The Golden Season (3 page)

“Well, Terwilliger?”

“The only counsel I can give is that you find a
very
wealthy husband.”

“You mean
marry
?” She sounded as though he’d just suggested she sell flowers in Covent Garden.

He nodded. “As you should have done years ago. You should have wed your fortune to another of equal stature and yourself to a man devoted to the concept of economy. A temperate, conscientious, careful fellow with an impeccable pedigree who could have multiplied your net value while still allotting you a generous allowance.”

“An allowance. Someone to portion out to me that which is already mine.” She gave a delicate shudder. “But, yes, I suppose I might have to consider marrying,” she finished.

“Surely things have not come to that?” Emily cried softly.

“I’m afraid so, Emily.” Lady Lydia nodded. “We must face facts and the fact seems clear: I must wed,” she finished in sepulchral tones.

Easier said than done, Terwilliger thought unhappily.

“What is it now, Terwilliger?” Lady Lydia demanded, seeing his glum expression. “Has the earth opened up and swallowed my town house?”

“May I speak frankly?” he asked, certain he was about to overstep himself. But he had three daughters, all of whom he’d successfully married off, and he was confident he knew something about matchmaking. Even though he did not belong to the exalted ranks to which Lady Lydia did, he surmised that when all was said and done the concerns and requirements of the
ton’s
bachelors were simply amplifications of those from his own strata. But most of all he felt compelled to offer advice because he felt partially responsible for her current predicament.

“By all means.”

“Lady Lydia, for years you have been turning down marriage proposals from the finest and wealthiest gentlemen of the
ton
. I do not think of an eligible bachelor who would risk humiliation by tendering a second offer.”

“I am sure there exist a few men who have not yet proposed marriage to me.” Her tone was dry.

“True,” Terwilliger said slowly, “but given the quality of those whom you’ve already turned down, I doubt someone with a lesser pedigree would think he would receive a different answer than his betters. You are famously unattainable, I am afraid.”

“You don’t think anyone will offer for me?” The idea clearly startled her.

He cleared his throat, trying to find the line between candidness and delicacy. “I think that the men who would suit your particular requirements are just as famously proud as you. Once it is known that you are in financial straits, the reason for your accessibility will be evident.”

“But everyone marries to better their situation,” she said. “Either financially or socially. I may not bring wealth to the union, but I still have an ancient and honorable name.”

“Very true,” he said. “But the manner in which you have deported yourself these last years has given the polite world reason to believe that you consider yourself above dynastic politics. You have made a reputation as someone who need only please herself and does not concern herself with the choices of others.”

“And so I am. Or rather, have been,” she corrected herself.

“Exactly.
Have been,
” he said. “There are those who will take malicious delight in the necessity that drives your marital ambitions. Including former suitors and rivals.” He sought for some nicer way to phrase the next, but in the end, Terwilliger proved himself a banker. “They might seek to decrease your value in the eyes of potential suitors.”

Such smallness not only repelled her but fascinated her. “In what way could they do this?”

“By mocking your past refusal to marry as pretentious and suggesting that you are desperate.”

“I am.”

“Such ruthless honesty. Few men would want their future wife to be the subject of their friends’ derision or consider themselves the only choice left to a desperate woman.”

She inhaled at the ugly words. “No. I can see that they would not.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Lady Lydia,” he hurried on. “I have no doubt you will entertain many offers once it is known you are interested in matrimony, but those gentlemen who come up to scratch might not be of the sort you could have chosen had you done the responsible thing and married years ago.”

“And just what sort of gentlemen do you imagine now will be paying me court?”

“Well,” he said, picking his way carefully. “I would expect them to be either men who would be happy with the name and cachet you bring to the union or men who feel the press of time in which to produce heirs.”

“I see,” she said. “In other words, social climbers who will not care that I am desperate or old men as desperate as I.”

“In the greater part,” he admitted uncomfortably.

“I’m afraid that won’t do,” she said.

“No. It won’t do,” Mrs. Cod inserted, head bobbing in agreement.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I refuse to marry a mushroom for the manure from which he’s sprung. Nor shall I marry an old man to be his broodmare.”

