She untied her bonnet ribbons and would have retied them, except Tyne plucked her millinery from her grasp. Whatever losses had inspired her into a life in service were doubtless to blame for this harebrained plan to leave. She honored somebody’s memory by remaining within earshot of grief, much as Tyne kept Josephine’s portrait in the formal parlor.
“If we’re to have a proper argument, madam, at least do me the courtesy of looking me in the eye while you threaten desertion.”
“You need heirs,” Miss Fletcher retorted, snatching the bonnet back. “Male heirs of your body. You’re a marquess, need I remind you.”
“If you think I can forget for one instant that I bear the responsibility for an old and respected title, you have been doing too many sums. Need I remind you that I have seven nephews thriving in my brothers’ nurseries, which are heirs enough to secure any succession?”
Though sons would be lovely. Noisy, boisterous, little fellows who rode like hellions, tracked mud into the house, and drove their parents barmy.
“Where’s Sylvie?” Miss Fletcher asked, scrambling to her feet. “I don’t see Sylvie.”
“She’s deserted us,” Tyne said, rising. “Gone off without giving notice.”
“Badger me some other time, my lord. I don’t see her anywhere.” A thread of panic laced Miss Fletcher’s voice. “I’m her governess and I’ve lost her in the middle of London. This is awful.”
The panic was contagious, for Tyne had never before misplaced a daughter. “She can’t have gone far,” he said, invoking a calm he did not feel. “We’ll find her. Steady on, Miss Fletcher. Let’s talk to the other girls.”
But neither Amanda nor her friends had seen Sylvie slip away, and though the square was small and plenty of people sat on benches or in coaches by the roadside, Sylvie was nowhere to be found.
* * *
How could Lord Tyne be calm, how could he think at all, when Sylvie was missing?
He was utterly composed. He dispatched the two grooms to work their way around the square, bench by bench, asking after Sylvie. Amanda and her friends did likewise with the children, while Lucy’s heart hammered against her ribs and guilt hammered her conscience.
“She could have been snatched away,” Lucy said, gaze upon the busy streets surrounding the square. “She could be lost, she might have been knocked witless by a passing carriage, and she’s so little, nobody would even—”
“Miss Fletcher,” Lord Tyne said, putting a hand on each of Lucy’s shoulders. “This is not your fault, and we must look at the situation logically. Sylvie is a sensible child. She has had your example to guide her for quite some time, and she knows better than to dart into traffic. She will not take foolish risks, will not talk to unsavory people, and will not leave this area without us.”
He took Lucy by the hand and led her back in the direction of the coach.
“Where are we going? We can’t leave, not with—”
“We have searched the square, and unless Sylvie has learned to levitate straight up into the boughs, she’s not here. We must check the coach and the coaches of acquaintances who happen to be enjoying the square. Thanks to you, Sylvie has many little friends, and she might even now be cadging another ice with one of them.”
That… that made sense. Lucy’s panic subsided the least bit. “I still feel responsible. She’s a little girl, and I am her governess.”
“While I am merely her father? You are being ridiculous. This outing was my suggestion, Sylvie is my daughter, and she will be fine, assuming she survives the scolding we’ll give her.”
His tone was cool, his grip on Lucy’s hand steadying. His lordship inquired at three different coaches, and still no Sylvie, not even a sighting of a child who might be Sylvie.
“We need to look in one last place,” his lordship said, escorting Lucy back across the street to Gunter’s. “I should have started here, because I have every confidence that we’ll find the prodigal and her accomplice slurping maple ices and looking entirely—”
“There you are!” Lucy said, dashing among the tables and wrapping Sylvie in a hug. “We looked everywhere for you, and I was so worried. Sylvie, you must never again give us such a fright.”
Sylvie yet held her spoon—she was indeed enjoying another maple ice—while Mrs. Holymere looked on with tolerant amusement from the seat at Sylvie’s elbow.
“I had to get Lady Higginbottom,” Sylvie said when Lucy could stand to turn loose of her. “I forgot her, and I’m not supposed to be forgetful. Mrs. Holymere helped me cross the road and said we should wait for Papa to come fetch me.” The girl looked uncertainly from her father to Lucy and then set aside her spoon to pick up her doll. “Am I in trouble?”
