Miss Delightful by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781952443541
Publisher: Grace Burrowes Publishing

* * *

This concludes your free sample excerpt of Miss Delightful, book two in the Mischief in Mayfair series!

Miss Delightful

Chapter Eleven

“That is a baby.” Alasdhair MacKay stood back lest the infant or the woman holding it touch him as she sailed over the threshold into his foyer.

“How astute you are, Colonel MacKay.”

“Mister Mackay will do.” Formerly of His Majesty’s army. 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 office 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 bundle in her arms, one glimpse of a cherubic pink face being more than enough.

“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.”

She turned earnest gray-green eyes from Alasdhair to the baby and back again. “Perhaps not your legitimate son, but there is a certain—”

“Newborns of native British stock all have blue eyes. That child is not my son, and you and I have not been introduced Miss Delancey.” He would recall an introduction to a such a woman. She exuded propriety and decorum, could doubtless deliver whole sermons on divine plans and mankind’s fallenness.

So could Alasdhair, did she but know it. So could any soldier fortunate enough to return from the wars.

“He’s not a newborn,” she said. “The child is a good six months or thereabouts. He’s beginning to teeth, 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 froze into granite.

But there was no battle here. No enemy. Only this well dressed female with her drawing room English and earnest gaze, and 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 word responsibility like a pristine banner of righteous certainty. “Melanie Fairchild named you as his guardian, and as she is on 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 great good health.” Melanie, like so many of the women offering themselves on London’s streets, had been a good girl once, the kind to suffer terribly when deemed no longer worthy of that appellation. 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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.