The Golden Season

by Brockway, Connie

Smyth misread his smile. “Ah, as I suspected. Most natural thing in the world,” he said with heavy patronization. “She is Lady Lydia Eastlake after all. Admired, emulated, and unattainable.” He smiled himself. “No. I’m not surprised you are interested in her based on the images you’ve seen. But I warn you, an image is not always a proper representative of a person.”

  “What do you mean?” Borton asked, frowning.

  “She’s a bit unconventional, something of a scapegrace, truth be told. Oh, not so anyone protests. She is Lady Lydia, after all.” He paused, his brows climbing inquiringly. “I am sure you’ve heard . . . you do know about her companion, don’t you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Her companion. Mrs. Cod. No one would tolerate her except that Lady Lydia treats her like a pet, so we all do. Seeing how Lady Lydia not only sets fashion but is fashion, it’s surprising we don’t all trail mad thieves in our wake. Personally, I’d prefer a dog. Might pee on the rugs but at least it wouldn’t steal the china off one’s hostess’s table, eh?”

  His remark did not invoke the sniggers he clearly anticipated and Smyth’s eyes studied the group of men with subtle contempt. Ned barely noted it; he was busy considering on Smyth’s words.

  Lydia Eastlake had a thief for a companion? Ned did not give Smyth’s words much credence, but whatever truth there was in the claim suggested an unexpected dimension to Lady Lydia’s character. Smyth was gazing at him expectantly, clearly waiting for Ned to thank him for his favor. “I see, Mr. Smyth. Thank you for being so . . . illuminating.”

  Smyth looked taken aback. “Oh. Oh, no. That ain’t the favor I was going to do you. Consider that bit gratis. No. I have something much better in mind.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Smyth ignored him. “I know for a fact Lady Eastlake will be dining al fresco next Saturday at Lady Pickler’s house. The Pickler is preparing to set her daughter on Society and if the daughter is anything like the mother, Society had best beware.

  “It will be a dead bore, of course,” he drawled. “Lady Pickler is the worst sort of stiff-rumped bully, but she and the Almack harpies are thick as thieves and should you offend by refusing, you might as well sip arsenic because from then on you will be dead to the highest Society.

  “Only the cream of the ton is tolerated,” Smyth went on, and the languid dismissal of his gaze made it clear he doubted any of those standing nearby would be on the guest list. “But say the word and I will secure an invitation and the opportunity to meet our legendary Lady Lydia. Why, I’ll introduce you myself. We are friendly.” He pursed his mouth together in a mocking moue. “Oh, please allow me to do this thing?”

  Smyth was welcome to whatever pettiness he plotted, for Ned would not refuse the chance to see Lady Lydia again. He meant to discover if her eyes were really the color of a martin’s wing, if she would feel as light on the dance floor as she had in his arms when he’d caught her from tumbling off the ladder, and if her smile was as quick and breathtaking and inviting when she was not posing as someone she wasn’t.

  “Captain?”

  “Yes,” Ned said. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, no, my dear Captain, ’tis I who thank you. You shall have the invitation, I promise.” He motioned toward the betting book still lying open on the seat of Borton’s vacant chair. “May I take it back to the library? I’d like to enter a wager.”

  “Of course,” Borton said, leaning down and closing the book. He handed it to Smyth, who received it with an enigmatic smile and sauntered off.

  “He didn’t used to be like that,” Borton said, watching him go. “There was a time I rather liked him. But his grandfather’s been squeezing him between his thumb and forefinger for years. He feels fiercely his lack of antecedents. Society is growing much more select these days. I believe he took up with the dandies to increase his consequence and now he seeks to impress them.”

  Borton shook his head worriedly. “You shouldn’t have accepted his invitation. He only means to make sport of you to his friends.”

  “Oh, I know,” Ned said.

  “Then why ever did you agree?”

  Ned smiled. “Why, to meet Lady Eastlake. What else?”

  Back in the library, Smyth bent over the betting book. Beside him stood Prince Carvelli. Smyth finished writing and signed his name with a flourish and turned the book for the prince’s signature. It read:Childe Smyth 1000 g to Prince C’s 100 that a naval captain fresh from battle will be broadsided by Lady L before the Season ends.

