Maggie MacKeever Read Free Page B

thought merely that Edwina and Neal deserved to suffer for the sin of being spiritless. His Grace, it becomes apparent, was a man impossible to please.
    Binnie, who had from experience learned to read the expressions that flickered across the duke’s attractive countenance—for the duke’s countenance was a direct proof of the adage that beauty is only skin deep— awaited his next remark with no small suspense. She was not disappointed. “How can I do other than offer the girl a home?” he said, in a noble manner that Binnie found sickening. “The poor child has no living relatives of any close degree. I can hardly leave her with a band of tinkers, especially when Mannering charged me to look after her. Beside,” he added, quite ruining his selfless performance, “I’m already encumbered with the lot of you; what matters one more?”
    A brief silence greeted this ungentlemanly remark. Binnie, who might have responded in a manner calculated to take the wind out of His Grace’s sails and simultaneously send him into a thunderous rage, was occupied in keeping her brother from reacting similarly, an act accomplished by kicking his shin. What Sandor said was true enough; they were dependent upon him and would be for three more years, until Neal came into his own inheritance, on which happy day the Baskervilles would be privileged to bid the duke go and be damned.
    Edwina, who could not anticipate a similar release from Sandor’s ill-tempered dominion, choked on the apricot tart that had turned into a sodden, tasteless lump in her mouth. “Tea!” she said thickly. “Tea is very refreshing when one is in trouble. Pray let us have some!”
    “If you wish to curdle your insides with that stuff, do so; but don’t try and inflict it on the rest of us.” Sandor had missed none of the byplay, including the pained expression on Neal’s face as Binnie’s shoe had connected with his shin, and was as a result regaining a degree of good humor—or humor as good as was possible for him. “How much trouble can be caused by a mere dab of a girl, even if she is—and she sounds to be—a pernicious brat? Don’t distress yourself, Edwina! Binnie will look after her.”
    “To be sure I shall!” said that lady cheerfully. “I shall exert myself to bring her into fashion. In truth, I must consider this a piece of astonishingly good fortune. ‘Twill be an excellent way to prevent myself falling into a lethargy.”
    Sandor was not pleased that his deliberate provocation should be met with smiles and sweet good humor; he scowled.
    Binnie patted his hand. “Give it up, cousin! I shan’t allow you to stir coals. You are certain in your own mind that this Delilah is who she claims to be?”
    The duke jerked away his hand, and rose. “I am. Neal, you will find the chit and bring her here. Tomorrow.”
    Neal, who had been sorely regretting his decision to dine en famille instead of in the officers’ mess, roused from his abstraction. “Tomorrow I cannot. I am otherwise engaged.”
    “Then break the engagement!” advised the duke, callously. “If you don’t show some independence now, you’ll live forever under the cat’s paw.” He looked at Binnie, who was fiddling with her fork. “Even more so than you do now.”
    Binnie glanced up at her cousin and smiled. In a very nasty temper, the duke strode from the room.
    He was a damnably attractive man, she thought, with his golden hair, his arrogant sun-bronzed features, his chill blue eyes; and his athletic figure showed to good advantage in evening dress. Had Sandor not been totally deficient in all the graces, he would have been nigh irresistible. Despite his various inadequacies, many women had found him so, current among them the dazzling Phaedra, who had held Sandor’s erratic attention longer than most. Doubtless Sandor was even then en route to an assignation with the lady, after which he would perhaps adjourn to the theater, then pass half the night at the gaming