Loretta Chase - The Devil's Delilah (12 page)

She stomped down the path until she came to a wrought iron bench placed conveniently in a shady corner. Muttering imprecations upon Mr. Langdon and occasionally — when she remembered — Lord Berne, Delilah flung herself onto the seat and fell into a sulk.

She had been thus amusing herself for about ten minutes when her maid appeared bearing a letter, as well as a lengthy recitation of her trials and tribulations, the letter being the most recent affront to Joan's dignity. She did not see why a lady's maid must act as messenger when there were plenty of footmen lazing about the house, gaping and gawking the livelong day for want of anything to do. Her ill-tempered mistress only added to these injuries by curtly dismissing her.

While Joan marched back to the house in high dudgeon, Miss Desmond was eagerly tearing open the letter. She quickly scanned the bold, black lines, then, with her first genuine smile in at least three days, sat back to read again more slowly.

When she had finished savouring Lord Berne's lyric prose for the tenth time, Delilah made for the house, to acquaint her father with this latest, most promising development on the rut-ridden road to matrimony.

She found him in the late Lord Potterby's study, perusing an epistle of his own and grinning. "Ah, there you are," said he. "I was intending to come out to share this with you but you've spared my aged body that labour. What do you think, Delilah? We have yet another publisher who wishes to become my bosom-bow — and at twice the price."

He handed the letter to his daughter, whose joyous countenance reverted to its previous gloom while she read.

"This is dreadful, Papa," she said when she was done. "I thought Mr. Atkins assured us of secrecy. How on earth did this man learn of your memoirs?"

"Easy enough," said the parent with a shrug. "I daresay one of Atkins's clerks has a passion for listening at keyholes and a loose tongue. An unfortunate combination, but one prevalent, I fear, in every class of society."

"Indeed. I expect all of London knows by now."

"If that were the case, I should receive a great many more offers than this. Rest easy, my dear. Businessmen are always spying upon one another and they are not above paying their rivals' employees for useful tidbits."

Delilah could not rest easy. She began pacing frantically, her skirts whirling about her in a manner which would have sent her great-aunt into paroxysms. Fortunately, the only observer at the moment was her papa.

"Yes, my love," he said. "I am certain you have inherited your legs from your mama, but I hope you will be cautious about revealing that circumstance beyond our small family circle."

Miss Desmond dutifully threw herself into a chair. "Thank you for the reminder, Papa. Aunt Millicent has told me a hundred times to move with more decorum. But it will scarcely matter whether I lift my skirts and run howling through the village if we do not silence this horrid man."

"Silence him? But my dear, he offers double what Atkins did. If I accept, I might repay our nervous friend and commence a less tiresome relationship with his colleague. Although I must say," he added, "Atkins has astonished me by keeping away this whole week. I wonder if he's returned to London?"

Delilah had no time for wonderings. The crisis at the moment was this letter. It must be dealt with. If her papa accepted the offer, she might as well go back to Scotland to her mama. She could not endure any more anxiety.

"What on earth is there to be anxious about?" her father asked mildly. "My memoirs are safely entombed. Another few weeks of rain and they will have rotted away. Or is it your elusive golden prince who troubles you? You should not be cast down, my dear. Reformation is a most wearisome enterprise, particularly for fickle young libertines. You cannot be surprised that after an eternity of five whole days he has altogether forgotten your existence."

"Oh, has he?" was the arch response. "Then I wonder why he writes so desolately of missing me." Delilah bounced up from her chair to wave Lord Berne's letter triumphantly in her father's face.

Mr. Desmond smiled. "Has he, indeed?" He took the letter and skimmed it. "Defy his parents… his life heretofore a shallow mockery… nothing but this pernicious accident could have kept him away. Good heavens," he said, looking up. "His courage and resolution take my breath away."

Whether he was breathless or not, Delilah told her parent, he must wrench his mind from Lord Berne for the moment and fix it on this new publisher, who must, she averred, be answered immediately.

"You must tell him he is mistaken, Papa. Tell him the memoirs do not exist. If you do not, the rumours will be all over London in another week and I will not dare show my face there until I am as old as Aunt Millicent."

