Lord Sidley's Last Season

by Sherry Lynn Ferguson

  Sidley shrugged. “We have discussed him. I acknowledge his claim. But the man is not present,” he said softly, “and that is his misfortune.”

  Marian could look straight up into his eyes. The bright moonlight robbed them of color but not of depth or darkness. She wondered at herself, to be considering him so minutely, as though he were a subject she intended to paint. But her consciousness was of something else entirely-that of warmth, and closeness, and a much too attractive temptation.

  She swallowed and forced herself to break the gaze. She looked to his nose and cheeks-and frowned. He had to be wearing powder, for the moonlight to reflect so little upon his skin.

  “Do not peer at me so, Miss Ware. I am too shy for it.”

  “Shy! Your reputation is otherwise.”

  “Perhaps I do not deserve my reputation.” He smiled and turned his head to listen to a lone flutist playing within the ballroom. “Orpheus is practicing. ‘Tis a pleasant tune. I think we might practice as well. Come, Miss Ware, you must help me exercise. Try some simple steps with me. I saw Colonel Bassett dancing as I came in. Even in my decrepit condition I ought to execute a turn as well as old Bassett”

  He moved away from the stone rail and extended a gloved hand to her. The flutist’s tune, from an old, simple minuet, carried sweetly through the open doors.

  “People will see,” Marian said, even as she compliantly extended a hand.

  “We do not care,” he countered. For a moment his smile broadened. “You have such a short time here, Miss Ware. Will you not enjoy it?” His coaxing tone robbed her of any objection, though she did wonder whether he referred to her stay in London or on Earth.

  For a minute they stepped slowly and carefully to the melody. When the instrument stopped, they stopped as well, and Marian held her breath as Sidley merely stood and smiled at her. In that brief pause she was conscious of a small audience, but, just as Sidley had claimed, she did not care. As she held his gaze she knew her heart kept pace with the vanished tune. When the flutist resumed, the music did not continue but began again, and Sidley dutifully positioned himself to lead her through a repeat of the initial steps. But beyond those first moves, as the music advanced to a more intricate passage, he tried to pivot on his bad leg at a turn, and stumbled.

  “Curses …” he muttered, gritting his teeth in obvious pain.

  “You have done very well.”

  His bright gaze was sharp. “You speak to me as though I were twelve.”

  “I speak to you,” she said evenly, “as though you have been injured-and are recovering.”

  Something in his gaze then, something more than his customary consideration, held her very still. Marian was scarcely aware of the few people near them.

  “I wish,” she continued impulsively, “I wish you were not ill. I wish-”

  “You mustn’t wish for too much, Miss Ware,” he said simply. “I tend to be superstitious.”

  But he was looking at her so openly that Marian could only be impatient with the suddenly distracting eruption of noise from the ballroom. And then Lord Benjamin stood highlighted against the brilliantly lantern-lit doorway.

  “Sidley!” he urged. “Do come. It’s Vaughn!”

  “Clarses,” Sidley muttered again, brushing past Benjamin. Inside all was heat, light, chatter, and companyeverything, in fact, that Sidley had gratefully escaped out-of-doors. Miss Ware would have deserted him…. Yet as he glanced back over his shoulder, he spotted her several steps behind him. She was holding his cane, which she had thoughtfully retrieved. He paused long enough to allow her to draw even with him, and he gave her the briefest of smiles as she proffered the cane. Though he did not need it for walking, he thought it might serve admirably to brain Vaughn.

  “Where is he?” he hissed to Benny, even as their urgency forced the ballroom crowd to give way to them.

  Benny nodded toward the hall. “I’d just finished speakin’ with Formsby,” Benny relayed in a low voice, “when I noticed Knox talking to Vaughn outside the supper room. Both of ‘em looked steamed, though in different ways, of course, since Vaughn never looks much of anythin’. But then Vaughn made for the hall. I could tell he meant to leave, Sidley, not to cause a scene. Only Knox had to rush after ‘im, and I came for you-”

  “Well judged, Benny,” Sidley murmured just as he entered the hall to confront a red-faced Griffin Knox blocking the door to the Viscount Vaughn.

  “I say you shall not leave here without such a promise!” Knox fumed.

