Elisabeth Kidd (5 page)

“I see now where your creative bent has led you, my dear,” she said. “When you finished rebuilding the east wing, I feared there was nothing left of Long Hill on which to exercise your talents—but now I perceive that you have simply extended your improvements to the out-of-doors!’’

Lyle straightened himself and looked around. “I expect you are in the right as usual, Vanessa. Fortunately, the weather will soon turn warmer and I may exercise my talents, as you put it, on more profitable ventures in the home farm and woods. Would you care to sit down for a moment?’’

They seated themselves on one of the white benches; Lady Romney spread her cloak artistically around her and produced a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her muff, with which to blot a few imagined drops of moisture from her brow.

After another minute, Lyle said, “Was there something in particular you wanted to say to me, Vanessa?”

“Oh, yes, to be sure! It was so pleasant to walk about here, I quite forgot. I only wanted to ask, Drew, if you are quite certain you wish to take on this guardianship?’’

“I do not see that I have any choice in the matter.’’

“I understand that you feel it your duty,” Vanessa went on. “But I fear Miss Archer may prove to be rather a trying charge. She is so—well, candid. She really must be taught not to show her feelings quite so openly, for that is frequently taken for rudeness, is it not? And that would reflect badly on you, as her preceptor.”

“It seemed to me that she was remarkably subdued this morning,” Lyle remarked, leaning forward to examine the set of the bricks in the garden path, so that Lady Romney could not see his expression.

“Of course, one must give her credit for making an attempt,” she conceded. “Nevertheless, one wonders how long such submissiveness will last. I fear she will be a trial to you, if only because of her extreme youth and naiveté.’’

“Susan Whitlatch is younger—and certainly more naive.’’

“Well, yes, but your cousin is such a timid child. Not at all like Miss Archer.”

A reluctant smile moved the Marquess’s lips up at the corners. “No, not at all like Miss Archer!’’

Lady Romney was able to observe Lyle’s expression this time, and her budding suspicion that he was actually looking forward to taking on the untamable Miss Archer sprang into full bloom. She abandoned her carefully plotted, if circuitous, route and made directly for the point she had intended to make in the first place.

“I merely thought that it might be easier on you if you sent her away from here,’’ she said.

“To some sort of school, do you mean ?’’

“In a way.” Vanessa smoothed her handkerchief carefully and folded it. “Do you remember my friend Sylvie Forsythe? She is Sylvie de Lamartine now, but it happens that her daughter by Jules Forsythe is just Miss Archer’s age, and Sylvie is bringing her out this year. Janine is a very pretty-behaved child and she has certainly had an impeccable upbringing. You, of course, have not been to Town in the season for some years, and so will not remember the child, but I feel confident she would be just the companion for Miss Archer. You might, perhaps, mention this to Prudence?’’

Lady Romney looked at the Marquess for several minutes after she had completed her little speech, attempting to read in his inscrutable expression what he thought of her suggestion. She was more than a little apprehensive, for she did not normally interfere in Lyle’s affairs to quite this extent, but when he spoke at last he did not appear resentful of her intrusion—although she was nevertheless left in uncertainty over whether she should have attempted it.

“I think you must be aware, Vanessa,” he replied at last, “that Mrs. de Lamartine is not my idea of the ideal person to present to a young lady as an example of gentle breeding. I believe her to be vain and encroaching. You are quite right in suggesting, however, that as I am not acquainted with the daughter, I am in no position to judge what influence her friendship may have on my ward. I think, if you don’t mind, that we will compromise in this matter. When Sydney goes to London, I will allow her to meet Miss Forsythe, and if they suit each other, perhaps some of Prudence’s duties may be transferred to Mrs. de Lamartine. I shall write my aunt to that effect this evening.’’

Lady Romney agreed that this was indeed an eminently sensible course of action. “You are certain, Drew, that you will not yourself come to London? You would be very welcome by your friends, I know.”

He smiled, a little wryly. “Thank you, no. I am not certain it will not be necessary in the end, but at this moment I do not anticipate having to travel up to Town. Cedric appears to be willing and eager to attempt to turn our duckling into a swan before she ever leaves Long Hill—preferably with no interference on my part.”

