Page 4 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

He and Mr Brandon stared at one another for a beat, embroiled in a silent argument that ignored Lydia entirely.

She stood there, pink-faced and awkward, wishing, desperately that she had left the corridor when she’d had the chance, until Ashford turned back, extending a hand to Lydia in unenthusiastic invitation.

Indignation warred with humiliation in her chest. How she wished she might decline the offer!

But she could not, could she? It could very well ruin her whole Season.

Besides, she had heard what he had said.

A hot-headed rejection would be just the mannerless behaviour he would expect from a Cit’s daughter, wouldn’t it?

No, she would not give him the satisfaction.

‘I should be delighted,’ she said primly, placing her hand upon his arm and smiling at him – without teeth – just as she had been taught.

Indeed, for that dance, and every interaction that followed, she made sure to follow every single directive Aunt Agatha had ever taught her: speaking quietly and briefly and only of ladylike subjects, professed a fascination in every one of his opinions while having none of her own and laughing at all his jests (such as they were).

‘I just wanted to prove him wrong,’ she bemoaned now. ‘I had no notion of where it would lead.’

‘You think that’s why he fell in love with you?’ Pip asked.

‘Can he have fallen in love with me? That seemed to be what he was suggesting, with the proposal.’

‘A good first clue,’ Pip agreed.

‘But he has given no other sign of it!’

She had noticed – of course she had, Aunt Agatha had been tickled pink – that he had begun asking her to dance, whenever they were both at the same ball, had begun spending a few minutes in her company whenever they crossed paths, but she had not thought much of it.

He did, after all, still dance and speak with every other young lady presented to him, in just the same manner.

‘He’s a very starched-up fellow,’ Pip observed, ‘but his affections must be engaged. Stands to reason. Why else would he stoop so low?’

‘Stoop?!’

‘What I mean is,’ Pip corrected himself hastily. ‘He has no dearth of options, does he?’

‘Apparently there is a dearth,’ she said. ‘No lady thus far has been able to meet his impossible standards.’

Was it possible that her perfect behaviour had not only encouraged him, but also somehow made her attain every item on his – and the duke’s – implausible specifications? Or was Pip correct, and did Ashford’s tepid warmth mask a deeper attachment?

‘It doesn’t signify, anyway,’ she reminded. ‘ I don’t love him .’

‘Only one thing for it,’ Pip said. ‘Have to cry off. Pay a visit to him today, before this house party nonsense.’

His expression darkened at this fresh reminder of their impending departure from London.

‘I don’t mind telling you, it’s come at a very inconvenient time,’ he added. ‘What if there is a case, while I am away?’

A month previous, Pip had – by utter happenstance – aided the Bow Street Runners in apprehending a thief, accidentally tripping the fellow as he fled the scene of the crime.

The experience had captured his imagination: overnight, he had taken to smoking a pipe, wearing a quizzing glass and haunting their offices to ‘assist’ in investigations.

‘Mr Simmons has just begun tutoring me on my investigation skills,’ Pip said, aggrieved.

Mr Simmons was a Senior Officer at Bow Street. Lydia did not know the exact nature of their relationship, but the fellow was certainly the idol to which Pip currently worshipped. Not an hour went by that he was not quoted, imitated, or otherwise referenced.

‘It was not my idea!’ she said. ‘Besides, Ashford has already left for the country.’

‘Suspicious,’ Pip said darkly. ‘ Very suspicious.’

Since he had begun working with the Runners, Pip declared a great many things to be suspicious.

‘You’ll have to do it in Kent, then,’ he said. ‘Can’t promise he’ll take it well, and then you could still set your cap at Captain von Pratt.’

‘Von Prett ,’ Lydia corrected, kicking at a stone.

Ah, the noble captain! She had met Captain von Prett, the celebrated explorer, at his lecture a week earlier, and it had been – for her at least – a coup de foudre .

Her heartstrings had been pulled by his moving tribute to his late wife, and a few brief moments of eye contact had sent her heart to thumping for hours afterwards.

Understandably, she was desirous of pursuing the acquaintance.

But first she needed to get out of this cursed engagement.

Ladies were, technically, permitted to call off engagements – if they accepted the accompanying shame – and Ashford’s insistence on secrecy should make that all the easier, but there was still Uncle Edmund and Aunt Agatha to consider.

‘I’d be sent to Aunt Mildred, as quick as a flash,’ she said.

‘I’d fetch you back,’ Pip said, ‘as soon as I come of age, and then we might live independently, at last.’

Lydia and Pip had been plotting to leave their aunt and uncle’s guardianship ever since it had begun.

Once Pip turned one and twenty, he would be in full possession of his fortune, and no one could stop them from setting up house together.

Technically, it was less than a year away, but …

Lydia cast Pip a quick, evaluating glance.

As a man, he was less beholden than she to the diktats of their aunt and uncle, but not by much.

He was expected to marry well, also, and more than once over the past years, they’d had to work together to avoid Pip’s marriage, too.

And Pip … Without her here to defend him, to keep his secrets and prevent the worst of his scrapes – would he be all right?

Or would Uncle Edmund bully him into marrying some horrid young lady who would make his life miserable, just as soon as Lydia was out of sight?

