Elisabeth Kidd Read Online Free PDF Page A

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