The Scoundrel and the Debutante (The Cabot Sisters #3)

GRACE AND MERCY darted in from the rain just behind Honor and her children, and as Honor sent her children to their nursemaid, Grace and Mercy bustled Prudence into the drawing room and fluttered and chattered around her, demanding to know where she’d been and what she’d done.

Mercy’s blue eyes were bright with excitement. She held a long, slender, highly polished wood box as she demanded the minute details of Prudence’s adventure and then hung on to every word, laughing at inappropriate times, gasping in unison with Grace.

Neither of them seemed particularly surprised by what Prudence told them, and she suspected that they’d already heard the worst of it from Honor or Augustine. When Prudence finished her story, Grace gave her a fierce hug, then set her back. “Now that I’ve seen with my own eyes that you are quite all right,” she said, her hazel eyes darkening, “I can ask you if you’ve lost your bloody mind.”

“Grace!” Mercy said.

“You cannot imagine the distress you have caused me and my husband with your deception!” she continued. “Merryton has been nothing but generous with you, Pru, and only asks that you think of your virtue and the family name in return. How could you be so careless? How could you be so defiant?”

“How were you so defiant?” Prudence shot back.

Grace gasped, her eyes widening. “Don’t you dare throw my mistakes in my face! I may have been wrong, but it was obviously divined. Merryton and I are quite happy now, aren’t we? And besides, my situation is very different from yours. I was trying desperately to save us all.”

“You and Honor both seem to think you have the exclusive right to bad behavior. Is my situation really so different?” Prudence asked calmly. “I want only to save myself.” Grace could flog her for all Prudence cared—her heart was too heavy to muster much interest. “You and Honor are married. Mercy has her art school. I had a thirst for adventure.”

“Look,” Mercy said, and opened the box she was guarding so closely and held it up to Prudence. “Augustine gave them to me.” Inside the velvet-lined box were four paintbrushes of varying sizes. The handles were inlaid with pearl. “I think they came at a very dear price. The bristles are sable, you know. Those are the best sort of brushes.”

“Mercy, not now,” Grace said wearily, but Mercy was single-minded and had been for weeks. Prudence looked at her younger sister as she pushed her spectacles up on her nose and admired her paintbrushes. Her face was glowing with pleasure, and Prudence imagined how devastated she would be if she were denied the opportunity to attend the Lisson Grove School.

“Did you know that over one hundred artists applied for six available chairs?” Mercy asked, looking up from her brushes. “Can you imagine, Prudence? It’s the most prestigious art school in all of England, and I have one of the six chairs for new students!”

“Really, Mercy, now is not the time. Prudence has gone off and done something wretched and we really must address her,” Grace said irritably.

Just then, Honor came into the room. “Address what?”

“I have asked Prudence to explain her behavior and she won’t.”

Prudence shrugged. “What would you like me to say, darling? That it was wrong of me? All right, it was wrong of me. But I don’t care that it was.”

“Pru!” Grace exclaimed with great frustration.

“I have apologized,” Prudence reminded them all. “What more can I do? I can’t turn back the clock.” The good Lord knew how desperately she wanted to turn back the clock, to go back to that day at Ashton Down and never step on that stagecoach. If she hadn’t, she would have spared herself the pain of a broken heart.

“Oh!” Grace said, throwing up her hands in surrender.

“Do you think,” Mercy asked, peering at Prudence through her spectacles as if she were a specimen in a museum, “that you are feeling yourself? It really is unlike you to go off like that.”

“No, Mercy, quite the contrary. I am at last myself. For the first time in four years, I am not defined by what Honor and Grace did, don’t you see?”

Grace gasped as if she’d slapped her. Mercy said, simply, “Yes, I do. I understand completely.”

Grace looked to Honor for help.

Honor shrugged. “She’s right.” But then she turned to Prudence and said, “Well? Are you going to tell them?”

“Tell us what?” Grace said. “What else could she possibly tell us?”

All three pairs of eyes fixed on Prudence, waiting for her answer. She looked at their faces, at their hope mixed with a bit of trepidation of what she’d say. There was no one closer to her than these three. They’d been a troop since they were small, one for all and all for one. Her sisters were pieces of her, and she pieces of them; they understood each other completely.

A rush of heat swept through Prudence as she thought about life without them. Her gaze moved to Mercy, who was clutching her box of paintbrushes. Mercy had spent the entire summer wrapped in her plans for the art school. For her, everything depended on that one opportunity.