Sylvester by Georgette Heyer Page B

bashful to speak above a whisper or without blushing fierily from neck to brow. Lady Marlow made them both known to him, but ignored the claims of the grim lady to a share of his civility. He concluded that she must be the governess; and instantly determined to show his hostess what he thought of her insufferable manners. He favoured Miss Battery with a slight bow, and his most pleasant smile, and directed at Lady Marlow an inquiring look she was unable to ignore.
    ‘Oh—! My daughters’ governess,’ she said shortly. ‘Pray come to the fire, Duke!’
    Sylvester, choosing instead a chair rather nearer to Miss Battery than to the fireside party, addressed a civil remark to her. She answered it with composure, but gruffly, looking at him with unnerving fixity.
    Lord Marlow, always very easy and good-natured with his dependants, then added to his wife’s displeasure by saying: ‘Ah, Miss Battery! I have not seen you since I came home! How do you go on? But I need not ask: you are always well!’
    That gave Sylvester the opportunity to ask her if she were related to a family of the same name living in Norfolk. She replied: ‘Shouldn’t think so, sir. Never heard of them until your grace mentioned them.’
    As the family had no existence outside his imagination this was not surprising; but his question seemed to have broken the ice: Miss Battery, appearing slightly mollified, disclosed that she came from Hertfordshire.
    Lady Marlow, breaking rudely in on this, said loudly that she had no doubt the Duke would enjoy a little music, and waved Phoebe towards the pianoforte.
    Phoebe was an indifferent performer, but as neither her father nor Lady Marlow was at all musical they were perfectly satisfied, as long as she did not falter, or play any unmistakably wrong notes. Sylvester was not musical either, but he had been used to listen to the first musicians of the day, and thought he had never heard anyone play with less taste or feeling. He could only be thankful that she did not play the harp; but when, in response to some affectionate urging from her father, she sang an old ballad in a small, wooden voice he was much inclined to think that even a harp might have been preferable.
    At half-past eight the schoolroom party withdrew, and after half an hour’s desultory conversation the tea-tray was brought in. Sylvester saw the end of his purgatory, and so it was. Punctually at half-past nine Lady Marlow informed him that they kept early hours at Austerby, bade him a formal goodnight, and went away, with Phoebe following in her wake. As they mounted the stairs she said complacently that the evening had gone off very well. She added that although she feared the Duke was a man of fashion, she was on the whole pleased with him. ‘Your father informs me that hunting will be out of the question tomorrow,’ she observed. ‘If it should not be snowing I shall suggest to Salford that he might like to walk with you and your sisters. Miss Battery will accompany you, of course, but I shall tell her she may fall behind, with the girls, and give her a hint at the same time not to be putting herself forward, as I was excessively surprised to see her doing this evening.’
    This programme, which, a few hours earlier, would have appalled her, Phoebe listened to with a calm born of her fixed resolve to be gone from Austerby long before it could be put into execution. Parting from Lady Marlow at the head of the stairs she went away to her bedchamber, knowing that both Susan and Miss Battery would come to her there, and that it would consequently be dangerous to repair to the morning-room before she had received these visitors.
    Susan was soon got rid of; but Miss Battery, who followed her, showed a disposition to linger. Seating herself at the foot of the bed, and tucking her hands into the sleeves of her thick woollen dressing-gown, she told Phoebe that she thought she had done Sylvester less than justice.
    ‘Sibby! You did not like him?’