“What?”
“The landscape. The countryside.”
“It’s nice,” he agreed.
“Nice! It’s lovely, Roan. I can’t imagine America looks like this.”
“It doesn’t,” he said. “American has a different sort of beauty. Rugged, so many parts of it untouched. Not in the city of New York, obviously,” Roan said. “But if you were to ride north as I often do, you might go days without seeing another person.”
“No villages?” Prudence asked. “No crofters, no sheep?”
“There are some settlements and fields and livestock on the main roads. But America is so much larger than this island. It would be impossible to inhabit it all. I can’t describe how stunning is a landscape untouched by man.”
Roan began to talk about America, its forests and valleys, the snowcapped mountains, the wide, sweeping rivers. It sounded enchanting to Prudence. She longed to see it, to ride through that vastness. She could imagine Roan in that setting, on a much younger horse, his bags and bedroll strapped to the horse’s rump. She pictured him gathering wood and building a fire in the middle of a forest, then roasting a rabbit he’d snared. Prudence had no knowledge of how such things were done, but she guessed that a man as lusty and strong as Roan Matheson would handle them with ease.
He told her about New York City, too, and a more genteel image of Roan began to form in her mind. He mentioned the City Hotel, and the dancing assemblies held there. She pictured a gentleman dressed in flowing tails and a silky white waistcoat who was a fine dancer, surprisingly light on his feet as he circled around the ladies he partnered with. She could see his bright smile, the twinkle in his topaz eyes as he showered them with compliments. She saw the debutantes of New York gathering behind their fans, giggling and whispering about the fine figure he cut, their eyes darting to wherever he was in the assembly room.
He told her of the small house his family kept in town, on Broadway Street, very near the Park Theatre. His family, he said, were patrons of the arts and the theatre. But he was most animated when he described the family’s country estate in the Hudson Valley. Prudence imagined him walking, perhaps with a dog or two trailing along, down a vast green lawn that led to the edge of the Hudson River. She could see him working to train the horses his family kept and bred, as he did not seem the sort to trust that to anyone else. When she listened to him, she imagined estates more lush than Longmeadow, the Beckington estate where she’d grown up, or Blackwood Hall.
Prudence began to dreamily imagine herself on the New York estate, walking across the landscape he described, fingers idly skimming across rhododendron blooms, or her skirts dragging against a dewy green lawn.
Roan spoke about his family’s business again, the plans they had, the work he did for them. It occurred to Prudence that what was missing from his speech was the mention of a society, a wife, plans for marriage. “You speak of your family’s legacy, and yet you haven’t mentioned marriage,” she said.
Roan said nothing. His silence was enough to make her turn her head to look at him. “You will marry, won’t you? Have your own sons?”
“Of course,” he said tightly. But his demeanor was so strange that Prudence had a sudden and horrifying thought—he was married. “Oh dear God,” she said, and turned around.
“What?”
“Are you...are you married?” she made herself ask, dazzled by her own stupidity.
“What? No! Of course I’m not. Do you think I would— Pru, for God’s sake.” He put his hand around her waist. “I hesitate not because I am married. But...in honesty, I have an understanding with someone. Not an understanding as much as an expectation. The truth is I hardly know her, and God knows I’ve not actually proposed anything to her. But a marriage to her is one that will benefit the Mathesons and her family.”
Prudence felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. She found it difficult to catch her breath for a moment. “I see,” she managed to say. Lord, she was naive!
“No, you don’t see,” he said. “It’s an arrangement—”
“I had no right to ask,” she said quickly, and closed her eyes, wishing she had never opened her mouth, wishing she could live on with her fantasy of what might have been. But she had opened her mouth, and now she felt sick. “What’s her name?”
There was another hesitation at her back. At long last, he said, “Susannah.”
Susannah. She was beautiful, Prudence thought. She was in America, waiting for him. She was the woman he’d wake up to, and she...
“Pru, I shouldn’t have—”
“I asked for it,” she said sharply, cutting him off before he ruined the memory of last night completely. “It’s quite all right, Roan. It’s not as if I thought you’d offer to...”
The Scoundrel and the Debutante (The Cabot Sisters #3)
Julia London's books
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- The Complete Novels of the Lear Sisters Trilogy (Lear Family Trilogy #1-3)
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- The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)