Lydia knew why.
The captain had been his friend; he’d said he wished for Lydia to be his friend. Tanner Blake’s persistence had won out over her embarrassment, and her normal clear-headedness had replaced her irrational dislike for the man. For that alone, she was grateful to the healing powers of time and distance. But why hadn’t he simply now told her the truth? That the captain, as he lay dying, had asked him to “take care of my Lyddie.”
How terrible to force a man into agreeing to such an obligation. Yet how much worse it was to be that obligation. She believed the duke saw her as an object of charity, deserving of sympathy, which also forced her into the role of a young woman still daily, actively, grieving her lost love. Even as she hoped, prayed, she could leave this limbo she had existed in for the last year, with the captain still always alive in her heart, but as a cherished memory rather than a constant ache.
The Duke of Malvern was a good man. An honorable man. But did he ever see her as anything other than an obligation? And why was it becoming increasingly important to her that he think of her only as Lydia, and not some appendage to the past?
That was a question she couldn’t even have asked of her twin.
There was a knock on Lydia’s bedchamber door, and she quickly wiped at her damp cheeks as she called out, “Yes, please come in.”
Charlotte Daughtry, Duchess of Ashurst, looking young and slightly flushed in the London heat as she carried around a belly that seemed to increase daily, entered the room, her head tipped to one side as she looked at Lydia. “I thought I’d give you some time by yourself. She’s really happy, sweetheart. Be happy for her.”
“I am,” Lydia said sincerely, getting to her feet and accepting Charlotte’s hug. “Lucas adores her, and she him. But I will miss her.”
Charlotte idly rubbed at her perfectly round belly. “We’ll all miss her, but it isn’t as if she’s gone to the ends of the earth. She and Lucas will be coming to Ashurst Hall in July, to see her new niece or nephew—please God, the babe will have arrived by then—and also so that we can make plans for the wedding. By the way, it will be your job to talk her out of arriving at the church on horseback, with some of the little girls from the village prancing along ahead of her, streamers in their hair, tossing rose petals. Lucas, I’m afraid, is so besotted he’d grant her anything.”
Lydia smiled even as she blinked away fresh tears. She loathed feeling like a watering pot; she’d always been so careful to hide her emotions, especially the stronger ones, which tended to frighten her. “Actually, I think that would be very nice. Very…Nicole.”
“Don’t tell Rafe, but I agree. Oh, speaking of Rafe, he’s downstairs with our friend Tanner, who has come to take you for a drive on this unusual warm day in dreary London. It’s so lovely to see the sun, even when it plays hide-and-seek with us as it is today. Honestly, the only reason I came upstairs instead of leaving you some time to yourself was to tell you about Tanner’s offer. Not only am I as big as two houses, I may be turning senile. At any rate, Tanner somehow knew Nicole was leaving today, and thought he’d bear you company. Such a wonderful friend, isn’t he? So you go fetch your bonnet and pelisse, and I’ll tell him you’ll be down directly.”
Lydia nodded, finding it difficult to speak, holding in her sigh until Charlotte had quit the room.
Was this to be her life for the remainder of the Season?
Charlotte and Rafe happily married; kind, caring, but also very much wrapped up in each other. Captain Fitzgerald, irrevocably lost to her. Nicole, her very best friend, off on a new adventure in her life.
And Tanner Blake, the man she’d initially taken in such dislike through no fault of his own, the man who still seemed so doggedly determined to live up to his promise to his friend Fitz, could soon be married as well, with a whole new set of obligations.
Why, were she the dramatic sort, she would say that she was alone in the midst of a multitude, which was not a very pleasant place to be.
“If the exercise weren’t so fatiguing,” she told herself, “I should most probably throw myself to the floor and drum my heels against the carpet. Nicole always vowed it made her feel better. But I’m much too polite and restrained and civilized. Much too dull and boring. No wonder I sit with the desperate wallflowers. I may as well be invisible. Then again, if my inside were on my outside, if I were to act as I think and damn the consequences, like Nicole, I should probably shock everyone to their cores, including myself.”
Lydia allowed herself another deep sigh before she lifted her slightly pointed chin and dutifully went in search of her pelisse and bonnet. The bonnet with the sky blue ribbon Captain Fitzgerald had picked out for her last Season, saying it went so well with her eyes. Thus armed, she then headed for the staircase, having firmly decided that she was a Daughtry, not a mouse, and it was time she began acting like one.
Chapter Two
“IT WILL BE A YEAR SOON,” Tanner Blake, Duke of Malvern, remarked as he accepted a glass of claret from his friend Rafe. “Sometimes it all seems a lifetime ago, and then at others it feels like yesterday.”
He knew he didn’t have to say more than that for Rafe to understand to what he was referring. Last year’s battle was a fact in all of their lives, one never to be forgotten.
“At least this time it looks as if Boney will be staying where we put him.” Rafe took up a seat on the facing couch in the large drawing room, a handsome man with a firm jaw and intelligent eyes. He put forth his glass in a toast. “To Fitz. And to all the good and true men who died in that damned unnecessary battle.”
Tanner solemnly clinked glasses with his friend. He wasn’t the sort who indulged overmuch in spirits, but it was easier to trust the wine of France than it was the cloudy waters of London. He was much of an age with Rafe, but knew he looked younger, thanks to his dark blond hair with its tendency to wave when he neglected his barber, and to features his late mother had often cooed over as being “nearly Greek.” It was only his eyes, seemingly turned a deeper green in the past year, which aged him beyond the schoolroom.
“They’re calling it all Waterloo now, you know, because Wellington stayed at an inn there while he wrote his dispatch to Parliament after the battle. I suppose it’s as good a name as any. A grand and glorious battle, they say now, a great victory for the Allies, destined to be one of the most memorable battles in history. All of these gushing fools forgetting that if they had just locked up the man more securely, none of it would have happened. To Fitz,” Tanner said, raising his glass. “To Fitz, and to the rest—and to stout locks.”
Both men drank, then fell silent for some moments, each of them lost in their memories of Captain Swain Fitzgerald and all the other good friends they had lost.
“I think she’s doing much better,” Tanner said at last, because it wasn’t a far leap in his mind from the captain to Lady Lydia.
Rafe nodded his agreement. “To forget him would appall her, but Lydia knows that he’d want her to go on without him. You’ve been very good for her, Tanner.”
“Have I? It’s no secret that she saw me as a constant reminder of what she’d lost, at least at first. But our time apart may have taken some of the edge off the events of that day last spring. I’d like to think we’ve become friends this Season. It’s what Fitz wanted.”
“And you, being such an honorable man and all of that, also feel obligated to make good on your promise
