Prudence and the Romantic Poet (The Three Graces #3)

Chapter 24

24

‘Is it good to be back?’ Charity asked her sister as they alighted in Curzon Street.

‘So many memories,’ said Prudence, looking up at the white stuccoed front of the tall town house. ‘We were girls when we first came here. Now you and Constance are wives and mothers.’ She swallowed, feeling a lump in her throat. Her own hopes of marriage and motherhood had just been dashed to the ground.

Their arrival was met with an extraordinary amount of noise. The first to greet them was an enormous black, shaggy bear that hurtled down the hallway towards them, skidding across the tiled floor, and to Prudence’s horror – opened its great mouth and seemed to devour Alex. As Prudence’s heart raced she realised that Alex was not screaming with agony but squealing with joy as he hugged the great, black beast.

‘Oh my,’ said Prudence, feeling suddenly weak-kneed from the rush of alarm that had coursed through her. ‘Hannibal has grown!’

Alex’s nurse exclaimed loudly at seeing them all safe. Charity’s maid was no less verbose nor shrill in expressing her joy at the reunion and recounting the dreadful anxiety of the past day when they had not known what had become of the family! The skeleton staff that managed the town house when the family were away came out of their respective places to greet their master and mistress. Meanwhile Leon was calling out instructions regarding the unloading of luggage, and Alex was laughing and Hannibal was barking and everyone talking all at once.

Prudence escaped into the drawing room. ‘There you are!’ exclaimed Charity, coming in a quarter of an hour later. She flopped beside her sister on the sofa. ‘Isn’t this pleasant? Long journeys are so tedious, it is such a pleasure to reach the comforts and quiet of home. Are you not glad to be back in the civilised world after all those weeks in that mausoleum of a house? Here’s the tea things. Thank you, Matthew. Put the tray there.’

‘You have not altered things much,’ said Prudence, looking round the room. The lemon-striped sofas, the primrose velvet curtains, and the buttery silk walls were just as their godmother Miss Darby, now Mrs Ramsbottom, had left them. Only the enormous pair of golden Atlas lamps were missing from the room, replaced with a pair of cut-glass candelabra.

‘Not this room,’ said Charity. ‘But all the pink drapery and paper in our bedroom and dressing room is gone. The room that used to be Finn’s and then Connie’s is now Alex’s nursery. I will show you round when you have had your tea. Oh, Pru, this is like old times having you here. Do you recall all the larks we got up to the year I met Leon? Remember how you dressed up as Miss Dimity and chaperoned me about?’

‘I do.’ said Prudence dryly. ‘I remember it led to all kinds of troublesome consequences. ’

‘Oh, fiddle. If we had not gone to the theatre and that ball, I would not have met the love of my life.’

Prudence did not reply, but sipped her tea. She was aware that Charity was eyeing her with a gleam in her hazel eyes.

‘I deduce,’ said Charity, ‘that you may have met the love of your life before you reached town.’

Prudence looked at her in surprise.

‘He is very handsome. I am not surprised you like him, though the age difference does surprise me a little.’

Prudence could only stare. How had her sister, who was not usually very acute in her discernment of people’s feelings, guessed about Sir Robert when she had barely seen him?

‘The age difference is not so large,’ said Prudence. ‘Not,’ she hastened, ‘that you are right about him being… the love of my life.’ A wave of misery washed over her. ‘We are only friends. Were only friends. I doubt I shall see him again.’

‘Not see him again? I heard you begging him to follow you to town, and he said he would hotfoot it after you.’

‘Beg him? Hotfoot? Are we speaking of Mr Shelbourne?’

‘Who else? A very handsome, gentlemanly fellow. I suppose he’s only a couple of years younger than you, is he not? Nothing to speak of. I was only teasing.’

‘Mr Shelbourne and I are only friends,’ said Prudence, but Charity was not listening.

‘What a severe fellow his uncle is,’ she remarked.

‘What uncle?’

‘The dark-haired man. A good figure, but so terribly grim .’

‘That was Mr Shelbourne’s cousin,’ said Prudence quietly .

‘Mrs Shelbourne,’ said Charity. ‘It sounds very well.’

‘I assure you, Chari, we are only friends. Mr Shelbourne is not coming to London to pursue me, he is in love with another young lady.’

‘Fiddle. I saw how intimate the pair of you were. Why, the fellow confessed that he is so familiar with you that he walks in and out of the house as he pleases. What other young lady can hold a candle to you? Now you are a rich young lady you will be the marriage prize of the season.’

This was a depressing thought. ‘I shan’t be in London for the season,’ said Prudence firmly. ‘Connie’s baby is due in early April, and I shall be at Lindford by mid March in case the baby comes early.’

‘I suppose you won’t need a season if your Mr Shelbourne follows you here to pay his addresses.’

‘I will not respond to any more of your nonsense, Charity. You can believe what you will, but I am telling the truth when I say that Mr Shelbourne and I are only friends.’

‘We shall see,’ said her sister cheerfully. ‘There are more important things than men to consider at present. The first thing we must do is get you to Miss Carina and make you fit for going into public. Your wardrobe is a disgrace , Pru. Thank goodness old Uncle Sealy forbade you from wearing weeds.’

The first few days of life in London flew by. The sister’s first call was upon Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom now living in fashionable St. James’s. Married life was very agreeable to their godmother, whose penchant for youthful white and pink muslins and gauzes had not abated.

She also met with Miss Kimpshott very regularly, who was delighted to see her. ‘I have been pining for a friendly face,’ confessed Miss Kimpshott. ‘I have not made a single female friend the whole time I have been here.’ But on the day of Mr Shelbourne’s arrival the following week, Miss Kimpshott was laid up with a disagreeable head cold that she had caught from her cousin. Nothing serious, she assured Prudence in a note, but the doctor advised staying out of the December winds and rain until every symptom had passed.

