Page 62 of To Dare a Duke

Prue sat at the tiny writing table in her room, staring down at the words which the world would read and exclaim over tomorrow morning. She always kept copies of the chapters she sent to the magazine, and so there was no escaping the scurrilous tale, no way of lying to herself and pretending it wasn’t as bad as she’d thought.

It was worse.

How could she have written such things about a man she didn’t know?

Except she’d believed she had known him. When she’d first begun the story Prue had believed the gossip and seen a man just like her father, a bully who would use his fists and his might to crush someone who ought to have been protected by that same might, and with that same passion. At the time of writing she’d felt like a pioneer, a champion for those women who could not stand up for themselves, showing the world the face of a tyrant who hid behind his title and his power and was untouchable, especially by someone whom he owned like he did a horse, or a teacup, or a pair of shoes.

Even when she’d begun to understand he was perhaps not the violent man she’d believed him to be, she’d been unrepentant, as he was clearly a libertine and a profligate gambler at best.

Except she’d been wrong about that too.

Robert was flawed, but no tyrant, and Lavinia had been no virgin sacrifice. Her father had already sacrificed her virginity to get him closer to a title, and she was tired of being a pawn. Neither was hero nor heroine, villain or villainess. Just two people with imperfect lives, muddling through and making more mess in the process as their anger and hurt drove them towards a terrible climax.

Prue had played judge and jury without even regarding the evidence. There had been no evidence, only deliciously dark whispers and murmurs of cruelty and vice. She’d listened to it with as much eagerness as anyone, fuelled with righteous indignation and ready to strike out at the villain, at the powerful nobleman who thought himself invincible, invulnerable, and would prey on those who were weaker than himself.

In a fit of anger and frustration, Prue swept the papers from the table. With a muffled cry of anguish, she put her head in her hands.

She did not hear the door open until Minerva was in the room. She and Aunt Phyllis must have come home, and she hadn’t even noticed. Stupidly, she had also forgotten to lock her door, and now Minerva hurried in.

“Prue, wherever did you get to? I was so worried. Are you ill?”

Prue jolted, getting to her feet so fast that her chair tipped over and crashed to the ground. She lurched forward, snatching up the scattered papers as Minerva bent to help her.

“No! Don’t!” she exclaimed, panic making her voice hard and angry.

Minerva jumped a little and straightened but she had a sheet of writing in her hand and, in the light of Prue’s shout, she looked down at it with a frown. Prue’s heart gave one erratic thump and she reached forward, trying to seize the sheet from Minerva, but she evaded Prue’s hand, and then it was too late.

Minerva paled as her gaze rose from the paper.

“It’s you,” she said, her voice soft, her lovely eyes growing wide. “Y-You’re Miss Terry!”

“Minerva,” Prue said, her stomach twisting in horror. “Please, listen to me.”

“You wrote all those things about Bedwin,” she said, looking truly shocked. “And he’s… he’s not at all like people say he is, you know he isn’t. He’s been kind and… even when Mama is being so vulgar and awful, he never… he never crushed her, he never looked down on us, and….”

Minerva took a step back, as though being in the same room as Prue was something she couldn’t stand to do.

“Minerva! Minerva, come at once, you have a visitor!” Aunt Phyllis almost screamed up the stairs, her voice vibrating with excitement.

Prue’s heart skittered in her chest, as if one heartbeat had run directly into the back of the next, each of them stumbling and crashing about. Turning, she looked out of the window that looked down into the street. She couldn’t breathe.

Robert was at the front door.

Oh, dear god, no.

Prue swung around to beg Minerva to hold her tongue, to make her understand that Prue would make it right. She would do that much before she confessed to her sins, but Minerva had gone, and she’d taken the page of today’s chapter with her.

“Minerva!” Prue shouted, terror forcing her past the numbness in her mind and body, driving her into action. She ran to the stairs, but Minerva had already reached the bottom, and Aunt Phyllis had already shown Robert inside.

“Minerva, don’t! Please—”

As though in a dream where the horror unfolded in slow, inevitable increments she saw Minerva hold the page out, delivering it to Robert, who frowned. He looked at Minerva, to Prue, and then down at the sheet of paper, taking it from her hands.

Prue froze, clutching at the banister, breathing as if she’d run for miles, her lungs burning, her skin turning to ice as she watched him read. The chill sank into her, into her blood and bones, freezing her so thoroughly that she couldn’t move or speak. The inescapable cold reached her heart, and she was glad of it, glad for the way it numbed her against the pain of shock as he realised what he held, and who was responsible.

Those green eyes looked up, meeting hers.

Prue had written of broken hearts before, jotting down trite little sentences depicting pain and longing and hurt, but she’d never experienced it first-hand. She’d never seen a heart break before her eyes, never felt her own explode in that same moment, the icy shards tearing at her from the inside out, slicing clean through her soul.