When they arrived at home, he started to make for the solitude of his study, but she reached out and stopped him with a handon his arm. “Don’t do this,” she said quietly. “Don’t you run off and leave me on my own yet again. How many times do we have to go through this with one another, Leonard? How many times before we’re able to admit to one another that we are on the same side?”
It was too much to bear. “You aren’t on my side,” he told her. “You’ve never been on my side.”
“I don’t know how you can say that.” She drew back, tears in her eyes.
“And I don’t know how you can suggest otherwise,” he fired back. “What’s the one thing I’ve told you again and again is more important than anything to me? I know you’ve heard me say it because you’vemockedme for it. You act like it doesn’t matter what people think of us, and to you, it doesn’t. But youknowthat it does to me, so how can you set my priorities aside with such reckless abandon?”
She shook her head. “I never meant to do any such thing,” she said softly.
“But you did! I told you how important it was that no one ever find out what happened the day of our wedding. I told you how ruinous it might be to my brother’s reputation.
The tears seemed to evaporate from her eyes very suddenly, and she drew herself up to her full height. “That’s really all you care about, isn’t it?” she demanded. “Peter’s reputation. That’s the only thing that matters to you.”
“It’s a very important thing to me, and I’ve never made any secret of that fact. He is my brother, Prudence! It’s my responsibility to take care of him.”
“And what of your duty to me? To us? Toyourself?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“You heard the way those ladies were speaking about you! How disrespectful they were,” she said. “Did you really expect me to just stand there and listen to them say those things and not intervene? To say nothing at all while they disparaged you and told me what a rake you were, when you and I both know it isn’t the truth? As someone who claims to care so very much for his reputation, how can that be what you want? How can you be content to let other people slander you right to your face?”
“They were poking fun at me, that’s all,” Leonard said though he felt a bit uneasy. There was some truth in what Prudence was saying—a little too much truth.
“And that’s all right with you, is it?” Prudence asked. “I don’t see any fun in it. How can it befunto allow people to impugn your character?”
“You know as well as I that being a part of society comes with a bit of this sort of nonsense and teasing,” Leonard said. “I can’t afford to get angry every time someone calls me a rake.”
“All right, maybe you can’t. What if they had been talking about me?” she asked him.
Leonard frowned. “I don’t believe I know what you’re referring to.”
“Use your imagination. What if those ladies had decided to focus on the scandalous things they’ve heard about me instead of the rumors about you? Would you have allowed that to happen, simply because they were teasing and we can’t afford to get upset about it? Would you have stood by and let them say negative things about your wife?”
“Of course, I wouldn’t.” How could she ask him that? The very idea of it was offensive.
“Well, if you wouldn’t allow that to happen, how can you expect me to do the same thing?” she demanded. “How can you expect that I would sit back and allow cruel words to be spoken about you when I have the power to correct them? When I have the ability to tell people that you didnottry to shirk the responsibility of marrying me but immediately and reliably stood up to it? There was never a less rakish man, and I won’t have people saying such dreadful thing about you when they simply aren’t true.”
“But don’t you see that in defending me, you gave away what Peter did? You told them that he abandoned you at the altar,” Leonard pointed out. “No one will be able to respect him now. No one will see him as anything other than a man who neglectedthe lady he was meant to marry. It will be all but impossible to find him someone to marry now.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that’s my fault,” Prudence said firmly.
“Oh, you don’t?” Leonard raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you the one who revealed what happened tonight when I thought we were agreed on the need to keep it a secret?”
“Yes, but I’m not the one who came up with the idea that it had to be a secret in the first place,” she told him. “And why should it be? Why did we have to make such a show out of everything when we could have simply walked out of that church and said that we’d decided you and I were the better match? We could have acted as if this marriage was something we wanted right from the start instead of making out as thoughanyonewas forced into anything. We could have simply told people that we had decided to leave Peter out of it. You were always so much more concerned with what was best for him. You were willing to overlook entirely what was best for us.”
“You’re being unfair,” Leonard told her.
“No. I don’t think I am,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been unfair about any of this. You always tried to control things, and it was always a bad idea, wasn’t it? I told you I didn’t want to marry Peter, Leonard, and he told you that he didn’t want to marry me. But you did all you could to force us together anyway in spite of what either one of us wanted. You were so determinedto control the situation that you didn’t bother to consider what would actually make anyone happy.”
“You sound as if you’re taking Peter’s side here,” he objected, hardly able to believe it.
But she squared her shoulders. “Maybe I am,” she said. “Maybe I think the way he acted made sense given the circumstances.”
“Oh really? You think his choice to leave you at the altar was justifiable, Prudence? He abandoned you. How can you be all right with that?”
“He didn’t abandon me!” she burst out. “Itoldhim not to come for heaven’s sake!”
Leonard froze.
