Sylvia Or The Moral High Ground

by Catherine Bowness

  “I already told you: she is no longer my teacher; she is my friend.” The girl sounded angry now; she did not like the man’s manner, whether he was a duke or not.

  “Dearest Melissa, you must not allow either his grace or me to involve you in this absurd argument. If he wishes to be uncivil, that is no doubt his prerogative.”

  “I will not permit him to be rude to you even if he is a Duke,” Melissa cried, putting up her chin and holding fast to Sylvia’s arm.

  “I doubt if even you will be able to stop him. Let us not argue upon the pavement a moment longer,” Sylvia said. “We will go home and hope that our paths will not cross again.”

  “Yes, oh, do let us,” Melissa cried, clearly relieved. She was very young and had only recently arrived in London where she knew she was expected to behave in a pleasing manner, particularly to a man whom she already knew her mama favoured. The scene upon the pavement outside the hat shop had turned into something deeply unpleasant. Although she did not understand the reasons for the hostility between her beloved governess and the Duke, she sensed the depth and violence of the emotions involved.

  In the very act of holding out her hand in farewell, she suddenly grew red. Sylvia following her eyes, which were not on the Duke, saw a very young man alight from a curricle, throwing the reins to a groom perched up behind with a shouted instruction, and run towards them.

  “This is Mr Harbury!” Melissa cried, her face brightening perceptibly and a smile spreading across her face.

  “Indeed? How do you do, Mr Harbury?” Sylvia said with almost excessive warmth, holding out her hand. “Miss Sullington told me that you met in the Park yesterday.”

  “Yes! What an enormous pleasure to see you again so soon, Miss Sullington!” The young man was bowing. “And your grace too!” he added, bowing again.

  “It only wants Lord Furzeby to complete your encounter in the Park!” Sylvia murmured.

  Melissa introduced Miss Holmdale to Mr Harbury, who reacted in a far more agreeable manner than the Duke, bowing over her hand quite as though she had been a lady.

  “We were about to go home,” Melissa admitted.

  “Oh, you cannot rush off as soon as I arrive,” Mr Harbury exclaimed ingenuously. “Could we – would you like an ice or something? Gunter’s is not far. Would you both, and you too, Duke, if you would not find it tedious, join me there?”

  “Oh, can we do so, Miss Holmdale? I do not think Mama would mind, do you, if we were to spend a little longer on our shopping trip?”

  “I am certain she would not, particularly if his grace were to accompany us,” Sylvia agreed sardonically.

  “I thought you would wish to see the back of me as soon as possible,” that gentleman said, so surprised that his voice was almost pleasant.

  “Oh, I do, but I am sure Lady Sullington will be happy for us to spend any amount of time eating ices if you are to be one of the party.”

  “I see.” For a moment the glacial eyes thawed and she saw an answering gleam of understanding. “In that case, I shall be delighted. Will you take my arm, Miss Holmdale?” He crooked it but, as he accompanied the gesture with a sneer, she hesitated.

  “If you are sure that walking down Bond Street with a governess upon your arm will not lower you irretrievably in the eyes of the world,” she said, stepping back and thus allowing her charge to take Mr Harbury’s arm and set off, chatting brightly, in the direction of Berkeley Square.

  “I daresay I am so elevated that my reputation will be able to withstand it. Should I, perhaps, nip into that shop whose window you were admiring, and purchase the lavender silk bonnet so that you will look more the part?”

  Sylvia, thinking how peculiar it was that two men should be so eager to buy her something wholly unsuitable for her position within as many days, laughed. She did not suppose for a moment that the Duke wanted to buy her anything except perhaps a vial of some particularly unpleasant poison.

  “How kind! Would you? Although I think it would look a trifle odd with my pelisse.”

  “Yes, it would,” he agreed. “But the hat would be so arresting that I should not think anyone would notice the rest of your apparel. In any event, I daresay we can find a shop to furnish us with a more fashionable pelisse on our way to Gunter’s.”

