“What do you mean?” Leonard pulled his hand back. He looked from Peter to the solicitor. “Once the annulment is official, she’ll be at liberty to do as she likes, isn’t that true?”
“That’s right,” the solicitor said. “Both you and the Duchess will be free to remarry once the papers have been signed and processed.”
“And I thought that was the point of all of this,” Leonard said. “I thought the whole reason you wanted to pursue this annulment was so that you and she could marry. Now, you tell me that it isn’t going to happen?” His eyes narrowed. “Do not tell me now that you’ve changed your mind about it, Peter. That you’ve turned on her yet again. When you came back, I believed you had changed your ways. I thought you were going to be different. If I found out you had talked Prudence and myself into an annulment based on the offer of a marriage that you never intended to follow through on, that would prove to me that you are exactly who I believed you to be. I would be beyonddisappointed in you, brother. I don’t know how you and I would ever make peace with one another after something like that.”
“That isn’t what’s happening,” Peter objected. “I haven’t betrayed anyone.”
“And yet you’re telling me that you won’t be marrying Prudence after all?”
“I offered her a marriage,” Peter said. “Just as we discussed. But she doesn’t want to marry me.”
Leonard sucked in a breath. “She doesn’t?” The words seemed to reverberate in his ear like a gong. “How can you be sure?”
“She refused. She said that she would never marry again unless it was for love which she doubted she would ever find.” Peter sighed. “And fair enough, really. Prudence and I are not in love and never would be. I like her plenty, but that sort of connection doesn’t exist between the two of us. If that’s what she’s seeking, we would never be a fit for each other. I have to respect the way she seems to know her own mind about it.”
Leonard felt deeply disturbed by his brother’s words. “If that’s the way she feels, then why would she accept the annulment in the first place? What purpose could it have if she doesn’t mean to remarry? Did she answer that?”
The solicitor cleared his throat as if to remind the brothers of his presence.
Leonard ignored him. He had chosen to come along and wait here rather than dropping off the papers and returning to pick them up, so now he was going to have to accept that he might hear some conversation he would find a little awkward.
“She’s a good woman, Leonard,” Peter said softly. “She has a kind heart.”
“I know that,” Leonard replied. “She is my wife, after all.” It hit him with a pang that this was probably one of the very last times he would be able to say those words. If they signed these annulment papers, she would be his wife no longer. The marriage would be over.
Suddenly the papers on his desk seemed to him like a poisonous viper—like a threat. He pushed them to the far edge of the desk.
The solicitor raised an eyebrow. “Those do still need your signature, Your Grace,” he said. “I can’t take them back unsigned.”
“You may go,” Leonard barked. “Call on me tomorrow if you wish. I’ll have them ready by then.”
“As you say, Your Grace.” The solicitor turned and left without another word. He was moving rather quickly, and Leonard couldn’t help thinking he looked relieved to be told to go.
Well, that’s just fine. There was no reason for him to be hanging around here in the first place unless he wasalsoeager for myannulment to be completed. It’s hard to fathom how everyone can be so invested in something I never wanted for myself, but they do seem to be!
He turned back to his brother. “Why are you telling me what sort of woman my wife is?” he asked. “Do you think I don’t know?”
“She wants you to be happy,” Peter told him. “Just as I do. She doesn’t want to see you forced into a marriage that isn’t what you want.”
“Is that what she actually said?” That was hard to believe. Prudence had made no secret of the fact that she believed the two of themcouldfind happiness in their marriage, that she didn’t think it was hopeless. So why would she have suddenly changed her tune?
Well, maybe because I walked out on her and then sent my brother to her, telling her I was ready to pursue an annulment.
He closed his eyes. Of course, that would have looked dreadful from Prudence’s perspective. How could she have helped but to think that he was miserable and that he wished the marriage had never happened?
“Essentially, yes, that is what she said,” Peter responded. “She asked me why I was so determined to see your marriage annulled. She’s no fool, and she knows it isn’t because I was so in love with her that I was simply desperate to marry her. I told her that my reasoning was born of my desire to see my brotherhappy. That you shouldn’t have been forced into a marriage based on the choices that she and I made.”
“And that was when she agreed to this,” Leonard said quietly. “After you had explained that to her. After you’d told her that your sole purpose in all this was to rescue me from the situation you thought you had forced me into and to see me happy.”
“That’s right.”
“Not because she wanted to be married to you instead.”
“She doesn’t want that at all,” Peter said. “And now that I’ve spoken to her, I have to say, I don’t think I want it either. Don’t mistake me, she’s a delightful person and would make a wonderful wife. But she made a good point when I asked her about it, a point that made me realize just how hasty I was being in what I was asking her for.”
“What was that?”
“She said that I deserve to find love,” Peter explained.
