Helen Dickson - Carrying The Gentleman's Secret

‘Why do you ask?’

‘He is well known and popular among members of his club, his reputation that of a man about town who likes a good time.’

‘My time off from work was limited. We saw each other on Sundays and sometimes I could manage an afternoon during the week. We were alone mostly.’

‘That stands to reason. He wouldn’t want to advertise the fact he had taken a lover.’

‘We were not lovers,’ Lydia was quick to inform him, her cheeks flushing pink with indignation that he thought they were. ‘Never that.’

‘No? Then I have no doubt this is the reason why he insisted on a sham marriage. His desire to possess you must have been overwhelming—even though he never had any intention of leaving his wife.’

‘On occasion he did introduce me to a selection of his friends. Surely they would have said something—unless they didn’t know he was married either.’

‘Believe me, Miss Brook, they knew,’ he said drily.

‘You mean they were in on the deception? So I really was just some kind of amusement to liven up their bored lives?’

‘I’m afraid so. I told you it is not the first time he has done something like this, although he has never gone as far as being prepared to enter into a sham marriage to get what he wants. You must have something the others lacked.’

She bristled. ‘No, I’m just another one in a line of women.’

‘Were you impressed by him?’

She looked at him steadily. What woman would not be, she thought, having been raised as she was. ‘It was all so new to me. A different world.’

‘And now? Will you go back to what you were doing?’

‘I already told you that I have to. I have to work to live, Mr Golding. Throughout my life I have lived with the belief that happiness, security and future success would be available to me through the mainstay in my life—my mother—with her calm and gentle but firm ways. When she died all that changed—until I met Henry.’

Alex nodded with understanding. ‘I am sorry. And your father?’

Immediately Lydia’s eyes darkened and her face tensed. She looked away. ‘He...he is not in my life.’

‘I see.’ There it was, Alex thought, that was the something which was not quite right. He was intrigued. Why the reluctance to talk about her father? Sensing that his enquiry was sensitive to her, he did not press further. It was not his concern. ‘And your employer? Do you get on with him?’

‘I have always tried to, for my mother’s sake—they were lovers, you see.’

‘Then if that was the case, will he not help you?’

‘Alistair is a hard master. Working for him, I will never be more than an overworked, underpaid employee. I want to have a chance to make my own way, to be the dressmaker I know I can be—that my mother wanted me to be. I want to be a woman in my own right.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t expect you to understand. How could you possibly?’

Alex did understand—more than she would ever realise. As the deprived son of an impoverished and more often than not inebriated estate worker, on the death of his parents when he was just a boy, his maternal grandfather had paid for his education at Marlborough and then Cambridge. Alex would be eternally grateful to his grandfather for making this possible, even though he’d spent almost every penny he had doing so.

When Alex was eighteen, with his entire fortune of one hundred guineas given to him by his grandfather, he had worked his passage to America. Life had taught him that he had to grasp the opportunities when they arose. Nothing was going to be given to him. Gambling his money on a series of investments had paid off. Thirteen years later he had made his fortune and never looked back.

He continued to excel in business like Midas. The only other venture he had engaged in was the pleasurable pursuit and conquest of the opposite sex.

Though thoroughly put out by this whole sordid affair with Henry which had disrupted the smooth order of his business life, he was impressed by this young woman’s astuteness and he was amazed she hadn’t seen through Henry’s deception. She exuded tension and a certain authority and despite everything his curiosity was aroused as they ate their meal. She had an easiness of manner and a self-assurance and poise that was entirely at odds with her background. He was warmed by her sunny smile, the frank gaze and artless conversation, and he found himself sparing the time to listen to her.

There was an air of determination about her that manifested itself in the proud way she held her head and the square set of her chin and a bright and positive burning in her eyes when she outlined her plans for the establishment she hoped to open one day.

She told him how she was apprenticed at thirteen and how she had gained a thorough knowledge of fabrics and the business of supplying dressmakers. She had made a study of ladies’ fashions and, inspired by what she had learned and her own ideas, she had high hopes for the future. She told him she had a small nest egg put by and when she had saved enough she would realise her ambition and her mother’s before her. Alex found himself being carried along by the wave of her high expectations.

Finally falling silent, she looked at him and sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to talk so much. You must wonder how I can speak so enthusiastically about my work after what Henry has done. He told me all my hopes and dreams would be fulfilled once we got to America. Well, that won’t happen now—but I refuse to let what he has done to me ruin my hopes for the future. I cannot believe how I let myself be duped like that.’

‘No? They say love is blind.’

‘Love?’ She laughed at the absurdity of it. It was as humorous as it was bitter. ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t love. I was flattered that a man of such glamour and charm—with a merry smile and a certain devil-may-care approach to life—should pay me attention.’

‘So you didn’t love him?’ Alex felt curiously relieved on being told this, but once again he felt there was an edge to her manner—subtle, yes, but there—which led him to think there might be another reason why she had been so ready to accept Henry’s proposal of marriage, that she might be running away from something and she had seized on the opportunity to escape. After all, she had admitted she didn’t love Henry. So what other reason could there be?

Lydia smiled, a faint frown puckering her brow, and when she spoke it was as if the question was directed against herself. ‘How does one analyse love? It has always been one of life’s great mysteries to me. How can anyone adequately explain it? It’s like trying to explain why the sun shines, why the earth spins and why the moon controls the tides.’

He laughed. ‘The things you mention are rational to me. They are divined by nature.’

‘That’s another thing. How to explain nature.’

‘You sound very cynical, Miss Brook. Love does not need an explanation, surely? Love, so I’m told, is something that grows out of nothing and swells as it goes along. No one can tell another why if happens—only how it is.’

Lydia smiled at his teasing tone. ‘Now who is the cynic?’

‘Touché, Miss Brook. Tell me. Why would you want to go back to working for Alistair if you were not happy?’

She looked at him. ‘Happy?’ She pondered the question a moment. ‘I don’t think the world has much to offer in the way of happiness,’ she said, more to herself. ‘There’s too much grief—too much pain.’

‘And you have known both, I suspect.’ He looked across the table at her, his eyes curiously intense. ‘You have just told me that you do not love Henry, which I find curious since you agreed to marry him. Why, I ask myself, would a woman who is both beautiful and clever do that, unless you are running away?’