“Robbie, I asked you, what have you done with my Mrs. Prudence?”
The screeching and bellowing of women was one of Robbie’s least favorite things in all the world, all the more so when he knew he was in the wrong. Still, he would have enjoyed a scone or two before Mary Elizabeth rained hellfire down on his head.
“I haven’t done a thing with her,” he lied. He thought of Prudence Whittaker’s soft lips, and the inviting way they’d parted, letting a man in only to draw him in and drown him. If he could have touched her body, even once, he would have died happy. To think that he had kissed her with a bed only ten feet away made his body harden in earnest. His ardor was dampened, however, by the sound of his sister’s voice.
“Why has she not come down for tea?” Mary Elizabeth asked suspiciously.
“How on earth would I know that?”
“She went walking this afternoon and only came back an hour ago. Now she is missing tea. If she hides during dinner, too, I’ll know you did something to her. You might as well go ahead and tell me now.”
Robbie reached for the scone, and this time, she let him have it.
“Did something happen after I left the fencing room?” she asked.
“The ducal ballroom, you mean?”
“Don’t mince words with me, you blithe boy. This is serious.”
Robbie sighed. His conscience was bothering him. If only Mary Elizabeth would leave him be and let him sort himself out in peace the way Alex would have.
“Nothing happened in the fencing room,” Robbie said, setting his teacup down. Mary Elizabeth must have been pleased with his answer, for she leaned over and refilled it, even going so far as to give him some milk and sugar. “We talked a little, and I gave her the afternoon off.”
“She might have come outside and enjoyed the garden with me,” Mary Elizabeth said. “I’m not her job. I’m her friend.”
Robbie did not answer that, but drank his tea. His sister had the look in her eye that their mother often got when things were not going her way. It made him want to run out of the room. But he was a man, so he held his ground as their father always did.
“And you haven’t seen her since?” his sister asked.
Robbie was not a liar. He did not speak at all, but ate a biscuit.
“Ah, you daft boy. I told you that you need my help to win her. Why are you so bloody stubborn?”
Surprised to hear affection in his sister’s voice instead of ire, Robbie answered her. “It’s more fun my way.”
Mary Elizabeth snorted and sipped at her own tea daintily. “Not if you lose.”
That was a chilling thought. He dropped the second biscuit he had planned to eat and felt a shudder come down his spine. He had never lost the game with a woman yet, though all his earlier quarry had been far easier to catch. But Mrs. Prudence was unlike any woman he had ever known. One kiss, and he was drowning. He sat back against the duchess’s overstuffed cushions and blinked.
Mary Elizabeth must have seen something of his fear in his face. She merely patted his hand instead of deviling him further. “Leave your lady to me.”
“God help us,” Robbie said fervently at that.
“Amen.”
* * *
Pru knew she was being a coward, but she did not come downstairs for tea. When the dinner gong rang, she did not venture downstairs either. When the upstairs maid came to inquire after her health, she said that she was suffering from a headache. Which was not altogether untrue. Robert Waters was a headache of extreme proportions.
Of course, Pru had not realized how hungry she would be.
By nine o’clock, she was even willing to venture down the back stairs in search of a snack from the kitchen. A knock on her borrowed bedroom door left her frozen even as she pulled her half boots on.
“Yes?” she asked.
Mary Elizabeth’s resonant voice was clear through the thick oak. “It’s only me, Mrs. Prudence. Might I come in?”
Pru hesitated, thinking to offer the excuse of her phantom headache, when Mary Elizabeth said, “I’ve got food.”
Pru kicked off her unlaced boots and opened the door.
Mary Elizabeth came in with a silver tray piled high with sandwiches and a soup tureen, along with a pitcher of lemonade. How the slight girl did not spill it and make a mess on the carpet, Pru was not sure. As she had handled a claymore easily on the day they’d met, the young lady was clearly stronger than she looked.
