by Maya Rodale
London, 1820
Four years earlier
Three of Lady Penelope’s students were not in their French lesson, as they ought to have been. It was the sort of glorious day that begged one to be out of doors with the sunshine on one’s skin and breathing in the scent of spring in full bloom. Three best friends, having had enough of lessons, skipped out and ensconced themselves at their spot: a lovely, hidden patch of grass near the river that ran through school grounds. Here they lolled in the grass or skipped stones on the water.
“Only one more month until we graduate,” Emma said gleefully.
“Only one more month until our debut,” Prudence said, feeling nervous but excited all at once. Lady P’s was a wonderful school, with friendly students (except for Kate Abbott and her minions) and amiable instructors. But oh, they longed to be grown up and make their debut, for then life would truly begin.
But first—
“I hope my freckles fade before then,” Prudence added. She had a smattering of them across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Everyone knew they were not quite “the thing,” and she diligently put lemon juice on them each night.
Emma and Olivia tossed aside their bonnets, but Prue kept hers firmly in place. She had only one more month for the freckles to fade and for her hair to darken from a less coppery shade of red. Along with choosing which gowns to order, these were her most vexing problems.
“I cannot wait. I’ve had enough of dancing lessons,” Olivia declared. “I’m ready to be dancing with a tall, dark, and handsome rake instead of our Monsieur Dumas.”
Monsieur Dumas was their dancing instructor. Occasionally, the girls read novels where gently bred ladies ran off with the dance master. If any woman ran off with Monsieur Dumas, Prudence would eat her bonnet . . . and then sit in the sun.
“I’m sure I’d forget the steps,” Prudence said. “Even after all our hours of lessons, I bet I’d be too distracted by his smoldering gaze and thoughts of kissing.”
It went without saying that a handsome man would waltz with her, holding her closer than was proper, and he would gaze at her smolderingly and she would think of kissing him. This was the stuff of her dreams, and as far as any of them knew, dreams did come true—especially to good girls like them.
“Oh, perhaps he’ll be such a strong lead that you won’t have to have a thought in your head at all,” Emma said confidently.
“How do you know that?” Olivia asked.
“I read it in Miss Minerva and the Malicious Marquis,” Emma answered, grinning.
“It’s safe to assume that did not come from Lady Penelope’s library,” Prudence replied dryly.
“Of course not,” Emma replied. “I gave a downstairs maid half of my pin money for it.”
“So it’s one of Those Books,” Prudence said, grinning wickedly.
The school’s library contained only those books determined suitable for young ladies. Thus there was a brisk black market of shocking novels and other scandalous texts amongst the students and servants of the school.
“I want to borrow it next,” Olivia said, “as long as it’s not like that Mad Baron book that got passed around. I couldn’t sleep for weeks.”
“We know,” Prudence muttered. “Because you kept waking us up in the middle of the night seeking reassurance.”
The entire population of the school had been riveted—in a ghastly, can’t-look-from-the-carriage-accident sort of way—by a newly published broadside entitled The Mad Baron: The Gruesome Story of an Innocent Maiden’s Tragic Love And Untimely Death. A True Story. It was about a lord who had murdered his wife.
“What if one of us has to marry the Mad Baron?” Olivia asked in a hushed, horrified whisper that made the hair on Prue’s neck stand up. This was the greatest collective fear of Lady Penelope’s class of 1820.
“Don’t be absurd,” Emma answered. “He never comes to town, and by the time he ever does, I’m sure we’ll all be happily married to dashing rogues and charming reformed rakes.”
“Which one of us will marry first, do you think?” Prudence asked. It went without saying they would all marry. As young ladies of the haute ton, they had one task in life: marry and marry well. It was unthinkable that they wouldn’t.
“I think Olivia will marry first,” Emma said.
“I think that is quite likely,” Prue agreed. Olivia had beautiful blond hair and a pale complexion that begged for comparison with angels. She was the perfect lady, too, moving with grace and possessing perfect manners and a sweet disposition.
“Prue, I think you’ll be next,” Olivia said. “Some man will be enchanted by your dark eyes and your sly wit, especially compared to vapid creatures like Miss Dudley.”
Miss Dudley, a year younger, couldn’t hold a thought in her head for more than a minute—everything that crossed her mind was verbally expressed, whether it was her need to visit the necessary or her opinion of someone’s “tragically unfortunate gown.” Had she had interesting thoughts, it might have been forgivable.
Prue didn’t say vapid things. She was too smart for that. Her governess, Miss Georgette, had said so before she’d retired to Stanbrook Abbey when Prue had gone off to school.
“The trick for you, Emma, will be finding someone who compares with all the heroes in your books,” Olivia said.
“I’m sure he’s out there,” Emma replied dreamily. “I hope I find him soon.”
“But not too soon,” Olivia cautioned. “Remember our plan.”
“The first season is for flirting,” Prudence repeated. They all agreed they should have time to enjoy themselves, flirting and dancing with an assortment of gentlemen. It wouldn’t do to go straight from the schoolroom to being wed.
“The second season is for settling down,” Olivia finished. “After we’ve had some fun.”
“One more month . . . ,” Prudence said in a hushed and excited whisper.
