Page 12 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

Lady Phoebe allowed them only half an hour at the refreshment table before moving them briskly on to the next activity.

‘Lawn billiards!’ she declared, springing to her feet as if there was not a moment to waste. An hour before, Lydia would have shared such an attitude, but now she rose to obey Lady Phoebe’s chivvying rather reluctantly. She did not wish to play billiards. She wished to think.

‘Goodness,’ Lady Morton said, fanning herself vigorously, sending wafts of red tendrils fluttering around her face, ‘I am far too fatigued to participate.’

‘Truly?’ Lady Hesse said rather derisively. ‘I have always thought you so … robust a woman.’

‘I slept uneasily,’ Lady Morton said.

‘Uneasily? Or … guiltily?’ Pip wondered, picking up his pencil and flicking his notebook to a fresh page.

‘ Pip ,’ Lydia entreated softly. Ought she bid him discontinue with this notebook business? It was certainly proving his eccentricity, but was he now going too far?

‘Lady Morton does not deserve such insolence, sir!’ Lord Hesse glared at Pip around another giant collar. ‘I have a good mind to call you out!’

‘Don’t be silly, darling,’ Lady Hesse said.

‘ Mother ! ’ Hesse said through gritted teeth. ‘I am not silly.’

‘Was I being rude?’ Pip asked Lady Morton, as if this had never occurred to him. It probably had not. Pip had many qualities, but self-awareness could not be counted as one of them. More than once it had fallen to Lydia to extricate him from a social misstep.

‘Oh, I do not mind in the least,’ Lady Morton said, appropriating herself of Pip’s arm. ‘Let us take a turn of the gardens together, and you may satisfy all your curiosity.’

The billiards pitch had been laid out on one of Hawkscroft’s rolling lawns, with seats and parasols and several footmen to attend to them.

Lady Phoebe divided them into pairs for the game, and Lydia was relieved to be given Hesse for a partner.

Had she been placed with Ashford, she could not have wasted such an opportunity to perform more incomprehensible stupidity for Ashford’s benefit, but after their tour, however, she was not sure she had the stomach for such tricks.

It had been a great deal easier to plot Ashford’s downfall before she had come to know him a little better.

‘Are we ready?’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘Waldo, I think we shall begin!’

But Waldo was not attending. Reeves was speaking quietly in his ear and gesturing back towards the house.

‘… he wishes for an audience.’

‘Waldo!’ Lady Phoebe called again, holding out a mallet towards him.

‘I am afraid you will have to do without me for a moment,’ Sir Waldo said. ‘I have to attend to some business.’

‘What business?’ Lady Phoebe said, a tiny frown appearing between her eyes. ‘We have guests, Waldo.’

‘I warned you of this,’ her husband replied.

‘Did you?’

‘Yesterday. You are so forgetful,’ he said, reaching out to pinch her chin, and they gazed at one another so caressingly that Lydia had to look away.

Her eyes, almost against her will, sought out Ashford.

As if sensing them, he looked up and smiled.

Lydia shifted uncomfortably in her riding habit, and not merely because the thick wool material was too hot for such activities as this.

She had forgotten, a little, how very pleasing he was to look at.

‘Reeves, you will have to hold Waldo’s place,’ Lady Phoebe declared, holding out the mallet towards Reeves who took it after the tiniest beat of hesitation. Was this not just classic behaviour from Lady Phoebe – to change the rules on a whim, and then change them back? Was this a trick?

‘I think not,’ Ashford said firmly, and yes, o f course , Ashford would not wish to play a game with a servant, because he was far too high and mighty to. Then, ‘I hear Reeves was one of Wellington’s best riflemen, which constitutes unreasonable advantage,’ he said.

‘The 95th regiment, wasn’t it?’ Dacre said, once again proving his exceptional manners. To have remembered such a thing about his brother’s butler – not even his own – was quite remarkable.

‘Are you a very good shot?’ Brandon asked.

‘I wouldn’t go as far as that, my lord,’ Reeves said modestly. However, by the end of his turn, he was receiving joking curses from all the gentlemen, even Ashford. What was happening, here? The man who had used the word ‘Cit’ was comfortable playing billiards with a butler?

Ashford and Miss Hesse took to the field next.

Miss Hesse had not played before, and Ashford had to spend a little time talking her through the rules of the game.

He did so patiently, of course, because apparently everything he did was patient.

Patient and calm and unexpectedly kind and it was so irritating Lydia could scream .

Where had this version of him been, during the Season?

