Prue’s sister Charity lived with her three children in Tidbury End, a pretty village in Bedfordshire. Prue had sent a message ahead, so they were expected, and David had booked a room for himself and Gren at the inn in the village.
David insisted on seeing Prue to her sister’s door, sending Gren on with the post chaise and their luggage. “I’ll walk up once I’ve seen Prue settled,” he told Gren.
When the maid opened the door, Prue briefly thought about telling David to go. Charrie would make assumptions, no doubt, if she invited him in, if she introduced them. But she would not be openly rude in front of David, and Charrie would soon hear that Prue had been escorted by two gentlemen. She would undoubtedly deduce Prue was the mistress of at least one of them.
And she would almost be right, though David was not Prue’s protector but her lover, and Prue could not find it in her heart to be sorry, or guilty.
At least Prue had made her own decisions, with her eyes wide open.
Pity for her sister softened her voice as she entered the small, pretty parlour where Charrie sat by the window sewing—mending, by the look of the needlework.
“Charrie, I am here.”
Charrie’s eyes remained on David as she answered. “Prudence. You were not due to visit for a two-month.”
They had been friends once, when they were children. Or, if not friends, allies against their father, and against the solid partnership of their twin older sisters. And, Prue reminded herself, Charrie had come to her rescue when Prue was in most need, for all that she demanded payment in humility and gratitude every day since.
“Charrie, allow me to present the gentleman who was kind enough to give me his escort, Mr. David Wakefield. David, my sister, Mrs. Stocke.”
Charrie’s eyes narrowed at Prue’s use of David’s Christian name, but she said nothing.
“A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Stocke.” David had donned his professional manner, all surface warmth with a cold watchfulness beneath, though only someone who knew him as well as she did would detect the underlayer.
Charrie nodded, forced to politeness. “Mr. Wakefield.”
Prue waited for her sister to offer a seat, but she said nothing, so Prue settled herself in the chair on the other side of the window, and said, “Please take a seat, David. Can we offer David refreshments, Charrie? We have come all the way from London today, and he must be hungry and thirsty. I know I am.” David would be surprised. They had already agreed he would go on to the inn, where Gren would have ordered them both a hearty dinner. But really, Charity was being so hard-hearted.
Charrie’s lips whitened as she pressed them together, but she nodded and said stiffly, “Ring for the maid, Prudence. Mr. Wakefield, will you join us?”
David questioned Prue with his eyes, and she gave an infinitesimal shake of her head. However much she wanted to annoy her sister, however reluctant she was to say goodbye, it was best David did not stay; this house held secrets she did not wish to share.
“Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Stocke, but my friend, who travelled with us, will have ordered dinner at the inn. Prue, I will call in the morning before we leave for Liverpool, if I may.”
“I will come down to the village in the morning to say goodbye, David,” Prue said, at the same moment as Charrie told him, “Call any time after seven of the clock, Mr. Wakefield.”
David looked doubtfully from one sister to the other.
“The children are staying at the vicarage, so we will not make as early a start as usual,” Charrie said. “You and your friend are welcome to break your fast here before you start your day.”
Whatever was she up to? Prue examined her sister’s face, but could detect nothing but cold courtesy. Still, she had answered Prue’s main concern.
“Thank you, Charrie. That sounds lovely. If it suits you, David. I will see David out, Charrie.”
David nodded his agreement.
“Until tomorrow, then. Good day, Mrs. Stocke.”
In the hall, he hesitated again, but Prue walked into his arms and hugged him tight. “I will miss you, David.”
“I will miss you, too. Prue, tell her tonight and come with us in the morning.”
“I am tempted.” It was not going to be a pleasant stay. “But I must stay, David. My sister might need me.” Prue was torn. Part of her wanted to stay for her own sake. She had few enough opportunities, and she would not miss this one. And part of her feared that their separation would be the end of their idyll. Surely in Liverpool, without her body to distract him, he would realise how little she had to recommend her. Certainly, if he knew about her past, he would be gone: not standing in Charity’s hall with his eyebrows drawn together and worry creasing the corners of his eyes.
“I don’t like to leave you here,” he fretted.
Prue reached up and kissed him, an affectionate peck. “She is my sister, David, for all her faults. She won’t hurt me.” Or at least not more than she already had. “I am about to break her heart. I must stay and try to comfort her.”
He captured her lips for a hungry kiss that ended when the little maid approached. Charrie’s maids had been either too young or too old to tempt the master of the house since the first year of her marriage, and this one looked to be about ten. Selby was not lavish in his support for Charity and her daughters, and Charity hated that her main income came from the sister whose scandalous past was an insult to the good name of the household. She pinched the household pennies until they screamed. She had one housemaid, one nursemaid, a cook, and a surly adolescent boy who did handyman work.
