“No, no, I just...” Prudence shook her head.
Aurora stood up and walked to the vanity where Prudence was standing. She stood beside her and picked up a hand mirror set in porcelain and pretended to study it. “I feel quite awful about everything, you know. Now that I’ve ruined Mr. Gunderson’s regard for me, I suppose it’s doubly important that Roan honor his commitment to Mr. Pratt and marry Susannah. Not that I have any doubt that he will,” she said, and smiled sweetly at Prudence. “My brother is unfailingly a man of his word. If Roan says he will do something, he will do it.”
She put down the mirror and turned to face Prudence. “And as I said, he has such affection for her. He’s cross with me, you know. He didn’t want to leave her, and now he wants to hurry back.”
Prudence gaped at her. Did she know that Roan had asked her to marry him? Was that why she spoke so freely about Roan’s intentions?
Aurora’s smile deepened. “Life is so much easier without unnecessary complications, don’t you agree?”
Prudence understood her. She couldn’t speak. Her thoughts were rushing over themselves, but one thing was crystal clear: Aurora Matheson was telling her not to complicate Roan’s commitment.
“Oh, but I am exhausted!” Aurora said airily.
“Yes, of course,” Prudence said. “I’ll leave you now.” She walked out of the room and moved blindly down the hall, reeling at the message Aurora had just delivered. Roan was committed. His family expected it. No matter what he wanted, Aurora had made it quite clear that he was expected to honor his word. She desperately wanted to speak to him, and crept downstairs. The door to George’s study was closed, and a thin shaft of light was coming out from beneath it. She could hear the low voices of men behind the door.
Prudence climbed back upstairs, passing the drawing room, where she could hear her sisters talking. She carried on to her room, each step heavier than the last. It felt a monumental effort to even drag herself onto the bed, where she lay on her side, staring out the window, her thoughts whirling around Stanhope, Mercy and Roan, the man who had awakened her to the world. Her heart felt as if it were shattering.
The rain had ended and the clouds were breaking. The moon was peeking out between them. A lonely moon, gray and sickly.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT WAS HALF past twelve when Roan made his way up to his room by the light of a single candle. He moved with deliberation, trying to swallow down his angry indignation for the “compromise” George Easton had offered him.
They thought him a bloody bounder, a scoundrel, which Roan supposed he deserved.
Easton was in shipping, he’d said, and had been eager to explore bringing the American cotton market to England. He had suggested to Roan that they could partner together, with Roan acting as his agent in America...in exchange for leaving Prudence in England.
“You can understand, surely, our concern,” Easton had said as Merryton looked on, as easily if they were talking about a horse. “Not five days ago, our Prudence was on her way to visit a friend who had given birth to her first child. Today, she is contemplating sailing to America to marry a man she scarcely knows.”
It was all Roan could do not to put his hands around Easton’s throat for thinking he could buy him. Instead, Roan calmly explained that he had not lured his sister-in-law into a nefarious trap and suggested that George Easton put his cock in a goat.
That comment caused Lord Merryton to turn to the sideboard and pour three whiskeys.
“Calm yourself, Matheson. You can’t fault me, can you? You’ve just retrieved your sister from a similar situation,” Easton said.
“I am not Villeroy,” Roan said sharply. “Do you think I’ve made this offer like a young pup? That I don’t understand how sudden it is? I love Prudence. I have spent days in her company, at least as much time as I might have spent courting her under your watchful eye, sir. Granted, things have happened far too quickly, and in a manner that we both find surprising and unexpected. But that doesn’t change the fact that I have come to love her. I would suggest the same thing happened to you,” he said to Easton. “And to you,” he said to Merryton.
Easton and Merryton exchanged a look. Merryton handed the whiskeys around. The man hardly spoke at all, but he said to Roan as he lifted his glass to him, “Think carefully, my friend. With great change comes great responsibility.”
The Scoundrel and the Debutante (The Cabot Sisters #3)
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