Or had he always been this person, and she had just been blinded by his poor first impression?

Perhaps his words to Mr Brandon, in that corridor long ago – perhaps she had misunderstood them, remembered them for worse than they were?

She had been frustrated, that day, hadn’t she?

Perhaps it had led her to judge him too harshly?

But where did that leave her? Even if he were not as bad as she had thought, she still did not love him, and that was what counted. But to continue to visit such humiliations upon him, knowing he did not deserve them … It did not make her feel a particularly good person.

‘Miss Hanworth! It is your turn!’

Some might consider lawn billiards a relaxed sport. Not Lady Phoebe.

‘Waldo is missing all the fun,’ Lady Phoebe fretted. ‘Ashford, will you fetch him? He’ll listen to you.’

If Ashford thought it strange that he was being used as an errand boy, he did not show it. ‘Brandon – I shall rescind my tutoring role to you.’

‘Right you are!’ Mr Brandon said, beaming at Miss Hesse.

‘There are others who might wish for a turn,’ Lady Hesse intervened quickly, as Pip and Lady Morton approached, their circuit of the gardens now complete.

‘Right you are,’ Mr Brandon subsided gloomily.

Lady Morton took up the mallet gamely enough, giving Pip a wink of farewell.

‘Can we speak?’ Lydia said quietly to her brother. ‘I am not at all sure what to do.’

‘Fret not, I am,’ Pip said, taking an evaluating glance around the group. ‘This is our moment.’

‘Our moment for what?’

‘For investigation,’ he said. ‘While everyone is occupied out here, I shall begin my search.’

‘Of the house?’ Lydia said, a little alarmed.

‘Stands to reason I’ll find some clues inside.’

Lydia bit her lip. This was her fault. She had encouraged this, but she ought to have predicted that Pip would get carried away.

‘Recollect no crime has actually been committed,’ Lydia felt beholden to remind him.

‘Yet,’ Pip said darkly. ‘But there’s bound to be something – I’ve never met such smoky fellows in all my life, and Simmons did say I have prodigious instinct for such things.’

Lydia did not doubt that Simmons had said such a thing, but just as a lady ought to feel some cynicism for compliments given by a gentleman trying to win her favour, so too did she think Simmons’ opinion on Pip’s investigative skills ought perhaps to be taken with a pinch of salt.

‘If you are discovered somewhere you ought not be,’ she reasoned, ‘they are quite likely to think you the smoky one. I do not think it wise.’

‘I shan’t be discovered,’ Pip said, ‘for you will be keeping watch.’

‘But I— Oh, very well.’

He was not likely to change his mind, and far better that she be there beside him, to defuse whatever scrape he might fall into, than he go alone.

Lydia tugged an ostrich feather from her head and held it up to the group. ‘Alas! My brother is going to escort me to change my hat!’

No one paid them any mind, for Miss Hesse had just managed to score a point and Mr Brandon raised both his hands in a whooping cheer.

‘Will you be able to hold the fort for our pair, Lord Hesse?’ Lydia asked. ‘I’m sorry to abandon you.’

‘Oh it doesn’t matter,’ Hesse said, raising his chin. ‘A child’s game, really – oh by Jove, good shot!’

He forgot his world-weary aloofness long enough to enthusiastically applaud Dacre’s sportsmanship, while Lydia and Pip made their way back toward the house, through the open French doors, across the drawing room, and down the long corridor that led to the grand staircase.

‘We shall pass directly by Sir Waldo’s study,’ Lydia warned Pip. If it would not have looked odd, they would have been better rounding the house and re-entering via the front door, so that they might climb the grand staircase directly, but no matter.

‘Fact is, just need to appear nonchalant,’ Pip said.

He began a strange sort of walk, sort of swashbuckling and duck-footed, as if his hips had become abruptly loosened from his waist.

‘No, no,’ Lydia said. ‘Don’t do that!’

They were about to pass Sir Waldo’s study, the door to which was standing just slightly ajar when Sir Waldo’s voice boomed out:

‘—a complete disgrace!’

‘Your advice is kindly meant, sir, but I do not require it,’ Ashford said.

‘You evidently do,’ Sir Waldo said, ‘if you can countenance marriage to such a terrible creature!’

Lydia and Pip paused, mid-stride. They exchanged a glance, and then, by silent agreement, pressed themselves against the wall to listen.

‘I would thank you to speak more carefully of my betrothed,’ Ashford said, and Lydia had never heard him speak so coldly.