Mrs. Holymere beamed at the marquess. “Of course not, my dear. Looking after you for a few moments was my pleasure, and you really must not let this delicious ice go to waste. My lord, won’t you join us? Lady Amanda is somewhere about too, isn’t she? Perhaps the governess can take the child back to the square while we enjoy some adult conversation.”
The governess . Mrs. Holymere turned her smile on Lucy, clearly expecting the governess to take Sylvie by the hand and disappear for so long as it pleased Mrs. Holymere to publicly flirt with the marquess.
Sylvie took Lucy’s hand, and Lucy had picked up the half-eaten ice when Lord Tyne offered Mrs. Holymere a bow.
“While I thank you for aiding Lady Sylvie, I am not free at this moment to tarry. Good day.” He plucked Sylvie up onto his hip, passed Lucy the spoon Sylvie had been using, and strode in the direction of the door.
Lucy offered the barest curtsey and marched after him.
The ride back to the house was taken up with Amanda chattering about Rose and Winnie, her kickball opponents, and Sylvie debating the merits of maple ices over those flavored with lemon. Happy, normal babbling about an enjoyable outing on a fine spring day.
When the coach pulled up in the mews, the girls scampered into the house. Lucy climbed out last, accepting Lord Tyne’s hand to assist her to the ground.
“You are still upset,” he said, keeping hold of her hand as the coach pulled away to the carriage house.
“I am furious.”
“With Sylvie?”
Lucy shook her head, willing herself to remain civil, to keep to her place.
“With me?” Lord Tyne asked.
“You were wonderful. You kept your head, you didn’t panic, you applied common sense and persistence, while I wanted to run up and down the walkways shouting Sylvie’s name.”
“That would have been my next step as well, having exhausted all other possibilities. If you’re not wroth with me or Sylvie, then who has earned your ire?”
Standing this close to Lord Tyne was distracting, but not distracting enough. All over again, Lucy saw Mrs. Holymere’s smirk, heard her dismissing the governess, the better to be seen sharing an ice with the marquess.
Lucy stalked the half-dozen paces across the alley and into the garden, Lord Tyne following. “I am furious, my lord, though I know I shouldn’t be. I am furious at Mrs. Holymere for dragging an innocent child into her machinations, for pretending to be Sylvie’s friend, for entirely disregarding the difficult position she put a little girl in. Was Sylvie to suffer a birching for the betterment of Mrs. Holymere’s designs on you? Do you know how far back that would set the poor girl?
“Sylvie was trying to fetch her doll,” Lucy went on, “which I have admonished her to remember to do over and over, and that woman, that manipulative, sly, flirting menace to the peace of the nursery, had the audacity—”
Lucy was pacing a circle around the smallest fountain in the garden and came smack up against his lordship.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I ought not to criticize my betters.”
“Mrs. Holymere is not your better. If I had any doubt of that before today, I’m convinced of it now. You must calm yourself, Miss Fletcher. Sylvie is safe. She was at no time in danger, and a few reminders about keeping us appris
ed of her whereabouts are all the repercussions she should face.”
“I am not calm,” Lucy said. “This is why I should leave. I love those girls, and that is unpro— unprofessional of me.” Her breath hitched, and she tried to turn away, but there was the marble sculpture of a laughing boy, his half-tipped urn eternally spilling into the pool at his feet.
Lord Tyne passed her his handkerchief, put his arms around her, and drew her close. “You aren’t going anywhere, not at the moment. Now, have a good cry—however one defines such an oxymoron—and then we must talk.”
Lucy indulged her tears, because the comfort Lord Tyne offered was irresistible. To be held, to be cosseted, to be allowed for once to share an emotional burden… The relief was as exhausting as her worry over Sylvie had been. She never cried—almost never—but to think of Sylvie in harm’s way, lost, alone, at the mercy of an unkind fate…. That was worth a few tears.
“My nose is probably red, and my cheeks are splotchy. Allow me some time to repair my toilette, and I’ll be happy to—”
“Miss Fletcher… Lucy, if I may be so bold. I hope you know I would never trifle with the help?”
She took a seat on the nearest bench, because his lordship’s reassurance was anything but cheering.
