Page 117 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

It was Lady Phoebe. And sitting around her neck was the stolen diamond necklace.

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‘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?’