The Golden Season by Connie Brockway

modesty. Perched atop her head she wore a green lacquered bonnet decorated with blackberries and fuchsias.
    “You’d best hope it doesn’t rain, Lydia,” Eleanor continued. “Lady Pickler will still insist on parading us all down to her bottom garden, by which time you shall be shivering so violently, reports next morning will claim you have ague.
    “Take my shawl with you.” Eleanor held out the Kashmir wrap folded on her lap.
    “What? And obscure this dress? I should think not. One must make sacrifices,” Lydia replied in an amused voice. Still, she accepted the shawl.
    It was unseasonably chill and had been all spring and Emily was sensitive to drafts. Lydia reached across the carriage and gently spread the fine wool over her slumbering companion, then settled back.
    “Is she asleep?” Eleanor asked.
    “Oh, yes,” Lydia answered softly. “Thankfully. She hasn’t been sleeping well of late.”
    Eleanor’s gaze stayed for a long while on the sleeping, motherly looking Emily. “I must admit, Lydia, your decision to engage Emily as your companion was a good one.”
    “Thank you.” Lydia appreciated the duchess’s admission. She had not initially approved of Lydia’s new companion. But Lydia had been unable to deny Emily’s polite, hopeless request to remove her from Brislington Asylum. Her appeal had startled Lydia.
    In truth, it had frightened her, too. For the first time in her adult life it was borne in on Lydia how much influence she owned and that she could affect things, things both frivolous and important, and that this was not a privilege to be taken lightly. Emily had awoken in Lydia a desire to act.
    Yet this sounded nobler than Lydia knew herself to be. It was only part of the answer. Her house was too empty and she needed someone to share it with. Both women saw in each other the family they’d lost.
    “I wonder who will be at the Picklers’ this year,” Eleanor eventually mused as they continued at a leisurely pace.
    Lydia glanced out the carriage window. They were approaching the outskirts of St. James, where the Pickler family had years ago decided to straddle rustication and urbanization.
    The city was slowly encroaching upon them, however, and what with taxes and debt and offers to purchase portions of their property simply too good to refuse, what had once been a fairly large estate had been whittled down to a fraction of its former size. Not to be gainsaid, Lady Pickler had long ago enclosed the remaining lawns with a high stone wall and proceeded to landscape it as though it were still a hundred acres and not ten. Every year brought a new surprise or horror in the little plot of land—depending on one’s sensibilities.
    “There will be the usual crowd in attendance, I’m sure: Lord and Lady Alvanley, the Hammond- Croutts, Mrs. Mary Sefton, and Childe Smyth. Brummell was invited, but he has been notably absent from all Society of late,” Lydia replied, then went on to name a dozen more in quick succession, finishing by saying, “Very few unexpected names and even fewer unfamiliar ones.”
    Eleanor’s thin brows rose above her deep-set eyes. “Good heavens, Lydie, one would think you knew the guest list.”
    “I do. My maid is cousin to Lady Pickler’s. That same maid is, not coincidently, currently sporting the very nice blue wool spencer you admired last year.”
    Eleanor gave her an approving look. “Your ingenuity is impressive.”
    “I mean to leave nothing to chance this Season, Eleanor.”
    “Then you will already know that Lady Pickler did not want to invite you to her fete this year,” Eleanor replied, watching her carefully.
    No. Lydia had not known this. “Why ever not?” she asked. “She’s a picksome old tabby, but I have never offended her to my knowledge.”
    “Her daughter has never debuted before. Lady Pickler knows you’ll cast her Jenny in the shade.”
    “Piffle,” Lydia said.
    Eleanor ignored this statement as disingenuous, which it was.