Page 14 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

Lydia stood by her bedchamber door, her ear pressed to the crack, listening for footsteps.

The ladies had all retired long ago, but it was only now that the gentlemen, who had elected for cards and cigars with Sir Waldo, were drifting towards their beds.

Lydia’s mind was far too rattled for sleep, and so she waited, until …

‘Pip,’ she whispered, recognizing his profile passing her doorway, and opening her door a crack. ‘ Pip !’

He wheeled around, losing a little of his balance in the process. She beckoned him toward her, and as he slid into the room, the telltale scent of port wafted over her.

‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘How did he seem?’

‘How did who seem?’ Pip said, wandering over to her dressing table and seating himself before the looking glass – seeming a trifle surprised to see his own reflection within it.

‘ Ashford ! ’ Lydia said impatiently, then – when Pip seemed bent upon adjusting his necktie – snapped her fingers at him impatiently. ‘How did he seem?’

She was not foolish enough to think that Ashford would have broken down into public sobs over his Terrible Mistake, but there were other, subtler, signs of inner despair. Had she done enough? Had it worked? Was she free?

‘Difficult to say,’ Pip said vaguely. He appeared to be having a little trouble focusing his gaze on her. ‘Not the chattiest fellow, is he?’

‘Did he look at the end of his tether?’

Pip considered this. ‘Not at the beginning of it, certainly. Stands to reason.’

‘Pip,’ Lydia said, trying to master the frustration rising within her, ‘you are meant to be my eyes and ears. Is there nothing you can tell me?’

‘Nothing is at it seems,’ Pip said. ‘ That’s for certain.’

Turning to face her fully, he extracted his notebook from his pocket and fumbled to open it. ‘Dacre, for example – the man’s too pleasant, it makes no sense – suspicious, I tell you, the way he does not heed any of Sir Waldo’s insults.’

Lydia held up her hands. ‘Please may you just concentrate, for a moment?’

Pip closed his notebook, a trifle crestfallen. Lydia felt as if she had just kicked a puppy.

‘I’m sorry, I did not mean to … it is just, this is my future. It is important.’

Pip nodded. ‘I know that.’

‘Do you?’ she said. ‘You have performed your role admirably, and I am grateful, but at times I feel as though you have forgotten our purpose entirely.’

Thrice today, she had tried to bend his ear on Ashford, but each time he could hardly bring himself to concentrate for a moment. Too busy daydreaming of mysteries to attend to her.

‘I have had a great deal to do,’ Pip defended himself. ‘The investigation …’

Lydia restrained her temper with an effort. ‘I need you to be serious now,’ she said with tolerable composure.

While she had certainly made an impact upon Ashford this evening, it had not eased her agitation. She felt as if she was a bird flapping desperately at a closed window and the proximity of her escape was only making her more frantic. She had to be free of him, she had to!

But Pip would not yield. ‘I am being serious. It is my work.’

Lydia’s frustration burst its banks. ‘There is no work, Pip! No crime, no mystery. Practising your investigation is one thing, but you are taking it all too far now.’

‘Something fishy is going on!’ Pip insisted. ‘I can feel it in my bones.’

Lydia pressed the heels of her palms to her chin. ‘Oh, dear lord!’

‘Do you not believe me?’

Lydia lowered her hands very slowly. Pip’s eyes were wide as he regarded her, expression stricken.

‘I – I …’ She did not know what to say.

Slowly, Pip reached his hand into his pocket for his pencil.

‘How,’ he said, opening his notebook to a fresh page, ‘does one spell betrayal?’

‘Oh, don’t do that!’ Lydia snapped. ‘I did not mean… the situation is so precarious right now, Pip, for both of us. If I cannot rid myself of Ashford, then our plan – our life together – it will be ruined. I cannot leave you alone .’

‘I do not need you to protect me, Lydia,’ Pip said.

Yes, you do, Lydia wanted to shout at him. How can you not see that? But of course he did not, because that was Pip. Too open, too unselfconscious, too himself in a world which would only punish him for it.

‘I am the elder,’ Pip reminded her. ‘Stands to reason, I do the protecting.’

She stared at him helplessly. ‘I—’

A soft knock interrupted them. Lydia turned, just as Jane poked her head round the door.

‘Miss Lydia, are you—’

She halted when she saw them. ‘Oh good. You are both here.’

Lydia frowned. ‘Is everything all right, Jane?’