  “So that I do not lower your standing?”

  “Is that an object with you?”

  “It would depend upon the price.”

  “No doubt; but perhaps, after all this time, that will have come down.”

  He scored a more direct hit with this shot than he had with his overt rudeness earlier. She flushed and looked away.

  He, no doubt emboldened by this evidence of having pierced her armour, took her wrist in a firm grasp and led her, not down the road towards Berkeley Square, but into the hat shop.

  “I have a mind to purchase that bonnet in the window for my companion,” he said to the milliner as she surged forward, curtseying. “She had better try it on in case it should not in fact suit.”

  “No, I do not want it,” Sylvia said at once, moving towards the door now that he had released her. She was conscious of the absurdity of her position as well as, most unpleasantly, the smirk upon the milliner’s face. She might be dressed as a governess, but a man of the Duke’s rank wanting to buy a pretty bonnet for a woman of a lower class implied that she had pretensions to a different career: in short, that he was outfitting her for his own amusement.

  “Oh, but I insist,” he said, taking hold of Sylvia’s wrist once more and pulling her away from the door. “Please take it out of the window at once.” As the milliner hastened to do so, he untied the ribbons of the hat presently upon Sylvia’s head, removed it and cast it contemptuously to the floor.

  She did not know what to do. She felt inclined to hit him but suspected that that would only lead him to humiliate her further. “Pray stop this absurdity at once,” she hissed, pulling at her wrist. His fingers tightened.

  The milliner, emerging from the window with the bonnet in her hand, approached, placed it upon Sylvia’s head and tied the lavender ribbons beneath her chin.

  “Oh, that is perfectly charming!” she exclaimed enthusiastically, putting her head on one side, like a little bird, to contemplate the red-faced customer.

  “Miss Sullington was perfectly right,” the Duke observed in a silky voice. “It is indeed almost the exact same colour as your eyes. Unfortunately, your complexion at present rather clashes with it, but I daresay you will get over your shame in time.” He turned to the milliner, who was looking a little uncomfortable at the turn the gentleman’s speech had taken. “We will take it. Now, my dear, we will walk a little further and see if we can find a more fitting pelisse for you to wear with your new bonnet. I really do not think that the one you are wearing becomes your present status. You may dispose of my companion’s old hat,” he added to the milliner. “She will not require it any more.”

  Keeping a firm hold on one of his victim’s wrists, he pulled out his wallet. “Please take whatever this confection costs and we will be on our way.”

  Sylvia said to the milliner, “I am attached to my old bonnet and would be grateful if you could wrap it up for me so that I may take it home. It will remind me of today in years to come.”

  “Of course, Madam; quite understandable.” The woman bent and picked up the discarded hat and began to wrap it carefully in tissue paper.

  “Thank you. And thank you, your grace, for your generosity.” Sylvia directed a pleasant smile at the milliner followed, as that female turned away to reach for some string to tie the parcel, by one directed at the Duke, which showed her teeth in anything but a warm look. He smiled at her blandly.

  “Lovely teeth,” he said.

  “All the better to bite you with,” she murmured, reaching up to bestow what no doubt the milliner guessed to be a kiss on his neck just below his ear.

  Close to, she could smell his skin, so intoxicatingly familiar that it made her limbs almost dissolve. Her l
ips touched the beating pulse beneath his ear but, far from kissing it, she took a tiny fold of skin in her teeth and bit him sharply.

  He jumped, taken aback by the nature of the salute, but rallied almost immediately to drop the wrist he held and put his arm around her, bending her against him with what felt to his victim like a band of steel.

  “Little cat,” he said softly into her ear and she was assailed suddenly by a wave of fear. “Come along,” he went on, “we must catch up with our friends, must we not?”

  Chapter 8

  The Duke, the parcel swinging from one finger by its string, took Sylvia’s wrist once more. She allowed him to lead her down the road a little way so that the milliner should not see her untie the bonnet, pull it from her head and throw it on the ground.