The three girls smiled broadly, giddy for what awaited them once they arrived in London, made their debuts, and life truly began.
PRUDENCE OFTEN THOUGHT back to that day, pinpointing it as the moment when her entire life stretched ahead of her like a bright, warm ray of sunshine. With her best friends by her side, they would take London by storm. No more dull lessons on French, geography, or dancing. Their lives would be a whirlwind of balls, afternoon calls with their suitors, and shopping expeditions to Bond Street. They would all fall in love and live happily ever after.
Prudence had not expected to be married within her first season, but definitely by the end of her second. She had expected all sorts of things.
However, she had never expected this: finding herself stranded on her own in a small country inn. As a family dined noisily, she stood before the window in the parlor, watching the rain and wondering what had become of Cecil. Or her maid. Or the highwayman.
Prue was jolted from her thoughts by the arrival of Lord Castleton, whom she had not seen since her arrival yesterday. He stood beside her, looking out the window as well. He didn’t have to utter a word for her to be agonizingly aware of him. Her nerves tensed, on high alert. There was a man. She was on her own, vulnerable. Discreetly she glanced about the room, searching for a way out. Having just survived a highway robbery and worse long ago, she wasn’t about to break her habit of always noting a path of escape.
But really, where could she go? Out into the rain, on her own? Prue took a deep breath. There was no running today; she would have to face her fears.
She was just grateful that family was nearby, distracted as they were with their own business.
Prudence’s gaze traitorously settled on Castleton. He was tall, lean, perhaps even lanky, but strong. He dressed informally, with just a waistcoat and the sleeves of his white linen shirt rolled up to the elbows, revealing bare forearms corded with muscle. She stared at his arms during a long moment in which her heart beat hard with a warning.
For once she tried to drown it out and imagine a man’s arms around her affectionately.
But then her heart seized and her breath hitched in her throat. Beside her, Castleton loomed large. She didn’t know him. She did know there were bad men in the world.
“Quite a rainy day,” he remarked, now clasping his hands behind his back, standing at ease.
“Indeed,” Prudence said. She didn’t want to encourage conversation, but she also didn’t want to be rude and make him angry.
“How is your room?” Castleton asked, still looking out the window.
“Dry,” she quipped. She dared a sideways glance and saw him smiling.
“That’s something, isn’t it?”
“Thank you for alerting the innkeeper to my arrival,” she said, and not just to be polite. Prudence was grateful for the consideration, even if it made her wary about what he might expect of her in return.
“Would you care to join me for luncheon, Miss Merryweather?” Before she could refuse, he carried on. “It seems absurd for both of us to dine alone in silence. Mr. and Mrs. Hammersmith are quite busy with their brood.” She peered over her shoulder. A tradesman and his wife were obviously frustrated as they tried to dine with their six children. “And Buckley isn’t talking.”
She supposed Buckley was the one slumped on a rough-hewn stool, resting his head on the long wooden bar. Still.
Prudence opened her mouth to decline. She wasn’t thinking about lunch with Lord Castleton; it was hard to think of anything, given the tremors of fear that rocketed through her at the prospect of being alone with a man. She hated that her instinct was to bolt when her heart maybe, might, perhaps wish to stay. She hated why she felt this way.
Over the years, Prudence had made an art of deflecting a gentleman’s gaze and ensuring one never asked her for a waltz or a turn about the ballroom. She had let her slender figure grow round. Her gaze never connected with a man’s. At balls, she found her fellow wallflowers and rooted herself in their corner.
BUT HERE WAS a man—a handsome one, with friendly blue-sky eyes and the sort of easy smile that suggested he did so often—and he was asking her to dine. Prudence had no good reason to refuse.
THOUGH IT WAS only midday, the overcast skies outside meant candles were necessary indoors. Rutherford was bustling about, lighting white tapers and stoking the fire in the grate. There was something electric in the air, enhanced by the moodiness of the weather and the strange circumstance by which Castleton found himself with this woman who raised more questions than she answered.
He pulled out the chair for her at the table for two the innkeeper had already set. There was no mistaking the suspicion in her large brown eyes as she took note of the cutlery and glasses already laid out. Waiting.
“Of course I had planned to invite you to dine with me,” Castleton explained.
“And you presumed I would agree,” she said, cheeks reddening with indignation.
“I did not anticipate much competition,” he said with an easy smile meant to diffuse her nerves or temper or whatever had her bristling at the prospect of a gentleman arranging for lunch with a lady when they had no other company.
“There’s Buckley,” she said quite seriously, save for a spark in her velvety brown eyes. Her teasing took him by surprise.
“It’d be a sad day for me if I lost you to the likes of him,” John quipped.
“Would that wound your ego?” Miss Merryweather asked.
“Tremendously.”
“I know your kind,” she said, with the faintest upturn of her lips.
“What, pray tell, is that?” His voice remained light, even though this line of conversation could be dangerous to him.
“The kind that expects women to fall at your feet and the whole world to fall in line and do your bidding.”
She was so far off the mark that there was nothing to do but laugh and take a sip of wine. He offered her a glass, which she refused. What a pity; the girl was so tense, from her rigid spine to her slightly scrunched shoulders. Was it something about him in particular?
