Elisabeth Kidd (8 page)

And the little scamp didn’t even look like Owen! Lyle had searched for a resemblance in her, thinking he saw it in the set of her mouth when she was being stubborn, then in the graceful way she had of smoothing a stray lock of black hair behind her ear, and in her talent for inspiring affection in everyone from the servants to the shrewd old Comte de Grand-Ile. Everyone had liked Owen, too. But then the resemblance faded away again, and the mind picture Lyle had carried all these years of Owen Archer retreated further into the past.

The Count came to pay a visit to his ailing pupil, and after assuring himself that she suffered from nothing worse than frayed pride, also paid a call on his friend the Marquess, and was the first to venture into the library after Murray had come out of it, shaking his head warningly at Chambers and Mrs. Collins, who waited at the door. The Count, however, met a warmer reception. He lowered himself gently into the chair Lyle held out for him, refused a brandy, and observed that Mademoiselle Archer’s presence must be quite a change for the Marquess’s household. Lyle could not help laughing at the understatement, which his visitor—for his own reasons—took as an encouraging sign.

“There are no other such
demoiselles
in your family?” the Count enquired.

Lyle changed his mind about the brandy and put the decanter aside. “Yes, there is my young cousin Susan. I believe you met her last year when she and her brother came to visit.”

“Naturellement,
how stupid of me not to remember! But she was a timid child, as I recall, and not so accomplished as your pretty ward. Are they acquainted, these two young ladies?”

Lyle explained the connection and the approximate design—subject ever to the whims of the lady herself—for Sydney’s future. This appeared to satisfy the Count sufficiently so that Lyle was emboldened to ask, “Do you find Miss Archer exceptional in her talents, sir? You speak frequently of them.’’

The Count hesitated, but then remarked obscurely, “She takes somewhat unexpected things very seriously, you know.
Sans doute,
she will get over them in time, but I urge you,
mon cher,
to go gently with her in the meanwhile.’’

“Do you suggest,” Lyle asked, weary of Gallic circumlocutions, “that I encourage her to pound out sonatas on my piano and to sing French songs to the frogs in Mrs. Griswold’s pond, as if all this would be of some future use to her? It seemed to me yesterday that the only difference between Miss Archer, when I pulled her out of that pond, and Ophelia, was that Ophelia was better dressed. I believe it would be of far more use to Sydney to be made to consider her effect on others before her own fancies.”

The Count, although finding Sydney perfectly agreeable as she was, recognized that his taste in young ladies was not that of the arbiters of fashion she would encounter in the capital. He therefore merely shrugged and said that Lyle was doubtless in the right of it, for what did a poor émigré know of such matters? He took his leave shortly thereafter, bidding his host to keep a stout heart and—above all—a sense of humour.

Lyle saw his visitor out and, reflecting on this piece of advice, realized that his sense of proportion had indeed deserted him of late. Very well, he would make an effort to be reasonable, even agreeable. He would not, however, permit Sydney to sail so blithely down the path to her own ruin as the Count (who was undoubtedly aware of the uses to which Sydney intended to put her talents) and Cedric (who more than likely preferred to remain unaware of them) appeared willing to condone! In any case it would take a stronger hand than either of theirs to steer the determined Miss Archer onto a safer path. Lyle’s, for example.

Cedric, it was true, was happily unaware of Sydney’s plans for her future, having successfully dodged those hints he had inadvertently got in the way of, so that when Lyle announced his intention of taking dinner with his guests in future, Cedric was more pleased than apprehensive. Although fully respectful of Lyle’s exacting standards, Cedric had great confidence in Sydney’s ability to meet them. She was certainly at a stage now when she could dine with Lyle without either boring him or spilling something on him.

To be sure, she did once in the course of their first meal together refer to Lady Romney incorrectly as Lady Vanessa, but Lyle appeared not to have heard this blunder, and the rest of the meal passed in civilized silence, punctuated only by Lyle’s sharp glances at his ward, and Sydney’s warily downcast eyes. Cedric breathed a sigh of relief when he and the Marquess were alone with their brandies later and Lyle made no comment on Sydney’s behaviour, saying only that he was pleased to see Cedric had made some progress after all, but recommending that he keep his Ophelia away from open water for a little longer, just to be on the safe side.

