Maggie MacKeever (29 page)

“Mayhap, guv’nor,” he ventured, “we might strike a bargain. I’m not wishful of doing you ill. Once the ransom’s paid, I’ll set you free and we’ll forget all about this. No harm done, eh?”

The duke understood, perfectly, that the fox was on the run. Briefly, he contemplated the inevitable uproar in his household when Johann’s note—composed with much labor and knuckle-chewing, assisted by various unhelpful suggestions from the duke himself—arrived. Would Binnie, faced with the prospect of his imminent demise, regret her unkind words? Or would she, as was much more probable, greet with delight so effective a means by which to remove a thorn from her flesh? Sternly disallowing himself further reflection on that flesh, of so lovely a complexion and so pleasingly packaged, Sandor hoped he might live to find out.

“No bargains!” said he. “Release me and I’ll press no charges against you, but I won’t be bled one farthing.”

Johann considered this a very selfish attitude, especially from a man as rich as Croesus. He thought a fellow so plump in the pocket could be a bit more generous toward one whose pockets were perennially to let. All he wished, the tinker stated, was the means by which to be beforehand with the world. It was very uncharitable of the duke, he added, as he strode indignantly toward the door, to be trying to sconce the reckoning. He could only conclude that the duke was a nipfarthing.

“Oh, he is!” came a cheerful voice, as Delilah appeared in the doorway. “But we cannot blame him too much for cheeseparing, because he is all to pieces! That’s what I’ve come to tell you, Johann: the Duke of Knowles hasn’t a feather to fly with. He is extravagant and undisciplined, a spendthrift and something of a rogue—in short, he’s whistled his entire fortune down the wind. There will be no ransom paid and you will have to let him go. What are you doing, you blunderhead? Release me at once!”

That Johann had no intention of so doing, he made quickly clear, not only to Miss Mannering but to Lieutenant Baskerville, who had rushed into the wagon to find Delilah being held at knife-point. His Grace, meanwhile, settled back to watch the proceedings with a distinctly sardonic air. Even more sardonically, he murmured his appreciation of so splendidly executed a rescue.

“Oh, do hush!” snapped Delilah, who was struggling manfully, if to little avail, with Johann, and wishing fervently for a frying pan. “Johann, you are a nodcock! A gapeseed! A clodpole!
Now
what hubble-bubble notion have you taken in your brain?”

As Johann disposed of these two additional fish who had floundered into his net—a disposal accomplished not without difficulty, Miss Mannering being prompted to energetic protest every inch of the way, and the lieutenant being rendered very reckless by the sight of a tinker laying violent hands on Miss Mannering—he explained. Miss Mannering’s assertions that the duke lacked a fortune, he regarded as a proper take-in. However, was it true, Miss Mannering’s own fortune remained intact. Johann had evolved the nacky notion of holding Miss Mannering to ransom, along with her guardian.

The duke inquired of whom Johann meant to extract that ransom, since the person enabled to pay it—himself—was likewise in captivity; Neal offered to draw the tinker’s claret, could he but get his hands free; Delilah cursed like an entire regiment of troopers, which rendered everyone else silent with shock, including Johann. With a hint of admiration, he informed her that young ladies shouldn’t say such things. Then he added that he wasn’t to be diddled by a slyboots.

“Fiddle-faddle!” responded Delilah. “You are a cabbagehead! Only a cabbagehead would go about kidnapping babies and dukes! Don’t deny you meant to hold poor Toby to ransom also—Athalia has already told us you wished to extort money from his mother for her return. That was very poorly done of you, Johann! Even if she had put him out to pasture like an old horse—which does not at all suit my notion of conduct fitting to highborn ladies, but clearly I do not fully comprehend the ways of the polite world!—she cannot help but be concerned for him.”

Miss Mannering’s audience was affected strongly by these remarks. While Lieutenant Baskerville admired her bold courage, Johann was chopfallen to learn Miss Mannering had held converse with Athalia; and Sandor was positively flabbergasted by the references to Toby. “Good God!” he said.

“It is enough,” added Delilah, “to send one off in an apoplexy! And
that
would serve you right, Johann, because you can hardly ransom a corpse!”

That much, Johann understood. He begged that Miss Mannering would not fidget herself. All would work out for the best, she need just wait and see.

