Elisabeth Kidd (2 page)

“She may or she may not,’’ Vanessa said. “Our curiosity will be satisfied in the morning. In the meanwhile, may we not drop this subject of conversation? Drew, I appeal to you. No one interests me more than this mysterious Sydney person, but I cannot talk all evening of a subject with which I am not acquainted.’’

“Forgive me, Vanessa,” Lyle held out a hand for hers, which he raised to his lips. “I forget that you are not, like the majority of your sex, happiest when indulging in speculation about precisely those of whom you know nothing.’’

Vanessa accepted the compliment with her usual grace, but then found herself somewhat constricted in her choice of alternative subjects of conversation, the chief topics in London salons at that time being precisely such gossip—about the old king’s deteriorating state of health, Princess Caroline’s outrageous behaviour, and the newest royal pregnancy—that of the Duchess of Kent, whose royal brothers-in-law had been racing one another, since the death of the Regent’s daughter Princess Charlotte in childbirth sixteen months previously, to produce a legitimate heir to the throne.

Vanessa settled at last upon her own plans to tour Italy in the spring, a subject neither so dull as Mr. Wordsworth’s latest poem—about which, if truth be told, she knew almost nothing—nor so uninteresting to Lyle as such voyages generally are to those not making them, for he had recently spent several months there very much to his taste. This was, indeed, Lady Romney’s reason for going herself; she wanted to have it in common with him.

Vanessa no more than Lyle wondered why he had not asked her to marry him. They had known each other forever, it seemed—or at least since before Vanessa’s marriage to Sir Giles Romney, an elderly but gentle knight who had pursued her with a devotion she had at last found touching enough to acknowledge. Besides, Andrew Innes had just then entered the army, and she did not think his prospects good enough to wait for; she frankly admitted now that she had been mistaken, but at nineteen she had not been so perceptive. It was a pity it had taken her so long to learn her lesson, but at least she had learned patience too. Drew would come around; he was almost there now. While she was in Italy, Vanessa thought, he would make up his mind to do it. Vanessa firmly believed in the warming effect of absence on the heart.

It was now nearly midnight; supper had been served and dispatched—thanks largely to Cedric’s unerring appetite. The candles were beginning to sputter, and a little of the rawness of the March night was creeping in around the heavy velvet draperies over the library windows, when Lyle’s remembrances and Vanessa’s anticipation of Fiesole on sunny Sunday afternoons were interrupted by a clamourous banging on the outside door. It was loud enough to raise Cedric from the doze he had dropped into a few moments before.

“Eh? What’s that?”

“We appear to be under attack,” Lyle remarked with no great concern. “I hear Sergeant Murray leaping to the fray, however. Doubtless he will send the intruder smartly about his business.”

But the intruder did not go away, and the noise did not abate, but became louder, apparently in the wake of the unknown cause of it, which was proceeding up the staircase towards them.

Cedric’s eyebrows rose a full half-inch. Vanessa’s lovely profile turned towards the door, but it was Lyle who caught the alarmed expression on Murray’s schooled countenance when he opened the door and, holding it half-closed behind him, as if holding back a flood, announced, “Miss Archer, my lord!’’

He let the floodgate open, and in came a vision in a mud-spattered drab cloak, which looked as though she had borrowed it from a groom, and from which the hood had been flung back to reveal a pale, heart-shaped face, a tangled mane of thick black hair, and eyes blazing with anger. They raked the assembled company like gunfire. Only Lyle among them noticed their colour—an exceptionally deep blue, much like a lapis brooch his grandmother had once worn. He smiled at the irrelevancy of the thought.

Sydney Archer drew a sharp breath and stopped short at the edge of the library carpet. She had, within the space of a few minutes, come down from the saddle of an extremely balky borrowed horse, through a forbiddingly splendid entrance hall, and finally into a contrastingly cozy and well-heated library. This accumulation of sensations had a powerful effect on her precarious temper, which the sight of three elegantly dressed people who had obviously been excessively comfortable all the time she had been stumbling along a rough road to reach them did nothing to improve.

She guessed immediately from his proprietorial posture that the slim dark man who had risen first and now regarded her with an odd sort of intentness and a provoking half-smile was the Marquess of Lyle. Sydney thought he looked cold and unapproachable. She felt rather more capable of dealing with the younger man by the fireplace, whose expression, if somewhat foolish, was at least amiable. However, she had no notion of who he might be, nor of the identity of the haughty-looking lady on the chaise longue.