Jane did not usually appear in Lydia’s bedchambers until morning.

‘No, it is not.’ Jane pushed the door open. ‘No, I – well we – need your help.’

She walked inside, leading by the hand another young woman, dressed in maid’s uniform.

‘This is Elspeth,’ Jane said. ‘Lady Phoebe’s lady’s maid.’

As the light of Lydia’s candle illuminated their faces more fully, Lydia say that Elspeth’s face was tear-stained, her eyes puffy.

‘Are you hurt?’ Pip rose from his seat.

Elspeth turned to Jane. ‘Please, I did not think I can …’

‘They can help,’ Jane encouraged, squeezing her palm.

Lydia looked from one girl to the other and frowned. ‘Help with what?’

Elspeth shook her head, fresh tears springing to her eyes.

‘Feel better in a moment,’ Pip encouraged.

‘No, I won’t,’ she choked out. ‘Not when I’m like to be killed.’

‘Killed?’ Lydia repeated, alarmed.

‘Killed?’ Pip repeated, excited. ‘Whatever for?’

‘I cannot say, miss,’ She turned again to Jane. ‘I ought not be speaking to them at all.’

‘You can trust them,’ Jane promised.

Lydia thought she might know what was going on here. ‘Has Lady Phoebe been cruel?’

She could not imagine that her ladyship was the world’s easiest mistress and house parties did put such pressure on household staff. All of their grandmother’s worst stories were from events such as this.

‘No, no Miss, ’ Elspeth refuted, visibly bridling. ‘No, no, it is not her … It is my fault.’

Jane shook her head. ‘No, it is not.’

‘What is “it”?’ Pip prompted.

Elspeth stared at them, tears still glinting on her face, the absolute picture of tragedy.

‘It’s the diamonds, sir,’ she whispered. ‘Lady Phoebe’s diamond necklace. It’s gone.’

Pip drew in a deep, ecstatic breath. ‘You don’t mean it’s been stolen ?’

He turned on Lydia triumphantly. ‘I told you there was something smoky afoot – thievery! It is just as I suspected.’

‘I didn’t do it – I promise I did not,’ Elspeth said. ‘But I went to clean it tonight, after Lady Phoebe retired – and it’s not there.’

‘Perhaps it’s lost,’ Lydia said. ‘Misplaced – fallen down the back of something.’

‘It’s always locked safely in the box,’ Elspeth said.

‘Sir Waldo is most specific for it’s so valuable and he worries about thieves – and I have the only key because he says Lady Phoebe can’t be trusted not to lose it.

’ She let out another sob. ‘I have the only key,’ she repeated. ‘Everyone is going to think I took it.’

‘Did you?’ Pip asked.

‘Pip!’ Lydia smacked his arm.

‘One has to ask the difficult questions,’ Pip said. ‘In my line of work.’

‘Steal diamonds worth half the country?’ Jane said. ‘She’d be far better off stealing silverware.’

Indeed. For what servant would set such a rare and easily identifiable item in their sights, when the house was riddled with far easier treasures?

‘I would never do such a thing!’ Elspeth insisted.

‘Then you have nothing to fear,’ Lydia assured her. ‘We shall go to Lady Phoebe and alert her there is a thief—’

‘No! They will think it’s me,’ Elspeth said, ‘and I’ll be hung.’

Jane reached out and squeezed her hand. Lydia bit her lip.

Servants often received severe punishments for egregious thefts, imprisonment or even transportation to foreign lands, for a mere moment of light-fingered temptation.

The largest diamonds in Europe, Sir Waldo had called them.

What would be the punishment for such a theft?

‘You will not be hung,’ Pip said, ‘not if we can find the true thief.’

His dramatic, portentous tone filled Lydia with foreboding. ‘Pip, we cannot promise such a thing.’

‘May I remind you,’ Pip said, a bite in his voice that she was not used to hearing, ‘that I am a Senior Officer on Bow Street.’

He had promoted himself, since arriving at Hawkscroft. Lydia huffed out an exasperated sigh.

‘Pip, I really do not think …’

Pip turned to Elspeth and Jane. ‘Together, we will find the diamonds and catch the killer.’

‘The thief,’ Lydia corrected.

‘The thief, yes,’ Pip said. ‘Exactly.’

‘Do you truly think it possible?’ Elspeth blinked up at him.

