The Golden Season

by Brockway, Connie

  “Lydia,” Eleanor suddenly said. “Now, don’t gape, my dear, and try not to stutter, but if you turn around, I believe you are about to be introduced to your paragon.”

  Chapter Nine

  Lydia wasn’t gaping . . . well, quite . . . and she had never stuttered in her life—but what if he did recognize her? No, she reassured herself. That wasn’t possible. That disheveled shopgirl and Lady Lydia Eastlake bore no resemblance one to the other. She turned around.

  For a second she thought perhaps he did. There was something in his eyes, something quizzical and observant. But . . . no.

  “Lady Grenville, how delightful to see you again,” Childe Smyth said, bowing to Eleanor before turning to Lydia. “And Lady Lydia, I had hoped to find you here.”

  Distracted as she was, she still contrived a welcoming smile. She knew others thought little of Smyth, but she had always thought his airs were protective armor and that at his core he was simply a man who’d been taught to question his own value too much. “How are you, Mr. Smyth?” Drat. She sounded breathy.

  “Tolerable,” he replied. He turned to his companion. “Lady Grenville, may I present Captain Edward Lockton? Captain, Her Grace, Eleanor, the Duchess of Grenville.”

  “Ma’am, it is a pleasure.” The captain bowed, gravely inclining his head just so.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  “Lady Lydia,” Smyth said, and a devil danced in his eyes, “may I make known Captain—”

  “Yes, yes, Mr. Smyth, Captain Lockton. I was standing right here,” she said with an arch of her brow. She looked up at Lockton, her heart thundering so loudly she was certain he must hear it. “How do you do, Captain?”

  She looked straight up into his eyes. They were just as clear and remarkable as she recalled and she could not discern a whit of recognition in them. Her racing heart slowed; she felt an odd little twist in her chest. It must be relief. Not disappointment. Why would she be disappointed? He hadn’t recognized her as a dirty little shopgirl. That was hardly a cause for disappointment.

  “Very well, Lady Lydia,” the captain said. “Thank you.”

  “As you can see, Lady Lydia does not bend to protocol,” Childe Smyth explained. “Protocol accommodates her.”

  “You are restive of formality, Lady Lydia?” the captain asked curiously.

  “Good heavens, Mr. Smyth,” Lydia said, with a scolding glance at Smyth. “Only see what you’ve done. You have given the captain to believe I am an unconventional creature when I am in fact the very definition of conventionality.”

  “Are you?” the captain asked before Smyth could respond.

  “Oh, yes. I may tease propriety at times, but that is all part of the role. At least, my role. And a very unoriginal one at that, I’m afraid.”

  “And what role may that be, Lady Lydia?” he asked with such apparent earnestness she almost forgot to be worldly and insouciant. But in many respects she had been worldly long before she had arrived in London and it would take more than a naval captain to make her forget her lines.

  “Why, dandyess, Captain. I would think that would be obvious.” She measured him with her eyes. “Surely you’ve come across the sort?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said gravely. “I do not think I have ever met your like before.”

  A shiver ran through her. Had anyone ever told her being called ma’am could produce a thrill of physical attraction she would have laughed. But it was the way he said it, with such formality and intensity and . . . Good heavens, she thought. I am besotted.

  “Mr. Smyth, I see Lady Sefton entering the house. I should very much like to speak to her,” Eleanor said. “Would you escort me inside?”

  Lydia had forgotten Eleanor. And Smyth. She barely remarked them now. Her whole being seemed attuned to the tall, handsome man attending her with such delicious concentration. She heard Smyth declare it would be his pleasure and then they were retreating across the terrace.

  Lydia didn’t watch them go but, then, neither did Captain Lockton.

  “I assure you that I am hardly rare. But then you’ve probably been away at sea,” she said, continuing their conversation. “Now that you are in London I am sure you will meet many ladies and soon grow so familiar with our habits that we pall.”

