Elisabeth Kidd (4 page)

Viscount Kedrington obligingly lowered his head, so as not to spoil the
sport of the quizzers, thereby concealing from them a decided quiver in the corner of his otherwise rather harsh mouth. He was doing his best to
play propriety, but Miss Pritchard would have been amazed to learn how
unnatural he felt even to be standing still. In fact, he came close to
oversetting himself when, upon picking up another book, he opened it to
Chapter One and read:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a
single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife....

Good God! The viscount glanced over the shop for the clerk, determined to purchase this piece of impertinence on the spot, but the clerk,
in order to allow prospective buyers to consider their purchases at
leisure, had beat a tactful retreat. Kedrington turned back to his book
and read on in fascination for a few pages until, distracted by the sound of
a departure (Miss Pritchard being dragged out of the shop by her determined mama), he pulled a watch out of his waistcoat pocket,
consulted it, frowned, and looked out of the window into the street.

He was to have met Philip Kenyon here quite half an hour earlier—
perhaps Kedrington had misunderstood the direction? Oh, no—there he
was. And not alone. Mr Kenyon was approaching at a leisurely pace with an unexpected but—considering the gentleman’s roving eye—entirely
plausible excuse for his tardiness on his arm. She wore a fur-lined cloak with a hood that framed a radiant face and cheeks rosy from the brisk air
of the street. She carried a large fur muff which, when Kenyon whispered
something into her ear, she raised to her face to smother a bubble of
laughter.

Lord Kedrington, who had of late become something of a connoisseur
of feminine beauty, considered this particular lady to be a remarkable
specimen, but he was not prepared for the enchanting effect of her
laughter—more like the gentle cooing of a dove than any human noise—
which drifted into the shop when Mr Kenyon opened the door. It ceased
abruptly, however, when the lady saw the viscount, and he realised that he had been staring at her. He recovered himself, removed his hat, and
made a stiff bow.

Mr Kenyon, a handsome, grey-haired gentleman who walked with a
cane and an air of casual elegance, either did not see or chose to disregard
the expression on the viscount’s face.

“Ah, Duncan—there you are!” he exclaimed blithely. “I beg your
pardon for keeping you waiting, I’m sure, but I was delayed by the happy
accident of meeting this lady across the way. My dear, may I present to
you the Viscount Kedrington? Our neighbour, sir, and my adopted
niece—Miss Antonia Fairfax.”

Miss Fairfax had pushed back her hood and stood smiling candidly up
at Kedrington, who now saw that she was not the remarkably pretty girl
he had first thought her, but a lovely woman with not a missish air about
her. When his hesitation became pronounced, she held out her hand to
him and cocked her head to one side enquiringly.

“Your servant, ma’am!” He took her hand, but rather than letting it go
after the customary cursory examination, he held onto it as a thought occurred to him. “Fairfax? Ah, yes
...”

“Should we know each other, sir? Uncle Philip tells me you are but
lately returned from many years in Spain. I cannot imagine that my
reputation—such as it may be—can have reached so far!”

“No, no!” he protested, abruptly letting go her hand when he recalled
where he had in fact heard the name. “I was once acquainted with a
certain George Fairfax, but he lived in Hertfordshire.”

Miss Fairfax replied gravely that she had to her knowledge no kin in
that part of the country, which failed to surprise Kedrington, who had made George up out of whole cloth.

“Duncan here will be stopping at Windeshiem for a time,” Mr Kenyon
informed Miss Fairfax, retrieving her unclaimed hand and tucking it into
his arm once more. “Came to look the old place over—

A barely perceptible movement on Kedrington’s part halted Mr Kenyon
in mid-sentence and nudged him into another conversational path. “Told him he’d have to take potluck with us,” Mr Kenyon went on, “but he
don’t mind that. To be sure, when he told me he’d meet me here, I
thought he must be bored already—not being any entertainment at home but reading nowadays. What’s wanting at this time of year is a cosy little
dinner party somewhere. Isn’t that so, m’dear?”

Miss Fairfax declined to acknowledge this broad hint, but looked as if she were hard put to keep a sober face. The viscount came to her rescue, enquiring of Mr Kenyon if he had read Mr Scott’s latest poem, and if he
thought it was up to his
Lady of the Lake
. Mr Kenyon disclaimed any
literary opinion at all, but he was not lax in taking a hint. Admitting to
an unfortunate ability—acquired in his impressionable youth—to read,
he took himself off to the other side of the shop to examine, over the edge of a book held upside-down in his hand, the trim figure of a lady in a blue
riding habit.

A gleam of amusement lightened the viscount’s grey eyes and lingered
in spite of his resumption of what he imagined to be an air of refinement,
but when he turned back to Miss Fairfax, she lowered her own eyes
demurely, and they discussed
Rokeby
in civil terms. Miss Fairfax regret
ted that such craftsmen as Mr Scott should be eclipsed by so-called
geniuses such as Lord Byron.

“That is the inevitable result of fashionable crazes,” Kedrington said.
“When we left town,
The Corsair
was all the rage.”

Miss Fairfax declared herself disinclined to read Lord Byron’s latest,
being quite sated with Turkish tales and Athenian maids. “I am con
vinced that Lord Byron desires nothing more than to create an aura of
mystery about himself. I daresay he is in reality quite ordinary. But I beg
your pardon—perhaps he is a friend of yours?”

“Merely an acquaintance,” the viscount said noncommittally. “He has
few friends. I should assure you, however, that whatever his faults, Lord
Byron can scarcely be called ordinary!”

“Then you will not tell him I said so, will you?” Miss Fairfax begged of
him. Indicating the volume which the viscount still clutched in the same
hand that held his modish hat, she advised him, “I should purchase that
novel, if I were you. It is quite out of the common way. The author is
most adept at depressing pretension and showing up for precisely what
they are worth such persons as—for example—wear town fashions in the
country, deliberately to cast the local gentry into the shade.”

