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“No, Maidie, don’t answer him!”
On the point of responding with a resurgence of heat, Maidie looked at Lady Hester and thought better of it. Beyond casting Delagarde a brooding glance, she refrained from adding fuel to the flames.
“That’s better,” approved Lady Hester. “You have said quite enough, Laurie. Now, let it be. I shall keep the child here for a moment or two, so she may have an opportunity to cool before reappearing in company.”
Delagarde hesitated. He was still smouldering, but his aunt’s words had recalled him to the impropriety of engaging in any further argument at a function such as this.
“Very well, do as you please. I wash my hands of it. And if she is quartered on us forever, don’t blame me!”
“I wish I could think he meant it, but I fear there is little hope of him washing his hands of you,” Lady Hester said, laughing, once Delagarde had gone.
The Viscount had every intention of doing so, but he found it to be more problematic than he had bargained for. To begin with, it was extremely difficult to concentrate on anything anyone said to him when his attention obstinately held on the question of what Maidie might be doing. Impossible not to cast furtive looks about to check where she was in the room, and he could not help sighing with relief when he noted Aunt Hes was still at her side. This state of affairs was conducive neither to his peace of mind, nor to his relationship with his intimates.
“What ails you, Laurie?” demanded his friend, Mr Everett Corringham, a gentleman much of the Viscount’s age, but lacking his elegance. “You have answered me at random no less than three times.”
His companion, a mischievous buck with a roving eye, let out a crack of rude laughter. “Thinking of this waif he has adopted, I’ll lay my life!”
“She is no waif, Peter. Nor have I adopted her. I am merely her sponsor.”
“A new come-out for you, dear boy, to be sponsoring young females,” pursued Lord Riseley, twinkling at him.
“No,” agreed Corringham. “He usually avoids them like the plague. Too many matchmakers in tow.”
“Take care you don’t find yourself riveted before too long, my boy,” teased Riseley.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Delagarde, all but shuddering at the suggestion. “Lady Mary and I don’t deal together. As for sponsoring her, I had no choice in the matter, for it was my mother’s doing a good many years ago. Besides, it is my aunt who is in charge of her.”
“From what I hear,” returned his friend, “your aunt was not the one who gave the girl a raking for standing up to the Rankmiston tabby.”
“Devil take it, is that story doing the rounds?”
“You couldn’t expect it not to, old fellow,” said Corringham reasonably. “Don’t think it’s done your little gingerhead a mite of harm.”
“You don’t?”
“Can’t think of many who wouldn’t want to see the Rankmiston receive a set down.”
“Yes, but it won’t do. And she’s not my little gingerhead!”
Riseley grinned. “She told the Rankmiston she owed her hair to one of Henry the Eighth’s bastards.”
“Good God! What next will she say?”
“Where did she get that head? Astonishing colour.”
“She got it, Everett, from the man Lady Rankmiston stigmatised as a lunatic.”
“And was he?” asked Riseley irrepressibly.
“How the deuce should I know? I didn’t know the fellow. He was evidently eccentric, but Maidie thought the world of him.”
“Who’s Maidie?”
“Lady Mary, you fool! It’s what he called her.”
“Oh. Well, if I were you, dear boy, I should shab off as fast as I could. You don’t want to be leg-shackled to a female who is ripe for Bedlam.”
Delagarde groaned. “Peter, I keep telling you—”
