Elisabeth Kidd (15 page)

“Yes, but—”

“I shall reveal all when I call tomorrow.
Vive valeque
, my muse!”

He made her a graceful bow as Thurston opened the front door to admit her, and then went off, much as he had arrived, like a figure out of a dream or some romantic painting.

“Cedric,
dearest
!”

Sydney ran quickly up the steps to the library, where Thurston said she might find Mr. Maitland—whom she was to have met half an hour before to be escorted to Berry Brothers to order some pipe tobacco for her uncle—and threw herself dramatically down onto the carpet next to the small table at which he had patiently been playing solitaire.

“Cedric, are you acquainted with Lord D’Arcy?”

Cedric had dropped his cards and was for one startled moment transported back to the days of Sydney’s falling into lily ponds—but at the mention of Lord D’Arcy’s name, his apprehension eased somewhat.

“Might have known from your italics that you’d run into D’Arcy,” he said, picking up his game. “Rackety fellow, but he seems to affect all females like that. Stand up and take off your bonnet.”

Sydney obeyed. Flinging the bonnet on the sofa and pulling another chair up to Cedric’s, she waited eagerly for him to say something. Cedric, however, only looked her up and down silently, and finally observed that she had acquired a fine layer of town bronze after all.

“Oh, never mind that!” Sydney exclaimed. “Tell me about Lord D’Arcy.’’

Cedric eyed her suspiciously. “You ain’t fallen in love with him, have you? Eligible as anyone could wish, of course, but even you might find him indigestible after a taste or two. Besides, I didn’t know you was acquainted. Didn’t know he was in Town even. They told me he was on the Grand Tour.’’

“He was,” Sydney said, and impatiently outlined the manner of their meeting. “I know we were not properly introduced, but it was plain to see he was a gentleman—although rather an unusual one, to be sure—and I was certain you would not object to my speaking to him, would you Cedric?—and, oh yes, we did take a perfectly unexceptional turn around the Park.’’

Sydney turned her blue eyes appealingly to Cedric. Even though she had left out Edward Kingsley’s part in the afternoon’s events—which he would not be likely to speak of himself—and glossed over the fact of having been unchaperoned for much of the morning, Cedric’s look was decidedly disapproving. He refrained from giving Sydney a scold, however, and told her instead as much as he knew—which as usual was a good deal—about the gentleman in question.

Lancelot Cornelius Brinsley, Lord D’Arcy (Cedric informed her, resuming his tutorial manner) was the son of the Duke of Pemberly and scion of one of the oldest and most distinguished noble families in England. He was the eldest—although not the only, son, the Duke having been twice married—and he had been generally indulged from an early age. While at Oxford, Lancelot had turned his considerable talents to the arts (Cedric said with a hint of distaste). He dabbled in watercolours, played on the harpsichord, wrote sonnets, and collected
objets d’art
(at which activity Cedric reluctantly conceded Lord D’Arcy a genuine talent). His affectations were tolerated with amusement by his peers, and were much admired by those toadeaters to whom birth and fortune were of more moment than the personal idiosyncrasies of their possessor.

D’Arcy had gone abroad the year before to study classical architecture, but had fallen in with a troupe of actors and had now come back to England determined to do to—or with—Shakespeare what his fellow players had done across the continent with Aeschylus and Euripides. No one, so far as Cedric was aware, had yet been privileged to discover precisely what this was.

Sydney had already guessed more of this last matter than Cedric would have liked to hear, so she said nothing about it, instead pressing him for more personal details—most of which were of considerably less importance to her but would serve to distract Cedric’s attention from her real interest in Lord D’Arcy. Would Lord D’Arcy be permitted to call on her? Where was his home? Would he come into a very large inheritance? How was it she had never heard of him before, and why was he not at any of the entertainments she had thus far attended?

Cedric said he supposed Lord D’Arcy would be invited to all the balls as soon as the hostesses discovered he was back in Town, and he resigned himself to answering as many of Sydney’s questions as he could. Believing her to have succumbed to D’Arcy’s inexplicable charms, Cedric also felt an obligation to warn Sydney away from him. But since he could offer no sound objection to D’Arcy’s calling on her, or for her meeting him in company, he left off any attempt to do so. He wondered if he ought to break his own rule about staying out of Sydney’s amorous adventures and write to Lyle for advice, but in the end, he decided rather to follow another of his self-imposed maxims—to let matters take their own course while keeping a sharp eye on where they might be going.