Some girls were just nervous about men. They were raised to be wary, to never speak with a gentleman with whom they had not been properly introduced. It was to be expected she would be nervous, especially when she was traveling without a protector. Judging by her dress, her accent, and her manners, she was not the sort of woman who should have been out roaming the countryside unaccompanied. In fact, girls like her did no such thing unless driven to desperate measures.
But then again, maybe the upper-class accent and refined manners were faked, and the fine gown was a castoff from her mistress. It had been known to happen.
Rutherford entered then, bearing a tray loaded with food—lamb stew, peas, roasted carrots slathered in butter, and thick crusty wheat bread. He served them. They began to eat.
“What brings you to Westbury?” John didn’t know the town’s name, but odds were that it wasn’t Westbury, which he’d just made up.
After a moment’s hesitation she told him, “I’m on my way to London.”
John was more interested in the fact that she didn’t correct him, which suggested that she didn’t know the name of the town either. What was she doing alone in a town that she didn’t know the name of? His sipped his wine and gazed at her curiously. Things did not add up with Miss Merryweather.
“I am also traveling to London,” he told her. That he did not make up.
Great things awaited him in London. Everything he’d ever dreamt of was in London. Come hell or high water, he was going to London, and he was going to get there by Sunday, even if he had to swim, which seemed like an actual possibility given this relentless rain.
“Imagine that,” she replied, treating him to another slight smile. It was quite ridiculous what those slight smiles of hers did to him. But like many a man before him, a pretty girl was his undoing.
“All roads lead to London,” he quipped. “I’m curious. What awaits you there?”
As John watched her thinking of what to say, he had the distinct impression that she was hiding something. Of course that only made him more curious.
Prudence didn’t answer with any of the immediate things that sprang to mind: Mortification. Failure. Complete ruination if word of this encounter ever gets out. Nothing.
Instead she replied, “My friends. And my family.” Her friends were few and family fewer, but that didn’t need to be said. She had Emma, Olivia, and Lady Dare, and they meant the world to her. For a second she felt a flash of guilt, since they were all ignorant of her whereabouts and she had deliberately misrepresented her travel plans. And then, eager to change the subject, she asked, “Why are you going to London?”
“It’s a mad scheme, really,” he confessed, grinning slightly, revealing his dimple and a spark of excitement in his blue eyes.
“Now I’m intrigued,” she said, not untruthfully.
“Two gentlemen are working on a machine that will change everything,” Castleton told her, leaning forward, his voice hushed. Prudence stilled. “They’re calling it the Difference Engine, and it will perform advanced mathematical equations correctly every time. This will change everything.”
Prudence declined to mention that she was well aware of the Difference Engine and that she was acquainted with both inventors, the Duke of Ashbrooke and Baron Radcliffe.
She murmured, “How intriguing” rather than explain her connection. Prudence wasn’t sure of this Lord Castleton yet, so she sipped her water rather than give this strange man too much information about herself. But she did tuck it away for possible use later. She asked, “Are you acquainted with them already?”
“Not yet,” Castleton replied, after a sip of his wine. “They’ll be at the Great Exhibition with the machine. I intend to get an introduction then.”
One didn’t just get an introduction to dukes, which everyone who was anyone knew. But then again, Ashbrooke was a friendly man who didn’t stand on ceremony, especially when it came to talking about the beloved engine he had invented.
“What will you do once you
have been introduced?” Prudence asked.
“The world will need more than one of these machines,” John said. His voice was an excited whisper now, as if someone might overhear and steal his idea. She doubted the Hammersmith family or Buckley or Annie cared, but there was something in his enthusiasm that made her heart start beating a bit faster.
How lovely to be so certain of one’s future ambitions. She envied him that. Castleton continued, “And I intend to build them. Or rather, my factory will build them.”
“You have a factory?” Prudence inquired, a bit perplexed by this, for most peers concentrated their efforts on agriculture rather than the bustle of city commerce.
“Not yet,” he admitted, leaving her to wonder how one just got a factory. Probably the same way one just got an introduction to one of the highest-ranking men in the country.
“I thought lords didn’t dabble in trade,” Prudence remarked. She eyed him carefully and compared him to the lords she knew. It was one thing for a peer to dabble with inventions, quite another to manufacture. But so much of Castleton said peer of the realm, from his accent to his manners and lordly way he had declared “I am Castleton” when they’d met on the road.
“This one will,” John said confidently, though he had only a vague idea how to accomplish it. But he had this winning streak, which had already brought him more money and opportunities than he’d ever dreamt possible while back at Castlemore Court.
“I suppose ladies don’t go traipsing around the countryside alone either,” she mused. He grinned and laughed, because generally ladies did no such thing.
“I confess I’m intrigued, Miss Merryweather,” he asked, resting his arms on the table and leaning forward. “Why were you trudging along that road, miserable and alone? Are you in trouble?”
“The mail coach I was traveling in had an unfortunate encounter with a highwayman,” she told him. Her voice was light, as if she merely mentioned a broken axle or the horse throwing a shoe. However, she couldn’t quite meet his eye.