Kedrington glared down at her, but she only enquired sweetly, “Grossly
uncivil, don’t you agree?” and precipitated the viscount—whom she had
rightly perceived to be maintaining only the most precarious hold on propriety—into abandoning it altogether. Their eyes caught, and both
laughed aloud.

Mr Kenyon overheard them and turned his head in their direction. Kedrington had only time to whisper, “Lives Lady Disdain,
Miss Fairfax?” before he rejoined them, demanding to know the joke.

“No jest, sir,” said the lady. “Merely the novelty of such as Lord
Kedrington in these benighted parts. We are not much addicted to
London manners here.”

“Pooh, nonsense!” Mr Kenyon protested. “It is not so very long ago
that you yourself decreed those manners, my dear. Surely you have not
forgotten when all London was at your feet?”

“I sincerely hope London has forgotten it! And if the lure of the metropolis is sufficient to keep you from home so frequently, Uncle
Philip, I have reason enough to take exception to it.”

Mr Kenyon smiled fondly at her. “But I only go to visit Charles, you know—when he can bear to have me underfoot. When not—why, I go
somewhere else!”

Kedrington thought a shadow briefly darkened Miss Fairfax’s blue
eyes, but she replied lightly, “Why, yes! You are as likely to be flitting off
to examine some race horse in Ireland, or a new variety of gas lamp in Bristol.”

Kenyon chuckled modestly. “I’m too old to change my ways now,
m’dear, however ramshackle they may be, and too old to be posting all the
way here whenever Pomfret writes that such-and-such a cottage has
fallen into disrepair, or to ask if I think eight sheep to the acre is too many
or if we should lease out more pasturage, when half the time I haven’t the
least notion what he’s talking about.”

Miss Fairfax looked as if she could well believe this, but not being so
tactless as to say so, she made no remark. Lord Kedrington paid for his
book, and all three left the shop.

“We shall escort Miss Fairfax on her way,” Mr Kenyon announced. “It
would not be kind of us to abandon her to the ogling of every demi-beau
in town!”

Lord Kedrington acquiesced with suitable gravity, but Miss Fairfax
protested that she was quite accustomed to walk out alone.

“I shall be perfectly safe, I assure you, sirs! Melton is still a country
town, where a lady may go about unchaperoned with no fear of being
molested by gentlemen with ... London manners!”

Mr Kenyon kept her hand imprisoned in his, however, and she made
no further demur when the gentlemen accompanied her down the South
Parade. It was soon apparent—much to Miss Fairfax’s gratification and Lord Kedrington’s chagrin—that the object of attention on the street was
to be not the young lady but the fashionable gentleman.

Several heads
turned to watch him, and although he continued to make polite conver
sation, the viscount expected too much of Miss Fairfax if he believed that she would imitate his sublime disregard of a bold damsel dressed in a
sable-trimmed redingote, who passed them with an appraising look and a flirtatious smile. Antonia looked back after the lady, smiling benignly in
return. The viscount, caught in midsentence, sputtered to its end and
protested, “Miss Fairfax, you are shameless!”

Miss Fairfax was all innocence. “I, sir?”

“Do not play the ingénue with me, madam! I know what you are
about.”

“But I should have imagined that to be just your style, my lord.”

Curiosity compelled him to ask, “Is that how you fancy my style, Miss
Fairfax?”

“Oh, I did not mean that I fancied your style at all, sir!” she replied
unblushingly.

“Kenyon!” his lordship appealed in desperation. “Tell me where it is
that we are escorting this lady to! We appear to be running out of
village.”

Having left the South Parade and the church behind, they were in fact
walking down a street of cottages, at the end of which stood a small brick
house with a trellissed porch. They stopped in front of it, and Miss
Fairfax thanked the gentlemen for their escort. Mr Kenyon insisted that
this must not be the last time they met during his sojourn in Leicestershire,
and she obliged this latest hint by inviting both gentlemen to dinner at
Wyckham the next day, an invitation which was quickly accepted. The
gentlemen then turned back toward the village, having like Miss Fairfax
left their equipage at The George, and the lady pulled at the knocker of her friend’s door.

It was Imogen Curtiz’s custom to open her own door, since she
indulged in no servants other than a housemaid who frequently found
herself with nothing to do, but Antonia’s summons was answered with
an alacrity which caused her to suspect that Imogen had observed her
approach from behind the lace-curtained front windows. Her suspicions
were confirmed when her friend opened the door, kissed Antonia on the
cheek, and rather absently invited her to enter, all the while keeping a
sharp lookout on the street from the corner of her eye. But presently she
closed the door and devoted her attention fully to her guest.

“Come in and have some tea, my love—let me take your cloak—I have
a new concoction for you to try. It has a little Darjeeling, a little dried
lemon peel, a pinch of—

“Imogen, you must not reveal all your secrets.”

“Oh, my child, I have no secrets from you!” said the older woman, shepherding Antonia into a sunny alcove in the rear of the house,
overlooking a small garden. She seated herself at the tea table opposite Antonia, and for a few minutes addressed to her some trifling remarks
upon the weather, the state of her azalea bushes, and a shipment of tea
which had unaccountably gone astray in the post.

Imogen Curtiz was a handsome woman in her early fifties. Her dark
hair was streaked dramatically with grey, and she had magnificent large black eyes and a long aristocratic nose. She was rather thin—having passed through several of her late husband’s illnesses with him—but she
carried herself regally and reveled in a reputation for unconventionality
of dress and manner. She had once appeared at one of the Fairfaxes’
parties in Arab costume, giving Maria palpitations but delighting every
one else.