III. Kingsley.

"Uncle!"

Cyril turned in his chair at the sound of that high, commanding tone. He rose from his seat at once at the sight of the creature framed by the doorway of his study, then bent at the waist in a sweeping bow. "Ah, my regent! To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Kingsley Meredith approached him, striding into the room like a young ruling noble. Casting formality aside, as was a regent's privilege and no one else's, she did not return Cyril's bow, but attacked him with a fierce embrace. She smelled of rosewater and summertime, a warm, pleasant scent. Her father, Percy, had always put Cyril in mind of the mild springtime, but Kingsley was as bright in color and as intense as summer could be. "You owe the pleasure to the pleasure I take in your company," she announced once she had released him.

"How fortunate," said Cyril, pleased and laughing at the sound of such grandiose words on the young girl's lips. He stepped back from the child to examine her. He tried not to smile at what he saw, but he could not prevent the amusement from creeping into his eyes. The girl was dressed in somewhat oversized trousers, a shirt, vest, and overcoat, a neckcloth wrapped inexpertly about her neck, her golden curls tucked up into a jaunty brown cap. Her intended effect, he imagined, had been to masquerade as a boy, but he did not think she had quite managed it, not with that face, those eyes. "Aren't those your father's clothes?"

"Yes, they are. Viv's are too loose on me. He's so tall!"

Cyril nodded. "He is, isn't he? He's grown a great deal taller all of a sudden." Cyril was sure Percy would not want him to encourage Kingsley in parading about London dressed in men's clothing, but he hated to scold her; she looked so lovely dressed up like her father. Like a little female Percy, which was such an adorable notion, it seemed a shame to discourage her in it. It was too bad he was obligated to take the position of an adult by merit of his advanced years. "Did you come all this way by yourself?"

"Yes. And it's a secret, so please don't tell father. I snuck out the window."

"My regent, really. Do you think that was the best idea? I'm sure your father would have gladly brought you round to see me. The city is certainly not the safest place for a young lady such as yourself. What if someone should kidnap you? You are worth a king's ransom, and there are unscrupulous characters everywhere."

"I don't want to be a young lady. I want to be a young gentleman," Kingsley sniffed. Cyril took a moment to contemplate what Kingsley would look like as a young gentleman. The resultant image was an enchanting one. As a girl she was already fast growing into a reckless beauty. As a boy, she would have cut a figure to wrench his poor heart. "I'm not afraid of kidnappers. I'll do as I like. I didn't want to wait for father. It's more fun to sneak off, anyway. Rather like something someone might do in a novel."

"Very awful things happen in novels as well, if you'll recall."

"But this isn't a novel, is it?" Kingsley asked with a wicked grin that reminded Cyril of himself at her age. "I can play at being in danger without actually being in any."

Cyril himself liked to play at being in danger, ofttimes courting actual danger, and it did seem hard to believe that this assured girl could be in any real peril. She seemed above such things: peril, squalor, the everyday world. Yet he had seen too much to believe that anyone was truly above the world. The world had a way of dragging people down despite their noble natures and their self-assurance. Kingsley was still very young. She had few defenses other than her insouciance, and insouciance could take one only so far. "Things that happen in novels can happen in real life, as hard as that might be to believe, considering the sensational tone of most novels one reads these days."

Kingsley pouted. "You're not going to tell father, are you? Please don't! I'll be in terrible trouble. Confined to my room! For a month! With no dessert!"

Cyril grinned at this dire prediction, which sounded most unlike the kind of punishment Percy would actually mete out. "I have a certain obligation--"

"Please, Uncle Cyril? I swear I won't do it again, if you only promise."

Cyril hesitated. His sympathy was with the girl. "Very well. If you swear to really swear."

"I swear to really swear! Upon my honor!"

Cyril nodded. "How could I disbelieve an oath like that?"

"Hurrah!" The girl attacked him with another embrace. "My hero!"

"Yes, yes. I know. Always the hero, never the knave. Being the hero is so much work. It's a hard lot to have drawn in life."

"Don't be silly," Kingsley chided him. "You make a lovely knave."

"You're too kind." Cyril took note of what the girl was carrying. A battered leather case dangled at her side, its handle hanging carelessly from one hand. He had registered its presence when Kingsley had entered, but owing to the surprise of seeing her and their talk, he had not until now had a moment to wonder over its purpose. "What have you brought me?" he asked, nodding towards the mysterious object with a teasing smile. "A present?"