“I will see you tomorrow, then,” David said. The maid let him out the door and Prue returned to the parlour and her sister’s angry hiss.
“Prudence, how could you!”
“How could I what, Charity?”
“How could you bring your lover here, under my roof, where there are innocent children? He is your lover, is he not? Did you learn nothing from that marquis? I am so disappointed in you, Prudence.”
Prue sat and arranged her skirts around her while she thought about her answer. It had been a long day. Her bones ached from the bouncing of the chaise, and she was hungry and thirsty. And David had left, and would go still further away tomorrow. For a moment, she pictured herself running after him down the lane that led to the village.
Would Charrie be offended if she told the maid to bring her a cup of tea and something to eat?
“Could we fight about this tomorrow, Charrie? I am very tired.”
“I was right to send the children away. You are not fit to associate with them.”
It took Prue a moment to process this through her growing headache. “You mean to stop me from seeing the children?”
“I am sorry, Prudence. I cannot take the risk. I believed you when you said it was only that marquis. I stood up for you when our sisters said you were lost. She will never do it again, I said. She has learned her lesson. But look at you! You are that man’s mistress. You cannot deny it.”
“I do deny it. I am his lover, not his paid plaything. We have chosen one another, Charrie. He is a good man, and I care for him.”
“Do you think that makes it better? If it were that or starve in a gutter, there might be an excuse. Father might think a good woman would choose to starve, but he did not see his children go hungry.”
For a moment, their eyes met in perfect accord. Whatever the gap between them, once, they had been united in the childhood-long defensive pact against their father. But then Charrie remembered her grievance.
“But to lie with a man because you wish to? That is wanton, Prudence. Better you leave with him in the morning. I will not bring the children home until you are gone.”
Prue’s temples were pounding now. “You think me wanton because I lie with a man for no better reason than he is my friend, and I love him.”
“Yes, if you are not married to that man, then you are wanton.”
“Then apply the label to yourself, Charity, for you are not married to Samuel Stocke.” Oh, dear. She had not meant to say it so bluntly, or to say it at all tonight. Charrie paled and reared back in her seat, mending unregarded on her lap.
“What are you talking about? I am, too, married to Samuel. You were at the wedding.”
“I am sorry, Charrie.” If only her head would stop pounding. “I did not mean to blurt that out. But I came here to tell you—you deserve to know the truth.”
Charrie was shaking her head. “You were at the wedding,” she repeated.
“Oh, Charrie. I am sorry. I do not know how to tell you.”
“Say what you came here to say. Then get out. Go share that man’s bed or sleep in the gutter. No. I do not want to hear it. Just go.”
“Charity, the man you married is not called Samuel Stocke. I met him in London and recognised him immediately.”
“It is not true. You are just saying that to punish me for calling you names.”
“He is the Earl of Selby, Simon Stocke.”
“No.” Charrie shook her head. “Now I know you are lying. The Earl of Selby is an old man. He is Samuel’s uncle. That is why we live here, in the village, because the Earl of Selby would stop Samuel’s allowance if he knew Samuel had married so far beneath him.”
“Charrie, you are not beneath that man. He is a cheat and a liar. He lied to you, Charrie. He is Simon Stocke, and he became Earl of Selby just before Christmas, when his father died. He has no cousin Samuel, Charrie. I made enquiries. There was a Samuel: the earl before your false husband’s father. But he died six years ago.”
“I do not understand.” Charrie was beginning to believe her. Her whole body had slumped, and her eyes were dazed. She picked at the garment on her lap, rubbing the fabric between her fingers as if the physical sensation anchored her to reality. “Why would he lie, Prue? Why would he tell me a false name?”
Prue hoisted her weary bones from her chair, and dropped at her sister’s feet, taking the restless hands in her own.
“There is more, Charrie.” One sharp incision, an army surgeon had once told her. Get in and get out as fast as you can. The speed of the operation determines success.
“More?” Charrie shook her head slowly, but her eyes remained fixed on Prue’s, and she clung to Prue’s hands.
“He has a wife. He already had a wife when he married you. I am so sorry, Charrie.”
“No.” A bald, uncompromising rejection, already untrue when Charrie said it. “No, Prue. I am not… He could not… My babies are… bastards?”
“Oh, Charrie.” Prue took her weeping sister into her arms, headache and weariness forgotten for the moment. “My darling. We will work it out. We will find a way, I promise. Oh, darling.”
Charrie was calm and composed by the time David and Gren arrived in the morning, though her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy.
She had cried for much of the night—over the supper Prue had eventually ordered, and later when she crawled into bed beside Prue, declaring she would never again sleep in the bed where ‘that monster’ had violated her trust. She always did have a flair for the dramatic.