“Well, my dear, in that case, I too shall refrain from meddling any further. I shall take my leave in the morning, but—” Again Lady Romney hesitated. “—but I shall be happy to postpone my journey to Italy for a few weeks if you find matters getting out of hand, or indeed if you simply find yourself in need of a little—comic relief, shall we say?”

Lyle smiled enigmatically. “Thank you, my dear. I shall keep your kind offer in mind.’’

And with that she had to be content.

Sydney remained firm in her initial determination to learn and profit by her enforced sojourn in the Marquess’s household, but she also found herself, after only a few days there, succumbing to a certain distracting fascination with her surroundings. She had never before been inside any house larger than the neighbouring squire’s, an unpretentious brick abode set in a pleasant little garden, to which the vicar’s family was invited—along with everyone else in the vicinity—on Public Days and occasionally on religious holidays when the squire suffered from an abundance of worldly indulgence and sought comfort of his spiritual advisor and his exemplary family.

Long Hill, however, was quite another world. Sydney’s estimation of her own artistic tastes did not always coincide with the evidence of their expression, but it was nevertheless true that she possessed an innate tastefulness. This enabled her to perceive immediately the difference between the squire’s wife’s beruffled and bejeweled evening clothes and the simple but exquisitely cut gowns with which Lady Romney enhanced her natural beauty rather than smothered it, and between the squire’s taste for the latest mode in round gilded tables supported by carved ebony sphinxes, and the graceful Sheraton furnishings, pale blue draperies, and discreet use of dark wood paneling at Long Hill.

Sydney was impressed also by the number of rooms there with large windows—very convenient to read in late into the afternoon—and the quality of the works of art and sculpture in the gallery and in individual rooms—for which, she discovered, Lyle had laid out quite a large sum in quite a short time since beginning the construction of his home seven years previously. He naturally maintained an army of servants to keep everything in perfect order, and at least one virtue of Sydney’s upbringing displayed itself in her scrupulous, if sometimes superfluous, care to pick up after herself to save the servants extra exertion.

Indeed, if the owner of the estate displayed no particular gratification at the honour of having Sydney Archer as his guest, his servants soon came to adopt an opposite attitude, viewing Sydney’s advent as a treat of no mean order. Daisy, the pretty, plump country girl Sydney had brought from home to attend her, displayed an unsophisticated deference to her elders in service that went down very well with them, and Sydney’s coachman Hitchin was so unobtrusively knowledgeable about the finer points of horses and their needs that he was readily accepted as an intimate of the stables. Once these two were firmly fixed in the good graces of the Long Hill staff, their mistress was accorded no lesser respect, and it was very little time before she came to earn it through her own efforts and was on visiting terms with the entire household.

Her uncle having trained her, long before Cedric Maitland thought to mention it to her, not to become overly familiar with servants, Sydney did not precisely gossip with them, but—she reasoned—it was only polite to listen to what they wished to tell her. This, whether directly or by way of Daisy’s gleanings below stairs, was a good deal—particularly about the Marquess’s relationship to Lady Romney (obscure but ominous), his past (undoubtedly heroic, if no less mysterious), and his present mode of life.

This last elicited many firm if varied opinions, but on two things at least his lordship’s staff were in agreement: he should marry, and he should become less of a recluse (not necessarily in that order). He needed an heir more than he needed another rose garden, said Mrs. Collins, tactfully but decidedly; but he wouldn’t get one if he waited at Long Hill for the right woman to come to him, instead of going out into the world to find her.

Unfortunately, Sydney was given very little leisure for mulling over some of the fascinating information she acquired in this manner, or for reading, sketching from the Constable landscapes in the gallery, or exploring the house inside and out as much as she would have liked to do. She rarely encountered her reclusive host on her wanderings—and then he only nodded and went on his way without speaking to her—but Cedric, who seemed determined to take the bull by the horns, was her constant companion.

