Wilde in Love(28)

Prudence gave him a beatific smile. “Alaric and I shared a special …” Her voice dropped. “A special bond.”

Bloody hell.

“No, we did not,” Alaric stated.

She gave him a sympathetic look. “I understood that you would have tried to raze me from the tablets of your heart after discovering that I had passed from this earth.”

There was silence again as everyone wrestled with her idiosyncratic language.

“When I left Africa, you were perfectly healthy,” Alaric observed.

The duke said, “May I say that for someone who claims to have died, and lived again, you are looking remarkably well.”

“It was a miracle,” Prudence said. Alaric was starting to find her glowing smile unnerving. “I came here, among the tents of the wicked, with sobriety and humbleness, not taking pride in my love for Lord Wilde, but certain of it.”

“A Puritan, I gather,” his aunt said.

Prudence turned her head and her eyes narrowed as she looked closely at Lady Knowe. Then she said, with a little gasp, “Let not your eyes be drawn aside with vanity, Prudence, nor your ear with wicked noises.”

“I beg your pardon, but did you just address yourself?” His aunt seemed to be working out how best to handle this eccentric stranger.

While Lady Knowe appeared undisturbed by Prudence’s rudeness, Alaric was appalled. What in the devil was Prudence doing, insulting his aunt and raving about a “special bond”?

He had clear memories of her as a spotty young girl who prayed more loudly and fervently than did her parents. All the same, she’d had an unhealthy anger about her, as if she was always on the verge of loud sobs.

Then the night came when he’d discovered her tucked under his sheet—belying her claims to godliness. He had pried her from the bed, escorted her to the door, pushed her out of his bedchamber, and left the next morning.

“Why are you here, Miss Larkin?” he asked.

“I came for you, dear one.”

“I am not your dear one, and there is nothing between us.”

“It is a sin of obstinacy, great obstinacy, high and horrible obstinacy, to deny the truth.”

“There is no truth in what you are saying.” He’d heard enough. Prudence was more than eccentric; she was deranged.

“What I wish to know,” his father said, intervening, “is whether there is a connection between you, Miss Larkin, and the play depicting a missionary’s daughter that is currently on the stage in London.”

Prudence turned to Alaric with a gentle smile. If it was a mask, it was a complete one, one which the woman herself believed in. “Indeed, there is,” she said. Her smile widened. “I wrote Wilde in Love.”

“You wrote that play?” The words grated from Alaric’s chest.

Her eyes fell. “You are right to admonish me, husband.”

“Husband?”

“I think of you as my husband, though I know the word is an ensign of pride, a banner of pride,” she said, stumbling over her words for the first time. She squared her shoulders and that eerie sweetness stole over her face again.

To Alaric, she looked like a woman smiling at a baby, rather than at a small circle of hostile aristocrats.

“My father calls the theater the smoke of vanity, made by Satan himself to draw us to fleshly errors, things of the world, of the devil, and the flesh.”

“Does he indeed? And I would call your play a tissue of lies,” Alaric said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I feel myself justified in calling the sheriff.”

“Do not be angry with me,” Prudence pleaded. “Everything I have done, I did for the pure love of you.”

This was an unmitigated disaster.

“Where is your father?”

“After you left, I fell into such a fit of longing that I was deemed not likely to survive.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “I died, verily, I died. When I awoke, I knew that I had to follow you, though you went to an impure place, yea, even into the fires of hell itself.”

“She’s deranged,” Lady Knowe said, bluntly but not unkindly. “Daft as a brush, and that’s the truth of it. I always said those Puritans prayed too much. Fasting isn’t good for a body either.”

“You should not address me,” Prudence said, her chin firming. “You have the marks of the devil about thee. You partake of pitch. You—”

“Do not speak to Lady Knowe in that tone,” His Grace said.

He did not raise his voice, but something about the duke made Prudence instantly fall silent.

“Where is your father?” Alaric repeated.

