Page 1 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

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‘Who wishes to marry me?’ Lydia demanded, looking up from her novel in some alarm.

‘I can hardly believe it myself,’ Aunt Agatha said, pulling vigorously at the bell to call for Lydia’s maid. ‘Quick, let us tidy your hair – we mustn’t keep him waiting.’

Turning a deaf ear to Aunt Agatha’s wittering was one of Lydia’s chief policies in life – what one didn’t hear couldn’t upset one – but today it was clear she had missed something rather crucial.

‘Keep who waiting?’

Aunt Agatha ignored her. In a few deft movements she had pulled the book from Lydia’s hands, Lydia from her armchair, and deposited her at the dressing table, where – too impatient to wait for assistance – she began to tug at Lydia’s chignon herself.

‘How on earth do you dishevel so quickly?’ she muttered.

Lydia submitted to the manhandling without protest, too busy cudgelling her brain for any gentlemen who might be desirous of marrying her. Not one came to mind.

‘If your grandfather could only see this,’ Aunt Agatha breathed. ‘You to wed to such a person as this!’

Lydia reached up to still her aunt’s hands.

‘Of whom can you possibly be speaking?’ she asked.

‘Were you not listening?’ Aunt Agatha demanded. She drew in a rapturous breath and declared, with the same fervour their Vicar invoked Jesus Christ Our Lord and Saviour: ‘It is Ashford!’

Lydia stared. Had the disappointment of Lydia’s second failed Season sent Aunt Agatha mad?

‘Aunt …’ she began, slowly and carefully – she did not wish to upset her fragile faculties further – ‘That is utterly absurd.’

For the Marquess of Ashford, Earl of Bath and future Duke of Ancaster, one of the highest-ranking peers in England and certainly the most eligible, most certainly did not wish to marry Lydia, Miss Hanworth of Nowhere, Lady of Nothing. Why, she was barely better born than Aunt Agatha’s pug and given the fastidious Ashford had already rejected several diamonds of the ton, Lydia did not think pug was the level at which he wished to settle.

‘It is beyond anything I dared to dream.’ Aunt Agatha said, pulling tightly on Lydia’s hair. ‘I had not thought his attentions were serious.’

Neither had Lydia. They were barely acquainted, their first conversation occurring only a fortnight earlier, and in their encounters since, Ashford’s manner had never been the least loverlike. He was always so entirely proper, so perfectly correct.

‘Is it possible he has come to the wrong house?’ she wondered aloud. ‘Perhaps he meant to offer for Miss Callow, across the square.’

The state of the masculine intellect meant such a mistake – though embarrassing – was not improbable.

‘What nonsense,’ Aunt Agatha tutted. ‘Consider: this must be why Lady Phoebe invited you and Pip to her house party. Ashford must have requested she do so!’

Two days before, Lydia and her brother had received billets from Lady Phoebe Henley, Ashford’s enormously wealthy and tremendously fashionable cousin. The invitation to join her house party at Hawkscroft House had been flattering but incomprehensible. Until now.

‘Lawks,’ Lydia breathed, stunned.

‘Mind your tongue!’ Aunt Agatha snapped, with an accompanying jab of a hairpin to strengthen the reprimand. ‘If you dare utter such vulgarities in front of Ashford, I shall see you speedily regret it. Recollect, he could have anyone!’

‘He could have anyone,’ Lydia said, ‘so why me? It is not as if he requires my dowry.’

It was plain that most gentlemen found Lydia’s impressive dowry by far the most alluring part of her character.

‘Ladies do not to speak of such things,’ Aunt Agatha said, weaponizing her pin once more. ‘You might try to look more pleased! A thousand women should die for such an opportunity as this!’

This was true. Alas, Lydia was not one of them.

‘I decline,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I do not wish to marry him.’