Maggie MacKeever (9 page)

Edwina, having firmly expressed her intention to have nothing to do with the Mannering chit, glanced around the morning room. It was a pretty chamber, with rosewood furniture and sofas upholstered in striped silk, a patterned Wilton carpet, a segmental barrel-vaulted ceiling. In one comer stood a harp. Then she again studied Binnie. “Tell him you won’t do it!” she advised. “The girl is Sandor’s charge; let him deal with her.”

Binnie shoved aside her coffee cup and with it her fit of the blue devils. “Do you wish me to suffer one of Sandor’s rake-downs? Just the other day, Edwina, you were begging me to say nothing that would set up his back.”

Her cousin had the grace to look discomfited. Truth be told, Edwina didn’t care in the least if Binnie brought down Sandor’s wrath, so long as she herself was out of earshot. It occurred to her that the duke was a great deal easier to live with when Binnie wasn’t around.

It occurred to her also that young Lieutenant Baskerville had appeared quite taken with Delilah, a circumstance that prompted her to seriously doubt his intelligence. Nor did she think his fiancée would take to Miss Mannering. Edwina rather admired Miss Choice-Pickerell. Sibyl, she knew, did not agree, which clearly demonstrated that Sibyl was also deficient in common sense. She was also exceedingly kind-hearted. Otherwise she would have understood, as had Edwina on first glance, that Delilah was a sly and scheming minx.

Just then Miss Mannering herself walked into the morning room, trailed by the faithful Caliban, both of them greatly improved in appearance by thorough scrubbings. Delilah wore, Edwina noted, a pretty walking dress with a waistcoat bosom and puffed sleeves and a flounced skirt. It was typical of Sibyl to have had the most fashionable item in her wardrobe altered for the chit.

If Delilah was aware that Edwina was gazing askance at her, she gave no sign. “Good morning!” she said brightly. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help but overhear— does His Grace frequently fly off the hooks?”

This innocent question roused Binnie from her brown study, even as it cast Edwina smack into the dumps. “He does,” responded Miss Baskerville.

“I thought he might.” Delilah seated herself beside Binnie on a sofa, and Caliban sprawled panting at their feet. The hound so approved these new surroundings that he had grown positively frisky. Already that morning he had raided the larder, had caused the cook hysterics by accounting for a side of beef and a ham. He belched in contentment.

Miss Mannering ignored her pet’s ill manners. “His Grace has the look about him of a man accustomed to having his own way. There is a royal assurance in his manner. Odd, is it not, that men visibly used up by dissipation often excite awe? As if undisguised profligacy were something to admire! Still I suppose the duke must have
some
good qualities, despite his vagaries.”

“You’re wrong,” said Binnie unsteadily, as Edwina stared with horror. “Sandor has none. However, for all his shortcomings, Sandor is not a libertine.”

“No?” Miss Mannering looked disappointed. “A pity; I have always wished to meet a rakehell. It all sounds so romantic; bold Corsairs and paroxysms of intemperance—not that I
should care for it myself.”

Binnie had begun to think that the instruction of Delilah in the social graces might not be without its small rewards, no matter how overwhelming the prospect. Already she had experienced a lightening of the spirits. “You relieve me,” she said drily. “Just what sort of gentleman
should
you care for, Miss Mannering?”

Delilah looked surprised. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t, would I, until I met him? Certainly I do not mean to fall in love after the briefest acquaintance and throw my hat over the windmill, like my mother did! Nor will I be fool enough to love a man who is running mad over another woman, which she also did, and which very often seems to be the case. People are very perverse, I think, always wanting what they can’t have, and underrating what they
do!”

This rational viewpoint struck Binnie very strongly, as did the air of worldly wisdom that sat so oddly on Delilah’s young face. She chuckled.

“You are quizzing me,” Delilah said reproachfully. “I don’t mind! You do not know me, so I cannot blame you for not realizing that I am a downy one. Beside, you are quite lovely when you smile.” Speculatively she eyed Binnie, who was struggling valiantly to contain her mirth. “I’ll lay a monkey you could cut quite a dash, if you wanted to!”

“But I don’t want to!” gasped Binnie. She explained that she had had several seasons, but did not take; that at length she had relinquished the arena to younger damsels. Miss Baskerville was that most unenviable of creatures, a spinster left to wither on the shelf.

