Maggie MacKeever (30 page)

“Why, Neal!” Delilah raised her huge brown eyes to his somber face. “Do you
still
not realize?”

How could he? She had said nothing that gave him a clue to the lucky man’s identity. He begged she be more specific.

How the deuce, wondered Delilah, should a young lady properly conduct herself in a situation like this? She would not wish the lieutenant to think her bold as a brass-faced monkey, or a pushing sort. “I cannot!” she lamented. “Modesty forbids me. The devil, Neal! It’s clear as noonday.”

The lieutenant was growing very frustrated by being denied the identity of his rival—not that he could ever honorably enter the lists. Irritably, he requested that Miss Mannering cease being missish. If she did not mean to name the possessor other affections, he averred, she should never have introduced the subject.

“Missish!” echoed Delilah, incensed.

Sandor, lest he expire of a fatal paroxysm of mirth, could listen to no more. “Young cawker!” he uttered, between guffaws. “The lady is speaking of yourself.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

With breathless stealth, Binnie approached the caravan. Toby, who’d fallen asleep on her hip, had grown remarkably heavy for so young a child; Caliban, restrained by a hastily fashioned leash, required considerable energy to curtail his exuberance. Definitely, Binnie was in need of several more hands. She wondered if, in rushing off
ventre a terre
to the rescue, she had perhaps not rushed her own fences.

No matter, the thing was done. She could but put forth her best efforts and pray for success. Thusly ruminating, she crept closer.

Irritable voices came to her, engaged in argument. Actually, Binnie had become aware of those voices some time previous, but had been unable to gauge the source of disagreement. The voices sounded familiar; she paused. Frowning, she strained to hear.

Surely that could only be Neal, simultaneously making a confession of his sentiments and spouting a great deal of nonsense about unrequited love. Unrequited? Binnie listened even more carefully. Her brother, it appeared, momentarily anticipated his deathblow. He did not wish to shuffle off this mortal coil without making Miss Mannering aware that he was unalterably devoted to her. However, Miss Mannering was not to consider this declaration as particularly encouraging. Neal was promised to another. He begged that Miss Mannering would not wear the willow for him, or sink into a decline.

Miss Mannering’s response to this loverlike speech was exactly what might have been expected from that intrepid damsel. “Flimflam!” she cried. “Johann has had a very bad influence because now
you
are talking like a nodcock! First you profess to be my very ardent admirer, and next you suggest that I should be trained in a school of sorrow. It makes me cross as a cat!”

Binnie felt as though she might suffer a similar affliction. She had rushed boldly to the rescue, only to break in on a singularly bird-witted lovers’ quarrel? Could that be Sandor
laughing
in the background? She hitched Toby further up on her hip and peered cautiously around the corner of the caravan. In so doing, she came face to face with Johann.

Came for them both a moment of stunned immobility. Johann, who after prolonged reflection had concluded that he was
not
a downy one, couldn’t think what to make of this disheveled female who was clutching a baby, a pistol, and a singularly ugly hound. Furthermore, he knew both the baby and the hound. The pistol, though unfamiliar, looked most businesslike.

Johann was not enamored of strange females brandishing pistols in his face. Quick action was the ticket. He lunged.

Binnie, faced with the alternatives of dropping Toby or loosening the hound, shrieked and let fall Caliban’s leash. Caliban, delighted at this unexpected release, and anticipating a pleasant tussle with his old acquaintance the tinker, also leaped. He and Johann collided in midair. Johann lost his balance. His head thwacked against a wagon wheel; he sank senseless to the ground.

“Oh,
good
dog!” cried Binnie, who was very shaken by her close escape. Gratified, Caliban wagged his tail, lolled his tongue, and sat down smack on the tinker’s chest. Johann would go nowhere for a while. Binnie cautiously approached the wagon door.

The sight therein—the caravan was indescribably filthy and her friends in dire straits—sent her quickly out again, in search of Johann’s knife. Toby, who still slept, and the pistol she set aside. Then she once more entered the wagon, after drawing a deep breath, and freed the captives. By unanimous consent, they speedily adjourned outside. In the case of the duke, this was not accomplished effortlessly. His Grace had no feeling whatsoever in his limbs.

