The Golden Season

by Brockway, Connie

  “Mayhap I could even aid you in your quest?” she suggested, desperate for him to say something, anything more than those terrible, polite monosyllables!

  A shift of muscles and sinew, so subtle it was barely discernible, announced the return of tension. “Once more, ma’am, I must beg your pardon. I am clearly out of my depths here.”

  “I know all the young ladies of the ton.” The words tumbled out, unscripted and raw. “I am well acquainted with their families. I know their qualities and their faults and their . . . situations and I might be able to help you avoid—” She trailed off, blushing profusely.

  He stepped in to save her. “Avoid a situation similar to this one?” he said with complete composure. At his words, she realized how maggoty and distasteful her impulsive offer had been. She also realized how very much it was something she would decidedly not like to do. But what could she say? She’d already offered her assistance.

  “Yes.”

  “That is extraordinarily kind of you.”

  “Yes.” She felt ill.

  “I accept,” he said and then nodded thoughtfully. “And in reply to such a magnanimous offer, I can do no less.”

  She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  He caught both hands behind his back and paced a short ways away and back again and she noted for the first time that in one of his hands he was clutching a handkerchief. Where had it come from? His sleeve no doubt. But who had given him that one? Why was he holding it? What did it mean to him?

  “I must offer you the same assistance.” He smiled at her, but there was a sharpness in his eyes that had never been there before. “Hear me out. I know I have not been long in town, but as a gentleman I am liable to hear things that would never reach your ears. Boodle’s is a positive font of information. Please, allow me to be of service. As your friend.”

  “That isn’t necessary.”

  “I insist. If you are going to be so good as to help me . . . How to say this?” he muttered and then laughed. “Oh, why stand on ceremony? As we are such good friends now we can speak plainly with each other, can we not?”

  Not. She nodded.

  “Excellent!” he said. “So bluntly put, if you are going to hunt me up a bride, I can do no less than find you a groom as well.”

  She didn’t want his help finding a husband any more than she wanted to help him find a bride. “No. It’s too much of an imposition, and it seems rather, well”—she cast about anxiously—“rather cynical, doesn’t it?”

  “Cynical?” His beautiful gray eyes widened. “Good heavens, Lady Lydia. Pray recall our sophistication. There is nothing cynical about expedience. I will, of course, be strictly mute about your finances.” She might have thought he was mocking her, but she noticed that his hand had fisted so tight around the handkerchief he held she could see the paleness of his knuckles. “So, we are agreed?”

  What could she do? She’d backed herself neatly into an untenable situation. “Agreed.”

  “Excellent.” He moved toward her, looking down into her upturned face, and whatever he saw there caused his smile to lose its odd vulpine edge.

  She gazed back mutely, miserable and confused. Uncertainty flickered in his expression and he moved even closer, so close she could feel the slight brush of his breath on her cheeks. He raised his free hand as if to touch her and despite herself, she held her breath, hoping he would.

  “Of course, we could just dispense with—”

  Whatever Ned had been about to suggest they dispense with was forever lost in a riot of giggling exploding from the hedge a second before a girl broke from the eastern entrance and tumbled into the center, an exceptionally handsome young redheaded lad puffing hard on her heels.

  “Jenny, please! You promised! One kiss!” the young man declared.

  Jenny Pickler, still laughing, swung about to answer and caught sight of Ned, impeccable as always, and Lydia, her hair down around her shoulders, her skirts ripped and dirtied. Jenny’s mouth fell open.

  “Lady . . . Lydia?”

  Lydia, finally, after a hiatus of nearly an hour, found her dignity and recovered her too long absent poise. “Yes, Miss Pickler.” She lifted a dark winged brow at the very young and flustered gentleman. “Sir?”

  “Ma’am.” He bowed deeply.

  “Yes. Well. A fine day, is it not?”

  “Indeed, Lady Lydia,” Jenny stuttered.

  She plastered a brilliant, regal smile on her face. “Then good day to you,” she said, and with a sense of enormous relief, sailed out of the maze.