“Of course it will—it generally
does—
but if it doesn’t you will be to blame!” Delilah scowled so dreadfully that her eyebrows met above her freckled nose. “And I shall make as great a piece of work of it as I wish. Oh, go away, you simpleton! You make me cross as crabs.”

To this request, Johann proved obedient—not in an effort to placate the tempersome Miss Mannering, but because he needed time in which to contemplate these new developments. Johann’s processes of thought, which at the best of times ground slow as the mills of God, were not hastened by verbal abuse. Athalia had tipped the wink to Delilah? Doubtless Athalia was halfway to London by now. Strongly, Johann was tempted to follow suit.

Yet he could not abandon all hope of gaining a fortune so easily. It was a dreadful puzzle. Perhaps Delilah had been correct in suggesting that he wasn’t a downy one, unkind as it was of her to speak so of him.

And perhaps, which was more likely, she’d been pitching him gammon once again. Never had Johann known so young a lady with so large a deviousness of mind. In that case, the intimation that the duke’s fortune had been frittered away might also be a hoax. Viciously, Johann kicked at a wagon wheel. It was enough to make a man’s head spin.

Neal’s head was spinning also, as a result of the wagon’s stench. Silently he watched Delilah inch across the floor until she reached a position halfway between Sandor and him. Sandor did not seem appreciably disturbed by the grave danger that loomed over them. Unless Neal’s vision failed, Sandor was actually smiling. Did he not comprehend that they might all momentarily have their throats slit? Neal did not mind that Sandor’s neck should be cut; and for himself it would be a fate preferable to marriage with Miss Choice-Pickerell. On behalf of Delilah, however, he mourned so premature an end.

“So that’s why,” he said bitterly, “you’ve kept me without money for common necessaries. You haven’t sixpence to scratch with yourself. Not that I’m surprised—I suspected as much! It is just the sort of thing that is typical of you. Binnie was right to call you a Monster of Depravity!”

Even with his dark dress coat and black florentine silk breeches in deplorable disarray, Lord Knowles retained his dignity. “Ah, yes, I believe she mentioned something of the sort. Amazing, the opinion formed of me by the pair of you. I begin to wonder if I have given you basis.”

Neal squirmed violently, trying to rid himself of the tight ropes in which he’d been trussed, rather like a butterfly cocooned. “By God, if I hadn’t promised Binnie—and if I could get my hands free!—I vow I
would
murder you!”

“What’s this?” The duke quirked a brow. “Your sister doesn’t wish me murdered? You surprise me.”

“I shouldn’t!” snapped Neal. “She only told me not to because she wanted to do it herself! And when she finds out that you’ve spent all my money, I daresay she’ll be happy if I carve out your gizzard! And even if she doesn’t wish it, I mean to do it anyway!” Having run out of threats, he glared.

Delilah had listened contemplatively to this tirade. Since Johann had surely heard enough to convince him that she’d spoken the truth about the duke’s financial affairs, she interrupted the hostilities. “Johann will hang, I expect! Good riddance, I say!” she uttered briskly; and then, in a lower voice, “Neal, this is the height of ingratitude. It was all a hum.”

“What
was a hum?” The lieutenant looked blank. Of all people, he would not have expected Delilah to take him to task.

“Lower your voice!” she hissed, with a meaningful glance at the door. “Do you want Johann to hear? Well, Your Grace, you do not look too terribly misused, though very much the worse for wear! We have been looking all over Brighton for you. Binnie is very concerned for your welfare.”

Neal understood why Delilah was being so kind to the duke—obviously she still meant to marry him—but if Delilah still coveted the duke’s fortune, then a fortune the duke must still retain. “Wait! Do you mean Sandor
hasn’t—”

“Of course not!” Delilah shot another glance at the door. “Or I don’t think he has. Have you, sir?”

“Of course not!” Sandor’s sense of humor was acquiring rapidly broadening horizons. “Why should I?”

“That is an excellent question,” approved Delilah, “and one for which I had no answer, which is why I decided you had not.” She contemplated Neal, who looked very uncomfortable. “But that is fair and far off!”

“So it is,” agreed the duke. “Having expended such efforts to find me, now what do you plan? Though I hesitate to point this out, the omens are not encouraging.”

“Nonsense!” retorted Miss Mannering. “I would not have thought you one to easily cry quits. We need only to be patient; something will occur to me. And even if it doesn’t, we need not despair. I daresay Binnie will send help when Jem tells her what we learned.”

