Delightfully Dangerous (Knights Without Armor Book 1) Page 12

  Aye, this was the best course of action, and he would regard this as a mission—and he’d never failed before, he would not fail this time around.

  Feeling quite confident, he reached for his hat, gloves and walking stick.

  It was time to go to the ball and ruin the loveliest lady he’d ever known.

  Lydia pinched her cheeks in a vain attempt to force some color into them.

  Her heart hadn’t stopped drumming in her chest, and she felt quite weakened. Rose had shattered most of her ideals concerning Richard. She had believed him to be a man unconcerned with other women, and immune to the hankering for danger. But now…now she knew. Her eyes had been opened. Richard wasn’t the saint she had painted him to be. The man had kept a mistress. The man had done his bit during the wars against Napoleon in a way that none of them had imagined. Rose had sworn her to secrecy, and said that even she did not know the exact role Richard had played, but she had been told by Micah that it wasn’t a small role, and it hadn’t been not fraught with peril.

  It was all a cloak and dagger operation and she didn’t like it one bit. She would not marry him now. There were too many secrets. Secrets, she gathered, he could never reveal to her, and the secrets he could tell her, she wagered she didn’t want to know. She had no yearning to hear his stories about how he had kept women—or even how he had visited brothels. An innocent young lady like her wasn’t supposed to know about such things, but she had been enterprising enough to eavesdrop on Micah and on a few of her male acquaintances like James Newson and it was quite shocking to hear what they talked about while playing billiards or cards and thought that all the ladies were safely away in their drawing rooms. Rose had calmly told her about the mistress whom Richard had once kept here in Town. Lydia couldn’t understand it. She’d heard about kept women before and knew enough to realize that doing so was to invite scandal, and yet most men had them and most women looked the other way.

  Her mother had decided to keep to her private chambers during this ball. As her brother and Rose were hosting, she dare not try to hide away but oh, how she was tempted.

  “Lydia?” Her mother’s voice was soft and more like how she had remembered her when her father was still alive and she had been prone to better moods.

  “Yes, Mama?” She turned to look at her mother, who stood framed in the open doorway of her bedchamber. “Mama…you are…”

  “Ready for the ball?” She smiled gently. “Aye. I thought that you might need some motherly support tonight.”

  “I…I don’t know what I need, Mama. Perhaps, perhaps before any of this started I should have fled back to the country.”

  “We all decided to stay and give you a Season you won’t soon forget. You quite had your heart set on it.”

  “I know, Mama. I know that’s what we decided, and what I wanted, and yet…I want the country. I am just a quaint country girl fit for lovely lazy picnics and fishing on a warm summer day, and riding through the snowy lanes in the winter.” Summer and winter were her two favorite seasons. She also loved the springtime when Wiltshire was blooming, and the autumn when the leaves were falling for the winter ahead. There was nothing quite like wandering through Maidstone and Castleton during that time. Aye, she was a Moonraker at heart. Her soul belonged to their beautiful county and to The Moonrakers Ladies Society that Richard’s sister Julia had started several years ago. She also had the thrilling races along the quiet country lanes to look forward to. During the winter months they stopped their racing due to the weather. She knew deep down that if she married, her adventures, along with Jamie Poole would be gone, although marriage didn’t keep Julia from taking part in a race now and then, though her husband Freddie usually accompanied her.

  Somehow, she didn’t think Richard would be as free thinking. He would decide that that it was time for her cast aside her spirited ways. It would be time to fill the nursery and settle down to working on her embroidery and overseeing the servants. James Newson would be living quite a simple life, but she was used to the simple life, though she’d been indulged quite liberally since her brother had become a peer of the realm. Adjusting to life as a lord’s sister had been difficult at first, but she had been raised properly, and knew exactly how to act like the lady that she now was, even if she hadn’t yet held a courtesy title.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can take London. Walking and riding out in the parks, well, it just doesn’t compare to life in Wiltshire.” It was all rather boring—aside from her time as Jamie there wasn’t anything keeping her in London. Jamie. Her heart pained. She’d have to leave Jamie and everything that came along with that disguise behind her. It was time to put Jamie behind her, and reclaim Lydia. She kept telling herself that, so why did she feel as if someone was stabbing her straight through the heart whenever she thought about it? Why did she feel as if losing Jamie would be like losing a part of herself? The wilder side of her told her she wasn’t done having adventures, whilst the sensible side told her to have done with it, and go back to being the proper Lady Lydia before it was too late to salvage her reputation.

  “That’s your father’s influence. He always preferred the bucolic life to London living. He always favored the tranquility of it—but he wanted the best for all his children, and giving you the opportunity to find a good man to marry is what he would have wanted for you. It’s the only life for you, Lydia. You cannot relegate yourself to being a spinster and beholden to Micah for every little scrap he wants to throw your way.”

