The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter THIRTY


Ellie spent most of the night wide awake. She almost drank from the bottle she’d taken from Nick, but the fumes put her off the stuff. In the morning, she didn’t feel tired — just restless and unhappy, wondering what Nick’s response to her demands would be.

She had to stop thinking of him. She rang for Lucia early, dressed in a comfortable morning gown, and went to her salon. Her books would distract her until she had to mix with her guests. But her salon wasn’t empty. Prudence sat there alone, scribbling something on a piece of paper as she perused the book propped open on her writing desk. Most mornings, Ellie was glad to see her. But her greeting, when it left her lips, sounded annoyed rather than pleased.

Prudence was too perceptive by half. “Are you feeling unwell?” Prudence asked, laying aside her pen. “You seem…piqued.”

Ellie must have sounded worse than that to make Prudence stop writing. “Is that what you would call it? To tell the truth, I don’t know what I feel.”

“Shall I ring for tea?“

Ellie noticed that Prudence did not offer to leave. She tried to ignore her flaring annoyance. “No need — I sent for a tray. But I believe I shall take my chocolate and my thoughts elsewhere.”

Prudence eyed her thoughtfully. “I know how tempting it is to think you might find it easier to be alone. But you are a reasonable woman. You may find that company may help if solitude has yet to do the trick.”

“You are the first to ever call me a reasonable woman.”

“Intelligent, then,” Prudence said with a grin. “Reason is given too much adulation anyway.”

Ellie sat down across from Prudence, lounging on the same chaise where she had received Nick — was it only four nights earlier? It felt like four months. The broken glass had all been swept up, but it seemed that Nick’s scent still hung in the air, an invisible web that held her down and wouldn’t let her forget.

“Do you smell bergamot?” she asked Prudence.

Prudence sniffed the air tentatively. “No?”

Then it was on her skin, not in the air. She had slept in his shirt, with his scent wrapped around her. A proper woman might have blushed, but Ellie shrugged it off.

Further questions were forestalled by a footman bearing Ellie’s chocolate. “Would you care for a cup?” Ellie asked as she poured.

Prudence shook her head. Ellie waited until the footman was gone before she picked up the conversation again. “What did you mean, earlier? About finding that solitude isn’t doing the trick?”

“I won’t claim to understand you, Ellie. We’ve both lost brothers and had our share of difficulties with our parents, but we aren’t the same. Witness how you’ve been your own mistress all these years, while I escaped my mother only by taking refuge with Lady Salford.”

“I think you give yourself too little credit,” Ellie interjected.

Prudence held up a hand. “I know my failings. Solitude does that, you know — gives us a chance to chew endlessly over what we might have said or done or been.”

“It’s not so bad as that,” Ellie said. “And you can’t accuse me of solitude. When is my social calendar ever empty?”

“But you only host lavish crushes. When was the last time you had an intimate tête-à-tête?” Prudence pressed on despite the way Ellie’s mouth compressed. “Your calendar is full, but what do you get from those engagements? Something that enriches you? Or merely peace from the voices in your head?”

Peace. It was what she had told Nick she wanted. But Prudence made it sound so bleak — and Ellie wasn’t ready to give her the point. “When have you ever known me to have doubts?” Ellie asked.

Prudence saw through the diversion. Still, her voice softened. “I only guess, Ellie. Perhaps…perhaps I need to understand you so I can see what I would have to do to secure my own independence. But my current guess is that you haven’t enjoyed being the merry marchioness — you’ve survived it.”

“Leave me,” Ellie ordered suddenly, with the same abrupt, frosty tone she used when Lucia, or Marcus, or anyone else stepped out of line with her. “If you’re going to prattle on about things you know nothing of, then leave.”

Prudence didn’t even flinch. “That tactic may find success with Madeleine. She is so shocked when you don’t pour your heart out that she stops asking. But I know, Ellie. I feign amiability just as you feign cynicism.”

“You believe my cynicism to be an act? I assure you, it’s not. People will use you for their own ends, Prudence. And you will do things that are unforgivable. With your family history — even with what Amelia did to you in Scotland — I thought you would understand that.”

Their friend Amelia had spent the previous summer trying to “save” Prudence from an arranged marriage she desperately needed — only to be compromised by, and later married to, Prudence’s would-be fiancée. But Prudence just sighed. “If all you let yourself do is lament the past in your studio, it’s little wonder you think you believe what you just said.”

“I don’t think it — I know it.”

“And yet you save people. What would have happened to Lucia, do you think, if you had believed her transgressions to be unforgivable? Or to Madeleine — she and Ferguson never could have married without your help. Why do you help people if you think betrayal or your own failings are the inevitable outcome?”

Ellie couldn’t respond. Her blocked response was an almost physical experience. Her mind drained of words, just as her breath was knocked out and her throat closed against her. Prudence, the friend Ellie had thought to take to Europe with her, the woman Ellie pitied for having less freedom and money and prospects and all the rest…

“I’m not kind, Prudence,” she said. Her voice was low, and she couldn’t look Prudence in the eyes. “You are remaking me in your own image, not the one I deserve. It’s not altruism or genteel goodwill that drives me. Just the regret that I didn’t stand for myself when I should have, and the desire to stop others from making the same mistake.”

She sipped her chocolate, but the bitter concoction brought her no joy. When she finally dared to look at Prudence, there was no shock there — only consideration.

Finally, Prudence spoke. “I am sure a vicar would tell you to be more selfless. But in the face of great personal disappointment, you chose to help those who needed your help and found what enjoyment you could in the rest of your life. Your decision to give others the chance you didn’t have, rather than trying to take it away from them…that says all I need to know about your character.”

Ellie believed her. It was the belief that struck her, even more than Prudence’s words. The woman Prudence described — it was how Ellie wished she saw herself on the days when everything was dark.

It wasn’t much — not a proclamation that Ellie was a hero, or a saint, or any other superlative. But if she believed it, if that assessment of her character was correct, then she was human — not the goddess Nick had made her into, not the fallen soul she’d believed herself to be, not the perfectly cool aristocrat the ton applauded.

And in that small, still moment, with the fire blazing and Nick’s bergamot scent whispering around her like an old friend, she knew what she wanted.

“Prudence,” she said, “how did you know what to say?”

“I didn’t,” Prudence said, shifting in her chair. “But perhaps…perhaps I wish someone would say something similar to me.”

Regret flickered over Prudence’s face. Ellie wondered, not for the first time, when Prudence would do something about it. “Do you love Lord Salford?” she asked abruptly.

Prudence blinked, then pressed two fingers to her temple as though she’d been coshed over the head. “I beg your pardon?”

“Alex. Do you love him?”

Prudence turned back to her writing desk. “I haven’t the faintest idea why you would even suggest such a thing.”

“Take a bit of unsolicited advice, then, as repayment for giving it — whatever it is you regret, do something about it. If it’s Salford, say something. If it’s your circumstances, run away and have an adventure. You are a rational woman. If what you are doing doesn’t bring you joy, change it.”

Prudence snorted. “Felled by my own logic. That is why I study history, not philosophy.”

But there was amusement in her voice, enough to make Ellie laugh. She left Prudence to her books — not because she wanted solitude, but because she felt like painting something, anything, for the first time in weeks. She went up to her studio, ready to pour her heart onto the canvas.

Perhaps she and Nick couldn’t be real for each other. There was a chance that too much had happened to them, that there were too many words they couldn’t take back and too many wounds they couldn’t heal. But she was willing to try. Either he would see her heart and believe in it — or he wouldn’t be able to forgive her, no matter what she said.

Either way, she would have peace. She just had to hope that Nick could make the choice they both deserved.