The Golden Season (6 page)

If she was being honest, she would acknowledge that that question had much to do with why she had never accepted any of the marriage proposals that had been made to her. What if she made a mistake, as her mother had in her first marriage? Or what if she wed a man she found out later she did not love, as had Sarah? Or a man whom she despised, like Eleanor? Or a man like Emily’s husband?

Yet there was no gainsaying it; Lydia
did
want to marry. She wanted the sort of companionship and affection her parents had known for each other, as well as the intensity of emotion she had oft glimpsed in her father’s eye as he watched her mother. She wanted to be regarded with a similar wealth of feeling, undisguised and wholehearted. But she had never felt confident that any of the men who had asked for her hand could provide her with these things. Or she, him. And so the years had slipped by while she waited, never feeling the necessity of having to make a choice, content, if truth be told, to enjoy the independence for which she was known.

That had all changed now. And in some ways it was a relief to finally have to commit to what she had always wanted. Or at least, the possibility of it.

“So what will you do?” Sarah asked.

Lydia canted a brow. “Keep my poverty a secret.”

“I agree,” Eleanor said at once. “It is imperative you secure an offer before your situation becomes common knowledge.”

“Are you advising Lydie to marry under false pretenses?” Sarah asked. She did not sound particularly shocked.

“Good heavens, no,” Lydia said. “I would never marry a gentleman without revealing my pockets are to let.”

“I should say not,” Eleanor agreed. “Any such deception would be discovered well before the marriage could take place, when the papers were drawn up. Even if they weren’t, a fellow could have the marriage annulled on the grounds of fraud. Or, if he decided to save face by honoring the marriage, out of spite he could be cheese-paring with her allowance.”

“Men can be most spiteful,” Sarah agreed, a dark shadow clouding her pale eyes.

“Since avoiding beggary is the reason for her to marry in the first place,” Eleanor continued, “such a deception would rather defeat its own purpose, wouldn’t it?”

“But”—Sarah sounded thoroughly confused—“if you ain’t going to tell them you’re poor and you ain’t going to lie . . . oh, I
am
beyond muddled!”

Sarah never thought more than one minute ahead of the last. Lydia rose and moved to sit beside her. “I shall inform my beau of my financial straits
after
he proposes and offer to free him of his suit,” she explained patiently. “Should he renege on his offer he is obliged to keep my confidence, moving aside to allow another unsuspecting candidate to take his place. It’s a matter of honor, don’t you see? But if he should let his offer stand, he does so knowing full well my situation and without any reason to begrudge me.”

“You think someone will want to marry you after they discover your pockets are to let?” Sarah asked doubtfully.

“I hope so. If nothing else, I have a fine pedigree. And being the gentleman who secures my hand in marriage should carry some cachet. I am well aware that my name features prominently in the betting books at the various gentlemen’s clubs as to when and whom I shall wed,” Lydia said, striving to sound a good deal more confident than she felt. “The most valuable thing I own is what Society has given me—prominence. Whether it is enough remains to be seen, but if I play my hand right, by the time the fellow learns of my financial deficits he may decide that I have other qualities to bring to the union.” She paused as if considering. “I daresay I can adequately grace a dining table, look ornamental in an open carriage, and am a capable enough hostess that I might prove an asset to a socially ambitious gentleman.”

Sarah nodded in understanding.

No one, Lydia noted with a small pang, suggested that the proposed suitor would fall in love with her. It wasn’t the way of their world.

“We shall have to start letting it be known that over this last winter Lady Lydia Eastlake has undergone a transformation,” Eleanor mused quietly. She had clearly been thinking matters through as Lydia explained the situation to Sarah.

“You can say I have grown lonely,” Lydia suggested.

“Piffle,” Emily said.

“Emily is right,” Eleanor approved. “Loneliness is not an appealing quality. No. We will say you have felt the tug of maternal yearnings. You desire a family.”

“Yes,” Sarah murmured in an odd voice. “Everyone understands wanting to have children.”

Everyone except Eleanor, who was childless, and Emily, who was childless, and Sarah, who though she had two children, never saw them, Lydia thought sardonically.