  Scraps. There it was. That’s what her mother thought of her. She thought she only deserved scraps should she not succeed in catching a man and making him her husband. Tears welled in her eyes, and she looked away from the baroness. She had to be cold at the moment, or she would lose her nerve. Her mother never understood her. Her mother never would understand her. She cared not for what Lydia wanted—only what she had decided Lydia could have. She focused instead on what her mother had said about her father. There was common ground there; if she focused on the scrap remark, they would be having a good row before the ball, and she cared not for that sort of drama at the moment.

  “And yet…” Lydia sighed. “Papa never had any haughty airs to him. He was so humble and…”

  “And that is why he was such a good preacher. He knew exactly how to relate to the common man that belied his less than humble origins as the grandson of an earl. Now then, you must put on a brave face and ready yourself for tonight’s festivities.”

  Lydia moved away from her mother and went to look out her window to the street below. Carriages were arriving. Well-dressed lords and ladies were alighting from the vehicles. The ball was starting, and she was scared out of her wits. She didn’t want to see anyone tonight. For the first time in her life, she wanted to hide away from the world or run from it. Donning her Jamie disguise would do her quite well at the moment. Alas, she wouldn’t be able to sneak out by way of the back gardens without being found out.

  The glittering spectacle that would be the ball held no temptation for her. She was no longer a wide-eyed girl—she was a woman who had her eyes opened to the ways of the world, and desperately wanted to close them again.

  “I am feeling rather fatigued, Mama. Do you think…do you think I could…”

  “You want to keep to your chambers?” her mother asked bluntly.

  Lydia was relieved. There was no anger in her mother’s tone. “I’d prefer not having to dance tonight. I think I might have twisted my ankle the other day while walking in the park.”

  She glanced back at her mother to see how she could react to such a plumper. The wise glint in her eyes told her that she was seeing right through that bouncer.

  “I suppose it’s for the best. I wouldn’t want you to exacerbate that ankle. It must be dreadfully painful. By the by, my dear girl, I knew you wouldn’t accept James Newson, even if it put you at risk of having to accept your brother’s charity.” There it was. Her mother’s need to drive the dagger into her chest, whilst trying
to give her motherly advice. Lydia stared out at the arriving carriages, willing herself not to lose her temper.

  “So, you do not approve of him?”

  “I do not approve of him for you. He will do fine marrying another pretty young miss. Pray, give me some credit, Lydia. I might not be the cleverest person on the face of this earth, but I have always known that your heart belonged to another. I knew it from the first moment you grew into a young lady, and stopped thinking of Lord Tisbury as just another friend of your brother’s. Your father and I even discussed it, and he and I made plans for your future. He decided that, given time, Lord Tisbury would be a good match. Although I fear there is a side of him none of us know, and that frightens me, dear. We do not always see eye to eye, Lydia, and sometimes my hot temper and curt tongue get the better of me, but I do not want you to marry a man you do not truly know. He needs to confess all to you, before you can be his wife, just as I confessed all to your father before we were married.”

  “What did you have the need to confess, Mama?”

  “There will come a day when I can tell you that, my dear, but I do not think your sisters should know anything about my past. It would only divide us as a family, and I do not wish that. Just know that I want you to learn from my mistakes. You are the most like me out of all of my children.”

  Lydia felt pained by that statement. Did she have a habit of saying something awful and mixing it with a kind word? She wasn’t at all like her mother. Her mother and she were as different as night and day.

  Weren’t they?

  “Mama, what mistakes could you have possibly made?”

  Her mother looked away from her, and sighed, it was a nervous rattling sigh, and she looked more vulnerable than Lydia had ever seen her.

  “My beginnings were most humble indeed. I didn’t have any of the love you were lavished with as a child. I wasn’t born into a loving family—I wasn’t born into a family at all, actually.” She let out a nervous chuckle. “My father…my father, I was to find out, was a gentleman of some regard, as was his family. They were not titled, but had a vast estate, riches far beyond what I could ever dream of, and he was to inherit it all. There was only one thing keeping me from sharing in that life of privilege. He wasn’t…he wasn’t married to my mother. He had found her in some bawdyhouse.”

  At these words, her mother hung her head, and looked away from Lydia. “She raised me the best way she knew how until my father returned for me. He took me from her arms when I was about five years old. I still remember her face, and most of her ways. She wasn’t exactly a soft-spoken woman. She could be quite loud and boisterous at times, but she did love me in her own way, and she kept me safe, and I wasn’t hungry—often. Still, although she was beautiful, she was also an extremely sad creature, and her coarse tongue and some of the poor behavior I learned from her stuck with me, even though I remember her more of a ghost in my life, than anything else. There are good things I recall about her, but most of it, I prefer to forget and leave in the past. After my father fetched me away from her and that dreadful place, he called me the dirtiest and rudest little creature he had ever seen. He assured me quite forcefully that I would be trained out of my vulgar ways. He only believed I was his daughter because, as I was later to learn, I bore a mark that only those within his family bore, and I…I was the exact image of his eldest legitimate daughter. We could have been twins, actually. The day I came face to face with her, startled me to my core. After he, as he was later to say, rescued me from my mother, he delivered me into the care of two maiden aunts far away from his wife, who wanted no part of me.

