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‘That set us all in a bustle, as you can imagine. If dear Hugo hadn’t been here I should have been quite terrified,’ she said, absentmindedly popping the macaroon she’d fetched for Prudence into her own mouth. ‘But he took charge in the most masterful way, considering his age, taking Mr Bodkin aside and getting the whole story from him before explaining it to me. At least, he explained some things, which all sounded highly improbable—but then when gentlemen go off in pursuit of some wager they often get tangled up with the most extraordinary company.’
Prudence was about to agree, since she’d had pretty much the same thought earlier, but Lady Mixby hadn’t even paused to take breath.
‘Why, you only have to think of cock pits and boxing saloons and places of that nature. Not that I have ever been in one. Nor would I wish to. They sound perfectly frightful.’
While Lady Mixby was giving a delicate little shudder at the thought of what might go on in a boxing saloon, Prudence took the opportunity to inject a word or two of her own.
‘So Hugo told you all about the wager, did he?’ She said it as though she knew all about it, hoping that Lady Mixby would enlighten her without her having to admit she was almost completely in the dark.
‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ Lady Mixby’s eyes widened. She leaned forward in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘I would never have believed it of Halstead, had he not arrived here today without his valet and groom, looking so very unlike himself. Though, come to think of it, now I’ve seen his resemblance to the First Duke—who was little more than a pirate, really—I can believe him to be getting up to any amount of mischief. Not that I am implying he has done anything that is not fitting to his station in life.’
She looked at Prudence guiltily.
‘Has he? Oh,’ she added, before Prudence had a chance to draw breath. ‘Not that I would blame you if you had done something you ought not... The way he looked just now, I can see exactly how it might be that you couldn’t resist him. Though I would not have thought anything of the sort had you not said that about trusting him with your virtue. Oh, dear—how I do rattle on. I have ever been thus. It is why I never took, as a girl—why I never married. No rational man could have put up with me—that is what my father always said.’
‘I’m sure that is not true,’ said Prudence faintly, in the pause that came while Lady Mixby was popping a second fancy cake into her mouth.
‘Dear girl,’ she said, flicking crumbs from her skirt onto the expensive carpet. ‘It is such a sweet thing of you to say, but the truth is we were all as poor as church mice in spite of our name. Such is the way of the world. Girls with plain faces only get proposals if they have a dowry large enough to make up for it. Whereas the veriest drabs will have oodles of men paying them court if they have money to back them,’ she said with a shrug.
She was in blithe ignorance of the way she’d just plunged a knife into Prudence’s already sensitised heart. Because she did have money, didn’t she? Could that be why Gregory had tacitly accepted her proposal, in spite of the discrepancy in their rank? After all, the men in Aunt Charity’s congregation had suddenly started looking at her differently once it had become common knowledge that she was heiress to the Biddlestone fortune.
Was Gregory really as mercenary as the men of Stoketown?
‘But let us not dwell on the past,’ said Lady Mixby, sighing and clasping her pudgy hands together. ‘I am so looking forward to hearing all about how you met Halstead and how you came to fall in love. I know—you don’t need to remind me,’ she said, raising her hand in the air as though in surrender. ‘Not a word about any of it until we are all together after dinner. Speaking of which,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘I should really go and get changed. Or should I?’ she said, just as she reached the door. ‘Would it be terribly tactless of me to dress up when you have nothing decent to wear? Halstead himself is borrowing the Sunday clothes of the under-gardener, who is the only one of the male staff with broad enough shoulders to have a shirt that would fit. I shall ask Benderby. Such a treasure, you know. I can always rely on her to come up with a practical solution.’
The room seemed very, very quiet once Lady Mixby had left. Prudence had never come across anyone with the ability to speak continuously without pausing for breath before. Or with the tendency to flit from one subject to another like a butterfly.
How on earth could Gregory have led her to believe for one minute that Lady Mixby was a dragon? She was the very opposite. It almost seemed wrong to describe her as an aunt at all. In fact she’d been so welcoming that she’d completely dispelled the slightly oppressive atmosphere of the room. It no longer felt as though the furnishings had been expressly designed to depress the pretensions of impostors, but rather to enfold any weary guest in a sumptuous sort of embrace.
