Page 25 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

The party dispersed as quickly as dandelion seeds, just as soon as they arrived into Eagleton.

In one moment, Lady Phoebe had appropriated Dacre’s arm and borne him off on some unnamed errand, merrily instructing them to meet back at the carriages in two hours.

In the next, Pip had slid off, muttering darkly about jewellers, and almost immediately after that , Prett had been approached by a clutch of nervous young women bearing autograph books.

‘Yes, tis I!’ he declared, spreading his arms in welcome.

‘I refuse to watch this,’ Ashford said.

‘To the ribbons?’ Mr Brandon suggested.

‘Yes,’ Lydia agreed. Furthering her acquaintance with the captain could wait until her scent had improved, and in the meantime, this was a serviceable opportunity to push Miss Hesse in Ashford’s direction. ‘Perhaps, Mr Brandon, you and I could …’

But Mr Brandon had already offered his arm to Miss Hesse with an extraneous flourish, leaving Ashford no choice but to offer the same to Lydia.

He held out his arm with far less enthusiasm than Mr Brandon, and Lydia took it without any at all.

Matchmaking was proving far more difficult than she had expected – she had new respect for Lady Hesse’s plight, and found herself wishing, though she scarce would have predicted it only a day before, that this lady be present to help.

Though Eagleton was not a large town, it boasted an impressive high street, counting a jeweller’s, stationer’s, library, printshop and several establishments devoted to raiment amongst its offerings.

Of these, Burton’s was the grandest and busiest: serving as a linen-draper, milliner and haberdashery united, one glance into its window showing it to be already thronging with people.

‘There is not room for us all to enter at once,’ Lydia said. ‘Mr Brandon perhaps if you and—’

The end of the sentence had been ‘I’, but Mr Brandon interceded before she could finish.

‘A famous idea,’ he said promptly. ‘Miss Hesse and I shall lead the way!’

Foiled again. Lydia resisted the urge to stamp her foot.

‘How is it all going?’ Ashford said, voice thick with faux sympathy, as the bell over the door dinged behind them. ‘Not well?’

‘Oh, hush,’ Lydia snapped, turning to glare at him. ‘You are such a – such a sneaksby .’

The insult slipped out before she could stop it – borrowed, as all her best insults were, from her grandfather’s lexicon, and long forbidden by her aunt – and Ashford raised his eyebrows.

‘I am not familiar with the term,’ he said coolly, ‘though I gather it to be a vulgarity.’

‘Well, someone had to tell you,’ Lydia said, turning her back to him and pretending to admire the flower display around the shop window.

‘We may be at odds, but that is no excuse for discourtesy,’ Ashford said, with infuriating primness. ‘May I remind you that cordiality is the bedrock of a civilized society?’

‘You may,’ Lydia said, flashing him a fierce look over her shoulder. ‘If I might then cordially invite you to cease making such an incredible ass of yourself?’

A passing promenading couple – overhearing Lydia’s less than ladylike words – cast them an affronted glance, and Ashford flushed in second-hand embarrassment.

‘Perhaps it is best we do not speak,’ he said, turning to look out onto the street.

‘Certainly,’ Lydia said – some of her cheer restored, for she felt she had won that battle, even if the war was looking rather risky.

She peered in through the shop window. From what she could tell, Mr Brandon and Miss Hesse appeared to be making a full tour of the shop, dawdling away the minutes in admiration and indecision.

She huffed a sigh. They might be here for some time.

She glanced up at Ashford, who was apparently ignoring her in order to watch a gaggle of children rush past in a close game of steeplechase.

‘I used to love such games,’ she confided after a beat. ‘I think it unfair that they are abruptly deemed inelegant once one attains twelve years, don’t you?’

‘May I encourage you to share such confessions with a diary?’ Ashford said.

‘I suppose you would never have done something so undignified, even as a child,’ Lydia continued, ignoring this set down, and reaching out to pluck out a wilting peony spoiling the display. ‘Did you exit the womb reciting Latin conjugations?’

Ashford made no reply.

‘Or perhaps you were a sadly wild child.’ She began to pull the browning petals from the flower, one by one. ‘Until you decided to mend your ways and become the ponderous prig whom we all know and – well, whom we all know.’

Ashford still did not speak.

‘Though if Mr Brandon is to be believed,’ she said, attempting to flick the petals onto Ashford’s sleeve, ‘you were full of vim and vigour as a boy. What happened, to pop all that fun out of you?’

Ashford brushed the leaves away with the smallest of huffs and reached into his pocket for his snuffbox.

‘Come along,’ she encouraged, batting his arm playfully with the stem of the now-massacred flower. ‘Do be a good sport.’

