The Golden Season by Connie Brockway

good bargain. Which all men, regardless of their wealth, were to some extent.
    Lydia had planned this trip for days, working out every little detail, down to where she would leave her carriage and how many footmen she would have shadow her steps and what she would wear to blend in with her surroundings. But she hadn’t reckoned on Roubalais going home to eat his midday meal. How vexing.
    Every moment she spent here was a moment more someone could recognize her, and if there was one thing she did not need, it was to have it bandied about that she’d visited a pawnbroker. Not only would it begin the inevitable speculation about her fortune, but a lady never, ever visited a pawnbroker. And first and foremost and to the exclusion of all else, Lydia was a lady.
    Until today, she thought.
    “I suppose I’ll have to come back,” she muttered.
    Roubalais’s daughter-in-law shook her head. “No, madam. You mustn’t discommode yourself,” she said, shedding her voluminous and dirt-streaked smock and flinging it over the back of a chair. “I will go and bring him back at once.”
    “That won’t be necessary.”
    “But it is no trouble at all and only a few short blocks away. Monsieur Roubalais would never forgive me if he should hear that you visited our shop and I did not fetch him.”
    “Don’t tell him,” Lydia suggested. “I was only going to ask for an appraisal of an amethyst and pearl parure. It . . . it belongs to a friend.”
    The girl was well trained. Her face gave away not a whit of doubt at this prevarication. “But of course! Now, please. You stay. Look about. It will be only a few minutes, I promise.”
    Before Lydia could protest further, Berthe had hurried out the door, calling over her shoulder, “The baby just settled down before you came in and shouldn’t wake while I’m gone.”
    “Baby?” Lydia echoed, but Berthe had already gone.
    A short circuit of the shop proved that a baby did indeed sleep within the emptied bottom drawer of a bombé chest. Lydia had no idea of its age or gender and had no desire to remedy her ignorance. It looked quite content as it was, a drool bubble catching a prism of light, spiderweb-fine lashes sweeping a soft—and faintly sticky-looking—pink cheek, the blanket covering it rising and falling in time with its breathing.
    Lydia knelt nearer, studying the little creature. As someone’s wife she would be obliged to produce one, if not several, of these. The idea was a touch terrifying. She knew nothing of children, having been the only child in a world of adults.
    She hoped when she had children she would grow fond of them. At least, she assumed one would find parenthood more pleasant if one were fond of one’s offspring rather than indifferent. Her own parents had been most demonstratively affectionate.
    She supposed she would feel the same about her children. If they were pretty and well behaved and bright. And if they were not . . . ? Would she love them then? Would she have been loved had she been a little golem with the manners of a hedgehog?
    A sharp, sweet-acrid smell drifted up from the drawer, abruptly ending Lydia’s fascination. She shot upright and stepped away, accidentally backing into a ladder behind her. She spun and steadied it, her gaze rising to the top shelf lining the wall. Something colored a gorgeous royal blue glinted from far above. It demanded investigation.
    She hesitated. Lydia was well known for her impetuousness, but she allowed herself to be devil-may-care only within the strict parameters of what Society allowed. Charge a stile on horseback? Of course. Tease a prince? Often. But clamber about the dusty shelves of a pawnbroker’s shop? It wasn’t done.
    But . . . why not? No one knew she was here. What harm could come of it? Once more, Lydia’s insatiable curiosity joined forces with her impulsiveness to trump caution.
    She looked around and spied the smock Berthe Roubalais had left behind. Without further thought, she donned the