As Lord Maxwell stepped aside and let her mother enter, Prudence returned her attention to her husband. But not before she’d seen the regret and sorrow lining her mother’s cheeks.
“You need to rest, Prudence.”
If she were capable of feeling anything beyond this cold numbness, she would have smiled at her mother’s attempts at controlling any and every situation. How little control she’d truly had. Of Sin. Of Patrina. Of her. But then, did any of them truly have any control? “I am not tired, Mother,” she said wearily. They each moved through life, pawns upon the chessboard of fate.
The candle at the nightstand beside Christian’s bed cast his face in dark shadows. Prudence studied the dancing shades of the light on his chiseled cheeks, darkened by three days’ worth of beard. This still, lifeless being bore no hint of the strong, smiling man she loved. She wanted her grinning, teasing Christian. She wanted the husband who brushed his thumb over her lower lip and who humored her sketches. A sob tore from her lips and she smothered it with her fingers.
The floorboards creaked as her mother came over and stopped beside the seat where she had set herself up as a sentry. Her mother rested her palms on Prudence’s shoulders. “Oh, Pru.”
Pru. Not Prudence. As long as she’d been a girl, her mother had strived to turn her into a well-behaved, proper, dutiful daughter. She’d not once uttered that moniker, until now. “He is a good man,” she said, swiping at her tears. “I know you did not approve of my decision to wed him.”
“I did not approve of your decision to offer for him,” her mother put in, unrepentant in her tone.
No, her mother and brother had been so very determined to see her wed to a proper, dull gentleman who fit with their lofty and unrealistic expectations. “For so many years, I dreamed of knowing what Patrina and Sin had. I dreamed of finding love in Hyde Park and recreating those moments.” She angled her head back. “Do you know what I realized, Mother? Those moments belonged to Patrina and Sin. They were not mine. You wanted the dream of a gentleman who did not exist for me. I would have never been happy with the stranger you’d selected.” She bit hard on her lower, trembling lip and looked to her husband’s still form once more. “You both failed to realize he was the real dream. And he is not a paragon, but to me he is perfect.” Her tears fell freely and this time she allowed them to go unchecked.
In a wholly un-countess like move, her mother sat on the arm of the chair and drew Prudence’s head close to her shoulder. For a moment, she resisted and then the floodgates opened. She wept just as she’d done for the past three days. Through it, her mother didn’t issue protestations or words of false assurance. She just simply held Prudence while she cried, and when the tears dissolved to a shuddery, watery hiccough, her mother gently released her. She set to putting her limp curls to order, tucking them behind her ears as though it mattered what her coiffure should look like when her world was so shattered.
“I never told you about the day you were born.”
She blinked. Mother had never been one to wax emotional over time past. Coolly pragmatic and reserved, Prudence did not even recall the woman crying when her daughter had run off with a blackguard.
“For twenty-two hours I struggled to bring you into this world. I heard your father speaking to the midwife. She told him you were turned and that you would likely kill me. While they spoke, I had a moment where I could think past the pain. I stroked my belly and demanded you shift so I might see the fiery, spirited child who would likely make my hair grey. And do you know, just then, you turned.” A sad, wistful smile pulled at her mother’s lips. “That was the last time you obeyed me, Prudence Gwendolyn. Through the years, I questioned nearly every decision you made, even with your husband.”
She glanced at her husband and again tears welled. He was so still. So broken. Agony knifed at her heart and she hugged her arms tight to her chest to dull the pain. Oh, God, she could not live without him.
“But do you know,” her mother said softly, stroking the crown of her head. “You have a bold courage and strength I never had, nor will ever have. And you were correct where Christian is concerned.”
The irony of this moment was not lost on Prudence. Her mother and brother had disdained her choice in husband only to now, with him near death, at last, be able to see his worth. “I would like to be alone with my husband again, Mother.”
Her mother ceased her gentle caress. “Of course,” she replied. She stood with the rigidity she’d always shown through life, the proper countess in place once more. “But Prudence?”
She glanced up.
“The day you were born, I told your father about speaking to you and told him that you’d heard and understood. He, of course, credited that reaction to my delirium and your movement to…well, good-fortune. But do you know what I believe?”
She shook her head, too tired from the agony of waiting for her husband to awaken from his silent slumber and her own lack of sleep to make sense of her mother’s words.
“I believe if you speak, a person will listen. Speak to your husband, Prudence. Really speak to him.” Then, as though embarrassed by that not at all logical advice, color flooded her mother’s cheeks and she started briskly back toward the door. She reached for the door handle, but then wheeled swiftly back around. “And Prudence?”
She looked tiredly at her mother. “Yes, Mother?”
“I love you, and though I do not know Christian very well, I know in an act of heroism, he sacrificed himself so you might live and I will forever love him as my own for that.” With that, she took her leave, closing the door behind her.
With her mother’s words ringing in her ears, Prudence rose on numb feet. Days of immobility caused tingling shivers to shoot down the length of her legs. She climbed into the bed and curled on her side, staring at Christian’s prone form.
