Page 104 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘Neither of you have brought gifts for everyone,’ Lydia hissed at them.

‘Well, now, how can you be sure?’ Brandon said. ‘I might have done.’

‘Just yesterday, in fact,’ Ashford said, ‘Brandon began embroidering his face onto some handkerchiefs.’

Mr Brandon nodded gravely. ‘So that every time you blow your nose, you may think of me.’

Lydia lost the battle with her own self-control. She began snorting herself, just as Lady Morton, by accident, upset the box of miniatures, so that the remaining three fell onto the floor. Quick as a flash, Brutus had picked one up and run off with it. There was laughter all round as Lady Morton and Captain von Prett gave chase, Brutus leading them on a merry dance around the pianoforte. In the end, it was Miss Hesse who scooped the thief up, and managed to wrest the miniature from his mouth.

‘He has quite mangled your face,’ she told Captain von Prett apologetically.

‘Oh, there’s an idea,’ Mr Brandon whispered to Ashford. ‘Here, smuggle him mine too.’

Prett could not quite maintain his usual air of relaxed abstraction as he regarded the remains of his miniature. ‘Oh, you … naughty thing,’ he said, bopping Brutus on the nose with a finger. Miss Hesse took a wary step backwards.

‘You know dogs,’ Lady Morton said airily, ‘so mischievous.’

‘My Flossie was the same,’ Prett said, and Lydia waited for Miss Hesse to melt, as she always did when the animal was mentioned.

‘I thought she was named Cassie?’ Miss Hesse frowned.

‘Oh yes, Cassie,’ he said. ‘My wretched memory.’

Miss Hesse’s frown deepened. ‘You do not remember her name?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Prett said.

‘She followed you for a hundred miles.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Prett said rather impatiently. ‘But really – Flossie—’

‘Cassie,’ Miss Hesse corrected.

‘Indeed, Cassie – was more a metaphor than anything else, for the trust I had lost in my fellow man. That is the point I wish audiences to take from it.’

The glowing eyes Miss Hesse usually pointed in Prett’s direction were absent. Instead, she surveyed him as if she were seeing him clearly for the first time and did not like it a jot.

‘A dog,’ Miss Hesse said, with a disapproving sniff that was suddenly reminiscent of her mother, ‘is not a metaphor.’

‘I wish this portrait were a metaphor,’ Mr Brandon said mournfully, looking down at his miniature, entirely unaware that his greatest competition had just been vanquished. As had Lydia’s, of course. But as she waited to feel something, relief or triumph or gladness, that Miss Hesse was no longer to be vying for Prett’s attentions, she felt … nothing.

Lydia looked to Prett, standing there – looking so very handsome with that infamous cowlick – and felt nothing. Ashford had been right. Prett was not who she wanted, at all.

23

That night, Lydia did not even try to fall asleep. She merely lay there, waiting, until the clock had struck midnight and she fancied that the whole house must be asleep. Then, she rose, threw on a nightgown and slippers, lit a taper, and padded downstairs towards the library. If she had been asked how she knew that he would be there, she could not have answered satisfactorily. Call it intuition, a hunch, or even just a hope – she felt certain he would be there.

And he was, seated in a winged-back chair observing the fire, a single taper candle on the table. This time he looked up at her without surprise and indicated the seat opposite with a wave of his hand, as if he had expected her just as much as she had expected him.

She sat, putting her candle down, then busied herself with angling her head to look at the title of his book rather than meet his eyes.

‘Have you read it?’ he asked, holding it up so she could better read its spine.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A long time ago.’

‘And … what did you think?’ he asked.

Lydia raised her eyebrows. ‘Another question. Are you trying to get to know me, my lord?’