Page 31 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

That night, long after Jane had extinguished the candles and left for her own quarters, Lydia lay awake, her mind turning, turning, turning, too busy to allow for sleep.

In London, if such insomnia struck her, she would light a candle and read until her eyelids were straining with the effort of staying awake.

But there had been no space for books in her trunk – a good thing too, given her recent proclaimed illiteracy – and she was left defenceless, now.

She wished it were appropriate for her to spend a few uninterrupted hours in Hawkscroft’s grand library.

But to wander the halls, at nighttime, in her nightgown – it would be improper and foolish.

She would simply have to wait for sleep to come, patient and restful …

Her bedroom door creaked as it closed behind her, loud in the hush of the house, and Lydia flinched to hear it.

Hawkscroft, forbidding enough in the daylight hours, became almost frightening in total darkness.

The fragile light of the taper candle sent long, flickering shadows ahead of her, turning the suits of armour from grand to ghoulish, the portraits upon the wall from smiling to sinister.

She crept down the hallway, the flagstones very cold against her feet – she ought really to have worn slippers – and down the grand staircase.

She had to brace her shoulder against the oak to open the doors to the library.

A single step inside however was reward enough for the effort, and as Lydia inhaled a lungful of old books and old wood, she felt a wave of calm wash over her.

Her bare feet made no noise on the flagstones and though it was even darker here – the rows of bookcases did not allow her candlelight to travel far – it was no longer frightening.

Lydia picked a book from each row she passed through, some old favourites, some titles she did not recognize and then wandered in search of the hearth, where she recollected there were several armchairs with vague pretensions to squishiness.

Yes, there they were – a few wing-backed chairs, clustered around a fireplace that was still glowing.

Perfect. Lydia rounded the chair, ready to collapse into it – until she realized, with a jolt of horror, that it was already occupied.

She let out a shriek of surprise, dropping several books with a loud thud as she leapt backwards, clutching at her taper. The figure in the chair gave their own shout of surprise, startling violently and knocking over their own candle.

‘Damnation!’

‘Ashford?’

‘Dear. God.’ Ashford said, releasing a hand from his chest to pat himself down as if he were expecting to find a bullet wound upon his person.

‘What on earth are you doing lurking in such a way?’ she demanded.

‘I do not lurk,’ he said, with more hauteur than she would have thought possible from a gentleman wearing sheepskin slippers and a woollen house robe.

‘You ought to make more noise when you walk,’ he muttered, mopping up the spilled wax from his sleeve. ‘I might have hurt you.’

‘What would you have done? Thrown your slippers at me?’

Ashford abandoned his mopping to glare at her.

‘Leave,’ he instructed. ‘I’m here to find some peace.’

Whatever calm Lydia had gathered in the past few minutes dissipated into irritation.

‘You have no right to order me around in such a way. Perhaps I am here to find peace, too.’

‘It is not proper for us to be here alone. We are in our nightclothes.’

‘As attractive as your dressing gown is,’ she said, ‘your virtue is perfectly safe, I assure you. If you are concerned, you may leave.’

She sat down mulishly in the seat opposite him.

‘Shrew,’ he said.

‘Clodpoll.’

‘Harpy.’

‘Bufflehead.’

Ashford paused. ‘Bufflehead?’ he asked, reluctantly curious.

‘Stupid,’ she said. ‘But worse.’

‘Wonderful. Now – begone.’

‘ You begone.’

She leant forward to pick up the book at the top of his stack, holding it up to her candle so that she might read the title.

‘This is one of my favourites,’ she said, surprised.

He looked at it. ‘Mine as well.’

‘Though it was written by a woman?’

Ashford leant forward to snatch the book back. ‘I do not actually hold women in low account.’

‘Really?’ she said, rather derisively. ‘You can understand why I would disagree, given what I overheard on our very first meeting.’

‘I should never have said such things if I knew anyone was listening!’

‘Do you see how that makes it worse?’

‘Everyone has a right to hold an opinion,’ Ashford said. ‘Is it such a crime to evaluate the characters of the women I might marry?’

Lydia laughed. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Tell me something you learnt of these ladies’ characters – beyond whether they know who the Prime Minister is.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ashford’s brow furrowed.

‘Does Miss Callow have a favourite novel?’ Lydia suggested, in the sort of tone one might use to speak to a particularly slow child.

‘I don’t—’ he broke off.