Janine Forsythe was more frank with her advice, although equally aware that Sydney would do precisely as she pleased in spite of it. She and Carl chanced to be still in Sydney’s parlour after the other morning callers had taken their leave, when Lord D’Arcy was announced the following day. Janine, who had heard much of this gentleman, even apart from Sydney’s account of yesterday’s events, and Carl, to whom his name meant nothing, both behaved with remarkable fortitude when Lancelot, beautiful to behold in pearl grey and pink, with a large amethyst in his cravat, strolled in and glowered at them.

He soon recovered his manners, however, and made pleasant if oddly-seasoned conversation with Carl while Janine took Sydney aside to whisper, “My goodness! I had no idea he was so—so spectacular! And you know, Sydney, you really ought to have a gown made of that grey silk we saw at Madame Louise’s the other day. By itself, as we agreed at the time, it might appear a trifle dowdy, but next to Lord D’Arcy—”

Sydney laughed. “That is precisely what Lord D’Arcy would say! Indeed, if I mentioned it to him, I’ve no doubt he would accompany me to Madame Louise’s and tell her precisely how to make it up. In the meanwhile, I am thankful I wore my lavender today, rather than yellow or blue—for that would surely have given him a disgust of me!’’

Janine studied her friend’s face for a moment, and seeing there a rosy flush and in her eyes a glowing look that seemed oddly at variance with her speech, she did not know what to think. D’Arcy did not seem to her to be to Sydney’s taste—but one never knew about love.

“I’m sure nothing could do that, Sydney,” Janine assured her, squeezing her hand affectionately. “No one who comes to know you can fail to appreciate your true worth, and Lord D’Arcy will soon discover your many accomplishments as well. Indeed, you have a great deal more than looks in common with him, but—well, even I remember how all the ladies were used to swoon over Lord Byron, and—”

Sydney smiled and quizzed her friend, “Are you going to tell me not to sit in Lord D’Arcy’s pocket, Janine?”

“No—certainly not! You have more sense than to go to such extremes, but—well, he is rather distractingly handsome, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is,” Sydney agreed, giving Janine a light hug. “But don’t worry about me, darling. I’m not Caro Lamb, to be disguising myself as a boy to slip undetected into his lordship’s chambers. I’ll keep my head!”

Carl Wendt, however, was either not so confident of his cousin’s discretion or too nice in his observance of the proprieties to leave Sydney alone with Lord D’Arcy, with the result that the guests left together some ten minutes later. Prudence, who saw them go, immediately rushed in to demand of Sydney why she had not been told of Lord D’Arcy’s arrival and—alternating between annoyance at being denied an introduction to him and dizzy delight at Sydney’s success in attracting the heir to a dukedom to her parlour—patted her arm and called Sydney a sly puss, but claimed she knew all along that Sydney’s good sense would show her what was to her best advantage.

“Only imagine, my dear, if you were to attach a duke! What a triumph that would be—and what a blow to Sylvie de Lamartine, who no doubt will attempt to snare Lord D’Arcy for Janine! To be sure, he is a most unusual young man, but then, you are not precisely in the common way yourself, as we all know.’’

Sydney began to wonder if she would cause any more consternation among her friends and relatives if she announced her true intention of pursuing her artistic career with Lord D’Arcy’s assistance. No doubt (she wrote in her journal with an indignant pen) that would be met with less incredulity than the idea of her marrying a man she had met only the day before, becoming a duchess—over the very much alive body of the present Duke of Pemberly—dressing to her lord’s dictates every morning for the rest of her life to ensure that her clothing was compatible with his, and sponsoring—with her newfound fortune if not her less desirable personal patronage—a succession of colourless Whitlatch females, which was apparently what Prudence had in mind! Sydney did not know whether to laugh or cry.

Lord D’Arcy, on the other hand, knew what he wanted and set straightaway to achieving it. If Sydney’s other friends had set their sights frankly on a match between Sydney and Lord D’Arcy, his lordship, with equal single-mindedness, set to playing Pygmalion with a determination that blinded him to the possible hazards to himself in this role.