  “You seem determined to behave like a fishwife,” he admonished her, adopting a tone he might have used to a small child. “What in the world will people think to see you act so pettishly?”

  “I should imagine they will think you are trying to abduct me,” she answered through clenched teeth.

  “I own I had not thought of that. It might be amusing. You are still far from being an antidote and clearly possessed of a fiery spirit – more so than I gave you credit for all that time ago.” He bent and picked up the bonnet, smoothing it carefully with his long fingers. “The hat is beguiling and becomes you. Why throw it on the ground?”

  “Because it is hateful to me – as are you!” she spat at him.

  “Our feelings for each other always matched, did they not?” he asked, sneering.

  “There have been moments,” she said, “when I have wondered if I did the right thing by breaking our engagement. I know now that I did. You are an excessively nasty piece of work when crossed, if your conduct in that shop is anything to go by.”

  “You are not precisely what one might describe as sweetness and light either, are you, my love?” he asked, touching the spot where she had bitten him and looking thoughtfully at his finger.

  She was relieved to see that there was no blood upon it for she was already horribly ashamed of her action. “Do not call me your love when you hate me so excessively,” she exclaimed, choking.

  “But you were once. Indeed, you still have the distinction of having been my only love, although you are quite right that my feelings have hardened during the time we have been apart.”

  “You cannot forgive the insult to your pride; that is what makes you hate me, is it not? And, by the look of you, you have become excessively puffed-up since becoming a Duke. When I knew you before – when we were young – I did not by any means get the measure of you. I cannot tell you how glad I am that I did not marry you.”

  “Indeed? Should you not have liked to become a Duchess?”

  “You know I would not. That never weighed with me; indeed, I did not even know that you were like to become a Duke.”

  “No, you appeared quite unworldly at the time – and peculiarly uninterested in my family connexions. So, indeed, did your entire family. At the time I found it engaging; now I wonder if it was not due to an excess of arrogance as well as a spectacular degree of self-centredness. But that air of innocence, which turned so rapidly to priggishness – and was, in any event, entirely false - would have proved a dead bore in no time.”

  He paused before continuing in a less sneering tone, “Well, now that we have both served each other a pretty trick, would you prefer to swap hats again and proceed down the road as a dull little mouse rather than a dashing lightskirt?”

  “Do you think this bonnet proclaims its wearer as a lightskirt? I wonder if that explains why Lady Sullington refused to buy it for Melissa. I would not know about such things,” she added with an exaggerated air of disapproval.

  “Would you not? It becomes you admirably, but I own it does look odd with the rest of your dowdy get-up. Are you enjoying your life as a governess?” he added curiously.

  “More, by the look of it, than you are yours as a Duke.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “That you do not look happy. You have aged.”

  “So have you. It is only to be expected in more than seven years. You are no longer a fresh-faced girl and I am no longer a foolish boy.”

  “No.” She fell silent, the weight of the past crushing her spirit. After they had walked a little further, she said wistfully, “Must we hate each other?”

  “We must do something. I am striving for indifference but it will take time. It was a shock to find you in Bond Street gazing at a hat. I was unprepared and reacted disagreeably.”

  He handed her the parcel containing her old hat; she stopped, unwrapped it and jammed it on to her head. He took the paper and used it to wrap the lavender bonnet, which he still held by its ribbons, in its stead. When he had done so, he held it out to her.

  “Please keep it. I bought it with a spiteful motive but it is a beautiful hat and becomes you. You may one day find a use for it.”

  “I could never wear it without remembering every second of the humiliation you heaped upon me in that horrid shop. Do you feel better for demeaning me in that way?”

  “No. It was ungentlemanly and I beg your pardon.”

  “Truly?” She raised the lavender eyes to his.

  “Truly. This would be the moment to part for ever, would it not? Unfortunately, we are like to meet frequently now that you are chaperoning that charming girl and apparently promoted to being her friend.” He paused to allow this to sink in before adding in an offhand tone, “I’ve a mind to pursue her, you know.”

