Lydia shook her head emphatically. “You don’t need to go to such lengths for us to be married, surely!”

Even with her wealthy, bourgeois father, the upper classes treated her like she was nothing more than a merchant’s daughter. She shuddered to think how she might be vilified if she met the Queen.

“Your father graduated from Cambridge and teaches at the University of London. He might not be of the gentry in a technical sense, but he ought to be regarded as such in a professional capacity.”

Perhaps, if he were a bishop or a barrister. Her father’s profession might just about put him at the same level of social standing, but it was such a stretch that it seemed to her even more audacious to expect an audience with the Queen.

“Would you truly find it so shameful to announce your engagement to me before my debut?” Lydia asked.

Edgar’s brow furrowed.

“In that case, perhaps you ought to find yourself a wife among the aristocracy instead,” she went on, knowing as she spoke that she was being utterly unreasonable.

Unable to bear things any longer, she rushed from the room.

***

It had been one Lord Constable who had marched most indignantly into the Ashenbert estate about half an hour earlier. Despite having shown up without announcing himself, he had shouted at the butler to summon Edgar as though he were the one being slighted. Tompkins hadn’t had a choice but to interrupt the earl during his meeting with his fiancée and her father. Knowing how much influence Constable had in political circles, Edgar had chosen to see him rather than turn him away.

“I must insist that you take responsibility” were the first words out of his mouth.

“Regarding what matter precisely?”

“I shan’t be told that you have forgotten that you seduced my daughter.”

“I was quite unawar