The duke’s sense of humor may have been growing by leaps and bounds, but with this intelligence it received an abrupt check. Binnie, in receipt of information from Delilah—and well he remembered the dramatic style of messages fashioned by Miss Mannering—as well as Johann’s ransom note? Miss Prunes and Prisms would be wholly overset. Without the slightest hesitation, he aired his displeasure.

Though Miss Mannering was not abashed by this tongue-lashing, indeed endured it with an expression of extreme interest, Neal was considerably less self-possessed. The information that Sandor was not fleecing him had not inspired him with any greater fondness for his cousin. “If that’s the way you talk to poor Miss Basketville,” said Delilah, as Neal drew breath to utter a tongue-lashing of his own, “it’s not at all surprising that she should think you don’t like her above half. I would’ve thought you better versed in the way of women, Duke!”

Diverted, Sandor confessed that in regard to Miss Baskerville, he had behaved with less than his usual sangfroid. However, as he pointed out, Miss Baskerville was not in the ordinary way. And why, he begged to be informed, had Delilah sent word to Binnie instead of to the authorities?

“It was a mistake,” Delilah admitted handsomely. “I have been making a great number of mistakes of late! I would weep with pure vexation, were I of a melting temperament! Fortunately I am not, because weeping does not accomplish much. And anyway I am not to be entirely blamed, because so many people have had irons in the fire. I may be an unconscionable little liar, and always getting into scrapes, but never before have I stirred up such a hornets’ nest. Oh, the authorities! I did not think you would wish a public washing of your dirty linen, sir!”

“The deuce!” said the duke. “I would much more prefer a scandal to being held to ransom, my girl!”

“Oh,” responded Delilah, deflated.

For Neal, his cousin’s ingratitude was the last straw. That Sandor should behave so callously toward the young lady who for some inconceivable reason wished to marry him was the outside of enough. So he stated. As a result of that blunt statement, he received a blank look. “Marry
me?”
echoed Sandor.

Delilah sighed heavily. “I suppose I had better lay my cards on the table, though the time is not propitious! That is the trouble with playing for high stakes; one cannot but trust to the luck of the draw. And all too often one draws a deuce, when one is wishing for an ace!” Solemnly, she regarded Neal. “I have deceived you. At least, I have allowed you to be deceived, which comes out to the same thing.”

Miss Mannering’s unhappy little face, which had turned bright pink, her shamed and soulful manner, tugged at Neal’s heartstrings. “Never mind, puss!” he said gruffly. “I’ve already guessed.”

“Guessed what?” inquired the duke, intrigued.

“I think, sir, that Neal has guessed I am an adventuress.” Delilah regarded her bound wrists. “Which is not an unreasonable conclusion. He has also guessed that I am on the lookout for a fortune, having no real claim on that of the Mannerings.”

“An impostor! Why didn’t I think of that?” For a gentleman hungry and tired and lacking sensation in his extremities, the duke was enjoying himself inordinately. “Probably because you’re the spitting image of your father! Do continue!”

“You’re
not
an adventuress?” Neal asked. “But you said—”

“I say,” Delilah responded sadly, “a great deal of flummery! Anyway, Neal decided that I’d taken a marked fancy to your fortune, You Grace; and also that you fancied my fortune to an alarming degree. It has had him in quite a pelter, because he’s convinced we shouldn’t suit.”

“So
we shouldn’t!” agreed the duke.

“But you said,” Neal persisted in his struggle toward enlightenment, “that you wished to form an eligible connection.”

“I did. And I do!” There was nothing for it, decided Delilah, but to confess the whole, even if that confession was a trifle premature. “It has been deuced difficult, too! In ordinary circumstances I should have simply swept the gentleman off his feet, but it is much more difficult to fix one’s interest with a gentleman who is otherwise bespoken, because he is too honorable by half and therefore not even aware that one is laying siege!”

To this tender declaration, the lieutenant responded with utter bewilderment. Delilah was in love with a man promised to another? Well he understood her predicament, poor girl! The duke, rather more perspicacious, gazed upon Delilah’s rosy cheeks and Neal’s stricken expression, and succumbed to a paroxysm of mirth.

Neal ignored his cousin’s outburst. “Poor puss!” he said gently, then expressed a curiosity concerning the identity of the gentleman so thickskulled as to fail to realize he held the admiration of the most divine young lady ever to set foot on an unworthy earth.