The tip of her umbrella hit the floor and she jerked to her feet. “I said stop it!”
“You brought up the topic.”
Letitia’s eyes narrowed. When he was a small boy, that glittering gaze had held the power to shred him to ribbons. Rhys was heartily glad he’d grown up.
“God,” she choked, “how did I spawn such a son as you?”
“With the devil. How else?” He stretched out his arm to yank the bell pull on the wall nearby. “It certainly wasn’t from something as distasteful as bedding your own husband.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could do so, Hollister appeared in the doorway. “Your Grace?” he inquired.
Rhys spoke to the servant without removing his gaze from Letitia’s. “My mother has changed her mind. She will be staying elsewhere for the season. Please show her out, and arrange to have her trunks sent wherever she intends to stay.”
With a sound of contempt, Letitia turned and started for the door.
As she walked away, he called after her, “Does this mean I won’t have the pleasure of seeing you again for another twelve years, Mama?”
The drawing room door slammed behind her, which he hoped was an affirmative answer. He reached for his glass, downed the remainder of his whiskey in one swallow, then leaned back against the cabinet and closed his eyes, pressing the cool glass against his forehead.
He drew deep breaths, striving to banish the image of his brother’s lifeless body from his mind, forcing all the rage and pain back down deep where they belonged, working bit by bit until he was numb again. He stood there a long, long time.
It was a well-known fact in London that omnibuses were like cats, for whenever it was pouring rain, both made themselves scarce. Prudence rose up on her toes and leaned out over the curb, keeping her umbrella carefully over her sewing basket to protect the piecework it contained from the deluge as she studied the various vehicles lumbering up New Oxford Street.
After a moment she fell back onto her heels with a discouraged sigh. Not an omnibus in sight. Either she would have to stand here and wait, or she would have to take a hansom. Cabs cost so much, and she and Maria had already splurged on the luxury of one twelve hours earlier, but Prudence was so tired, she couldn’t bear the thought of walking even part of the way to Holborn. Nor did she want to stand here on a cold, rainy afternoon waiting for an omnibus to pass by. After the ball last night and a full day at the showroom, she was utterly done in.
She once again leaned out over the curb and scanned the traffic to her left, this time looking for a hansom cab. If only she could afford to take hansoms every day, she thought with longing, then immediately shook off such wasteful wishes. Wanting what one couldn’t have was such a pointless game, and yet, on days like this, it was such a tempting one to play. If only she could afford to leave Madame and find a better post. If only she could afford not to work so hard. If only she were rich…
Just then a clatter of wheels to her right warned her a vehicle was coming around the corner. She jumped back, dropping her umbrella and cannoning into the person behind her as a luxurious brougham rolled past. With no way to escape the inevitable, Prudence lifted her basket high overhead to protect her piecework, turning her face to the side as she was doused with a spray of cold, muddy water from the gutter.
“Oh!” She looked down at her dress, impossible dreams forgotten as she stared in outraged dismay at the brown stains across the pretty beige and white stripes of her skirt. Gutter mud was awful. She would have to launder the garment the moment she got home or the stains would set and her best showroom dress would be ruined. Then she’d have to buy a new one from Madame and have the cost taken out of her wages. That meant she’d have to work even harder next week to make up the difference. Suddenly, everything in the world seemed too overwhelming to bear, and Prudence felt the stupid desire to weep.
Instead, she gave vent to her feelings by shouting one of Maria’s best curses after the inconsiderate driver of the brougham, then picked up her umbrella, hailed a hansom, fought mightily with the two horrid men who tried to jump into it ahead of her, and went home.
She fell asleep and was jolted awake three times before the cab reached the lodging house in Little Russell Street where she lived. She paid the driver and went inside, wanting only to wash out her dress and fall into bed, but when she stepped into the foyer, she found that sleep was destined to elude her a little while longer.
