Page 83 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘I do not mean to excuse myself,’ he said. ‘But it has been rather a trying year.’

Lydia raised her eyebrows in challenge, waiting. If he wished to absolve himself, she was not going to help him.

Ashford held her gaze for a moment, pressing his lips together and tapping his fingers consideringly upon the arm of his chair.

‘The marriage mart is treacherous ground,’ he said at last. ‘When one is …’

‘So very eligible?’ Lydia suggested.

‘That is not what I was going to say,’ he muttered, then – raising his voice over the sound of her snort – continued: ‘but there are many who covet my title for their daughters or nieces, and they are forever throwing lures into my path.’

He was speaking more quickly now.

‘Then, there is the fact that I cannot speak to a young lady for more than five minutes before the gossips begin predicting matrimony,’ he said, the tapping of his fingers becoming more of an agitated drum. I thought making swift judgement would avoid unnecessary scrutiny to myself or any young lady, but now …’ His hands stilled. ‘I suppose it was rather cruel,’ he admitted.

Lydia sat back a little in her seat, regarding Ashford with less rancour than she had in days. Here, in the candlelight and with no one else around to observe, he seemed far softer, somehow – a person, not a monster. It was difficult to find someone intimidating, when they were wearing slippers – not impossible, but difficult.

‘How then, did you come to choose me?’ she asked, with genuine curiosity. ‘There are ladies better born, by the score, and some of them just as wealthy. Surely you might have found one who was not pompous, nor foolish or eccentric, who would have been a less controversial choice?’

Ashford sent her a peevish glance. ‘Recollect your behaviour was rather different, in those halcyon days.’

Lydia shook her head. ‘It cannot just be that.’

Ashford spent a moment plucking at his cuffs, as if to adjust a crisp cotton shirt and not a dressing gown.

‘What harm can the truth do now?’ she entreated. ‘I just wish to understand. You were not, I think, overcome by my beauty?’

She waved a hand self-deprecatingly over herself. Ashford’s eyes followed the movement down to her dressing robe and then – as if recollecting their mutual state of undress anew – tore his eyes away to stare up at the ceiling.

‘Yes, well, I did not – I was not displeased, by how you look – looked,’ he said stiffly. ‘Your gowns, in those weeks, were more – were less …’

‘Banana-ish?’ she said helpfully – for the effort of finishing such a sentence looked as if it were hurting him.

‘Much less,’ he agreed, eyes flicking back to hers and it was rather remarkable, how they changed according to his feelings. Darker, when angry; lighter, when amused – as he was now. Both so much more superior to the wooden vacancy of the expressions he had worn earlier in their acquaintance.’

‘I offered for you,’ Ashford went on, and Lydia jolted back to conversation to realize she had been staring, ‘because I thought my father more likely to accept a controversial choice than a traditional one.’

Lydia furrowed her brow. She did not know the duke, of course, but generally weren’t such figures meant to be rather austere? Committed to respectability and such?

‘I don’t understand,’ she admitted.

Ashford gave his cuffs a last tweak, and then laid down his hands. ‘My father is insistent my marriage be a love match, as his was. Every other suitable young lady I have suggested to him, he has rejected, feeling that my feelings were not sufficiently attached. And so, I decided to … pretend.’

Lydia swallowed the retorts that sprang to her tongue. Whatever spell had him speaking so honestly – whether it was the midnight hour, or the softness of the firelight – she did not wish to break it.

Ashford paused, struggling to collect his thoughts. ‘You accused me, yesterday, of deceiving you – I truly had not considered it in such light, though I perceive now that is cold comfort. I was so fixed on solving our predicaments, you see, and … I assumed you would be getting what you desired, from the match, too.’

‘A leg up in the world?’

He held her gaze with admirable fortitude. ‘I have been beset by those who wish themselves or their daughters to be a duchess, from the moment I came of age,’ he said quietly. ‘Earlier, even. If it never occurred to me that you would not have an interest in my title, then it is because you may indeed be the first.’

Lydia found this oddly flattering. ‘I am one of a kind,’ she said, preening a little.

‘As I have borne witness,’ Ashford agreed, a trifle grimly.

‘And His Grace … believed you?’ she said. ‘He thinks you in love with me?’

He nodded. ‘He deemed the gap between our stations proof enough of my feelings.’