Her papa sighed and declared his only wish, of course, was to cater to her every whim, regardless how silly. He obediently took up his pen and wrote as his adamant child dictated. When the letter was sealed up, the two departed for Rossingley. Nothing would do, certainly, but to post it themselves, forthwith.

Lord Streetham had reached an unhappy conclusion. Desmond's daughter was far more wily than the earl had imagined. Whatever favours Tony might eventually obtain from her, the manuscript was not one of them. Having admitted his error — a painful enough exercise — the earl must now face an even more disagreeable fact. There were only two ways left to get the manuscript away from Desmond. One was to steal it, which was now not only impossibly difficult but exceedingly risky. The other was to buy it, which was demeaning and expensive. On the whole, Lord Streetham thought he'd rather swallow his pride than risk swallowing a much harder object — like the end of Desmond's sword.

No man had ever run afoul of the Devil and emerged from the experience intact. Lord Gartwaite's jaw had been so severely dislocated that he'd been subsisting for the past twenty years on gruel. Billings was mouldering in the family crypt because he'd made an ill-chosen remark about the former Angelica Ornesby. Even the Devil's own brother had walked with a limp ever since attempting to cheat the Devil of the few trinkets left in their father's will to the younger son.

These represented the smallest fraction of gentlemen who had at one time or another taxed Devil Desmond's patience too far. The curst fellow always found out somehow what was said or attempted behind his back.

Lord Streetham gave a superstitious shudder as he turned his carriage through the gates of Elm-hurst, then shrugged off the sensation. Desmond could not have known his belongings had been searched at Streetham Close, or he'd have given his host a most unpleasant time of it. The man did not have eyes in the back of his head, regardless what others believed.

Having steeled himself for a humiliating interview, Lord Streetham was both relieved and frustrated to learn, shortly after he met his hostess, that Mr. Desmond and his daughter had driven into Rossingley. The earl was relieved enough to wish to return home immediately, his purse and dignity still intact, but that would only mean he must repeat the same unpleasant journey Lady Potterby was at the moment commiserating with him about.

"Such unusual heat we have had, My Lord," she said as she led him into the drawing room. "So oppressive. We are sadly behind in our baking because the dough will not rise properly. Even when it does, who is to do anything with it, with the kitchen hot enough to bake bricks and the staff collapsing into the soup kettle?"

Lord Streetham agreed that the weather had been most un-English of late. Even the rain was far more like that of India in the monsoon season.

"Whatever it is, it cannot be like Greece," said Lady Potterby. "Those seedlings my grand-niece and Mr. Langdon planted are half of them dead already. Indeed, I do wonder they made such an experiment. Surely Mr. Langdon knows ours is not a Mediterranean climate. Jenkins is most distressed," she added, shaking her head. "But what could he do? They were so eager to test one of the theories in that lovely volume you so generously gave Mr. Langdon."

Lord Streetham had prepared himself to endure Lady Potterby's endless prosing for hours, if necessary, and had assumed the same state of half-attention he usually accorded his wife. He could not help wondering, however, why two young persons of the upper class (Miss Desmond was at least technically a member) should be labouring over seedlings. Why hadn't they left it to the gardening staff, who were paid to make themselves hot and dirty? Or was Miss Desmond's planting merely some needlessly laborious pretext for taking advantage of a naive young man?

"I'm afraid I am not familiar with the book's contents — which does not surprise me," said the earl. "My collection is so extensive and the demands on my time so great. Yet I supposed Mr. Langdon's interest was purely academic. After all, did not the ancients place great reliance upon conjunctions of certain planets and sacrifices to their pagan deities? Hardly the sort of theories to put to scientific experiment, I should think."

Though he spoke casually, Lord Streetham's mind was working at full speed. The massive tome Jack had clutched… the panicked look he'd darted at Desmond. The pages themselves… something odd… not thick and rough-edged — because, perhaps, they had never required to be cut?