Miss Mannering cast a speculative glance around the campsite. She saw the sleeping Toby and the pistol, a smug-looking Caliban perched triumphantly atop the spoils of battle. “Thunder and turf!” she uttered. “Is he
dead?”

Neal bent over the tinker. “No, but he’s going to wake up with the devil of a head.” The duke, sitting on the caravan steps while Binnie attempted to restore by brisk massage some feeling to his limbs, aired a hope that the tinker’s head might ache as if danced upon by
all
the imps of hell. And even that, continued Sandor, would not be sufficient punishment. To this, Miss Mannering offered the opinion that any recourse taken against Johann could not but rebound on themselves, and unpleasantly; Miss Mannering was not adverse to scandal, but she suspected her companions were rather more nice to their notions. And then she turned her attention back to Neal.

“And I am not missish!” she stated sternly. “Nor am I bold as a brass-faced monkey
,
or
pushing!
But I never thought you would have used me in this manner, and it has rather raised my spleen. Perhaps the trouble you have been in has deranged your ideas? Because it makes no sense that you should say you have a decided partiality for me, and in the next breath be shabbing off!”

Damned difficult it was to be honorable when one wished more than anything to cast all principle to the winds and ride off into the sunset with the object of one’s affections tossed over one’s saddlebow. But he could not. “Try and understand!” begged Neal.

“What I understand is that we shall come to cuffs if you keep nattering on about propriety!” Perhaps the lieutenant might prove more receptive to a less logical approach? Delilah sniffled. “Perhaps you
want
me to be so very melancholy.”

Naturally, Neal could not bear that Delilah should be made unhappy on his account. “Oh, no, puss!” he cried, grasping her hands. “Never that!”

“I see how it is!” wailed Delilah, tears streaming down her cheeks, which were a telltale pink. “I
have
been too bold! You are only being kind to me! You
wish
to marry Miss Choice-Pickerell! I daresay I shall never recover, but do not concern yourself. I shall bear with resignation my irreparable loss, shall reap what comfort I can from the knowledge that my beloved has won the lady of his choice, which will be the only consolation left me on earth.”

The lieutenant was impelled to reassert his adoration of Miss Mannering; Miss Mannering retorted that a gentleman who adored one young lady wouldn’t marry another, and therefore she concluded that the lieutenant cared nothing for her at all. She had exhibited an unbecoming violence of feeling which she hoped he would forgive; she hoped also that he would not consider her vulgarity of expression as a symptom of light-mindedness; he must realize that she would not behave in so unmaidenly a manner were not her feelings wounded and her heartstrings cracked.

Neal protested: it was honor that bound him to Miss Choice-Pickerell, not affection. Delilah was adamant: did he but love her, which obviously he didn’t, she wouldn’t care a groat if he was thoroughly dishonorable. The preceding is a faithful example of the entire conversation conducted between Lieutenant Baskerville and Miss Mannering, which though of the utmost interest to the participants, was too tedious to be related here in its entirety.

“Gracious!” uttered Binnie, at the point when Delilah asserted dramatically that her heartstrings were cracked. “What has put Delilah in such a tweak?”

Sandor, who had paid not the least attention to Miss Mannering’s histrionics, being a great deal more interested in Miss Baskerville’s ministrations to himself, and additionally having grown bored with the antics of what he considered a singularly well-suited pair, responded absently. “What tweak? Binnie, I owe you an apology.”

So generous an admission cast all other considerations—in particular the consideration that perhaps she should inform her brother that Miss Choice-Pickerell was due to break off their betrothal, though Binnie suspected that Neal would refuse to allow Cressida to cry off if he knew how shamelessly she’d been manipulated—from Binnie’s mind. “Pray, don’t! It is I who must apologize to you! Those horrid things I said— Mark has told me they weren’t true.”

The duke—who it must be remembered had been recently laboring under any number of difficulties—was not especially delighted by this introduction into the conversation of his friend. “And you told me that you decided to marry Mark only to prevent me from further inroads on Neal’s inheritance.” Having regained mobility in his hands, he grasped her shoulders. “Goose! What do you think he would have done?”

Binnie was feeling extremely shy, a circumstance for which she took herself to task. Sandor was irresistible to most women; birds of paradise vied for his favors—and why not? With his golden hair and sun-bronzed features, his blue eyes and athletic figure, Sandor was surely the most handsome of gentlemen!—and would have scant interest in a female who could not even properly order her thoughts in his presence. Lest she cause him to hold her at a distance—or worse, inspire him with pity—she must not let him guess that she loved him quite desperately. If only she had not laughed, those many years ago! But this was no moment to cry over spilled milk.

