I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’
Not in her hearing perhaps, Frances thought icily, though what her sister and mother said about her behind her back would probably convince her to wear a bag over her head for the rest of her life. They both thought of her facial scarring as the worst misfortune that might have befallen her on the very morning of her eighteenth birthday, but then both of them were beautiful. In her mid-fifties, their mother was still a strikingly attractive woman, with only the faintest touch of silver in her dark hair and an almost unnaturally smooth, porcelain complexion. Walking side by side with her eldest daughter, the pair of them were capable of turning every male head in Whitby.
Of course there had been a time, not so long ago either, when she wouldn’t have looked so out of place beside them. With only a six-year gap in their ages, both she and Lydia had inherited their mother’s fine looks and statuesque figure, though it had taken her own curves so long to appear that she’d thought they weren’t coming at all. She’d been a late bloomer; though when she finally had, she’d shown signs of surpassing even her sister in beauty, or so their mother had once told her to Lydia’s furious chagrin.
Her accident had put paid to all of that, however, so that now, although they shared the same oval face, dark eyes and chocolate-coloured hair, they were hardly two sides of the same coin any more, rather two different coins altogether, one lustrous and shiny, the other dinted and tarnished.
‘Now will you take a message for me or not?’ Lydia was starting to sound impatient.
‘No, and I can’t believe you’re even suggesting it! John’s only been dead for ten months.’
‘Exactly!’ If she were remotely offended by the insinuation, Lydia gave no sign. ‘Ten whole months. How much longer am I supposed to remain in mourning?’
‘A year and a day in full mourning and another year in half-mourning, you know that. The Queen’s been wearing black for over a decade.’
‘I’m not the Queen!’
Frances swallowed a sarcastic retort, vaguely amazed that her sister was aware of the fact. Most of the time she acted as if she had a sovereign right to command everyone around her. If it had been up to Lydia, no one would have spent more than a week wearing black.
‘I can’t understand what good it does to imprison me in my own home!’ Lydia jumped to her feet abruptly, starting to pace up and down the parlour in frustration. ‘Mama hardly lets me go anywhere or see anyone.’
‘Only because it’s not seemly for you to go visiting yet.’ Frances gave her a sympathetic look, for once in agreement. Forcing widows to remain trapped indoors with their grief didn’t strike her as the best way of helping them to overcome it either. Not that Lydia seemed particularly grief-stricken.
‘It’s ridiculous that I’m supposed to act as if my life is over. John was already half-dead when I married him. He was past sixty when we met.’
‘I thought you said that age didn’t matter in a love match.’
‘I said that?’
‘Yes, before you got married.’
‘Oh.’ Lydia looked sceptical. ‘Well, I suppose I did care for him, as much as he could have expected me to anyway, but I don’t see why I have to waste my best years in mourning now that he’s gone. I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted it either.’ She stopped pacing in front of a mirror and pressed her fingers against her cheeks, tugging the skin gently upwards. ‘I’m only twenty-eight. Wearing black crepe makes me feel old.’
‘We’re all tired of wearing black, Lydia, but those are the rules. At least you’ve no need to worry about money.’ Frances tried to sound reassuring. ‘John left you a good legacy.’
‘Barely a third of what he was worth.’
‘But he left the rest in trust for Georgie.’
‘With his lawyer holding the purse strings. As if I can’t be trusted.’
Frances dipped her head to hide her expression. The terms of John Baird’s will, though by no means churlish towards his young bride, suggested he’d understood her better than anyone had realised. With Lydia in control of his fortune, their son George would have been lucky to see so much as a penny on his majority.
‘Maybe he thought you wouldn’t want to be bothered with such details.’
‘I don’t see why. Georgie is my son. It’s not right that somebody else is looking after his future. John used me very badly.’
‘Mmm...’ Frances picked up her stone and polishing cloth again with a sigh. Lydia’s memory in regard to her deceased husband was becoming more and more selective by the day. But then John Baird hadn’t been quite the catch she’d been hoping for when she’d made her come-out, not compared with a certain eligible viscount anyway, a man they’d all thought had been lost at sea...
‘In any case, I wouldn’t remarry until after a suitable period.’ Lydia settled back on to the chaise longue. ‘But if I have to wait until I’m out of mourning then Arthur might marry somebody else and then where will I be? I missed my chance six years ago. I won’t miss it again.’
‘Marry?’ Frances stopped polishing abruptly. She’d been working on that particular piece of jet for half an hour, smoothing away the rough edges and imperfections so that now, in the light of a flickering candle, she could see her own eyes reflected in the surface. They looked sad even to her. Quickly, she put the stone aside, dropping it into a small wooden box filled with sawdust.
‘You mean you still want to marry Arthur?’ She asked the question softly, wondering why she hadn’t guessed the truth sooner.
‘Of course! What did you think we were talking about?’
‘You only said that you wanted me to take him a message.’
‘To persuade him to call on me, yes.’
‘Why can’t you just write?’
‘Because I already have.’ Lydia’s expression turned sullen. ‘He sent a note back saying he was too busy to renew our acquaintance. You know there was a time when that man would have crawled over hot coals for me and he calls it an acquaintance!’
‘You did marry somebody else, Lydia.’
‘Only because I thought Arthur had drowned! What was I supposed to do?’
‘Maybe wait more than a week before getting engaged?’
‘Wait?’ Black eyes glittered with anger suddenly. ‘I’d already spent years waiting for Arthur to persuade his father to accept me. It was humiliating enough having to keep our engagement a secret, but then he had to go and fall off his boat and abandon me. He left me to become an old maid!’
Frances fought the urge to roll her eyes. As she recalled, Lydia couldn’t have behaved any less like an old maid. She’d had more than enough spare suitors to choose from, not that Arthur had known about any of them. He’d been aware of her other admirers—in truth, it would have been nigh impossible to miss them—but he’d never known quite how serious some of those other flirtations had been. That had been one small mercy when
