I cherished every moment we spent together at your new estate. You cannot know how much I have come to care for you. The love I suffer. The pain I felt when I left since we cannot be together every moment of every day.
Worse yet, I left without being truthful.
I never found the courage to confess about the lasses between you and Elizabeth. To that end, I am most certainly a coward. Why hesitate, you ask? Why hold back when you have every right to know? Because I fear, my love. Simple as that. I feared your response. Losing you. I cannot imagine not having you in my life. Never holding you again.
I will tell you next time we meet. It will be the first thing I do.
Yours Only,
Jacob
“Yet you did not,” she whispered.
“What, my lady?” Agnus said.
“I am not sure.” She shook her head, not really seeing her maid when she looked at her but all the moments leading up to the here and now. From the letters she had received to the time spent with Jacob. “Other than to say I might have been a fool.”
“I would think that quite impossible, my lady.” Agnus sat beside her on the bed. Looked at her with unexpected wisdom. “For foolish actions do not make a foolish person.”
“I can only hope you are right, my friend,” she whispered.
Agnus looked at her kindly and nodded. “I suspect I am.” Her gaze went from the box to Prudence. “Shall you continue reading, or is all hope lost for your duke?”
“Lost?” She blinked back tears and reached for another letter. “I think perhaps not, after all.”
Agnus smiled and nodded with approval before returning to her chair. Not to watch over her like a warrior of old standing guard on a battlement but as a friend, if she needed it.
Jacob had clearly struggled in letter upon unsent letter about whether he should tell her of his time after Elizabeth. He wanted no secrets between them. Yet ultimately, he had come to the conclusion it was best left behind them. He reiterated that he had not laid with those women, would never dishonor them like that, and they had gone on to good lives, so best he ended that chapter and started a new one with Prudence.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. What had she done? But she knew full well. She had let upper crust gossiping ladies rule her heart. Believed lies from strangers when she should have gone straight to her dearest friend and asked him for the truth. Because he would have given it to her. Just as he had in these letters. She had no doubt.
“I should haveneverfled that night.” She blinked back more tears. “Had I just gone up there, he might have told—”
Her words were cut off by a rap at the door.
When she frowned at Agnus, her maid shrugged and went to the door only to find Fenwick on the other side. Pale as a ghost, he looked Prudence’s way.
“What is it, Mr. Fenwick?” Agnus prompted when he seemed tongue-tied.
“This,” he stammered, uncharacteristically shaken. He handed two letters to Agnus. “The Duke of Argyll has sent word. His driver waits below stairs lest you wish to speak with him.”
Prudence went cold at the look on Fenwick’s face before he shut the door behind him. She and Agnus stared at each other for a moment before she did not bother reading the letters but swung out of bed. “Help me dress.”
Agnus did and swiftly at that before Prudence flew downstairs to find Jacob’s man standing in the foyer just as troubled as Fenwick.
“What is it?” Her voice shook. “What has happened?” Without doubt, something terrible. She knew it like she knew how to breathe. “Tell me now.”
“My lady.” The man bowed and did not quite look her in the eyes. “I come bearing sad news.” He glanced from her servants to Prudence, clearly dreading his message. “News you may want to sit down for.”
Chapter Twenty
Prudence stared outJacob’s carriage window and saw nothing but leaden grey in what would normally be a glorious Scottish countryside. A world devoid of color as his carriage carried her south to what was left of him. Every second felt like years. The space between them infinite.
“My lady.” Agnus tried to pry Jacob’s latest letters out of her hand, but she only gripped the unopened envelopes more tightly. “Please, my friend.” Her maid’s voice softened. “Let me have them. Read them to you. The Duke of Argyll would have wanted that. It is why they were sent. Why they were rushed to you and you alone in his time of need.”
“A time of need that has passed,” she whispered hoarsely. “Because I was not there. Could not help him.” Her vacant gaze dropped to his letters. “And now, these are all that are left of him.”
“If so, then he thought highly of you indeed that he would see two letters delivered to you upon his death.” Agnus shook her head. “Is that not strange?”
