The Golden Season (11 page)

“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.

They were waiting for her.

It was not vanity that made her think this; it was experience. Ever since she’d made her debut, she had been at the center of the public’s attention. From birth, she’d been on display. Her parents had well equipped her for the life she was to lead; her manners were exquisite, her deportment gracious. By ten, she knew to speak when spoken to, to be decorative when not, and what words would best please an aged princess or a gruff prime minister.

But on the day her parents were driving up to an acquaintance’s villa high in the Swiss Alps and their carriage had overturned on a mountain pass, killing them both, everything had changed.

One week she’d been surrounded by affection, elegance, adventure, and laughter—the next plunged into a world of muted colors, of ticking clocks and hushed corridors. There had been no distraction from her grief. The servants, the governess, the dancing instructor, and the housekeepers were all very kind. Very solicitous. Very . . . separate.

When Eleanor had arrived to sponsor her debut in Society, she’d sobbed with gratitude. And when she’d been presented at court and saw again the familiar expressions of approval and admiration, she’d felt she’d been delivered back into the world of the living.

She’d exerted herself to be the center of excitement and conversation and people, so that she would always be wanted, anticipated, and welcomed. She never made the mistake of taking Society’s approval for granted.

And now her future hung in the balance and those social skills that had always come so effortlessly seemed suddenly to have abandoned her. An unnatural tautness settled about the mouth that wore smiles so easily, and an unusual stiffness accompanied her usually graceful step. She briefly closed her eyes, conjuring up a pair of strong phantom arms to enfold her.

And just like that, her balance was restored and her sense of humor came to her aid. She was husband-hunting, not dying. And really, she told herself, it could not begin to approach the difficulty of deciding which modiste would fashion her gown for Spenser’s masquerade ball honoring Wellington during this summer of the Glorious Peace. In fact, it was less difficult. She knew exactly what she required in a husband: wealth.

And with that, she took a deep breath, gathered her skirt lightly in her hand, and followed Eleanor up the stairs.

“Ah, Lady Grenville, how delightful. And here are you, too, Lady Lydia. Everyone is so kind to come to my little party.” Lady Pickler, her keg-shaped body draped in saffron-striped silk, glanced at Emily. “And Mrs. Cod.”

First she had the audacity to dismiss Sarah and now Emily? Lydia’s back stiffened. “How amusing that you call kindness what everyone else in the
ton
refers to as—”

“—pleasure,” Eleanor interjected before she could say “an onerous obligation.” The duchess linked her arm through Lydia’s, discreetly jabbing a fingernail into her side.

Lady Pickler accepted the praise as her due. “One does what one can to make the Season gay. Not that it isn’t a great deal of work. I shall have to retire to my bed for a week come tomorrow. But you all so love my little dinner al fresco. How could I deny you?”

“How could you?” Lydia purred.

On the opposite side of the hall, a group of the
ton
’s most eligible scions spotted their newly arrived party and began making their way over. “Lady Lydia!” they hailed her, trying to navigate through the crowd at the door.

Alas, Lady Pickler had other plans for the bachelors.

“Ah!” she said, taking both Lydia and Eleanor by their elbows and spinning them around. She tugged them forth with the determination of a small barge crossing turbulent waters, Emily trailing in their wake.

“Pardon us. Excuse us. Yes, yes. Oh my. No time to stop,” she chirped overbrightly at acquaintances who looked as though they would impede her progress by greeting either Eleanor or Lydia. “Can’t stop to chat now. Her Grace is most eager to see what improvements I have made to the park.”

Having quickly shunted them through the crush in the house to the relatively empty terrace overlooking the yard, she deposited them with feigned regret at having to return to “greet those other people.” She assured them that there were many “wonderful new vistas to explore” and then all but pushed Lydia off the bottom step onto the lawn, flapping her hands playfully as she urged them to “get lost amidst the wilderness!”

“I am sure she would like you lost,” Eleanor muttered. “Permanently.”

“I don’t feel any need to witness the atrocities that woman perpetuates on nature, Lydia,” Emily said, puffing a little at having to keep up. “I see a bench over there. If you don’t mind, I think I will sit a while.”

“But of course, Emily.”

Crowds agitated Emily. Lydia suspected the asylum’s crowded facilities and the potential for chaos amongst its inmates could account for her distress. She didn’t have much time to ponder, however, because the crowds were overflowing the house and spilling out onto the terrace in her wake. It was time to shine.

Like an actress taking her mark, Lydia drew herself up, immersing herself in the role that had become second nature. She greeted those she knew with outstretched hands and smiles and was greeted in kind. For the next half hour she chatted and flirted and told merry stories and listened appreciatively to those stories told by others. She accepted the gentlemen’s compliments gracefully and where called for, returned the favor to wives and daughters.

She even managed to prise a smile from Jenny Pickler, who proved completely tongue-tied in the presence of gentlemen. It was a pity, Lydia thought, that she did not smile more often. She was a striking girl with inky hair and straight black brows and remarkable, clear skin. But her expression was so thunderous and unwelcoming, it was hard to appreciate her beauty.

Her sympathies engaged, Lydia lingered to speak to the girl and discovered that the reason Jenny looked so funeral faced was because she aspired to become a bluestocking, one of the earnest—some would say overeducated—ladies whom the
ton
disparaged so vehemently. At least, the
male
element of Society. It was small wonder that Jenny’s parents forbade her from associating with the bluestockings, not if they wanted to see their daughter make an acceptable match.

“Why ever did you tell them your intentions?” Lydia asked. “Tell someone your intentions and you are asking to be thwarted.”

“What do you mean, Lady Lydia?”

“Don’t ask anyone’s permission. I never do. Simply follow your head and let the chips fall where they may.”

Jenny Pickler frowned, digesting this revolutionary idea.

“Now, mind, that doesn’t mean you need to send an announcement to the
Times
about whatever it is you do. A little discretion is always advisable. But should you visit the lending libraries with a maid, or attend lectures with some sympathetic relative—and my dear, for the proper remuneration, there is always a sympathetic relation—by the time anyone notes you’ve packed your head with knowledge it will be too late. Simply go as you will. No one can keep you from becoming the person you mean to be.”