“The doctor said you really should have awakened two days ago, Christian. He is not at all pleased with you, and…” Emotion wadded her throat. “And I am not at all pleased with you, either.” She inched closer to him and rested her palm on his cheek. “You had no place pushing me out of the way. That elm branch was intended for me.”
And for that sacrifice, as her mother had called it, her husband would cease to be. A gasping sob escaped her and shook her frame until she thought she might break, so that only his arms could stop that tremble. But he could not and so she cried all the harder.
“Y-you are not to die, do you hear me?” Silence served as her only answer. “What am I without you, Christian Villiers? I have smiled more because of you and certainly danced more than I probably ever should.” Her tears broke as a half-laugh, half-cry. “And if you go, my world will forever be dark. I love you.” Prudence pressed her eyes closed and let the tears freely come. How many tears could a person cry? And why could they not heal? For if they could, Christian would even now be waltzing her through his darkened chambers, whistling a jaunty tune, kissing her lips—
A large, weak hand settled over hers. Warm with a proof of a life. Familiar. Her eyes flew open and she shoved herself up on a gasp. “Christian.” His name emerged as a ragged, broken whisper.
He maintained his frail hold on her fingers. “How could the world go dark as long as you are in it?”
Prudence strained to hear the harsh, weak quality of his whispered words. Another sheen of dratted tears blurred his cherished visage. “You heard me.”
Her husband eyed her through thick, heavy lashes as though it were a physical chore to keep his eyes open. Then she blinked rapidly. “I should call for the doctor.” She swung her legs over the bed but he held up a frail, staying hand.
“I just want you now, Prudence. There will be time enough for a sawbones later.”
Prudence spoke so quickly her words spilled over one another. “But I must tell the doctor. And Maxwell is waiting outside. And my mother and—”
“Will you please, this once, do as I ask?” The faint thread of amusement in those whispered words filled her wi
th elation and the sudden assurance—he was going to be all right.
She climbed back into the bed beside him, burrowing close to his side. With tentative fingers, she caressed the knot at the back portion of his head. He winced. “I am sorry,” she confessed. “Do you remember what happened?”
“I do.”
“Good.” Prudence pursed her lips. “Christian Villiers, you are never, ever to do anything so foolhardy as that again.”
“As foolhardy as save you?” The gold flecks in his brown eyes glimmered with amusement. “Isn’t that what heroes do? They save their lady love?”
Oh, the lout was finding amusement in all of this. If she didn’t want to kiss him for living, she would gladly throttle him for thinking there was anything at all humorous about leaving her alone in this miserable, cold world. Then his words registered. She blinked slowly. “You love me?”
The mirth died in his eyes. “How can you not know that? I love you,” he said, breathing the words into existence for the first time and joy exploded in her heart in a blast of heat and feeling. “I loved you from the moment I saw you tipping your head in Lady Drake’s ballroom in time to the music.” He brushed his knuckles down her cheek. “Do you think I could have ever gone on living if I had not saved you? I may as well have died in your stead anyway, Prudence. A world in which you are not in it, is a world I do not want to be in.”
The dratted tears fell freely once more. He captured them with his thumb, brushing back the salty drops. “You have lived your life thinking you are not a hero and striving to prove your worth, but don’t you see? I don’t want a hero for the pages. I want a husband who is real and who is flawed. For that is a real hero, Christian. Not the flawless, fictional figures who you think exist among us or on those battlefields you fought upon.”
The muscles of his throat worked and he slid his large hand around her neck and cupped the sensitive skin of her nape. “Oh, all these years I have pasted on a smile for the world, hating who I am, and what I did or did not do. It took you to show me that it is all right for me to be happy.”
Prudence leaned close and brushed her lips against his in a soft, fleeting kiss. “And are you happy?”
“How could I not be?” A grin played on his lips. “How when I am and have always been so hopelessly captivated by you?”
Epilogue
Final Lesson
All you need is love…
Three months later
From where Prudence sat beside him, Christian took in his wife as she intently worked over the sketchbook on her lap. Occasionally, she would pause, angle the book slightly, and then resume her efforts. Her fingers flew over the page as she sketched…He squinted and leaned closer.
Feeling his gaze on her, she shot her head up.
“A…a…?” God help him, he didn’t have a deuced clue.
She turned the book around for his attention.
It might or might not have been a rose bush. “I do not have my spectacles, love.”
Prudence angled around and reached for the wire frames resting on the mahogany side table. “Here,” she said, thrusting them under his nose.
With a sigh, he placed them on and attended his evaluation of her latest… “It is a tree.”
She gave a vigorous nod.
“Your elm.” Except the jutting branches did not display the same limb-like stretch of the pages he long remembered.
“Decidedly not,” she muttered. “I detest that tree.”
He tweaked her nose. “I thought you loved that tree.”
“That was before it tried to kill my husband.” She tilted her head back to receive his kiss. “I love you and now hate that tree. It was a very good day when it was decided they would take it down.”
