Page 17 of Miss Dignified
“Did you buy your colors because your cousins did?”
The cider was good, the apple tart perfection itself. Not too sweet, not too messy. The conversation was on safer ground, and the ache in Dylan’s back had subsided. Perhaps he was not lonely so much as he was in want of domesticity, little doses of comfort and companionship at the end of the day…
He set aside that thought, lest he be purchasing himself a dog next. “I bought a commission in part because that was any patriotic fellow’s duty and also just to get the hell away from my father. He was determined that I become his steward as well as his heir, and I was determined…”
“Yes?”
To leave. To get away. To be free. More fool he. “Enough of that. Tell me your best memory.”
Mrs. Lovelace set a second apple tart on Dylan’s plate from the basket in the center of the table. “I well recall the day my brother was born. I was an only child until he came along, and the notion that I would be an older sister was tantalizing. No longer would I be the youngest member of the household, the girl everybody ordered about and corrected and scolded.”
“Your parents were stern with you?” Parents sometimes put high expectations on an only child, and thus she put high expectations on herself. Dylan had certainly been burdened with expectations as the only boy.
“My mother was and is the dearest woman you’d ever want to meet.” Mrs. Lovelace smiled slightly at the mention of her mama. “I realized, though, when my brother arrived that my failings were beyond salvation by earthly powers. I adored my papa, and he was always patient with me, but when I acquired a brother…”
She sipped her cider, and Dylan realized the late hour had also led her down paths of memories she preferred not to visit.
“When you acquired a brother?” Odd phrasing, but then, most bachelors referred toacquiringa wife.
“I realized that I was and always would be a distant second best to a son. I always had been, without even knowing it. My father was tolerant of me, not doting. My mother indulged me to an extent because she knew the burden I carried. I would never be anything but a girl. As children do, I grasped that my brother mattered, while I would only matter if he decided I did. I thus became a very conscientious older sister.”
How old could Lydia have been when she’d grasped the realities of her universe? Five? Seven? “And you are conscientious, still.” Not a failing, of course, but duty alone didn’t leave much room for joy, affection, or apple tarts late at night.
Though duty mattered, of course.
“I was happy,” Mrs. Lovelace said. “You were, too, on your pony, summering with cousins. Perhaps childhood has such a rosy reputation because adulthood can be yet still more grim by comparison?”
Dylan ate the second tart and finished the cheese—the kitten in his lap was apparently fast asleep. “Are you happy here, Mrs. Lovelace?” Did she ever long for home as he did, ever wonder if she’d acquire a partner in life to cuddle up with at the end of the day?
“I am abundantly happy,” she said, quite firmly. “I have tremendous freedom as your housekeeper, and I see the results of my own hard work. You have hired good people to look after your residence, and you pay me generous wages that I can use as I see fit. Why would I not be happy?”
Because she was lonely. Because she took in stray kittens lest they be lonely too. Because life could not be entirely about gleaming candlesticks and swept hearths.
And someday, for Dylan, life would not be entirely about duty, honor, and the aftermath of war. “Where is home for you, Mrs. Lovelace?”
“The Midlands. You?”
She was prevaricating with a generality that encompassed a third of England. “Glamorgan, though I also spent time in Radnorshire growing up. If we’re to be subtly interested in one another, I should know where you hail from, madam.”
She set aside her glass. “The Shropshire countryside. I was educated mostly at home, and my mother came from Surrey. We have loftier and somewhat distant relations elsewhere in the county.”
More prevarication. Dylan didn’t have to be one of Wellington’s best reconnaissance officers to notice that Lydia Lovelace wouldn’t give up the name of the closest market town, not even the name of an obscure village. Closer investigation was surely warranted.
“Tell me about your fancy relatives.”
Chapter Five
Mrs. Lovelace became interested in rearranging the fabric scraps and yarn in her workbasket. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about one of my mother’s relatives. Marcus Glover inherited the Tremont earldom at a young age and bought his colors after only a year at university. He went off to war and hasn’t come home. The family isn’t saying much about his whereabouts.”
Tremont again? Bad enough that Dylan had brough him up in conversation with Goddard. “Were you fond of him?”
“I am curious. A peer of the realm—if he’s extant—should be difficult to misplace, even for the British army.”
Dylan had nearly let the men misplace Tremont into an unmarked grave on several occasions. They had refrained, citing his lordship’s youth and dimwittedness.
“The kindest thing I can say about Tremont is that I know nothing of his whereabouts, and if he developed a scintilla of intelligence while he held his commission—for he brought little enough with him from England—he will keep me in ignorance of his whereabouts.”
Mrs. Lovelace was winding a dark blue mass of wrinkled yarn—an abandoned project perhaps—into a ball. She ceased her winding. “You would do him an injury?”
