Page 7 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘Are you certain this is what you wish to wear? It is not one your aunt selected.’

Jane, Lydia’s lady’s maid, looked Lydia over with visible concern, but Lydia gazed into the looking glass with nothing but satisfaction.

Tonight’s dress was certainly not one Aunt Agatha had approved: a striped gown of grass-green and white, excessively festooned with pink lace at the hem and each sleeve and ornamented with a medley of brooches on her bodice.

‘Don’t I look awful?’ she asked Pip gleefully upon his entering the room.

It was not even the worst dress in her arsenal.

At Pantheon’s Bazaar, an astonishing mart not commonly the shopping destination for young, unmarried ladies of fashion, Lydia had used a whole month’s worth of pin money to purchase a wardrobe of such wild ostentation that Marie Antoinette herself might well have deemed it a Bit Much.

‘Hideous,’ Pip confirmed supportively.

‘You might still change,’ Jane said. ‘But we must hurry, you are already late—’

‘No, no,’ Lydia interrupted. ‘It is perfect.’

If Ashford had not visibly recoiled at her puce travelling cloak – nor the gaudy post-chaise Pip had sourced at great difficulty – then this certainly would do the trick.

Jane looked from Pip to Lydia with narrowed eyes. ‘What scheme is afoot, Miss Lydia?’

Lydia hesitated. In ordinary times, there was little about Lydia’s life that Jane did not know.

Jane’s grandmother having been a close friend of Lydia’s grandmother, the two girls had known each other all their lives.

Behind closed doors, they never stood on ceremony – indeed, Jane was quite Lydia’s closest friend – but on this matter, would it be better for Lydia to remain silent?

She did not wish to put Jane in the position of having to lie to Aunt Agatha, if questioned.

‘My apologies, I have overstepped …’ The hurt in Jane’s voice made up Lydia’s mind instantly.

‘Later,’ she promised, ‘later I will explain everything.’

She tarried a little longer in front of the mirror, for she did not wish to ruin her poor first impression with punctuality, but she needn’t have worried.

Traversing Hawkscroft’s halls to the East Drawing Room, where the guests had been instructed to gather for dinner, took them several minutes.

Together, she and Pip walked along the long first-floor corridor, flanked on either side with gleaming suits of armour, down the great winged staircase, and were just hesitating in the grand hallway, when Reeves, Hawkscroft’s butler, materialized to escort them to the East Drawing Room.

They halted in the doorway for a moment, somewhat awestruck.

Lydia and Pip were not strangers to finery, but even so, the sight within was most impressive.

The room was decadently proportioned, with lofty ceilings overhead, and high sash windows whose curtains had been left open.

The last rays of sunshine poured in to cast a golden glow over the people within, murmuring and laughing and sipping from sparkling champagne flutes.

Lydia’s breath caught. For the first time since the walk with Pip in Green Park, she was abruptly aware of the absurdity of their scheme. Of its impossibility. Surely, surely , she could not follow through with what she had planned in front of such persons as this?

‘Mr Hanworth, Miss Hanworth,’ Reeves announced quietly, but in a voice of such assurance that the hum of voices instantly quietened, and eight heads turned in their direction.

‘Good evening,’ Pip said, braver than she, for Lydia could not speak.

From the widening eyes and smirks that were blurring together in front of her, she had not erred in her choice of outfit.

An instinctive sting of humiliation, to be noted as so immediately and clearly out of place, sprang to Lydia’s cheeks.

This is the whole point, you fool , she told herself fiercely.

This is what you intended. But shame did not respond to logic and instinctively, Lydia found herself searching out the friendliest face in the room.

This was not, as it happened, her betrothed.

Ashford’s eyes were fixed upon her, it was true, but his face was utterly devoid of expression.

He looked as if he did not even recognize her.

That is good , she reminded herself, it is progress , but her words meant nothing to her quickening heart, to the sharp edge of panic building in her chest. Lydia looked desperately to the illustrious Lady Phoebe whose lips were parted in surprise, as if her jaw had been on the way to dropping before she had mastered it, before landing, at last, on the bearish gentleman standing next to her, who was wearing a broad smile of welcome.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ he boomed. ‘Come in, come in …’

For a moment, Lydia’s feet would not work. It was only the reassuring press of Pip’s arm against hers, that had her moving forward.

‘Good evening!’ Lady Phoebe said, recovering her expression and giving them a wide, brilliant smile.

She was wearing an exquisitely simple gown of cerulean silk that fitted her to absolute perfection and contrasted brilliantly against the darkness of her hair.