This faint praise, tactfully conveyed to her by Cedric, caused Sydney no gratification whatever, and she told Cedric bluntly that Lyle doubtless had taken her slip of the tongue as an insult to his “lady love,’’ but was too craven to say so.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Cedric said, trying to be fair. “Lyle don’t often hesitate to say what he thinks, and he’s never felt any obligation to come to my sister’s defense, that I’ve noticed. She don’t need it anyway.”

Sydney scowled, unsure whether this meant that Lyle was simply not of a knight-errant disposition, or that he did not feel so disposed towards Lady Romney. She was likewise unsure of whether she preferred to believe the one or the other of him. He clearly admired Lady Romney, so that if he did not feel romantically towards
her,
how might he feel towards one he did not admire? No, there was no point whatsoever in
that
sort of speculation! Indeed, Sydney told herself, she ought not to consider Lyle at all, since he clearly had a way of bringing out the worst in her besides making her feel unaccountably shy and retiring—she was convinced that had she and Cedric happened on anyone else in Arundel that day, her shoes would
not
have been muddy!

After a considerable struggle with herself, Sydney concluded that the Marquess of Lyle’s admiration was not a goal to be scorned, little though she might desire it
personally,
professionally, the ability to impress such a man might be a useful one to possess. Sydney made up her mind to add this skill to her list of those to cultivate.

The next evening, therefore, she came to dinner in a spring-like new lavender gown, with her hair tied up in a ribbon to match, an amethyst locket suspended around her throat, and a fixed smile on her lips, prepared to do battle with her guardian. But Lyle was beforehand from the start; he looked her over with a quick but comprehensive glance, which greater worldliness would have told Sydney was an admiring one, and attacked from an unexpected quarter before she had readied her defenses.

“Are you a great admirer of Lord Byron, Miss Archer?” he enquired in a disinterested, ordinary-dinner-table-conversation way over the consommé. “The report from Italy—where as you know, he now resides—is that our once-fine poet has grown sadly fat. He appears to have lost both his talent and his youthful appearance, having let his hair grow long and grey, and his pen dull from disuse.’’

“I daresay the climate of Tuscany does not agree with him,” Sydney replied sweetly, after only a moment’s hesitation. “Perhaps you had better warn Lady Romney of its unwholesome influence—or has she already canceled her plans to journey there?”

This sally silenced Lyle for a moment—as he took a sip of wine to hide the involuntary smile that came to his lips—but then he threw himself back into the fray.

“And then there is poor Miss Jane Austen,” he said. “Such a pity she died before seeing the publication of
Northanger Abbey,
or realizing her own fame. She was not very old, you know. I expect the lack of recognition of her talent, and the straightened circumstances in which she lived as an unmarried lady had their—ah, unwholesome influence on her.’’

Sydney glanced at her guardian, but he was unconcernedly helping himself to buttered carrots. Cedric, fascinated enough by the conversation to disregard his own empty plate, remarked that he supposed Miss Austen would have found more satisfaction in knowing her own name to be revered after her death than in having her husband’s live on only through her children.

“How very liberal-minded of you, Cedric!” Lyle replied, one shapely eyebrow in alt. “I would not have expected it of you.’’

“Why do you persist in putting Mr. Maitland in the wrong, my lord?” Sydney demanded to know, her combative instincts coming to Cedric’s defense more readily than to her own. “Surely he knows as much about the matter as you do—and he is remarkably more sensitive to Miss Austen’s feelings than
you
appear to be!”

There was another moment’s pause.

“On the whole,” Lyle said then, quite as if Sydney had not made her outburst, “I wonder if we oughtn’t to turn Miss Archer over to Vanessa after all?”

“I won’t have her!’’ Sydney declared, before Cedric could say anything in reply to this suggestion. Indeed, Cedric was finding himself with very little to say now that Lyle had taken up sparring with Sydney over meals instead of mildly baiting Cedric, as had been his former custom. He looked from guardian to ward and back again, aware that something was going on of which he was uninformed. He was not, however, eager to be enlightened. He sank as inconspicuously as he could into his chair and nibbled at the creamed chicken placed before him.

