Chapter 1
I am, undoubtedly, an idiot. Also an arse.
—from the 1818 papers of Arthur Baird, Fifth Earl of Strathrannoch, unsent draft
“Based upon our respective financial situations, our mutually agreeable political interests, and the general compatibility of our persons,” Lydia Hope-Wallace said, “it seems to both our advantages that we unite in holy matrimony.”
Her voice shook only a trifle, which was a notable improvement.
Her friend Georgiana Cleeve gazed at her from across the post-chaise, expression impassive. Bacon, Georgiana’s dog, gave Lydia a sympathetic moan from his position on Georgiana’s lap.
Lydia winced. “Too wordy?” She fiddled with her sheaf of papers, trying not to look at her notes. Again. “I was afraid of that. Perhaps there is some way I can compress the language of the third clause—”
“I am not certain thelanguageis the problem.”
“Perhaps not.” Lydia chewed on her lower lip and staredblearily down at the papers in her lap, draft after penciled draft of marriage proposals in her own hand.
Marriage proposals. To a man she had never met.
It turned out it was rather difficult to get such a thing right.
She pulled out the pencil she’d stuffed into her coiffure and scratched out a hasty revision. “How about this:Based upon the mutual benefits conferred by a legal union—”
“Mutual benefits?Lydia, you are the third-richest unmarried heiress in London. The benefits are all Strathrannoch’s.”
“Second-richest, I think.” Lydia frowned and drew a line throughcompatibility of our persons, which suddenly struck her as a bit indecent. “Hannah Harvey got engaged last week to that fellow in tin from Birmingham.”
She drew a line throughmutual benefitsas well, for the sake of caution.
Georgiana cleared her throat, and Lydia redirected her gaze to her friend’s finely drawn, deceptively innocent face.
“Perhaps,” Georgiana said—as though she had not said it half a dozen times in the last week—“we might consider a social call on Lord Strathrannoch first. You might discuss your ‘mutual interests.’”
Lydia clenched her teeth. Her heart beat harder in her chest, as it did every time Georgiana proposed an alteration in their plan. “No.”
“I can ask for a tour of his castle. You can take tea in his parlor. And then we can return to Dunkeld for the evening.”
They had left the posting inn in Dunkeld that morning to set off for Strathrannoch Castle. It had taken quite a bit of coin to persuade the postilion to take themawayfrom Perth and Dundee, rather thantowardthose centers of civilization—a fact that had given Lydia a moment of pause—but the farther afield they traveled, the more theview out the hazed glass soothed something inside her. Softened the spiked edges of panic in her chest.
They’d spent nearly an hour winding along the river before they’d passed into a forest of thick-branched oaks and clustered fir trees. When they’d emerged, it had been to a wide soft vista of green—all hills and sun-spangled water and no other humans as far as the eye could see.
Lydia had loved every moment she’d spent peering out the coach window. It was only when she looked down into her lap, at the rumpled papers and scratched-out notations in her own neat hand, that panic resettled itself somewhere above her breastbone.
“You needn’t propose to the man immediately upon meeting him,” Georgiana went on. Also not for the first time. “Perhaps you might consider making him earn the privilege of your hand. Men perform better when they are required to rise to the occasion.”
“No,” Lydia said again.
Her blood had begun pounding in her ears. Her stomach churned.
She could not recall a time—even in the furthest reaches of her memory—when she had been comfortable with basic social congress.
In her own home, within the comfortable knot of her friends and family, she was perfectly capable of human interaction. Outside that circle, however, she tended to fade silently into the background—or, alternatively, become so flustered and dizzy that she fainted in the middle of a drawing room and had to be carried out by a footman.
She knew herself. There was no possible way that she could sit down with the Earl of Strathrannoch and make polite conversationfor several days before revealing the truth of why she had come to his castle. She had to get it over with as quickly as possible before she made an utter cake of herself.
“We’ve come this far,” Lydia said. She looked down at the papers in her lap—some in her own hand and some in Strathrannoch’s, dozens of his clever, charming letters—and tried to force the tremble out of her voice. “I’m not going to give up now.”
She could not. She had hidden her whereabouts from her mother and brothers, revealed the truth of her plot only to her closest friends, and set out for Scotland armed with nothing but a trunk and a fresh pencil.