  Chapter Seven

  “La Belle Assemblee has named the newest shade of the Season ‘Eastlake beaux yeux,’ ” Eleanor informed Lydia on their ride over to Lady Pickler’s in her ducal carriage. She eyed Lydia’s newest gown—as it would happen, a purple one—sardonically. Lydia chuckled.

  “Come now, Eleanor. I am not so enamored of my own reflection as that. I simply asked for a heliotrope-colored gown.”

  “Well, you are in marvelous looks,” Eleanor declared. “I hope you realize your gown is responsible for adding to my sins.”

  “How so?”

  “Envy. I am loathsomely envious.”

  “I am certain you will overcome such unworthy sentiments as soon as you remember that circumstance makes it imperative that I show to advantage whilst you show to advantage simply out of habit.”

  “Blatant flattery,” Eleanor declared. “Nonetheless I will accept it as my due.”

  “Eleanor is right,” Emily roused herself from her corner of the carriage to say. “You look most dashing, Lydia.”

  There were shadows under the older woman’s eyes. Lydia suspected Emily was not sleeping well. Not that she ever did, but Lydia’s decision to seek a spouse had clearly awoken troublesome memories for Emily. Lydia had reassured the older woman that she would not share in Emily’s fate, but though Emily understood this objectively, she explained that what one knows and what one feels are not always the same things.

  “Thank you, dear,” Lydia said.

  “You are certain to attract much admiration,” Emily said. “You will have an offer by nightfall, I am convinced.”

  Emily’s determined effort toward optimism made Lydia smile, but it soon faded. If she could just convince herself this husband hunt was a kind of sport, like fox-hunting or searching for June strawberries. But every time she sat down to consider possible candidates, she ended up wondering about the unknown gentleman from Roubalais’s.

  Over a week had passed since her impromptu masquerade at the pawnbroker’s shop. She’d spent them expecting to hear rumors that she had a sister born on the wrong side of the blanket to a French émigré, one currently working at a jeweler’s in Cheapside. When this didn’t occur, rather than relegating the incident to the past, she found her thoughts returning again and again to the tall, handsome stranger whose solemn mien was belied by the unexpected humor in his blue-gray eyes.

  Not that she seriously considered him a potential suitor. That would be absurd on the basis of one brief meeting and under such bizarre circumstances. She wasn’t so green. She was a practical, sophisticated woman.

  But . . . had he wondered about the shopgirl he’d saved from falling? She only had to close her eyes to feel his strong arms and broad chest. Did he feel her imprint against him? No. Of course not. But if he did, did it keep him awake some nights—

  “—be careful, Lydia.”

  Eleanor’s voice broke through her reverie like an internal warden. She came out of her musings with a snap. Emily was nestled in the corner of the carriage, her eyes closed fast and Eleanor was regarding her curiously.

  “Excuse me?” Lydia managed.

  “I commented that the fabric looks delicate, so if you venture into the rose garden, you’d best be careful.”

  “I will.”

  Though the dress had cost a small fortune (something a month ago Lydia wouldn’t have even known, much less cared about) she was glad she’d ordered it made. Lady Pickler’s was the first proper fete of the Sea
son and she needed to be conspicuous and conspicuously attractive. This gown made easy work of that.

  Beneath the overskirt of deep rose jaconet flowed a filmy petticoat of the finest shell-pink muslin ending in four rows of pale green embroidery with a lace-edged flounce. The gown’s long sleeves were banded with darker green satin à la Duchesse de Berri. A wide sash of the same material nestled just below her bosom, accenting the empire waist, while a diaphanous gauze fichu filling in the low-cut bodice gave a cursory nod to modesty. Perched atop her head she wore a green lacquered bonnet decorated with blackberries and fuchsias.

  “You’d best hope it doesn’t rain, Lydia,” Eleanor continued. “Lady Pickler will still insist on parading us all down to her bottom garden, by which time you shall be shivering so violently, reports next morning will claim you have ague.

  “Take my shawl with you.” Eleanor held out the Kashmir wrap folded on her lap.

  “What? And obscure this dress? I should think not. One must make sacrifices,” Lydia replied in an amused voice. Still, she accepted the shawl.