She greeted David with a much friendlier nod than he had received the previous evening, and Prue said, “Charrie, this is our friend, Lord Jonathan.”
Gren bowed extravagantly over her hand. “Charmed to meet you, Mrs. Stocke.”
Charrie shuddered. “Please. Call me Charity. You are a friend of my sister, after all.”
“I will, if you call me Gren, as David and Prue do. After all, Prue is like a sister to me, which makes you my sister as well.”
“Gren, then. That is an odd name.”
“Short for Grenford,” Gren explained, and Charrie turned startled eyes to her sister.
“Grenford? Is that not…”
Prue shook her head and, thank goodness, Charrie took the hint.
Gren, though, thought he knew what she meant. “Yes, the Duke of Haverford’s family. But please do not hold it against me.”
Charrie’s smile was weak, but genuine. There would be questions after the men left, though. Her mind was clearly working furiously.
“Cook has made fresh bread,” Charrie told Gren. “My sister says you are likely to be hungry.”
“Gren is always hungry,” Prue assured her. “I have never seen anything like the way he devours food.”
“Hollow legs, our cook used to say,” Gren agreed, cheerfully. “Lead me to it, Charity.”
“You told her? About Selby?” David whispered, as he and Prue followed the others.
Prue nodded. “It came up,” she told him.
“You could still come with us,” he suggested, hopefully, but Charrie heard him and turned, her eyes swimming with tears again.
“Please stay, Prue. I need you.”
Prue took her sister’s hands. “I will, Charrie. I will stay until we have a plan.”
Gren was looking curiously from one to the other.
“Sister talk,” David said, clapping Gren on the shoulder. “Look, Gren. Sausages.”
“From my own pigs,” Charrie said, proudly.
Gren kept up a light patter of social conversation over the meal, and Prue made a valiant effort to contribute, though she was dreading the parting to come, and kept lapsing into silence to soak up her last moments with David.
He was quiet, too, and Charrie oscillated from bright and bubbly to morose and silent. Without Gren, it would have been a dismal meal.
When the men rose to leave, Gren suggested to Charrie, “Shall we allow them the breakfast room for a moment, Charity? I know my brother wants to kiss her goodbye, and he doesn’t want to embarrass her in front of her sister.”
Charrie gave each man a hard look. “You are brothers?”
“Half-brothers,” David confirmed.
Charrie opened her mouth, thought the better of whatever she was about to say, and shut it again. Without another word, she left the room, Gren trailing in her wake.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Prue walked into David’s arms.
“Travel safely,” she said.
“I’ll call for you on my way back.”
“No, I doubt I’ll stay long. I will go back to London. Come to me there.” Please, David. Please come to me there. Do not forget me in Liverpool.
“Stay in Chelsea, Prue. Mrs. Allen knows to welcome you and make you comfortable. Treat it like your own home.”
“I will. I would like to.”
They kissed, and it was a hello and a farewell, all at once. Even if he returned, this one kiss would have to sustain her for a month or more. It lasted an eternity and was over too soon.
“I do not want to leave you,” David said at last, drawing his head back but keeping her locked in his arms.
“I do not want you to go. But we each have our duties. Go, David. Finish your enquiries and come home to me.”
David smiled, more a warmth in the eyes than a movement of the lips. “Home. Home is wherever you are, Prue.” He kissed her again, a gentle benediction, then stepped away and opened the door.
“Let us be on our way, Gren.”
The sisters walked them to the gate and waved them down the lane.
“He really cares for you,” Charrie said. “I am sorry for the things I said last night, Prue.”
“It is only what the world would think, if they knew,” Prue acknowledged. “Do not let it trouble you, Charrie.”
“The eyes. They both have the same eyes as…”
Prue nodded. “Yes, they do. And Lord Jonathan has the same colouring as his other brother.”
“I have sent the maid to fetch the girls,” Charrie told her. “They should be back shortly.”
Prue turned to look back down the road and then across the fields, where a footpath cut through the woods behind the village to make a shortcut to Charrie’s cottage. They were just coming out of the trees: the little maid, another slightly older maid carrying an infant, and three little girls: the eldest, as Prue well knew, had just turned five years old.
Prue waited impatiently, but they were slow.
“Go and meet them, Prue. You know you want to.”
She let herself out of the gate, then climbed the stile on the other side of the lane and began to hurry, half-running, down the path towards the little group.
The eldest of the girls looked up and saw her, and began to run in her turn, and in moments, she had leapt into Prue’s arms.
“Antonia. Oh, my love, how you have grown.” Prue smiled into hazel eyes the very image of those her lover shared with his half-brothers.
“Mama,” her daughter almost sang in reply. “Mama! Oh, Mama, I did not know you were coming, Mama.”