He must have heard her wrong. That couldn’t have been right. There was something he was failing to understand, something about what she had said that was missing because it was impossible that her words were true at face value.
“You didn’t tell him anything,” he said slowly. “The two of you never spent any time together out of my company.”
“We did,” she explained. “I saw him once without you there.”
“When?” His voice was hoarse. This didn’t make sense. And if he could prevent it from making sense, he could prevent it from being true.
It couldn’t be true.
“I went to see him,” she said.
“You went to see himwhere?”
“At the pub. I went the night before the wedding. I… I wore my peasant clothes.”
He closed his eyes. “Now that you say it, I don’t know why I’m even surprised,” he said. “Of course, you did that. And I suppose you just assumed that you would find him at the pub?”
“I had seen him there many times before,” she replied. “It was a fair assumption to make, especially since I turned out to be right about it.”
“And what did you say to him?” Leonard asked.
“I told him that I didn’t want to marry him and that I knew he didn’t want to marry me either,” Prudence said, lifting her chin. “I told him that the best way out for both of us was for him to simply not come to the wedding. He knew you would be angry, but he assured me he could manage your anger—that it was something he was used to dealing with.”
“That makes it sound as if I’m unreasonably angry with him all the time.”
“I don’t pretend to know what things are like between the two of you,” she said. “What I do know is this—I never intended this to be a way of forcing you to marry me. I never imagined things going that way, nor was it what I wanted. You were there. You saw how I tried to resist. I wasn’t trying to… to entrap you or anything of that nature.”
“No,” he murmured. “No, that’s not what I thought.”
“I hope that means you can forgive me for this,” she said. “I hope you can understand why I had to do it and that I never meant you to come to harm.”
“But that doesn’t matter,” Leonard said. “You took matters into your own hands without even pausing to consider what I might think about it.”
“And how is that different from what you did when you insisted that Peter marry me in the first place?” she demanded. “It sounds to me, Leonard, as though you’re fine with the idea of people making decisions that influence each other’s lives—it’s just that you don’t want anyone to do that to you. You were fine with doing it to me.”
He couldn’t even think through what she was saying. It was all too much. “I’m going to my study,” he said. “I’m going to take the rest of the night too myself.”
“Leonard, if only you could step back and look at this clearly, you would see that I haven’t done anything that should distress you,” she protested. “Peter hasn’t been seen in weeks anyway. It’s not as if he’s even taking part in this season. By the time he returns—if he even does—any gossip about this will have died down. And in the meantime, you and I will be able to live the lives we deserve.”
“This is exactly what I was worried about, you know,” Leonard said. “I was worried that our feelings for each other would lead us to set aside the priorities we ought to have—and that’s exactly what’s happened. You’ve proven me right.”
“Oh, no, I haven’t,” she countered. “The only thing I’ve proven, Leonard, is that I have never had the priorities you wanted me to have. Not from the very start.”
She said nothing more, and neither did he. He waited a moment to see whether she would, but it appeared she had spoken her piece, so at length, he turned and went up to his study, wondering how he would ever bring himself to face her again.
CHAPTER 33
“What is all this?” Prudence asked.
She had come down to breakfast the morning after their fight to find the foyer filled with trunks. The sight of it gave her a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She had a feeling she knew exactly what was happening here, and she found herself hoping desperately that she was wrong.
Leonard was overseeing the movement of one of the trunks. “I’m leaving this morning,” he said, his voice far away, as if she didn’t have a great deal of his attention. “I’m going to the country house.”
“I thought you had decided not to go.” Her heart raced, her body jumping immediately into a state of panic. “That was what you told me. You said you were going to stay here. You told me that was what youwanted.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “Given the way things have been recently, I think it’s best if I simply leave. Best for both of us, really. You’ll be better off without me here, giving you misleading ideas about the nature of our marriage.”
“Don’t pretend you’re doing it for my benefit,” Prudence said, anger welling up within her. “You’re going because you can’t face the fact that thereissomething real here. It scares you to know that I might be able to influence your emotions. That your actions might not be firmly and completely one hundred percent under your control and all times of every day. That something might happen you didn’t predict or plan for. That’s why you’re leaving. And if that’s your decision then I have no choice, of course, but to accept it. I will accept it. But what I will not accept is you laying the blame for your choices atmyfeet, telling me that I’m getting the wrong idea about what this marriage is and that you have to protect me from misapprehension. I was there when you kissed me, you know. I may not have as much experience in the ways of men and women as someone like yourself, but I do know enough to know the difference between something pretend and something real, and that moment was real. You wouldn’t be as frightened as you are right now if it hadn’t been.”