  Left behind, Ned watched her depart, the swish of her mangled skirts in no way lessening her regality. He withdrew his hand from behind his back and idly unfolded the bloodstained handkerchief pressed tightly to his palm.

  “Captain, your hand!” Jenny Pickler gasped. “However did you injure it?’

  He glanced around, his gaze finding the girl and her red-faced swain.

  “Eh? Oh,” he said. “I was attempting to restrain an overwhelming need to express my . . . friendship for a certain person.”

  “Friendship?” Jenny Pickler echoed, nonplussed by his odd tone when he used the word and the sight of the jagged tear in Ned’s palm.

  “Yes. Some would have found a different name for the sentiment—perhaps passion—but a lady I hold in high esteem has informed me that it was not in fact what I was feeling, and I would not argue with her.”

  “Captain,” Jenny Pickler said. “I do not take your meaning.”

  “No, Miss Pickler,” he replied calmly. “Neither does she.” His gaze drifted to the shifting youngster behind her. “For God’s sake, Pip, straighten your cravat.”

  And with a bow to Jenny Pickler, he left.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lydia retired early that night, but sleep eluded her. Her thoughts kept tumbling over one another, the phantom prospect of happiness with Ned fighting for precedence against the looming potential for isolation and loneliness. She had never lacked for courage, never refused to acknowledge a thing because she did not want it to be so. One took what one had and made do, or in fact did better than make do, as had she.

  Restlessly, she turned where she lay. What was she supposed to do? What had she hoped would happen? She still didn’t know. The news that Ned’s family’s pockets were to let had deeply shaken her. She had taken his wealth for granted, then fallen in love with him. How could she do otherwise? He was everything she admired, everything she respected. His nobility was one of genuine character, not manners; the things he had seen and done had importance and merit. His masculinity was unaffected and forceful. He was everything she wanted . . . except rich.

  She sat up and jerked her blanket tightly around herself and huddled with her chin on her knees, glowering out at the darkness with futile resentment. Was she supposed to have told Ned it didn’t matter to her that he had no money and then hoped that he felt the same? It would have been a lie. Wouldn’t it?

  Even if he did return her love and proposed marriage, what was she supposed to have done then? Leave everything she knew behind? Her friends, her position in Society, her lifestyle? Abandon the retinue of retainers and craftsmen and artisans that relied on her? While her concern for them might be based on reasoning that was somewhat spurious, it also had some basis in fact.

  She didn’t know any other way to live. Her brief years in Wilshire had been telling. The isolation and loneliness there had driven home that with her parents’ deaths she had lost everyone who cared about her and all her connections to the world. Which is why Emily’s plight had resonated so deeply with her. It only made sense that after Eleanor had brought her to London, she had gone about collecting a sort of makeshift family with a fervor that would have been amusing had it not been pitiful.

  She sank to her side on her bed, curling in on herself. If she married with no thought to wealth or status, she would be forced to rely on her husband to provide the emotional connections she needed, the sense of closeness, of being more than importa
nt to someone, of being necessary. Of being loved. What if Ned could not provide that? What if he was, as Childe suggested, incapable of the sort of passion she wanted him to feel for her?

  What if he could? Her breath caught with elation over the possibility before cold reason extinguished it. How could she take that chance? What chance? He hadn’t asked for her hand. He had obligations and responsibilities as pressing as her own. Her speculations were all moot. Ned needed a rich wife and she required a rich husband and that was the end of it.

  Some time later, not long after Lydia had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, a light, insistent tapping awoke her. She shifted up onto her elbows, looking about groggily. The night was still black outside her bedroom windows and her room was steeped in shadows. Not yet dawn.

  “Lady Lydia?” She heard the whisper of her maid’s voice as the door opened a crack.

  “Come in,” Lydia said, sitting up.

  The door swung silently open and the last remaining maid in Lydia’s once-large staff entered, fully clad, the only sign she hadn’t been awake all night the untidy braid coiled around her head. She held a single lit taper in her hand.

  “What is it, Peach?”

  “Mrs. Marchland, milady. She is downstairs and insists on seeing you. She is waiting in the morning room.”

  Sarah? Here? Lydia swung her legs over the side of the bed and the maid hurried over, sweeping a dressing gown from the foot of the bed, holding it open for Lydia to don.

