Slightly Scandalous (38 page)

"She will try sending Prue to an asylum," he said, "where she will be locked up and chained and beaten and put on public display and treated like an animal."

She looked sharply at him. "Even she could not be so cruel," she said.

"She would have done it when Prue was a child," he said, "if my uncle for once in his life had not exerted himself. She is talking of doing it now if she is forced by my return to remove to the dower house with her daughters."

Freyja inhaled audibly. "If I do not take my fists to that woman's face before I leave here," she said, "I will be a candidate for sainthood-and I believe that would be a dreadful fate. What are you going to do about it? You are Prue's guardian, are you not?"

"Until I am convicted of murder, yes," he said. "What ought I to do, Freyja? Encourage her to marry a fisherman?"

He smiled at the look on her face. Such a prospect must be beyond the wildest imaginings of any member of the proud Bedwyn family. Except that he had learned since going to Lindsey Hall that Aidan had married the daughter of a Welsh coal miner and that Rannulf had married the daughter of an obscure country parson and granddaughter of a London actress. Yet Eve and Judith were as well accepted by the rest of the family as if they had been duchesses.

"Perhaps," she said, "Prue is capable of making her own choices in life. Josh, she held my hand yesterday afternoon when we were climbing up the hill behind the house. It was not because she needed my help but because she believed I needed hers."

"You froze me in my tracks when I once made that mistake," he said. "Though we were about to go down rather than up, I remember."

"I know," she said. "But I was touched. I know what you meant when you told me she is full of love and brimming over with it. And so innocent that one fears for her. Perhaps we ought not to fear for such people but for ourselves whose experience has taught us not to trust one another or life itself."

He looked at her in some astonishment. Her voice had lost all its customary hauteur. It was almost shaking with emotion. All because Prue, thinking her lonely, had taken her hand?

"I should talk to her, then?" he asked. "Will you come with me?"

She looked more herself then. "Eve would be a far better choice," she said. "But, yes, I will come. Josh, whatever am I doing here at Penhallow? Why am I not still in Bath, promenading in the Pump Room every morning and taking tea in the Assembly Rooms?"

"I believe, sweetheart," he said, "you perceived a rogue and could not resist brightening up your life for a spell by taking on the challenge of trying to keep pace with him. Besides, it is better for you to be here with me than expiring of boredom there, is it not?"

"A rogue," she said as they turned into the cobbled stableyard of the inn and an ostler hastened to lead out their horses. "Is that what you are, Josh? Life was so simple when I had no doubt about the answer."

He turned his head and winked at her.

The following morning was cloudy, windy, and altogether rather dreary. Joshua had gone out early again with his steward and Aidan. The marchioness had asked Constance to run an errand for her in the village and at the last moment had suggested that the Reverend Calvin Moore accompany her. Alleyne, perhaps seeing the tight look on Constance's face, had asked Chastity if she would like to go too, and the four of them had departed together, the marchioness's dagger glances piercing Alleyne's back.

She was a tedious enemy, Freyja concluded. Very different from Freyja herself or any of the Bedwyns for that matter, she did not simply burst out with open hostility and fight fairly. She had set something in motion, and she was prepared to wait for it to come to fruition. In the meanwhile, she acted the gracious, wilting hostess to everyone. Her gentle smile seemed to have been painted on her face.

Freyja had found refuge in the morning room. She was writing a letter to her solicitor while Morgan, beside her at the table, wrote to Judith.

"This waiting around for something to happen is very strange, is it not?" Morgan said abruptly after a while. "I expected fireworks as soon as we arrived at Penhallow. I expected excitement and danger and flashing swords and smoking pistols for the first day or two and then the satisfaction of victory."

"Are you disappointed?" Freyja smiled at her.

"Disappointed? No." Morgan frowned. "But a little uneasy, I must confess. The marchioness really does hate Joshua, does she not? And all of us too even though she persists in informing us how delighted she is to have us all here. Why does she hate him so much that she is prepared to put his life in danger?"

"She blames him for her son's death," Freyja said. "She thought him guilty in the sordid business over the governess, and then when her son went to confront him, he died. In a sense, perhaps, one can hardly blame her for wondering if the accident really was an accident."

"I suppose," Morgan said, "it was the son who seduced the governess."

"Yes," Freyja said.

"I do not believe I would have liked him," Morgan said. "Indeed, I am quite certain I would have detested him quite as much as I do his mother. How horrid of him to have allowed Joshua to shoulder the blame-and to find a home for that poor lady. But what worries me, Freyja, is that witness. How provoking that he is not at home and so cannot be confronted. Alone he is surely no threat at all, but what if he can persuade several other men to corroborate his story? Does Joshua understand the danger he is in? Is he doing anything about it?"

"He is indeed," a voice said from the doorway, and they both turned to see Joshua himself standing there. He was still dressed for riding. His face was ruddy from the outdoors, his eyes dancing with laughter.

He liked living on the edge of danger, Freyja thought.

Independent of thought, her body was instantly aware of him, of his virile grace and beauty. She had wanted yesterday to happen so that she would have happy memories to cling to. She had been a fool. How would she live without that? How would she live without him?

"What, then?" Morgan asked.

"Why spoil the fun by telling?" he said, laughing as he came into the room. "Garnett is still from home, but I have hopes that he will return in time for the ball. Indeed, I am depending upon his having heard of it and upon his having a proper sense of drama. I have sent him an invitation."

"I know," Morgan said. "I wrote it. But why?"

But he would only laugh again. "Let me say only," he said, "that if Garnett comes, the ball will be an occasion after the Bedwyns' own heart."

Morgan's eyes shone. "Oh, you do have something planned," she said. "Well done."

He reached out a hand and squeezed her shoulder while turning his attention to Freyja.