Mary Elizabeth brought the tray to the settee in the corner and placed it on the gilded table nearby. She poured two glasses of lemonade, then sat down and picked up a sandwich. “There’s soup, if you’d like some. Leek and barley, which sounds foul, but heals every ailment on God’s green earth. The cook made it at my instruction.”
Pru sat down across from her charge in a fussy Louis XIV chair. Her stomach growled loudly, and she reached for an empty bowl to fill it. “Thank you, Mary.”
“It’s the least I can do after my brother spent the afternoon running you out of the house and deviling you alone in your room.”
Pru dropped the soup spoon with a clatter. Mary Elizabeth leaned over and casually cleaned up the broth that had splashed on the silver tray. “Eat up,” she said. “It’s no good cold, and this blasted silver won’t hold heat for love nor money.”
“A great deal of money,” Pru joked in spite of herself.
Mary Elizabeth laughed, leaning back against the settee cushions, sandwich in hand. “Some people have more money than sense.”
“Like dukes,” Pru quipped.
“And their mothers,” Mary Elizabeth groused. “But enough about my troubles. I want to hear about yours.”
“I am grateful for my position here,” Pru began. Mary Elizabeth cut her off before she could finish.
“You’re not resigning, so just put that thought right out of your head. I’m to be feasted among the English on the duchess’s godforsaken estate, and I need you with me.” Mary Elizabeth sighed. “Besides, if you ran, Robbie would only bring you back again.”
“Miss Waters—”
“None of that, now. I’m Mary Elizabeth, and that’s all. We both know that Robbie is a devil and a nuisance, but he has a good heart, even if he likes to pretend otherwise.”
Pru had never questioned his heart. She questioned the good sense of her own. But that, of course, was not something she could tell this girl.
“Come with us to Northumberland. I promise, I’ll make Robbie behave himself.”
Pru finished the delicious barley soup with a slurp, feeling guilt creep along her spine. It must have shown on her face, for Mary Elizabeth smiled. “Ah, so that’s the way of it.”
“The way of what?”
“You don’t want me to make him behave.”
Pru felt all the color drain out of her face, and a headache coming on in truth. Mary Elizabeth reached out and took her hand.
“You’re an honorable woman. Robbie’s an honorable man. You’re a widow and a woman who knows her own mind. My brother is a scalawag, but a good one. My mother raised him to treat ladies like ladies. He’ll do right by you, make no mistake.”
Pru thought of the way his tongue had felt in her mouth, the way he had tasted of honey and heat. She shuddered with need, which Mary Elizabeth seemed to take for fear.
“Don’t fret yourself,” she said. “My older brother Alex just got married, and his woman gave him a wild race. Make Robbie leap and dance before he wins you. And even after. He’ll thank you for it.”
“Married?” The word came out as a squeak. Delectable young men of means with duchesses for family friends did not marry penniless, nameless women. Surely even this sweet girl knew that.
Despite her beautiful face and soft, blonde hair, Mary Elizabeth did not look particularly sweet at the moment. Her hazel eyes seemed to take in everything abo
ut Prudence, the good and the bad, weighing and measuring her in one glance. From the look on Mary Elizabeth’s face, it seemed that Pru did not come up wanting even then. The tension started to fade from Pru’s shoulders, and she reached for a beef and watercress sandwich.
“Marriage or no, that lies between you and my brother. I’d never dream of interfering.”
Pru repressed a smile at that irony. “Of course not.”
“But you’re a strong woman, like my mother before you. And the men of my family require strong women to keep them from running amok all their days. Hold to your course, whatever you decide, and make Robbie toe your line. He’ll thank you for it.”
Prudence’s mind whirled as she ate her meal, barely tasting the soft white bread and beef. What exactly was Mary Elizabeth saying? Surely she did not think Robert Waters would actually consider marrying a woman like her? And as a debutante and a well-bred young lady, albeit a well-bred lady from Scotland, Mary could not possibly know about gentlemen and their penchant for widowed mistresses.
“Whatever you decide, you have my blessing. That’s what I mean to say.”
