by Maya Rodale
Dedication
For girls like Prudence and men like Roark
And for Tony
Acknowledgments
I AM INDEBTED TO Sara Jane Stone, Aimee H, and Tony Haile for reading early versions of this manuscript and offering brilliant feedback. Many thanks to my Facebook fans for helping me determine the title of this book; my friends, family, and the Lady Authors for their encouragement; and my editor, Tessa. I am especially indebted to the brave people who shared their stories of sexual assault and recovery, which helped me in writing Prudence’s experiences.
Introduction
Dear reader,
Sometimes a story seizes an author and won’t let go. What a Wallflower Wants is a departure from my usual lighthearted romances. This novel is darker, it includes a graphic depiction of sexual violence, and it’s deeply emotional. It is also a novel that ends happily.
Though set in a historical time period, this story was influenced by all too frequent accounts of sexual violence against women in the news today. These heartbreaking and enraging stories impelled me to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) to write about a girl, Prudence, who suffers the worst thing imaginable but finds love and acceptance anyway; a hero, Roark, who defies conventions but is heroic in all the ways that truly matter; and a villain who gets just what he deserves.
Above all, What a Wallflower Wants is a romance novel, which means that this is a story about a hero and heroine falling in love, saving each other, and living happily ever after.
Yours,
Maya
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Author's Note
Excerpt from The Bad Boy Billionaire
About the Author
Romances by Maya Rodale
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
London, 1820
Lord and Lady Blackburn’s Ball
“ARE YOU THERE, God? ’Tis I, Prudence.”
Her voice wavered. Her knees buckled and she sank to the ground, her back sliding down against the wall.
God didn’t answer, which was just as well. Prudence didn’t have the words to describe this thing that had just happened to her. One minute she was waltzing and the next—
A sob caught in her throat. She drew her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Slowly she rocked on the ground, back and forth, back and forth, holding herself close. Her memories were hazy, with a few sharp, piercing moments. She could still smell him on her skin—a noxious mixture of stale smoke and wine.
She was faintly aware of the sound of the orchestra mingled with the dull roar of hundreds of people laughing and chatting. They had no idea that just down the hall a girl had been stripped of everything. Only eighteen, she was an innocent girl on her first season with her life stretching out before her, rich with possibilities.
Was.
Everything was different now.
Just an hour ago she had believed in love, romance, and happily ever after. She had believed in God’s mercy and trusted that heroes came to the rescue. But that was before. No one had answered her pleas. No one had come to save her.
From now on, Prudence would be on her own.
Chapter 1
Somewhere in Wiltshire, 1824
Nine days before Lady Penelope’s Ball
If a young lady is traveling west on the London road and a young rogue is traveling east on the London road, at which point shall they meet?
EVER SINCE HER first season, Miss Prudence Merryweather Payton had known that she would never marry. By her third season, she had made peace with the sad truth that love and marriage were not in the cards for her. Which was fine. FINE. Truly, she was not bothered in the slightest at the prospect of a long, boring spinsterhood. Why, think of all the needlepoint or charity work she might do.
Or so she had thought.
But that was before the invitation had arrived. A delicately worded missive, written in an elegant script, inviting her to the one-hundredth anniversary of her finishing school, Lady Penelope’s Finishing School for Young Ladies of Fine Families.
With that invitation had come the mortifying and heartbreaking truth: no graduate had ever taken more than four seasons to land a husband.
Except Prudence.
Until recently, she had not been alone in her matrimonial failures—her friends Emma and Olivia had also been wallflowers with hardly any suitors amongst them. Prudence had envisioned a future for the three of them, living happily in a cottage by the sea. She had known this invitation, this ball, this moment would come, but Prudence had always thought she’d confront it with her very best friends by her side. But then Emma had landed a duke and Olivia had found love with the most unlikely man. Prudence was happy for her friends—truly. No one deserved love and happiness more than Emma and Olivia.
Now Prudence was on her own.
The last wallflower.
Given that marriage was not an option for her, this put her in something of an indelicate position. By indelicate, she meant angsty, stomach-knotted, quietly panicked, a constant state of terror.
She could either be the one failure in one hundred years, or she could face her fears and make one last attempt to secure a husband. With a spark of hope that surprised her and a fortitude she didn’t know she possessed, Prudence embarked on one last-ditch effort to wed.
Thus, Cecil.
Prudence stared at the sleeping man across from her in the mail coach. Convinced that there was no one for her in London, Prudence had left for Bath with her aunt and guardian, Lady Dare. It was in the Bath Assembly Rooms that she’d struck up an unlikely acquaintanceship with Cecil, Lord Nanson, who tended to seek refuge in the wallflower corner during balls. They came to the realization that a quick, clandestine marriage of convenience would suit them both.