  “I cannot imagine it.” He tipped his head. “I can, however, recognize the grounds for such a conjecture.”

  “Oh?”

  “Familiarity can indeed rob a thing of its appeal,” he answered. “Take for example mermaids. When I was a lad I was quite besotted with them.”

  She thought she knew the direction he was taking with his comment and supplied him with his end point. “But you grew tired of imagining what you realized you could never find and left them behind with your childhood.” She nodded wisely.

  “Oh, no, ma’am,” he answered soberly. “I meant that having spent half of my life at sea, I’ve grown quite inured to their charms.”

  She started. He’d caught her off guard and she was unused to being caught off guard. Her eyes widened; an answering light danced in his gray-blue eyes. A trill of unrehearsed delight escaped her.

  “Oh, seeing mermaids is a mundane experience for you, is it?” she asked through her laughter.

  He shook his head ruefully. “If one were only obliged to see them. It’s not the seeing that grows tedious. Quite lovely creatures, actually. No, it’s their incessant singing that grows tiresome. Always bleating on about some fellow named Jason, lost love, that sort of thing. Mawkish brood.”

  He leaned a little closer and spoke sotto voce. “You have doubtless heard stories about men being lured to their death by the mermaids?”

  She nodded.

  “The truth is that most of them died fleeing, afraid they would be stuck listening to piscine sniffles and watery megrims for an eternity.”

  She was laughing even louder now, the image of terrified sailors hurrying past pathetic lovelorn mermaids too delicious to resist.

  He tipped his head, his expression gratified. “You doubt me, Lady Lydia?”

  “I think you have told me a Banbury tale, Captain, to remind me that while you have been figuratively at sea, you are not there literally. Your point is well taken.”

  “But that was not at all my aim,” he said, the teasing light fading from his gaze, replaced by something else. “I merely sought to illustrate that those things you take for granted, I find extraordinary. And expect I always shall.”

  His gaze seemed to her to have grown tender and she was as unused to seeing tenderness in a man’s eyes as she was to being caught off guard. Admiration? Amusement? Yes. Even desire. But those looks could be leveled at any inanimate object: a beautiful painting, a political cartoon, a French postcard. Tenderness was far more intimate, reserved for beings, not things.

  It brought a flush to her cheeks. Her gaze fell.

  “Forgive me,” he said, quick to discern the change in her expression. “I’ve embarrassed you.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Not at all.”

  He would think her a poor creature if she could not parry a subtle compliment without growing red cheeks. “I am wondering what other things bore you that would amaze me,” she said. “Besides mermaids, that is.”

  “I shall strive to think of something,” he said. Then, “I have heard Lady Pickler is quite proud of her landscapes. Perhaps you would care to walk with me and explain what I am seeing?”

  “Yes,” she said at once and too quickly. What was wrong with her? She should try to muster up at least a soupçon of hesitation. But . . . why? Why be false when in his company being true came so easily?

  Finding no answer, she moved down the stairs and onto the lawn. He fell into step at her side, clasping his hands lightly behind his back and measuring his long strides to accommodate hers.

  Above them the lowering sky hung breathless, lending a silvery twilight atmosphere to the day and his eyes. Beads of dew hung suspended from leaf tips like crystal pendants left by tiny woodland syl
phs and the air shimmered with moistures. The damp from the grass seeped through the thin leather soles of her slippers. She barely noticed.

  Mindful of propriety, she stopped on the edge of the lawn. He looked up and his expression betrayed a moment of astonishment. She empathized. Anyone not forewarned about Lady Pickler’s landscapes tended to be overwhelmed. In ten acres of artificially rolling land, Lady Pickler had managed to stuff a Roman ruin, a sheep’s meadow, a Greek temple, a Japanese pagoda, and a hermit’s cave—complete with a hairy little hermit glumly peeling potatoes outside his lair.

  “I think he’s one of the gardeners when he is not a hermit,” Lydia confided, watching the direction of the captain’s gaze.

