Maggie MacKeever (24 page)

This blunt announcement was beyond the comprehension of the needle-witted Miss Mannering. She understood what Binnie had said, of course, but the suggestion that so decorous and diffident a lady should be mistaken for a fair barque of frailty was so absurd that Delilah decided she could not have heard aright. “He didn’t!”

“No?” Binnie’s amber eyes burned with remembered rage. “I assure you he did! He also said he was grateful I didn’t try to put a period to my existence—from the shame of it, I suppose!—because it would have made a dreadful
mess!
And even that was not the worst!”

Utterly fascinated by these disclosures, Delilah pleaded to be told the rest. Binnie, who had spent a sleepless night working herself into a dreadful frenzy, was not reluctant to oblige. “He let it be known that he was prepared to overlook my indiscretions, and that he wouldn’t toss Toby out into the street.” She wrung her handkerchief as if it were her cousin’s neck. “He would make me an object of his charity! And so I made him privy to my opinion of
his
character! Gracious God, it’s not
my
honor that’s besmirched!
I’m
not the one who makes a habit of deceit and duplicity!”

More and more interesting! decided Miss Mannering. ‘Encroaching fancies’ had an encouraging ring. She did not expect Binnie to view the manner in a similarly rational light, however. “Devil take the man! Then what happened?”

“I slapped him.” Binnie looked very guilty, and so she felt, having convicted herself of grave misconduct. “What else was I to do? He had intimated that I was a—a bird of paradise! I had no choice but to administer a stinging rebuke.” Delilah’s silence, she interpreted as censure. “And he kissed me, the beast!”

But Miss Baskerville had misread the character of her protégée: Delilah was not censuring such arrant misbehavior, but struggling to repress an untimely fit of levity. “Naturally he kissed you!” she gasped. “I was sure that at some time during this encounter, he must have! What did you do?”

At least, reflected Binnie, she need no longer worry that Delilah would succumb to the duke’s practiced allure. Obviously Delilah realized the duke was a Monster of Depravity. But there remained the worry that the Monster of Depravity might succumb to Delilah and unwittingly lend his assistance to that young lady’s aspirations toward bigamy—though why Binnie should care if Sandor ruined himself she didn’t know, unless it was for the sake of the family. “What do you
think
I did?” she retorted irately. “After he had accused me of throwing out lures, had intimated that I might be privileged to be his favorite of the moment! Treated me, in fact, as if I were no more than bachelor’s fare!”

“What’s this?” inquired Neal, from the doorway. Binnie, in her agitation, had failed to turn the key in the lock. “Who is no more than bachelor’s fare? I must tell you, Binnie, that it is hardly proper for you to be discussing bits o’ muslin with Miss Mannering!” He entered and locked the door behind him, then sternly regarded his sister and her protégée. Binnie looked to be in a rare taking, and Delilah’s cheeks were pink. He concluded that she was embarrassed at having been caught out in a highly exceptionable conversation. “Never mind, puss! It’s not
you
that’s blotted your copybook!”

This kindness almost proved Delilah’s undoing. “No!” she gasped. “It’s Binnie who’s tossed her bonnet over the windmill. I mean, she hasn’t, but he thinks she has—oh, mercy!” She dissolved into giggles.

Neal stared at his sister, whose unhappy frame of mind had led her to take even less trouble than usual with her appearance, and who consequently appeared a very far cry from her brother’s notion of a soiled dove. Her nose was red, her expression forbidding, and her hair was coming unpinned. Binnie, set upon the path to perdition? Neal fell into whoops.

That Delilah and Neal should laugh themselves into stitches at the notion that she might pursue an infamous career pleased Binnie as little as had the notion itself. “Well!” she said indignantly, hands on her slim hips. “I don’t see why you should think it all so amusing! I daresay I would make a very good, er, bit o’ muslin, if I wished it! Not that I
do
wish it, but it is hardly kind of you to act as if I couldn’t!”

This irate observation did little to instill sobriety. Delilah offered an assurance that Miss Baskerville could indeed, if she chose, be a prime article of virtue; Neal, between guffaws, inquired if Binnie was suffering a fever of the brain. Miffed, Binnie turned her back on them. Toby, tired of a useless effort to reclaim the blanket on which Caliban had gone to sleep, toddled toward her. Thus reminded of a further reason for offense, Binnie picked him up. “It is especially unkind of you, Delilah, to make game of me! When the whole misunderstanding came about because I withheld the truth for your sake.”