  “You need no promise, Knox,” Vaughn said tightly. “You imagine-”

  “Ah! There you are, Vaughn! Good fellow!” Sidley called, forcing an obliviously cheerful smile. “I know we were to depart ten minutes ago-”

  “You should never have come at all,” Knox snapped. “And now you’d best stay out of this, Sidley.”

  Sidley’s grin lost a bit of its expansiveness. “The last person to order me so, Mr. Knox,” he said pleasantly, “was a general.”

  “And what did he say?” Knox sneered. “Polish my boots?”

  Sidley leaned heavily on his cane to keep himself from swinging it. “I may misremember,” he said easily. “It has been some time, after all. But I believe we were before Orthez, and he wished me to trounce Marshal Soult.”

  He spoke carelessly, but in that happy company the comment shocked. And all recognized the battle, just months before, in which Wellington himself had been injured.

  In the subsequent silence, Knox’s sneer fled. “This is not your affair,” he bit out.

  “Nor is it Lord Vaughn’s.”

  “It should not be-but he must busy himself where he is not wanted.”

  Sidley thrust his cane across Vaughn’s boots to prevent him from surging toward Knox. Sidley was conscious of the gathering audience and most conscious, perhaps, of Marian Ware several steps beyond his right shoulder. That he should be so alive to her presence was most peculiar.

  “This is not the place to air your dispute,” Sidley said to Knox. “Lady Katherine and her family can only thank us if we remove ourselves. Will you not step outside an instant, Mr. Knox?”

  “I will not leave my wife!”

  Sidley’s gaze noted Jenny Knox, attended by several friends, at the entrance to the ballroom. “Mrs. Knox is in good company.”

  “I make certain of it!” Knox spat. “Which is why I’ll have that promise from your friend!” He looked at Vaughn, whose lips were tight-as though he meant never to speak again.

  Sidley glanced again at Jenny Knox, whose dark eyes were huge in her pale face. Her ghastly pallor gave him an idea.

  “Come now, Vaughn,” he coaxed in as pompously wheedling a tone as he could manage. He patted Vaughn’s sleeve condescendingly. “Surely you can promise the man, fool though he is, anything he likes?”

  Vaughn actually frowned. “Leave off, Sidley,” he said sharply.

  “Good heavens! That from you, when I’ve-exerted myself so-” Abruptly he loosed his grip on Vaughn’s sleeve and, collapsing as heavily as he could against his friend, slid in an apparent faint toward the floor.

  Vaughn was quick enough to grab his arms, sparing him a blow to the head. Sidley kept his eyes closed and heard all the hubbub around him: Benny’s gleefully repeated “Get back!”; Edgar Formsby’s “What has happened?”; and, most clearly, young Lady Katherine’s penetrating shriek of “Sidley!”, at which he could scarcely prevent himself from cringing.

  Sidley heard Vaughn ordering the carriage to be called, then several people were carrying him, unevenly and most uncomfortably, to the door. He heard Colonel Bassett’s blistering description of Lord Sidley as a “useless bit of goods,” with a dismissive, “Marshal Soult? Most unlikely!” added for good measure.

  Even in the darkness out-of-doors he kept his eyes closed, knowing that Edgar Formsby, if not volunteering so much as to help carry him, was enough of a host to see an ill guest from the door. Sidley was doubly glad of his discipline when he heard Marian Ware softly recommen
ding that someone loosen Lord Sidley’s collar, and Vaughn’s answering assurance, “We shall see to him, Miss Ware”

  Oh, no doubt, no doubt, Sidley thought. The arms that shoved him unceremoniously onto the carriage seat were certainly far from gentle.

  “I shall kill you for this,” Vaughn muttered darkly as the horses started.

  “Why, Vaughn?” Sidley asked, struggling to sit up. “Did you not wish to quit the place?”

  Benny laughed, but Vaughn looked like thunder. “You must drop the game with me, Lee. I would have left Knox on my own terms, without your interference.”

  “That is no doubt the case, my friend. But as I stand your second, I deem it my duty to make certain that your `terms,’ as you call them, are not aired. I shall make every effort to prevent a confrontation.”

  “I would not have challenged Knox.”

