Page 55 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

Saturday – Ten days later

‘I do not intend us to remain late,’ Aunt Mildred said, as their carriage turned into the gates of Malton Hall. ‘I have little appetite for speaking this evening, and even less for listening.’

‘Understood,’ Lydia said, by now unfazed by this frankness. Aunt Mildred neither had a large social tolerance or any qualms about admitting this which bore no relation to her manners, which were – to Lydia’s initial surprise – rather elegant.

A great deal had been surprising, about Aunt Mildred.

Their journey northward had been long and hard.

Already a distance of several days, they had been waylaid further by repairs, when two separate wheels – on two separate occasions – had fallen foul of potholes, and so it was four days later that Lydia and Pip found themselves arriving in Marnsley, where Aunt Mildred had her home.

From the reports delivered to them by Aunt Agatha and Uncle Edmund, Lydia had assumed this would be a mud and straw structure, and the locale so boring as to make dishwater seem a lively conversationalist. On their winding route through the village, however, it was quickly apparent that both these assumptions had been erroneous.

Marnsley’s pace was slower than London – hardly difficult – but it did not seem sleepy in the least.

Barely half an hour’s drive from Harrogate and its thriving local assemblies, Marnsley boasted an energetic local population alongside beautiful scenery, and startled to attention twice a day with the noisy arrival of the stagecoach, unpacking all manner of travellers at the local inn for refreshment and board.

Aunt Mildred was waiting for them when the carriage drew up outside her home, a pretty Tudor cottage.

Aunt Mildred, however, looked just as dour as her depiction, short and angular, she was dressed in a sombre dress of grey bombasine – as if in mourning for a close relative – with a cap of starched cambric drawn tightly beneath her chin.

Nothing in her greeting assuaged this first impression of gloomy respectability.

‘I hear you are in disgrace,’ she said as they approached, without so much as a ‘good afternoon’.

‘Yes,’ she said, too tired to put up any kind of defence. ‘Uncle Edmund and Aunt Agatha have condemned me utterly.’

‘Well …’ Aunt Mildred considered them for a long moment. ‘I suppose that is as good a character reference as any.’

Her expression warmed, her eyes began to twinkle, and as she followed her aunt inside, Lydia relaxed minutely.

The cottage was just as charming within as it had appeared outside: light and elegant and possessing all the modern conveniences.

Aunt Mildred’s housekeeper showed them to bedchambers which, if smaller than the rooms to which they were used in Berkley Square, were pleasant, comfortable and dressed with fresh flowers.

It was not nearly so dire as they had been led to believe – and nor, indeed, was their aunt.

‘Do you know why they have sent me to you?’ Lydia plucked up the courage to ask, over the dinner table that evening.

‘My sister explained it in rather hysterical terms in a missive that arrived just before you did,’ Aunt Mildred said crisply. ‘Jilted, dishonouring the family name, etc – is that about the sum of it?’

‘It is,’ Lydia said. ‘I hope it will not make your life … difficult, if the news travels.’

Even if the exact details of Lydia’s behaviour, and the nature of her relationship with Ashford, were kept as secret as they had all promised, there were other means through which gossip might begin to rise.

She did not think there had been any who overheard when Ashford had jilted her, but she could not be certain.

Who was to say a discerning eavesdropper might not put some names and references together?

Aunt Mildred fixed her with a beady eye. ‘We shall not be troubled.’

‘But—’

Her aunt overrode her. ‘My standing is good here, and I wager my friends are a trifle stronger than the cads and charlatans who populate the capital.’

Her voice was crisp, not intended to be reassuring, and yet that was the effect.

‘Aunt Agatha would have had us believe you are an ogre,’ she marvelled.

‘Slanderous,’ Pip confirmed. ‘A crime, you know.’

‘A good thing too,’ Mildred said with a pleased nod. ‘Being unmarried, one is asked endless inconvenient favours. One must cultivate a little reputation, or else one’s life can be entirely ruined by having your niece and nephew foisted upon one with no notice.’

Lydia and Pip exchanged uncertain glances.

‘Just an example,’ Aunt Mildred added, mouth ticking up at the corners, and they laughed – mostly out of relief, but still, it felt good to do so. Lydia had not, since Hawkscroft.

‘Twice a week, I visit Harrogate to partake of the waters,’ Aunt Mildred informed them. ‘Once a week, I attend a public assembly in the evening, and there are occasional card parties and events closer to home – next week Mrs Lindell is to host a waltzing party.’

‘How wonderful,’ Lydia said, cast down once more, the mention of dancing recalling the last person with whom she had waltzed – and suddenly she was forcing back tears.

Oh, she was certainly going to be a popular dancing partner here, if she burst into sobs every time the music began.

This pessimism was shortly proved false.

Though the prospect of their first assembly here, barely a day after they had arrived, had incited within her breast a veritable dread, she had forced herself to attend nonetheless.

She was not foolish enough to believe remaining at home would alleviate her wretchedness.

Her instincts led her correctly, for nothing could be more cheering than an evening at Harrogate Assembly rooms. While the entertainment ran in a very similar fashion to its London counterparts, it was noticeably friendlier and livelier.

Under the guidance of Aunt Mildred – who gave none of the commands and judgement Lydia was used to receiving from Aunt Agatha – they were introduced to a succession of new acquaintances, all of whom seemed very pleased to meet them.