Having lost his first opportunity to speak privately with Sydney, he sent around a note asking her to meet him in Green Park early the next morning on a matter “vital to the survival of the Arts in England,” and, incidentally, of “great professional interest” to Miss Archer.

Naturally, Miss Archer kept this appointment, dragging a yawning Daisy to the Park at seven o’clock the next morning. There they found Lord D’Arcy wrapped in a yellow cloak and contemplating the mists rising from the woods at the southern end of the Park. He made his bow to Sydney, took her arm in his, and led her on a promenade among the trees and the cows while he revealed to her his plans for an outdoor production of
The Tempest
in Richmond Park, as a part—the most ambitious part—of the entertainment at Sir Gavin Thiers’s fête on the following Friday, six days hence. Special lighting effects and a finale featuring dancers and pipes—much in the medieval style so appropriate to the subject of the play, D’Arcy explained—would be featured.

“I, of course, shall play Prospero,” his lordship announced, with a wave of an imaginary staff, “and you, dear Miss Archer, shall be my Miranda.’’

“What, that ninnyhammer?” Sydney said scornfully. “I certainly shall not!”

This forthright declaration not unnaturally set Lord D’Arcy considerably aback. He stopped in his path to stare at Sydney and, in a mood of Prospero combating the elements, demanded awfully, “You do not wish to appear in my play?’’

Sydney reminded him reasonably that it was Shakespeare’s play, and repeated her unflattering opinion of its ingénue role. “I shall play Ariel,” she said then, piling outrage upon blasphemy.

“Ariel!” D’Arcy now looked absurdly like a small boy about to indulge in a temper tantrum. “But you—you’re a female!”

“Where does it say Ariel may not be played by a female?” Sydney begged to be informed. “In Shakespeare’s time, you know, boys played Miranda and Rosalind and all the female parts. Who is to say that in these more enlightened days a lady may not perform what is traditionally—although by no means categorically—a boy’s part?”

“Anyway,” she added, as if to clinch the matter, “I shall be in costume, and no one will know the difference.”

Lord D’Arcy was, beneath his singular outward appearance, a fair-minded young man, and after he had walked a little farther in silent consideration of this proposal, he was obliged to concede its merits. Furthermore, he now recalled that Prospero had some very fine speeches in his scenes with Ariel.

“Very well,” he conceded. “That is what we shall do. How long will you be in learning your lines? We must meet every day for rehearsals.’’

Sydney assured Lord D’Arcy that she would begin learning her lines that very night and meet him every morning in the Park to go over them. Having reached the Park gate, they turned back again and D’Arcy revealed more of the details of the enterprise—which indeed he had firmly fixed in his mind—to his new associate. Sydney accepted his advice about the theatrical make-up she would need to disguise herself—disguise being essential to the mystery of the play—but she had her own ideas about her costume and was adamant that between them she and Daisy would fashion it.

After some further minutiae were thrashed out between them, they returned to the field where the cows were kept, to find Daisy—who had given up pacing about after them some time before—sitting on an upturned milk pail and chattering happily with one of the dairymaids who sold milk in the Park every morning.

On bidding Lord D’Arcy good morning, Sydney felt called upon to bring it to his attention that they would very likely meet each other elsewhere in Society, and that people would very likely come to erroneous conclusions about them.

“What sort of conclusions?” D’Arcy asked, puzzled.

“Well—” Sydney looked at the ground and felt rather as Cedric must have done in the many embarrassing moments she had put him through. “They may say that—that I have set my cap for you.’’

“Oh,
c’est une bagatelle, ça
.” D’Arcy flung his cloak around himself and said with a resigned boredom. “It is to be expected, I suppose, but I shall not mind. There is no need to give credence to such a ridiculous notion.’’

Sydney scowled. “I don’t see what is so ridiculous about it—except that I would never do such a thing!’’

“I have just said so, have I not? Since you mention it, however, we might perhaps take advantage of this lamentable tendency my countrymen have to attend to everyone’s business but their own to attract publicity to my play.’’

“But we have agreed I am to appear anonymously!’’

“Yes, naturally—but
I
shall not, and any talk that attaches itself to me will create an interest in seeing the performance. Yes—that will be the thing to do. I shall call for you at eight o’clock.”