Page 52 of To Dare a Duke

Bonnie stared at her in dismay. “He’s asked you again!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed and appalled. “And you refused him… again?”

“Oh, the poor man,” Alice said, holding a hand to her heart and sighing.

Prue tutted with indignation. “Why are you pitying him? He’s The Damned Duke, the one with the terrible reputation for cruelty and vice. You should do everything in your power to keep the scoundrel from my door!”

She now suspected the duke she’d been on far too intimate terms with, and the man whispered about behind his back—the one that had inspired her villain—were not at all the same person, but still, they didn’t know that!

Alice frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding hesitant. “I was speaking to a cousin of mine a few days ago, and she knew the woman he married. Lavinia Bradford, she was then. The most beautiful woman you ever set eyes on.”

Prue felt a vicious stab of jealousy at Alice’s words, and cursed herself for a fool. What nonsense. She had no business being jealous of his wife. His dead wife, at that.

“What else did she say?” Jemima prompted, sitting forward on her seat. “My neighbours knew the family and their son said she was a….” She faltered, clearly unwilling to voice the word aloud.

“I heard that, too,” Matilda said, smirking a little. “My brother met her once at a dinner party. She tried to seduce him before they’d gotten past the fish course. Her husband was at the same dinner.”

Gasps echoed about the room.

“And don’t ask me,” she added with a grimace. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to.”

Prue swallowed as her stomach roiled. Poor Robert. What must he have endured? Yet he hadn’t condemned his wife when they’d spoken; he’d pitied her loneliness, her unhappiness.

Alice’s voice brought her back to the conversation. “My cousin knew her as a child and she said, well… I’ll not repeat it word for word, but she said she was wild and unkind and… spiteful.”

“The poor man,” Bonnie said, shaking her head and looking back at Prue once more. “How can you refuse him? He’s handsome and rich—he’s a duke, for heaven’s sake—and he’s clearly not the monster we’ve all been thinking him all this time. Oughtn’t you give him the chance to prove himself, at least?”

Prue felt an unpleasant lump sit heavily in her throat as the echo of Robert’s words filled her mind.

“Let me know you. Give me a chance to gain your trust.”

She couldn’t, even if she wanted to… and, too late, she’d realised how much she did want to. But how could she marry him without revealing what she’d done? How could she let him know her without telling him about her writing? Even if she didn’t reveal the truth, he’d figure it out soon enough. Either she told him, or he would discover it, and both outcomes ended in him hating her, in him being hurt by what she’d done, and all the dreadful things she’d written.

How stupid. She’d thought to lash out at a bully, at the vile monster who had terrorised her mother in the only way open to her as a woman. With stealth and her own intelligence as her weapons of choice, she would expose and cut down a powerful man in a way she’d never achieved with her own father. She hadn’t saved her mother, but she could warn other women to stay clear of this weak, vile tyrant.

Except she’d been wrong. Her aim had been true, her intention just, but she had caught the wrong victim in the crossfire. She’d judged a man and allowed him no defence, no chance to prove her wrong, and that made her as much of a vile bully as she’d believed him to be.

Shame burned in her heart.

Prue jolted as Alice laid a cool hand over hers. “Are you all right, Prue? You look rather pale.”

“Fine,” Prue said, forcing energy she was far from feeling into the word and attempting a bright smile. “I’m fine.”

Except she wasn’t. She was tired and heartsick, and so tangled up she couldn’t think straight.

The Lady’s Weekly Review had written to her, demanding the next chapters of her story. They had one more which would be published in three days, and she still hadn’t sent them the next… hadn’t sent it because she hadn’t written it.

She didn’t know what to write. Her villain wasn’t a villain and the innocent maid he’d been hunting was neither so innocent nor as hunted as she’d believed. Nothing was as black-and-white as she’d supposed it to be. People weren’t so easily cast into their rightful roles of villains and heroes—as temptresses, little innocents, or saintly heroines—as she’d imagined.

The revelation had cast everything in shades of grey, a heavy, dull fog that Prue could not fight free of. It sapped her energy and made her rethink every decision, every dream and plan and ideal. She felt lost and aimless, and she didn’t know how to recapture her future, how to reshape it in the light of her own stupidity.

“If you want a minor scandal, just ask a fellow to dance,” Bonnie said sourly. She shrugged as the women all turned to look at her. “Worked for me. It’s why I’m here,” she added with a sigh. “To learn propriety, ye wee hellion,” she said, thickening her Scottish accent, no doubt to imitate her formidable sounding father. “I dare ye, try it again,” she added, grinning at Prue.

Prue raised her eyebrows though and regarded Bonnie with interest. “Yes,” she said, giving a decisive nod. “That should do it.” Surely such unladylike behaviour would be the last straw for a man with a dukedom to consider. “I accept.”

Bonnie stared back at her, startled. “B-But, Prue,” she stammered, “I was only teasing. I did it at a local dance and there was no one there who cared overmuch. If you do it in front of the ton—”

“I’ll finally be regarded as completely unmarriageable,” Prue said, wishing her heart wasn’t thudding in such an unpleasant way. “I’ll stop having to make excuses to get out of going to endless balls and ridiculous affairs I haven’t the slightest interest in. It’s perfect.”

The words tasted bitter, the finality of them making her stomach clench.