Mary Elizabeth stood and collected her silver tray, leaving a plate of cookies and the pitcher of lemonade behind. “We’ll be shopping for gowns tomorrow. I’ll need your opinion.”
“Of course,” Pru said, rising to her feet. “You’ll need to make a good impression on the gentlemen at the duchess’s house party.”
“I don’t give two figs and a nutmeg for what Englishmen think of me. It’s the duchess I aim to please, as she’ll be reporting back to my mother.”
Pru saw a hint of pain on the girl’s face then. If only she could mend it as deftly as Mary Elizabeth had mended Pru’s self-esteem and her evening with her visit, her kind words, and her good food. As tempting as Robbie was, men were not as fraught an issue as mothers.
Prudence pressed her hand to Mary Elizabeth’s arm in silent sympathy. She did not know what to say, so she said nothing. But her young charge seemed to take comfort from her touch, for some of the sorrow went out of her face, and she smiled.
“We three are a band of exiles together,” Mary Elizabeth said.
“But I’m in England,” Pru replied. “I’ve not left my country.”
“You’ve left your home,” Mary Elizabeth answered. “As we have. And I suspect, unlike the two of us, you can’t go back.”
Pru felt her own pain rise up, unbidden, at the thought of Lynwood Hall. She wondered who held it now, and what had happened to their things, the paintings and the furniture, all of the pieces of the estate that their family had collected for generations. The pain was sharp and burning, all at once. She drew a breath, but it was hard won.
Mary Elizabeth did not speak again, but kissed Pru’s cheek before she stepped out into the hall with her tray, closing the bedroom door carefully behind her.
Eleven
Robbie knew that he had stepped in the stew, as Ian might have said, but he also knew that he had to brazen it out. The best way to make a woman come to you, in his experience, was to ignore her.
It wasn’t in his nature to ignore a beautiful woman. But then again, it wasn’t in his nature to make love to a woman in his employ. How did one transition a decent woman from the role of a sister’s companion to a mistress? He felt like a cad even asking himself the question. But as he watched Prudence Whittaker drink her hot chocolate, her soft lips pursed to blow on it, he felt his tongue cleave to the roof of his mouth, and he knew that he would do it.
Mrs. Prudence seemed to have a taken a page from his own playbook, however. She nodded to him coolly when the footman drew out her chair, and after that did not speak to or acknowledge him again. So he found himself watching her as she ate her toast and jam, not listening, as usual, to whatever Mary Elizabeth was saying.
Mrs. Prudence seemed to listen, however, nodding and adding comments. Something about the type of bonnet best worn on morning calls, assuming Mary Elizabeth stayed in London long enough to meet another Englishwoman she might like to visit. An English lady who might receive her, even after the debacle in Hyde Park with Lord Grathton and the claymore.
Robbie caught the phrase “billet-doux,” and his ears perked up. Had she been receiving letters he did not know about? Could he possibly have a rival? He felt a bizarre fit of jealousy rise up from his spleen, but he tamped it down. Jealousy was beneath him. He had seen no evidence of letters or gifts from a man on her dressing table when he had explored it the day before. He had managed to discover the name of her perfume, but that was all.
He knew he shouldn’t have been spying on the woman at all. If his mother ever found out, she would tan his hide, no matter how old he was, and rightly so. Robbie vowed never to search through her things again, no matter what the temptation. In future, if he wanted to know something, he would behave like a man, and ask.
Mrs. Prudence was speaking, so he tried to focus on her voice.
“While it is permissible for a lady to receive casual correspondence,” she was saying, “it is extremely inappropriate for a young lady, a debutante such as yourself, to accept letters of love. It is even more unacceptable for a lady to write them. Once you are engaged, it is a different matter. One might then receive notes from one’s fiancé in good conscience, but I still would not recommend writing letters of one’s own.”
“Because engagements, like love, so often go sour,” Mary Elizabeth mused, sipping her tea.
