Chapter Three
Brightonwasagreatdeal less enjoyable than Lydia had expected. Every social event the Forsters were invited to seemed to be exclusively for senior officers and their wives, and all the wives were years older than she and Harriet. While they were perfectly polite, Lydia could tell they didn’t approve of her.
Jealous old cats, she privately termed them; jealous of her youth and beauty, and the way the single officers (and even some whose wives were present) fawned over her. Indeed, if she had been inclined to catch a husband of senior rank, it would have been the easiest thing imaginable.
Instead, she spent her days being squired about by men older than her father for the most part, fending off their enthusiastic attentions with firm disclaimers that she was far too young to think of marriage.
The one exception was, to her great surprise, Colonel Fitzwilliam. He had called the very day after their first meeting and asked if he might escort her for a promenade along the seafront, chaperoned by the maid, of course.
Lydia had no way to gracefully refuse, and she did want to go for a promenade along the front, she reminded herself. Harriet was almost beside herself with excitement, insisting on re-tying Lydia’s bonnet ribbon three times to achieve the perfect jaunty bow before she pronounced her fit to be seen.
Colonel Fitzwilliam was rather nice, Lydia had to admit as they walked. He was certainly an easy conversationalist, listening as she chattered away and actually asking questions which showed he had been paying attention to her words, which was really quite surprising.
At one point, having remarked that the wives of senior officers seemed to occupy a peculiar kind of precedence in Brighton, one that had nothing to do with family or fortune and rather more to do with proximity to the possibility of loss, she immediately wished the words unsaid. He had gone quiet for a moment, and she had thought she had offended him.
“That is very astutely observed,” he said instead.
Lydia blinked, not quite sure whether she was being flattered or taken seriously, and suspecting it might be the latter, whichwas a disconcerting novelty. She filed the moment away without quite knowing why, and moved the conversation on to safer ground.
Still and all, as a marriage prospect he was entirely out of the question. An earl’s son would never marry someone from her station in life, so she saved her smiles for the younger captains and lieutenants who eyed her admiringly as they passed.
At one point she was sure she spied Wickham, but he turned abruptly from their path and disappeared down a side street. He was already gone from sight by the time she could peer along the street after him, and she could hardly ask Fitzwilliam to chase after him, so she sighed inwardly and rued the missed opportunity to ask him what he thought of her new bonnet, the one she had so cunningly trimmed all by herself.
Fitzwilliam waited until after he had delivered her back to an excited Harriet to thank her for her company and ask if she might care to walk out with him again the following day.
“Oh, I think we might have a prior engagement,” Lydia tried to demur, but Harriet immediately overrode her.
“No, no, Lydia, it was only a morning call on Mrs Garmond. I can quite happily go by myself, and you will enjoy a walk with the colonel far more, I am sure.” Harriet dimpled at Fitzwilliam, somehow managing to convey the impression that she would definitely rather be walking out with him than attending some dull tea.
Lydia was forced to admit Harriet was quite correct, though. Walking out with Fitzwilliam was indeed preferable to amorning tea with an old lady who watched her every move with a gimlet eye. So she thanked him prettily and agreed that he might call for her the following day at ten.
Lydia had been in Brighton a full fifteen days before her first ball, and was quite sick of smiling prettily for gouty old men who thought she’d make a fine wife. Honestly, it was perfectly dreadful that Colonel Fitzwilliam was the only man she actually liked who paid her any attention, and he wasn’t really interested in her, she was sure. He treated her rather like a younger sister who needed an eye kept on her to make sure she didn’t do anything silly, not responding even when she flirted with him out of sheer desperation.
“Wickham,” she almost gasped with delight when his handsome face was one of the first she saw at the ball. “How wonderful to see you; I have been just dying of boredom without you!”
Wickham smiled down at Lydia and said how happy he was to see her too, not mentioning that he had every opportunity to call but dared not while Colonel Fitzwilliam was sniffing around her. He had only attended the ball tonight because he had discovered Fitzwilliam had been sent off to London with important dispatches that afternoon, and would not return until the morrow at the earliest.
“Darling Lydia, I have missed you so,” he said, doing his best to sound lovestruck. In truth, it was not difficult to soundenthusiastic for her company. The thought of stealing her from under that prig Fitzwilliam’s nose was utterly delicious. He’d play the devoted swain as much as she wished.
“Oh, Wickham.” She gazed up at him as he led her to the floor for the first dance. “I have missed you. You would not believe the deadly bores I have had to be polite to, this last week!”
She was already half in love with him, Wickham thought. Pushing her over the edge into full-blown infatuation should be a simple matter. By the end of the evening he’d have her eating out of his hand, especially if he judiciously spiked the punch he brought with her supper with a little brandy from his pocket flask.
“You know I can’t,” Lydia giggled when Wickham importuned her for a third dance after supper. Colonel Forster was eyeing her narrowly, and she had learned he was quite a stickler for propriety, especially when more senior officers were present. “I’d be locked up in the house for a week!”
“I can’t bear to see any other man touch you!” Wickham claimed, wondering if he was doing it up too brown. Lydia had imbibed plenty of spiked punch, though, and gazed up at him through soft brown eyes, drinking in every word.
“I hate to see you dance with any other woman too, Wicky. I hated Mary King so much, why ever did you ask her to marry you?”
“A man would be a fool to pass up a fortune dangled under his nose,” Wickham said dryly, before recalling himself.
“Would that I had a fortune!” Lydia sighed dramatically.
“Your fortune is in your beauty and charm, my darling. You have certainly enchanted me.”
Lydia giggled and cast him a slanting, mischievous look under her lashes, a look he’d seen on many a lady before. Wickham smiled.
“Pay a visit to the retiring room,” he murmured in her ear, “and when you come out, turn right instead of left. I’ll be waiting for you in the last room at the end of the passage.”