“Of course I know that, sir. You are all that is kind, and I’m simply overset.”
He came down beside her. “With good reason. Sylvie gave us a fright, or rather that Holymere woman did. I knew her husband, so I attempt to be courteous to her, but my courtesies are at an end.”
“You’ll cut her?” Lucy liked that idea exceedingly.
“I will be merely civil, which is all the rebuke allowed to me as a gentleman. You are quite fond of the girls.”
Hadn’t Lucy said as much? “Which is why I should find another post now, my lord. I will grow more attached, and that cannot end well for anybody.” The words hurt, but that pain was familiar, unlike the growing attachment Lucy felt for his lordship.
“And yet,” he said, “I cannot abide the notion of you leaving us.”
A sad silence went by. The garden was coming into its fragrant, colorful summer glory, but like the flowers blooming in such abundance, Lucy’s time in Lord Tyne’s household would soon be over. She nearly started weeping all over again, which made no sense.
A trip to Gunter’s was not an adventure. A man who kept his head when a small child went missing was not a dashing flirt.
Lord Tyne was so much more than that. “We can speak further of this later, my lord. I am, as you say, not at my best.”
He assisted Lucy to rise and stood staring down at her. Lucy could almost hear him rearranging mental chess pieces, hear him choosing the phrasing by which he might offer her a higher salary to remain in his employ. She did not want a higher salary—had no need of it, in fact.
“When we speak later,” he said, “please consider that while I would never trifle with a woman in my employ, and your privacy is inviolable, and I am not keen on being trifled with myself, if you should ever be inclined to show me the sort of regard that—”
“Excuse me, my lord, Miss Fletcher.” The first footman stood several yards up the garden walk. “I apologize for intruding, but the gentleman has been waiting for some time.”
“What gentleman?” Lord Tyne asked.
Regardless of the gentleman’s name, Lucy wished him to perdition. Whatever his lordship had planned to say mattered more to her than some gentleman pacing in the parlor.
“He’s an acquaintance of Miss Fletcher’s,” the footman said. “Says he’s an old friend, a Captain Giles Throckmorton, and he’d be very pleased if Miss Fletcher could spare him a few minutes of her time.”
* * *
“Miss Fletcher was wild with worry for you, Syl.” Amanda had been worried too.
“Mrs. Holymere said I was to come with her, and I needed to fetch Lady Higginbottom.” Sylvie situated her ladyship back among the other dolls on the nursery shelf. “I think Papa was angry with me.”
Amanda flopped into the rocking chair where, when she’d been smaller than Sylvie, she’d climbed into her papa’s lap and fallen asleep while he’d read to her. The memory made her sad now, which was silly.
“If Papa was angry with anybody, he was angry with Mrs. Holymere.”
Sylvie took the other rocking chair, her feet not reaching the floor. “John Coachman calls her Mrs. Holy Terror. She smiles too much. I told her I’d already had an ice, and I’d helped Lady Hig finish hers too, but Mrs. Holymere insisted I stay with her to have another.”
Mrs. Holymere’s agenda had become clear to Amanda when the woman had called upon Papa several weeks ago, pretending to need his advice about how to manage her domestics. Amanda had every confidence Mrs. Holymere was a dab hand at managing her servants, her friends, and half the bachelors in Mayfair.
The housekeeper had said as much, and Cook and Mr. Drummond, the butler, had agreed with her.
“Mrs. Holymere wants to marry Papa,” Amanda said. “Wants to add him to the staff she manages.”
Sylvie set her chair rocking. “Papa is a lord. Nobody manages him but Good King George.”
“Miss Fletcher manages him. She made him take us to Gunter’s for ices, and now he has the knack of it on his own. She’s the reason he sometimes brings us flowers, Syl, and before she came, you weren’t even taking breakfast downstairs.”
Sylvie’s chair slowed. “I like breakfast downstairs. I like Miss Fletcher. So does Lady Hig, and Miss Twitlinger, and Her Grace of Dumpwhistle, and the Honorable Mr. Woddynod. Mr. Hamchop doesn’t like anybody.”
Amanda liked having Sylvie at the breakfast table. With a younger sister underfoot to get jam on the table napkins, mash up words, and speak too loudly, Amanda felt more at ease.
