Elizabeth Kidd (5 page)

“I thought you’d seen them,” the viscount remarked as he waited for his wife to choose between a green-and-white striped walking dress that she confessed was perhaps a little young for her, and an amber crepe afternoon dress that made her, she feared, look perhaps a trifle matronly.

“You are a young matron,” Kedrington pointed out, “so either should be suitable, if unoriginal. Why don’t you wear that Prussian blue dazzler I saw being delivered the other day? It looked delightfully unsuitable.”

“I’d forgotten that!” Antonia exclaimed, tossing the crepe onto the bed. When Duncan was on hand to assist her to dress, she dismissed her maid, although Betty knew that it would be her duty later to gather up the remains. “And it will be just the thing for our drive in the park afterward.” She pulled out the blue dress and held it up in front of her.

“I trust that Miss Melville has been informed of that part of today’s treat,” Kedrington said.

Antonia looked offended. “You don’t think I would really spring something disagreeable on her without warning, do you? Besides, it won’t be disagreeable, and it’s a lovely day for it, and she will be with us the whole time. She need not even speak to anyone else, but it will give her an opportunity to see people we might talk about but whom she does not know.”

Kedrington muttered something about people he would rather
not
know, but Antonia ignored him.

“It’s been an age since I saw the marbles,” she said instead, from within the blue silk dress as she dropped it over her head. “You remember, you took me to them when they were still in Park Lane.”

Kedrington rose and helped her arrange herself, then did up the fastenings in the back of her gown. “Did I? Then perhaps you will be good enough to explain why we are going again.”

“Elena has not seen them.”

“Oh.”

Antonia paused in her contemplation of her own reflection in her mirror to assess her husband’s. “What did you really think of her, Duncan? I vow, when you wish to keep your opinions hidden, you are remarkably adept at it. Even I cannot tell by looking at you what you are thinking. I wish you would teach me to do that.”

“Half your charm, my dear, is your artlessness,” he said, smoothing the loose strands of hair that disturbed her neckline. “I should dislike putting a damper on it by encouraging you to imitate me. I was trained to it, in any case.”

“You mean all that skulking about Spain for the Duke.”

He laughed. “You could put it that way—although not in front of Wellington, if you please. As for Miss Melville, I thought her an interesting, intelligent girl, handsome for those who appreciate the type—which I hasten to say I do, although purely in the most academic way. She may well grow into greater beauty with age.”

Antonia was ransacking her glove box for an appropriate pair to go with the blue dress and said absently, “Who may?”

“Miss Melville. Isn’t that who you asked me about?”

“Oh, yes. I was distracted by your skulking. I didn’t know you classified women by type. How disappointingly masculine of you.”

He turned her toward him and adjusted the dress in front. “I cling to only one type, my love—full-blown roses with blue petals.”

He kissed her forehead, but she moved her head before he reached her mouth. “Is that so? What about that honeysuckle vine who clung to you at the Drummonds’ reception?”

“She only wanted to hear about my martial exploits.”

* * * *

Having collected Elena at her home—necessitating a detour to the far reaches of Marylebone, of which the viscount’s coachman expressed his disapproval by sitting even more stiffly upright at his post than normally—the Kedringtons, Mr. Fairfax, and Miss Melville duly found themselves standing inside the great stone gateway of Burlington House wondering what to do next, as there was no indication of where, in or out of the building, the marbles were being exhibited, nor was there anyone present who might serve as a guide. Antonia turned to her husband.

“You did say that Lord George had told you to go in the front gate?”

Burlington House had been sold the year before, and the new occupants were apparently not yet settled in.

“Rap on the floor with your cane, Duncan,” Carey suggested. “That usually brings the troops to attention.”

Kedrington gave him a quelling look and said that as the marbles were reportedly being kept in a separate building on the grounds, he did not suppose the owner would object to their simply strolling in.

“I daresay the staff has not been instructed to escort stray visitors to the display,” he said as if, had it been his staff, heads would have rolled. “Let us walk around to the yard,” he suggested.