“Stuff!” Delilah’s eyes held a glint of curiosity. “You had all those other ladies beaten to flinders, or could have had—I’ll stake my reputation on it.”

“Reputation!” uttered Edwina, scandalized. Since Sibyl obviously did not intend to impose a check on these unbecoming high spirits, Edwina was forced to act. “Miss Mannering, if I may give you a word of advice, and I feel I must: you are behaving in a way open to very unfavorable interpretations. If you go on in this manner you will soon be sunk quite below reproach. Young ladies of breeding do not employ vulgar expressions, or display such indelicacy of principle.”

“They don’t?” Miss Mannering appeared less dismayed by this accusation of boldness than intrigued.

“They don’t!” Edwina strove for self-control. In the most decidedly unequivocal terms she listed Miss Mannering’s various sins. A well-bred young lady would never pry, nor make vulgarly personal remarks, as Delilah had to Binnie; she would never treat a gentleman whom she’d just met with easy camaraderie, as she had Neal; she would never take the gross liberty of accusing a gentleman of inebriation. His Grace, Edwina pointed out sternly, was Miss Mannering’s guardian, and as such was due her unflagging respect and obedience.

“Even,” Delilah inquired doubtfully, “when he’s cast away?”

“Especially then! Don’t interrupt! A well-bred young lady, Miss Mannering, wouldn’t recognize if a gentleman
was
, er, in his cups!” Additionally, Edwina continued, while both Delilah and Binnie looked increasingly glum, a young lady should know nothing of the irregularities habitual to gentlemen, let alone speak of them. Nor would she encourage the pretensions of persons of lowly station, consequently being forced to protect her virtue by means of a frying pan. “But Sibyl can tell you more about that!” she concluded, as she rose. “You will excuse me; I must go lie down!”

In silence, the ladies watched her depart. Then they contemplated each other. “I can’t, you know,” said Binnie. “Tell you more about that. I have never been
in the position of repulsing a suitor with a frying pan.”

Delilah giggled. “I didn’t think that was what she meant. Does Miss Childe often talk such skimble-skamble stuff? She was evidently in a state of great perspiration. I expect she doesn’t like me very much.”

“My dear.” Binnie was simultaneously sorry for her newly acquired protégée and appalled by her. “I’m afraid, in spite of the unfortunate way she did so, that Edwina only spoke the truth.”

“Oh, I can perfectly see
that.”
Miss Mannering looked wise. “I know I must mend my tongue if I am to live in the highest style. I fear I must start from scratch, since I was only twelve when my mother ran away, but I
do
wish to learn how to go on properly. I am a quick study, I assure you! Already I have concluded that I must not be getting into scrapes, or telling Canterbury tales—or swear like ten thousand troopers, which I
can!—
or speak of such things as the shameful lewdness of the London streets at night.”

“That,” responded Binnie, rather faintly, “is very perspicacious, Miss Mannering.”

“Pooh! You must call me Delilah, since the task of my reformation has obviously fallen into your lap.” There was a worried expression on Miss Mannering’s face. “I promise I do not mean to be a charge on you, or to cause you to fret yourself to flinders, because I can see that something is already prying on your mind. And I’ll be hanged if I add to your anxiety! So if you will only tell me what is required, I will do it, upon the square! I mean, honestly!”

Only the greatest beast in nature could have remained unmoved by this earnest speech, which was delivered with such fervor that its utterer’s cheeks were pink; and Binnie was not impervious. Indeed, so charmed was Binnie by the sincerity of her protégée that she decided a gentle stroll around Brighton would not be amiss. Therefore she provided Miss Mannering with one of her bonnets, and an Indian shawl of worsted with a pine pattern; and accompanied at a discreet distance by a footman, the ladies set out. Caliban went with them, held firmly on a leash.

Delilah was delighted with all that she saw, from the city beaux who sported their carriages on the Downs and their persons on the Steine to the roof work of the Royal Stables and Riding Houses that had been completed a few years previously. The Stables, with their eighty-foot cupola, sixty-five feet high, she found especially memorable; although she was a little doubtful about the Moslem Indian style of architecture.

Delighted to have so appreciative a pupil, Miss Baskerville broadened their tour. Delilah was presented to Phoebe Hessel, who sold gingerbread and apples from a basket at her side, and who in her youth had served for five years as a soldier without discovery of her sex; and was privileged to view a scar on the old woman’s elbow, result of a bayonet wound. In very good spirits, the ladies then proceeded to the beach, there to observe the distant fishing fleet. The fleet sailed at sunset, explained Binnie, and returned laden with fish in the early morn. Awaiting their return would be the London fish-merchants. Providing one arose early enough, one could observe the fish being packed into carts for the market at Billingsgate.