He wasted no time in ascertaining precisely how much his pupil had already been taught, and how much of it—such as her infelicitous habit of shaking hands like a schoolboy on display—would have to be remedied or repressed. He set to his task with a will and, at least at first, a seriousness of purpose that Sydney found somewhat dismaying. This did not, however, survive more than a week of close association between pupil and teacher.

“You’ve got to remember not to
touch
people all the time!” Cedric told her—albeit a shade reluctantly—after she had given him an impulsive hug on the second morning of their meetings. “Some people don’t take to it, y’know—and plenty of others will misinterpret it! Fold your hands in your lap, or hold onto your handkerchief, if you can’t keep them still any other way.’’

“Yes, Mr. Maitland,” Sydney said, suiting the action to the words with apparent docility but a lively smile in her eyes. Cedric sighed and decided that for the present the appearance of grace would have to be enough.

“Now, then,” he said when they had settled themselves comfortably in the breakfast parlour, where Cedric had chosen to conduct his classes. “Where shall we begin today, eh?” He consulted a list he had made up of the various topics that he felt ought to be covered in his course of instruction, and selected Sydney’s hypothetical social calendar as a likely subject. “Ever been to a soirée, Miss Archer?”

Sydney shot an enquiring look at Daisy, who was sitting wide-eyed in a convenient corner absorbing Cedric’s precepts every bit as eagerly as the person to whom they were directed. Soirées were beyond Daisy’s present scope, however, and she shrugged her incomprehension.

“I think I was at a levée once,” Sydney ventured, remembering the squire’s popular gatherings.

“I doubt that,” Cedric said repressively, thinking of the equally crowded but more sweetly perfumed assemblies at Carleton House under the Prince Regent’s gracious auspices. He then read Miss Archer a lecture on the difference between a soirée and a levée, and between a rout and a drum, which dissertation Sydney interrupted by recollecting Smollett’s description of the latter as being so called “from the noise and emptiness of the entertainment,” which in turn caused Cedric to threaten to send Sydney to a dozen if she ever again quoted from any person who wrote novels.

“Do you play cards?” he asked, being thus reminded of yet another matter he had not thought to put on Sydney’s agenda.

“Uncle Augustus does not approve of gambling.’’

“I’m not talking about gambling. Do you play cards?”

“Well—my cousins and I played loo and piquet for penny points.”

Cedric thought he would not send Sydney to any drums after all.

“Now supposing,” Cedric speculated on their third day, “you was introduced to the Prince Regent at, say, a ball at Lady Jersey’s—”

Sydney’s eyes widened in awe. “Oh—would I be likely to meet him?”

“Perfectly possible. He’s a sociable old fellow, Prinny, in spite of his hardly being able to walk any more—being so fat, you know. Don’t call him that in public, by the way. You say ‘his highness’ when speaking of him, and ‘sir’ when addressing him personally.”

“No more than that?”

“That’s enough. Just talk about the scenery or the weather, unless he asks you a direct question about something, and even then, you’d better not say anything but ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’ ‘No,’ mostly,” Cedric added on consideration.

“Yes, sir,’’ was the pert reply.

Cedric scowled blackly, but his pupil’s downcast eyes hid any mischief that might have been brewing in them.

“Whom else shall I be likely to meet in the normal way of things?” she asked, with an uncharacteristic offhandedness that put Cedric instantly on the alert. He was rapidly coming to dread his pupil’s irrelevant comments and constant questions, the answers to which would consume more of his valuable time than he had intended to spend on the entire course of instruction—even if he could supply answers to them, which he seriously doubted. He was game, however, if guarded.

“Strictly speaking, there ain’t all that many people moving in the circles you’re likely to encounter—not more than a few hundred, really, and they all know one another already. You’ll probably hear the name of every person you’re ever likely to be introduced to at the very first ball you attend.’’

“But people are always talking about—for example—Lord Byron, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Mrs. Siddons, and Mr. Macready, and Madame Catalani,” Sydney said. “How shall I know which of these I may speak to, and which are only talked about?”

Cedric considered this, and decided it would be best to take Sydney’s questions literally, for he suspected her to be quite capable of doing some outrageous thing merely because he had never told her specifically that she could not.