The party were about to suit the action to the word when footsteps were heard coming in their direction from the colonnades to their left.

“Hallo!” said Carey. “Here’s rescue perhaps.”

“Perhaps not,” Kedrington said, listening more carefully. “It’s a man with a limp.”

The man in question appeared just then from around a pillar and came to a stop, looking mildly startled to see anyone there and even more startled when he recognized one of the fashionable group poised in the forecourt.

“Duncan!”

“Robin Campbell, by all that’s holy! What are you doing here?” the viscount said, stepping forward to shake the hand of the pleasant-looking young man who smiled warmly at Kedrington, then at the others.

“Carey Fairfax as well!” he exclaimed. “A happy surprise!”

Antonia’s assumption that Mr. Campbell was an army acquaintance of her husband and brother and that he had acquired his limp in the Spanish campaign shortly proved accurate when introductions were made.

Further examination revealed, mainly by the tightness around the former lieutenant’s blue eyes, that he had suffered from his wound—or perhaps from the war in general. Antonia had lately noticed more and more of this effect now that the last stragglers were coming home from France—those wounded men whose recovery had meant months in some foreign bed or simply months of delaying the return home that might turn out to be less joyful or less healing than they had perhaps anticipated over the long years of their absence.

Mr. Campbell explained that he had been hired as caretaker of the marbles and overseer of the move to their new home in Bloomsbury, which had been authorized as soon as the bill had been passed for their purchase.

“It’s not as grand a job as it sounds,” he explained, “really just glorified guard duty, but it keeps me out of taverns and doss houses.”

He smiled, but Antonia suspected that it was not such a joke as his wry smile was intended to convey. She decided that she liked Mr. Campbell, and despite Kedrington’s teasing about her predilection for widows and orphans and other helpless creatures, she would make a friend of Robin Campbell if she could.

“Can you give us a tour, Mr. Campbell?” she asked him. “That is, if we are not imposing upon past friendship to make you break the rules.”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Campbell graciously. “If you will follow me…?” He offered his arm to Lady Kedrington, who accepted it with a saucy look back at her husband, and led her around the colonnade into a space which was apparently once the yard but was now occupied by a large shed. Carey and Elena, with Kedrington bringing up the rear, stopped beside them.

They entered the unprepossessing building and stood awestruck by the sight of the sculptures—confined there, Antonia thought fancifully, like ancient gods chained to the wall of some dark cavern. Mr. Campbell was silent for a few moments, allowing them to study the figures and form their own first impressions. Antonia, having seen them before, instead watched Elena, who said nothing, but approached the figures with awe. She reached out to lay her hand on smooth marble head of a horse; then she closed her eyes, as if the touch conveyed something to her. Antonia imagined that she could feel the sun of Greece through that contact with the taut muscles of that vital, almost living creature.

“As you can see,” Mr. Campbell began at last, just loudly enough so that the entire party could hear but addressing himself to Antonia, “this is scarcely the ideal setting. The lighting is unreliable, as we depend still on natural light from the overhead windows. Gas lighting will be installed at Montagu House, however, before the official opening ceremonies, and placards describing the pieces will be affixed so that amateur guides like me will not be necessary.”

Antonia transferred her gaze to her guide, assuming an expression of intense interest in his narrative as an excuse to study him more closely.

“I’m sure you know a great deal about the statues and their history—not to mention the controversy surrounding them,” she said when he paused to lead them to the next grouping. “But tell me, Mr. Campbell—do you find them beautiful? Are they works of art, and was all this fuss about their acquisition worth it?”

He thought about that for a moment. “It’s odd,” he said, gazing around as if for the first time, “that people so rarely speak of their intrinsic value. The marbles are looked upon as symbols of one sort or another, but rarely as objects of beauty. But yes, I find them beautiful. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when there is no one else here, I simply sit and look at them. The poses are various, some belligerent or strained or filled with tension, but they are all somehow restful.”

His voice had dropped so that only Antonia could hear him now, but only she might have understood. “All true works of art are restful,” she observed, “no matter how violent or distasteful the subject matter. Do you not agree, Mr. Campbell?”