‘I cannot be silent,’ Sir Waldo said. ‘I consider you something of a younger brother, my lord.’

‘You are older, I suppose,’ Ashford said. ‘But aside from that I am afraid I do not—’

‘After all your family has endured, to make such a horrible choice as this!’ Sir Waldo went on. ‘I did not think you the type to lose your head over a pretty face.’

‘I am in total control of my faculties,’ Ashford snapped, ‘and – rest assured – I always act in my family’s best interests.’

‘Is it the dowry?’ Sir Waldo paid no heed to the anger in Ashford’s voice. ‘I understand the duchy is in a tough spot but—’

Lydia frowned. This was the first she had heard of such a thing.

‘Who told you that?’

‘Dear boy, one hears things,’ Sir Waldo said, his voice full of condescending sympathy. ‘How bad is it? You need capital, I take it?’

‘The duchy will be fine.’ It was the closest Lydia had ever come to hearing Ashford lose his temper. ‘I have it all in hand.’

‘Do you? This girl will debase your name! It is the very height of foolishness.’

‘ Waldo —’

‘I know you have a devilishly difficult time with the duke, but you need not do this all alone. I wish you had consulted me.’

‘I owe you no explanations, Waldo,’ Ashford said in freezing accents, ‘but you may be reassured that I consider my business dealings very carefully. Miss Hanworth’s dowry is considerable, her family unobjectionable, and – ordinarily – her character is entirely docile.’

There was a pause. Lydia’s heart was pounding so loudly that she could hear it.

Dowry. Docile. Business dealings. It was far softer than any of the insults Sir Waldo had levelled at her, but Ashford was her future husband. And he was describing her as if she were a – a horse .

‘But her behaviour?’ Sir Waldo moaned.

‘Is motivated by nerves,’ Ashford interrupted, ‘which I assuaged this afternoon. I think you will find her far improved going forward.’

He had manipulated her, then. That little show of earnestness in the portrait gallery had been just that – a show.

‘This shall be the last time we discuss the matter, Waldo. My mind will not be altered.’

The sound of footsteps had her jolting back.

‘We must go,’ she hissed to Pip.

‘But—’ Pip looked at her face and bit back his protest. ‘Yes, of course.’

They hurried down the hall and back out onto the lawn.

‘Docile?’ Lydia whispered.

‘Not good,’ Pip said fervently. ‘Not good at all.’

‘He is worse than I – more than I …’

She did not have the words.

‘A villain with a moustache,’ Pip summarized. ‘The most dangerous sort.’

‘And to think I felt sorry for him,’ Lydia marvelled. ‘I thought he might actually … care for me.’

Her face burnt with mortification. She could not believe she had been so foolish.

Polite laughter tinkled lightly over them as they approached the billiards lawn and she remembered that she was meant to have changed her hat.

Lydia reached up and plucked more feathers off her hat, discarding them in a convenient bush.

One, two, three, four. She did it so violently that some of the velvet came loose with it, and Lydia could feel a new breeze on her head that was suggestive of a hole.

‘Perfectly done,’ Pip said.

‘There you are!’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘All of you.’

They turned to see Ashford and Sir Waldo striding out onto the lawn behind them. Neither one was looking at the other.

Lydia had to fight to keep a glare from her face.

How dare he! How dare he throw her life into such disorder and not even tell her why.

He needed capital, did he? Why, he was no better than a common fortune hunter, and she had wasted time feeling sorry for him, had worried she was humiliating him unfairly – had questioned her intentions, her motives, her memory!

‘It is your turn, Miss Hanworth!’ Lady Phoebe called out merrily.

Lydia accepted her mallet, approaching the ball which had been left at a little distance.

She examined it carefully, then hit it with a resounding smack and impeccable aim.

It flew directly towards Ashford, forcing him to jump backwards with an undignified yelp, only partially avoiding the ball which hit him on the thigh rather than her original, far more painful, planned spot.

‘Goodness!’

‘By Jove, that’s a hit!’ Sir Waldo said enthusiastically.

‘I’m not certain it’s the right game, though,’ Dacre murmured.

Standing upright with a wince, Ashford forced a laugh. ‘Have I offended you, Miss Hanworth?’

‘I am sorry, my lord,’ Lydia said, smiling her toothiest smile.

‘All is forgiven,’ he said, ‘as long as you promise to aim for the hoops in future.’

‘I promise,’ she said sweetly, and added, in the privacy of her own mind: to make your life a living hell.