Page 45 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘Oh, do I?’ he bit out. ‘How fitting – how incredibly fitting – because I do, in fact, feel rather uncomfortable, Miss Hanworth.’

He brandished the bonnet at her somewhat violently.

‘I had thought that you must, surely, have run the gamut of new ways to debase me,’ he said. ‘And yet here I am – soaked in fetid water – and my mortification is complete. Are you satisfied?’

He was almost shouting now.

‘No, of course I am not,’ Lydia lied, desperately trying to blink some tears into her eyes, for the situation could surely be exacerbated by tears. ‘Indeed, I am sorry. I never meant for you to fall in so embarrassing a manner. You must feel so humiliated.’

Ashford did not appear to be listening. He leant down to tear off his left boot, tipping it upside down to clear it of water.

‘It is not just the hat,’ he said, watching an incomprehensible amount of water run out. ‘It is everything.’

Hopping about on one foot – and truly, Lydia almost felt mortified for him, for the display was quite intensely unmasculine – Ashford replaced his left boot and then pulled off his right. Neither one appeared to have been in the least waterproof.

‘Everything you have done since arriving here,’ he went on bitterly, ‘has been so impossibly deplorable that it defies comprehension. Indeed, I could almost accuse you of – of …’

Lydia had ceased trying to cry in favour of observing Ashford’s meltdown as gleefully as one might watch one’s horse win a race. In fact, she had lost control of her own expression entirely, and it would prove to be her mistake.

For when Ashford raised his head to fix her with another accusatory glance, he did so to see her regarding him with a wide grin of triumph on her face.

‘Of – doing – it – on – purpose,’ he finished.

Lydia rearranged her face as quickly as she could, but the mask, once removed, did not go back on as smoothly. Ashford stared at her, rage tempered with incredulity upon his face, as realization slowly began to dawn. There was a long pause.

‘You have been doing it on purpose,’ he said.

‘What on earth can you mean, my lord?’ Lydia asked, all distressed confusion. Even to her own ears, it was no longer convincing.

‘I thought you seemed different, right away,’ he said, almost to himself. He raised a trembling hand to his forehead. ‘Your gowns, your behaviour, your laugh … It makes sense, now. But why on earth would you do such a thing?’

Lydia bit her lip. She had not prepared for this eventuality.

‘Was it some sort of test?’ Ashford demanded. ‘Did you mean me to prove my worth by – by driving me mad?’

What on earth should she say? What was the correct manner to manage this?

‘Tell. The. Truth,’ Ashford said, very deliberately.

And, well … Perhaps that was the only thing left to do.

‘Not test you,’ Lydia said. ‘More … get rid of you.’

‘Get rid of me?’ he said, voice rising again. ‘Get rid of me?’

‘I do not wish to marry you,’ Lydia explained. ‘Thus I had to get rid of you.’

‘But … why?’ he said. ‘I do not understand …’

‘I imagine you do not,’ Lydia said, ‘given you think yourself such a prize that you reject women for French and capriciousness.’

Ashford mouthed at her wordlessly for a moment, as a goldish stranded on land.

‘You heard our conversation, that night,’ Ashford said at last. ‘When I was—’

‘Enumerating all the ways ladies were failing to meet your standards,’ Lydia finished for him, ‘as if we are chattels, there to be judged and found wanting?’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Yes, I heard you.’

He stared at her for a moment longer.