Page 66 of Miss Dignified
And what tender effusion came out of his mouth? What clever greeting did he offer the woman whom he esteemed above all others?
“Good morning, Mrs. Lovelace.” He bowed. “May I fix you a plate?” Had she been waiting for him? Looking forward to seeing him with equal parts glee and trepidation, as he’d been looking forward to seeing her?
“Captain, good day. I’ll stick with tea for now. I trust you slept well?”
Dylan glanced at the door, dismayed by the hint of misgiving in Lydia’s eyes. “I dreamed the most unbelievably lovely dreams… of splendors unimaginable to a mere mortal man. Breathtaking, exhausting, glorious splendors.”
Lydia frowned at him. “You sought to allow me my rest by abandoning me?”
Marvelously blunt speaking. “We would still be abed if my selfish nature had anything to say to it.” He took the seat beside her rather than sit at the head of the table. “How are you?”
She took a sip of her tea. “Gobsmacked. Again. Double-gobsmacked.”
Dylan poured for himself. “Likewise, and happily so.” He watched the steam rising from his cup and debated the wisdom of taking Lydia’s hand beneath the table. He needed to touch her, he wanted to consume her, and he wanted to sit across from her such that he could simplybeholdher.
“I hope you will not feel unhappily gobsmacked,” she went on, “when I tell you that Marcus, Earl of Tremont, is my brother.”
Dylan set his tea cup down slowly. “I beg your pardon?”
Lydia brushed a glance over him. “I am Lydia Glover, sister to Marcus, Earl of Tremont. He never came home from France. As far as we know, he was on a transport ship that docked in due course at Deptford, but—”
“LydiaGlover?”
“Lovelace is my mother’s maiden name. Mama and I got exactly nowhere making polite inquiries regarding Marcus’s whereabouts, so I thought approaching the problem from a different angle made sense.”
Nothingmade sense. “If you are Tremont’s sister, then you areLadyLydia Glover. Your mother is the Lovelace heiress.”
Lieutenant Lord Tremont had once mentioned that about his mother. Dylan took a sip of his tea, though he tasted nothing. Lydia had lied to him.Lydiahad lied to him.
He’d sensed she was keeping secrets, but this… Even Dorning and the cousins had warned him of the same possibility. Why tell him now? Why not tell him over a game of chess? When taking a meal on the terrace? Why not tell himbefore last night? If she sought to findher own brotherwhy not openly ask for aid?
“Uncle Reggie is bankrupting the estate,” Lydia went on. “The same Uncle Reggie making a pest of himself with Mama’s solicitors. Our cousin Wesley—Tremont’s and mine—can do nothing to stop him. Mama retreats into planning the village fete. The lawyers are circling, starting the process for having Marcus declared dead, when I know he’s alive, if perhaps unwell. I had to do something.”
“Did you have to lie to me?” Dylan kept his tone civil with effort.
“Yes,” Lydia said, quite firmly. “Had I marched up to your doorstep as Lady Lydia Glover, asking for your aid because you are Captain Powell, guardian angel of former soldiers, you would have been polite, reserved, and useless.”
“Useless, Lydia?”
Dylan had despised Tremont, thought him the most scurrilous, inept sycophant ever to don a uniform, which was saying a great deal. That Lydia was his sister was troubling, though one sibling did not necessarily cast the die for another. That she wouldlieto Dylan, join his household under false pretenses and a false name, then take him to bed…
“You made it plain that Marcus disgusted you,” she said. “Why would you help a woman you don’t know to find a man you don’t respect?”
She was growing annoyed, which baffled Dylan. “Because I am honorable, for God’s sake. You cannot help that your brother is a scoundrel, but that doesn’t excuse your behaving like one too.”
Dylan’s temper, which plagued him rarely but spectacularly, was threatening to take over the discussion. He knew this feeling, this bewilderment and fury, for they’d befallen him frequently when Dunacre had been alive. Dunacre had lied with such regularity and so convincingly, that Dylan had been hard put to know truth from fiction.
“I have tried to be honest with you,” Lydia said. “The moment was never right, or I’d get my courage together and then we’d be interrupted—by your cousins, by Bowen, by your sisters’ arrival. I did try, Dylan.”
Dylan mentally reviewed last night’s conversation with Lydia and recalled her admitting that the flowers were from Tremont. Tremont, her supposedly distant maternal relation, who was larking about London somewhere. Why hadn’t that disclosure resulted in a thorough interrogation from Dylan rather than…?
But Dylan knew why. Dorning had claiming that reasoning with a fellow in love was pointless, and Dorning had been right. Dylan hadn’t wanted to see the clues or notice the patterns. He’d wanted to take Lydia to bed and arise as an engaged man.
“This was the conversation you sought to have with me,” Dylan said. “The one that would make me unhappy?” The one she’d repeatedly warned him would make him unhappy.
She nodded. “And my prediction has proven accurate, though you also assured me that whatever I had to tell you, you would pitch my worries into the Channel, and then we’d be married.”
“This is not a worry, Lydia. This is a great, ill-timed falsehood.”