‘Do you imagine I am going to have a chitchat with you about my childhood?’ he said, finally provoked into speech. ‘You ?’

‘Will you not indulge my curiosity?’

‘No,’ he said, glancing at her grimly. ‘You are only hoping that I might confess some childhood fear with which you would then torment me.’

‘You think I would resort to such childishness?’ she said, with pointed emphasis.

Ashford turned away to regard the square again.

‘Did you have any childhood fears?’ she asked, after a beat.

‘ No .’

‘Not even of beetles, perhaps?’

‘No.’

‘Not even a little?’

‘I’m ignoring you.’

‘What about a bedful of beetles?’

Ashford opened his snuffbox rather than answer. As ever, something about the way he did it – slow, unhurried, dismissive – prompted a rush of irritation in Lydia and her hand clenched around the stem.

‘My grandfather used to say,’ she said, as Ashford took a pinch to his nostril, ‘that taking snuff was a habit reserved for loose fish and lechers.’

Ashford inhaled rather sharply and spluttered.

‘A charming adage,’ he said, in a passable imitation of his usual calm – though his eyes were watering. ‘He would not have approved of me, I take it?’

Lydia snorted.

‘On the contrary.’ She examined the ruined flower in her palm. ‘He will be dancing in his grave at the thought of our marriage.’

‘The apple fell quite far from that tree, then.’

‘I resemble my grandmother more,’ Lydia said defensively. ‘She had a great deal of integrity’ – Why was she still speaking? – ‘and she felt very strongly, too.’

‘If you say so,’ Ashford said.

‘I suppose your relatives are all cut from your cloth,’ she said scathingly, dropping the floral remnants on the pathway and pushing them towards the gutter with one slippered foot. ‘Duty and honour and hearts of stone.’

‘You are wrong,’ he said. ‘My father is very sentimental, in truth, and so is – was – my mother.’

It was difficult to say who was made more wrongfooted by this statement: Lydia – for she could not exactly argue with him now that he had brought up his deceased mother, could she?

Or Ashford himself, who had flushed uncomfortably.

Lydia had never heard him speak of his mother before, though in London rarely a day went by when she did not see her referred to in the papers or hear her named to in conversation – usually accompanied by a rapturous sigh.

The late duchess had been famed in her lifetime, beautiful, kind, and one half of a marriage that – before Lady Phoebe and Sir Waldo – had been quite the most lauded love match for a century.

It was rare for a person to live up to such a reputation, and yet, according to Lydia’s grandmother – who had had the felicitation of meeting the great lady as a child – she had been quite the sweetest creature imaginable.

As this encounter had occurred in her previous life as a maid, the Hanworths could hardly boast about it – much to Aunt Agatha’s chagrin.

‘I heard she was—’ Lydia began softly.

‘Everyone in the family is very proper, too, of course.’ Ashford’s priggishness, briefly vanished, made a swift return. ‘Tradition and duty are paramount to us all.’

‘It can’t be that paramount,’ she said, ‘if you offered for me .’

‘Then, if you recall, you were a great deal more elegantly behaved,’ Ashford reminded her, ‘and spoke a great deal less cant.’

‘I am still a Cit’s granddaughter.’ She surveyed him for a moment before asking, impulsively, ‘Does His Grace truly approve of me?’

Ashford hesitated. ‘While your family history is, ah, a little different to what he is used,’ he said carefully, ‘he was happy enough to approve, given the extenuating circumstances.’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Your poverty?’

Ashford frowned down at her. ‘That is hardly accurate.’

‘Well, how am I meant to know,’ she said, ‘unless you will tell me?’

‘It is private family business,’ he said.

‘I am your betrothed,’ she reminded him.

‘Not for long.’

‘On that we agree.’

He turned again to regard the street. Lydia turned away from the window and followed his gaze. The game of steeplechase had ended, and the children were now embroiled in a healthy scrap. As they watched, one of the little girls began thwacking her opponents with her tiny parasol.

‘I don’t understand how you can need my money,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Your family has acres and acres of land.’

‘Land is expensive,’ Ashford hummed. ‘And even the oldest families can fall.’

‘Did your father order you to marry a wealthy girl?’ she hazarded a guess. ‘Threatening to disown you, if you did not comply?’

She had read of such things happening.

‘This is not the dark ages,’ Ashford said irritably. ‘Of course not.’

Lydia nodded dubiously, not at all sure that she believed him. ‘Very well, but when you cry off from our engagement—’

‘When you cry off,’ Ashford corrected.

‘He will be disappointed?’

‘Very,’ Ashford said grimly.