Lydia kicked moodily at another stone. At this rate, Ashford would be responsible for ruining two lives, rather than just one.

‘If he only knew what an abominable choice I am,’ Lydia said. ‘Far worse than those other ladies. Without Aunt Agatha constantly in my ear, I would forever be forgetting people’s names and curtseying the wrong way and – and …’

‘Using vulgar expressions,’ Pip supplied.

‘Yes, and I can’t sing—’

‘At all .’

‘I’m terrible at embroidery, my French is awful—’

‘Your Italian is worse!’

‘If Ashford knew all that, he’d soon regret his choice,’ Lydia said. ‘And everything would be solved.’

She stopped walking. It took several moments for Pip to realize she was no longer beside him, looking back enquiringly.

‘I cannot cry off,’ she said. ‘But he could.’

‘Wouldn’t do that,’ Pip objected. ‘Not when he’s only just proposed. Fact is, dishonourable.’

This was true. While ladies could call off engagements – if they were willing to bear the social consequences – most gentlemen viewed such dishonour as utterly impossible. Except …

‘The engagement is to be a secret for ten days,’ she said. ‘He could call it off within that time and nobody should know except Aunt Agatha and Uncle Edmund – and they’ll not likely broadcast such shameful news.’

They began walking again, faster now, their disconsolate drift turned purposeful march.

‘If he could be made to see that he had made the most terrible, ghastly mistake,’ she said, ‘then he might do something drastic.’

‘How would you do such a thing?’ Pip said. ‘Not certain telling him all about Shakespeare will cut the mustard this time.’

That was also true. Ashford did not seem the type to risk his honour without extreme provocation.

Lydia remembered the way he had said ‘Cit’s daughter’, that night at the Alcot ball, as if such people were more beneath him than worms in the soil.

Aunt Agatha’s rules had plainly worked magic on him, glossing over her woolly roots – but what if she ceased to behave by them?

Or, indeed, what if she did the opposite?

The vulgar, social-climbing, mercenary merchant class the ton feared was a largely fictional creation, but it need not be.

‘If I wear the wrong things,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘and say the wrong things, and behave the wrong way …’

‘Would it be sufficient?’ Pip said dubiously. ‘Fact is, I don’t know the fellow.’

‘Nor I,’ Lydia said. All she knew was that he thought himself so above the most accomplished, most beautiful, most wealthy young ladies of the ton , that he had rejected each of them for the most frivolous set of flaws she had ever …

‘He rejected Miss Mablethorpe for being hen-witted,’ she recalled aloud, ‘and Miss Callow for saying French words, and Lady Evelina for her eccentric family and for being capricious.’

She could not believe she had not realized it earlier. Lydia took in a deep, decisive breath. ‘If I act vulgarly and foolishly and pompously …’

‘Oh ho!’ Pip said, catching on. ‘Wouldn’t Aunt Agatha smell a rat?’

‘As foolishly and pompously and vulgarly as I can,’ Lydia corrected, ‘without Aunt Agatha suspecting a thing.’

If word of her behaviour reached her aunt and uncle, they would certainly consign her to Aunt Mildred.

‘What of the eccentric family?’ Pip said. ‘Perhaps I can help on that front.’ He raised his quizzing glass to his eye and squinted thoughtfully through it.

‘Might be difficult though,’ he said. ‘Fact is, not really the eccentric type.’

Lydia’s mind, so full of sludge this morning, was alive again and whirring.

‘If you wish to practise your investigation skills,’ she said, ‘why not practise them at Hawkscroft?’

‘Aunt Agatha doesn’t like me to investigate things at parties,’ Pip said. ‘Says people don’t like it.’

‘Yes,’ Lydia said. ‘ Exactly , Pip.’

‘Oh ho ,’ Pip said in sudden understanding. ‘Yes, with all those fancy coves in one house together, there’s bound to be a secret or two to uncover,’ he mused. ‘Stands to reason. That would impress Simmons, wouldn’t it?’

His chest puffed up at the mere thought and a sudden shard of guilt cut through Lydia’s enthusiasm.

‘This doesn’t have to involve you,’ she said. ‘I could make your excuses, find a reason for you to stay in London.’

‘If you’re in it,’ Pip said, ‘I am, too. Stands to reason.’

Lydia’s mood lifted in a great rush. All at once, everything that was dark and worrying became bright and hopeful once more, as if the sun had abruptly risen and rendered the world light again.

She had been foolish to think, even for a moment, that today was the day Ashford ruined her life.

Today was, as every day had been, simply another chance for her and Pip to eschew Uncle Edmund’s diktats, to dance around this pitfall as they had every other.

‘First,’ she said, ‘we need to visit Pantheon’s Bazaar today so I may purchase a new wardrobe.’

‘Tick!’ Pip asserted.

‘Then tomorrow we go to Kent, where I shall wear the wrong thing, and say the wrong thing, and do the wrong thing.’

‘Tick!’

‘And you shall investigate things.’

Pip gave a triumphant clap of his hands.

‘Tick!’

Lydia took in a rapturous breath of sweet, summer air. What a beautiful park. What a wonderful day.

‘If we can do all that,’ she said, ‘I shan’t need ten days to get rid of him. I shall do it in two!’