Aware that she had wounded her benefactress’s feelings, Delilah strove for self-control. “How’s that, ma’am?” she asked, wiping her damp cheeks.

“Here!” Neal produced a handkerchief. “Let me!” Under Binnie’s startled gaze, he dabbed tenderly at Delilah’s freckled face.

As a result other brother’s considerate action, Binnie found herself in a very sad fix. She realized that Neal was far from impervious to Miss Mannering. It wouldn’t do, alas; even less than Sandor was Binnie eager to see Neal engaged in bigamy. Furthermore, he was betrothed to Miss Choice-Pickerell— and for the first time, Binnie considered that betrothal a blessing in disguise. While engaged to one young lady, Neal could hardly pay his addresses to another. Or could he? Neal appeared to be doing exactly that. There was but one way to nip this dreadfully blighted blossom in the bud: the truth had to come out. “I refer,” Binnie said severely, “to Toby’s parentage.”

Delilah glanced away from Neal’s handsome face to Binnie’s somber one: could Binnie know something she did not? “What about Toby’s parentage?”

“Oh, my dear! Have done with this!” Binnie hugged Toby and looked at Delilah reproachfully. “Surely you cannot be so heartless as to deny your own son?”

“My son?” echoed Delilah, taken aback. Equally astounded, Neal inquired first if his sister had been making inroads on the brandy bottle, and then proceeded to read her a dreadful scold. “Wait!” cried Delilah, gratified that on her behalf Neal should ring a regular peal over his sister, and curious as to why Neal’s sister should have leapt to so very illogical a conclusion. “It accomplishes nothing to give poor Binnie a trimming, Neal!”

“Certainly it does not!” Unhappy at the necessity, Binnie persevered. “Especially when I do not deserve it! Instead of roundly denouncing me, Neal, you would do better to ask Delilah why she wears a wedding ring!”

Neal had not passed a pleasant morning. During the daily drill he had endured an unpleasant encounter with his colonel, who seemed to think the lieutenant should be capable of rendering an explanation of the recent erraticisms displayed by the fair Phaedra. Colonel Fortescue’s wife had progressed from making a fool of him all over the town, it evolved, to teetering on the brink of a decline. Naturally, Neal had been able to render no explanation, having never exchanged more than polite civilities with the colonel’s wife. Nor was he in his cousin’s confidence. These circumstances he had tried tactfully to make clear.

It had not served; Colonel Fortescue had subjected him to a severe tongue-lashing. Had not the colonel’s irascibility stemmed from an obviously genuine concern for his wife’s welfare, Neal might have retorted in a manner guaranteed to ensure that he was straightaway cashiered out of his regiment. Instead, he had bitten back the angry words and had tried to view the matter objectively. And now Binnie made unkind accusations about a young lady who, though undoubtedly an adventuress, was aside from that minor failing above reproach.

“That wedding ring,” he snapped, “belonged to Delilah’s mother. So she would have told you, had you bothered to ask.”

Binnie paid scant heed to Neal’s displeasure; she gazed upon Delilah with horrified sympathy. “You’re
not
married? You poor child!”

It had become apparent to Miss Mannering that her benefactress was laboring under a severe misapprehension— perhaps any number of them. “If I was married,” she said reasonably, “I could hardly hope to form an eligible connection, could I? But I daresay that did not occur to you. Oh, I see! You
did
think of it, and thought that I was hoaxing you! I expect I might have, had it been necessary, but you see that it was not.”

Miss Baskerville had developed a raging headache, alleviated neither by the daggers Neal was looking at her, or Toby’s tugs at her hair. Wincing, she set him down. Toby immediately tottered over to Neal and gazed worshipfully up into his face. “I don’t understand, Delilah! What about Johann?”

“Johann,” Delilah answered bravely, “was a mistake. I freely admit it! But I thought Toby was his child—Athalia told me as much! And I was very anxious to steal a march on Johann because he was trying to blackmail the duke. Binnie, you are turned white as parchment! Pray try not to faint! It may look bad—it
does
look bad!—but we are not yet undone.”

Guilty of misjudging Miss Mannering every bit as badly as she’d been misjudged, Binnie sank down on the bunk. Feebly, she requested a full explanation.  

