“Do let’s go to Hyde Park,” Pru had gestured expansively toward the park in question, shaking Amanda’s arm in her eagerness. “I’m dying to sweep by Rotten Row and take a few turns on Oberon.”
“I’m game for it.” Honoria, her eldest—already married—sister, had lifted her nose and squinted into the distance where the horse track colloquially known as Rotten Row bustled with the empire’s aristocracy, both human and equine.
Amanda was more Honoria’s age than Pru’s—which was three years older—but she and Amanda shared a blithe and energetic nature that made them natural mischief-makers and thereby the swiftest of friends.
Honoria, though a beauty, was born to be a dreary proper matron, and fulfilled her vocation with dreadful aplomb.
“I wouldn’t at all mind examining the new stags on the market,” Amanda said with a sprightly grin lifting her myriad of freckles. She tucked one arm into Pru’s and the other into Honoria’s, and nearly dragged them both toward the square.
Prudence’s ride along the row had been every bit as exhilarating and satisfying as she’d imagined. Friends and acquaintances had called out their hearty congratulations, which had produced the sort of smile that she felt with her entire self.
It’d dimmed when she’d a brief encounter with Lady Jessica Morton, who was the reason everyone had called her “Prudunce” in finishing school. But even her spinster nemesis had gritted out her felicitations. Had Jessica’s smile been on a dog, it would have been called a snarl, and Prudence had to fight a spurt of victorious wickedness.
Jealousy was such an unflattering color.
Oh, it wasn’t her best quality, this, but it had felt indescribably good to “win,” for lack of a better word. Her entire life, she’d come in second. Second eldest and second prettiest of the four so-called, “Goode girls.”
Second married, as well.
But to an Earl! And not just any Earl, but one of the most marriageable bachelors in the realm. Her happy engagement was delicious any day but became pure truffled pleasure when trotted out in front of Jessica.
Bidding a cheerful farewell to the retreating back of her childhood antagonist, Pru had handed Oberon to one of the grooms, and set off to meet the ladies for tea.
Bouncing her riding crop off her thigh in high spirits, Pru had searched for them, eager to share her bit of gossip about her conversation with Jessica.
She found Honoria and Amanda on a bench with their heads together. They admired a group of smartly dressed young men prancing about on thoroughbreds and sipped thin glasses of lemonade that sweated in the summer heat.
She was about to call out to them when she fumbled her riding crop and dropped it, kicking it behind a tree.
Cursing her constant clumsiness, she scampered after it, and was still stooping to retrieve it when Amanda had said, “How bold of Lady Jessica to approach Pru in public.”
Honoria retrieved a compact mirror from her reticule and checked the hue of her perfect lips, the pallor of her dewy skin, and tucked a stray dark hair back beneath her hat before snapping it shut. “I detest Jessica Morton. She tormented Pru endlessly in school.”
Amanda made a sour face, as if her lemonade had suddenly become too tart. “I’d thought her affair with Pru’s fiancé concluded, but now I’m not so certain.”
Honoria’s excessively pretty features pinched into a frown of disapproval. “George and Jessica? Are you quite certain?”
Heedless of her new wine velvet riding jacket, Prudence had pressed her back to the tree, less a furtive move than a collapse. She needed something to hold her up.
George…Her George…and Jessica Morton?
When? Why? And how? And how many times? And… When?
Certainly, she’d never assumed he’d been a saint, not with his roguish good looks, but now that they were to marry, she’d thought he’d have no need for other women.
That she’d be enough.
That their love would contain all the passion he’d require.
Amanda swatted at an insect with the fan previously hanging from her white-gloved wrist. “I heard about it at the Prescott Ball, Maureen Broadwell and Jessica Morton complained that Sutherland is a base and venal lover. She said, and I quote, ‘That man can read a woman’s body like a blind man can read music.’”
Honoria’s breath hitched on her sip of lemonade and she hid a series of delicate coughs behind her handkerchief.
Pru swallowed back her own sob. The Prescott Ball had been only a fortnight ago. George had been her escort…and these women had been discussing him in such a manner as he waltzed her on the tops of clouds.
“Poor Pru,” Amanda tutted, waiting for Honoria to finish her coughing fit before adding, “Don’t you find it a bit disgusting how many bastards Pru’s dowry will keep up once George has his hands on all her money?” She sighed, then shrugged it off as if it were no more disappointing than a broken fingernail.
Bastards?
Pru had tugged at the high neck of her gown, fighting for breath.
All she’d ever wanted was children.
To tuck chubby little limbs into bed. Kiss scraped knees and tears. She wanted to hear the peals of laughter when their strong daddy would toss them in the air and allow them to climb on his back.
George had been that man in her dreams. So dashing and virile.
He already had children?
Honoria had leaned forward, looking intently toward the track as if searching for Prudence’s form. “Poor Pru, indeed. George has convinced everyone that he loves her. Even William…even me. I suppose we should tell her.”
William Mosby, Viscount Woodhaven, was George’s closest compatriot, and Honoria’s husband.
Now that Pru thought about it, Honoria hadn’t seemed particularly pleased with the betrothal, and she’d always assumed it was because Pru was marrying an Earl when William was merely a Viscount, and thereby his social inferior.
She’d been so absurdly blind.
Amanda let out a disenchanted sigh. “Pru needs to learn how the world works, eventually. That it’s not all ponies and balls and butterfly nets.”
Honoria sucked her lip between her teeth, a gesture she made whenever she was conflicted. “Though, I’d hate to ruin her wedding for her, and it’s not as if she can break the engagement now. I should have warned her off George ages ago, but William expressly forbade it.”
Amanda nodded, smoothing the creases from her cream gown. “It’s kind of us, I think, to maintain her frivolous naiveté for a bit longer.”
“Yes. Kind.” Honoria’s famous composure crumpled for the slightest moment, uncovering the features of a woman beset by abject misery. “She’s a lifetime to be disappointed by a husband.”
Pru clapped two hands over her mouth to keep from saying anything. From screaming in the middle of the bustling park loud and long enough for all of London’s elite to hear. She couldn’t face them yet. She couldn’t sort through her hurt and anger and humiliation enough to land on a single thing to say.
Frivolous naiveté? Was this really what they thought of her? Her best friend and her elder sister? Honoria… the woman she’d idolized for the whole of her life. The bastion of feminine perfection against which she’d been measured. The loveliest debutante to grace Her Majesty’s halls in decades.