Thus they were traveling to his estate, where they would marry by special license.
It was almost the stuff of romance, except that he had no romantic interest in her, nor she in him. Cecil wanted two things: his mother to stop plaguing him to marry, and Lord Fairbanks. After their perfunctory wedding, Prudence and Cecil planned to promptly return to London, where she would prove to everyone that she wasn’t the sole failure in the one-hundred-year history of Lady Penelope’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, and then . . .
She didn’t know what then.
She knew only that she had to attend and that she could not face that ball without a ring on her finger. Otherwise The Beast would have won.
In the years since, Prudence had become rather adept at pretending that the awful thing had never happened. She’d told no one and had proceeded to pretend with Emma, Olivia, and Lady Dare that she was the same girl she’d always been. Sometimes she almost believed it.
But then The Beast was there—a shard of a memory, or at the same party—reminding her
that she had no future. No man would ever want her or love her. Which no longer mattered, because she had no interest in being with a man intimately. Yet every so often she felt a hot flare of determination to prove him wrong.
Thus, a husband for Lady Penelope’s Ball.
Cecil, with his round, pale cheeks and floppy blond curls, would never hurt her. Of that she was certain. As he slept, he breathed faintly through his parted lips. Prudence tried not to be immensely irritated by this. She deliberately avoided thoughts of a lifetime sleeping next to a man who breathed through his mouth. Beggars could not be choosers.
Besides, knowing her and knowing Cecil, they would keep separate bedrooms. Cecil, she suspected, had as little interest in bedding her as she him. The way his gaze had strayed to Lord Fairbanks when they’d all conversed in the assemblies at Bath hadn’t escaped her notice. He wouldn’t hurt her. Nor would he touch her. That suited her just fine.
The prospect of a marriage of convenience didn’t provide the relief she had sought. This wasn’t what she had dreamt for herself. She had wanted love: all-consuming, passionate, can’t-stay-away, shout-from-the-rooftops, die-without-you kind of love.
But at least she wouldn’t be a spinster. At least she wouldn’t be the one failure in the hundred-year history of her school.
She could do this.
It was her best option. It was her only option.
There was no reason for her stomach to be in knots. There was no reason for her heart to ache a little more with every beat. And there was no point in being sad for what she’d lost.
Everyone else in the mail coach slept. Everyone else included a portly middle-aged man and his equally portly wife, one wiry young man with spectacles, and a vicar. None of them breathed through their mouths.
Prue looked out the window and watched the countryside roll by in the moonlight. Fields gave way to a thicket of forest. Instead of the usual luscious green of old trees and expansive meadows, a drought had made everything dry up, stiff, crackly, and brown.
They ought to have arrived at Chippenham hours earlier, but the journey had been fraught with delays. First, Cecil’s private carriage had broken irreparably. Her insistence that they return to London in time for Lady Penelope’s Ball had meant that travel by the mail coach was their only option.
Her maid and his valet had taken the first coach, having been sent ahead to prepare the household. Prudence and Cecil had remained behind for lunch whilst he’d written a letter to his mother in town announcing their imminent marriage. An hour later, they’d been on the road again, this time stuffed into the mail coach with strangers.
Unfortunately, her bad luck had continued. Someone had failed to properly secure the luggage, and somewhere around the village of Corsham it had all tumbled off with a great rumble. Valises, trunks, and some of their contents—a man’s unmentionables, a crushed bonnet, leather gloves—had been strewn about the dusty road.
They were delayed.
It was now late.
Her small valise hadn’t made it back on top of the carriage and was now nestled at her feet. She longed to stretch her legs. She really wished to lie down on cool sheets in a dark room. Perhaps wash the dust from her limbs and face with a cold, wet cloth. She wanted to be alone, behind a locked door.
The carriage stopped abruptly. A few passengers stirred, blinking their eyes sleepily. Beside her, Cecil woke up. The night was dark, quiet. Because they were all silent, waiting, they could hear the highwayman’s voice loud and clear.
“Stand and deliver!”
The occupants of the carriage stirred awake to the sound of someone approaching and nervous horses pawing at the ground, whimpering.
They started to argue then—the carriage driver and this highwayman—their low, angry voices like a threatening rumble of thunder in the night. Prue’s heart started to pound. She wanted so badly to reach for Cecil’s hand. Instead, she reached for her valise and hugged it to her chest.
The matron started weeping. The vicar started mumbling under his breath. Prayers, presumably.
“Cecil, do something,” Prudence whispered fiercely. He was a man, her protector in the big bad world, and danger was approaching. She needed him. Everyone knew that no good came of encounters with highwaymen. It was rare to walk away still in possession of one’s valuables and virtue. Prudence was not a lucky girl.