He smiled down at her. “I do—but you would be amazed at the snippets of conversation I overhear about them. Everything from dowagers who are shocked—but vastly entertained—by the figures’ lack of decency, to young ladies who contrive to find their beaux’ features in the faces.”

Antonia giggled. “Do they then speculate on what other features might resemble those of their swains?”

“Lady Kedrington!” Mr. Campbell exclaimed, pretending shock. “How unworthy of you!”

“Oh, Duncan will tell you I have a wayward imagination,” she said, laughing. “But no—perhaps you had better not ask him. He will think I am trying to corrupt you.”

“Please feel free to try,” he urged her, and Antonia was pleased to see that the smile in Mr. Campbell’s eyes was freer now, and the lines around them had softened just a touch. He could not be more than thirty, she thought, but old enough to believe he might never make any mark with his life—perhaps even to wonder if he should have left it in Spain.

They walked down the long side of the building, where the remains of the famed East Pediment figures were arranged in all the glory of their original positioning on the Parthenon. Mr. Campbell waved his arm grandly at the display, but then spoiled the effect by saying that there were more pieces in another shed attached to the larger one, including some dozen sculptures and slightly more metopes, which he explained were marble squares which formerly separated the parts of a frieze.

As they walked, Mr. Campbell kept up his learned commentary, which Antonia reflected she would have been grateful for on the occasion of her first look at the sculptures, when they all looked so much alike that she was unable to appreciate their variety. Mr. Campbell also offered his personal opinions of the various pieces, and Antonia was most interested in those, for he had apparently studied them in detail and offered a perspective she had not considered previously.

“Notice, for example the naturalness of the figure’s position here,” he pointed out at one point. “The muscles of the shoulder work just as they do when a man puts his arm to work in that fashion. You may know that a boxer was brought in once to compare his anatomy to those depicted here, but while the sculptures proved anatomically accurate, they were at the same time strangely more graceful than nature. That, I believe, is what defines them as art.”

Kedrington rejoined them at that point and listened with interest, interrupting only with occasional questions, while Carey and Elena drifted off toward the other side of the room, abandoning their interest in ancient art for absorption in each other. After a short time, however, an exclamation from Elena attracted Antonia’s notice, and she turned to see that another man had entered the building, apparently by a side door. Elena walked swiftly toward him and kissed his cheek; Carey, coming up behind her, bowed politely and shook the man’s hand.

“Who is that?” she whispered to Kedrington, who responded, “Her guardian, one would assume.”

This proved to be the case, as Elena immediately brought Arthur Melville over to them to be introduced. He was a tall, severely handsome man with graying hair and an air of being not altogether at home in his clothes, which were nonetheless complete to a shade, as Carey would have put it. His posture and manners were overly formal, and Antonia thought he would be difficult to put at his ease, if indeed he ever was at ease in company. A man more different from her last new acquaintance, the personable Mr. Campbell, she could not imagine.

“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” she said nonetheless, shaking his hand. “We have become quite fond of Elena already, and it is more than time that we met the rest of her family.”

“Her family…? Of course, you speak figuratively,” Mr. Melville replied, smiling indulgently at his ward and confirming Antonia in her impression that Mr. Melville was not a kindred spirit. “I do see myself as in some sort an uncle to Elena—a kindly one, I trust. But I wanted to meet you as well, my lady, and when I saw you enter the building, I made so bold as to follow you in.”

“How fortunate that you were passing at that moment,” Kedrington remarked.

“Not at all. In fact, I—er, own some property in this neighborhood and was consulting with my architect about some little renovations when I observed you from the window.”

And hurried home to change his clothes, Antonia suspected. She glanced at her husband, but he had assumed the bland air which he wore on occasions of unavoidable tedium—or when he expected his wife to do something outrageous and wished to disassociate himself from her. She wondered which he thought it would be today. Mr. Melville was a trifle fawning, but not quite to the point of tedium. His manners were, indeed, unexceptional; Kedrington would probably tell her that her tendency to informality made her too critical of those who were punctilious to any degree greater than her own.