Just inside the door, she was greeted by her landlady, Mrs. Morris, who must have been watching for her arrival from the window. “You have a visitor,” the older woman informed her, closing the front door as Prudence set her dripping umbrella on one side of the coatrack and her sewing basket on the other. “A gentleman caller,” she added in an animated whisper, her face alight with understandable curiosity. This was a respectable ladies’ lodging house. Gentlemen callers were infrequent, and always generated a great fluttering of excitement and speculation.
Even so, Prudence was too tired to find this news exciting, especially since she knew it had to be some sort of mistake. She was a twenty-eight-year-old spinster of average looks who worked twelve-hour days in a post where she was surrounded by women. She never had gentlemen callers because she didn’t know any gentlemen. “Who is he?”
“He says his name is Mr. Whitfield, and he has been waiting for you for nearly an hour.” She glanced downward. “Oh, heavens, look at your dress. Perhaps you should change.”
Prudence had no intention of going to that sort of trouble for a stranger. Pulling at the ribbons of her hat, she removed the damp concoction of straw and feathers and set it on a hook of the coatrack, then leaned sideways and peeked around the doorjamb into the parlor.
Seated on the horsehair settee was an older gentleman with a precisely groomed goatee. His hat, a fine felt bowler, was beside him, and his hands were folded over an ebony and gold walking stick. A black leather dispatch case sat at his feet. He met her gaze with a genial smile, and Prudence ducked back out of sight.
“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” she whispered as she began to unbutton her cloak. “What does he want with me?”
“He says he’s come all the way from America to meet you, but he refused to say why.” Mrs. Morris’s face, round as a currant bun, scrunched into lines of concern. “Dearest Prudence, you didn’t perhaps answer one of those advertisements, did you?”
Attempting to engage her wits enough to figure out what Mrs. Morris was talking about proved beyond her. “Advertisements?”
“For wives, you know,” the older woman whispered back. “American men are always putting advertisements in our newspapers. They do seem to have quite a shortage of women over there.” A hint of disapproval mingled with the concern on her face. “Of course you wish to be married. Every young woman does, and husbands are so difficult to find nowadays, but America is such a long way off. And, really, dear, to answer an advertisement rather implies a sense of desper—”
“I didn’t answer any advertisement.” Prudence cut her off, knowing that sometimes interrupting her landlady was the only way to get a word in. She hung her cloak beside her hat. “I cannot imagine why he wishes to see me.”
“Should we offer him tea?”
Prudence’s empty stomach twisted, reminding her of how hungry she was, but she told herself to be strong. “I hardly think tea is necessary.”
“But Prudence, it is coming on five o’clock. And he seems a most respectable and courteous gentleman. For the sake of civility, tea, sandwiches, and cake seems the least we can do.”
Her mouth began to water. “Mrs. Morris, you know I’m banting,” she said, valiantly resisting temptation.
“You girls, always banting, so conscious of your figures that you refuse to put decent nourishment in your mouths. Why, I don’t know why I bother serving meals at all in this house. But striving for a twenty-inch waist simply isn’t healthy, dear.”
To obtain the coveted and fashionable twenty-inch waist, Prudence would have pledged to go on banting for the rest of her life. But her body seemed to care little about what was fashionable, for despite her continual efforts to whittle down the size of her waist, it seemed stubbornly fixed at a number equal to the years of her age. She ran her hands along her ribs, disheartened that her stays felt as tight as ever. Two days of nothing but a handful of crab canapés and a few cross buns at the showroom, she thought, aggrieved, and she didn’t seem the least bit slimmer. “Tea, then,” she agreed, capitulating at last, and tried to console herself with the irrefutable fact that she had to eat sometime.
“Dorcas and I shall bring it directly.” The landlady bustled away in search of the maid, and Prudence shoved down any glimmers of guilt over her lack of gastronomic fortitude as she entered the parlor.
The gentleman, silver-haired and quite handsome, rose as she came in. “Miss Bosworth?”
“I am Prudence Bosworth, yes.” She took in his finely tailored clothes with an experienced eye. A prosperous gentleman, she knew at once. A bit of a dandy as well, she judged, going by the gardenia in his buttonhole and his ornate walking stick.