Page 7 of The Earl’s Second Chance

“Lady Mary, you play as if pursuing the notes with a weapon.”

“I practise four hours each day.”

“Then practise listening for one.”

He gave her Mozart, then folk airs, then a simple duet to play with Kitty. Slowly Mary learned that expression was not vanity, and that pleasure could carry meaning as surely as a sermon.

Kitty was restless during history and shy during languages. One rainy afternoon, Lady Susan found the margin of her exercise book covered in tiny, exquisite studies of hands.

Within a fortnight, a drawing master arrived from London.

Mr. Bell stared at Kitty’s first landscape for several minutes. “Who taught you to see light?”

Kitty blushed. “No one.”

“Then no one has interfered. Excellent.”

For the first time in her life, Kitty possessed something Lydia could neither lead nor ridicule out of her. She began walking alone with a sketchbook. Her cough disappeared. Her voice grew steadier.

Lydia resisted everything.

She hid Lady Susan’s spectacles, bribed a footman to carry a note to a groom, cut two inches from a mourning gown, and told the dancing master that she had been promised presentation at sixteen. When corrected, she screamed that everyone hated her because she was young and pretty.

Her father answered each rebellion with calm consequence. Privileges vanished. Letters were inspected. Rides were supervised. Lydia interpreted steadiness as tyranny and longed for the careless father who had once laughed at what he was too idle to prevent.

At Christmas she escaped through a service passage to attend a tenants’ dance in the village. She was found at midnight in the company of two young officers, one of whom had wagered that he could kiss an earl’s daughter before Twelfth Night.

Lord Herfershire dismissed the officer from the estate and confined Lydia to her rooms.

The next morning she hurled a porcelain shepherdess against the wall.

Her mother flinched. Her father did not. “You will leave for Miss Templeton’s academy after Epiphany,” he said. “You must learn to govern yourself.”

Fanny wept, but stood beside him. “I love you too much to help you ruin yourself.”

Lydia stared at them as if they had become strangers. Perhaps they had.

CHAPTER FIVE

A Year of Becoming

The year of mourning altered them by increments too small to notice until the whole family had changed.

Lady Herfershire learned to receive tenants’ wives without condescension and noble ladies without panic. She discovered that kindness, memory, and sincere interest were social gifts no dancing master could teach. Lady Susan instructed her in precedence; Mrs. Gardiner advised her in taste; experience taught her confidence.

When Lady Allerton, a widowed marchioness from the neighbouring estate, called for the third time, she remained two hours.

“My dear Lady Herfershire,” she said, accepting another cup of tea, “you have the most comfortable room in the county.”

Fanny glanced around at the unfashionable cushions, the bowl of late roses, and the embroidery frame abandoned on a chair. Once, she would have apologized.

“Then you must come often enough to prove it,” she replied.

Their friendship began there.

Lord Herfershire spent increasing periods in London, where he took his seat in Parliament. The first time he rose to speak, it was on a bill concerning rural roads. He had intended only a brief observation. Instead, his wit sharpened an argument rather than a person, and the chamber listened.

He returned to Grosvenor Square flushed with purpose.