by Maya Rodale
Her eyes were now bright with tears. But the stubborn Miss Merryweather wouldn’t let them fall.
“Tonight I announced myself as Lady Castleton. Because I believed you, I am now a laughingstock.” He winced. She saw. “And the thing was . . .” She stopped and bit her lip. Her cheeks flushed. Dying, he was dying. “I knew better,” she said in a low and bitter voice. “I knew better. God doesn’t answer. Heroes never come. I am always on my own.”
Prudence broke free of his embrace. With one last glance at him, she turned and walked away. Her friends followed immediately behind her. Everyone else in the ballroom swept aside to let her go.
John wanted to run after her. But that “Ha!” held him back.
Chapter 24
Later that night
The bedchamber of the Duchess of Ashbrooke
THE THREE FORMER wallflowers gathered in Lady Emma’s bedchamber. The duke was dispatched to another chamber whilst the three girls climbed into Emma’s massive four-poster bed, wrapped in blankets and dressing robes.
A fire roared in the grate, providing warmth and soft light.
Glasses of sherry were poured into three cut-crystal glasses.
“Tell us everything, Prudence,” Emma said.
“Everything,” Olivia added for emphasis.
“Starting from when you left for Bath last month,” Emma said.
Prue sipped her sherry, as if a little more time and a little more of the sweet wine would somehow make it easier to finally tell her friends the truth. It was a night for truth telling, it seemed.
The dull ache in her belly from earlier this evening had only intensified.
She had fallen in love with a man she didn’t know.
While she had been revealing every truth, he had been concealing a fundamental fact about his existence. Prue didn’t even know what to call him in her thoughts—not Castleton, obviously. John? That seemed too intimate. Yet they had been so intimate.
Prudence didn’t know what to think. She ought to be mad, for she had been deceived. And she was mad at him for lying to her. But a portion of anger was directed toward herself. She knew better than to trust a man, to love a man. . . .
But she couldn’t forget the freedom she’d felt at revealing her secrets. Hiding the truth was exhausting. She was so tired of being tired.
She also couldn’t forget how she’d told John what had happened to her and he hadn’t shunned her as damaged or spoilt. Perhaps, then, it was time to confide in her best friends. She was still scared: What if they could no longer be friends with her after they knew? What if they always looked at her in a certain way, or treated her gently, as if she were damaged? With her friends, who didn’t know, she could just be Prudence. If they knew, she might be poor, pitiful, pathetic Prudence.
Prudence gazed up at the anxious faces of Emma and Olivia. They were dying to know what had happened in Bath, and with Lord Nanson and “Castleton.”
Don’t be scared. Even when you are scared.
“I know you want to hear about . . .” Prue paused, stumbling over the name. “. . . that man who made the dramatic entrance tonight.”
“ ‘Dramatic entrance’ being a vast understatement of epic proportions,” Emma remarked.
Prue smiled wryly and nodded. “But I have to tell you both what happened during my first season.”
As if sensing the weight and sadness of what she was about to tell, the mood in the room shifted, and Emma and Olivia’s expressions became somber, on edge, waiting.
“Dudley raped me,” Prudence whispered, putting into words that thing that had happened to her and saying it aloud for the first time.
She looked from Emma to Olivia, fearing judgment. She saw expressions of sadness, and shock and pain—and compassion. Wordlessly, as of one mind, they shifted to sit on either side of her and wrapped their arms around her in a warm and loving embrace that made some truths clear. Her friends would not leave her. Her friends still loved her. She had the strength now to tell the rest.
“Not ravished, not seduced, not even took advantage,” Prudence said in a low, bitter voice. “He took my innocence against my will.”
“Oh, Prue,” Emma moaned, resting her head on her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” Olivia whispered, holding her close.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Emma asked.
“I was afraid no one would believe me,” she whispered. “Or worse: I was afraid people would believe me and I would be forced to marry him. If no one knew, then I could pretend it never happened. I just wanted to forget.”
“We wouldn’t have let that happen to you,” Emma said strongly. Prue doubted they could have done anything during their first seasons—the lot of them had been nobodies without influence, voice, or power. (Like John? That thought, unbidden, interrupted her.) But they would have tried, certainly.
“How can people be so cruel as to force a girl to marry her rapist?” Prudence asked, a little sob catching in her throat. “As if some hasty arrangement to patch up her reputation were the answer to such a barbaric act.”
“What a strange, cruel world we live in,” Olivia murmured.
“I didn’t want to have the attentions of another man after that,” Prudence continued. “Being a wallflower was my refuge. I let my figure grow round, and I never looked any man in the eye. In the wallflower corner, I was surrounded by other girls, and no man ever dared to approach. Everything was fine until—”
“All the pressure to marry for Lady P’s ball,” Olivia said softly, regretfully.
They fell silent, remembering an evening earlier this season when they drank sherry and pledged their determination to marry this season or else!!!
“I was ruined. Spoiled. I could not marry,” Prue said. “I cannot marry.”
