CHAPTER 25
“Did my father offend you terribly?” Prudence asked once her family had gone.
“They both did, truth be told,” Leonard told her. “Your father and your mother. I suppose I didn’t realize they were like that. I’ve only met them a few times after all. Is that always the way they are?”
“If you mean, are they judgmental and critical then yes,” Prudence said. “We’ve all gotten used to it by now. My sisters and I, I mean. I’m not sure Bridget is really accustomed to the way they talk to her. I don’t think her parents treat her that way.”
“I’m surprised she puts up with it.”
“Well, Bridget is a country girl and likely thinks those are just city ways. She’s here for her season, you know. Making her debut. I do worry about her,” Prudence sighed. “With only my mother and father to guide her, I mean, now that the rest ofus have left home. I can’t imagine that will be a very positive experience.”
“I’m sure she’ll do fine,” Leonard said. “After all, you’ll still be at all the balls, so it isn’t as though she’s going to be on her own entirely, right? If she needs anything, she will still be able to come to you.”
“That’s a good way of thinking of it.” Prudence smiled. “You have a way of making me see the best of everything, Leonard. I’m sure everything will be all right. I just hope that I’m able to see her through the challenges ahead.”
“I’ll help you,” Leonard assured her. “Whatever needs to be done, we’ll do it together.”
“Well, I am very sorry about my parents,” she said with a sigh. “I hate that they made their very first visit to our home and used the occasion to cause you offense and distress. That bothers me.”
“It’s notyourfault,” Leonard countered. “Nothing they said would have bothered me at all had it not been for the fact that it was unkind to you, and that’s not something I’m willing to tolerate in my home. They can’t pass judgment on my wife or the way she lives her life.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be saying that if you had told them about some of my wilder escapades and heard what they had to say,” Prudence pointed out. “In fact, I think you might be glad of an ally. I’m surprised you didn’t choose to tell my father some of the things you don’t find favor with about my behavior.”
“And give him more cause to think he knows best? No, thank you,” Leonard said firmly. “The man is insufferable enough as it is.” He glanced at her. “Forgive me. I know this is your father I’m speaking of.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she assured him. “I don’t like it either when he tries to tell me what to do, especially since he has spent so much time sabotaging my prospects by working himself deeper and deeper into debt. If he wanted to help me advance, there were more practical ways to do that. He could have seen that I was provided for instead of constantly lecturing me. For that matter, he could have guided me in selecting an appropriate husband rather than arranging marriages with anyone he felt would have me just to get me off his plate.”
“I thought you’d realized you were pleased with our marriage,” Leonard said, raising an eyebrow.
She worried she had offended him. “I am pleased,” she assured him. “This isn’t about you. It’s about other arrangements my father has tried to make for me in the past. I’ve always rejected his choices for me. You know he tried to arrange a marriage between me and Caroline’s husband Levi.”
“You had mentioned that,” Leonard said. “He seems like a good man.”
“A wonderful man, yes, and a lovely match for Caroline—but not the right choice for me.”
“I see.”
“And then the arrangement between myself and Peter… I understand why that was important to you of course,” she added quickly, hoping it wouldn’t prove a mistake to bring it up. “But for me, that wasn’t an ideal situation at all.”
“No,” Leonard agreed. “Now that I know you a bit better, I can see that the two of you would have been all wrong for one another. Truth be told, it’s difficult to imagine a lady for whom my brother would be the right husband.” He sighed. “I suppose I hoped that the difficulty of the circumstances would make it all right to put that burden on you. I told myself you would be grateful for his marrying you, but you never were, and you were right.”
“I never intended to be ungrateful,” she said.
“No, but you can hardly be thankful for something that isn’t right for you. I thought you were being difficult when you insisted you would rather be a spinster all your life than to accept my brother’s proposal, but you meant that.”
“I did,” she said.
“I know you well enough now to see that about you. I understand who you are and how you think,” he told her. “It was hard for me to imagine that any lady would truly be happy on her own. I thought it was posturing. I believe it now.” He chuckled. “I’m surprised I got you down the aisle at all, as stubborn as you are. I believed on our wedding day that you had no choice, but you’ve always been one to make your own choices, haven’t you?”
She was both startled and flattered to realize that he saw her so well—and that he found her amusing rather than irksome. That was an unfamiliar experience. “I suppose I have,” she said.
“And yet you walked down that aisle anyway.”
“I’d have run if I had really wanted to do so.”
“Yes, I understand that about you now… so tell me, why didn’t you?” he asked. “Why did you allow yourself to be forced down the aisle? Why did you marry me when you knew that you had a way out?”
“I had to determine whether the way out would be better or worse than the marriage I was facing,” she explained, recalling how it had felt to stand in the church that day and see her future spread out before her. “I had to decide which option I wanted to take my chances with—you or the prospect of a life alone and alienation from my family. In the end, I felt as though you were likely to be the better option of the choices available to me.”