“I don’t think things are quite so grim as that. Doubtless there are healthy young heirs to lesser fortunes who will be thrilled should you show them some encouragement.”

“How much of a lesser fortune do you suggest I must consider?”

He would not lie. In the upper echelons of Lady Lydia’s world, marriages were contracted to bolster foundering empires or grow them. It was a rare case for two people to wed for other reasons. “Substantially less.”

“That won’t do, either. If I must marry, I expect at the very least to continue on in a situation akin to the one I now enjoy.”

He had no idea how to respond. She sounded as though she thought she had a choice.

“Who knows the extent to which I am in debt?” she asked.

Terwilliger lifted a hand. “It is generally assumed that everyone in Society is in debt. It isn’t as if you had lost a fortune gaming in one evening. You do not have any single outstanding debt. You have dispersed your fortune over a large field, Lady Lydia. Deeply and widely.”

“And enjoyed every moment of it, Terwilliger,” she said with another smile. “How many are privy to the information about the fleet?”

“None as yet. Once it gets out, there will be nasty financial repercussions for all involved, including this bank. I shall, of course, remain discreet, but the rumor mill will begin to turn soon enough.”

“When do you expect the crew to return?”

“Well, we have to send ships for them and then return them here. The journey around the cape is a long one. I should say three to four months.”

She thought a minute. “I need this Season, Mr. Terwilliger, the entire Season without being hobbled by suggestions that I am in desperate straits.”

“Why is that?”

She rose to her feet. “Because before my future husband learns of my poverty he must be so convinced that I am his perfect mate, the news will cause him nothing more than slight disappointment.”

He gazed at her in bemusement. “And who is this future husband?”

“Good heavens, Terwilliger,” she said, motioning for Emily Cod to rise, too. “I will only know that after I have met him.”

At the same time, one hundred and twenty-three miles northeast of London on the Norwich coast near the small town of Cromer, a similar meeting was taking place at Josten Hall.

Captain Ned Lockton, recently retired from His Majesty’s naval service at the age of twenty-eight, sat in the library of his ancestral home facing his family: his brother, Marcus Lockton, the Earl of Josten; Nadine, the earl’s wife; and his widowed sister, Mrs. Beatrice Hickston-Tubbs. Also in attendance were two eighteen-year-old, sullen-looking Pinks of the
ton
whose resemblance declared them kin: Josten and Nadine’s son and heir, Harry, and Beatrice’s Phillip, fondly known as Pip to the family. Though no one was feeling very fond of either young man at the moment. The rest of the children, Beatrice’s twenty-year-old daughter, Mary, and Josten’s fifteen- year-old twin boys, being unimplicated in the current crisis, had elected not to attend the family meeting, already showing more sense than both boys combined.

Beatrice regarded her tall, redheaded son worriedly, then glanced with similar concern at Harry, who was blond and elegant. They were such handsome, angelic-looking lads. How could simple high spirits have led to such a pass?

Because Lockton men were passionate and proud and, mayhap, a bit overly confident.

Now she glanced at her brother Ned, two decades her and Josten’s junior. Luckily, he had been the family changeling, born without any of the famous Lockton passion or conceit. Lucky for them, too, for if he had any of those family traits, he would never fall in with their plans for him.

“There is nothing else for it. You shall have to find an heiress and wed her as soon as possible,” Josten said to Ned in his most commanding voice, which was impressive, indeed.

Unless, that is, one happened to be Captain Ned Lockton, who did not look the least bit awed. Not, unfortunately, because Ned owned any of the cool, imperious unflappability of, say, a Beau Brummell or Lord Alvanley. No, thought Beatrice, Ned simply looked genially oblivious. His handsome face held not a whit of annoyance or affront. He seemed much more interested in the apple he was peeling than the conversation.

“Do you hear me, Ned?” the earl asked, his ruddy, equally handsome face set into the stern lines of a born patriarch.