“Why not?” Lyle addressed Sydney directly. “Lady Romney is the very person to see that you are respectably launched. She knows everyone and her reputation is spotless.’’

“Which I suppose is why she is so very dull to be with!” Sydney retorted impudently. “Besides, I don’t need her help. I can do perfectly well on my own. I shall be a prodigious success, and I shall be invited everywhere.’’

Lyle smiled quite openly at this, and Sydney, misinterpreting his meaning, rushed on headlong. “People will be falling over one another to have me at their dinner tables—yes, and you will see how many handsome young men I can attach, with no help from Lady Romney! You will see if one of them is not a—
duke!”

Lyle laughed then, and said he supposed that would put him, a mere marquess, in his place. At that, Sydney got up and, flinging her napkin down on the table with a mixture of passion and dignity, marched out of the room in high dudgeon. Running up to her room two steps at a time, she then changed back into her own comfortable if unmodish clothes, but balked of a late ride by a regretful but firm groom who refused her a horse, was forced to betake herself to the herb garden, where she paced back and forth between the basil and the thyme for half an hour, giving herself furiously to thought.

If it had not been perfectly obvious before it was now, that Lyle considered her a poor specimen. Doubtless, he was sorry he had taken her in, and would sooner have nothing more to do with her than was necessary to drive her away from Long Hill as quickly as possible. That she had been even ruder than Lyle at dinner did not escape her, but made her only the more determined to show him how well she could get along without him.

Her head filled with agreeable schemes and visions of her inevitable triumphs, as the night descended unnoticed. Unnoticed too was the relegation to secondary importance, to make room for her new obsession, of her formerly overriding concern with her blazing artistic career. She had not forgotten it, by any means, and it only enhanced her present dream of triumph over her guardian to imagine how the future Duchess of So-and-So, who had been a mere Miss Archer in her youth, would take to the stage of Drury Lane Theatre and become the foremost tragedienne of her time. But for the present Sydney looked forward only to completing her lessons and removing—without Lyle—to London. Cedric had informed her that they would do so as soon as Mrs. Whitlatch arrived to chaperone her there.

This event occurred somewhat sooner than anyone anticipated. Lyle, aware of the demon he had set loose but confident that Sydney would now do her utmost to prove her guardian mistaken in his supposed notions of her, took himself out of her path for a few days. When he next enquired of Murray after Miss Archer’s whereabouts, he was informed that Cedric, Sydney, and Chambers had been moving furniture about and had even demanded of Mrs. Collins if she could play at the pianoforte, or at least sing (she could do neither, but she could hum a tune pretty well, she said).

“I expect that means Cedric will be displaying an excellent imitation of what is vulgarly known—to Miss Archer, certainly—as a ‘caper merchant.’ Miss Archer will doubtless insist on leading. Where is this entertainment to take place, Murray? In the ballroom?”

“Yes, my lord,” Murray informed him, with something more than his usual bland tone. Lyle shot a suspicious look at him, but then laughed and said he would go and be entertained.

“Miss Archer has been deprived of my valuable criticism long enough.”

Unfortunately, Lyle then ran full tilt into a situation for which neither his renewed sense of humour nor his reading of Sydney’s character had prepared him. He came in upon Cedric and his charge about to take a waltz around the room—country dances, cotillions, and Cedric’s General Theories of Social Dancing having been more or less disposed of over breakfast.

Chairs and the piano had been pushed any which way against the sides of the large room. Chambers stood, and Mrs. Collins sat amongst the rejected furniture—the young footman wide-eyed with interest and the housekeeper smiling and tapping her foot on the brilliantly waxed floor, her household keys jingling musically at her waist. For several moments no one was aware of Lyle’s presence.

Cedric’s initial verbal instructions gave Sydney a mild case of the giggles, but when he put a firm hand around her waist, these ceased abruptly.

“Now then,” he said, seizing command while he could, “you put your left hand on my shoulder—there—and your other hand in mine—no, on top of my hand. That’s it. Don’t stiffen up, you’ll only do it clumsily. Now watch my shoulder; that’ll tell you what I’m going to do next. My hand on your waist will tell you what
you ‘re
supposed to do.”