Lord Sidley's Last Season Read Free Page B

not notice his pallor, Marian?”
    “Indeed, he did look very pale. But I assumed that
he must not be outdoors much yet, because of his-his
cane. His limp, ma’am.” In the resulting silence she
sensed something unwelcome. “Do you suggest more,
Edith?”
    “Without question there is more, Marian, as I have it
from his aunt, Lady Adeline, that for the past month Sidley has been treating night as day and involving himself
in the most regrettable excesses of dissipation.”
    “I do not care, Mama,” Katie inserted boldly. “I intend to marry him anyway”
    “Then you are a gudgeon, Katherine, and must be
prepared to wear widow’s weeds. For you know as well
as I that Lord Sidley is said to be dying.”

ccI cannot help but believe, Sidley,” Lord Benjamin
said the next morning, “that what you are doing is rather
wicked.”
    “You should never qualify `wicked,’ Benny”
    “What? Oh-I see. Yes. Quite!”
    Leland Erasmus Pell, eighth Earl of Sidley, turned
from his dressing mirror to smile at his friends. “There is
no question I am engaged in a deceit of outstandingly
evil proportion. Would you not agree, Vaughn?”
    Viscount Vaughn sent him a pointed look. “Agree,”
he said, and returned to an examination of his immaculately buffed Hessian boots.
    “Vaughn would have me claim numerous `deceits,’
Benny,” Sidley said as his man gave a final brush to his
coat. “My deceits multiply. In for a penny, in for a pound! But wicked as I may be, you must admit that none of this
was at my initiative.”

    “Certainly not!” Lord Benjamin began to pace about
the room. “Your aunt is much to blame. Cutting up rough
like that! Carrying on as though you were already in
your grave! No one could convince her-But really,
Sidley-once having, having submitted to-having let
the notion-”
    “Having let the lie stand, I might only redeem myself
by refuting it?”
    “Yes!”
    “I intend to do so, my Lord Benjamin. But the execution . . ” Sidley shrugged his shoulders, or as near as he
could shrug in the close-fitting coat. “I must play out this
hand in the most satisfactory manner.”
    “You must leave town,” Vaughn said firmly. “To dieor recover”
    “I think I should prefer to recover, Vaughn,” Sidley
said with a sidelong glance. “Though it does present the
greater difficulty.” He smiled. “But by good fortune, I
needn’t determine my fate just this minute.”
    “It has gone on far too long,” Vaughn said. “You cannot fool everyone indefinitely. You must end it, Sidley.”
He glanced at the volume lying in its wrapping paper
on a side table. “I believe I saw a copy of the Microcosm
in your library last week.”
    “So you did.”
    “Then this one is … T’

    “A gift, Vaughn. I shall send it on to Lady Formsby
with my compliments.”
    “To Lady Formsby?”
    “Lady Formsby is a very dear friend of my aunt’s.
And an enthusiast for the latest in printing techniques.
Did you not know?”
    Vaughn returned to an examination of his boots, but
now he was frowning.
    Lord Benjamin stopped pacing the floor. “Your aunt,
Lady Adeline, knows then, Sidley? That you have never
been that ill?”
    “She knew within the first forty-eight hours, Benny.
But by then the damage had been done. And all her subsequent protests were ascribed to a fond relative’s wishful thinking.” Sidley smiled but shook his head. It still
amazed him, how remarkably the tale had spread. The
formidable Lady Adeline Pell, that model of composure, collapsing in hysterics. On seeing her nephew, pale
and still as a corpse, carried on a litter from the Lark at
Portsmouth, she had shrieked to all present that he was
dying, before succumbing herself to an astonishing fit
of the vapors.
    Though the combination of illness, inebriation, and
severe mal de mer had indeed rendered Sidley temporarily insensible, he had in fact been assured at least a few
more days of life.
    But the gossips had