Page 8 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘I’d fetch you back,’ Pip said, ‘as soon as I come of age, and then we might live independently, at last.’

Lydia and Pip had been plotting to leave their aunt and uncle’s guardianship ever since it had begun. Once Pip turned one and twenty, he would be in full possession of his fortune, and no one could stop them from setting up house together. Technically, it was less than a year away, but … Lydia cast Pip a quick, evaluating glance. As a man, he was less beholden than she to the diktats of their aunt and uncle, but not by much. He was expected to marry well, also, and more than once over the past years, they’d had to work together to avoid Pip’s marriage, too. And Pip … Without her here to defend him, to keep his secrets and prevent the worst of his scrapes – would he be all right? Or would Uncle Edmund bully him into marrying some horrid young lady who would make his life miserable, just as soon as Lydia was out of sight? Lydia kicked moodily at another stone. At this rate, Ashford would be responsible for ruining two lives, rather than just one.

‘If he only knew what an abominable choice I am,’ Lydia said. ‘Far worse than those other ladies. Without Aunt Agatha constantly in my ear, I would forever be forgetting people’s names and curtseying the wrong way and – and …’

‘Using vulgar expressions,’ Pip supplied.

‘Yes, and I can’t sing—’

‘At all.’

‘I’m terrible at embroidery, my French is awful—’

‘Your Italian is worse!’

‘If Ashford knew all that, he’d soon regret his choice,’ Lydia said. ‘And everything would be solved.’

She stopped walking. It took several moments for Pip to realize she was no longer beside him, looking back enquiringly.

‘I cannot cry off,’ she said. ‘But he could.’

‘Wouldn’t do that,’ Pip objected. ‘Not when he’s only just proposed. Fact is, dishonourable.’

This was true. While ladies could call off engagements – if they were willing to bear the social consequences – most gentlemen viewed such dishonour as utterly impossible. Except …

‘The engagement is to be a secret for ten days,’ she said. ‘He could call it off within that time and nobody should know except Aunt Agatha and Uncle Edmund – and they’ll not likely broadcast such shameful news.’

They began walking again, faster now, their disconsolate drift turned purposeful march.

‘If he could be made to see that he had made the most terrible, ghastly mistake,’ she said, ‘then he might do something drastic.’

‘How would you do such a thing?’ Pip said. ‘Not certain telling him all about Shakespeare will cut the mustard this time.’

That was also true. Ashford did not seem the type to risk his honour without extreme provocation. Lydia remembered the way he had said ‘Cit’s daughter’, that night at the Alcot ball, as if such people were more beneath him than worms in the soil. Aunt Agatha’s rules had plainly worked magic on him, glossing over her woolly roots – but what if she ceased to behave by them? Or, indeed, what if she did the opposite? The vulgar, social-climbing, mercenary merchant class the ton feared was a largely fictional creation, but it need not be.

‘If I wear the wrong things,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘and say the wrong things, and behave the wrong way …’

‘Would it be sufficient?’ Pip said dubiously. ‘Fact is, I don’t know the fellow.’

‘Nor I,’ Lydia said. All she knew was that he thought himself so above the most accomplished, most beautiful, most wealthy young ladies of the ton, that he had rejected each of them for the most frivolous set of flaws she had ever …

‘He rejected Miss Mablethorpe for being hen-witted,’ she recalled aloud, ‘and Miss Callow for saying French words, and Lady Evelina for her eccentric family and for being capricious.’

She could not believe she had not realized it earlier. Lydia took in a deep, decisive breath. ‘If I act vulgarly and foolishly and pompously …’

‘Oh ho!’ Pip said, catching on. ‘Wouldn’t Aunt Agatha smell a rat?’

‘As foolishly and pompously and vulgarly as I can,’ Lydia corrected, ‘without Aunt Agatha suspecting a thing.’

If word of her behaviour reached her aunt and uncle, they would certainly consign her to Aunt Mildred.

‘What of the eccentric family?’ Pip said. ‘Perhaps I can help on that front.’ He raised his quizzing glass to his eye and squinted thoughtfully through it.

‘Might be difficult though,’ he said. ‘Fact is, not really the eccentric type.’

Lydia’s mind, so full of sludge this morning, was alive again and whirring.

‘If you wish to practise your investigation skills,’ she said, ‘why not practise them at Hawkscroft?’