“Sarah, you must lend me your youngest so I can be seen publicly cooing,” Lydia said.

“Can’t. His father won’t let him leave Hertfordshire,” Sarah said shortly.

“Well,
someone
we know must have a baby they are willing to loan me,” Lydia said.

“You have an even more Machiavellian mind than I,” murmured Eleanor wonderingly. “Sometimes I fear I did you a disservice in befriending you.”

“On the contrary. You have greatly benefited me, Eleanor. Without your guidance I should be shivering in a corner right now, paralyzed with fear rather than preparing to go shopping for a new wardrobe, which, you must allow, sounds vastly more fun. I have my reputation as a fashion plate to uphold.”

“But . . . how can you afford to do so?” Sarah asked, then flushed. “I mean, you are poor. I will, of course, lend you whatever—”

“No!” Lydia said, flushing, then more quietly, “No, thank you. I shall do what everyone does; I will purchase on credit and expectations. Where those will not serve, I shall sell things no one will realize are gone: paintings, antiquities, and jewels.”

“And what if, after all that, no one offers for you?” Emily asked softly.

“Well, then,” Lydia said, refusing to think past the end of the summer, “at least I shall have had one last golden Season.”

 

Eleanor waited until Lydia was taking her leave of Sarah to beckon Emily Cod to her side. “We must do whatever is necessary to ensure Lydia’s success. She can be too hasty in her affection and too quick in her judgments.”

“Yes. But she often chooses true.”

“This is too important to trust to intuition.”

Emily agreed. “What do you want me to do?”

“I count on you to help me vet candidates. You hear things, Emily, the rest of us are not privy to.”

Emily nodded. People oft forgot that simply because one’s eyes were shut did not necessarily mean one was asleep. Ears wide open, she’d heard oftentimes how indiscreet people could be in front of those they considered incidental. She loved Lydia and she would do everything in her power for her.

The whole situation was most distressing. It recalled vividly the circumstances of Emily’s own ill-fated marriage and her husband committing her to Brislington Asylum.

Her stomach began to twist and her hands trembled. She didn’t want to think of that. She mustn’t think of that. She had to think of Lydia and how important it was to all of them that she wed someone who would not be Cod or Eleanor’s duke or Sarah’s husband. Someone who would let them all live happily together as they had these past three years.

Emily winced at her thought, knowing her motives to be self-serving. But so, too, were Eleanor’s and Sarah’s. Eleanor because she would have no one without Lydia. And Sarah needed Lydia just as much because no one else would ever think only the best of her, in spite of her actions. Emily knew no one but Lydia would ever overlook her mad, uncontrollable thieving and find value in her.

No, Eleanor did not have to advise her of what was at risk. She was quite aware, far more so than Eleanor, of how important Lydia’s choice of husband would prove to them all.

As luck would have it, the goldsmith Roubalais had gone home for lunch and left his shop in the care of his daughter-in-law Berthe and thus was not there to receive Lydia. In the preceding few weeks, Terwilliger had discreetly handled the liquidation of a great deal of her personal property, but she wasn’t sure she could give up the amethyst parure entirely. Accordingly, she’d decided she would simply lend it to Roubalais until such time as she could reacquire it.

Roubalais, once jeweler to the French court, also traded in antiquities, and occasionally, and very discreetly, acted as a pawnbroker for the
beau monde
. It was for the latter purpose Lydia had ventured into the unfamiliar country of Cheapside. The store’s unassuming location was responsible for attracting much of the expatriate Frenchman’s clientele: gentlemen of the
beau monde
in need of some ready cash and those in the market for a good bargain. Which all men, regardless of their wealth, were to some extent.

Lydia had planned this trip for days, working out every little detail, down to where she would leave her carriage and how many footmen she would have shadow her steps and what she would wear to blend in with her surroundings. But she hadn’t reckoned on Roubalais going home to eat his midday meal. How vexing.

Every moment she spent here was a moment more someone could recognize her, and if there was one thing she did not need, it was to have it bandied about that she’d visited a pawnbroker. Not only would it begin the inevitable speculation about her fortune, but a lady never,
ever
visited a pawnbroker. And first and foremost and to the exclusion of all else, Lydia was a lady.

