Page 85 of How to Lose a Lord in Ten Days

‘But your parents …’ Lydia argued, for their love match was still spoken of with sighs of admiration.

‘Another exception.’

‘Which are beginning to stack up, aren’t they?’ she said, half smiling. Why was he being so difficult? ‘Why do you believe it so impossible for yourself?’

‘I simply do not wish for it.’ He sounded bored, as if this was a topic he had debated a hundred times before.

Lydia could not comprehend it. ‘How can you not?’ she asked, sitting up in her chair. ‘The happiness your parents shared – people still speak of it.’

‘It did not exactly end in happiness, did it?’ Ashford muttered.

‘Ah,’ Lydia said.

‘What do you mean “ah”?’ Ashford asked.

‘I do not mean anything by it,’ Lydia said. ‘It was just an “ah”.’

‘It obviously was not.’

‘I am not trying to antagonize you,’ Lydia said. ‘I just wish to understand. It is so different to how I feel, you see.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Ashford said, ‘you wish to fall desperately in love with Prett, I recall. Though how you can still possibly desire him, when he is such an almighty fool?’

‘He is not a fool!’ Lydia said indignantly. ‘He is everything I hoped he would be – heartfelt and earnest and himself, while you—’

‘The way he speaks,’ Ashford went on, ‘forcing his travels into conversation with the most spurious links!’

‘He is an explorer,’ Lydia said. ‘It is noble and brave and—’

‘We all enjoy travel,’ Ashford said. ‘I do not see that it makes him so special.’

‘Do you honestly feel yourself above him?’ she said. ‘You, who have had everything handed to you on a gilded plate, above he, who has had to work every day to reach such a station?’

Ashford flushed red.

‘I think myself above him,’ he snapped, ‘because he is the most singularly self-obsessed man I have ever had the misfortune to encounter – and I spend my Christmases with Sir Waldo.’

‘You are wrong about him,’ she said. ‘And about love, and – and everything.’

‘Oh, is that all?’

‘You will see,’ she threatened. ‘I will show you.’

She could not believe that a moment before she had felt sorry for him, when clearly he was too disagreeable to deserve sympathy.

‘By all means,’ he said. ‘Once you cry off from our engagement, I will watch your courtship avidly.’

Lydia raised her chin. ‘I am not going to cry off.’

‘You mean to continue your foolishness?’

‘Unless you would like to wave the white flag?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘So we are in agreement?’

‘We are.’