“I ran away. I came here, not to partake of sin, but to cleanse you of it.” A silence, and then she added practically, “You weren’t in the country when I arrived.”

“So you wrote the play?”

A hint of pride crept into her face. “I composed it on the voyage. The men aboard the ship were quite unkind and forced me to keep to my room.”

“You had no right to make a play out of my nephew’s life,” Lady Knowe said.

“I had every right,” Prudence retorted. “I am his wife.”

“I have no wife.” Alaric didn’t allow himself to move a finger.

“Yes, you have,” Prudence insisted. “We may not have exchanged words in the presence of a minister, but we were moved in the Spirit together, and God rewarded our zeal and glory.”

Alaric shook his head. “I have no idea what you are talking about. After you crept into my bed, I put you out directly. I did not tell your father about your actions, though I see now that was a mistake.”

“You took my heart with you when you left … I died. But I live, and die, every night in the play that I wrote for you. All that remains is for us to say the words in our heart under a sacred roof.”

“You can’t possibly think that Alaric would actually marry you,” his aunt said, visibly surprised.

“He will marry me because he loves me.”

Silence.

What in the hell could he say that would convince her? What did one say to a woman who seemed to think that she’d been brought back from the dead? “I will never marry you.”

“I will wait for you,” Prudence cried, her voice trembling. “I will wait until you change your mind. I will wait my entire life.”

The duke moved forward. “Miss Larkin—”

“Thou canst not rule my tongue,” she said desperately. “My tongue is my own, and so is my pen, and with it I will keep loving you no matter how often you slay me, reject me, hate me.”

“This is turning Shakespearean,” Lady Knowe observed. “I think she’s threatening to write more plays about you, Alaric.”

“I rejoice in my afflictions,” Prudence said. Then she scowled at Alaric’s aunt. “Thou, thou art all abomination!”

The duke sighed. “Miss Larkin, I’m afraid you must go your way now. You’ve said enough.”

“I’ll pay for your passage back to your father,” Alaric said. “I would guess that he’s worried about you.”

“No, he isn’t,” Prudence said, her voice trembling. “He knows we are to be married, because of our love. Because I came to you, and spent the night with you, and married you in my heart.”

“We did not spend the night together.” Behind Miss Larkin, his father shook his head, and Alaric realized the duke was right. There was no point in attempting to reason with her.

“I shall find you a ship headed for Africa,” he said, schooling his voice to what he hoped was a persuasive key.

“I was terrified in my inner heart that you would have found someone else, but now I see that my prayers are answered. You are mine, and though you may not—”

“No,” he said, “I am not yours. I have found someone else.”

Her eyes narrowed for a second and then, like a veil, the sweetness fell back over her expression. “You are teasing me, dear one. It isn’t kind. Not after the privations I’ve suffered for your sake.”

“A rest cure might help,” Lady Knowe suggested, sounding unconvinced.

Behind them the door opened and Willa entered. Alaric’s heart bounded at the sight of her. She was so frank and honest in comparison to this frighteningly strange madwoman.

“Please forgive my interruption,” she said, once she reached the group. “I came to fetch a book that Miss Gray left here earlier in the day.”

Alaric held out his hand. “Miss Ffynche, please join us.” Then he held his breath. Willa had theretofore refused his courtship in no uncertain terms. But there was something between them … an invisible bond as strong as steel.

He needed her help.





Chapter Nineteen


It seemed to Willa as if she’d entered a theater after missing the first two acts of a melodrama.

Before her stood the brave heroine, amidst a circle of uncaring aristocrats. This would be the scene in which the hapless, seduced maid denounces the evil squire for taking her virginity and getting her with child.

That speech was typically capped by the squire’s rejection, leading in Act Five to the heroine’s tragic plunge from a high tower, cliff, or church steeple.

But in this scene the evil squire was Alaric, and he was holding out his hand. He needed her. Her heart was pounding in her chest, even though there was no logical reason she should be so thrilled by the expression in his eyes.