“I don’t see why it matters.”
“It matters if I say it matters.”
“Years,” she said. “And I’ve never been caught. Not until tonight. How did you know it was me?”
He didn’t want to tell her that he hadn’t known, that all he’d had was a feeling telling him something was amiss. If he confessed that to her, she would insist that it confirmed her point, that there was no risk in the way she was behaving. It had only been a fluke that she had been discovered after all.
Maybe that was true.
But it didn’t mean that Leonard was going to allow his wife to go on taking risks like this.
He had nothing else to say to her for the rest of the ride home, and she didn’t speak to him either. They both looked out the windows of the carriage, as if trying to find something to focus on other than the events that had transpired today. As if this predicament might disappear if only they could bring themselves to turn their attention to something else.
But when they arrived back at Desford, of course, nothing had disappeared at all, and the problem remained right in front of them, waiting to be dealt with.
I’m going to have to address this—and I can’t let another day go by without doing so because there is every chance she’ll do the same thing again the moment she has an opportunity.
He waited until they had stepped out of the carriage then turned to face her. “Go and change into something appropriate,” he told her. “Then come to my study. Do it right away—don’t waste any time. And bring those clothes with you.”
“Leonard—”
“Don’t argue with me,” he said, his voice as tight as he had ever heard it. “I’ll be waiting for you there. I suggest you don’t keep me waiting for very long.”
CHAPTER 14
Prudence felt sick with regret as she changed out of her peasant clothes and into a gown.
The decision to dress herself down and go to a club this afternoon had been an impulsive one, and she had known at the time that it might be unwise, but she hadn’t imagined that it would end this badly.
Was there any way to avoid surrendering her peasant clothes? Leonard had insisted she bring them down, and she thought it fairly likely he would just throw them straight into the fire. Her heart ached at the thought. These clothes didn’t just represent freedom—although they certainlywerean invaluable ticket out of the confines of her life—but they meant more to her than that. These things had been with her for years. It would be sad to have to let them go.
Once she had changed back into what she knew her husband would consider proper attire, she folded her trousers and shirtlovingly and carefully. Then she sat on her bed for just a moment, holding them in her arms. He had said not to keep him waiting, so she knew that she needed to go, but the thought of getting up and walking down to his study was intimidating. She didn’t know exactly what would happen when she got there, but she was sure it wasn’t going to be anything good.
No point in putting it off. With a sigh, she rose to her feet, clothes still in her hands, and left her bedroom.
The door to the study stood ajar, and she paused for a moment outside it, wondering if she ought to knock anyway.
“Come in,” Leonard called—he must have heard her moving out in the hall. With a sigh, Prudence went into the study.
Leonard pointed to the chair opposite his desk. Prudence’s heart sank as she walked over to it and sat down—it was clear to her that she was here to be scolded.
Leonard folded his hands together on top of his desk and looked across it at her. “So,” he said, “you and I have a problem, Prudence.”
“It doesn’t have to be a problem,” she said.
“I agree. It doesn’t. Because, thankfully, no harm has been done so far, and there is an easy solution that will help us out of this predicament as long as we can both agree to make use of it. Do you think you can agree?”
She didn’t know quite what he was getting at, but she had a feeling that whatever it was, she wasn’t going to like it. “It’s not very fair of you to ask me to agree to something before you even tell me what I’m agreeing to,” she argued.
“Well, that’s true enough,” he told her. “Still, I’m not sure that I would start talking about what’s fair if I were you, Prudence. Your actions today haven’t been very fair to me.”
“I haven’t done anything to you,” she protested. That was taking things a bit far, surely.
“You don’t think so?” He raised his eyebrows. “Prudence, you may be accustomed to a life in which the only thing you have to worry about is yourself, but that isn’t how things are now that you’re married. What you do has an impact on me as well as you. You are certainly within your rights to make choices that will tarnish your own reputation, but when mine is on the line, it becomes my business as well.”
“I don’t think I’ve done anything that would tarnish your reputation.”
“No, because I stopped you in time.”
