“I suppose I’ve heard that about him, but I didn’t realize the scope of his assistance.”
“Meaning, you didn’t realize he helped people like me?” She tried not to jump to the worst conclusion, but she found herself speaking more freely to him than she did to just about anyone else. She blamed their close quarters and spending so much time together.
“That wasn’t really what I meant, but I suppose that’s also a valid point. I wouldn’t have thought so, no. I meant that I’m surprised he would help with a matter such as this. Anyway, he won’t want to help you when he realizes you’re protecting me.”
Prudence sipped her wine and set it on the table, flattening her palm around the base, with the stem between her thumb and forefinger. “He isn’t going to know you’re involved.”
Bennet stared at her as if she’d sprouted horns. “I didn’t think you could shock me more than you already have, but you intend to ask Lord Lucien Westbrook for help with this catastrophe that I created without mentioning me at all?”
“Yes. Keeping you out of it is precisely why we need help.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Please don’t question me or my motives. Just be relieved that I wish to keep you out of it.”
He gaped at her. “I don’t know what to say.”
“For once,” she muttered with a hint of a smile, teasing him.
His laughter warmed the air around them. “You are incomparable. Can you really be so sure that he’ll help you? Just because you’re companion to his sister?”
“That’s not why. He’s helped me before.”
“Has he?” His eyes glinted with curiosity, and she knew he was dying to ask. But he’d been careful not to press her on just about everything, endeavoring to keep their conversations light and noninvasive.
She would give him at least a half explanation. The specifics were far too private and would reveal far too much. “He helped me secure my first position as companion—to Miss Fiona Wingate. She was Lord Overton’s ward.”
“Then she married him. Perhaps over dinner, you’ll tell me how that happened under your very nose.” Now he was teasing her.
The truth was that Prudence wasn’t the most exemplary of companions. She’d aided both of her charges in deviating from propriety. For love. While Prudence endeavored to keep emotion from her own life. It was asinine. Furthermore, if anyone discovered her weakness, she’d never have another position in London Society again.
Grasping her glass, she took another drink, finishing the wine without intending to do so. As soon as she set it back on the table, Bennet refilled it. His curiosity was a living, breathing thing surrounding her. It made her upset.
No, recalling her failures as a companion and that she’d indulged in sentiment made her upset. She really ought to find a position working for an older woman where there would be no chance of being swept into another young woman’s love affair. Better still, she should find a position far away from London, from Society where she absolutely didn’t belong.
Except she still hoped to find her real mother—the woman who’d given Prudence life before she’d been adopted by the Lancasters. If she left, Prudence would never find her.
Perhaps it was time to let the past go.
“Pru?” Bennet queried gently. “Where did you go?”
Prudence blinked and gave her shoulders a shake. “I was woolgathering in the farthest reaches about nothing of import.” She glanced toward the door, wishing Mrs. Logan would come through it.
Then she was there, Prudence’s savior toting a tray bearing soup.
“Dinner is here,” Prudence said brightly, relieved for the interruption. She didn’t want to discuss how Lucien had helped her, and she certainly didn’t want to reveal the things she’d been thinking.
She’d distract him with stories about Fiona, nothing terribly personal, of course. So long as Bennet stopped wondering about her, Prudence could manage the rest of the time they were together. Then she would never have to see him again.
Suddenly, he seemed the perfect person to whom she could reveal herself—if she was ever going to tell one person all her secrets. Would he guard them? She suspected he would, and that made him far more dangerous than she’d originally feared.
Bennet ought to feel terrible that the weather had worsened the following day, which hardly seemed possible, but instead was glad for the time he had with Prudence. He’d read to her again after breakfast, for a much longer period, and then she’d gone to help Mrs. Logan bake bread while Bennet had checked on the status of the coach.
While the vehicle was repaired and ready for travel, the roads were not. The rain slanted sideways, and the trees shook with every gust of wind.
“Bad luck with this weather, my lord,” the stable master said. He was a large, wide-shouldered man with thick, dark hair. “Even if it stops raining tomorrow, you’ll be stranded here waiting a few days for the road to dry out. We’re too close to the river, and it overflows its banks. The stable’s been flooded a time or two.”
“How awful.”
“Bloody inconvenient, begging your pardon, my lord. But it’s late enough in the season that it ought not be that bad.”
Ought not.
Bennet would cling to that, for as much as he was enjoying his time with Prudence, he knew she wanted to return to her life. Needed to. The longer she was away, the more difficult it became to explain her absence.
He still couldn’t quite grasp that she wanted to ask Lord Lucien for help. Bennet didn’t know him well and doubted he ever would. The man had personally delivered Bennet’s invitation to the Phoenix Club, however, and asked him to come that very night. Bennet now knew it was so he could dance with Cassandra. It was one of the reasons he’d felt confident in her interest in him. She’d gone to the trouble to have her brother invite him to his club. How could Bennet have not thought she was open to his courtship?
Anyway, he’d dragged his feet with her. If he hadn’t, they might already have been betrothed before her father had learned of Bennet’s financial problems. It would have been too late to back out.
Why had he hesitated? Because as much as he needed to marry, he didn’t particularly want to. A wife would have to understand—and accept—certain things, which meant him revealing that which he could not.
It was a bloody tangle, but then everything to do with his father and family was.
“I appreciate you repairing the coach,” Bennet said to the stable master.
“My pleasure, my lord. Though, I’d have words with your head groom or whoever oversees your equipage. Your coach was in need of a great deal of maintenance.”
Bennet smiled to mask the reality—that Tom, his coachman, was well aware of the state of things and that he did his best to maintain everything given the complete lack of funds to do so. “I’ll do that, thank you.”
Despite dashing across the yard to the house, he was quite wet when he stepped inside. He removed his hat and shook it off, then did the same with his coat, hanging both on a rack near the door.
He probably shouldn’t wander around half-dressed, but he’d done it before—that first morning after they’d arrived. And his coat was wet. Grabbing it from the hook, he took it to their table near the fire and hung it over the back of his chair, then turned it toward the hearth so it could dry more quickly. Bennet rubbed his hands together and soaked in the warmth from the fire.