  “Good God, I should hope so,” the captain exclaimed.

  She tipped her head teasingly. “I don’t imagine there were any men on your ship whose sole occupation was to peel potatoes and look sullen and unapproachable.”

  “On the contrary,” he replied. “My cook. And he looked far more miserable than that fellow. I shall have to look him up and tell him there is a call for his particular talents in Society.”

  She laughed again and he looked down into her upturned face.

  Her laughter died as she sank into his mist-wreathed gaze, lost to her surroundings. She became conscious of her lips parting and her chest rising and falling as though she’d been running and she hurried to regain her sangfroid. If she kept staring at him with her mouth slack, he would certainly recognize her as the shopgirl who’d sold him a Chinese bowl.

  “Have you been a sailor long, Captain?” she asked, half turning to collect herself.

  “Not as long as most men who make a career of the sea,” he replied. “I came to it late.”

  “Oh? How old were you?” She wanted to know everything about him.

  “Fourteen.”

  Her eyes widened. “And that is late?”

  “Most midshipmen make their maiden voyage at eleven or twelve. I was obliged to remain at Josten Hall, however, until after my father’s death.”

  She shook her head. “Were you very eager to go?”

  “Very.”

  “And you will return to the sea?”

  He shook his head. “I am retired.”

  “Surely you are young to retire.”

  “Perhaps.” He seemed uninterested in answering her questions, which was very unusual in Lydia’s experience. Given scant encouragement, most men loved speaking about themselves. But he seemed more interested in asking her questions than answering them.

  Unfortunately, she had nothing all that interesting to impart. What was unusual about her, her wealth and the privilege it garnered her, were not the result of any action or inaction on her part. She had done nothing to deserve her situation. Despite traveling extensively as a child, in many ways her world remained very small, very select, very exclusive, and its concerns very small, very select, very exclusive to its milieu.

  But Captain Lockton? The life he had chosen had given him a deeper knowledge of life, far richer and more diverse experiences. He had led men in battle, made decisions that had far- reaching consequences. He had made a difference to the world at large, not just a tiny sliver of it. She liked her life very well, but his was more interesting.

  “Tell me of your childhood, Lady Lydia. Were you raised in London?”

  “No,” she said shortly, then feeling she was being rude added, “My parents traveled a great deal and I with them. Until they died.”

  “I am sorry.” He smiled gently. “Tell me about them.”

  Tell him about them? She looked at him in surprise. Everyone knew her parents’ story, from its scandalous inception to the romantic and tragic end. But then she remembered he had likely been at sea when they’d died.

  She didn’t know where to begin. The press and Society had always defined them by their unsanctified marriage and the vagabond glamour of their lives as expatriates. But that wasn’t what she recalled of them. When she thought of her mother and father, it was not of the scandal or their glamour.

  How odd.

  “They were wonderfully well suited. My mother was a great beauty and my father a Corinthian of the first order.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Like?” She’d just told him. They were beautiful and gay and . . . beautiful. Hadn’t she just said as much?

  “Yes. You say they were a handsome pair, but what else? Were they conscientious or impulsive? What did they do for pleasure and what for edification?”

  “It was all pleasure,” she said a little reluctantly, though heaven knew why.

  In response, he shook his head. “No. I am sure it was not.”

  How could he refute her claims as an eyewitness to a life he had never known and people he had never met? She wasn’t certain if she felt unnerved or affronted by his certainty. Probably both.

  Lydia had always been honest with herself, admitting her failings as well as her strengths. Were her memories of her parents wrong? Or at least, incomplete? What did she know of them other than that they seemed like stars shining in the social firmament, always lighting her way . . . but from a distance, a little chill for all their brilliance?

  What partialities, besides a love of gay company, beauty, and elegance, had they bequeathed her? Surely something . . .