“Oh, Prudence, how wretched that must have made you feel,” Emma added, clutching her close. “I am so sorry.”
“We are both so sorry,” Olivia added mournfully.
What was left unsaid but understood: it was one thing to face spinsterhood with her best friends by her side. It was quite another when they had married for love and she was alone. The last wallflower.
“I know neither of you ever meant to hurt me,” she said. “I didn’t want to be the only one unwed. I didn’t want to be a failure, yet I couldn’t bear the thought of being touched or having to submit to a man. Again.”
“But where did you meet that handsome stranger?” Olivia asked.
“That handsome stranger who looks at you as if he is deeply and irrevocably in love with you,” Emma added.
“First, I tried to elope with a man I met in Bath. Cecil was . . .” She didn’t know quite how to explain him. “A marriage of convenience would suit us both. I didn’t think he would ever claim his marital rights.”
“Lord Nanson?” Emma asked, and Prudence nodded yes.
“But then our carriage was robbed. I managed to escape.” Prue didn’t wish to get into Cecil’s betrayal or her night in the forest.
“That explains why his letter arrived in town, but neither he nor his bride came with it,” Olivia said.
Prue smiled ruefully. “It seemed like a good idea at the time to provide notice of our intentions.”
“Let me guess: that handsome stranger drove by and saved you,” Emma said. “It sounds like a novel.”
Emma read lots of novels.
“Not quite,” Prue answered. “He did drive past and offer to drive me to the nearest town, but I had to refuse. Then I made my way to the nearest inn. He was there.”
“Why didn’t you let him drive you there?” Olivia asked, perplexed.
Prudence sighed, about to give her friends a glimpse of the turmoil she’d lived with for years now. “Because, since Dudley, I could not be alone with a man. I just couldn’t.”
“Even if it meant walking miles in the scorching sun?” Olivia asked.
“Miles of scorching sun immediately followed by a mile in a downpour,” Prue added.
“
Oh, Prudence . . .” Emma and Olivia sighed so sadly at the same time, as they started to understand what it was like living with that fear and its icy grip on her heart.
“Because the rain made the roads impassable, we were stranded together at an inn for a few days. In that time, I think I fell in love with him,” Prudence said, a little hitch in her voice. Aye, this was a night for truth telling. She just didn’t know what to do with that love. . . . Was it still real if he wasn’t the man she believed him to be?
The faintest of smiles graced her lips as she recollected the little moments—the waltz at night, wondering if Buckley ever woke up, sobered up, and left, how Annie was faring now. There was the moment she confessed her darkest secret and John didn’t judge her for it. She remembered how he’d taught her to defend herself—and she thanked God that he had. Had John known even then that he wouldn’t always be there for her?
She’d never forget the pleasure he’d shown her. How was she ever supposed to live without it now?
But all those memories led up to his heart-stopping revelation tonight. I am not who I say I am. Her smile faltered and her heart felt rather like it was breaking. “Rather, I fell in love with the man I thought he was. I’m sorry, I’m not ready to talk about him yet.”
“Have more sherry,” Emma said, topping off their glasses.
“What are you going to do about Dudley?” Olivia inquired.
“What do you mean?” Prudence asked.
“He is still plaguing you, Prudence. We saw him tonight,” Olivia said.
“John helped me discover the strength to stand up to him,” Prudence said softly. “And he taught me how to defend myself.”
“That’s very good, but everyone saw what you did to him. He will be angry. What if he retaliates?” Olivia asked softly.
Once again, fear started to spread in Prue’s heart. Dudley would be livid—and John was no longer around to protect her.
Emma’s brow furrowed as she considered something else. Then she spoke up: “But what if there are other girls?”
Prue glanced at her friend in shock. What if there were other girls walking around, trying to piece together a life after Dudley’s damage? And what of all the girls—like John’s sister—who suffered similarly at the hands of demons like Dudley? It meant she wasn’t one lone weakling, and it meant he was a monster.
It also meant something had to be done.
“Oh, my God,” Prudence gasped. “What if there are other girls?”
What if there were other girls who would never meet a man like John, who, in spite of being a monumental liar, had made it possible for her to love herself again? He had shown her patience and compassion. What if these other girls never met a man like John who knew her dark secret and loved her anyway?
For the first time, Prudence’s heart began to ache not for herself and what she had lost but for the other girls who had suffered the same and might never know love.
“You have to do something, Prudence,” Olivia urged. “He’s just out there, walking around, angry, possibly terrorizing other young girls . . .”
“Should we kill him?” Emma asked. Prue and Olivia turned to face her. She was completely, utterly serious.
“Emma, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Olivia remarked. “It will make a dreadful mess, for one thing.”
Prudence thought of his blood on her new satin gloves, and rage flared. “I could do it,” Prudence said.
“We can’t let you do it either,” Olivia countered. “Newgate is disgusting, and you are too young and lovely to swing from the hangman’s noose.”
“Besides, death is too good for him,” Emma said. “Now that I think about it. We need something more devious, with more lasting devastation. He has to suffer.”
