“You want me to tell you I promise I won’t climb trees?” she asked.
“And in exchange, you can keep the cat with no argument from me,” he said.
She paused, searching his face.
There was no chance of ruin to her reputation, or to his, based on the actions she had taken today. For once, that wasn’t what this was about. He was upset for another reason.
Maybe he really did think I was at risk of falling.
There had been that one moment when she’d slipped. It had been a little frightening, she supposed, though her grip had been good enough that Prudence didn’t think she had ever been in any real danger. Still, to someone watching from below, that might have been frightening. Maybe she really had scared him.
She felt a surge of sympathy. If she had seen him in a situation she had deemed dangerous, she might be reacting in much the same way he was right now. It would have frightened her, and she might have responded with anger.
He’s being like this because he was worried about me. Because he cares about me.
It was a staggering thing to realize, and it startled her even more that it meant as much to her as it did. She wouldn’t have imagined that his caring for her could matter to her in such a powerful way. But she felt warm inside, as if someone had ignited a candle within her.
“I won’t climb any more trees,” she told him, and very much to her own surprise, she meant it. She really wouldn’t. She didn’t want to make him worry, especially now that she understood he reallywouldworry.
She wrapped her arms round the cat she’d saved and sank down into a chair.
Leonard looked at her for a moment, and she was sure he must have something else he was thinking of saying. But if he did, he didn’t find the words. He turned away and left her in the sitting room on her own, perhaps thinking that she would take the time to ponder the choices she’d made today.
Or perhaps he was going to think about his own choices.
Either way, everything seemed to have changed between the two of them, and Prudence had no idea what to expect anymore.
CHAPTER 22
“We’re going to attend the Staffordshire ball in a few weeks,” Leonard announced over breakfast a few days later.
Prudence looked up from her toast. “When you say we, do you mean you and me?”
“Who else would I mean?” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you think this is my way of telling you I plan to take Mrs. Mills to Staffordshire?”
“Well, no, of course not,” she said. “But I’m rather surprised to hear that you intend to take me as well. We hadn’t discussed attending any of the season’s events together. What changed?”
“Now that I won’t be moving to the country, we have to think about our image,” he told her. “The honeymoon period is over, and people will expect to see the two of us emerge into the publiceye. Staffordshire will be our first opportunity to do so, and we need to have a conversation about what that’s going to look like.”
“What it’s going to look like?” Prudence repeated, setting her toast down slowly. “I’m not sure I know what you mean. Did you have something in mind that you wanted me to wear?”
“Well, now that you mention it, we should have a conversation about your wardrobe,” he agreed. “I’d like you to appear in the latest fashion. It’s a good way to make the sort of impression we want on society. But that will be easy enough to arrange. I’ll send someone out to pick something up for you. What I really need to discuss with you is the way we need to present ourselves at the ball. The way we want to be perceived.”
“How do we want to be perceived?” she asked slowly, her eyes narrowing as if in suspicion that he was going to say something she wouldn’t like.
Maybe he was. He had no idea how this conversation might go over. “We need to make sure that everyone thinks we’re a very happily married couple,” he explained.
“We aren’t unhappy,” she said.
He wasn’t prepared for the way that simple sentiment would affect him, sending a shiver through his nerves. “We’re not,” he agreed. “But I want them to think we’re in love and desperately so. I want people to believe we’ve spent the honeymoon holed up together, unable to let one another go. I want them to look at us and have no doubts about how in love we are.”
“Why is this so important?” Prudence asked. “I doubt very much whether anyone will be thinking about the two of us this much anyway?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “Or, I don’t know, perhaps you wouldn’t. You ought to know as well as anybody how nosy the ton can be, and how excited by gossip. If they can find something to criticize us for, they will. And we can never allow ourselves to forget the fact that we are keeping a secret from everyone.”
He saw confusion cloud her eyes; shehadforgotten. Or, if not forgotten, she had at least allowed other things to become so important to her that she hadn’t kept it at the forefront of her mind. “The circumstances of our marriage,” he reminded her. “The fact that you were originally intended to marry my brother, and then that changed.”
“When he left me at the altar, you mean.”