‘Pip …’ Lydia cautioned. To give the girl false hope – it would be unreasonably cruel. More to the point, would it not make her look more guilty, the longer the absence were concealed? ‘Lady Phoebe will discover it missing herself if we tarry. What if she wishes to wear it on the morrow?’

‘She doesn’t,’ Elspeth said. ‘She says it is too uncomfortable, to put it away until the masquerade.’

‘Then all we have to do is find the clues,’ Pip said. ‘Stands to reason we can solve it in time.’

Lydia grasped Pip’s arm and drew him around to face her. ‘We ought not to promise anything we cannot fulfil.’

‘We have to try , Lydia,’ Pip said, voice suddenly serious. ‘Surely you can see that?’

Still, Lydia hesitated. ‘I do not know …’

There was a headache beginning to throb between her eyebrows, and she pressed her thumb there, trying to think.

There was an awful part of her that wished Jane had never brought this to their door, for Lydia did not think she could cope with more complications.

And yet how could they say no? Pip would certainly not be able to let it alone and she would not be able to let him do it alone – but it was not as if she had nothing to do, herself!

With the trap of her engagement tightening around her with every moment that passed, to be distracted at such a juncture could be fatal.

‘It is too much,’ she muttered, more to herself than the others.

‘Miss Hanworth,’ Jane said. The formality of her address had Lydia blinking in surprise. Jane usually only referred to her as such in front of Aunt Agatha. ‘There is no one else who can help. Please.’

Her voice was entreating, almost pleading. Lydia had never heard Jane speak so and it broke her thoughts away from their selfish bent.

We are just the same as they, her grandmother used to tell Lydia at every opportunity, reminding her that, but for a few changes in circumstances, Lydia too would have grown up in domestic service.

Such a thing as this could easily have happened to her, or Jane – an injustice, committed by another leaving one left to bear the consequences, alone and powerless.

‘You need not be involved,’ Pip said, ‘if you do not wish to be.’

‘If you’re in it, I am too,’ she assured all three of them. Pip beamed at her. ‘Where should we begin? There are hundreds of people it might have been.’

Pip drew himself up to his fullest height. ‘I believe no servant would be foolish enough to steal such a thing, and that leaves only our fellow guests.’

Guests who had been informed of the necklace’s preciousness and value at great length.

‘If Lady Phoebe is to wear the diamonds on our last night,’ Pip said, ‘we have eight days to find the thief and bring them to justice.’

‘Truly?’ Elspeth was looking at him as if he had hung the moon. ‘You believe we can?’

‘Fact is, I know it,’ Pip said. ‘I have already begun by questioning the suspects – Simmons says that is the very first thing one should do, you see. Then, we must search the rest of the house – every room, every bedchamber – for evidence.’

‘What sort of things should I look for?’ Elspeth asked breathlessly.

‘We shall know them when we see them,’ Pip said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

‘The house is crawling with staff,’ Jane warned.

Lydia’s brow wrinkled, feeling that this might be more difficult than Pip imagined. ‘What if any of you are apprehended?’

A dozen disquieting scenarios sprang easily to her mind, but Pip only gave a dismissive wave. ‘We’ll think of an excuse.’

‘What if you are apprehended by the thief ?’ Lydia demanded. ‘They could be a dangerous person – do you have your pin, Jane?’

‘Of course.’ Jane withdrew from her lapel a pin the twin of Lydia’s own. Grandmother had supplied all her maids with these weapons, knowing as she did how some gentlemen felt they might take liberties with the household staff.

‘If we time the thing well enough,’ Pip said, ‘and use each other as lookouts, we will not be discovered.’ Warming to his inspirational role, he added: ‘We shall prevail! On this, and on—’

Lydia cut her eyes meaningfully to Elspeth. Just because they were united in this venture, did not mean they ought to reveal all their confidences, surely?

‘The other matter,’ Pip finished, with such significance that Elspeth looked between them, curiosity obviously piqued.

‘You are making good progress,’ Jane encouraged, with equal indiscretion. Lydia frowned at her. ‘His valet reports he is going through snuff by the pound.’

However uneasy Lydia might feel about their loose lips, this was the piece of reassurance she needed. Lydia felt the hard knot in her stomach ease, a little.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’

Pip gave her an encouraging smile. ‘We can do both, Lydia, I promise. There is time.’

She reached out to touch his arm. ‘Thank you.’

He was correct. There was still time. And, if Ashford had not jilted her by the end of tomorrow, there was still one – very terrible – thing she had not yet tried.