Mr Shelbourne was sorely grieved to hear of Miss Kimpshott’s malaise. ‘It is only a bad cold,’ Prudence assured him when he called promptly at Curzon Street on his arrival. ‘She will be about again soon.’

‘You are quite sure it is nothing more than a cold?’ Mr Shelbourne said, wringing his hands. ‘What if the physician is mistaken? What if it is something deadly?’

‘Mr Shelbourne, she would not have written me a letter to say that it was only a cold if she were dying.’

‘And was it really in her own handwriting?’

Charity, who was in the room during this call had stared at him. ‘Who do you suppose would write in her name if not her?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘Her cousin. She would stand to inherit Miss Kimpshott’s substantial fortune if anything should…’ He could not finish such an awful thought.

‘I think your Mr Shelbourne is a little touched in his upper works,’ Charity said, when the gentleman had taken his leave.

‘He is not my Mr Shelbourne,’ replied Prudence. ’And he is not mad. Just… fanciful. And young. And surely you can see now that there can be no possibility that I could ever be in love with him.’

Charity considered this, and concluded, ‘Well… they do say that opposites attract sometimes. He could certainly do with some of your good sense. ’

Charity’s notion of restoring her little sister from a prolonged period of nursing was not a prescription for a recuperative season of peace and quiet – peace and quiet being two things that were rare in the Hart household – instead, a frenetic round of shopping was undertaken.

Prudence gave up trying to quell her sister’s efforts; in truth, she had not the energy to resist. She allowed herself to be borne along, usually by carriage, wherever Charity wished to take her. Silk warehouses, milliners, modistes, Prudence’s new wardrobe began to spring forth like wildflowers in springtime, she thought wryly as she stood gazing at the enormous armoire full of new clothes, feeling overwhelmed by choice.

Prudence had not resisted any of her sister’s contrivances, partly because she saw that it gave Charity enormous pleasure to take her sister about and ‘fit her up’, and partly because there was something strangely relaxing in giving over the reins of one’s life to another, going where she was bid and assenting to whatever was proposed. She let Charity choose what play they would see, what museum they would visit, what dishes they would eat, and what new clothes she would wear.

A part of her was indifferent to all these superficial things, but they did serve a useful purpose in carrying her along like a pleasure boat through these days of emotional turmoil. From breakfast to bedtime, she quashed her heartache. Only at night, when the maid had left her, and she was alone with the red-gold flicker of the fire, only then did her feelings have some release as she tossed and turned and finally fell asleep with wet cheeks .

If Prudence thought she was successful in hiding her sorrow, she was mistaken. Charity’s endless generation of fun was inspired by the wish to see her sister’s spirits lifted, for she could see very well that she was brought low.

‘She should never have been left alone to nurse that man for so long,’ Charity fretted to her husband as she brushed out her curls before bed a fortnight after their arrival in town. ‘I should have gone to fetch her sooner. I feel responsible. I don’t know why Connie was so insistent that I let Pru have her own way.’

‘Constance was quite right,’ said Leon, who sat in his dressing gown, flicking through a sporting almanac. ‘If there’s one thing I know about the Grace sisters, once they make up their mind to something there’s no use trying to argue them out of it. Prudence is not a baby, she’s a young woman. If she wanted to stay in Bath with her long-lost relative, who are you to argue? What would you do, drag her bodily away?’

‘I should have gone and helped her,’ said Charity. ‘Why do you laugh?’

‘I laugh, my sweet widgeon, because you are the last person to be of any use in a sickroom nursing a dying man.’

‘I nursed you,’ said Charity indignantly.

Leon cast aside his magazine, crossed to the dressing table and plucked Charity’s brush from her hand. ‘If I recall,’ he said, lifting her to her feet. ‘It was little Prudence who did the actual nursing. You only read me sentimental novels and force fed me plates of ham.’

‘Well, it worked, did it not?’ said Charity, pretending to resist him in protest as he drew her to him. ‘It distracted you from your depression, did it not?’

‘It was you who were the distraction, Mrs Hart. You’ve done nothing but turn my head and distract me since the first minute I set eyes on you.’

Charity ceased all resistance. Then she stiffened and pulled away, saying, ‘That is it!’

‘What is it ?’ groaned Leon.

‘That’s what Pru needs. The best kind of distraction. What a noodle I am. New clothes and Astley’s are the right kind of distraction for me, and those tedious Elgin marbles might be the right kind of distraction for someone like Constance, but Pru needs what Connie and I have. She needs a husband. I thought she was in love with that young Shelbourne fellow, but he’s dined here twice now, and I think she is speaking the truth when she says they are only friends.’

‘Of course she is. He’s a likeable fellow, but he’s a boy. Prudence is far too sensible to fall for a cub who drifts into trances.’

‘They are not trances, they are poetical visions, so he says. But what she needs is a man of substance,’ said Charity. ‘Well educated and highly principled and good natured. Someone well-looking, but not a man milliner.’

‘I think you are sailing into dangerous waters, my love,’ warned Leon.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Matchmaking is the worst kind of interference. Better let love run its own course. Prudence is young. She has plenty of time to meet someone.’

‘She rarely gets the chance to meet anyone, she lives so retiring a life. Now is an excellent time to introduce eligible men to her. I shall recruit Lady Clementina in the scheme. She will know who to introduce Prudence to. Her Christmas ball will be the largest ball in London, and Prudence has the most adorable ball gown being made – if only I can persuade her to dance!’