  It was unseasonably chill and had been all spring and Emily was sensitive to drafts. Lydia reached across the carriage and gently spread the fine wool over her slumbering companion, then settled back.

  “Is she asleep?” Eleanor asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Lydia answered softly. “Thankfully. She hasn’t been sleeping well of late.”

  Eleanor’s gaze stayed for a long while on the sleeping, motherly looking Emily. “I must admit, Lydia, your decision to engage Emily as your companion was a good one.”

  “Thank you.” Lydia appreciated the duchess’s admission. She had not initially approved of Lydia’s new companion. But Lydia had been unable to deny Emily’s polite, hopeless request to remove her from Brislington Asylum. Her appeal had startled Lydia.

  In truth, it had frightened her, too. For the first time in her adult life it was borne in on Lydia how much influence she owned and that she could affect things, things both frivolous and important, and that this was not a privilege to be taken lightly. Emily had awoken in Lydia a desire to act.

  Yet this sounded nobler than Lydia knew herself to be. It was only part of the answer. Her house was too empty and she needed someone to share it with. Both women saw in each other the family they’d lost.

  “I wonder who will be at the Picklers’ this year,” Eleanor eventually mused as they continued at a leisurely pace.

  Lydia glanced out the carriage window. They were approaching the outskirts of St. James, where the Pickler family had years ago decided to straddle rustication and urbanization.

  The city was slowly encroaching upon them, however, and what with taxes and debt and offers to purchase portions of their property simply too good to refuse, what had once been a fairly large estate had been whittled down to a fraction of its former size. Not to be gainsaid, Lady Pickler had long ago enclosed the remaining lawns with a high stone wall and proceeded to landscape it as though it were still a hundred acres and not ten. Every year brought a new surprise or horror in the little plot of land—depending on one’s sensibilities.

  “There will be the usual crowd in attendance, I’m sure: Lord and Lady Alvanley, the Hammond- Croutts, Mrs. Mary Sefton, and Childe Smyth. Brummell was invited, but he has been notably absent from all Society of late,” Lydia replied, then went on to name a dozen more in quick succession, finishing by saying, “Very few unexpected names and even fewer unfamiliar ones.”

  Eleanor’s thin brows rose above her deep-set eyes. “Good heavens, Lydie, one would think you knew the guest list.”

  “I do. My maid is cousin to Lady Pickler’s. That same maid is, not coincidently, currently sporting the very nice blue wool spencer you admired last year.”

  Eleanor gave her an approving look. “Your ingenuity is impressive.”

  “I mean to leave nothing to chance this Season, Eleanor.”

  “Then you will already know that Lady Pickler did not want to invite you to her fete this year,” Eleanor replied, watching her carefully.

  No. Lydia had not known this. “Why ever not?” she asked. “She’s a picksome old tabby, but I have never offended her to my knowledge.”

  “Her daughter has never debuted before. Lady Pickler knows you’ll cast her Jenny in the shade.”

  “Piffle,” Lydia said.

  Eleanor ignored this statement as disingenuous, which it was. Lydia had seen the Picklers’ Friday- faced daughter. Of course, if Lady Pickler had been her mother, she would have looked like she had a continual migraine, too.

  “She didn’t dare snub you, of course,” Eleanor continued. “She is trapped between fearing you will accept her invitations and outshine her daughter and fearing you won’t attend and thus consign her fete to the ranks of the second-rate. I’d feel sorry for her, except that last week she was overheard to comment that she thinks it’s absurd that a spinster should have endured as the cynosure of all masculine eyes for as long as you. I believe she feels a new nonpareil is due to ascend. Preferably her Jenny.”

  “Endured? My heavens, she makes me sound like one of Stonehenge’s monoliths,” said Lydia. “However do you know this?”

  “You are not the only one with a loyal maid who aspires to a fashionable wardrobe.”

  Lydia chuckled but then murmured, “Oh, bother,” as she thought about the difficultly of negotiating a Season filled with worried mamas jockeying for their daughters’ futures.

  Eleanor patted her hand consolingly. “At least she didn’t call you an ape leader.”