“What? Oh, Mark! He would probably have done nothing. At least nothing to the purpose. I’ll tell you what he
has
done, Sandor: told that odious Choice-Pickerell female about Delilah and Johann! I wished to sink.”

It was obvious to the duke, whose attraction for various diverse ladybirds his cousin had not underestimated, and who as a result was very familiar with the illogical workings of the female mind, that he must proceed cautiously. “What
did
you do?”

“Behaved abominably!” Briefly forgetting her embarrassment, Binnie cast him a mischievous glance. She acquainted him with the whole. The duke’s mood was considerably improved by the intelligence that Miss Baskerville had decided
not
to marry Mark. His hands tightened on her shoulders and his blue eyes gleamed. Binnie stared at him, breathless. And then Johann stirred.

He pushed futilely at Caliban, snoozing on his chest, then clasped his aching head. Then he looked cautiously around. Nearby, gurgling in his sleep, lay Toby. “Dashed if it ain’t his nibs!” uttered Johann.

Thus recalled to the present, Binnie snatched up the gun. “Of course it is!” she said reprovingly. “You knew that when you kidnapped him, you dreadful man! How could you be so stupid as to try and ransom a duke? You deserve to hang!”

With that sentiment, Johann did not agree. Moreover, he thought he saw a way to avoid so distasteful a contingency. He regarded the duke, who was testing the mobility of his legs, and proceeded with great relish to try and make that high-and-mighty gentleman squirm. “Not the gentry cove!” he explained. “The brat!” He glanced at Miss Mannering, still engaged in lachrymose argument with her lieutenant; and expressed a strong wish that the lieutenant might pop the question so that Delilah would get her cursed dog off his chest.

Thus abjured, Delilah briefly abandoned her campaign. “Now what are you up to?” she inquired sternly of Johann, as with great expenditure of energy she hauled Caliban off him. “Because it would be most unlike you not to be up to something—and I must say it is very tiresome of you, Johann, to forever be getting in the way!”

Once again, Johann marveled that the heiress could harbor so little liking for a fine specimen like himself. He decided that Miss Mannering’s fortune was above his touch. However, he had not yet despaired of the duke. “Shall you tell them, guv’nor?” he suggested slyly. “Or shall I? ‘Course, was you to come across with some rhino, I might be persuaded
not
to spill the beans.”

His Grace, much to Johann’s disappointment, didn’t appear at all perturbed by this threat. In fact, he ignored Johann altogether, and picked up the sleeping baby. Toby, his slumber rudely interrupted, yawned hugely and opened his blue eyes. Serenely, he regarded the duke. Then he smiled.

“So that’s it,” said Sandor thoughtfully. “I rather suspected it might be. Now I suppose you will expect me to reward you for bringing me the brat.”

That particular notion had never crossed Johann’s mind; he had supposed the duke to have no special interest in his by-blows, of whom he conjectured there were any number in existence. Certainly Johann was agreeable to reward—so agreeable that he professed himself willing to round up any number of misbegotten brats. He was, Johann added modestly, very good at pinching things. His Grace expressed a rather wry appreciation of this offer, but explained that Johann had overestimated his prowess; this was the only of his by-blows. Or, he amended, the only by-blow of which he was aware, and his awareness of Toby’s existence had only come about lately, the fair Phaedra having kept very quiet on the subject, with an intention of using the brat as a second string to her bow. “But you very neatly spiked her guns!” the duke concluded. “Perhaps you
do
deserve to be rewarded.”

Delilah had, during these startling revelations, been watching Binnie’s face. She could not decide if her benefactress was benumbed with shock, or verging on an apoplexy. Nor could she determine why the duke was so quick to take the word of a confirmed scoundrel like Johann. “Pooh!” she said briskly, before Johann’s ambition ruined this segment of her master plan. “This is all a hum!” And then she stared at Toby, who she had taken from Sandor, lest Sandor, due to lack of experience in handling babies, drop Toby on his head. “Hades!” gasped Miss Mannering. “
You’re
who he reminded me of!”