The girls fell silent, sipping their sherry and considering all the ways in which three young women could take justice into their own, ladylike hands and make a peer of the realm suffer unfathomable tortures and humiliations, as he so rightfully deserved.
Finally Olivia broke the silence. “This is a bit unoriginal, but why don’t we do what has always worked before?”
“Send a letter to The London Weekly?” Emma queried.
“We know they publish anything,” Olivia pointed out. “And we know everyone reads it.”
They knew this because they had previously sent in the most outrageous items of “news” to the paper—some on purpose, others by accident—only to read them in print a few days later, over breakfast, along with the rest of London.
“I don’t want anyone to know what happened to me,” Prudence said. “Tonight was mortification enough—I honestly don’t know how I can show my face in society again after foolishly announcing myself as Lady Castleton, being rumored to have married Lord Nanson, and having inflicted bodily, bloody harm on a peer of the realm. I probably ought to leave town. Indefinitely. Forever.”
“Hang society! You have us,” Olivia said. “And something must be done about Dudley. The London Weekly is the perfect way to get the word out about his true character. We shall leave it up to the decent people of the ton to shame and shun him.”
“Send the letter anonymously,” Emma suggested. “Dear London, beware of Lord Dudley.”
“I’ll even rewrite it in my perfect handwriting,” Olivia offered. “That way it cannot be traced back to you.”
That was a kind offer, but the minute the letter appeared, speculation as to the author would begin. After the events of this evening, all fingers would point to her. Prue had been out for four seasons now, and she knew how these things worked.
“If word got out, Dudley would be shunned, surely,” Emma said. “I know Ashbrooke would ensure that no one received him. But only if he knew.”
“Radcliffe, too,” Olivia added. “Just imagine—a world without Dudley.”
A world without Dudley. Well, if that didn’t sound like Heaven, Prudence didn’t know what did. Already the world seemed like a better place because her friends knew her awful secret and stood by her, taking her problems as their own, determined they should solve them together.
“Once we take care of Dudley,” Emma said, and her matter-of-fact use of we was the sweetest thing Prudence had ever heard, “we’ll figure out what to do about that handsome stranger whom you are obviously in love with.”
“I don’t think there’s much to be done,” Prudence said. Her voice wavered. John had deceived her. After everything she’d been through, it had taken so much for her to trust him, and he’d been lying throughout.
John had taught her to defend herself—but not against the likes of him. A charmer, a pretender, a rogue footman in gentleman’s clothing.
He had touched her. He had taught her how to touch herself. She thought she’d been discovering her own pleasure. A stranger had been watching her, urging her on. She had given herself to him, body, heart, and soul. And she didn’t know who he was.
She could not marry him. She could not entrust herself to him again.
Prue’s friends were a comforting presence, but even they could not stop the ache in her heart. She had triumphed over the devil tonight. But the victory was bittersweet, for she could think only of the man she had loved.
And lost.
And who might never have been the man she’d believed him to be.
Chapter 25
The day of the Great Exhibition
AFTER A QUICK escape from the ball, John had spent the hours after midnight wandering around the city until the sun started to rise. So many nights he had lain awake dreaming of London and how triumphant he would feel to finally arrive. He kicked a small rock in the street and it ricocheted off the cobblestones, flung aimlessly to and fro before stopping in the gutter.
John might have made it to London, but he was anything but triumphant. He was lower than ever, lower than he’d been on the dark, cold, wet February night he’d stood outside that inn and refused to be constrained by his station. But for a slip of paper that was a marriage license or a law
that left nothing to by-blows, John might have been something. He probably had the blood of a viscount in his veins, but it counted for nothing.
Like Prudence and her quest for a marriage license bearing her name. That little slip of paper was the difference between a respectable life deemed successful and a lonely existence as a pitiful spinster. It was just paper. It didn’t change who he was, or who she was.
Couldn’t she see that?
John kicked another little pebble, and it went skidding so far ahead that he didn’t see where it landed. John had risked everything, gambling big, and he’d sustained the kind of losses a man never recovers from.
So he’d never enact his plan to manufacture the Difference Engine. Now that he would be known as the man who’d assumed the identity of a peer of the realm, it was doubtful he’d even find work as a servant now—which was probably irrelevant, as either prison or deportation to Australia was probably in his near future.
It was the loss of Prudence he grieved the most.
She was the reason his chest felt tight and his throat was constricted. He felt like he was choking and his eyes were hot. She wouldn’t let the tears fall—well, neither would he.
It was her lips he dreamt of, sweet, plump, perfect for kissing. And those rare and magical smiles of hers. He’d never felt more powerful than when he’d made her smile, or laugh, or cry out in pleasure. It was a very real possibility that he would never touch her again, breathe in her scent, or hear her voice. Thus it was a very real possibility that life no longer held any purpose or meaning for him.
John knew he should have told her the truth sooner. But he also knew that his reason for hiding his past was sound. Prudence would have run off (as she had done last night). She would have found herself alone in the country, where highwaymen and Dudley roamed. She would have refused his assistance or protection (as she had done from the start).