A smile curved Ned’s well- molded lips, briefly scoring his lean, tanned cheek with the dimple. It was a very nice dimple, Beatrice thought with more relief than approval, one that would soon hopefully play havoc with the ladies’ hearts. Having popped off to join the navy fourteen years ago, he’d never had the opportunity to take his rightful place as one of the
ton
’s most eligible bachelors. Instead, taking his godfather Admiral Lord Nelson’s advice, Ned had joined the navy rather than have purchased a commission. It still annoyed Beatrice.

If a fellow must indulge his patriotic fervor he might as well look good doing it, in a lovely red coat and scarlet sash. Naval officers didn’t even get to wear their uniforms ashore. In Beatrice’s opinion, a terrible mistake on the part of the admiralty. Ned would be downright dashing in uniform.

Beatrice studied her younger sibling critically. She wasn’t as familiar with him as one might guess a sister should be. He’d been home only a week, and in the preceding years she’d seen him but a handful of times, on those occasions when he’d been home awaiting a new assignment. And, to be honest, at those times she hadn’t paid much attention to his looks. All Lockton men were ridiculously good- looking. She took it for granted. But now she was gratified to see that a hot Barbary sun had only burnished his tousled locks to a brighter gold and rather than scalding his complexion permanently red, the sun had left him tanned. Not stylish perhaps, but better than boiled.

Thank God, Ned’s face had been spared in naval battle. He would not be nearly so useful in solving the current unpleasantness without his breathtaking masculine beauty. A shadow caught in the cleft of a manly chin and a thicket of dark lashes obscured the clear blue-gray eyes lowered on the apple in his hand. His nose was Romanesque, his brow clear, and his physique that of a young Adonis.

It would have been better, of course, if his Olympian beauty had been married to Olympian forcefulness, like Marcus’s. Young ladies did so like a forceful man. How affable, accommodating Ned had ever managed to captain a ship full of ruffians was a matter of open debate. Still, Beatrice had noted the attention he’d already garnered from the ladies of Cromer. Hopefully, London ladies would be equally impressed. They had to be.

“There’s no other way to do it,” she muttered.

Ned glanced up. “No other way to what, Bea?”

“To restore the family fortune!” Josten roared. “What do you think we’ve been talking about? Did I not make clear that we are in dire financial circumstances? I should think the necessity of your finding a rich bride would be self-evident.”

“Don’t mean to be so thick-witted, but . . . my last visit home the family fortunes seemed secure. What happened to them?”

“Oh, what
didn’t
happen to them, Neddie?” Nadine cried, waving her lace kerchief about. Her fair ringlets bobbed around a face still as pretty as it had been when she and Marcus had wed. “The investments failed, the Corn Laws are making it impossible for the farms to profit, the children stand in dire need of things—”

“What sorts of things?” Ned broke in, glancing with interest at his nephews. They slouched lower in their seats. They were under strict orders not to speak, which, as both of them were notably voluble, would normally have presented them a challenge. But under their uncle’s mildly inquisitive gaze, they seemed to maintain their silence without much difficulty after at all. Odd.

“Oh, you know,” Nadine said, her gaze shifting away. “Things young people need.”

Bright spots of color appeared on Nadine’s round, soft cheeks. Ned regarded her mildly.

“Such as . . . ?” he prompted.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Ned,” Josten said irritably. “The essential point is that we haven’t the proverbial pot to piss in. Does it really make any difference how we came to such a pass?”

“Well, since I’m the one whom you have asked to marry an heiress to recoup the lost fortune, I don’t mind admitting that I should like to know.”

There was nothing accusatory in Ned’s voice, and his posture was as relaxed as ever. Nonetheless, Nadine blanched and her eyes welled with tears. “You are being horrid, Neddie.”

“Am I?” Ned asked. “Forgive me. That wasn’t my intent. I’m simply curious as to where the pot we are all used to piss in has gone.”

Despite the severity of the situation, Beatrice could not suppress a chuckle. Ned could not know how droll that sounded because Ned wasn’t droll. Or at least he never had been before. Lockton men were known for their beauty and forcefulness, not their
bon mots
. Josten shot her a reproachful glare. She stopped chuckling, reminding herself that these were serious matters.