It was the same settee on which Jasper had slept on her first night in London, the same settee under which she’d found the ruby earrings. She sat there with her emerald skirts billowing around her like a green silk cloud, her arms closed around the stiff little pillow with the fringe of tassels, the one that had once smelled of amber and orange blossoms.
He found her there some time later, an hour later, perhaps, or perhaps a dozen hours. By then, word that Lady Archer had somehow slipped uninvited into the Duke and Duchess of Basingstoke’s house had found its way into the ballroom.
Jasper tried to speak to her, in the study and in the carriage on their way home, his voice growing increasingly panicked when she didn’t respond to him and didn’t raise her eyes even when he begged her to please, please look at him.
It wasn’t that shewouldn’tlook at him, it was that shecouldn’t, because she was just so very, very tired, so she turned her face away when he tried to take her in his arms. “I’m fatigued, Your Grace. Please let me go.”
He released her, his hands dropping away.
She left him without another word, and went up the stairs to her bedchamber, where she sat on the edge of her bed until the fire went out, and the room was plunged into darkness. Sarah appeared at some point and tried to speak to her, but Prue didn’t say a word in response, so she relit the fire and left again, closing the bedchamber door behind her.
Prue never stirred from her place on the edge of the bed.
There was no sound from Jasper’s bedchamber next door until long after the house had gone silent, but eventually she heard footsteps, and Jasper’s low voice, speaking to his valet.
Only then did she move.
She rose to her feet, crossed the room to the door that connected her bedchamber to her husband’s, and with one quick twist of her fingers, she shot the bolt home.
CHAPTER23
In the summer of her sixth year, Prue had fallen in love with a young boy named Charles Crofton. He had golden hair and brown eyes, and he was a sweet-tempered lad who, despite being older than she was, had tolerated her adoration with all the patience that could reasonably be expected of an eight-year-old boy.
But alas, Charles hadn’t loved her in return. He’d gone off to Eton that autumn without a backward glance, breaking her tender, six-year-old heart. She’d been so distraught she’d spent the whole of one morning languishing tragically in her bedchamber before she’d given it up with a shrug and gone off riding with her father.
But there were broken hearts, and then there werebroken hearts.
The first sort was of short duration, and as sweet as it was painful. The second, though—thatwas a shattering so complete one couldn’t breathe for it, sharp claws sinking into the tender pink flesh of her heart, slicing and shredding until there was nothing left but blood and pulp, and it was easier just to give up breathing entirely.
This was the second kind.
Alas, her chest insisted on continuing to rise and fall, her lungs perfectly indifferent to the death throes of the heart. There was nothing for it, then, but to lie upon her back and stare at the canopy over her head, and wait for . . . something.
What, she didn’t know. A reason to stir from her bed, maybe. Some sort of impetus that would move her in one direction, or the other.
It came sooner than she expected.
The bedchamber door cracked open, and Sarah peered around the gap. “Your Grace? May I serve you some tea?”
Prue didn’t want any tea, but Sarah had poked her head in twice before already, and she couldn’t quite make herself send her away a third time. It wasn’t as if she could lie in her bed for the rest of eternity, in any case. “Yes, I suppose tea will do. Come in, Sarah.”
Sarah darted through the door, the tea tray rattling in her hands. She set it on the table beside the bed, arranged the tea things, then poured a cup and handed it to Prue. “Here you are, Your Grace. I’ve brought some of those scones you like, as well.”
“Thank you, Sarah.” Prue’s stomach lurched at the thought of the scones, the stomach being for the most part in sympathy with the heart, but she took the tea, raised the cup to her lips, and made an attempt to choke it down.
Meanwhile, Sarah busied herself with gathering the cast-off remnants of last night’s ballroom finery, which were flung about the room in shameful disarray. She’d been desperate to rid herself of every stitch of it, and had torn it off piece by piece as soon as she’d gained her bedchamber, leaving her gloves, ribbon, shoes, and reticle lying where they fell.
All but the emerald gown. She’d taken more care with that. She’d likely never wear it again, but it was too beautiful to ruin, so she’d draped it over the back of a chair. Sarah paused beside it now and reached out to caress a fold of the skirt before turning to Prue. “The ball last night didn’t go as you’d hoped it would, Your Grace?”
It was so far short of the horror of last night that Prue nearly laughed, but the urge died before a sound could pass her lips. “No. I’m afraid I don’t have much luck with balls, Sarah.” Her mistake had been in thinking Lord Hasting’s ball at the end of the last season would prove to be the most miserable she’d ever attended.
“Oh, dear. I’m sorry, Your Grace.” Sarah hesitated, glancing from the dress back to Prue again. “What will you do?”
That was the question, wasn’t it? If Sarah had asked her that last night, she wouldn’t have had an answer, but one thing about a broken heart was that it made sleeping impossible, and when one didn’t sleep, one had plenty of time to think.
London had made a coward out of her, because the only thing she wanted, the only thing that didn’t make her chest seize with panic to think of it, was to leave London behind. She wanted to be in the country, to lose herself there, far away from Jasper and theton, and far away from having to be the Duchess of Montford.
For a time, at least.