Unlike the plethora of ruby brooches upon Lydia’s own gown, she was unadorned, save for the necklace around her neck, which bore the most magnificent array of diamonds that Lydia had ever seen in her life.

‘May I introduce you to my husband, Sir Waldo? I do not believe you have yet met.’

‘Pleasure to make your acquaintance,’ Pip said.

‘I hope we are not terribly late,’ Lydia whispered. She had planned to call Sir Waldo by the wrong title, but in that moment, she could not force the words past her lips.

‘I was beginning to worry you might be lost!’ Lady Phoebe said.

‘Easily done, I am sure,’ Ashford said, coming forward with a smile upon his face.

‘Just so,’ Sir Waldo said. ‘Remember how you used to do so when we first married, my love!’

He cast a beaming smile down to his wife, and she dimpled in return.

Lydia watched them rather enviously. The courtship of Sir Waldo and Lady Phoebe was rather legendary.

Not all of it could be true of course – he surely hadn’t sent her three hundred freesias the night after their first meeting – but plainly, they were still deeply in love.

It was possible, then, for the lucky ones.

‘I must apologize,’ Ashford murmured in her ear.

Lydia turned to regard him sharply. For one wild moment, she thought he had somehow divined what she was thinking and was apologizing for denying her just such a love match.

‘We ought to have sent someone to escort you down,’ Ashford clarified.

That was … kind. Had circumstances been different, Lydia might have been touched. Had she reciprocated whatever feelings had caused Ashford to propose, she would have been well pleased with such care.

Lydia regarded Ashford for a long moment, staring up into his grey eyes and searching deep within herself for any ounce of the affection with which Sir Waldo and Lady Phoebe looked at one another.

Or, failing that, any portion of what she had felt, a fortnight earlier, upon meeting Captain von Prett – clammy palms, warming cheeks, quickening heart.

She had to check, had to be absolutely sure …

But no. Nothing. It was almost miraculous. A handsome man smiling at her, and she felt quite as unmoved as if he had been a portrait. Lydia could not have asked for a timelier reminder of her purpose.

Sir Waldo gave a theatrical cough, and Lydia jerked her eyes away from Ashford’s with a start, to find the rest of the room regarding them curiously. She took a minute step away from him and drew in a deep, fortifying breath.

The first stage was vulgarity. Use uncouth expressions, she reminded herself, speak on financial matters, reference their merchant roots.

‘May I introduce my brother-in-law, Lord Dacre?’ Lady Phoebe suggested brightly.

Lydia curtseyed again, and, as she rose, affected a start of surprise. She had known that Sir Waldo and Dacre were twins, of course, identical in all but their facial hair, for Dacre lacked Sir Waldo’s side whiskers – but ignorance was far more useful.

‘La,’ she said. ‘Am I seeing double?’

Use vulgar expressions – tick.

Sir Waldo gave a neigh of laughter, Dacre a small smile.

Pip raised his quizzing glass to inspect them.

‘Twins,’ Pip diagnosed. ‘How … suspicious.’

Sir Waldo’s smile faded a little. Lydia instinctively opened her mouth to intervene – a lifetime of easing over some of Pip’s faux pas was not easily forgotten – but mastered herself just in time. Eccentric relatives – tick.

‘How so?’ Waldo asked.

‘A jest?’ Dacre suggested.

Sir Waldo’s brow cleared.

‘Oho!’ he said, clapping Pip on the shoulder with such force, catching the delicate chain that held Pip’s quizzing glass around his neck and breaking it so that Pip dropped the glass, which fell to the floor and skidded away on the dark wooden floorboards. Pip lunged after it with a muttered oath.

‘Ashford is known to you, of course,’ Lady Phoebe interceded. ‘And Mr Brandon, too, I think? But not Lord Hesse – Hesse, may I present to you Mr and Miss Hanworth?’

Lady Phoebe beckoned to Lord Hesse, who edged past Pip, who was now groping about for his quizzing glass under a side table, to bow over Lydia’s hand.

Fresh to the title after the death of his father the previous year, the young Lord Hesse would have been handsome had it not been for the rather petulant cast to his expression.

‘Charmed,’ he said, without enthusiasm, his eyes straying to where Pip was stooping to peer under the side table, though he was prevented from turning his head by his shirt’s collar points, which had been made to such height and stiffness that they pressed into his cheeks.

‘Lady Hesse and Miss Hesse …’ Lady Phoebe continued on, indicating Lord Hesse’s mother and sister, and determinedly ignoring the commotion.