Not by a muscle’s twitch did Delilah betray that she did not consider the viewing of cartloads of dead fish any particular treat. Determined to be conciliatory, Delilah explained in turn how one might catch a trout by tickling its fins. “Johann showed me,” she said, then looked guilty. “I should not have said that, since young ladies certainly can have nothing to do with tinkers in the ordinary way of things. Forgive me, please!”

Binnie contemplated her charge, whose cheeks again were pink, a circumstance that she put down to maidenly embarrassment. Blissfully unaware that Delilah blushed only when embarked upon devilment, Binnie considered the girl charmingly eager to please.

She also considered it a great pity that such youthful high spirits should be so peremptorily squelched. Abruptly, Binnie dismissed the footman.

After that young man presented to Delilah the leash that restrained her pet and took his reluctant leave—he was in the process of developing a severe case of calf love for the unpredictable Miss Mannering—Binnie turned to her charge. “I think that when we are private, we may speak without roundaboutation. I am not apt to be either shocked or take offense, and to be forever carefully choosing your words must be very wearying.”

Delilah gazed upon her benefactress as if she were an angel, and nobly refrained from admitting a yen for nude sea-bathing, and from speculation upon the gay doings of the girls in town with the lads from the nearby defense camps. Miss Mannering, alas, was nigh incorrigible. Still, she had determined—among other things—to straighten out the tangled lives of the residents of the Duke of Knowles’s home on the Royal Crescent, and this could hardly be accomplished if the household was set on its ear.

It amazed Delilah that people could acquire the habit of obeisance to a tyrannical personality. Miss Baskerville, especially, appeared to allow herself to be sadly manipulated. Delilah found in the situation a most salutary moral. Binnie was a high-minded lady, without a ha’porth of spirit—and how much less happy was she than Delilah, who was wild to a fault.

“My dear, what is it?” inquired Binnie, recipient of an contemplative stare. “Have I made it sound a dreadful task, this learning propriety? Truly, it will not be so dreadful.”

“Oh, no!” Delilah fed the remainder of her gingerbread to the faithful Caliban. “I was merely thinking about—things. I’ll catch the hang of it soon enough; you’ll see! Why, it was no time at all before I adapted to life in the tinkers’ camp.”

“You poor girl!” uttered Binnie.

“Why?” Delilah’s eyes were wide. “Except for Johann, it was all very interesting. I learned how to catch a chicken with a horsewhip—from a distance you flick the whip around the chicken’s neck and it can’t even squawk. I even know how to ring the changes—the tinkers’ word for it is
glad’herin.
You go into a shop and ask for change for a sovereign, then purchase some trifling article. Then you change your mind and bewilder the shopkeeper so that you can cheat him. No woman who cannot make ten shillings a day by
glad’herin
is fit to be a tinker’s wife.”

“Gracious God!” ejaculated Binnie. “Delilah, did you
wish to
marry that man?”

“Who?” Miss Mannering inquired blankly. “Oh, Johann! Of course not. Do you know how the tinkers marry, ma’am? They call it ‘jumping over the budget.’ The bride and groom hop over a string or some other symbolic thing—though what it’s symbolic of, I do not know!”

Miss Baskerville was not unaware that her delicate inquiry into the state of Delilah’s sentiments had been delicately turned aside. Binnie was familiar with the bemused expression that Delilah had briefly worn; though she had never glimpsed it in her own mirror, for which she was grateful, she had often enough seen it on the faces of females of her acquaintance. For a moment, Miss Mannering had looked very much like a young lady in love.

But with whom? Binnie pondered this profitless question as they strolled along the beach. She could not imagine that Delilah had, in her nomad existence of the past several years, encountered a gentleman even vaguely eligible. She could only hope that, in light of the girl’s extreme youth, any such fancy would quickly pass.

“Delilah,” she said abruptly. “You are, or will be, a very wealthy young lady. As such, you will come to the notice of people who are not so scrupulous as one might wish. If someone should urge you to do something that you do not feel is right—such as an elopement, or a situation that might leave you compromised—I beg that you will come and tell me.”