  “Is she all right?” Lydia asked, thrusting her arms into the sleeves. “What time is it?”

  “It is half past five, milady, and Mrs. Marchland seems agitated, but otherwise in good health.”

  Hurriedly, Lydia twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her neck and hastened from her room, alarmed. Something dire must have happened for Sarah to come to her at such an hour.

  “That will be all, Peach,” she said upon reaching the door to the morning room.

  The maid bobbed a curtsy and vanished as Lydia pushed open the door to the morning room. Sarah stood inside, her hands knit at her waist, her face anxious and her eyes brilliant. She was dressed for travel.

  “What is it, Sarah?” Lydia exclaimed. “What has happened?”

  Sarah rushed forward, her hands outstretched to clasp Lydia’s. Briefly, Sarah embraced her before drawing her over to the settee in front of the cold hearth. Sarah sat down and faced her. “I am leaving Marchland to go to the Continent with Carvelli this morning,” she said without preamble.

  Lydia blinked at her, not certain she had heard aright. Sarah couldn’t mean it.

  “I know, my dear,” Sarah said, nodding as if Lydia had spoken. “I have quite shocked you and you are thinking how to best dissuade me from eloping. Pray, spare yourself the effort. I will not be deterred.”

  “Sarah, you can’t,” Lydia said.

  Sarah smiled ruefully. “Lydie, dearest, I did not come to confer with you. I came to advise you of my plans and”—her voice softened—“say good-bye.”

  Good-bye. Lydia’s heartbeat jumped in her throat. If Sarah did this thing then they would indeed be parted, not only by physical distance but by a far more unbridgeable chasm. Eloping with Carvelli would make Sarah a social pariah. None of their mutual friends would meet her. No one would acknowledge her. No one would have her in their homes. Sarah would be relegated to the ranks of the demireps and lightskirts. This was madness.

  “Sarah, you aren’t thinking properly. You are not yourself.”

  “But I am, Lydia,” Sarah said. “Never more so than now. Carvelli makes me happy and I make him happy.”

  “Happiness,” Lydia repeated incredulously. She could not believe this was the same woman who only a few months ago had advised her to marry someone accommodating who promised to be accommodatingly absent. “Sarah, how many times have gentlemen ‘made you happy’? And how long did that happiness last?”

  Sarah flushed and Lydia’s heart twisted at her own harshness, but this was no time to spare Sarah’s feelings.

  “Think of what you are giving up,” she persisted.

  Sarah’s gaze met hers. “I have, Lydie. I know you will not be convinced, but I have thought of nothing else for a week.”

  “A week?” Lydia echoed.

  “Don’t sneer, Lydia. A week is a long time for me,” Sarah said with unexpected dignity. “Despite your pose of insouciance, I well know you are wont to worry at a thing, and turn it over and examine it from all sides, pondering and fretting it to death.” This time Lydia flushed as she recalled the earlier hours of the night. “A week for you is nothing, but for me it demonstrates the deepest introspection.”

  Here, at last, in a roguish smile Lydia glimpsed a peek of the Sarah she loved so well. Then it was gone. “I love Carvelli and he loves me and we wish to live together as man and wife.”

  “But you aren’t man and wife, Sarah,” Lydia protested. “You have a husband and Carvelli has a wife. And if that does not influence you, let me remind you that you also have two children.”

  Sarah paled. “Gerald has children. He refuses to allow me to see them. He says my influence would be detrimental to their moral character.”

  Lydia had known Gerald kept the children with him, but she had always assumed the choice was mutual. She had never suspected Gerald of purposefully keeping Sarah apart from her children, but one look into her friend’s tense and strained face and she did not now doubt it. The tragedy and unfairness of it astounded her. Sarah, of course, had no recourse to fight Gerald’s decision. None. Children were their father’s responsibility and property.

  “So I do not have children, Lydia. But if I am very fortunate,” she said wistfully, “I shall bear Carvelli a child someday. He desires that I should above all things.”

  Lydia pulled her hands from Sarah’s. “And should he wish, Gerald could take that child, too.” It was the law.

