delilah. “Otherwise, I’d speedily find myself dished. I’m sure he’d try and stop me if he knew what I was about—which would be a shame, because it’s for the best.” A horrible thought struck her. “You won’t tell him, will you, sir? It would ruin everything.”

“Devil a bit, puss!” This was hardly a proper way in which to address a young lady, but it must be remembered that Neal was still suffering the effects of overindulgence in the grape. Too, Neal was laboring under the delusion, as had a certain innkeeper, that he was holding converse with a damsel who was no better than she should be. He peered down at her. She looked much more like a street urchin than an adventuress. Appearances, he decided wisely, were not to be trusted. “I’ll even help you! Just tell me what to do.”

Delilah had not expected such a large degree of helpfulness, even if her plan was indirectly to the lieutenant’s benefit. “How very good you are, sir!”

“Moonshine! Call me Neal! After all, you have just made me recipient of your deepest confidences.”

Delilah had done anything but that, but she let his misapprehension pass. “Have I gone beyond the line of being pleasing
again?”

“Not at all! You have expressed yourself with the greatest propriety.”

That was an obvious clanker. The lieutenant was as great a humbugger as Delilah herself. She paused to look at him, thoughtfully.

Neal also paused—Delilah still clutched his arm—and studied the little face turned up to him. Her red hair was curling wildly in the- damp air, her huge brown eyes were opened wide. Delilah noticed his rather owlish expression, and grinned. It was an enchanting face, Neal decided abruptly, for all its absence of beauty, the nose that was retroussé, the impudent, laughing mouth.

Definitely, the lieutenant had taken too much brandy; he had almost wished he were sufficiently plump in the pocket that this scheming minx might try and lure him into her snares. Amused by the ridiculous notion, he dropped a brotherly kiss on the tip of her nose.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Not a bit wearied by her late-night adventures, Miss Mannering arose betimes the next day. She obtained breakfast for her hound and herself, then engaged in some profound meditation in the morning room. There Edwina Childe found her, and prescribed the application of a freckle wash of dilute hydrochloric acid; or perhaps Roman Balsam, a paste consisting of an ounce of bitter almonds and an ounce of barley flour, mixed with honey, which was left on overnight. If these sovereign remedies failed, they might try Grape Lotion, or Dr. Withering’s Cosmetic Lotion. As a last resort, there was always Edwina’s own remedy, which she had for years been wanting to try out. One scraped a quantity of horseradish into a teacupful of cold soured milk and let it stand twelve hours, she explained to her reluctant laboratory specimen, then strained the mixture and applied it to the affected parts two or three times daily.

Though Delilah did not think her pursuit of an eligible connection would be aided by the aroma of horseradish and sour milk, she was too good-hearted to burst Edwina’s air bubble. She wondered what had inspired Edwina to make such efforts on her behalf. Since Delilah did not ask this question aloud, she did not obtain enlightenment. It would have surprised Miss Mannering very much to learn that Edwina envisioned her the next Duchess of Knowles.

She was rescued from Edwina—just in the nick of time, Delilah thought; Edwina had been making, vaguely threatening noises concerning Caliban, whose wretchedly low-born appearance she did not consider suitable to a lady of prospective rank—by Binnie. The ladies were promised to go shopping that day.

Nowhere, decided Delilah, could compare with Brighton in its display of vehicles. She saw sedan chairs and heavy coaches, phaetons and curricles, gigs and buggies, and every other kind of open carriage imaginable. Almost as diversified were the people sauntering everywhere in the streets.