Page 49 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘Well, you have outdone yourself, my lady,’ Lady Morton said, patting Lady Phoebe’s hand as the carriage left the front gates. ‘I am certain I have never attended a more eventful house party.’

‘It is a miracle we were not observed,’ Lady Hesse agreed, turning to regard the empty lawns behind them. ‘If any of this gets out, the whole of Kent will be gossiping for years.’

Lady Phoebe let out one, very constricted sob.

Ashford laid a hand on her arm.

‘My lady,’ Elspeth whispered.

‘I think we can all understand the need for discretion, can’t we?’ Lydia said carefully. She made eye contact first with Lady Hesse, then Lady Morton.

‘Fact is,’ Pip said. ‘There’s rather a lot we would all like to keep quiet, is there not?

‘Yes, I think so,’ Lady Morton said.

‘There is no need, in fact,’ Lady Hesse said, turning a gimlet eye upon her son, ‘to speak any further on anything that has occurred this week – if we are all in agreement?’

‘Yes,’ Dacre said.

‘No,’ Hesse said, looking from his mother to Lady Morton. ‘That won’t do for me at all – I wish you to marry me, Lady Morton.

‘Oh, do not be preposterous!’ Lady Hesse said.

Lady Morton pouted. ‘But it has been so long since I have been able to call anyone Mama.’

‘If you dare …’ Lady Hesse seethed.

‘Oh, you are too easy!’ Lady Morton said. ‘Hesse, darling, it’s been a great deal of fun, but I’m not in the least interested in marriage.’

‘But – but I love you,’ he declared.

‘Understandable,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I’m very fond of you, too – but it ends here. You would not wish your mother to suffer a heart attack – ladies of her age must be vigilant.’

‘You—’

‘Yes, I’m terrible,’ Lady Morton said mischievously. ‘Come along, Dacre, you owe me a dance.’

She twined a hand through Dacre’s arm and bore him off towards the house, Lady Hesse and her son trailing behind.

Lady Phoebe made a half-hearted move to follow them.

‘Perhaps you ought to have a rest, my lady,’ Reeves suggested quietly. ‘I can fetch some—’

But in the next moment Lady Phoebe was shaking her hair back and standing tall.

‘No, no,’ she said. ‘We have guests, Reeves! And the fireworks are soon to start. Miss Hanworth, I will need my domino and loo mask back. Elspeth will fetch you others.’

‘Yes – of course,’ Lydia said, unfastening the buttons of the cloak, and handing it over.

Lady Phoebe clapped her hands, briskly, and began leading the way back to the shining windows of Hawkscroft House.

Ashford and Lydia followed, at a slower pace.

‘Thank goodness you arrived when you did,’ Lydia marvelled.

‘You were incredible,’ he said.

‘So were you,’ she said.

‘The bravery …’

And they were talking over one another, as they seemed always to do, but gabbling and giddy rather than cross and crotchety.

He put a hand to her arm, stalling her.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I mean it – thank you. What we would have done, if you had not been here …’

He shook his head as if to rid himself of the possibility.

‘You were incredible,’ he repeated and Lydia, not usually one for blushing, felt her face turn blisteringly warm.

‘Come along!’ Lady Phoebe’s voice beckoned them imperiously from the entrance hall. They both startled.

Ashford exhaled around a laugh. ‘We had best go inside.’

They paused only for Lydia to accept from Elspeth a new domino and mask which she hastily put on in the deserted entrance hall, before following Lady Phoebe’s procession towards the ballroom.

There, the festivities were still in full swing.

The band still playing. The candles still burning.

No one seemed to have noticed anything was in the least amiss.

‘Well then,’ Ashford said. He turned to Lydia and gave a superfluous wave of his hand. ‘May I have this dance?’

Lydia made a great show of looking left and right for another partner – pretending to consider a florid gentlemen wearing a domino of bright emerald green standing nearby – before placing her hand in his.

‘Good of you,’ he said.

‘Young ladies of quality ought to partake in charity every now and then,’ she said primly, and he snorted a laugh as they swept together onto the dance floor, arm in arm.

Lydia felt suddenly awash with the relief of it all, the tension that had knotted her spine ever since she and Ashford and Lady Phoebe had met in that drawing room releasing with every exhale.

‘I can hardly believe it,’ she said, as they took their places opposite each other.

There was so much contained with the sentiment. I cannot believe it is over and I cannot believe it happened but also, I cannot not believe anything that had happened , these past nine days.

‘I know,’ Ashford said, and she believed he did know. For who else could understand exactly how she was feeling, in that moment, than he?

