Lord Sebastian's Secret (The Duke's Sons #3)(42)
Sebastian would have blurted out reassurances; he hated to see a girl cry. Or anyone, really, though fellows hardly ever did. But Georgina spoke before he could. “You should have told the truth at once,” she said. “We were in some danger, you know.”
“If I had realized…” began Emma.
“You knew we were lost,” Georgina interrupted. “You knew something had gone badly wrong. And you knew we had not eloped.”
Emma looked at the ground, snuffling.
“So it isn’t just a matter of not listening to Hilda. You must learn to judge for yourself what is right to do. And then do it, no matter how difficult it may seem. You see?”
As Emma nodded forlornly, Sebastian looked at his fiancée in admiration. She really was one of the wisest people he’d ever met.
“Georgina?” The marchioness’s voice carried across the gardens. “Where are you?”
Emma started and took a step back. “I don’t want to meet Mama,” she said. “She’s still angry with me. And I’m supposed to be in my room.” Wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands, she faded into the shrubbery.
“I must go,” said Georgina. She took Sebastian’s hand and squeezed it before walking quickly away.
Trying not to feel morose, Sebastian went off to find Sykes and prepare a letter to his mother.
“What a tale,” exclaimed his valet an hour later, when Sebastian’s dictation came to an end. Still holding the pen, Sykes sat back and gazed out over the writing desk into endless distance.
Sebastian watched as Sykes’s free hand rose and sketched an indefinable shape in the air, rather like a painter at an invisible easel. Now and then, he was allowed a glimpse of another person behind the smooth facade of his gentleman’s gentleman. This hidden Sykes never said “my lord” or made deferential bows. Those things fell away as if they’d never existed, and Sebastian wasn’t sure Sykes even knew it. As now, this fellow’s brown eyes were vague and dreamy rather than alert for services to perform. His spare frame arranged itself quite differently, with…somehow more carelessness and more weight at the same time. One could almost see dramatic vistas forming in his mind.
Despite the years of their association, Sebastian didn’t feel well acquainted with this man. Nor encouraged to be. It was deuced odd. They hadn’t much in common, of course, although Sebastian admired Sykes’s artistic abilities.
“I declare it is better than I could imagine,” Sykes said, clearly speaking to himself. “The wild tangles of vegetation, the heroic pair lost to all aid.”
“You may have the ravine,” said Sebastian. “With all its delightful mud and slippery walls and thorns as long as my thumb, but you mustn’t portray Lady Georgina.”
“I do not incorporate real people into my plays,” was the absent reply. “I gather traits and quirks from a variety of individuals and…amalgamate them into a fresh character.” Sykes’s hands drew together as if scooping up eels, or something equally slippery.
This was all very well, but Sebastian had found certain figures quite recognizable on the rare occasions when Sykes read bits of his plays aloud. And he knew he wasn’t the most discerning of auditors. He’d even mentioned it, but Sykes insisted he was mistaken. Sebastian didn’t mind a large, nobly born cavalry officer turning up in Sykes’s dramas. Not even the one who’d turned out to be a black villain. But… “Not Lady Georgina,” he repeated.
Sykes nodded to show he’d heard—like a preoccupied artiste, not a servant.
Sebastian supposed he might feel differently about the villainous colonel—a promotion, too—if the play was ever staged. Sykes had not yet achieved this goal. Sebastian had once offered to ask his father or Nathaniel for funds to mount a production, but his uniquely unusual valet had refused, insisting that his work must succeed on its own merits.
“This place is a veritable gold mine of material,” Sykes murmured. “I’ve never seen such richness and variety of character.”
That was one way of describing the Stanes, and Mitra, and the dogs, Sebastian thought. Actually, he rather liked the phrase. Perhaps he would repeat it to Georgina, should the chance arise.
“I must make notes.” Sykes half rose, then hesitated.
Sebastian watched him become fully conscious of his surroundings again. One day the man would move on, he thought. Indeed, Sebastian had asked him more than once if he wouldn’t prefer some other living arrangement. Sykes had denied any such desire, claiming that the world of a duke’s son was a source of endless inspiration, as well as a decent living. “I don’t know what else I’d do to earn my bread, to tell you the truth,” he’d said.
“You might be a great actor,” Sebastian had mused. Sykes demonstrated his acting skills every day as the perfect valet.
But Sykes had responded to his offhand suggestion with all the hauteur of a prince being asked to keep pigs. “I wouldn’t stoop,” he’d replied.
Frankly, it had been a relief. Sebastian didn’t know what he’d do without him.
Sykes straightened and somehow shook himself without moving. With that, he was back in his valet role. “I’ll get this off right away, my lord,” he said, folding the page and sealing it.
“Thank you, Sykes.”