Elisabeth Kidd Read Online Free PDF Page B

Miss Fairfax?”
    “Oh, I did not mean that I fancied your style at all, sir!” she replied unblushingly.
    “Kenyon!” his lordship appealed in desperation. “Tell me where it is that we are escorting this lady to! We appear to be running out of village.”
    Having left the South Parade and the church behind, they were in fact walking down a street of cottages, at the end of which stood a small brick house with a trellissed porch. They stopped in front of it, and Miss Fairfax thanked the gentlemen for their escort. Mr Kenyon insisted that this must not be the last time they met during his sojourn in Leicestershire, and she obliged this latest hint by inviting both gentlemen to dinner at Wyckham the next day, an invitation which was quickly accepted. The gentlemen then turned back toward the village, having like Miss Fairfax left their equipage at The George, and the lady pulled at the knocker of her friend’s door.
    It was Imogen Curtiz’s custom to open her own door, since she indulged in no servants other than a housemaid who frequently found herself with nothing to do, but Antonia’s summons was answered with an alacrity which caused her to suspect that Imogen had observed her approach from behind the lace-curtained front windows. Her suspicions were confirmed when her friend opened the door, kissed Antonia on the cheek, and rather absently invited her to enter, all the while keeping a sharp lookout on the street from the corner of her eye. But presently she closed the door and devoted her attention fully to her guest.
    “Come in and have some tea, my love—let me take your cloak—I have a new concoction for you to try. It has a little Darjeeling, a little dried lemon peel, a pinch of—
    “Imogen, you must not reveal all your secrets.”
    “Oh, my child, I have no secrets from you!” said the older woman, shepherding Antonia into a sunny alcove in the rear of the house, overlooking a small garden. She seated herself at the tea table opposite Antonia, and for a few minutes addressed to her some trifling remarks upon the weather, the state of her azalea bushes, and a shipment of tea which had unaccountably gone astray in the post.
    Imogen Curtiz was a handsome woman in her early fifties. Her dark hair was streaked dramatically with grey, and she had magnificent large black eyes and a long aristocratic nose. She was rather thin—having passed through several of her late husband’s illnesses with him—but she carried herself regally and reveled in a reputation for unconventionality of dress and manner. She had once appeared at one of the Fairfaxes’ parties in Arab costume, giving Maria palpitations but delighting every one else.
    Today, however—there being no one to shock—she was dressed simply in a grey gown that came up to her throat in a line of small black buttons and ended with a double ruff of pointed lace. She held herself militarily erect, while gracefully pouring tea from a Chinese porcelain pot.
    “But do not keep me on tenterhooks!” she admonished Antonia. “Tell me who that was who accompanied you here.”
    “Why, Imogen, surely you are well acquainted with Mr Kenyon,” Antonia teased her.
    “Oh—Philip!” Imogen exclaimed, dismissing their mutual friend with a wave of one beringed hand. “You know perfectly well I meant the other one.”
    “He is Viscount Kedrington.”
    Imogen’s eyes and brows flew up. “Kedrington? Oh, surely not! No, it can’t be—Desmond must be dead these fifteen years or more. This must be the—let me see—the sixth viscount? What is his name? I thought he was out of the country.”
    “I regret I did not ask for particulars.”
    “No matter. But tell me what he said to you.”
    Antonia did not appear to recall the interview in any detail, but she did dredge out of her fickle memory the viscount’s Christian name and that he had a well-developed literary instinct. Imogen stared at her, as if this was the last thing she would have expected to