Chapter 33
The days blurred, lesson folding into lesson until Lydia lost all sense of time.
Posture drills, language exercises, embroidery, endless readings from dull volumes Signora Bellanti claimed would season her mind.
When her darkest gown of silk or wool appeared upon her bed, she knew it must be Sunday.
Sunday meant chapel. The family sat beneath the carved pew canopy, incense and coal smoke mingling in the air. Lydia fidgeted, her eyes slipping to the painted windows rather than the pulpit. Yet the words of the sermon lodged somewhere in her mind:
“God set the solitary in families; He joineth the scattered; He maketh them one.”
She pursed her lips. A fine promise for a preacher to make, when her brother remained miles away at school, and she was caged at Matlock House.
After service came the ritual walk back through the echoing halls, their Sunday best gleaming in lamplight: her grandfather stately in black coat, her grandmother all stiff brocade, her mother’s hands folded pale and elegant, her father close and watchful.
Ron shadowed them, Duval hovered behind Lydia’s elbow, Bellanti carried a volume of Italian verse.
The whole retinue moved like a regiment on parade.
The parlour doors swung open.
He was there.
Langston stood by the hearth, taller than she remembered, his shoulders broad beneath the cut of a Cambridge coat.
He had the Fitzwilliam brow, the familiar smirk tugging at his mouth, but in his eyes—steady, amused—there was the glint of an older brother who had measured her entourage and found it laughable.
“God save us,” he said, bowing with mock gravity. “Has my sister acquired an army in my absence? I thought I should meet a young lady. Instead, I find a general surrounded by her staff.”
Heat rose in Lydia’s cheeks, half-rage, half-delight. She broke free of Duval’s fussing hand and ran to him, curtsey forgotten, propriety crumbling. “Langston!”
His arms closed around her, lifting her for a moment off the carpet. “Still Lydia,” he murmured with a grin. “Even with a regiment at your heels.”
* * *
Rain fretted faintly at the windowpanes of Langston’s sitting room.
He had his bare feet stretched to the fender, one ankle crossed over the other, a glass of brandy held easy in his hand.
Lydia sat opposite, half-curled in a wing chair, slipper toe worrying the rug fringe, a goblet of watered claret on the table beside her.
She had been speaking fast—too fast—for the better part of an hour.
Of Duval’s quiet footfall and quicker fingers.
Of Nurse Bessette’s bandages and prods, her merciless insistence that Lydia bind what she could not feel.
Of Signora Bellanti and the balancing of books on her head, the endless turns and measures, the Italian’s eye that found fault in the set of a wrist at twenty paces.
Of Ron at the door, always. Of the noise of London, the itch of satin, the ache of being watched.
And then it came in a rush: the call that afternoon.
The whisper pitched to carry, the cool glance over a shoulder, the quick, pitying smile from Lady Bexley’s daughter.
“They looked at me as though I were some poor unfortunate to be pitied,” she said, colour high.
“I wished to slap Miss Fairchild outright.”
At last, she stopped, breath catching. The hush that followed made the fire’s small crackle sound impertinent.
She coloured. “I have poured out a flood, like any schoolroom miss. You must despise me for selfishness.”
Langston tipped his glass so the light ran along the curve. “Do you wish me to placate your vanity, Lydia, or to have done with comfort and speak honestly?”
She folded her arms. “You have grown insufferable at Cambridge.”
“I was insufferable long before,” he said mildly. “Choose.”
She glared, then dropped her gaze and pushed a curl behind her ear. “Speak honestly, then. It is what I have always asked of you.”
“Very well.” He set the glass aside and leant forward, forearms on his knees. “You think yourself smothered. Watched. Measured. You are not wrong. But you are wrong in why you think it done.”
“Because of my condition,” she said hotly. “Because I am—” she swallowed— “not as other girls are.”
“That explains the care,” he said. “It does not explain the discipline.”
Her brows knit. “Is there a difference?”
“A chasm.” He gestured with two fingers, neat as a schoolmaster drawing figures on slate. “Care binds your wounds and keeps you from the pond’s edge. Discipline teaches you to look at the pond and think three thoughts ahead before your boot leaves the grass.”
“That sounds like Signora Bellanti.”
“She is tedious because she is correct,” he returned. “You take the leash, the muzzle, and Ron in the doorway as proof you are a prisoner. Very well—some days, perhaps. But the drills, the postures, the languages, the hours of repetition—those are not a cage.”
He caught her eye. “They are instruction.”
“Then why,” Lydia demanded, “does it not keep them from slighting me so?”
“Because the key is not yet yours. They do not whisper because you are weak, Lydia—they do so because you are above them.” Langston’s expression sharpened. “Jealousy is the first weapon they will use, and if you show the wound, they will strike there every time.”
She blinked at that.
He held out his hand. “Give me your left.”
Her fingers curled in her lap, stubborn, before she set them in his palm. His thumb traced the faint twin pin-pricks at the heel of her hand, pale as candleflame scars. “This is where you began,” he said softly. “The fork. The blood. The room in uproar. I should scold you still.”
“I did not know how else to make them understand,” she whispered. “That Henry Thomas is not—” She broke off.
He let her hand fall back into her lap and sat back, gaze steady. “Listen to me now and do not take umbrage until I have done.”
He waited for her small nod. “Grandpapa holds one of the largest estates in the kingdom. Father is not merely his heir; he is a soldier whose name soldiers speak with a certain tone. Mother has founded charity institutions of her own devising; women rise when she enters a room. I shall take the title in due time but I will be measured a hundred ways before then. Henry Thomas may find the Church; he has a steadiness that would suit it. And you, Lydia—” his voice gentled— “you are the lone daughter of this house.”
“I am aware,” she said, brittle.
“You hear only the ribbon and the curtsey in that phrase,” he said. “I hear the weight. Do you know what you represent in other men’s eyes?”
“You think me property,” she snapped.
“No,” he said, and the word cut clean. “To some, you will be a prize to win and wear. To others, a way to step where they could not. That is the world. It is not fair. It is simply so.”
She stared at him, throat working. “You make me a pawn.”
“I shall make you a queen,” he said, with sudden force. “If you learn the board.”
A reluctant smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. “Queens have been known to topple kings.”
“Then we must find you a crown that fits,” he said dryly.