Prudence knew the baker didn’t do it for her. None of the servants cared for her. She was unkind to them. The baker did it for Miss Ramsey. “Until someone takes my place,” Prudence brought up with a short laugh.
“No one can take your place,” her brother’sguestassured her. “Most of these people have known you since you were a little girl. They loved you then and they love you still.”
Prudence cleared her throat and took a moment before she spoke. She found her brother, coming toward them. He was still smiling. Simon was smiling, as well, but then, that was nothing new for him.
“What’s this?” her brother asked when he reached them and saw the tray of cinnamon scones.
“They are a gift from Miss Ramsey,” Prudence told him. So then, he wasn’t a part of this?
He set his gaze on Miss Ramsey and Prudence swore she hadn’t seen her brother’s eyes go so warm in almost twenty years. Something in her heart thumped watching him. Did this woman make him happy? Prudence had to ask herself, what was more important, her father’s name, or her brother’s happiness?
“That was very thoughtful of you,” he told his guest with the most tender inflection in his voice his sister had ever heard. He turned to Prudence. “Wasn’t it.”
“Yes, very,” Prudence agreed. “Why don’t you both have one?”
Her brother accepted, but Miss Ramsey refused the offering. “The baker wouldn’t allow a single scone to leave the kitchen if it wasn’t perfect. I ate two of them already.” Her smile widened into a grin that Prudence hated to admit, was quite endearing.
Her brother thought so too. Staring at her, he let out a little laugh.
Prudence looked at Simon leaving his seat and heading their way. She knew what these looks and dreamy smiles meant, for she shared them with Simon since she was a child.
“What else is the baker holding back in the kitchen?” Benjamin’s voice dragged Prudence’s attention back to him and Miss Ramsey. “Come, show me.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Miss Ramsey replied with a secretive smile, then sweetened it up when she turned to Prudence. “Good day, my lady.”
Prudence watched them walk away. Simon was stopped by the Earl of Chelmsford. She was happy the nobles who’d come for her ball were leaving in a few days. Benjamin had refused to open the guest rooms to most of them, so their lodgings were elsewhere. Still, they came for tea and to hopefully find out who among their daughters her brother was thinking of choosing for his wife.
“She has her hooks in him and now she’s trying to dig them into Lady Pru,” snarled Lady Rayleigh, mother of the well-educated Joan D’Artane.
“He’d never choose her as a wife, would he?
“She’s like a red witch with that hair of hers falling all around her. Why isn’t it tied up?” Lady Witham complained.
“Why doesn’t she powder her face? She almost looks indecent!” Lady Rayleigh added indignantly.
“Poor duke. He’s helpless toward her,” Lady Ipswich lamented. Everyone knew her daughter was in love with Benjamin.
Prudence wanted to hold her hands over ears to block out their clucking voices. Yesterday she would have sat here agreeing with them. But today…she thought of her brother’s happy face. She looked at the scones.
“We should help him,” the Duchess of Braintree suggested.
“She just showed up here one day,” said the Duchess of Nottingham slyly. “She could disappear just as easily.”
Prudence closed her eyes. How had it come this far? What were they saying?
“With her out of the picture, the duke would have to choose one of our daughters,” Lady Ipswich pointed out.
“What do you suggest we do?” asked Lady Chelmsford, biting into a scone.
“Bringing her harm isn’t the answer,” Prudence told them. “Besides, I doubt anyone could lay a hand on her without ending up flat on their back.”
“Have you been so easily bought with a tray of cinnamon scones?” the Duchess of Nottingham asked her. “You should have tossed them in her face.
Prudence had enough. She turned her clenched jaw on the duchess. “Are you now telling me what to do in my own house, Duchess?”
“Good afternoon, Ladies,” Prudence’s handsome beloved saved her from saying more, like; get out and stay out! No, the Duke of Nottingham’s eldest son had fought alongside Benjamin. She almost sighed thinking how that fact hadn’t mattered to her brother when he threw Charlotte out.
“Lady Prudence, may I speak with you?”
