The Viscount’s Veiled Lady. Jenni Fletcher

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 he’d gone missing, though now Frances wondered how he’d felt when he’d come home and discovered just how quickly he’d been replaced...

      ‘I’m sure you were very hard done by, Lydia.’

      ‘How was I to know that he’d come back nine months later and I’d be stuck with John? Do you know, Arthur didn’t even visit me!’

      ‘How could he? You were married.’

      ‘Well, all right, but I’m a widow now and he’s still unattached, and now that his father’s dead there’s no one to object. I don’t see why we can’t resume our engagement. It’s quite romantic when you think about it, as if it were meant to be all along.’

      ‘Yes. How convenient of John to die when he did.’

      Lydia shot her a petulant look. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand about love.’

      ‘I never said that I did.’

      ‘And Arthur did love me.’

      ‘Yes,’ Frances conceded wistfully, ‘he did.’

      That part was undeniably true. She’d never seen a man so in love as Arthur Amberton had been with her sister. She’d still been in the schoolroom at the time, but to this day she remembered the way he’d gazed so adoringly at Lydia, as if she were the Juliet to his Romeo. Once upon a time, she’d hoped some man might look at her like that one day, though the chances of it seemed unlikely now.

      Arthur Amberton had been the very epitome of everything she’d imagined the perfect gentleman to be: intelligent, charming and exquisitely mannered, albeit with a faint air of sadness about him. Dashingly handsome, too, with wavy, chestnut hair and intense, ochre-coloured eyes. He’d been considerate towards her, too, always taking the seat next to hers in the parlour when it was empty and asking about her art as if he were genuinely interested in her hobbies, treating her like an adult and not just a child, unlike the rest of Lydia’s admirers. She’d tried her very hardest to think of him as a brother, especially after Lydia had confided the secret of their engagement, but in truth she’d been more than a little in love with him herself, wicked as it had felt at the time. When he’d been lost at sea, she’d felt as devastated as if she’d been the one he’d left behind. She’d never understood how Lydia could have forgotten him so quickly, but then her sister had never been one to put all her eggs, let alone her heart, in one basket.

      ‘From what I’ve heard, however, it turns out I had a lucky escape six years ago.’ Lydia propped an arm behind her head. ‘Apparently the family fortunes were in a terrible state back then.’

      ‘Lydia!’

      ‘Oh, don’t be so naive, Frannie. Love has to survive on something, you know.’

      ‘Well, if he’s so poor, why do you want to marry him now?’

      ‘Because he’s not poor any more, silly. His brother’s marriage to Violet Harper restored all that.’

      Frances reached into her pocket for a new stone, examining it for flaws as she tried to unravel the tangled machinations of her sister’s mind. She vaguely remembered hearing that Violet Harper, the shipbuilding heiress, had married Arthur’s twin brother Lance a few years before, though she couldn’t see how that helped Lydia...

      ‘I don’t understand.’ She gave up finally. ‘How does that affect Arthur?’

      ‘Because it was her money they used to develop and expand their iron mine. It’s become quite successful, so I hear, and Amberton Castle’s been almost completely refurbished. Not that Arthur resides there himself, the vexing man. He lives in some woebegone old farmhouse on the edge of the Moors, but the property’s all still in his name.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘Because I make it my business to know.’

      ‘Oh...’ The tangles smoothed out suddenly.