  At this, Sarah’s mouth closed in a stubborn line. “He wouldn’t. He doesn’t care enough to want to hurt me and there would be no other reason to take our child.”

  “Listen to yourself, Sarah,” Lydia begged. “You are trying to spin some girlish romance out of a simple, sordid tale. Think past next month or even next year, when the idyll has played itself out and Carvelli returns to Italy. Where will you go then?”

  Sarah’s face remained mulishly closed.

  “Gerald will put you aside,” Lydia said. “He must. You will be exiled to some cold, dreary house far from the Society you have always known and enjoyed and there you will stay, separated from family and friends.” The picture she painted appalled her, doubly so as it so closely resembled a scene she had imagined for herself, should she throw everything over to marry Ned. Had he asked her to marry him. Which he had not.

  But she had no time to think on that now; Sarah must be convinced to abandon her plan.

  When Sarah finally spoke, she did so without the anger or affront Lydia expected. She looked suddenly tired, far older than her twenty- four years and jaded in a manner Lydia had never before discerned. “I did not come here for your approval, Lydia. I never thought to have it. And I realize the potential consequences of my action far better than you assume. I would be practical if I could, Lydia, but I cannot. If I do not go with Carvelli, I shall regret it every day of my life.” She held up her hand as Lydia opened her mouth to speak, forestalling her. “Doubtless all you say is correct, my dear, but it is a price I am willing to pay. So . . .” Her gaze flickered away from Lydia and back again. “Can you not find it in your heart to wish me well despite your disapproval?”

  Lydia flung her arms around Sarah’s shoulders and embraced her tightly. “Dear heaven, Sarah. Of course, I want what is best for you. That is why I am trying to convince you to forgo this madness.”

  “Then, Lydia, don’t want what is best for me,” Sarah murmured, returning Lydia’s embrace. “Want my happiness.”

  “The two are not exclusive of each other.”

  “For me they are,” Sarah
replied softly.

  Lydia had never heard her so subdued or thoughtful. She clasped Sarah by the shoulders and held her away, gazing intently into her face. “This is not any path to happiness,” she persisted.

  “Perhaps not, but it is a path and I have been standing still casting about without direction for so long I never thought to find one.” She stood up. “Now wish me well.”

  Lydia rose to her feet beside her, a hand on her forearm. “Sarah,” she said. “How can I stand by and ‘wish,’ when my love for you insists that I protest? You are ruining yourself.”

  “Let her go, Lydia.” Emily spoke from the doorway.

  Lydia looked around. Emily stood in the hall just outside the cast of candlelight. She was in dishabille, clutching a shawl around her round shoulders, the sleeping cap atop her head slightly askew.

  “Emily,” Lydia said, anticipating an ally, “add your voice to mine and convince our dear friend not to—”

  “You must let her go, Lydia. You must say good-bye to her and you must let her go,” Emily broke in, her soft voice carrying a fatalistic weight. “She has decided.”

  Lydia did not have time to wonder at Emily’s misalliance. She turned back to Sarah. “Have you spoken to Eleanor?”

  Sarah laughed. “Ad nauseum. She was as relentless in her determination to dissuade me from my plan as you. I would have thought she would understand better given the circumstances of her own marriage.”

  Sarah’s gaze moved past Lydia to where Emily stood like a mournful little dumpling of a ghost. “You understand, don’t you, Emily?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  Lydia stood by feeling oddly auxiliary and disoriented, her friends suddenly people she did not recognize or understand.

  Emily’s word brought a fleeting smile to Sarah’s face. “I wish you well, Sarah,” Emily said, hugging her shawl tighter as if against a sudden chill.

  Sarah nodded and turned to Lydia. “And you, Lydia, will you wish me well, too?”

  “But I will see you again eventually,” Lydia protested. “Won’t I?”

  “Of course,” Sarah said brightly, reaching out and taking hold of both of Lydia’s hands. “Just not in the same venues.” But Sarah’s eyes flickered toward Emily and with a near physical sensation of loss, Lydia realized how naive she sounded, how facile Sarah’s reassurance had been.