The Golden Season (37 page)

Would it be so bad, after all, if Lydia married Childe Smyth?

They could all settle back into their regular routine, just like Eleanor had been saying. Life could go on much as it had since Lydia had taken her out of Brislington. They could discuss what Lydia would wear to such and such a party, the latest
on dit
, which operas would win acclaim and which would fail. They could go to the lending library and art museums and shopping arcades. They would plan where to travel during the off season and whose great estate they would visit for hunting season.

Their lives would once again conform to Society’s predictable, opulent rhythms.

And Lydia would be miserable.

Because she loved Captain Lockton.

Emily moved sightlessly up the stairs to her apartments. It was a beautiful room, handsomely decorated and comfortably furnished. Her wardrobe contained a dozen dresses and several gowns. A pearl broach lay nested in an ivory-inlaid ebon box. Both had been gifts from Lydia.

She sat down on the rose-colored satin armchair. Even had Cod not reappeared, Emily’s future looked grim if Lydia married Captain Lockton. There might not be room in their much smaller household for a companion. Terwilliger had even said as much. Left to her own devices, Emily doubted she would fare very well.

Lydia had always protected her from the consequences of her petty thievery. True, she’d gained some control over her addiction, but that was only evidence of her contentment. With anxiety, the compulsion grew. Without the safe harbor Lydia provided, she would falter on rocky shores. There was no doubt about it, Emily’s interests were best served if Lydia married Childe Smyth. So were Eleanor’s. So too even Lydia’s.

No, she doubted she could be self-sacrificing enough to try to talk Lydia out of her plan to accept Mr. Smyth’s proposal. She had already been forced to sacrifice so much in her life: her dreams, her freedom, her child, her sanity . . .

Emily buried her face in her hands and wept.

The trip to Josten Hall had taken Ned sixteen hours by mail coach. While not nearly so hard on his leg as riding astride, the old wound had begun to ache. He’d arrived to discover that Nadine and Beatrice were in Brighton with Mary and Josten was in Portsmouth and not due to arrive until evening. He’d hobbled to his room, there to bathe and change and await his brother. Josten would doubtless rage and roar, he did it well, but in the end Ned did not think marrying Lydia would cause an irreparable break with his family.

Since Josten had been a young man, the weight of inheriting the monstrous, ever-ravenous organism known as Josten Hall had been heavy on his shoulders. He hadn’t had a clue how to go about managing the estate, so, lacking guidance, he’d spent his first few years as earl emulating his high-born friends, indulging himself and everyone around him with gifts and presents and toys and in between throwing impressively loud parties.

It was all for show. Josten was a monumentally tenderhearted and sentimental man. Not overly bright, but a born romantic. Which is why he had married Nadine, with whom he had fallen madly and forever in love after one short dance—as, luckily, she had with him—and retired with all haste to the countryside, where the new earl wouldn’t have to put on a worldly facade for people he did not really know and in whose company, if truth be told, he felt rather shy. It would be no great sacrifice for either Nadine or him to live modestly. Or Beatrice, either.

But Josten would not like losing Josten Hall, the Lockton ancestral manor. Josten would feel he had failed in his tenure as custodian of the place.

As the hours dragged on, Ned filled them with thoughts of Lydia, remembering her arms stretching up to him, her eyes sparkling with vivid lilac lights, and her smile filling him with the sense of homecoming that Josten Hall no longer could. His heart had been breached, the vessel confiscated, and it was now occupied by a beautiful pirate. It would never belong to another.

He walked through the house gardens to the cliff overlooking the North Sea and finally turned around to study the great old house, no longer seeing it through the eyes of a wounded man seeking sanctuary, a still point in a world that had cruelly changed.

Instead, he now saw so clearly that coming back here and trying to convince himself that things could return to the way they were when he was a lad had never been a feasible goal. There were no still points. Situations changed, children grew, and time traveled on and he would, too, and gladly, because he would be making the journey with Lydia. And all he wished now was to return to her side.

He made his way back to the house and from there to the library and waited impatiently, watching the clock. The dinner hour rang, then nine, and finally ten o’clock before he heard Josten’s booming voice from outside the window on the front drive. “Ned’s here? Where is he?”

Ned went into the hall to meet him. A few seconds later, Josten strode into the library looking magnificent and lordly, his air of ownership and
noblesse oblige
never more pronounced. An Irish wolfhound trotted in at his side. The footman started and snapped rigidly to attention, though Josten barely glanced at him.

Why, Ned thought with weary amusement, even footmen held themselves to a higher standard in Josten’s presence. He really did have being an earl down to an art.

“Good God, Ned,” Josten said when he saw him, “you look fagged to death, mi’lad. What the devil have you been doing? You haven’t taken up Will and Harry’s nasty habits, have you?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, sir. I have come with news that I am afraid will disappoint you.”

At this, Josten, who’d bent over to scratch the head of the great Irish wolfhound, glanced up. Reading the solemnity on Ned’s face, he sighed. “Must you?”

“Yes, I am afraid I must.”

“Very well, then. Into the library. You may leave us,” Josten told the footman. He strode ahead of Ned into the nearby room and flopped down in a leather armchair, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He stared broodingly at his boot tips. “Is it Harry? Have you set him up with the press gangs?”

“What?” Ned asked, startled. “Good God, no.”

Josten glanced up, his expression vastly relieved. “You didn’t?”

“No. Whatever gave you such an idea?”

“Because I would have,” Josten said bluntly. “I had the whole story from Pip. He came down last weekend. He never could keep anything back from his mother, and Beatrice told me and I had the lad in here on the carpet.