Until today, she thought.

“I suppose I’ll have to come back,” she muttered.

Roubalais’s daughter-in-law shook her head. “No, madam. You mustn’t discommode yourself,” she said, shedding her voluminous and dirt-streaked smock and flinging it over the back of a chair. “I will go and bring him back at once.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“But it is no trouble at all and only a few short blocks away. Monsieur Roubalais would never forgive me if he should hear that you visited our shop and I did not fetch him.”

“Don’t tell him,” Lydia suggested. “I was only going to ask for an appraisal of an amethyst and pearl parure. It . . . it belongs to a friend.”

The girl was well trained. Her face gave away not a whit of doubt at this prevarication. “But of course! Now, please. You stay. Look about. It will be only a few minutes, I promise.”

Before Lydia could protest further, Berthe had hurried out the door, calling over her shoulder, “The baby just settled down before you came in and shouldn’t wake while I’m gone.”

“Baby?” Lydia echoed, but Berthe had already gone.

A short circuit of the shop proved that a baby did indeed sleep within the emptied bottom drawer of a bombé chest. Lydia had no idea of its age or gender and had no desire to remedy her ignorance. It looked quite content as it was, a drool bubble catching a prism of light, spiderweb-fine lashes sweeping a soft—and faintly sticky-looking—pink cheek, the blanket covering it rising and falling in time with its breathing.

Lydia knelt nearer, studying the little creature. As someone’s wife she would be obliged to produce one, if not several, of these. The idea was a touch terrifying. She knew nothing of children, having been the only child in a world of adults.

She hoped when she had children she would grow fond of them. At least, she assumed one would find parenthood more pleasant if one were fond of one’s offspring rather than indifferent. Her own parents had been most demonstratively affectionate.

She supposed she would feel the same about her children. If they were pretty and well behaved and bright. And if they were not . . . ? Would she love them then? Would she have been loved had she been a little golem with the manners of a hedgehog?

A sharp, sweet-acrid smell drifted up from the drawer, abruptly ending Lydia’s fascination. She shot upright and stepped away, accidentally backing into a ladder behind her. She spun and steadied it, her gaze rising to the top shelf lining the wall. Something colored a gorgeous royal blue glinted from far above. It demanded investigation.

She hesitated. Lydia was well known for her impetuousness, but she allowed herself to be devil-may-care only within the strict parameters of what Society allowed. Charge a stile on horseback? Of course. Tease a prince? Often. But clamber about the dusty shelves of a pawnbroker’s shop? It wasn’t done.

But . . . why not? No one knew she was here. What harm could come of it? Once more, Lydia’s insatiable curiosity joined forces with her impulsiveness to trump caution.

She looked around and spied the smock Berthe Roubalais had left behind. Without further thought, she donned the garment, rolled back the sleeves, and commenced climbing the ladder. It was a good deal more rickety than she’d expected and the notion that this might not be a wise idea occurred to her, but her legs kept moving and before she knew it, she’d made it to the top. On the other side of a moldering cardboard box, a stunning Oriental bowl beckoned.

Her eyes widened with delighted discovery. She recognized this! Certainly it was Chinese. Kangxi? She had to get a better look. . . .

She grasped the edge of a box obstructing the bowl and gave it a cursory tug. The moldering side broke away. Startled, Lydia snatched her hand back, accidentally knocking over a silver candlestick holder and sending it rolling toward the edge. With a gasp, she ducked, but not before the candlestick fell, catching the brim of her hat and knocking it from her head, causing her elegant coiffure to come half undone. The candlestick clattered to the floor.

She held her breath and counted, praying the baby didn’t wake. It didn’t.

Relieved, she brushed her hair from her face and too late realized her hand was dirty and that she’d just smeared grime across her forehead. “Damn.”

She eyed the bowl, still resting above her. It glinted enticingly. She must see if she was right. She stretched to the top of her toes, sliding aside the torn box. It caught up on something and there was no way she could reach around it to the bowl. She dared not attempt to move the crumbling box lest it disintegrate completely. Which meant she would simply have to reposition the ladder—