Even when Pip expressed a far too close interest in the recent elopement of the Squire’s son – wondering loudly if murder had been entirely ruled out – it did not seem to dampen the company’s enthusiasm.

By the flurry of invitations arriving by the next post, their first outing into local society had been a consummate success.

‘You shall not be bored,’ Aunt Mildred had observed, looking through the invitations over breakfast.

‘I cannot accept all these invitations,’ Pip said, making enthusiastic work of a boiled egg. ‘Fact is, I have a case .’

‘I can,’ Lydia said rather grimly.

Distraction was to be her best medicine, now.

Over the last ten days, which had been the busiest social whirl Lydia had ever encountered, it seemed to be working.

There was something undeniably soothing about being around persons who did not know her, who could have no idea of anything she was feeling.

It made it easier for her to pretend there wasn’t anything to feel.

To pretend everything was just as it should be, to pretend she hadn’t been entirely undone by an engagement of merely ten days.

During the few blissful moments where her entire attention was taken up by conversation or dancing or riding, she pretended so well that she almost convinced herself.

By the night of Mrs Lindell’s waltzing-ball, a sen’night later, Lydia was feeling …

tentatively well. Not in the same way as before, no.

It was akin to that teapot in Lady Phoebe’s drawing room, the one Reeves had pointed out on their tour, run through the middle with a fissure they had mended with gold.

One could not go back, after going through something such as Lydia had.

One was different after, perhaps even better, in a way.

If Lydia thought about it fully, was it not a good thing she and Ashford had been parted?

Whatever her … feelings … for him, their life together would be awful.

She would not be here, jostling along the road in a carriage with Aunt Mildred and Pip, looking forward to an evening spent with people who actually seemed to like her – her , and not her fortune.

No, she would surely be at some sort of highly stuffy event riddled with just the sort of tremendously dull persons she most detested – and that would just be the beginning.

It would have been a lifetime of such things.

Yes, she could only thank goodness she had escaped in time.

It had been a near thing, too, for there had been a moment where she had truly thought – but no.

Whatever stirrings of sentiment she had felt were not real, they were merely brought on because truly, isolation in so gloomy a place as Hawkscroft would cause anyone to turn a little odd.

She was better off, without him, and he would be better off with whichever puffed-up piece of lace he ended up choosing, too.

Lydia wished him the best, she truly did, and she reminded herself of this as frequently as she could – in the hope that, one day soon, she might truly actually believe it.

The carriage was slowing. Outside the window, Malton Hall was coming into view.

Pip straightened in his seat and gave them each a very serious look. ‘Recollect, if I give the signal, we must leave at once.’

‘Very well,’ Aunt Mildred said, as placidly unbothered by this as she had been by all of Pip’s eccentricities. ‘Though perhaps you might wait to discover the Scene of the Crime until I have visited the gardens.’

Malton was the most considerable house for many miles around, and though it did not stand in a park, it had extensive gardens which boasted – Mrs Lindell having a keen interest in botany – a variety of notable plants.

‘Her gardener has installed a new Oleander since my last visit – imported from Spain which is very—’

‘Poisonous,’ Pip breathed ecstatically. He had been in exceptionally high spirits all day – ever since a letter from Mr Simmons had confirmed an earlier-than-expected arrival to Harrogate in only a fortnight’s time.

‘I was going to say “noteworthy”,’ Aunt Mildred said, but Pip did not heed her, predictably bolting for the gardens just as soon as the footman had taken his hat, leaving Aunt Mildred and Lydia to seek out their hostess.

The opening set of dances having already begun, Mrs Lindell was no longer at the entrance to the ballroom, having migrated deeper into the room.

It took them a little while to weave their way through the throng of persons – Mrs Lindell had invited genteel families for thirty miles around and all had accepted – but no sooner had they reached her side than Mrs Lindell seized Aunt Mildred by the arm, and drew her in close.

‘You ought to have told me!’ she said in low, urgent greeting.

Lydia turned questioning eyes to Aunt Mildred. Having only met Mrs Lindell once before, she did not know if this was normal behaviour.

Aunt Mildred did not seem unsettled by the strange greeting. ‘To what do you refer, Mrs Lindell?’

‘The most extraordinary thing – I was utterly undone,’ Mrs Lindell went on excitedly. ‘Why did you not tell me?’

Lydia’s interest waned. Mrs Lindell was a committed gossip and Aunt Mildred a negligent one – there could be any number of things she had seen fit to withhold.

Over the top of her coiffured head, Lydia could already spot several young persons of her acquaintances that she wished to speak to – and how marvellous was that?

She had made more friends in this past fortnight than in two whole years in London.

‘Tell you of what?’

‘Of your niece’s acquaintance with the Marquis!’

As though drawn by a thread, Lydia turned slowly back around to Mrs Lindell. Next to her, Aunt Mildred had stiffened minutely.

So here it was. Gossip had spread, just when Lydia had begun to feel at ease, to lower her guard.

She searched Mrs Lindell’s face, trying to ascertain what, exactly, she might have heard.

It could not be the full story, for she did not appear appalled, but then, her love for the aristocracy was well-known.

Perhaps Lydia having been jilted by so high a personage had only elevated her in Mrs Lindell’s eyes but there was no guarantee it would do so for others.

‘I did not consider it of particular interest,’ Aunt Mildred said guardedly. ‘May I ask who, pray, informed you?’

Mrs Lindell let out a delighted trill of laughter.

‘You do not know?’ she asked. ‘He told me, himself. Look, here he is, now!’