  She had almost thought he was warming towards her but knew now that, on the contrary, his desire for revenge was not in the least satisfied, but would be delivered cold in future. After a pause to recruit her forces for renewed battle, she managed to say lightly, “You will have your work cut out to compete with Mr Harbury. She thinks you quite old, you know.”

  “Did she say so?”

  “Yes.”

  “I look older than Mr Harbury,” he acknowledged. “But I have so much more to offer and there is nothing wrong with an older husband. How old is she? Seventeen?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am a mere fourteen years her senior in that case. Do you think I would make her happy?”

  “Not if she has given her heart to Mr Harbury.”

  “If she has, it has not long left her possession for they only met yesterday. I daresay she can take it back and bestow it elsewhere.”

  “Is that such an easy matter?”

  “I own I have not yet discovered the knack, but I do not necessarily want her heart, only her hand.”

  “You would take a reluctant bride?”

  “I suppose I must take some bride.”

  “I hope you will not choose one purely in order to spite me.”

  “Why should you hope that? Would it not be a feather in your cap?”

  “Because you are so filled with hate that I am afraid you would be unkind to a girl whom you despised and had married for despicable reasons.”

  “You flatter yourself if you think you are entirely responsible for my cynicism. I own you have played a part, but you are by no means the only contributor.”

  “Who else has embittered you? Your mistress? Do you keep the same one and are you as cruel to her as you would be to me? I cannot imagine why she remains with you; does she value the title – which she is denied – and the gifts more highly than I did?”

  His face whitened and she thought for a moment that he would hit her, there in the middle of Bond Street.

  “I thought you were employed – and paid – to chaperone that girl. Are you so lost to propriety, and to what you are paid for, that you will allow her to saunter off down Bond Street with a young man of whom I am certain her mother disapproves?”

  Sylvia looked down the road and saw that Melissa, whom she recognised by her hat, had not gone far. She had stopped, her arm still in Mr Harbury’s, to look into another shop window.

  “Now what
is she wanting?” she wondered aloud.

  “A pelisse for you, I daresay.” He crooked his arm once more. “Come along. If you do not wish to distress the girl any further, you will accompany me in a civilised fashion, without exchanging any more insults, and we will sit down at a table and eat ices with every appearance of enjoyment.”

  “I do not recall precisely exchanging insults with you,” she argued, pouting. “You issued them and I was obliged to receive them.”

  “I received yours a long time ago and have been waiting for an opportunity to return them,” he pointed out, taking her hand, as warily as though it had been a snake, and tucking it into his arm. “But I have not noticed a vast deal of reticence in your manner this morning.”

  They continued down the road in silence, linked as though by long acquaintance and affection but each wrestling with the myriad emotions provoked by the mischance that had thrown them together once more.

  Although both had dreamed of - and imagined - seeing the other once more, neither had been prepared for it when it actually occurred. The combination of shock, fear that they might betray their real feelings - as well as uncertainty as to what those feelings were - held them rigid. The insults he had levelled at her and the defiant manner in which she had received them had been on the surface. Their upbringing prevented them alike from falling into each other’s arms or hitting each other; the only outlet for the earthquake that was taking place within was verbal.

  When they reached the shop into whose window the others had been peering, he paused and said, “As I thought: there is a charming pelisse which would most perfectly match the hat, so much so that one wonders if both shops are under the same management. Arrayed in such garments, it would almost be possible to pronounce you a passably pretty woman.”

  She glanced at the pelisse before moving her gaze to his profile. He was not looking at her and she gazed at the fine, familiar features: the curl of the beautiful lips, the sweep of eyelashes, the line of cheek and jaw. He was absurdly handsome. Beneath the brim of his hat his hair clung to the base of his neck and caressed the curve of his ear. The style had changed in seven years but its unusual colour – butter yellow – was the same; it had not darkened with the years.