Suddenly aware of her own rather plain and by now considerably bedraggled attire, and feeling her up-to-now valiant determination to make a good account of herself beginning to falter, she grasped quickly at her only defense—which was rag-mannered but effective. She marched directly up to the unapproachable Marquess and held out her hand.

“My lord, I am much amazed to find you at home this evening!”

Apparently not in the least put out by this impudence, Lyle disregarded Sydney’s outstretched hand and answered calmly, “I do not know why you should be so, Miss Archer. I am naturally at home in the evening, when I am expecting to welcome a guest in the morning.’’

“In the—?” Sydney moved back a step and relaxed her defensive posture somewhat. “Did you not then receive my uncle’s letter—sir?”

“I received a letter last month telling me you were to honour my house with a visit, certainly.’’

“But not—not the one asking that someone meet me at the Friar’s Head in Arundel this evening?”

“I regret not. Is that perhaps where your baggage and your—ah, your abigail are now?”

“My abigail?” Sydney gave herself to thought for a moment, as if she had never heard of the convention of genteel young ladies having personal maids. “Oh, yes. Daisy and Hitchin are waiting there—I beg your pardon, my lord, I’m sure, but—’’

Struck by a particularly alarming thought, she exclaimed suddenly, “I know what has happened! Uncle Augustus forgot to post the letter. Well, if that isn’t just like him!’’

She stamped her foot in exasperation, causing Lady Romney to widen her eyes at her brother. Cedric, amused, only smiled. Miss Archer, the wind taken out of her sails, glared balefully at the Marquess, who stared back and then rang for Murray. This worthy, having been waiting expectantly just outside the door, responded to his master’s summons with alacrity.

“Murray, be so good as to send someone down to the Friar’s Head for Miss Archer’s servants and their luggage.’’

“Now,
my lord?”

“Don’t be impertinent. I am requesting it of you now, am I not? And ask Mrs. Collins to prepare Miss Archer’s room.’’

“Oh, no!” Sydney interrupted, impulsively putting one hand on Lyle’s arm, as if thus to stop him. “Please let no one be put to any trouble on my account! I can wait on myself perfectly well.”

“I have no doubt of it,” he said, gazing in mild astonishment at the hand on his sleeve, until Sydney snatched it back again. She could not have said when Lyle’s mood changed, but he was obviously no longer in an indulgent humour.

“Things are not done that way in this household, Miss Archer,” he informed her, “and since both your father and your uncle have requested me to instruct you how to get on in polite society, we may as well begin at once, don’t you think? Which brings me, however belatedly, to presenting you to Lady Romney and Mr. Cedric Maitland, my—ah, my
other
guests.”

Vanessa assumed a gracious yet dignified demeanour, and her lips parted to say something suitably welcoming to Lyle’s unorthodox charge, but the words were startled out of her when Sydney, apparently forgetting her sex in remembering her manners, reached out a hand to shake Lady Romney’s. That lady was so taken aback that she could only respond in kind, touching Sydney’s fingers lightly with her own and murmuring, “How do you do.”

Cedric, however, leapt to the occasion and, taking Sydney’s hand firmly in his own, he raised it to his lips and, with a friendly twinkle in his eyes, declared that he was delighted to make Miss Archer’s acquaintance. He regretted that he had not known Miss Archer’s father, except through the Marquess’s stories, but he felt certain he would have liked him equally well.

Sydney, warming to this unexpected reception, smiled and replied that she had not known her father either, but she supposed him to have been, from her aunt’s description, a real out-and-outer.

Cedric took this unladylike expression in his stride, but his sister raised her hand ominously to her heart. Lyle intervened.

“I am certain we will be glad to hear all the parish business tomorrow, Cedric”—Lady Romney leaned her head back and closed her eyes—”but now I believe Miss Archer will be glad to be shown her bed. Have you had your supper, Miss Archer?”

“Thank you, my lord,” Sydney replied, avoiding his comprehensive gaze. “We had quite a large dinner on the road.’’

This had, in fact, been many hours before, but Sydney’s fatigue was fast conquering her hunger. In any case, she felt as if she had very little strength left in her for sparring with the Marquess; her ramrod-straight backbone began to slump perceptibly under the voluminous cloak, and in spite of her aggressively upheld chin, she was hard put to stifle a yawn.