  “My aunts were hard and mean women, who treated me like the little beggar I was. They never failed to tell me how grateful I should be for my dear papa rescuing me from such a wretched existence. I spent more time in the care of the household staff than I spent with them. After they both perished in a fever, I was sent away to a boarding school, where I remained, knowing that I faced an uncertain future. My father sent me the odd letter asking me how I was, but never asking me if I needed anything. I was sent the frocks that his eldest daughter no longer wanted, and I became quite competent with a needle in order to alter the dresses as I saw fit. But I knew that my time at the school would eventually end, and I would be cast off into the cruel unforgiving world beyond its walls. If I was lucky, I would find a posting as a governess with a respectable family; if I was unlucky, I would find the same work my mother had fallen into. I was told that my father’s financial support would end when I finished my education. I knew that no other family member would withdraw me from the school to make my debut into Society. I had been all but been forgotten by them. Whilst I was there, my father added another daughter and finally a son to his growing brood, and I knew it would be fortunate indeed if he continued to keep me in his thoughts. After his first wife perished in childbirth, he married again. I hoped that his second wife would spare some sympathy for my plight, alas, my hope was quickly shattered.”

  Were those tears welling in her mother’s eyes? Lydia wanted to give her comfort, but awkwardly kept staring at her mother instead. She realized her mouth was gaping open. Quickly, she closed it. The startling revelation made her look at her mother in an entirely different light. She felt a twinge of sympathy for her, and wished that their time together had been spent differently.

  “What happened to you? Everything you told us about how you and Papa met, was it all made up?”

  “Most of it was true; some of it, though, well, let us just say your father and I took a bit of liberty and kept our children from what might do them more harm than good,” her mother admitted softly. “You father was against altering it. He wanted all his children to know about how I had started out in life, but he grudgingly went along with my wishes when I convinced him it was all for the best. I…I feared my fate, Lydia. I have no shame in telling you that. All I heard in my dreams as a girl, was my father’s cruel voice telling me what a wretchedly forsaken creature I was, and that I had owed him my life. As I grew older, my time at Mrs. Foster’s School for Girls became endangered. I knew that I could not stay there forever, unless I was offered a teaching position there, or if I was fortunate enough to find a teaching position with a nice family. What I was offered, was something I never expected. On the eve of my sixteenth birthday, my father appeared like a bolt from the blue. He was no longer the strong and haughty man I recalled. The years had not been kind to him, and he looked frail, frail but determined. I almost felt a twinge of sympathy for him, wondering if perhaps he still mourned his first wife, who had died finally giving him the son he had always wanted. He told me that I was to come home with him, that the current lady of the manor and his eldest daughter were…well, they didn’t get along you see, and his wife wanted him to fetch me home, so I could amuse Theodora, and she could have full run of the house. And so, that is how I learned that I would be his eldest daughter’s companion, and that I would be ‘adopted’ into the family. I would accompany her to house parties, dinner parties, and balls, and…” Her voice faltered. She shook her head as if to push away the cobwebs that clung to the memories she was stirring. “Hope stirred within me, I wondered if perhaps I would find a friend in the second Mrs. Thorpe, and as I mentioned earlier, I was heartily disappointed. She regarded me with the same amount of disdain as the first Mrs. Thorpe had, only, she…she saw me as a means to an end. She believed I could keep the strong willed Theodora out of her hair, and that was really the only true purpose I served in her household.

  “For one brief glorious moment, I believed I was saved. Being Theodora’s companion was not a hard task to endure, she wasn’t exactly cruel, though I did have to put up with a lot of grief. However, I was allowed to partake in their lives, even though I always felt like an outsider. I believed I would be given the love I had always craved. I was mistaken. I was treated like an indentured servant. My father told his second wife and his brood of children that I was the daughter of a distant relative, and that he would be ad
opting me into the family. I think they all knew—or at least suspected. My close resemblance to Theodora could not be denied. I never knew if he had told his second wife who I truly was. The hateful way his wife looked at me confirmed my worst suspicions. She knew and she despised my very existence, but she kept her mouth shut, and never confronted me on it. I looked far too much like his sisters and his daughters, and one would have to be an idiot not to suspect my true connection to the family, but there were those who were happy to cast a blind eye to me, and pretend that I didn’t exist, save for when they wanted to talk cruelly to me, or blame me for all the bad things they had done. I…I wanted to run back to the school. I wanted to get away from it all, until the day I met your father. Then…then, I would have endured anything to stay close to him. We shared a love like no other. We were always destined for each other. I came to understand that all of my suffering had been for a reason.”

  “Lord Tisbury doesn’t feel the same way about me.” Lydia’s words sounded hollow to her ears, and her chest tightened painfully.