Lady Potterby sighed. "I do not know what Mr. Langdon was thinking — who ever does? But he was a perfect sight when he came in to tea. Lord Rossing said he put him in mind of the grave-diggers in
Hamlet
, and asked whether they'd unearthed poor Yorick's skull." She did not notice the earl's slight start. "Delilah's maid declares she will never be able to remove the stains from that frock. How odd," Lady Potterby added, glancing toward the corner windows, her brow knit. "Now I think of it, I do not recall seeing the book again. Dear me, I hope Mr. Langdon did not leave it in the garden. He is dreadfully absent-minded, you know."

Lord Streetham too looked towards the window, though what he perceived was in his mind's eye — the stunning reality of what had occurred.

It had been Desmond's book contained in that elaborate binding, and the earl himself had given it to Jack. Then Jack, so easily manipulated, had done the Devil's bidding and buried it — there, just a few steps away, in the garden.

Not the slightest flicker of excitement was visible in his lordship's countenance, however, as he turned back to his hostess to agree in a good-natured, avuncular way that Jack was indeed absent-minded.

"We are still collecting articles that he left behind, poor fellow," he said with a small smile. "When his valet is not with him, one can only pray he will not present himself at dinner in his nightshirt. Very likely he did forget the book, and one day he will appear upon your doorstep, flustered and embarrassed, looking for it."

"One day!" cried Lady Potterby. "In the middle of February, no doubt. Good heavens, that fine volume might be lying in the dirt yet — and we have had two storms since Friday. I had better send one of the servants to look."

Lord Streetham rose. "No need for that. You've made me most curious about his experiment. If you don't mind, I'd like to have a look myself."

They went out to the garden, where they found the plants, as Lady Potterby had predicted, in various stages of decline. The book, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Lord Streetham stared hard at the woebegone flower bed. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "I wouldn't put it past the lad to have inadvertently buried the book in the process of turning the soil."

"Buried it! Good heavens, he could not be so muddled as that — and with Delilah by. Surely she would have noticed."

"If Jack was declaiming on Greek wisdom, she very likely had given all her concentration to follow his discourse," said the earl smoothly. "I think I had better find a spade."

Less than an hour later, Lord Streetham was once more upon the road. A thick tome, its cover damp and dirty, lay at his feet. One quick glance at the contents had been sufficient to assure him of what he'd found.

Obtaining possession of the volume had been simple enough. He'd insisted upon doing the digging himself, because it would never do for the gardening staff to know of Mr. Langdon's folly. Then the earl had only to express the charitable wish to have the book repaired secretly, to spare Jack embarrassment. Lord Streetham had solemnly assured Lady Potterby the restored volume would be discreetly returned to the young man. All they had to do was keep the matter to themselves. After all, Jack was a very good fellow, and absent-mindedness was a trivial flaw in the great scheme of things, was it not?

Lady Potterby, properly impressed by this show of magnanimity, had yielded up the book without argument.

While his father was returning home with his ill-gotten goods, Lord Berne was gazing discontentedly in the general direction of France. To soothe his troubled soul, he compared his beloved's hair to a waterfall of black pearls, her ears to shells, her lips to pink oysters, and her eyes to the rolling ocean. He made a mental note to jot down these revelations for future use as soon as he returned to his lodgings.

He gazed with lackluster eyes upon a fancy bit of muslin who smiled encouragingly as she passed. He looked away towards the ocean once more and sighed heavily. These activities being not quite so productive as when performed for an audience, he resolved to leave for home first thing tomorrow.

Lord Streetham closed the cover of the book and smiled at the soiled binding.

The references to himself were so easily amended that it was foolish to destroy the manuscript, as he had in certain panicked moments thought of doing. The book would take England by storm, just as Atkins had insisted. The lively adventures, the impudent, witty style, together with the occasional scandalous revelation, guaranteed tremendous popular success. There might be lawsuits, but the profits could easily absorb the legal costs — and since Desmond had taken care to show Prinny and his siblings in a favourable, indulgently humourous light, there was small likelihood of sedition charges from that quarter.

At any rate, being the largest shareholder of the firm, Lord Streetham had a right to make the occasional correction. Even Desmond must admit as much — if, that is, he ever got wind of the matter.