“I love cats, so I’m bummed that over the last year I didn’t get to oo and ah over cute cat pictures.”
Even walking down the stairs, she looked at me. “You don’t think having so many cats makes me some kind of crazy cat lady?”
Fuck her father and all the bitches who bullied her.
I forced a laugh hoping it didn’t sound forced and shared in all truth, “Girl, if I had this huge house, I’d have eight cats, five dogs and probably a colony of guinea pigs.”
That made her laugh, and hers was straight-up genuine.
I stopped her at the table and chandelier.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me?” I asked. “Because you thought I’d think you’re a cat lady?”
Her humor was gone, and her shrug was uncomfortable.
As such, I wasn’t sure she was up for another one of my Let Your Freak Flag Fly lectures.
Then again, I didn’t think she was at all freaky.
She was just…
Prudence.
I set us to walking again, saying, “Well, let’s get one thing super straight. I like you. And unless you admit to something dire, like you have a side hobby of poisoning, nothing about you is going to make me not like you, though it’ll probably make me like you more.”
She leaned into my arm, but other than that, didn’t say anything.
Though, that was all she had to say.
The north side of the house had what I’d describe as the entertaining rooms: the breakfast room, dining room, the parlor we’d been in last night. There were also more parlors, salons, a games room, a billiards room, a smoking room, and what Prudence called “the ladies’ lounge.”
All of this was not surprising considering we were nearing the end of that wing, which I could see from the open double doors was the ballroom.
My heart started thumping.
It was like Prudence felt it, because she whispered, “I saved this for last.”
We held each other close as we came to a stop in the threshold of that stunning room.
A room that brought us together.
The room that brought us to right now.
Three grand crystal chandeliers lined the center of the ceiling. The floors were intricate Versailles parquet. The walls were stark white as were the floral garland moldings. There were massive gilt-framed mirrors on the walls in between the big windows that showcased the gardens and parkland. And along the walls were several Georgian settees upholstered in ivory and early Georgian armless chairs upholstered in gold.
“Where Harmony and Charlie fell in love,” Prudence whispered.
“Yes,” I whispered back reverently.
“Marie didn’t want to do it,” Prudence told me something she’d already shared. “Open The Downs to soldiers, nurses, doctors, officers, as a convalescent hospital. She didn’t want the common riffraff filling her bedrooms, making offices of her salons and messing up her ballroom. Harmony guilted her into doing it.”
“Other great houses went so far as to tear down structures to donate iron and other materials to the war cause,” I added. “Also offering space for makeshift hospitals and turning over formal gardens to plant vegetables.”
“But not the Duchy of Burleigh,” Prudence said. “Until Harmony intervened over a year into the war.”
“It was do it or she was going to London to offer her services, meaning she’d have been in London during the Blitz.”
“I wonder, since she had such determination, how they managed to tear her and Charlie apart,” Prudence mused.