The musicians struck up a lively tune, one of Lydia’s favourite country dances, so full of spins and jumps and hops that on the most ordinary evening one could not help but smile.

Tonight, so very much no ordinary evening, they had hardly begun the first shape before she began to laugh, her giddiness rising and rising as they began turning, swapping partners and returning to one another – and she saw that Ashford was laughing with her.

Not the modulated laugh he commonly gave when appreciating a witty comment, or the forced chuckle when amusement was socially wise, but something rather more helpless, spilling out of him as if he could no more contain it than keep the world from turning.

The sound of his delight made Lydia’s exhilaration ratchet even higher, and as they stepped towards one another again, clasping hands and spinning once more, faster and faster, Lydia felt she might burst from the joy of it all.

The dance ended too soon.

‘Another!’ she demanded, even before she had risen from her curtsey. ‘Let us remain for another.’

‘Two dances, consecutively?’

Ashford had never, to her knowledge, ever danced with a lady twice in one evening. He tried to raise his eyebrows in his usual sardonic manner – but the breathless grin on his face rather undercut the effect.

‘It is a masquerade,’ she reminded him. ‘Your usual rules need not apply, surely?’

‘I suppose not,’ he said, and they stood still as the couples changed all around them, catching their breath after the exertions of the dance, though when the music began again, Lydia’s heart began immediately to quicken anew. For it was the waltz …

Ashford moved slowly towards her, encircling her waist with one arm, taking her hand with his other.

The last time they had danced so, Lydia had made a game out of how many times she could stamp upon his toes.

She could not believe that had only been a few days earlier. Everything was so different, now.

‘Are my feet to be safe tonight?’ Ashford murmured in her ear, thoughts clearly following the same direction.

‘I think so,’ she said, after a pause – for the sensation of his breath tickling her neck had distracted her for a moment – ‘though I would not like to promise anything.’

‘Ominous.’

They began turning with their fellow couples. Lady Morton had joined the set, embraced by a distinguished older gentleman, and so too had Lady Phoebe, impossibly cheerful as she twirled about in the arms of Mr Brandon. Not for the first time that evening, Lydia was stunned by her resilience.

‘She would have done it, wouldn’t she?’ Lydia marvelled. ‘Left everything she has ever known to be free.’

She did not see Ashford nod, but she felt the movement of it, against her curls. ‘It makes one feel rather cowardly in comparison.’

She leant back a little, to better look at him. His expression was reflective. ‘Does it?’

‘For so long I have thought of dutifulness as strength, but tonight … If I were in Phoebe’s shoes, I could not have done it. I am too bound by rules, by custom.’

‘You need not be, if you do not wish it,’ she said fiercely. ‘It is not too late.’

‘Is it not?’ he said. ‘I do not know what I would be, without it. What would be left?’

‘Oh, balderdash!’

‘Forgive me,’ Ashford said. ‘I was trying to convey my feelings, but I should have known that you—’

‘There is so much more to you than some antiquarian title,’ she interrupted, indignant on his behalf. ‘It could be the least interesting thing about you, if you would only step out of your own way.’

‘You think so, do you?’

‘You have a sharp tongue,’ she said, ‘and a temper which you hide. But you are kinder than you let on, too. You exercise so much caution, to be thought well of by Society, but when the moment came you did the right thing. Even though, strictly, it was “wrong”.’

He drew them to a stop, as the music wound to a close.

‘You think so?’ he said, again, in a very different voice.

‘I know so,’ she said. ‘I know you,’ she added, more softly, as the violins played their final aching note.

Suddenly, in that moment it seemed the most natural thing in the world to take another step forward and turn her face towards him, and he appeared to agree for he was stepping forward too, his hands coming up to touch her face and—

The sound of applause had him leaping back from her, as if burnt. Lydia jumped too.

‘My God,’ he said. ‘My apologies. Forgot where we were – good God, we almost …’

‘D-do not apologize,’ she stammered. ‘We were not thinking. I-it happens.’

Ashford gave a minute shake of his head. ‘Not to me.’

He looked unnerved by the lapse in control.

‘Well, it is as I told you: not thinking suits you. You ought to try it more.’

‘I’m not sure I agree with you.’ His eyes were flickering and darting about the room as if to check the moment had indeed gone unnoticed.

‘Why does that not surprise me?’ She smiled up at him, and after a beat he returned it, agitation easing, at last.

‘Come, they are making up the next set,’ he said, offering her his arm. ‘And even you will not convince me to dance thrice in a row.’

She acquiesced without argument. ‘Shall we go somewhere? Away from all this?’