“Breakfast was awful before Miss Fletcher came. Papa hid behind the newspaper and forgot I was there.”
“How could anybody forget you, Manda?”
The question was genuinely perplexed, and guilt rose again to upset Amanda’s belly. “I forgot you, Syl. I was so busy trying to kick the ball at that tree, I didn’t realize when you’d wandered off. I’m your older sister. I should have kept an eye on you.”
Sylvie hopped out of her chair and went to the toy chest. “I waited until it was your turn to kick before I went to fetch Lady Hig. I didn’t want anybody to know I’d forgotten her again.”
“Do you ever get tired of playing with dolls, Syl?”
“Yes, but there’s nobody else to play with, unless Miss Fletcher has me invite Rose or Jessica or Clementina or Daisy or Maude or Lizzie or—”
“Who does Miss Fletcher ever play with, Syl?”
“Grown-ups don’t play. I can’t find my tops.”
Grown-ups did play. They played fancy dress-up and called it a masquerade. They played all manner of card games, and Papa had once said Parliament was a glorified cricket tournament.
“Mrs. Holymere wants to play with Papa.”
Sylvie left off plundering the toy chest. “You said she wants to marry him. She told me that I have been too long without a mama, and Papa needs to do his duty by the session.”
“The succession, the title. She meant we need brothers, though we have seven male cousins on the uncles’ side. Mrs. Holymere wants to marry Papa so he can have sons with her.”
“Will brothers play with me?”
Amanda crossed the room to fetch a pair of spinning tops from the mantel. “From what I understand, brothers are a little bit of a friend and mostly a bother. Miss Fletcher writes to her brothers often.” Papa did not seem to bother the aunties, though he called upon them more often than they called upon him.
“Miss Fletcher has the most beautiful handwriting,” Sylvie said. “I want to learn to write as she does, without getting ink all over my blotter.”
Amanda had developed beautiful handwriting under Miss Fletcher’s tutelage. She was also tackling her third Beethoven sonata and, according to Miss Fletcher, was already equal to any of He
rr Mozart’s challenges.
“Papa can do his duty by the succession without involving Mrs. Holymere,” Amanda said.
“You found my tops!” Sylvie took the one painted with blue and white rings. “Let’s have a race!”
They’d been playing this game forever, setting both tops spinning until one toppled, and the one still whirling was the winner. Amanda rolled back half the carpet, Sylvie plopped to the floor, and Amanda tried to do as Miss Fletcher had done on the blanket in Berkeley Square—fold gracefully to her knees, then shift to one hip, legs tucked aside.
That was harder than it looked, like most attempts to emulate Miss Fletcher.
“How is Papa to find me some brothers without marrying another lady?” Sylvie scrambled to her feet and fetched Lady Hig and Her Grace of Dumpwhistle—they had made their come outs together, after all.
“Papa could marry Miss Fletcher.”
Sylvie whipped the string off her top and set it spinning on the smooth oak floor. “Miss Fletcher isn’t rich or fancy.”
“Papa’s not fancy, and he likes Miss Fletcher a lot. They smile at each other when they think we’re not looking.”
Sylvie watched her top, still going at a great rate, more of a blue blur than a highly polished wooden toy.
“We have had a lot of governesses,” Sylvie said. “Miss Fletcher laughs and hugs me, and she doesn’t say I’m too old for my dolls.”
“She makes Papa listen and makes him talk to us.”
“He wishes us good night now. I like that, but how do we make sure they marry?”
“We tell Papa, and he proposes to Miss Fletcher, and they marry.”
The top wobbled, then fell to its side, all momentum gone. “I don’t think it’s that simple, Manda. Wind your string, and we’ll have our race.”
“We’ll talk to Papa and maybe to Miss Fletcher. We’ll give them the benefit of our informed guidance.”
Informed guidance, according to Miss Fletcher, was to be esteemed as highly as a pot of chocolate and fresh shortbread, but not quite as highly as heavenly intercession.
“I’ll tell Papa that Lady Hig didn’t like Mrs. Holymere at all. Start on the count of three.”
Marquesses at the Masquerade Page 32