Page 44 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘How did you even get in here? You cannot use Sir Waldo’s study for clandestine entanglements!’ Lady Phoebe hissed. ‘Ashford, I cannot believe—’

‘The necklace,’ Lydia said blankly. ‘You have it.’

‘On the day of our masquerade, of all days you could have chosen for such a stunt as this!’

‘The necklace,’ Ashford repeated. ‘It is not stolen.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Lady Phoebe said.

‘We were wrong,’ Lydia said, turning to look at Ashford. His hair was disordered, one hand still a little outstretched toward Lydia, as if he had frozen on the point of drawing her back towards him. Unbidden, Lydia pressed a hand to her mouth and watched as Ashford’s eyes followed it.

‘Come, now, away,’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘If Waldo finds us in here!’

Her face was pale, and she kept glancing fretfully over her shoulder.

‘Come, now !’ she insisted.

They followed her beckoning hand out of the room and Lydia locked the door with shaking hands – Lady Phoebe’s eyes half bulged out of her head to see Sir Waldo’s keys in her possession – and just in the nick of time, too, for no sooner had they taken a few steps back from the door than Sir Waldo rounded the corner.

‘What, ho!’ he said, cheerfully surprised and stopping short at the sight of them. ‘What’s going on here? Some kind of corridor meeting?’

He chuckled at his own joke, and then, appearing to register the slightly strange mood in the air, his eyes flicked from each of them in turn, to the door to his study, and the smile slid off his face.

‘Phoebe?’ he said. ‘Is all well?’

‘Yes, yes of course!’

‘Is there a reason,’ he asked slowly, ‘that you are waiting outside my study?’

‘We were just discussing,’ Lady Phoebe said, ‘if we ought to throw open your study, as well for our guests.’

‘Yes,’ Lydia said. ‘I suggested it – a fine idea, don’t you think?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Sir Waldo said. ‘My study is the only room in the house that must always remain locked – as my lady wife knows very well.’

He looked so large standing there, shoulders filling up almost the entire hallway, and for the first moment since arriving at Hawkscroft, Lady Phoebe appeared terribly small – and without quite knowing why, exactly, Lydia stepped forward to stand alongside her.

‘Yes, yes of course.’ Lady Phoebe gave a trill of a laugh. ‘Silly of me even to countenance it.’

‘Very silly,’ Sir Waldo agreed, and he walked forward, reaching out to take Lady Phoebe’s chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifting her face.

‘You are wearing my gift.’

‘I was – I was just trying on my dress for tonight,’ Lady Phoebe faltered, flinching a little away from his grasping hands. ‘I thought – a special occasion.’

‘Diamonds for my diamond. Do you not think it foolish to wear it with so many tradesmen coming and going?’

He still had not let go of her chin. Ten days previous, this might have seemed charmingly intimate to Lydia’s eyes, but now …

Lady Phoebe pulled a smile to her face. ‘Oh, no one would dare steal from you, Waldo!’

This appeared to please him.

‘That’s true,’ he said with a nod. ‘You will wear the blue gown, tonight?’

Lady Phoebe shook her head. ‘The pink.’

‘You know I prefer the blue.’

‘I did not know you were such an expert on evening wear, Waldo,’ Ashford said, and he was stepping forward, too. ‘What colour do you think I ought to wear?’

At last, Sir Waldo dropped Lady Phoebe’s chin.

‘I’m sure you will always do exactly as you wish, Ashford,’ he said. ‘If you will excuse me, I have to attend to some business.’

He nodded toward his study and, to Lydia’s horror, reached a hand into his pocket for his keys. Keys which Lydia still had grasped in her hand. Sir Waldo frowned, encountering only emptiness within.

‘What?’ he muttered.

Lydia did the only thing she could think of. Stooping, she pretended to pick something off the ground.

‘Are these your keys, Sir Waldo?’ she asked. ‘They were on the floor.’

‘Must have dropped them,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Miss Hanworth.’

Lady Phoebe clapped her hands together.

‘Well, time is ticking on,’ she asked brightly. ‘Come, Miss Hanworth, and I shall show you your domino.’

They walked away.

‘Would you prefer a lilac domino?’ Lady Phoebe asked chattily. ‘Or a green?’

