Page 146 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

Ashford looked out onto Hawkscroft’s rolling lawns, digesting this.

‘I,’ the duke took in a deep breath, ‘I shall learn about these drains, so I might lift some of this burden from you. Not next week, of course, for I have the races – and after that, Alvaney is joining me for some fishing, but then, perhaps in August, I shall seek out this, this Ellery fellow and see what can be done!’

‘That is not …’ Ashford began. He took in a deep calming breath. A step in the right direction, however inadequate, was still a step.

The duke extended a hand, and Ashford reached out to clasp it.

‘Goodness, I am half-starved,’ His Grace said. ‘I would try to persuade you to take a second breakfast with me – but perhaps you wish to depart directly?’

Ashford raised his brows, pretending ignorance. ‘Depart?’

His father cuffed him gently across his head. ‘Come, now. You know exactly what I mean.’

Ashford sighed. For the dozenth time this week, he felt utterly at sea. What was the right thing to do now? He knew what he wanted to do, but what he wanted felt nonsensically rash. Childish, even. What was he going to do, ride ventre a terre after her? After everything he had done and said?

‘Perhaps we might ride out,’ His Grace suggested, eyes close on Ashford’s face, ‘so that you might think it all through.’

Ashford nodded. A ride, at this moment, was exactly what he needed. Some space to consider, to attain some distance from the whole affair, to evaluate the situation through with some rationality and think how—

He was interrupted by a quiet, familiar voice, speaking up from a very different corner of his mind.

Not thinking suits you. You ought to try it more.

Ashford let out another, longer sigh. ‘I believe,’ he began slowly, ‘the time for thinking might indeed have passed.’

He took a step backwards, away from the parapet, then another.

‘Bid Lady Phoebe farewell on my behalf, will you?’ he asked his father. ‘I must make haste.’

32

Saturday – Ten days later

‘I do not intend us to remain late,’ Aunt Mildred said, as their carriage turned into the gates of Malton Hall. ‘I have little appetite for speaking this evening, and even less for listening.’

‘Understood,’ Lydia said, by now unfazed by this frankness. Aunt Mildred neither had a large social tolerance or any qualms about admitting this which bore no relation to her manners, which were – to Lydia’s initial surprise – rather elegant.

A great deal had been surprising, about Aunt Mildred. Their journey northward had been long and hard. Already a distance of several days, they had been waylaid further by repairs, when two separate wheels – on two separate occasions – had fallen foul of potholes, and so it was four days later that Lydia and Pip found themselves arriving in Marnsley, where Aunt Mildred had her home.

From the reports delivered to them by Aunt Agatha and Uncle Edmund, Lydia had assumed this would be a mud and straw structure, and the locale so boring as to make dishwater seem a lively conversationalist. On their winding route through the village, however, it was quickly apparent that both these assumptions had been erroneous. Marnsley’s pace was slower than London – hardly difficult – but it did not seem sleepy in the least.

Barely half an hour’s drive from Harrogate and its thriving local assemblies, Marnsley boasted an energetic local population alongside beautiful scenery, and startled to attention twice a day with the noisy arrival of the stagecoach, unpacking all manner of travellers at the local inn for refreshment and board.

Aunt Mildred was waiting for them when the carriage drew up outside her home, a pretty Tudor cottage. Aunt Mildred, however, looked just as dour as her depiction, short and angular, she was dressed in a sombre dress of grey bombasine – as if in mourning for a close relative – with a cap of starched cambric drawn tightly beneath her chin. Nothing in her greeting assuaged this first impression of gloomy respectability.

‘I hear you are in disgrace,’ she said as they approached, without so much as a ‘good afternoon’.

‘Yes,’ she said, too tired to put up any kind of defence. ‘Uncle Edmund and Aunt Agatha have condemned me utterly.’

‘Well …’ Aunt Mildred considered them for a long moment. ‘I suppose that is as good a character reference as any.’

Her expression warmed, her eyes began to twinkle, and as she followed her aunt inside, Lydia relaxed minutely. The cottage was just as charming within as it had appeared outside: light and elegant and possessing all the modern conveniences. Aunt Mildred’s housekeeper showed them to bedchambers which, if smaller than the rooms to which they were used in Berkley Square, were pleasant, comfortable and dressed with fresh flowers. It was not nearly so dire as they had been led to believe – and nor, indeed, was their aunt.

‘Do you know why they have sent me to you?’ Lydia plucked up the courage to ask, over the dinner table that evening.

‘My sister explained it in rather hysterical terms in a missive that arrived just before you did,’ Aunt Mildred said crisply. ‘Jilted, dishonouring the family name, etc – is that about the sum of it?’

‘It is,’ Lydia said. ‘I hope it will not make your life … difficult, if the news travels.’