  “My father taught me to ride and shoot a pistol before I was ten.” She smiled. He’d been proud of her skill, though after her mother found out about it, she’d forbidden further lessons, deeming it unsuitable practice for a young lady. “I think he might have missed having a country house. He was from Wilshire and he liked dogs.”

  “Ah.” His tone was interested. “What else?”

  “My mother had no ear for language. She only spoke English. I recall her laughing and saying it was just as well since she was less likely to overhear someone speaking ill of her. But I think . . . I think it made her feel vulnerable and she did not want me to know.” And why would that be? Because she did not want anything to threaten the carefully maintained illusion of happiness?

  Perhaps it all hadn’t been pleasure. . . . A frown flickered across her face. The notion made her uneasy. No one had ever asked her questions like this and her thoughts had never run in this vein before. She’d had enough of her family’s history. She wanted to know more about him. “Will you miss the sea now that you’ve retired?”

  “The sea? Yes.” He answered in a voice that led her to suspect he was leaving something unsaid. “But Josten Hall overlooks the sea, so I shan’t have to pine.”

  “Josten Hall. This is your family home?”

  “Yes. It sits atop the Norfolk cliffs overlooking the sea and is the most beautiful place on earth.” He smiled and suddenly looked younger than any man who’d captained a warship ought to. “Do you still maintain your father’s home in Wilshire?”

  “No. It wasn’t an ancestral manse by any means. My grandfather bought the place off a nabob in the seven-ties. Will you miss your ship?”

  He did not answer at once but considered her with a slight, quizzical smile.

  “Ma’am, one might think from your questions you would see me gone back to sea. How have I offended?” His voice was light, but she discerned an underlying seriousness.

  “No! I am simply seeking to understand you.” She flushed at his smile and hurried on. “I mean, why you have given up the sea for the land. Those sailors I know are always pining to return to their ship like a beloved wife.”

  He finally spoke. “When I was a boy, there was nothing I loved more than to be on a boat bobbing about in the North Sea. When I was accepted as a midshipman on Nelson’s command, I was in transports. Going to war was a grand and noble adventure, vastly exciting.”

  He paused and looked at her carefully again before continuing. “But that was when I was young and when I was serving in another’s command. It is quite one matter to obey the order to fire on fleeing men or board a burning vessel, and another to give those orders. Suffice to say, I am glad to
be relieved of such duties—” He broke off, shook his head.

  Lydia studied him gravely, wanting to reach out and touch his arm, to offer comfort. She could not. He had ordered his men to fight unto the death and he carried the burden of their deaths with him. So much so that he had given up his commission.

  “Pray, don’t look so stricken, Lady Lydia. This is hardly suitable conversation on so brief an acquaintance,” he said.

  He was right. It was entirely too intimate. It was entirely too candid. It was entirely unprecedented. And she didn’t want it to end.

  “You have only yourself to blame,” he said, attempting to lighten the mood. “You have provided too sympathetic an ear and your face betrays none of the alarm, if not distaste, you must be feeling. I applaud your good manners.”

  “I am neither alarmed nor offended, Captain,” she answered. “But I am sorry something you once loved no longer brings you joy. It seems to me there are scant enough things to love that we can afford to lose even one.”

  She was being too serious, too earnest. She should retreat into a livelier, more flirtatious mien. He would think her somber. But her words felt like a portent and she shivered. She could not afford to lose anything more that she loved.

  “It is not that I have learned to dislike sailing as much as I have remembered that I love something more. Here.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a simple fob with a locket attached to the end. He flipped the lid open and held it up for her to examine. Inside was a tiny exquisite etching of a handsome manor home set on a prow of land overlooking a suggested sea. “This is Josten Hall.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “Yes,” he said and snapped the locket shut. “Many of my men carried on their person the likeness of wives or mothers to inspire and comfort them. I have always carried this.”

  “I see. You have come home,” she said quietly. “That is what you remembered you loved.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am home.”

  “And now you are prepared to enjoy the family and home you missed while you were fighting Napoleon,” she suggested.