She turned and walked back into the house, heart pounding madly, wishing that she was a braver person and knowing that she never would be. Knowing that, for as long as she was married to him, she would rely on him to bridge the gaps that still existed between them.
CHAPTER 26
Caroline did her best to hold on to what her husband had told her. That he preferred her best, out of all of her sisters. That he was glad she was the one he was married to. That he didn’t wish he could have had Prudence.
She wanted it to be the truth. She wanted to believe it.
But it was so difficult, with Prudence around the house all the time, to forget what it had been like when the two of them had lived under one roof. She had never resented Prudence for it, of course, nor did she resent her sister now. But insecurity was something else.
It took root deeply one day when she walked into the library and saw the two of them sharing a laugh over a book. There was no reason they shouldn’t, of course, but something about it struck her in an unpleasant way. Prudence was not a reader. What was she doing, bent over a book, sharing what looked like a private laugh?
The next moment, though, she understood she had misread things entirely. “I don’t know how you can read all this,” Prudence said, pushing the book back at Levi. “It looks terribly dull to me.”
“It’s not at all. It’s fascinating. You really ought to give it a try.”
Prudence laughed. “No thank you.”
“You don’t like to read history?”
“I do not.”
“What do you like to read, then?”
“You want Caroline for that,” Prudence said, glancing at Caroline over Levi’s shoulder. Levi turned and nodded a greeting to her as well. “She’s the one who’s likely as not to read all of these books. Me, I’ll never get through a third of them.”
“It’s a good thing to be able to read,” Levi said.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t read, I said that Ididn’t.”
“Well, you ought to cultivate the practice. If you don’t, how will you ever learn anything about the world?”
“That must be a joke. Do you think the only way to learn about the world is from books?” Prudence laughed. “I learn byliving. Ilearn by getting out and doing things. Everything I know comes from experience, and I couldn’t possibly be any happier about that. Books are fine as a hobby, but if you want to understand the world, you need to live in it.”
“And you’re the expert on that?”
“Among other things.” Prudence crossed her arms. “I would say that my experiences have taught me well. I did manage to hide from you two and evade capture for a prolonged amount of time.”
She was right about that. “I wouldn’t brag too much about it, though,” Caroline said. “A lot of that was luck, Prudence. Anything might have happened to you.”
“But nothing did And now I’m in a much better situation than I had before,” she said. “You couldn’t find something like that in a book. I had to solve that problem on my own, and I was capable of it because of the wisdom that comes from living life.”
Caroline remained in the corner. Though she knew it would be all right to approach and join the conversation, she found herself hesitant to do so.
It was just that it was so easy for Prudence to talk to people. She had always been this way. She had always been the most social of the three sisters. Arabella was good at taking charge of a situation, and she managed herself well in social settings because of it. But Prudence was the gregarious one. She was theone who could always make people laugh. She was the one that everyone wanted to be around.
And then there was Caroline. Caroline was the wallflower of the three. She always had been. What was strange was that Levi didn’t seem to see her that way. He had made it clear to her now that he saw something else in her. That when he looked at her, he didn’t see someone he was willing to simply allow his gaze to pass over. He appreciated her in a way no one else really had before.
He had told her that he was glad to have married her. That he was glad Prudence had left, because that choice had enabled him to turn his attention to Caroline. He had told Caroline that she was the only one of the sisters that he would have wanted to be with.
When he had said it, she had believed it was the truth. She still wanted to believe it was the truth.
But how could she?
No, she wanted Prudence to enjoy herself. She was glad Prudence seemed to be enjoying her time in the library. It wasn’t jealousy, this thing she was feeling...was it?
Caroline explored the depths of her feelings. It came to her that perhaps shewasjealous. She was jealous of the easy way Prudence was able to banter with Levi. She was jealous of how naturally they could talk to each other, and how Prudence didn’tneed to think about what she was saying. It was effortless. She was charming and funny and easy to be around.
She felt a mix of pride in Prudence and insecurity that she couldn’t be the same way.
