Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, Lydia sat at her dressing table. She had large, dark marks under her eyes and had hardly slept. Instead, she’d spent all night telling herself that she didn’t care.
Not really.
Not about her, the woman with the gilded smile and violet perfume who’d swept into Hawthorne House like a returning duchess instead of a forgotten ex-fiancée.
Not about the way Nicholas had stood there, stiff and silent, while Victoria recounted their nearly engaged youth as if she were flipping through a cherished novel.
No, Lydia didn’t care, because this wasn’t a real marriage. It was a transaction. A carefully inked arrangement, and nothing more.
She yanked the brush through her hair harder than necessary.
“Nearly married,” she muttered. “Smug little—”
A knock interrupted her muttering. One sharp tap, then another, hesitant.
“Lydia?” Charlotte’s voice came through the door. “May I?”
Lydia hesitated, then got up and crossed the room to open it.
Charlotte stood in a soft morning gown, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She looked like she hadn’t slept much either. Her hair was pinned but askew, and there was a pinch between her brows Lydia hadn’t seen before.
“I… I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” Charlotte said, stepping inside. “About last night. About Victoria.”
Lydia crossed her arms and walked back to the window.
“Don’t be. I’m not upset.”
Charlotte blinked. “You’re… not?”
“No,” Lydia said crisply. “It’s none of my concern who the Duke of Hawthorne almost married in 1800-whatever. I’m only here for the textiles and the roof over my head.”
Her voice rose, slightly sharper than she intended.
Charlotte watched her, lips pressed into a line.
“Right,” she said carefully. “Well… still. For what it’s worth, Victoria wasn’t invited by Nicholas. It was Aunt Beatrice. She… has a history of meddling.”
“I gathered that,” Lydia said flatly.
“And Victoria—well, she may have been part of Nicholas’s past, but she wasn’t kind when the family fell into scandal. She distanced herself. Left quickly. No letters. No support.”
Lydia lifted a brow. “So why is she here now?”
Charlotte hesitated. “Because my aunt invited her to stir things up. Maybe to give Nicholas a ‘reminder’ of what he could’ve had. Or maybe… to make things difficult for you.”
That made Lydia pause.
“And she’s succeeding,” Lydia muttered.
Charlotte gave a sympathetic smile. “Nicholas didn’t know she was coming. Truly. He was just as stunned as you were. But I can tell you this—he doesn’t want her.”
“How comforting,” Lydia said, too quickly.
Charlotte tilted her head. “You don’t care, though. Right?”
Lydia gave a tight smile. “Of course not.”
“Because this isn’t a real marriage.”
“Exactly.”
“And he can speak to whomever he likes.”
“He can,” Lydia snapped.
Charlotte said nothing for a moment.
“You just raised your voice at a window.”
Lydia turned away.
She didn’t want to be jealous. She didn’t want to care who Nicholas had kissed five years ago or what letters he’d written or what poems he might have read under starlight with that overdressed debutante. She didn’t want to need his explanations.
But here she was, arms crossed too tightly, her stomach in knots over a man who still hadn’t come to speak to her. Not last night. Not this morning.
“I’m fine,” she said eventually. “Truly.”
Charlotte looked like she wanted to say more—but nodded.
“Alright. I’ll see you downstairs. Just… don’t let her rattle you. You’ve got more power than she does. Even if she doesn’t see it yet.”
Lydia nodded, managing a thin smile. “Thank you.”
The door closed softly behind her.
Lydia exhaled, long and slow.
“Power,” she whispered.
Funny how it didn’t feel like power when a single woman in a pale green silk could unravel her like a spool of thread.
***
After breakfast, Lydia didn’t care that the sky was threatening rain again. Or that she hadn’t told anyone where she was going. Or that her boots were already damp.
She just needed to get out.
Victoria’s voice still echoed in her ears—dripping with old affection and veiled superiority, the way one might speak of a favourite hound now too old to hunt.
“We were practically inseparable—”
Lydia’s jaw tightened.
She marched down Fleet Street until her breath came sharp and her skin prickled beneath her gloves. When the small brass sign of Carlisle’s Books came into view, she didn’t hesitate.
The bell above the door jingled softly as she stepped inside, and the scent of worn leather, ink, and pipe smoke enveloped her like an old shawl.
Behind the narrow counter, Emma looked up from cataloguing a stack of novels. Her smile slipped when she saw Lydia’s face.
“Good Lord,” she said. “Is it war or scandal?”
“Both,” Lydia muttered. “And possibly treason.”
Emma lifted the hinged counter door without a word and beckoned her behind it. Lydia sank into the armchair kept near the stove and exhaled for what felt like the first time all day.
“It was unbearable,” she began. “She was draped all over him. Talking about duets. Duets, Emma. As if it were 1803 and we were all still children playing with harpsichords and hair ribbons.”
Emma handed her a steaming mug of tea. “Miss Victoria Allendale?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Everyone knows,” Emma said. “I thought you did too?”
“More the fool me,” Lydia said glumly. “Perhaps there was some benefit to you pouring all over the society pages all these years.”
“Look,” Emma said practically. “Someone like Miss Allendale is what happens when ambition goes to finishing school and never comes back.”
Lydia barked a bitter laugh and sipped the tea.
“She said they almost married.”
Emma arched a brow. “Did he confirm that?”
Lydia frowned. “No. But he didn’t deny it either.”
“And did you ask?”
Silence.
“So, instead of demanding the truth from the one man who has it, you’ve stormed halfway across the city, into my poor bookshop, ranting like one of Mrs. Bracknell’s discarded heroines.”
“I am not ranting,” Lydia snapped.
Emma tilted her head. “You are very eloquently… spiralling.”