Delilah didn’t like the look of Miss Baskerville at all. In fact, Binnie appeared on the verge of hysteria, or vapors, or both. “Truly I didn’t do it for a lark! But I thought you wouldn’t let me keep Toby here if you knew I’d stolen him! Rather,
Jem
stole him, but Jem mustn’t be blamed, because I told him to.” This attempt at reassurance fell short of its intended mark. Binnie moaned. “Are you going to swoon?” Delilah inquired anxiously. “Shall I go and fetch Edwina’s vinaigrette?”

Since the fetching of Edwina’s vinaigrette would doubtless bring Edwina trailing in its wake—of the various stirring events under way in the Duke of Knowles’s bow-fronted house, Edwina thus far had been kept in blissful ignorance—Binnie refused this offer of assistance. “Please, Delilah, from the beginning!” she begged.

 Delilah drew in a deep breath. The moment of revelation had come. Bravely, she faced up to I, and gifted Binnie with the circumstances leading to Toby’s presence in the nursery. “I thought I could blackmail Johann in turn,” Delilah concluded. “And if Toby was really his son, it might have worked very well! But I have decided Toby isn’t Johann’s son—though he does put me very strongly in mind
of someone—
Toby, that is, not Johann. Johann reminds me of no one at all, which is fortunate, because it would be sad to think there are two such perfect blocks in the world! However, if Toby isn’t Johann’s son, then whose is he? And what was Johann doing with him? I have thought about that very much, as you can imagine—and I have decided that maybe
Johann
stole him. If so, we did Toby a great favor by removing him from Johann’s wagon, because it’s certain that Johann’s intentions weren’t honorable. And if that is the case, all may still work out to our benefit!”

This speech was concluded with an air of triumph, which Neal perfectly approved. “Gad, what powers of reasoning!” said he, amid various other awed comments on Miss Mannering’s ingenuity. “Binnie, don’t you agree?” There was no answer. Neal tore his fascinated gaze away from Delilah to glance irritably at the cot. Binnie lay sprawled across it, in a dead faint.

She was not long allowed to enjoy this blessed state of unconsciousness, was awakened in but moments by a dreadful stench. Prohibited from fetching Edwina’s vinaigrette, the resourceful Delilah had burned Toby’s feather pillow in the grate. “There!” said Miss Mannering, as Binnie cautiously opened one eye. “You are yourself again! You must not worry: I am aware I have gotten us all into a dreadful scrape, but you may trust me to get us out again! On the square! Because I may be an incurable humbugger, may make rare mulls of things, but I
always
manage to fix them up all right and tight in the end!”

Binnie had been inspired by Delilah’s assurances to screw both eyes shut and pray for a resumption of her swoon. Hidden away in the duke’s nursery was a child the identity of whom was unknown, a child stolen from what appeared to be its rightful guardians. Perhaps that very moment anxious parents were in search of Toby, hot on the heels of his kidnappers. What would happen when that search brought them, as eventually it must, to this very house? Delilah and Jem at the best would be transported, at the worst would hang. And what of herself and Neal? As accomplices, they could hardly expect a more beneficent fate. Odd how often good fortune favored those who deserved it least. With all his wards thus disposed of, the duke would be a fabulously wealthy man. “Trust Sandor!” she moaned.

Delilah considered this odd remark as only natural from a lady so recently recovered from a swoon. In case Binnie had not totally recovered, she waved some burned feathers under her nose. “Yes, but do you think we
should?
Trust the duke?”

“Never think it!” Sneezing, Binnie sat up. “Above all, we must not acquaint Sandor with this. He’s already decided that I’m a marvel of indiscretion; let him go on thinking it! I’m sure I don’t mind.”

It was clear to Delilah that Binnie minded very much, not the duke’s misjudgment of her character, but that he had held her so cheap; and not that he had dared embrace her, but that he had done so out of expedience. Delilah was glad that she was no lady, and therefore not subject to the confusion attendant upon high principles. She wondered if she might delicately hint to Binnie that gentlemen did not generally go around kissing ladies to whom they were indifferent, or scolding ladies for whose misconduct they had no concern.

As Delilah pondered, Neal spoke. He had paid scant attention to the conversation between his sister and Miss Mannering, being totally bemused by the various expressions that flicked across Delilah’s enchantingly freckled face, but one aspect of the conversation had caught his interest. “Binnie!” he said, in a very deadly tone. “Who accused you of being a lightskirt?”

Unhappily reminded of that debacle, Binnie dropped her face into her hands. Delilah might vow to make things right as a trivet, but Binnie didn’t see how that was possible.