Page 2 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘Why?’

‘I care not for him.’

Aunt Agatha could not have looked more shocked than if she had been run through with a sword.

‘I do not understand,’ Aunt Agatha said. ‘You have danced with him happily enough …’

‘I could not exactly refuse him,’ Lydia pointed out. ‘Though I should have, had I been able. He is dreadfully haughty, you know.’

Aunt Agatha’s hands fell from Lydia’s hair to her shoulders and clenched.

‘Do you mean to tell me,’ she said, ‘you wish to decline a proposal from a marquess, because you do not care for him?’

Lydia’s heart began to quicken, but she raised her chin and forced herself to her aunt’s gaze.

‘If you could tell him that I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘But—’

‘You cannot decline, Lydia,’ Aunt Agatha interrupted. ‘You cannot! After all this family have worked towards, all these years … It would ruin us.’

The Hanworth family might be passably respectable now, but it had not always been so. Lydia might be the daughter of a gentleman, but she was the granddaughter of a wool merchant. For her to refuse so lofty a member of the peerage … there would be talk. Unpleasant talk, and lots of it. If each step of the Hanworths’ climb from the streets of Cheapside to the lofty townhouses of Berkley Square was the work of two generations, a fall from grace would be the work of a moment.

But Lydia could not live her life according to such fear. She could not.

‘You promised it would be my choice,’ she said.

‘Ashford will one day be a duke,’ Aunt Agatha said. ‘You ought to be falling over yourself to choose him.’

‘I do not want him!’ Lydia interrupted. ‘Does that not signify?’

‘I have introduced you to every eligible gentleman I could place my hands on,’ Aunt Agatha’s cheeks were turning blotchy with emotion, ‘and you have not wanted any of them!’

‘You and I have wildly different definitions of eligible,’ Lydia muttered.

Indeed, judging by the specimens Aunt Agatha could ‘place her hands on’, the whole breed of man was in a state of emergency.

‘At times, I should even suspect you of purposefully driving them away!’ her aunt accused.

Lydia worked to keep her expression clear. For Lydia had developed certain strategies for repulsing unwanted suitors out of Aunt Agatha’s sight and earshot. It was not difficult. Gentlemen of quality had high standards, and while they might be willing to overlook Lydia’s birth for a chance at the Hanworth fortune, they were less willing to endure poor behaviour. Thus, Lydia had found most marital inclinations could be cured by the liberal application of her foot upon theirs during the waltz, or, failing that, a single lecture on her Views on Shakespeare.

‘You are impossible,’ Aunt Agatha raged on, pressing a hand to her forehead. ‘You and your brother, both. What is wrong with you? You with your romantic turns, Philip with his—’

‘There is nothing wrong with Pip,’ Lydia said fiercely.

They glared at each other for a long moment, as bristling and hackled as a pair of alley cats.

‘If you do wish to reject Ashford’s suit, then on your head be it,’ Aunt Agatha said, in a voice both calmer and colder and no less intimidating for it. ‘But I will not ease your way. You shall have to tell him.’

She turned to the wardrobe, selected a fuchsia pink sash from within and motioned for Lydia to stand and turn. Lydia obeyed, reluctantly.

‘Of course, such a choice will not be without consequence,’ Aunt Agatha said. She held Lydia’s eyes. ‘If you refuse such an offer, your uncle will send you to Aunt Mildred.’

Lydia’s breath caught, and not just because her aunt was tightening the sash around her waist to mythical proportions. The threat of living in rural isolation with Aunt Mildred – severe, austere, and only marginally more animated than a slug – had for years served as Lydia’s very own sword of Damocles.

‘You must prevent him,’ Lydia said. ‘Persuade him …’

‘He is my husband,’ Aunt Agatha said. ‘I must obey his wishes.’

Lydia’s chest was constricting. If only she had a moment to catch her breath, but there was none, for Aunt Agatha was giving each of her cheeks a pinch and pulling her from the room.