  “Perhaps not. But I fear he comes too close to challenging you. And I have a marginal preference for keeping you whole. In any event,” he added, attempting to right his cravat by touch, “the Formsbys’ insipid do grew tiresome. It was time to leave.”

  Benny beamed. “Shall we go on to Boodle’s, then, Sidley? You said if we stopped in at Formsby’s-”

  “Unfortunately, Benny, that plan was previous to my collapse before half the ton. Credibility-a precious commodity, my young friend-requires that we retire to Sidley House for the nonce. But by tomorrow I shall have made a miraculous recovery.”

  “A veritable Lazarus,” Vaughn muttered. Even in the limited glow of the carriage lights, Sidley could see how grim he still looked.

  “I will call ‘round at the Formsbys’ tomorrow and make my apologies, Vaughn.”

  “You should be making your farewells.”

  Sidley shrugged. “Certainly I can no longer entertain the notion of offering for Lady Katherine. I cannot wed a woman who shrieks so.”

  “Perhaps she mustn’t suffer a husband who swoons so”

  As Benny laughed again, Vaughn continued to hold Sidley’s amused gaze. “It is not Lady Katherine you must bid adieu, as you well know, Lee. You’re too much the gentleman to sport with Miss Ware. You are far from insensible. You heard her tonight.”

  “Yes,” Sidley said. “She’s very kind-”

  “‘Kind’? Don’t play with her, Sidley. Let her spend her sympathies on her lieutenant. No doubt they make a charming couple. Be wise enough to take your own advice, else I shall ignore it as well”

  “Fair enough, Vaughn.” Sidley sighed. “But the girl is invited to Aldersham. What would you have me do about that?”

  Vaughn shot him a dark look and shook his head. “Do not go to Aldersham,” he suggested.

  “We could run on down to Brighton instead!” Benny urged. “Tip Newell and Percy Rutherford went down last week, along with-”

  “We are promised to my aunt,” Sidley reminded them. “Aldersham it is. I believe I can be dismissive enough to Miss Ware in my own home, with a dozen others about”

  “Or private enough,” Vaughn suggested.

  “I promise you, Vaughn, after tomorrow’s call, Miss Ware shall have such an aversion to me, she shan’t wish to remain within thirty paces.”

  The next day they were so dutifully early to pay a call upon the Formsby household that the ladies were not yet available to receive them. Sidley had taken special care with his toilette, being most particular to discard some of his habitual powder, thus improving his outward appearance of health. Intending to abide by his promise to Vaughn, he had also taken care to dress elaborately enough to raise Miss Ware’s disapproving eyebrows-though, as he remembered, she had rather nice eyebrows, and he saw no reason to mimic the impudent coxcombs he found so trying.

  They were shown into a small front parlor, one obviously rarely used for company, as the ladies’ sewing baskets were neatly arrayed to one side of a cold hearth. The gentlemen could hear the preparations for visitors in the drawing room across the hall; undoubtedly the clearing up from the previous night’s ball required that callers be diverted temporarily from any lingering evidence of revelry.

  “They might at least have lit the fire,” Benny grumbled.

  “We are rather early, Benny,” Sidley told him affably, ..and it is not cold” His gaze had settled on a pair of painted landscapes above the room’s fine spinet. He walked over to take a closer look. The neat signature M. Ware did not surprise him.

  “They are good,” Vaughn commented at his side. “She paints like a man.”

  “She paints better than a man, Vaughn. She paints with the best” Again he concentrated on the perfect watercolors. “These are exquisite.”

  He heard Vaughn’s sigh and turned to him with a quizzical brow. “What is the problem?”

  “You, Sidley. You are the problem. Tell me that you have not just abandoned your good intentions.” When Sidley stayed silent, Vaughn charged, “You are supposed to be dying. You might act it.”

  “Vaughn!” He watched Vaughn walk to a corner across the room, where another painting commanded attention. Sidley wished for better light in which to judge the oil, but the beauty of the piece would have been discernible even in the worst surroundings. Depicting the city from across the river, in a scene reminiscent of the prints Sidley had extolled in the Microcosm, this rendition was even more beautiful.

  “Miss Ware is much too modest,” Sidley said.

  “She did this?” Benny exclaimed. “How?”