‘Phoebe—’ Ashford began, but Lady Phoebe cut across him.

‘I am the only one wearing red, of course – the hostess’ prerogative.’

The smile on her face was rictus and false, and the bright sparkle of the diamonds, which eight nights previous, had only added to her lustre, now only emphasized the pallor of her face, the darkness under her eyes that not even powder could quite cover.

‘Phoebe, what is going on?’ Ashford said.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Nothing is going on!’

‘I don’t – I – I don’t even know what I am meant to ask,’ Ashford said. ‘But something is very wrong and you must tell me, so that I might fix it.’

‘Stop talking!’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘Stop – we will be heard .’

Muttering an oath, she seized Ashford’s arm, pushed open a door and pulled him into a side room. Lydia followed, uncertainly – this felt as if it was a family matter, but she was not about to miss it unless she was told otherwise.

Lady Phoebe took a hasty turn about the room, biting at her thumbnail.

‘Phoebe …’ Ashford said again. ‘Speak.’

With a discernible effort, Lady Phoebe drew herself to a stop. ‘I’m leaving.’

‘Leaving what?’

‘Everything,’ she said. ‘This house, my life, Waldo – all of it. I can’t do it anymore.’

‘I don’t understand.’

But Lydia did. She looked from Lady Phoebe, down to the necklace, and back again.

‘The necklace was missing,’ Lydia said slowly. ‘But you took it, didn’t you?’

Lady Phoebe’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I need it,’ she said. ‘The money it will bring me will buy a whole new life.’

‘But you wanted to marry him,’ Ashford said. ‘You wanted this.’

‘I thought I did,’ she said. ‘It was such a whirlwind. You remember. The gifts, the letters, the flowers . No one had ever treated me in such a way before, with such devotion, but now …’

‘Now?’ Ashford prompted.

‘I did not know it would be like this,’ Lady Phoebe said.

‘He wants to be with me, always. He did not wish me to attend the Season, but even when I am here, he needs to know where I am, always. If I leave the house, he tells the footmen not to let me out of their sight – he asks them, afterwards, where I have been, who I have visited.’

She paused, marshalling herself. Ashford opened his mouth to speak, but Lydia placed a hand upon his arm to forestall him.

‘He thought me so perfect, at the beginning,’ she said. ‘And now, if I do not live up to his ideal, even for a moment, he lets me know I have disappointed him. When he is happy, life is good,’ she said. ‘When he is not …’

‘Has he hurt you?’ Ashford said sharply.

‘Not physically,’ Lady Phoebe. ‘Not yet – I don’t know, if he ever will, but I … cannot, anymore, cope with it. I am so tired of trying to be everything he wants.’

Lydia stood very still. It felt as if one wrong movement would frighten the truth away, somehow; would have Lady Phoebe pinning a smile back on her face and pretending all was well, again.

‘Do you know,’ Lady Phoebe said, giving a strange little laugh, ‘I do not even like freesias?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Ashford asked, his voice breaking. ‘I would have helped you.’

‘I know you would.’ Lady Phoebe dashed across her face. ‘You would have taken it on yourself, as you always have done, for the family – but what could you have done? I belong to him, Ashford.’

‘I would have removed you from this house,’ Ashford said. ‘Spoken to him – ordered him that he could never—’

‘I would still have had to go back,’ she said. ‘Eventually. It is not as if you would support my divorcing him, would you?’

Ashford paused, lips parted. Divorces were almost unheard of amongst the aristocracy, granted in the rarest and most salacious circumstances – with the shame following your family for evermore.

A bitter smile curled Lady Phoebe’s lips ‘That’s a rather harder question to answer, isn’t it?’

‘I will speak to him,’ Ashford said. ‘You don’t need to do anything drastic. There will be another way.’

‘He will not let me go.’ She shook her head, sadly. ‘He will fight and make scenes and cause a thousand scandals rather than let me go.’

‘You would spend your life running, instead?’

‘With the diamonds, I shall have enough to flee, properly. I took the necklace to be valued in Chippenham last week, and it is worth more than you can imagine.’

‘Of course,’ Lydia murmured, as much to herself as to the others. ‘It went missing the same night Waldo announced you were leaving.’

