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Chapter Nine
‘Oh, my goodness!’ said Prudence as her feet slid into the ice-cold water. She didn’t know whether it was the shock of it, or something else, but suddenly everything had become clear. ‘That was what they were after.’
‘What who was after? What was it they were after?’
‘You know,’ she said, shuddering at the sting of the water on her raw feet. ‘My aunt and that man she married.’
‘I don’t follow,’ he said, sitting down on the bank beside her.
‘No, well...’ she said wearily. ‘That’s because I haven’t told you everything.’ But there wasn’t any point in keeping her revelation to herself. He was in it with her now—or would be after tonight—up to his neck.
‘I told you I was due to come into an inheritance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it is not totally without stipulations. The money comes from my grandfather, you see, and he was livid, apparently, when Mama ran off with Papa. He’d already refused consent to their marriage—not only because they hadn’t known each other for five minutes, but also because Papa was a soldier. A man who saw nothing wrong with drinking alcohol, or gambling, or any number of things that Grandpapa regarded as dreadful sins.
‘Not that Papa was a dreadful sinner—I won’t have you thinking that,’ she explained hastily. ‘It was just Grandpapa was so terribly rigid in his views. Anyway, he cut Mama out of his will. But then when I was born, and Mama wrote to inform him of the event, he put me in it instead. She was still disinherited, but he said that it wasn’t right to visit the sins of the fathers on the children. And just in case I turned out to be as great a sinner as either of them, there was this...stipulation.
‘The money wasn’t to come direct to me upon his death but was to be held in trust. Either until I married “a man of standing”, I think was the exact term. Or, if I hadn’t married such a paragon by the time I was twenty-five, then I could have it without strings, to use however I wish, but only if I am found to be “of spotless reputation”.’
‘In other words,’ he said slowly, ‘all your aunt had to do was blacken your name and...’
‘Yes. Mama’s portion—or rather mine, since Mama didn’t feature in the will at all, and I never had any brothers or sisters who lived more than a few days—would go directly to Aunt Charity.’
‘Villainous,’ he hissed.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, drawing her feet out of the water and pulling her knees up to her chin.
Wrapping her arms round her lower legs, she gazed across the stream to the ploughed fields on the opposite bank, blinking determinedly whenever the chill breeze stung her raw flesh.
‘And it isn’t just what happened this morning. Or last night. Aunt Charity and I have been at war, subtly, for years. I can see it all now...’
She shook her head, the furrows blurring as tears misted her vision.
‘I thought she was just a cold, strict sort of woman, and I made allowances for the way she was because I could sort of understand how she might resent me for being thrust upon her when she obviously hadn’t a maternal bone in her body. But I think it was worse than that. Of late I’ve felt as though she has been doubling her efforts to make me feel bad about myself. Always harping on about my “falling short”, as she termed it. And punishing me for the slightest fault.’
She turned to him and searched his face for his reaction.
‘But what if it wasn’t that at all? What if she was trying to make everyone think I was a terrible sinner? So that she’d have the excuse to say I didn’t fulfil the terms of the will?’
He opened his mouth to say something, but thoughts were tumbling into her head so fast she simply had to let them out.
‘It’s true that at one time—about the time Papa died and I knew I was never going to get away from her—I was...well, a bit of a handful. No, I must be honest. I was downright rebellious for a while. I told her I hated her and everything she stood for. But as it drew nearer to my birthday nothing seemed to bother me so much. Only a few more months, I thought, and then I will be free. Only a few more weeks, now...’
She shook her head.
‘But she still looked at me as though I was a problem she had to work out rather than a real person... Oh, I’m not explaining it terribly well, am I?’
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I think I see only too well.’ He sighed. ‘For I have been guilty of seeing my young cousin Hugo in that light,’ he said.