‘Miss Mablethorpe’s sister was wed last year,’ Lydia said. ‘I wonder, does she miss her, now she has left home?’

Ashford stared. Lydia leant forward.

‘Could you tell me the name of Lady Evelina’s new niece?’ she asked.

There was a long pause.

‘No,’ Ashford admitted.

‘I suppose their characters were not important to you,’ Lydia said. ‘So long as their dowries were considerable and their families unobjectionable.’

Ashford scrubbed a hand across his face. He seemed shaken.

‘It was more than … I did not have long to make my choice and I …’ Ashford stammered out. Lydia had never seen him so tongue-tied.

‘It is rather damning,’ he admitted after a pause. ‘When one lays it out in such a way.’

‘Thank you,’ Lydia said. ‘It was meant to be.’

She tried not to preen at this win, but Ashford sent her a narrow-eyed glance.

‘Are you always such a smug winner?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but well done on asking a question.’

He gave a reluctant snort of laughter.

‘I do not mean to excuse myself,’ he said. ‘But it has been rather a trying year.’

Lydia raised her eyebrows in challenge, waiting. If he wished to absolve himself, she was not going to help him.

Ashford held her gaze for a moment, pressing his lips together and tapping his fingers consideringly upon the arm of his chair.

‘The marriage mart is treacherous ground,’ he said at last. ‘When one is …’

‘So very eligible?’ Lydia suggested.

‘That is not what I was going to say,’ he muttered, then – raising his voice over the sound of her snort – continued: ‘but there are many who covet my title for their daughters or nieces, and they are forever throwing lures into my path.’

He was speaking more quickly now.

‘Then, there is the fact that I cannot speak to a young lady for more than five minutes before the gossips begin predicting matrimony,’ he said, the tapping of his fingers becoming more of an agitated drum.

I thought making swift judgement would avoid unnecessary scrutiny to myself or any young lady, but now …

’ His hands stilled. ‘I suppose it was rather cruel,’ he admitted.

Lydia sat back a little in her seat, regarding Ashford with less rancour than she had in days.

Here, in the candlelight and with no one else around to observe, he seemed far softer, somehow – a person, not a monster.

It was difficult to find someone intimidating, when they were wearing slippers – not impossible, but difficult.

‘How then, did you come to choose me?’ she asked, with genuine curiosity. ‘There are ladies better born, by the score, and some of them just as wealthy. Surely you might have found one who was not pompous, nor foolish or eccentric, who would have been a less controversial choice?’

Ashford sent her a peevish glance. ‘Recollect your behaviour was rather different, in those halcyon days.’

Lydia shook her head. ‘It cannot just be that.’

Ashford spent a moment plucking at his cuffs, as if to adjust a crisp cotton shirt and not a dressing gown.

‘What harm can the truth do now?’ she entreated. ‘I just wish to understand. You were not, I think, overcome by my beauty?’

She waved a hand self-deprecatingly over herself. Ashford’s eyes followed the movement down to her dressing robe and then – as if recollecting their mutual state of undress anew – tore his eyes away to stare up at the ceiling.

‘Yes, well, I did not – I was not displeased , by how you look – looked ,’ he said stiffly. ‘Your gowns, in those weeks, were more – were less …’

‘Banana-ish?’ she said helpfully – for the effort of finishing such a sentence looked as if it were hurting him.

‘ Much less,’ he agreed, eyes flicking back to hers and it was rather remarkable, how they changed according to his feelings. Darker, when angry; lighter, when amused – as he was now. Both so much more superior to the wooden vacancy of the expressions he had worn earlier in their acquaintance.’

‘I offered for you,’ Ashford went on, and Lydia jolted back to conversation to realize she had been staring, ‘because I thought my father more likely to accept a controversial choice than a traditional one.’

Lydia furrowed her brow. She did not know the duke, of course, but generally weren’t such figures meant to be rather austere? Committed to respectability and such?

‘I don’t understand,’ she admitted.

Ashford gave his cuffs a last tweak, and then laid down his hands. ‘My father is insistent my marriage be a love match, as his was. Every other suitable young lady I have suggested to him, he has rejected, feeling that my feelings were not sufficiently attached. And so, I decided to … pretend.’

Lydia swallowed the retorts that sprang to her tongue. Whatever spell had him speaking so honestly – whether it was the midnight hour, or the softness of the firelight – she did not wish to break it.