“You ought to go out there,” Cecil replied. It was a moment before the shock wore off and Prudence could speak.
“Are you mad?” she hissed. Sane men did not send women out to battle ahead of them. They didn’t sacrifice their intended. She knew this wasn’t a love match. But really! “I will not,” she said, her chin trembling.
“It’s you he wants,” Cecil said, driving a nail in chivalry’s coffin.
The driver and the highwayman continued to argue loudly, their voices a thick, heavy, rolling thunder punctured by a sharp crack of lightning.
Followed by a thud. Then silence.
It wasn’t lightning. It was a gunshot.
“I am a mother,” the matron sobbed, heaving heavily and pressing a handkerchief to her mouth. She didn’t need to say anything more for them all to understand: the young, unmarried woman’s life was worth less than hers. The highwayman would want the young woman for whatever nefarious pleasures he had in mind.
“He wants our valuables, not me,” Prudence whispered quickly, trying to reason with them. “If we just hand them over, perhaps he’ll leave us undisturbed.”
“But what if that’s not all he wants?” Cecil replied, his face pale with terror. “Besides, I need my valuables.”
Prue frowned. His father had five thousand a year. Cecil needed his valuables less than anyone in this carriage.
Prudence glanced at the vicar. He caught her eye and hastily bowed his head and resumed his prayers. She wanted to tell him not to waste his breath. She wanted to tell him to have mercy on her in this moment.
Everyone tensed at the sound of heavy boots crunching on the dirt and gravel road. Ominous, those steps were. Everyone was completely awake now.
Prue’s heart thudded loudly as she looked at her fellow passengers. All of them pleaded with their eyes for her to sacrifice herself.
“You can distract him,” Cecil whispered quickly. “While we escape for help.”
“Cecil, please . . . ,” Prue begged, knowing it was useless. The very reasons she had assumed him safe doomed her now: he didn’t care for her, he wouldn’t touch her, he wanted only the distraction she offered.
“Go on, Prudence. Please,” Cecil pleaded. He reached over her to unhitch the latch. The door swung open. He gave her a shove, then pulled the door shut.
Because she hadn’t actually believed he would be so cruel as to physically shove her in harm’s way, she hadn’t braced herself. She went tumbling to the ground, landing on her bottom.
Immediately a bloodcurdling scream emerged from within the carriage.
As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she held her breath and peered under the conveyance. She saw moonlight reflecting off the highwayman’s polished black leather boots on the other side of the carriage.
Chapter 2
PRUDENCE CLUTCHED HER valise to her chest and took one soft step backward, then another. And another and another. No one noticed, for Prudence had made an art of not being noticed.
She heard the vicar praying loudly. Prudence knew that wouldn’t do any good—she knew firsthand that God didn’t answer prayers. The stout matron wailed. Prue wanted to tell her there was no point in crying. Cecil loudly made promises to the highwayman. She wanted to tell the highwayman that Cecil would not keep his word.
She had just been jilted.
During a highway robbery.
Cecil ought to have protected her; instead he’d abandoned her. The vicar hadn’t shown her any mercy. It proved to her, once again, that regretful truth: men never came to save the day.
No one ever came to save Prudence in her hours of need.
A girl was on her own.
She’d do well to remember that.
Thus, knowing better than to wait by the side of the road for a hero to come along, Prudence began to step quickly and quietly through the dark forest as she made her escape. Pine needles cushioned the steps of her thinly soled leather boots. The night air was cool against her skin and a welcome relief from the relentless heat of the preceding days. In her hands, she clutched her valise.
She ran as fast and far as she could, until her lungs were near to bursting. Then she slowed to a walk and carried on, speaking softly to herself.
“He won’t come after you,” she rationalized as she stepped through the forest, painfully aware of the shadows and strange night noises. “A highwayman has better things to do than chase after poor young ladies in a dark and, frankly, terrifying forest in the dead of the night.”
Every so often she paused to listen for highwaymen, or Cecil, who perhaps had come to his senses and sought her forgiveness.
“I SUPPOSE MARRIAGE is utterly out of the question now,” Prue sighed after she’d been walking for a few hours and hadn’t encountered man or animal. “If anyone finds out that I attempted to elope and fled a highwayman alone, I’ll be utterly ruined. As if I weren’t already!”
She laughed softly, sarcastically.
“I must simply make other plans,” she carried on. “I shall live with Emma. Or Olivia. It won’t torture me at all to watch them in their wedded bliss with their revoltingly besotted husbands.”
There was no one to hear the bitterness in her voice.