Lady Phoebe turned to her, frowning. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Elspeth noticed,’ Lydia explained. ‘She feared she might be accused of its theft.’

‘And she came to you for assistance?’

‘To Pip, actually. He has been searching for it, but—’

Ashford interrupted her with an impatient slash of his hand through the air. ‘And then what? You can hardly take such an item to a pawn shop, Phoebe – you would be discovered at once.’

‘In England, yes,’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘But I shall not be here. I have saved enough pin money to get to France, and once there I shall organize it to be broken up and sold.’ She looked back to Lydia. ‘I was going to leave a note, explaining everything. Elspeth would never have been in danger.’

Ashford combed a hand through his hair, agitation not in the least appeased by this explanation. ‘Where will you stay?’

‘With your mother.’

For a moment, Lydia thought she had misheard or that Lady Phoebe was making a very poor, very crass joke. She turned sharply toward Ashford, who had gone quite as pale as if he had seen a ghost.

‘You wouldn’t,’ he said, voice choked.

‘I wrote to her.’ Lady Phoebe gazed resolutely at Ashford. ‘I thought she would understand, out of everyone, my desire to escape – and she did. She offered me shelter.’

‘But isn’t she—’ Lydia began.

‘She’s not dead,’ Lady Phoebe announced baldly.

‘Phoebe, don’t!’

‘Oh, she ought to know if she is to be your wife,’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘My aunt did not die, Miss Hanworth, she ran away. Of course, we could not tell people that, could we?’

Lydia turned to look at Ashford, hardly able to believe her ears.

‘You told everyone she died ? When she is alive, still?’

‘I did not,’ Ashford snapped. ‘I was only sixteen – but my uncles insisted, my father … She was everything to him. He could not face it. The shame of it would have been too much – it would have dogged us for generations.’

‘That is purest insanity,’ Lydia said, appalled beyond comprehension. ‘Have you seen her, since?’

‘Never,’ Ashford said.

‘She writes to him,’ Lady Phoebe said. ‘He does not even read them.’

‘ Ashford ,’ Lydia said. ‘That is—’

‘Do not speak of what you do not understand,’ Ashford said. ‘We could not have told the truth, it would have ruined us.’ He turned to Lady Phoebe. ‘As you risk doing so, too,’ he accused. ‘You have not considered the consequences. This is not just about you.’

‘Isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It is my life.’

‘So, we should all just go about acting in our own interests,’ he said. ‘Never mind duty and family and—’

‘What about me ?’ Tears had sprung to Lady Phoebe’s eyes. ‘Do I not signify?’

‘I – I …’ Ashford pressed a shaking hand to his forehead. ‘I – I cannot. I do not …’

Lady Phoebe reached out an imploring hand. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘You must understand …’

He backed away towards the door. ‘I – I need to think,’ he said. ‘This is not – this cannot be the only way.’

‘Ashford …’

But Ashford’s hand was on the doorknob and in another moment he had gone.

There was silence, in his wake.

‘Well,’ Lady Phoebe said, with a sad little laugh, ‘that went better than I expected.’

‘Did it?’ Lydia asked, rather incredulously.

‘He believed me. There is that, at least.’

She walked over to a low sofa and sat down with a sigh. Lydia went to sit next to her.

‘I just hope Ashford can recover his calm before this evening,’ Lady Pheobe said.

‘Waldo is watching me more closely than ever – and once you all leave there will be nothing to distract him and’ – she was speaking faster and faster, thoughts spilling out of her in an anxious tumble – ‘and I do not know how I shall ever get away under such scrutiny!’

She pressed her hands to her face. Lydia watched, frowning and thoughtful. Lady Phoebe was so brittle that one wrong word would shatter her. Lydia would have to speak carefully.

‘I think you are a fool, to waste such an opportunity as this,’ she said. Carefulness had never been her strong suit.

Lady Phoebe turned her head very slowly to regard her. ‘Excuse me?’

‘If you are concerned about distraction,’ Lydia said, ‘then what is tonight if not the grandest, most glittering distraction you could ever have asked for?’

Lady Phoebe stared at her.

‘You mean … leave tonight?’ she said.

Lydia nodded.

‘How?’ Lady Phoebe’s voice was fragile with doubt and hope.

‘Well, I – I think I have a plan.’