Lydia stared into her tea.
“He’s just so—cold. Except when he’s not. And then he’s too much. And I can’t—he confuses me. He shuts me out. And then he kisses me like—like he’s on fire. And then disappears again. And I’m supposed to act like it doesn’t matter, because this isn’t a real marriage, except now there are feelings—”
“Oh my God,” Emma said flatly. “You’re in love with him.”
The words landed like a crack in glass.
“I am not,” Lydia said at once. Too fast.
Emma just smiled, and it was slow, dry, smug. The smile of someone who’d known all along.
“Right. Just obsessed. Enraged. Distracted. Dreamy-eyed. Practically poetic in your distress.”
“I’m furious, not poetic.”
“You’re in love.”
“I need more tea.”
“You need less denial.”
Just then, the bell above the shop door jingled again.
Lydia turned, already rising to leave, but her feet froze as Sebastian Greaves stepped inside.
He held a bouquet of dusky garden roses, clearly pinched from one of the Montclair greenhouses—still damp from the earlier rain.
He looked up. Blinked.
“Oh,” he said. “Lydia. I—wasn’t expecting—”
“Obviously,” she said, voice like a blade she hadn’t meant to draw. “Secrets bloom in this country faster than roses, don’t they?”
Sebastian flushed. “I—it’s not—I just thought—”
Emma moved to the counter with unnatural speed. “Lord Greaves, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was just passing by,” he said defensively.
“With roses?”
“Is a man not allowed to wander the streets of London with roses just in case he should happen upon a beautiful creature working in a bookshop?”
Emma scoffed, but Lydia saw the faint flush in her cheeks.
“I am going to go,” Lydia said quickly.
“Lydia, you don’t have to—”
“It’s okay,” she said, smiling softly. “You look like you’ve got your hands full.”
Lydia didn’t wait for an answer.
She swept out the door before either of them could stop her, the bell jingling behind her.
And as she strode into the street—angry, confused, heart thudding like a traitor—Lydia realized, with a miserable sort of clarity: Emma was right. She was in love.
And she had no idea what to do about it.
***
By the time Lydia returned home, it was late afternoon, and the air in the entryway was too still, like the moment before a thunderclap. Lydia stepped inside, brushing faint city dust from her gloves, already composing a story for why she’d left in the first place.
She hadn’t even reached the first stair when a voice floated from behind her.
“There you are.”
Lydia turned, schooling her expression as Lady Beatrice emerged from the hallway. Her hands were folded neatly over her midsection, her mouth sharp with polite curiosity.
“You’ve been out,” Beatrice observed, as though Lydia had returned from war without official leave. “I do hope it was refreshing. Do sit with me a moment. I’ve had the fire stoked in the drawing room. A bit indulgent, this time of year—but there’s something melancholy in the air, don’t you think?”
Lydia forced a smile. “Of course.”
She followed the older woman down the hall. The drawing room smelled of orange blossom and wood smoke, rich and feminine and entirely too cozy for what Lydia felt in her chest.
Beatrice gestured graciously toward the window-seat.
“Do sit. It’s a shame not to enjoy this view.”
Lydia sank into the cushions, watching Lady Beatrice settle across from her, composed as ever. Her gloved fingers turned a teacup she had no intention of sipping. Her earrings—a pair of opals set in gold—caught the firelight.
“Tell me,” Beatrice said idly, “have you seen the gardens from this angle? I find them very… revealing.”
Something in her tone made Lydia’s spine stiffen.
“I can’t say I have.”
Beatrice turned toward the window and gestured lightly. “Go on, my dear. Have a proper look.”
Lydia hesitated, then rose and stepped to the window.
And froze.
There, in the rose-walk below the east terrace, were Nicholas and Victoria.
Victoria stood close to him, her hand on his chest, her face tilted upward. His expression was unreadable from this distance, but his hand was around Victoria’s arm. Holding. Steadying. Too familiar.
Lydia’s breath caught.
She didn’t move or blink.
She felt Lady Beatrice rise beside her.
“Old habits, you know,” the Baroness said softly. “Victoria always did have a fondness for that particular garden path. It’s where Nicholas used to read to her. Byron, mostly. Or Keats. Though I always suspected she preferred the sound of his voice over the verse.”
Lydia turned to her sharply. “Is there a reason you’re telling me this?”
Lady Beatrice’s smile didn’t waver.
“Only that a woman should understand the landscape of her own household. You’ve come so far, my dear. But you’ve entered a world that plays by quieter, crueller rules than you’re used to.”
“So you arranged this?” Lydia asked, her voice tight.
Lady Beatrice lifted a brow. “Arranged? No, no. Merely… invited. What Nicholas chooses to do with old affection is entirely up to him.”
Lydia looked back at the glass and felt heat rise in her throat. Not the sharp anger of business strategy or the bitter embarrassment of gossip, but something far, far more dangerous. It was jealousy.
Lady Beatrice watched her.
“You’re clever,” she said. “And certainly determined. But don’t confuse power for permanence. And don’t confuse a marriage of convenience for the sort of bond that can survive history.”
Lydia turned from the window.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she said evenly. “It’s not history I’m worried about. It’s vultures trying to drag it back.”
Lady Beatrice smiled coldly. “You know,” she said. “If you were to consider an annulment from Nicholas, I could make it worth your while. I have the means to ensure you live a very comfortable life.”
Lydia stared at her in disbelief and disgust. Then she left the drawing room without waiting to be dismissed. But she didn’t go to her chambers.
She didn’t go looking for Nicholas either.
Instead, she walked the long corridor alone, heart pounding, determined not to cry, not now, not ever, for a man she hadn’t even meant to want.