Kingsley fell silent, seeming at once shy, something she seldom appeared to be. She brought the case around in front of her, holding it now in both hands, standing with her legs together, suddenly demure, her lips pursed in a small, strange smile. "I must confess, I had a selfish motive for coming here. It was not merely to grace you with my presence."

"Oh no?"

She shook her head, shaking a fall of golden curls loose from the brown cap she wore. "I want to show you something. But it's a secret too, so you have to promise first that you won't tell."

"Aren't you full of secrets today?"

"I'm always full of secrets. It's just that I'm telling some of them today. Do you promise?"

He eyed the leather case dangling in front of her knees. He did want to know what could be inside it. It seemed a fairly innocuous item; he doubted it could contain anything harmful which he would be obligated to tell her father about. Therefore, without reservations, he replied, "I promise."

Kingsley smiled. "I knew you would. All right." She approached his desk, setting the leather case down there. It was held closed by two leather straps, fastened by dull metal buckles. She began to unbuckle the buckles, casting a mischievous glance at her nominal uncle as she did so. Cyril wondered where she had gotten such a case. It was old and tattered and looked like something that had been resting unclaimed in a railway station for twenty years. With Kingsley, one could never tell. Perhaps she had found it in a railway station.

"I wanted to ask your opinion on these," Kingsley said as she pulled the lid of the unbuckled case open. "There's no one else I trust."

Cyril nodded. He could not see what was in the case, as the girl was standing so that she blocked his view of the contents. She had her back to him, looking down at whatever the case held. Cyril heard the rustle of paper. "Viv would only laugh and tease me about them," Kingsley continued. "And Vera would only say they were awful, no matter what she really thought. As for Father-- well, he would praise them to the heavens, no matter what he really thought." She paused, reflecting. "Which is just as bad as what Vera would do, in its own way."

Kingsley turned to look at him over her shoulder, with a smile. The burnished gold spirals of hair spilling from her cap flashed in the sunlight as she moved her head. "But you," she said. "You're not like that at all. You'll tell me what you really think. Without being unnecessarily harsh. Yes, you'll show both tact and sense, I think."

Cyril listened to this speech, amused, as this girl reminded him so much of himself. In a way, he had raised her, as he had not raised her elder siblings, the twins Vivian and Vera. When Viv and Vera had been small, their mother had been well-- or relatively well. She had been a parent to them. It was only when she had grown great with Kingsley in her belly that Kathleen Meredith's true decline had begun. The pregnancy had had an enormously detrimental effect on her health. Cyril remembered the sight of her belly growing while the rest of her withered away, faded, her body increasing and diminishing at once, so oddly, like the moon simultaneously waxing and waning. It was a wonder she had survived Kingsley's birth, but in some ways, she had never recovered. She had certainly never been a parent to her younger daughter, not that Cyril blamed her, as her health and her nerves were so poorly. She turned all the way around, a sheaf of papers in her hand. "Please do keep in mind that I haven't had any formal training."

Cyril accepted the offered papers, held them up to look at them, his eyebrows rising. As Kingsley waited expectantly, he leafed through them. He did not say a word until he had examined them all in great detail. When he at last returned his attention to Kingsley, his face was unreadable. "You've been doing these for quite a while, haven't you?"

Kingsley nodded. "Those are my favorites of the lot."

Cyril adopted a businesslike tone. "I notice marked improvement, within this selection alone." He glanced down at the papers in his hands. Every one of them was covered with drawings, both quick sketches and more detailed studies, executed in various mediums. Cyril was not even sure what some of them were drawn with. One truly never could tell with Kingsley. "You copied these from books?"

"Yes," said Kingsley, with a pretty gravity. "I do use drawings in books for my models a lot of the time, and sometimes I draw various items around the house. Or else I draw things that are floating around in my head."

"And you have been keeping these a secret from everyone?"

"Oh yes. No one knows but you."

"But why is that? Why keep it secret?"

"It's nice to have a secret. Don't you think so?" Kingsley smiled, in such a way that Cyril felt perhaps she knew some of his secrets. "But I wanted to have someone else's opinion at last." She raised her head sharply to look her uncle directly in his eyes. "So. What is your opinion?"

"Do bear in mind I don't know the first thing about art."

"I'm bearing it in mind. Continue."