“Not often perhaps, but sometimes,” Mrs. Prudence said. Mary Elizabeth raised one brow at her, and Mrs. Prudence smiled. “Well, often enough.”
“Best not to commit oneself on paper,” Mary Elizabeth said. “Once you’ve written something down, you can’t take it back.”
“Though a gentleman, at the end of an engagement, will, of course, return your letters to you.”
“Assuming he is a gentleman and not a cad,” Mary Elizabeth said. Robbie felt that sentence skewer him in the side. His sister did not look at him at all, keeping her eyes firmly on his quarry.
Mrs. Prudence did not answer, but finished her chocolate, setting the demitasse cup on its saucer.
“You don’t strike me as a lady who might commit her feelings to paper,” Mary Elizabeth said. “You did not correspond with your husband during your engagement, I suspect.”
Robbie watched Mrs. Prudence closely, and saw a guarded look come into her eyes, as if a door had closed. He found that he very much wanted to open that door, along with many others, and peer into her soul.
He must be losing his mind.
“That is correct,” Mrs. Prudence said. “We did not.”
Mary Elizabeth took her hand across the breakfast table and squeezed it once in silent solidarity, before mercifully changing the subject. “It is time to meet the carriage,” she said. “Madame Celeste awaits.”
Prudence smiled. “Does she indeed?”
“Yes. I need your opinion on my new gowns, if you recall. You must tell me if they are satisfactory for visiting a duchess.”
Prudence laughed then, the light coming back into her eyes. “That sounds a weighty matter. It will be my pleasure to help.”
“I’m coming, too,” Robbie said. He looked around the room, as if the voice had come from somewhere else. He had just volunteered to go to a modiste. It was official, then. His reason was already lost.
Mary Elizabeth looked at him with barely contained amusement, but she had the good grace not to laugh at him openly. He was far gone if he was willing to traipse behind the ladies, carrying their bandboxes.
Mrs. Prudence did not know that this was unusual of him. She nodded as if his company was a matter of course, a job to be undertaken along with the pleasure of the outing. “Of course,” she said. “Someone must stand by to pay the bill.”
Mary Elizabeth laughed out loud at that, and Robbie cursed himself and his damn fool lust in silence.
* * *
Pru was shocked to find Robert Waters as intent on staring at her at breakfast as he had been the day before. He did not speak to her, though, nor did he try to do anything disrespectful, such as get her alone in the hallway as she donned her pelisse and gloves. Even when Mary Elizabeth went upstairs to change into a second outfit, deeming the first unsuitable for a London morning, Robert Waters did not pull Pru into an unused parlor or press her up against the wall to steal a kiss.
The last thought shocked her as much as it excited her. Pru was even more shocked to find herself disappointed that he took the road of honor, and did nothing at all.
Robert Waters held to his word and managed to stay with them for the first hour they were in Madame Celeste’s shop. His eyes glazed over after two minutes, but he valiantly hung on until there was a commotion in the streets, and he escaped outside on the pretext of investigating it. Pru was both relieved and sorry to have him gone, but she had her own duty, and steered Mary Elizabeth gently away from buying a forest green frock with gold fringe.
Pru glanced up at the door when it opened, expecting it to be Robert returning. She saw, instead, the Earl of Grathton step into the dress shop in his place.
Twelve
Pru cursed in silence the fact that she was meeting the last man she wished to see for the third time in the same week. But it was worse than that. His sister was with him.
“Pru!”
Sara Vaughton did not question the evidence of her eyes. She looked straight through the ugly gray gown, beneath the foolish widow’s cap, and behind the useless glasses to the woman who wore them. Her childhood friend did not hesitate, but threw her arms around her. “I thought you were dead!” Sara’s tears were damp on the front of Pru’s wool gown.
Mary Elizabeth was in the back of the shop, tucked away in a fitting room. Prudence stood with her past in her arms, her own heart bleeding. John Vaughton stepped forward and drew his sister away.
How to Wed a Warrior Page 7