Following the shocking tale of the Marquess of St. Cyr’s near death under the deadened branches, there was an outcry to see that great elm removed. By all, except one. He furrowed his brow.
His perceptive wife narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”
Christian coughed into his hand and turned over the sketchpad. “It was not truly dead.”
Not looking at the book, she tossed it behind her where it slid off the edge of the table and landed on the floor with a loud thump. “What did you do, Christian Villiers?”
Since he’d concocted his own scheme, he’d not truly thought she might protest. Of course he knew she spoke often of turning that great elm into kindling…but it was their elm.
“Christian?” she demanded.
He tugged at his cravat. “But it was not really dead. There were those leaves at the top branch—”
“Do you mean above the limb which nearly killed you?”
He nodded. “The same.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“Oh, er, right. Well, as I said, it was not dead and so I managed to see that it remain standing with the promise to remove those dead branches.”
She stared at him, frozen, passing her gaze over his face and he braced for her explosive annoyance, but then she sighed. “Oh, Christian.” Prudence came up on her knees and took his face between her palms.
“I was quite content to celebrate its fiery demise alongside you, if that would make you happy, but then I thought of everything that happened under that tree. Patrina met her husband over by that very spot and he arranged for them to be married there.” Emotion filled her expressive, blue eyes. “It saw our chance meeting in Hyde Park.” He paused giving her a probing look. “They were not chance meetings, were they?”
“They were a little bit chance,” she said, a twinkle lighting her eyes.
“And that tree saw us wed.” He coughed into his hand. “Even if it was not the most romantic of wedding ceremonies.”
“It was the most romantic of all wedding ceremonies everywhere,” she countered.
Odd, the funny things love did to a person’s words and memories that his wife should forget the deuced foolish wager.
“All except the part about the wager,” she added as an afterthought.
“Er, right. Yes. As I was saying, I was happy to see the tree destroyed if it would see you happy, but then I realized it was something more.”
“Do you mean more than the tree that tried to kill you?” she asked with a droll edge infused into her words.
He nodded solemnly. “Indeed. I realized somewhere along the way it ceased to be your elm and became ours.” Christian ran his gaze over her face. Her lower lip trembled and dewy moisture misted her eyes. Ah, God, how he loved her. “But if you would rather I arrange to have it taken down…”
Her glare cut across his promise. “You are to do no such thing. That tree is ours. And there is so much more for it to see.”
“Is there?” he whispered, taking her in his arms with him as he lay down. He adjusted her slender form atop his frame and held her close. “And what will it see next?”
A slow, wide smile split his wife’s bow-shaped lips and she reached for his hand and drew it to her belly. His heart started at the gleam in her eyes. “Why, it needs to see our babe.”
“You are—?”
Prudence snuggled against his chest. “Yes, I am expecting.”
He stilled as emotion slammed into him. For years, he’d been convinced of his own lack of worth. He’d seen his mistakes as failings. Until Prudence had shown him forgiveness within himself.
She nudged him in the side. “Well, usually this is where a father-to-be says how elated he is and plans the names of his future son and heir.”
“I am going to be a father?” he blurted.
His wife pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “I thought I’d been rather clear, but yes. You are to be a father, in approximately six months’ time, according to the doctor.” He would be a father. And she would be the mother of his babe. He imagined a world filled with precocious little girls who loved to sketch and dance every set.
Some of the teasing light went out of her eyes, replaced with hesitation. “You are happy, are you not, Christian?”
A slow, triumphant smile turned his lips. “I am happy.” How could he not be? He’d been well and truly captivated by his lady’s charms.
The End
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Biography
Christi Caldwell is the bestselling author of historical romance novels set in the Regency era. Christi blames Judith McNaught’s “Whitney, My Love,” for luring her into the world of historical romance. While sitting in her graduate school apartment at the University of Connecticut, Christi decided to set aside her notes and try her hand at writing romance. She believes the most perfect heroes and heroines have imperfections and rather enjoys tormenting them before crafting a well-deserved happily ever after!
When Christi isn’t writing the stories of flawed heroes and heroines, she can be found in her Southern Connecticut home chasing around her feisty five-year-old son, and caring for twin princesses-in-training!
Visit www.christicaldwellauthor.com to learn more about what Christi is working on, or join her on Facebook at Christi Caldwell Author, and Twitter @ChristiCaldwell
Other Books by Christi Caldwell
“Winning a Lady’s Heart”
A Danby Novella
Author’s Note: This is a novella that was originally available in A Summons From The Castle (The Regency Christmas Summons Collection). It is being published as an individual novella.
For Lady Alexandra, being the source of a cold, calculated wager is bad enough…but when it is waged by Nathaniel Michael Winters, 5th Earl of Pembroke, the man she’s in love with, it results in a broken heart, the scandal of the season, and a summons from her grandfather – the Duke of Danby.
To escape Society’s gossip, she hurries to her meeting with the duke, determined to put memories of the earl far behind. Except the duke has other plans for Alexandra…plans which include the 5th Earl of Pembroke!
Captivated by a Lady's Charm Page 31