"I am going down to the river walk with Prue," he said. "Will you come, Freyja?"

"I have to finish this letter to Judith," Morgan said when Freyja looked at her, "and then I must write to Aunt Rochester. I have not done so in ages, but she is to sponsor my come-out in the spring, perish the thought."

Freyja changed into a wool dress and a warm pelisse. She even, after looking out the window to note that the weather had not changed, drew on a bonnet that would cover her ears. Prue too was dressed warmly, in sunshine yellow from head to toe. She was beaming and clearly excited at the prospect of an outing with Josh and Freyja.

They scrambled down over the sloping lawn to the valley without using the more gradual slope of the winding driveway past the dower house. Prue was laughing aloud as she hurtled down the last few feet into Joshua's waiting arms. Freyja glared at him when he would have offered similar assistance to her, and he grinned and turned away.

They walked along the private path that ran beside the river to the beach. They did not go all the way to the beach, though. They stopped frequently to peer into the water, watching the slow currents eddying past stones and small sandbars, seeing the occasional tadpole dart by. Joshua picked up a stone and hurled it in a high arc to hit the opposite bank, some distance away, and Prue laughed and clapped her hands with delight. Freyja, not to be outdone, picked up a flat stone and threw it in such a way that it skimmed the surface of the water, bouncing four times before it sank out of sight. Prue jumped up and down in her excitement.

"I want to do that," she said, and Freyja spent the next ten minutes or so showing her how to select a suitable pebble and how to throw it sideways with just the right flick of the wrist. Prue never did get it right, but she derived a great deal of merriment from trying and collapsed down onto a large rock with uncontrollable mirth when Joshua could not do it either.

Freyja, with a sharp, narrow-eyed look at his abjectly meek face, was convinced that he could make his stones bounce ten times if he so chose.

She could not understand the almost painful love she felt for Prue. She was usually embarrassed by what she had always thought of as handicaps. If she had known about Prue in advance, she would have been horrified and would have shied away from her. Even so, she had kept her wary distance for a few days, content to let Eve and Joshua and Chastity converse with the girl.

But there was no guile in her and no stupidity or dullness or negativity. She was a sunny-natured child who simply did not possess whatever it was in most of the rest of mortality that enabled them to move away from the innocent exuberance and loving trust of childhood to a darker place they labeled maturity. Although Prue's sometimes ungainly movements and round, childish face were an outward sign that she was not as other young women were, she nevertheless was a rather pretty young lady.

She was the same age as Morgan.

Joshua looked down at her with a smile of warm affection until she had stopped rocking with laughter.

"Do you like going to the village, Prue?" he asked.

"Ye-es," she said. "I love it."

"What is your favorite part of it?" he asked her. "Your favorite place?"

Prue gazed with bright eyes across the river in the direction of Lydmere.

"The cottage," she said.

"Mrs. Turner's?"

"Yes."

"Why do you like it?" He went down on his haunches before her, selected a few pebbles, and rolled them in one hand.

"I can do things," Prue said. "I can help. It is a dear place."

"But small," Joshua said. "You would not like to live there, would you?"

Prue thought with furrowed brow and then smiled again. "Yes, I would," she said. "I know how to do things."

"You love Mrs. Turner?" Joshua asked.

"Yes." Her smile widened. "And Ben. I love Ben."

"Do you?" He turned and flung one of the stones. He obviously forgot that bouncing them was a skill he could not master-it bounced five times. Prue laughed excitedly and pointed. "Why do you love him, Prue? Is he kind to you?"

"Ye-es," Prue said. "He likes me making his tea, and he ate my cake, not Mrs. Turner's. Ben loves me."

"I love you, Prue," Joshua said. "Freyja loves you."

"Yes." She looked up at Freyja and beamed. "Josh made you better, Freyja. I saw you in the boat. You went to the island."

Oh, dear. Freyja smiled back and avoided Joshua's eyes.

Prue looked back to Joshua. "Ben kissed me," she said.

His face visibly blanched. "Kissed you?"

Prue laughed with delight. "On my birthday," she said. "I was eighteen. Mrs. Turner gave me my apron and she kissed me. And Ben poured my tea-we all laughed-and he kissed me. Here," she added, poking one forefinger at her cheek close to her mouth. "I said, 'I love you, Ben,' and he said, 'I love you, Prue.' " She laughed with delight.

"Prue," Freyja asked, taking the girl by the hand and drawing her to her feet so that they could stroll onward, "do you love Ben in a special way? As Eve loves Aidan?"

"As you love Josh?" Prue laughed. "Ye-es."

Joshua fell into step beside them on Prue's other side.

"Ben has nice hands," Prue said. "They are big. He works with them. He wouldn't hurt me with them, though."

"Of course he would not," Joshua said, drawing her arm through his and patting her hand. "No one will ever hurt you, Prue. Do you know what marriage is? Do you know what married people do together?"

"Ye-es," Prue said. "They look after each other. And they kiss each other. And have babies."

Joshua darted a startled look across her at Freyja.

"Miss Palmer told me," Prue said, "and Chastity. Chastity took me to see Miss Jewell and she told me. Miss Jewell has David. I love David."

"Her son?" Joshua said. "He is a handsome little boy."

"Miss Jewell said there are bad kisses and I must not let anyone give them to me ever again," Prue said. "Ben would not give me bad kisses. Ben loves me. I love Ben."

The women in her life-all except her mother who was most qualified to do it-had been educating Prue in the dangers of her own sexuality, Freyja thought. They clearly had realized that in some ways at least the girl was no longer a child.

"If you lived at the cottage all the time," Joshua said, "you would not have all of Penhallow for your home, Prue. You would sleep there and live there, and the work you do there now would have to be done every day. Lady Prudence Moore should live in a big house, should she not, with servants to look after her and grand clothes to wear all the time?"