Was she being deliberately pointed with him? “Yes, that’s what I mean,” he agreed. “The point is that we don’t want to allow anyone else to find out about that. We would both be disgraced, and so would Peter.”
“I never knew you were this worried about the idea of Peter being disgraced,” she said. “I mean, it’s come up several times since we married, but before that day, I would never have guessed it could be so important to you. Surely a grown man can manage his own affairs without his brother tending to everything? Why does he need you to worry about this on his behalf?”
“I would have thought you would understand,” Leonard observed. “This is how it is in your family. Am I correct? Your sisters are always looking out for one another?”
“Yes, but that’s different,” Prudence argued.
“I don’t quite see how.”
“Because my sisters and I… forgive me, but we like one another a great deal,” she said. “I would do anything for them, and they for me. They don’t just care for me because they’re worried about damage to my reputation—but that seems to be the way you feel about Peter. Am I wrong?”
“My relationship with my brother is a complicated one,” Leonard objected. He wasn’t in the mood to try to explain things to her. “The point is that we don’t want people to realize that the original arrangement was between you and him. That wouldn’t make you look very good either, you know.”
“I’m not worried about how I look.”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear. In any case, will it hurt you so very much to try to go along with what I’m asking of you here? You can manage it, surely?”
“I’m happy to try to cooperate,” she agreed. “Tell me what you want.”
“It’s fairly straightforward. We’ll attend this ball and act like a couple in love,” he explained. “That means that we’ll keep close to one another all evening. We’ll dance together, look into one another’s eyes, and in general put on a display of being deeply infatuated with each other.”
“It doesn’t bother you that such a display would be dishonest?” she asked him.
He laughed lightly. “No one is more dishonest in all the world than the people who attend these functions,” he said. “I have no compunctions about lying to them, especially when it comes to my personal life.
What he didn’t say, though he couldn’t help thinking it, was that it wouldn’t be such a lie as it might have been. He was very fond of Prudence, even though he found her deeply maddening. Pretending to be in love with her might not be entirely truthful, but it wouldn’t be as if he was pretending to be in love with someone he despised either. He liked her. That would be easy enough to show to people.
“All right,” she said. “If it’s that important to you, we can put on this act.”
“It is important,” he said. “And if we play our parts well, we’ll have them convinced that this is the reason we married. Not out of any desire to control a scandal but simply because we loved one another so much that a marriage was the only solution we could come up with.”
“Solution,” she laughed. “As though love was a problem that needed to be solved.”
“Maybe it is,” he said quietly, immediately hoping she hadn’t heard.
If she did, she said nothing about it and simply picked up her tea and sipped it slowly. When she put it down, she had a thoughtful expression on her face.
“Simply attending one ball isn’t going to do, is it?” she asked. “One ball isn’t going to make this point sufficiently.”
“No, it won’t,” Leonard agreed. “There will have to be many balls. We’ll have to see out the whole season and let everyone know just how strongly we feel for one another.”
“It’s a good thing you’re not going to the country, then,” she said mildly. “Tell me, what was the plan when you thought you would be going? How did you intend to show people that our marriage was real and born of love back when you thought you would be gone for the season?”
It was only a matter of time, he supposed, before this question came up. “I would have hoped that people would come to a different conclusion if I was forced to go,” he said. “I’d have hoped they would assume I had left for work, rather than out of any dissatisfaction with our marriage. That would have been the official story, of course, and there would have been some truth to it. I was never unhappy with you or leaving to get away fromyou in any way. I simply thought we might both appreciate our freedom… you know, before I realized that I didn’t trust you.”
“You’ll never stop bringing that up, will you?”
“It’s only been a few days,” he protested. “Am I expected to have forgotten it already?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know that, whether it’s days or years, you will continue to bring it up forever. You will always have something to say about me and about how scandalous I am, and that’s the reason you had to stay here.”
“Well, perhaps you’re right,” he murmured. “And you’re certainly right that one ball isn’t going to be enough to prove to anyone that we have the kind of marriage I want them to believe we have. So, yes, we’ll be attending many events this season.”
“In which case I will ask for a new wardrobe,” she told him. “I’d very much like something in lavender. And instead of sending someone to do the shopping, I would like to do it myself. Perhaps I could go into town with my sisters? We would have a very good time together. I think that would encourage me to be prepared for the kind of season you’re hoping to see me have. I’d be more than ready to convince anyone who was paying attention that I’m madly in love with mydearhusband.”
She gave him a witchy smile, and he couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing. “You know how to play your cards.”
“That’s an important thing for a young lady to know,” she agreed. “What do you say? May I do my own shopping?”
