In Bed with the Duke(63)

‘Well, if you are sure...’

‘Oh, yes. It has been several days since I’ve had use of a comb, you see, and my hair has always been difficult to manage, even with regular brushing.’

Prudence had only refused to have it cut before out of a perverse determination to thwart Aunt Charity. She wouldn’t mind having it all cut off now, while Milly was at it. Only just as she opened her mouth to make the suggestion she recalled the look in Gregory’s eyes as he’d wound one curl round his finger. One curl of what he had called ‘russet glory’.

‘Several days! How perfectly frightful,’ Lady Mixby was saying. ‘And what kind of thief would steal a lady’s comb? My goodness—what wickedness there is in the world. You must have a macaroon,’ she said, hopping to her feet, going to the tea table and putting one on a plate. And then adding a couple more dainties and bringing them across.

‘There. Three cakes. I was just saying to Benderby this morning how things go in threes. First Hugo came to visit, which he only does when he is quite rolled up. And then that strange Mr Bodkin person arrived, in possession of Halstead’s ring. His very own signet ring, which was handed down from the First Duke—the one I told you he resembles so nearly. Or would if he would only keep the beard and get himself a pearl earring.’

She sighed wistfully, giving Prudence the impression she had a rather romantical notion of pirates. Or Elizabethans. Or possibly both.

‘That set us all in a bustle, as you can imagine. If dear Hugo hadn’t been here I should have been quite terrified,’ she said, absentmindedly popping the macaroon she’d fetched for Prudence into her own mouth. ‘But he took charge in the most masterful way, considering his age, taking Mr Bodkin aside and getting the whole story from him before explaining it to me. At least, he explained some things, which all sounded highly improbable—but then when gentlemen go off in pursuit of some wager they often get tangled up with the most extraordinary company.’

Prudence was about to agree, since she’d had pretty much the same thought earlier, but Lady Mixby hadn’t even paused to take breath.

‘Why, you only have to think of cock pits and boxing saloons and places of that nature. Not that I have ever been in one. Nor would I wish to. They sound perfectly frightful.’

While Lady Mixby was giving a delicate little shudder at the thought of what might go on in a boxing saloon, Prudence took the opportunity to inject a word or two of her own.

‘So Hugo told you all about the wager, did he?’ She said it as though she knew all about it, hoping that Lady Mixby would enlighten her without her having to admit she was almost completely in the dark.

‘Incredible, isn’t it?’ Lady Mixby’s eyes widened. She leaned forward in a conspiratorial fashion. ‘I would never have believed it of Halstead, had he not arrived here today without his valet and groom, looking so very unlike himself. Though, come to think of it, now I’ve seen his resemblance to the First Duke—who was little more than a pirate, really—I can believe him to be getting up to any amount of mischief. Not that I am implying he has done anything that is not fitting to his station in life.’

She looked at Prudence guiltily.

‘Has he? Oh,’ she added, before Prudence had a chance to draw breath. ‘Not that I would blame you if you had done something you ought not... The way he looked just now, I can see exactly how it might be that you couldn’t resist him. Though I would not have thought anything of the sort had you not said that about trusting him with your virtue. Oh, dear—how I do rattle on. I have ever been thus. It is why I never took, as a girl—why I never married. No rational man could have put up with me—that is what my father always said.’

‘I’m sure that is not true,’ said Prudence faintly, in the pause that came while Lady Mixby was popping a second fancy cake into her mouth.

‘Dear girl,’ she said, flicking crumbs from her skirt onto the expensive carpet. ‘It is such a sweet thing of you to say, but the truth is we were all as poor as church mice in spite of our name. Such is the way of the world. Girls with plain faces only get proposals if they have a dowry large enough to make up for it. Whereas the veriest drabs will have oodles of men paying them court if they have money to back them,’ she said with a shrug.

She was in blithe ignorance of the way she’d just plunged a knife into Prudence’s already sensitised heart. Because she did have money, didn’t she? Could that be why Gregory had tacitly accepted her proposal, in spite of the discrepancy in their rank? After all, the men in Aunt Charity’s congregation had suddenly started looking at her differently once it had become common knowledge that she was heiress to the Biddlestone fortune.