Free Maggie MacKeever by An Eligible Connection Page B

with so contumacious a female. She’s turned you down again? Consider that you have had yet another hairsbreadth escape!”
    Demonstrably the duke was in a temper; he did not often venture so very far beyond the bounds of common courtesy. So Mark dared observe. He also stated his own curiosity as to what had prompted his old friend’s descent from rudeness to outright affront. Since Mark’s own sense of ill-usage had grown apace with each word, he then expressed extreme displeasure that the duke should have dared imply that the lovely Miss Baskerville was an old-cattish antidote, and issued an invitation to meet with pistols at dawn.
    Sandor could not explain the source of his discontent, being unaware of it, and he had no desire to rise from his bed so early to engage in a duel with his oldest friend. He let the challenge pass. “What maggot have you taken into your head?” he inquired, not unkindly. “I didn’t say Sibyl was bracket-faced; you did. I only said she was a hornet.”
    Mark was not assuaged. He was seriously angry with the duke for abusing his cousin. He said so, heatedly. He also said that Miss Baskerville was first-rate, the very woman calculated to suit his taste.
    His Grace took leave to wonder, privately, what caused Mark to think that, in his long-standing feud with his cousin, it was he who offered the greatest abuse. As he recalled it, Binnie had had his head for washing far more often than he’d had hers.
    Obviously it was midsummer moon with Mark. Romance again! thought the duke, with profound distaste. A cursed nuisance was this love, which turned the most amiable men touchy and difficult and prone to romantical high flights.
    “I know my cousin is lovely,” he said, with an effort at restoring the peace. “You don’t have to tell me that.” He was then inspired by an innate impatience to undo his good efforts. “A pity her personality isn’t as pleasing as her person! If you recall, I told you she’d send you to the rightabout.”
    So Sandor had. Since he had also told his friend that by rejection he would be blessed, Mark had not especially appreciated the advice. “This dislike in which you have taken Miss Baskerville,” he uttered wrathfully, “is unspeakably odious. She is—”
    “Lay all these bristles!” snapped the duke. “I believe I may know even better than yourself what my cousin is and is not. For the record, it is not Sibyl I dislike, but her manners. If you want her, you may have her, with my blessing! Moreover, you would be doing me the greatest of favors if you would sweep her off her feet and out of my house! Shall I forbid her to marry you? Because you may be certain that if I did, she would!”
    Briefly, Mark contemplated this ignoble manipulation of his beloved’s habit of running counter to the wishes of her cousin the duke. Reluctantly, he pushed temptation aside. “I congratulate you, Mark,” said His Grace, who had been observing his friend’s expressive features sardonically. “You are ever honorable.”
    If hostilities were not to be resumed, Mr. Dennison decided, the subject of his beloved had best be set aside. “You are not without honor yourself. Witness the example of Miss Mannering.”
    Sandor quirked an arrogant golden brow. “It is ever your habit to attribute to others a nobility of character that only you possess. Acquit yourself of the notion that my interest in Miss Mannering is at all honorable.”
    “No?” inquired Mark, as the gentlemen proceeded back along the passage to the supper rooms. “You lust after her fortune, I suppose.”
    “Dear Mark,” murmured the duke, as his pained gaze rested upon great panels of lacquer, red and black and gold, before which sat gilded and silvered sofas with dragon motifs. “You know me so well.”
    Further conversation was nigh impossible, due to the very loud music provided by the regent’s German band in an adjoining room. The effect was deafening to all but the prince, whose habit it