  “Oh, it’s not that,” Lydia said. “I daresay she’s right; I have endured. But I do wish her daughter could make her bow next year, when I will be happily ensconced in my new role as Lord Plentiful’s adored and overindulged wife.”

  “Well, her brat is out now and you will have to plan some way of allaying Lady Pickler’s motherly frets,” Eleanor, ever practical, stated. “For example, do not be witty. Lady Pickler doesn’t understand wit and it makes her uncomfortable. Poor dear has a filthy mind. She is certain anything subtle is indelicate and ought to be kept well away from her babe’s innocent ears. Why else do you think Sarah is not with us?”

  Lydia, who had been smiling as she watched the street scene outside the carriage, slew about. “What do you mean? I thought she had a previous engagement.”

  “No. She wasn’t asked.”

  “Not asked?” Lydia echoed with a chill in her voice that few people had heard. Lady Pickler could cavil about her all she liked, but Sarah was another matter. “That’s absurd. Have your man turn about at—”

  “No, Lydia,” Eleanor interrupted with a hand on her wrist. “Sarah knew if you learned of it you would refuse to go and she also knows, apparently better than you, that you can ill afford to offend Lady Pickler this Season.”

  “Of course I can,” Lydia said indignantly. “Of all the nerve. How dare she not invite Sarah after so many years? Tell the driver to stop.”

  “No. I won’t because Sarah has been kicking up rough of late and if you are candid with yourself, you will admit it, too.”

  Lydia’s lips pressed together, though she could not bring herself to deny the charge. To anyone else, yes, but not to Eleanor. Because Eleanor was right; Sarah had been acting the hoyden for the past year, paying increasingly little care to her reputation and more to her impulses. Lately she’d been even more distracted and preoccupied. Lydia did not know what to make of the changes in her lifelong friend. She felt in some odd ways abandoned by her, as though Sarah had purposely chosen a path she knew Lydia could not follow.

  “I wish Gerald would come to town,” she murmured.

  “It would only make matters worse. They loathe each other. The problem is that she is still so very young. I sometimes forget how long she’s been married. What was she when she wed? Sixteen? And Marchland is my contemporary.”

  “Yes.” Lydia remembered Sarah’s initial enthusiasm for the match. Gerald Marchland was wealthy and well connected and if
he seemed overly puritanical, Sarah would tease him into lighter moods. And she had at first. But the patterns of forty years were not to be gainsaid and soon those mannerisms he had found winsome, he considered lewd, and Sarah, rather than admiring his sobriety, thought him a bore. They were entirely unsuited. “Is she very unhappy do you think?”

  “No,” Eleanor said thoughtfully. “If she was, she might be more inclined to take advice. She actually seems in prime spirits of late and as like to thumb her nose at Society as bend to its rules.”

  “Perhaps she is simply going through an odd patch and shall pass out of it soon. Or maybe she’s breeding again,” Lydia suggested thoughtfully. “She certainly looks in glowing health.”

  “Let us hope not,” Eleanor declared. “She has not seen Gerry in three months.”

  “Who’s breeding?” Emily asked in a muzzy voice.

  “No one, dear,” Eleanor said. “We were simply speculating.”

  “That would be one good thing about you marrying, Lydie,” Emily said. “I should very much like a baby to dandle.” Emily’s face softened with sentiment. “I never had a baby to dandle.”

  “Neither have I,” Eleanor said, though a good deal more happily. Eleanor had always said she’d no desire to procreate.

  “Then we are alike, Eleanor,” Emily said. Neither woman seemed to notice anything odd in a former inmate of an insane asylum calling the Duchess of Grenville by her first name. Not that Emily would ever do so in public.

  Except for those times she had “misplaced something in her reticule,” she was very circumspect. She had, as she had once pointed out, been raised to be a lady, not a madwoman.

  “You are much nicer than I, Emily,” Eleanor said dryly.

  “You don’t know how nice you are, Eleanor,” Emily protested.

  Eleanor sniffed but nonetheless looked pleased.

  The coach drew to a halt and the door opened with a flourish as the footman hurried to pull out the velvet-covered steps. They disembarked and Lydia paused, looking up the granite stairs to the entrance of the great house, where the door stood open. Within the entry hall, shadowy figures intermingled and waited.