Free Elisabeth Kidd by My Lord Guardian

or are we to be inflicted with her yet further?” he snapped at Murray, who ventured into the library the next day with Lyle’s morning newspaper.
    “Miss Archer is quite well, thank you, my lord,” Murray reported, unperturbed by his employer’s tone. “Indeed, she has been most desirous of getting up from her bed this morning, but Mrs. Collins persuaded her to wait a day to be certain she has not caught a chill.’’
    Lyle could picture quite vividly Mrs. Collins’s efforts to keep her doubtless bloomingly healthy patient quietly in bed, but aware that his housekeeper’s efforts were more than likely directed as much to keeping Sydney out of her guardian’s reach as to ensuring her well-being, Lyle calmed down and asked Murray more temperately to bring him a brandy, a request that even at that early hour of the day Murray took in his stride.
    “Murray!” Lyle called him back as he opened the door to leave.
    “My lord?”
    “I trust Miss Archer is not too much of a trial to anyone?”
    “Oh no, my lord.” Murray even smiled dimly. “On the contrary, everyone quite enjoys having her around, so to speak. Quite a taking little thing she is, my lord.’’
    “Yes, I daresay. Thank you, Murray.”
    “Yes, my lord.”
    After Lyle had brought Sydney home the evening before—dried from the Count’s fire, but still shivering slightly—he had retreated wordlessly, but with a scowl that sent his staff scurrying to avoid him, into his library, where he sat down to pen another scrupulously formal but imperative summons to Prudence Whitlatch. He would make one last attempt, Lyle promised himself, to rid Long Hill of the impossible Miss Archer—sending her to the devil if there were nowhere else for her!
    He had a sudden vision of the havoc Sydney was capable of creating in Prue Whitlatch’s unstable but hardly merry household, and chuckled in spite of himself. Prue would doubtless have hysterics every other hour; young Susan, who was susceptible to any strong personality, would probably find Sydney totally admirable; and her brother Dolph would either fall in love with her, or run like retreating cavalry in the other direction.
    Nevertheless, Lyle had no qualms about thrusting Sydney in the path of the Whitlatches—who, now he thought on it, would very likely all respond by haring off in every direction at once to avoid stumbling over the obstacle—for both he and they were well aware of the debt owed Lyle by the family. Even so, the idea kept pushing itself forward in Lyle’s mind that the Whitlatches would be the beneficiaries of this arrangement; he could not help but compare what he knew of Sydney’s life to date with the way Prue’s family—not excluding Lyle himself—conducted theirs. There was something so positive about Sydney, even when she was in a temper!
    Lyle finished his letter, sealed and franked it, and sighed, wondering why he had not gone into the diplomatic service rather than the army. He knew why, of course; he might still be in it, growing more bored every day, instead of at his leisure to mull over memories that were, in the main, pleasant ones. Such remembrances had in fact occupied him considerably since Sydney Archer came into his life, tearing up his carefully laid routine and muddying his serenity.
    And the little scamp didn’t even look like Owen! Lyle had searched for a resemblance in her, thinking he saw it in the set of her mouth when she was being stubborn, then in the graceful way she had of smoothing a stray lock of black hair behind her ear, and in her talent for inspiring affection in everyone from the servants to the shrewd old Comte de Grand-Ile. Everyone had liked Owen, too. But then the resemblance faded away again, and the mind picture Lyle had carried all these years of Owen Archer retreated further into the past.
    The Count came to pay a visit to his ailing pupil, and after assuring himself that she suffered from nothing worse than frayed pride, also paid a call on