  “With a paintbrush and considerable talent. And a perseverance that would be foreign to you, my friend.” Sidley turned to face Benny. “Your education has been lacking in certain areas, my lord Benny. We must take a close tour of my collection at home. Or, better yet, visit the summer exhibition at Somerset House.”

  As Benny protested that he had no time for such frivolities, the butler addressed them from the doorway, with an announcement that the ladies were receiving. They crossed the hall, to be met immediately upon entering the drawing room by a bounding and happily smiling Lady Katherine.

  “My lords.” She curtsied to them all, then fixed a sparkling gaze on Sidley. “Lord Sidley, I am so pleased to see you recovered”

  He waved a hand. “‘Twas merely a bit hot in your rooms last night,” he claimed, “and I had been exercisin’” His glance slid past a silently attentive Marian Ware, to settle on Lady Formsby. He bowed to the older woman, as did Benny and Vaughn. “Lady Formsby, we must thank you for an excessively fine evening. I apologize for the excitement. I repeat, ‘twas nothing.”

  “Nothing!” Lady Katherine exclaimed. “Why-”

  “We are most grateful for your call here today, my lord Sidley,” her mother interrupted, with a sharp glance at her boisterous daughter. “‘Tis most reassuring. We feared for your health.”

  “A most misplaced concern, my lady,” Sidley told her, but he noticed that the disclaimer did not erase the concern from her face or Miss Ware’s. At least Lady Katherine’s wide green gaze was untroubled; but then, nothing much ever appeared to trouble the girl.

  “I was so glad that you-all of you-could attend last night,” she said. “Mama had given up on you,” she added, at which Lady Formsby looked her disapproval. “But I told her you were sure to come, as you’d promised! I do hope you sampled some of our chef’s supper. Oh, but you could not have had time! The music was delightful, nonetheless, was it not? I believe Lord Benjamin still owes me that dance,” she said, and she paused to grin roguishly at Benny, who went red to his ears.

  As additional callers were announced and welcomed, Sidley walked over to Marian Ware, who had retreated to a window alcove. She examined his face with a thoroughness that very nearly undid him.

  “You are quite well, then, my lord?” she asked.

  “Quite. Or at least-as well as the usual.”

  “Yes. Yes, I see” She bit her lower lip, which action had the unfortunate effect of drawing his attention.

  “Miss Ware,” he said abruptly, “we must do something about your painting.”

&
nbsp; “Do something, my lord?” She smiled. “Do you urge me to improve?”

  “You must not languish in parlors.”

  “You refer to-?”

  “Your work, which should be exhibited.”

  “Those paintings were gifts to my cousins.”

  “If you have others, they should not be tucked into dark corners.”

  “I am most flattered, Lord Sidley. But you do me too much honor.”

  “Nonsense!” He struck his cane forcibly upon the floor. Immediately he regretted it. He kept his gaze on the rest of the startled company as he spoke tensely, and very low, to Miss Ware. “There are few women who are painters. You are one of them. You must permit me to aid you.”

  “Aid me?” And for a second she looked all of the uncomprehending twenty that she was. “Why, my lord? Because of-because of Lady Katherine?”

  Marian watched the impatience creep into Sidley’s gaze.

  “Lady Katherine! What has she to do with anything?”

  Fortunately, this rather rude response was not audible enough to be overheard.

  “Really, my lord, I thought that you and she-that if you harbored plans..

  “I harbor no plans, Miss Ware. You must put that from your mind. Your painting has naught to do with any of it.”

  “I would certainly agree, my lord. Though I might ask what, then, other than an interest in my cousin, prompts you to honor the Formsbys with your company.”

  “I am not accustomed to having my motives or actions so questioned,” he said testily.

  “I do not mean to do so, my lord. Nevertheless, you must know that my cousin’s expectations have been … excited.”

  “If they have been so `excited,’ I am sorry for it,” he bit out. “Must we quarrel?”

  “I was not aware we quarreled,” she countered softly.

  Immediately his shoulders eased. He gave her a smile. “Certainly not,” he agreed. Again he surveyed the drawing room, where additional callers were filling out the company. “Still, I must be permitted to further your interests. Perhaps-well, I might ease an introduction. If you could paint anyone of your acquaintance here in town, Miss Ware, whom would you choose?”