Page 68 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days
‘I suppose your relatives are all cut from your cloth,’ she said scathingly, dropping the floral remnants on the pathway and pushing them towards the gutter with one slippered foot. ‘Duty and honour and hearts of stone.’
‘You are wrong,’ he said. ‘My father is very sentimental, in truth, and so is – was – my mother.’
It was difficult to say who was made more wrongfooted by this statement: Lydia – for she could not exactly argue with him now that he had brought up his deceased mother, could she? Or Ashford himself, who had flushed uncomfortably. Lydia had never heard him speak of his mother before, though in London rarely a day went by when she did not see her referred to in the papers or hear her named to in conversation – usually accompanied by a rapturous sigh. The late duchess had been famed in her lifetime, beautiful, kind, and one half of a marriage that – before Lady Phoebe and Sir Waldo – had been quite the most lauded love match for a century. It was rare for a person to live up to such a reputation, and yet, according to Lydia’s grandmother – who had had the felicitation of meeting the great lady as a child – she had been quite the sweetest creature imaginable. As this encounter had occurred in her previous life as a maid, the Hanworths could hardly boast about it – much to Aunt Agatha’s chagrin.
‘I heard she was—’ Lydia began softly.
‘Everyone in the family is very proper, too, of course.’ Ashford’s priggishness, briefly vanished, made a swift return. ‘Tradition and duty are paramount to us all.’
‘It can’t be that paramount,’ she said, ‘if you offered for me.’
‘Then, if you recall, you were a great deal more elegantly behaved,’ Ashford reminded her, ‘and spoke a great deal less cant.’
‘I am still a Cit’s granddaughter.’ She surveyed him for a moment before asking, impulsively, ‘Does His Grace truly approve of me?’
Ashford hesitated. ‘While your family history is, ah, a little different to what he is used,’ he said carefully, ‘he was happy enough to approve, given the extenuating circumstances.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Your poverty?’
Ashford frowned down at her. ‘That is hardly accurate.’
‘Well, how am I meant to know,’ she said, ‘unless you will tell me?’
‘It is private family business,’ he said.
‘I am your betrothed,’ she reminded him.
‘Not for long.’
‘On that we agree.’
He turned again to regard the street. Lydia turned away from the window and followed his gaze. The game of steeplechase had ended, and the children were now embroiled in a healthy scrap. As they watched, one of the little girls began thwacking her opponents with her tiny parasol.
‘I don’t understand how you can need my money,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Your family has acres and acres of land.’
‘Land is expensive,’ Ashford hummed. ‘And even the oldest families can fall.’
‘Did your father order you to marry a wealthy girl?’ she hazarded a guess. ‘Threatening to disown you, if you did not comply?’
She had read of such things happening.
‘This is not the dark ages,’ Ashford said irritably. ‘Of course not.’
Lydia nodded dubiously, not at all sure that she believed him. ‘Very well, but when you cry off from our engagement—’
‘When you cry off,’ Ashford corrected.
‘He will be disappointed?’
‘Very,’ Ashford said grimly.
‘There is always the little Season, in the autumn,’ she encouraged. ‘Or house parties are, I see now, a very fine way to meet eligible persons.’
‘They are almost finished,’ Ashford interrupted brusquely, nodding over her shoulder to the shop window, where Miss Hesse and Mr Brandon had reached the counter. They both turned to look, and then faced each other directly.
‘Why,’ Lydia went on, as if she had just been struck by a New and Interesting Thought, ‘had matters been even a little different, I imagine you would have been most pleased to be spending the week with so eligible a young lady as Miss Hesse.’
‘I suppose you think yourself very clever,’ Ashford said, deeply unimpressed. His eyes, as they looked down at her, were almost as dark as they had been last night, in the dining room.
