Free Sylvester by Georgette Heyer Page A

all displeased when Tom said that he thought it would be a great waste of time for him to go up to Oxford, since he was not bookish, and would very likely be ploughed there. What with cocking and coursing, fishing and flapper-shooting in the summer, hunting and pheasant-shooting through the winter, acquiring a knowledge of farming from the bailiff, and learning how to manage the estates, he thought he would be much better employed at home. He was allowed to have his way, the Squire resolving to arrange for him to be given a little town polish when he should be rather older.
    Except for one or two visits to friends living in a different part of the country he had been at home for a year now, enjoying himself very much, and justifying his father’s secret pride in him by taking as much interest in crops as in hounds, and rapidly becoming as popular with the villagers as he was with the neighbouring gentry.
    He was a pleasant youth, sturdy rather than tall, with a fresh, open countenance, unaffected manners, and as much of the good sense which characterized his father as was to be expected of a young gentleman of nineteen summers. From the circumstances of his being an only child he had from his earliest youth looked upon Phoebe, just his own age, as a sister; and since she had been, as a child, perfectly ready to engage with him on whatever dangerous pursuit he might suggest to her, besides very rapidly becoming a first-rate horsewoman, and a devil to go, not even his first terms at Rugby had led him to despise her company.
    When Phoebe divulged to him her astonishing tidings, he was as incredulous as Susan had been, for, as he pointed out with brotherly candour, she was not at all the sort of girl to achieve a brilliant marriage. She agreed to this, and he added kindly: ‘I don’t mean to say that I wouldn’t as lief be married to you as to some high flyer, for if I was obliged to marry anyone I think I’d offer for you rather than any other girl I know.’
    She thanked him.
    ‘Yes, but I’m not a fashionable duke,’ he pointed out. ‘Besides, I’ve known you all my life. I’m dashed if I understand why this duke should have taken a fancy to you! It isn’t as though you was a beauty, and whenever your mother-in-law is near you behave like a regular pea-goose, so how he could have guessed you ain’t a ninnyhammer I can’t make out!’
    ‘Oh, he didn’t! He wishes to marry me because his mama was a friend of mine.’
    ‘That must be a bag of moonshine!’ said Tom scornfully. ‘As though anyone would offer for a girl for such a reason as that!’
    ‘I think,’ said Phoebe, ‘it is on account of his being a person of great consequence, and wishing to make a suitable alliance, and not caring whether I am pretty, or conversible.’
    ‘He can’t think you suitable!’ objected Tom.’ He sounds to me a regular knock-in-the-cradle! It may be a fine thing to become a duchess, but I should think you had much better not!’
    ‘No, no, but what am I to do, Tom? For heaven’s sake don’t tell me I have only to decline the Duke’s offer, for you at least know what Mama is like! Even if I had the courage to disobey her only think what misery I should be obliged to endure! And don’t tell me not to regard it, because to be in disgrace for weeks and weeks, as I would be, so sinks my spirits that I can’t even write !I know it’s idiotish of me, but I can’t overcome my dread of being in her black books! I feel as if I were withering!’
    He had too often seen her made ill by unkindness to think her words over-fanciful. It was strange that a girl so physically intrepid should have so much sensibility. In his own phrase, he knew her for a right one; but he knew also that in a censorious atmosphere her spirits were swiftly overpowered, none of her struggles to support them alleviating the oppression which transformed her from the neck-or-nothing girl whom no oxer could daunt to the shrinking miss whose demeanour was