Page 1 of Miss Delightful
Chapter One
“That is a baby.” Alasdhair MacKay stood back lest the woman holding the infant knock him flat as she sailed over the threshold into his foyer.
“Indeed, Major MacKay. How astute you are.”
“Formermajor.” Alasdhair closed the door because the day was chilly and babies were fragile. Also because this situation needed no witnesses among the nosy neighbors. “And who might you be?”
He turned his signature commanding-officer glower on the woman and allowed his burr to deepen to the consistency of a growl. He did not so much as glance at the wee child in her arms.
“Miss Dorcas Delancey.” She dipped a curtsey, baby and all. “This good fellow appears to be your son, so I will leave him with you—”
“He is not my son.” Of that Alasdhair was emphatically sure.
She turned serious gray-green eyes from Alasdhair to the baby and back again. “Perhaps not your legitimate son, but there is a certain—”
“That child is not my son, and you and I have not been introduced, Miss Delancey.” Alasdhair would recall an introduction to such a woman. She wore propriety like a Sunday cloak and could probably deliver whole sermons on mankind’s fallenness.
She was no classic beauty, from eyes that were neither slate nor emerald, to hair that aspired to auburn but stopped just past dark brown. Her features were elegant, though any emotion in them was held in check by an air of brisk detachment.
She would be difficult to shock, and even harder to impress.
As was Alasdhair, did she but know it.
“You recall your activities from well over a year ago?” she asked. “The child is a good six months or thereabouts. He’s beginning to teethe, you see, and that is a good thing. The landlady heard him yelling and realized his mama was not with him. He was having rather a bad time of it.”
A coldness assailed Alasdhair, the same coldness that had come over him in battle. His body would function with heightened efficiency, his mind would leap along paths of strategy and intuition, while his heart turned to granite.
But there was no battle here. No enemy. Only this demurely dressed female with her drawing-room English and earnest gaze, along with that… that bundle of trouble.
“I am sorry for the lad’s misfortune, but he is not my son.”
“He is still your responsibility.” She unfurled the wordresponsibilitylike a pristine banner of righteous certainty. “Melanie Fairchild named you as his guardian, and as she is no longer extant, and her will is quite clear, that makes you—”
“What?” The coldness had never made Alasdhair light-headed before. “I saw her just last week. She was in excellent health.” She’d been quiet when last Alasdhair had called on her, perhaps tired. Only that. “She cannot be dead.”
“I am sorry,” Miss Delancey said. “You cared for her.”
“Of course I cared for her.” Alasdhair cared for them all, fool that he was. “She had come so far, against such odds. She had a cousin or auntie who was helping her, though the rest of her family is a worthless pack of pious hypocrites. She doted on that baby, went on and on about him.”
What a smart lad he was, how merry, what a good sleeper. Melanie had rhapsodized about one tiny infant and foreseen a great future for him, despite his mother’s scandalous circumstances.
“I apologize for being the bearer of sad tidings, Major, but you will have young John here to console you.”
“No, I will not.”
The baby gurgled, a happy sound accompanied by a tiny fist flailing in the direction of Miss Delancey’s not-quite-dainty nose.
“Might we continue this discussion somewhere warmer, Major MacKay?”
“Plain MacKay will do.” Manners required that Alasdhair take the lady’s burden from her, but he could not. “This way.”
He led her through a town house that was more of a roofed campsite than a dwelling. London was not his home, God be thanked, but he bided here in cold weather and had cousins here. No siblings in Town, and certainly not a son.
“My study,” Alasdhair said, opening the door reluctantly. “My guest parlor is unheated.” Equally important, the guest parlor had windows visible from the street, and the draperies on those windows were tied back, the better to display Alasdhair’s social life to any passerby.
Fortunately, he had no social life.
Based on the lady’s merino wool cloak, matching blue gloves, and nacre buttons, she was one of those women who thrived on going from friend to friend, collecting gossip. She would expect a tea tray. Where were her chaperone, lady’s maid, and footmen, for that matter?
