Maggie MacKeever Read Free

and a charcoal stub. Athalia could not read, but she could trace letters as well as anyone. A queer coincidence, surely, that the characters on Delilah’s letter were also engraved in the golden wedding ring? Her task accomplished after monumental labor, Athalia once more set out across the field. ‘It is easier to milk a cow that stands still.’  Athalia was very curious about what sort of trickery was being set in train. 
    As were certain other individuals, almost a week later, although those other individuals lacked Athalia’s appreciation of Delilah’s enterprise. It was the dinner hour in the elegant Brighton residence of the Duke of Knowles, an hour anticipated with no great pleasure by any member of the duke’s family, all of whom were present in the pretty dining room, which had been done in the Classical manner with fine stucco decorations.
    Said family, which was currently grouped around a brilliantly polished mahogany table that stood upon pillars and claws with brass casters, numbered three. Seated at the duke’s left hand was his cousin Edwina Childe. A woman in her fifth decade, Edwina’s manner suggested a girl half that age. Her hair was an improbable shade of yellow, her eyes a trifle too close-set, her features and figure gaunt from constant dieting. On this particular occasion, which would go down in the annals of family history as even more-than-usually memorable, she wore a lovely and totally unsuitable gown of sea-green.
    In direct contrast to Edwina’s beribboned and beruffled finery was the attire of the lady seated to the duke’s right. Her evening gown was of pale yellow muslin, its only claim to high fashion its Mameluke sleeves. Nor did the gown’s owner aspire to modality, though she possessed stunning amber eyes and an abundance of lovely chestnut-colored hair.
    The hair was currently drawn back into a severely unflattering style; and the golden eyes expressionless. Even so, there were those who appreciated Sibyl Baskerville’s understated beauty and quietly ironic demeanor. Her cousin the duke, who was not among that number, had often taken leave to wonder, aloud, why she should have left so many hopeful suitors languishing on the vine while she pursued a determination to remain unwed. Spinsters who had achieved the advanced age of twenty-seven, he stated, could not afford to be so very particular in their preferences—unless they did not mind the embarrassment of being firmly on the shelf. To these taunts, Binnie always responded with her habitual goodwill: preferable to marriage with a man whom she could not love was leading apes in hell—or, which was much the same, an existence in which she served as the duke’s unacknowledged housekeeper. As usual in such confrontations, the duke was left with no adequate response, a fact that did not in any way prevent him from continuing to vent his spleen.
    Seated next to Binnie, contemplating a sideboard table rather as if it were his own coffin complete with lions’ heads carved in the mahogany, was her brother Neal. A young man of twenty-two, clad in the dashing evening regimentals of the Tenth Dragoons, Neal resembled his sister to a startling degree; but where Binnie was so self-effacing as to appear almost colorless, Neal was astonishingly handsome. His chestnut hair was not cropped so short that it failed to curl, his amber eyes were most often merry and warm and sincere.
    Those eyes held no such expression now, as they gazed upon the duke, nor did the eyes of Binnie or Edwina. All three members of the duke’s retinue stared at him blankly. As usual, Binnie was the first to speak. “Good gracious, Sandor!” she murmured serenely. “Bits o’ muslin, high flights— have you been into the port?”
    The duke turned his cold blue attention on Binnie, without appreciation of the temerity that had prompted her to speech. Blandly, she met his regard. The duke repressed an impulse to swear, not from consideration for the delicate