Leo swallowed, as if he were nervous, and it touched her.
“I have had time to think about us. About our months together. It was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, Prudence. In fact, it might have been the first time in my life that I was happy. I have had successes, yes, but those were financial and social, but none of it made me happy. They made me and my mother comfortable, and that’s different.”
Prudence understood. She had been happy as a child, but not as an adult. Her accomplishments were satisfying, signing documents to purchase new railway systems, ordering new track to be built. Even ordering stock trades on behalf of the incapacitated Gregory. But she hadn’t beenhappy.
“That week at the cottage was—” Leo broke off, looking down in his lap.
It had been transcendentally happy. “Sheer happiness,” Prudence supplied.
Leo nodded. “To have you there, with the morning birds, and my sketchpad, it was new and different, and made me the man I want to be. And I’d thought, that night, coming down from the Hooper’s Hill, I could be this man all the time if I wanted.”
Prudence waited. She knew there was an exception coming.
“But when Granson showed up, and called me that name—that name who, as far as I’m concerned, belongs to a dead man. It all came flooding back—why I couldn’t be that man in the garden with the sketchpad. Why breakfasting with you amongst flowers was impossible. Why London was the only place I couldbe. And I wanted you with me, still. But I wasn’t willing to give you up. I shouldn’t have said I would leave you. Because I wouldn’t, Prudence. You have to know that I was desperate. All that helplessness I’d had with my mother in that place, it all came flooding back. And the idea of you knowing that weak and helpless starving boy—I snapped.” Leo took a shaky breath. “I am so sorry for not explaining it to you. For not behaving better. For not being the man in the garden with the sketchpad. He would have held you and told you everything. He would have brought you along every step of the way as a partner, not as baggage to haul off and put on a train.”
“Your sketches were rather good,” Prudence said.
“I mean it, Prudence, more than you can imagine. When you showed up at the house in the snowstorm, I thought this was what I had waited for. I was waiting for you. What I didn’t understand was that you were waiting for me to realize that I still hadn’t found the man I was for those few days. And I desperately want to show you how my life has changed since this summer.”
Her heart ached to forgive him. She wanted to forgive him so badly. But there was still more, and she felt so childish for wanting to know why he didn’t outbid Lord Grabe at the auction. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to cry.
“I wanted to say all this to you the night of your ball. Which was beautiful, by the way. The room was stunning. You were stunning. But I couldn’t get to you.”
“But you could have,” she whispered, cracking open her eyes. “You could have.”
Leo hung his head. “I don’t know how to explain this bit. There were times, when I was a child, that my mother starved so that I would have just a tiny morsel in my growing belly. She was so painfully thin that it hurt to look at her arms. So gaunt. Since then, I’ve been determined to always have enough money for us. I needed back-up accounts and hidden accounts, places that noone could find the money I kept on hand for us. I’m not proud of it. But the sum of eleven thousand pounds was too much for that part of me. The starving little boy, who was watching his mother reduce herself to a skeleton. I couldn’t. And when you looked down at me, and I saw the disappointment in your eyes when I didn’t bid, it undid me. I was wretched. And I thought, how can I explain this to her? How on earth could I make someone like you—who had a lovely childhood with lovely parents—how could I make you understand what it was like to have Reggie Morgan hounding my every move?”
Prudence swallowed hard. She’d never felt that instinctive need for money. The drive he described. But she could understand how a man like Reggie Morgan could make a boy feel like that.
“And then you saw him arrive in my house. You cannot know the embarrassment and shame I suffered that day, watching as everything unfolded in front of you. All the things I’d sought to keep away from you. All the nasty bits of my life and my family.”
“All families have their own dynamics. No one’s is perfect.” Prudence knew this was true, and while hers had squabbles, she loved them all so much.
“Living with Reggie and Granson has changed me, Prudence. Because you are correct—my family is strange and odd. But Reggie is a different man now. No longer drinks, and is surprisingly frugal. How my mother bosses him around, it’s really quite funny.”
Prudence ducked her head, smiling, because she heard affection in his voice. “I’ve missed visiting your mother.”
Leo smiled—he actually smiled! “It was your letter to her that made her beat me hard enough to get my head out of my arse.”
Prudence reared back. She couldn’t imagine.
“Metaphorically speaking,” Leo said, holding up a hand. “I was full of whisky and keeping company with Granson and Eyeball every night. It wasn’t a healthy choice.”
“Eyeball?” Prudence asked, flipping through her memory, searching for the name.
“Lord Grabe. He’s known how ardently I’ve regarded you for some time.”
Prudence giggled, reminding herself of Eleanor. “Ardently regarded?”
“Most ardently,” Leo assured her, scooting forward on his seat, so their knees touched. He removed his gloves and stowed them in his coat pocket. Then rested his hands on his knees, palm upward. “Prudence. I hadn’t known the meaning of the word until I missed you so badly I didn’t want to be in this world. I love you. The words scare me and compel me and make me drag myself across a very cold continent to find you. I love you. And I don’t ask for anything in return. I would never be so presumptuous.”
A warmth inside of her chest glowed brighter. As soon as he said the words, she felt them echo in herself as well. “I love you, too, Leo. I couldn’t breathe for how much I loved you.” She laid her gloved hands in his bare ones.
“Wunderbar!” cried the old lady next to Leo, clapping her hands. Even Georgie joined in, a smug look on her face.
“I doubt you’d be willing to kiss me in public, would you?” Leo asked.
“Would that not scandalize you? I’m an American, after all. I’m nothing but scandal.” Prudence tightened her grip on his fingers, pulling him toward her.
