Free The Golden Season by Connie Brockway

Lady Lydia Eastlake dash out the back door of the shop and smiled.
    Thank God the woman was wealthy and had no need to work for her keep because she’d never have made a living on stage. She was a terrible actress. She wore her thoughts on her expressive countenance: first amusement, then enjoyment, then a short- lived fear her accent—a terrible jumble of aristocratic tones and purposely dropped consonants—had given her away, the triumph she’d felt on thinking her explanation had deceived him, fear upon the other girl’s return, and finally panicked flight.
    It was a pity. She’d been having a grand time playing shopgirl. In fact, he’d been as attracted to her obvious glee in her masquerade as her stunning good looks. There was something about her pleasure that called to him, inveigled him to join. The woman was like champagne, a little intoxicating.
    He had known who she was as soon as she’d clambered down off the ladder. He’d have to be a half-wit not to. Every newspaper and magazine carried illustrations of her, and their pages were devoted to descriptions of her and where she was entertained, at what time, and in whose company. Certain playing cards even featured her likeness as the Queen of Diamonds and Sir Thomas Lawrence had recently unveiled his painting of her at the Royal Academy. But most telling of all, there was no possible way two women could have eyes that color.
    They really were a remarkable shade, a deep nocturnal purple, like a martin’s wing. In other ways, she reminded him of a silky little swallow, too: fluid and elegant and cheeky. She was—
    “Sir?”
    He looked down. A very small, nervous-looking Frenchman had entered the shop and stood pointing at the bowl Ned still held.
    “Ah, yes,” Ned said. “How much for this bowl?”
    Roubalais suggested a price and Ned paid it, biding his time while the girl wrapped the parcel and giving Lady Lydia ample opportunity to make good her escape. When Berthe finished, she handed him the wrapped package. He considered questioning her about her illustrious client but took pity. It would only put her in the position of either betraying a peer or lying to one.
    “Thank you,” he said, taking the bowl and tipping his head. Lady Lydia had had plenty of time to flee by now. At any rate, he intended to walk the opposite direction of where her well-known yellow-wheeled carriage was parked, toward Boodle’s Club. There was a gentleman there, Childe Smyth, to whom his nephew Harry owed a great deal of money. He frowned, more despairing of the whole situation than annoyed.
    It did no good to be annoyed with any of the Locktons. They shared the same family traits: bluff and blustering, softhearted, weak-willed, and unworldly. Wondrously enough, they considered themselves none of these things. Ned considered it an oddly endearing myopia even though he knew this sentiment was just as peculiar. But he’d always been a little staggered by his siblings’ unfounded bombast and bravado and they were just as befuddled by his lack of the same qualities.
    Once, while in the throes of a good drunk, Ned’s godfather, Admiral Nelson, had confided that he considered that rather than Ned being the proverbial cuckoo in the sparrow’s nest, a nest of cuckoos had hatched themselves a young hawk. Ned didn’t feel like a hawk. Since his return home, he felt more like a mother hen.
    Not that he wanted his family to be any different. The truth was, he loved them all very much.
    He hadn’t always. Like most lads, he’d quite taken them for granted when he’d applied for a situation on Nelson’s ship. If anything, he’d been desperate to escape the chaos and confusion, mismanagement and mayhem of Josten Hall. But as the years passed, the gravity of Napoleon’s quest for power had turned a schoolboy’s lust for adventure into grim duty. The image of Josten Hall and the chaotic family that occupied it had become a lodestone, beckoning him home.
    The calm, tranquil boy