“He told me all about Tweed and that card game and how you refused to challenge the blackguard and how Harry, that great oaf, felt the family’s honor had been impugned and so Harry challenged the blighter to a duel and you showed up and took his place against this craven Tweed and how my heir managed to get you shot!” He glared up at Ned. “Is that about it?”

“Yes, sir. More or less. But why would this lead you to believe I’d thrown Harry to the press gangs?”

“Because when Nadine searched you out in London to enlist your aid regarding that card game—yes, I had that from Nadine, too. No one in this bloody family is capable of keeping their bottle stopped—you told her you thought your nephews could do with some rigorous discipline of the type found in the navy. I haven’t seen Harry since that contretemps and so . . . Well,
I
would have,” he repeated gruffly.

“Well, I didn’t. I have no idea where your son is. Though the matter I have come to speak to you about does concern him.”

Josten blew out his cheeks, a man preparing for bad news. “Yes. Well, out with it, then.”

“Lady Lydia Eastlake has done me the great honor of agreeing to become my wife.” Just saying the words aloud filled Ned with a flood of joy, despite the moment.

Josten looked up. His eyes grew round. A broad smile broke over his handsome face and he leaped to his feet, clapping Ned on the back. “Well done, Neddie, m’boy! Well done, indeed! Lady Lydia Eastlake . . .” He rubbed his hands together in pleasure. “I have never met the lady, but her beauty is legendary and her fortune—”

“There is no fortune.”

Josten checked. “Er. Say again?”

“There is no fortune.”

“But there’s
money
.”

“No. No money.” Ned shook his head. “She is deeper in dun territory than we Locktons. She hasn’t a feather to fly.”

Josten dropped down in the chair as though taken out at the legs. His head fell back against the seat cushion and he stared at the ceiling. “Well, that is depressing.”

As Ned had expected something a great deal more vehement and definitely louder, he took this as an encouraging sign. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“Eh?” Josten looked up. “Oh. Yes, well . . . I suppose it couldn’t be helped?”

“No. It couldn’t be helped. I fell in love with her.”

Josten nodded, amazingly unsurprised. “I see. Quite. Love takes the Lockton men that way. A trial really, but nothing to be done for it once it happens except make the chit your bride.” For a moment his face reflected remembered passion and delight. “No. Nothing for it once you fall in love. Lasts forever, too, I might as well warn you.”

“Yes, sir.” Ned hid a smile. “I must say, sir, you are showing far more equanimity than I imagined.”

“Don’t see as I have any choice. No. I know you, Ned. You’re my brother. My blood. I know you like I know myself and there’s nothing for it but to accept it.”

“What will you do?” Ned asked, feeling a bit dumbfounded by Josten’s uncharacteristic composure.

“Do? Sell off all the unentailed land, I suppose. Can’t say I’ll miss it. Never understood much about acres and bushels and heads and tails and whatever it is the farmers drone on about. Keep the hunting rights, of course,” he said as though this were of primary importance, which, Ned supposed, it was to Josten. “And the pack. And a few horses.”

“You’ll try to keep Josten Hall,” Ned said.

Here, at last, grief clouded Josten’s gaze. “Keep the place? Doubtful. Things change, Ned. Things come and go. Sometimes in one lifetime, sometimes over the course of many.” He smiled. “Did you know that the Locktons originally bought the old pile off the Bortons?”

Ned was surprised. He hadn’t known that. He had always assumed the Locktons had built the place, hence the name
Josten
Hall. “No, sir, I didn’t.”

Josten nodded. “When Bonny Prince Charlie was making a run for the throne, the Bortons had the bad taste to back the Pretender.” He leaned forward and said confidentially, “The Bortons never were good gamblers. When the family took a political and extended leave from England, we bought it and rechristened it Josten Hall.”

His expression grew calculating. “You know, I shouldn’t be surprised if the Bortons want it back.” He paused. “Perhaps as a dowry?”

“You mean a marriage between Mary and George Borton? I thought he’d already asked her and been turned down. Something about his sister,” Ned said.

“He did and he was. But that was two years ago, when Mary made her debut. She was quite vain and certain of herself. She ain’t so persnickety these days and is liable to be even less so when her allowance has been trimmed to the bone.”

“But what of Borton’s sister?”

“I have the utmost faith in your niece’s ability to drive off any half dozen sisters- in-law. I will say no more.” He nodded sententiously. “The trick will be convincing Borton to come up to scratch again. Well, we will see. We will do what we can.”

With a slap on his thighs, Josten rose to his feet.

“Thank you, Marcus,” Ned said. “You have made this far easier than I anticipated.”

“Oh, don’t be relaxing yet, m’boy,” Josten said with a grim smile. “Nadine and Beatrice will extract whatever toll I have waived. They shall be most put out with you. Shouldn’t expect dinner invitations anytime soon.”

“I shall contrive to keep my disappointment in hand.”

This comment won him a slow, speculative glance from Josten. “You aren’t being
ironical
, are you, Neddie?”

“No, sir,” Ned denied. There was no sense in perturbing Josten with the idea that he did not know his young brother as well as he assumed. It would only hurt him.

“Didn’t think so. We Locktons never are. Now, get some sleep, lad. You look like bloody hell.”

Just before three o’clock in the morning, a pounding on his bedchamber door awoke Ned. He came fully alert at once, the practice of long years at sea during wartime coming to his aid, and called out for whoever it was to enter.

Josten appeared in the doorway, a candlestick in his hand, a nightcap on his head, barefoot and unshaven.

“What is it?” Ned asked, rising bare-chested from the bed.

“A rider woke the household ten minutes ago. He says he has a letter addressed to you and has instructions not to leave until he has delivered it to your hand.”

“Where is he now?”