Fortunately, the Marquess’s housekeeper Mrs. Collins appeared at that moment and, being a naturally kind-hearted lady, made no sign that she had been summoned from a warm bed to wait on this intruder. Taking in the situation at a glance, she gathered Sydney to her matronly bosom and assured her that she would be able to lay her pretty head down on a nice soft pillow in no time at all.

“Good night, Miss Archer,” said his lordship, as Mrs. Collins led her away.

Sydney looked back at him with a last flash of spirit in her blue eyes, but meeting only a boringly polite lift of the eyebrows, she nodded and went along behind Mrs. Collins. As the door closed behind them, however, Sydney heard a faint moan and then an unmistakably masculine chuckle from inside the library.

Later, when she was at last installed in a huge bed with a warm brick at her feet and three fluffy pillows at her head, that sound came back to her, and drove any thought of sleep from her mind.

Mrs. Collins, seeing this and obviously bursting with curiosity beneath her neatly starched apron, made soothing noises as she fluffed up Sydney’s pillows yet again, cleared away the remains of the hot chocolate and cakes Sydney had devoured, and fussed about the stains at the hem of Sydney’s cloak.

“Mrs. Collins—?”

“Yes, dear?”

Sydney looked up at the housekeeper’s kind pink face and put off the inquisition she had intended to put her to with regard to her reluctant host. Instead, she smiled and said, “I’m very sorry you were disturbed on my account.’’

“Oh, never say so, miss!” Mrs. Collins turned pinker with pleasure. “I’m that happy to do it, and—well, you must know, I could hardly wait to see what you—I mean, to be the first to welcome you to Long Hill!’’

“Thank you,” Sydney said, grateful for Mrs. Collins’s sincerity if not for the occasion of it. “Have you been here long yourself?”

“Oh, yes. His lordship took me on even before the place was properly ready to live in—back in 1812, that was, after the fire—and I’m still here.”

“It’s a good position, then?” Sydney must have sounded skeptical, for Mrs. Collins hastened to reassure her.

“Oh, yes, miss! His lordship is ever so kind to all his people.’’

“Kind?’

Now Mrs. Collins looked doubtful. Sydney erased her frown quickly and changed the subject. “Does his lordship reside here all the time?”

“Except for sometimes going traveling for a month or two. His lordship fancies Italy, and he fought in Spain and Portugal against Boney before he
was
a lordship—the Marquess, that is. Oh, but that’s where he met your father, of course! I’m sure they must have been good friends. His lordship don’t talk much about those days, but I know he remembers your father fondly. It’s a pity Mr. Archer never got to visit Long Hill. His lordship worked so hard to set it to rights—and did a splendid job of it, if you ask me. He hardly ever goes up to London anymore—but then, why should he, having everything he needs right here?”

Mrs. Collins realized suddenly that she had, unbidden, sat down on the edge of Sydney’s bed while she talked; jumping up, she smoothed the covers quickly.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, miss! I don’t know what came over me.’’

Sydney smiled more warmly and reached out to press the housekeeper’s hand. “I expect you are just tired, Mrs. Collins. Do please go back to your own bed, and again, thank you so much for everything!’’

Mrs. Collins backed out of the room; Sydney thought she would have performed grand salaams as she went, had she known what they were. Instead, she left assuring Sydney that she had only to ring for her morning coffee—in fact, she could have her breakfast in her room if she cared to, or in the breakfast room, which any of the maids would direct her to—and that everyone hoped she would be happy at Long Hill, and they would certainly do their best to make her feel at home, and—well, Mrs. Collins wished her, at last, a comfortable night.

Sydney did not blow out her candle immediately, however. She pulled out a large and rather battered leather-covered journal which she had secreted under her mattress when Mrs. Collins’s back was turned, and for half an hour she occupied herself with writing furiously in it with a thick pencil.

Even after she had put it away again, however, she remained sitting upright against her pillows for some time, not composing her mind peacefully for sleep but agitating it yet further by dwelling on the arrogance, the conceit, and—since she could hardly fault him on his manners—the general iniquitousness of the Marquess of Lyle. Who did he suppose he was to look her over in that odiously patronizing way? And to talk to her as if she were an idiot child!