"They do seem the work of an amateur? They don't have that more polished professional feel-- but you knew that already. Regardless, I do think they are quite good. And the fact that you've shown improvement seems quite promising. Being able to work at something by yourself and improve at it by so doing is an excellent sign. Most people have no sense of how to improve themselves, just keep slogging on blindly, going nowhere."

Kingsley nodded. "You think I show some promise, then?"

"I absolutely think so, yes."

"Excellent!" The girl snatched her drawings from his hands before he could protest and returned them to her case, which she promptly closed again, fastening the buckles around it, her secret returning to the world of the hidden. "I'm glad to hear that."

"Are you?"

"Oh yes. For I do enjoy drawing, but if you'd told me you thought I was no good, I'd have burned them all up and never put pencil to paper again." Her tone was so practical as to leave no doubt in Cyril's mind that she meant what she said. He could practically hear, in her words, the paper crackling on the fire.

"I see. So much hinges on my mere opinion?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes it does. Opinion can be a powerful thing. Didn't you know that, Uncle?"

Precocious child. Cyril smiled fondly at her. "You can't let the opinions of others influence you unduly."

"I can when it's you. Certainly, I wouldn't have cared what anyone else said." She shrugged. "But if you'd said they were terrible and that there was no hope for me, I'd have tried something else instead."

"That would be an admirable display of perseverance, but I'm glad you won't have to. Not that I'm not certain you couldn't excel at something else." Cyril eyed her battered leather case thoughtfully. He wondered if she planned to show him any more of her efforts in the future. "I do, I might add, have a suggestion for you."

Her case closed, she turned back to him, the handle of the old leather thing clutched in one hand. "Do you? What?"

Cyril had been trying to remember the artists he'd known. Most of them had been interested in him primarily for purposes other than artistic ones, yet, artists being what they were, he had been unable to entirely avoid discussions concerning the arts and matters artistic. "As I said, I have only the faintest notions concerning the ways of artists, but it is my understanding that most artists practice by drawing human models from life, isn't that so?"

"Yes," said Kingsley, with an air of authority, "that's true. But I haven't anyone."

Cyril put up a hand, the palm facing her. "Please. Allow me to continue. I meant to add, I would like to volunteer my services as a model, should you have need of them."

"Oh!" The girl's face lit like the sky after a brief summer's shower. "Do you really mean it, Uncle Cyril?"

"Of course I do. You've never known me to say something I didn't mean, have you? Not concerning a matter of such grave import?"

"No, you're right. I haven't."

"Then consider my offer a sincere one. You may take me up on it any time."

Kingsley enfolded him in another tight embrace. This time, Cyril felt the edge of the leather case pressing into his side, but he didn't mind. "Oh thank you, so much, thank you!" Kingsley's voice rose into the squeal of a much younger girl. She was like that at times, very immature in manner, but in the next moment she could surprise you by saying something unexpected in a voice that was not girlish at all. This was exactly what she did a moment later, asking in a much more measured voice: "You will be willing to pose for me fully nude, won't you?"

Cyril tried not to laugh. He wondered what Percy would say about his posing, but the wondering did not prevent him from answering her, "If that is what will best serve your art-- I am at art's service." He bowed his head. "But not now. Now I am going to return you to your father."

Kingsley made a face of shocked dismay. "Uncle Cyril! You promised you wouldn't tell!"

"Silly girl. I won't. I'm only going to escort you back to your home. There I will leave you to sneak back in the window, by yourself, unseen."

"Ah, I see. That's all right, then." Kingsley swung the leather case she carried back and forth in a lazy arc. Cyril watched the arc thus transcribed, tracing the invisible line of it with his eyes, for a moment almost hypnotized by the back and forth motion. This girl and her drawings. What would become of them? Here was someone-- something-- he could not bear to see dragged down by the world's too greedy, too soiled claws. But what could he do to guarantee that that would not happen? The world did as it wished, and the hardest part of loving someone, perhaps, was that one could not help them in the end. One could only try and fail. He himself had once been a child like this. Had he been vanquished? Or had he triumphed? He did not truly know yet. Whichever he found for himself in the end, victory or defeat, he found himself hoping, perhaps believing, that this girl would not need his help, that she would never falter as he had so many times.

He pulled his eyes away from the swinging of the old leather case, like the swinging of the pendulum in a clock, focusing instead on the girl's bright face, her brash grin. "One knave knows the needs of another, after all."

Laughter pealed from the girl's throat, a sound as of bells, but lovelier, thought Cyril, than the bells of any church on earth. "Yes-- how very true!"