The Perfect Rake (36 page)

Gideon shrugged. “I don’t know what plans they have, but Charity seems very happy to me, and Edward is floating on air. But
I
need to speak to Prudence, and she’s avoiding me!”

His aunt threw up her hands. “You are all too besotted to understand a thing! So it is left to me to ensure that the arrangements are perfect—there are flowers and food and champagne and all sorts of things to arrange, Edward’s house to be set in order, not to mention the matter of bride clothes.”

“She said she had plenty of clothes.”

His aunt gave him a scornful look. “You cannot possibly imagine that I would allow that beautiful child to be married in a gown she has worn before, do you, Gideon? Have you forgotten to whom you’re speaking?” She shook her head in disgust. “I have a reputation to maintain, and it shall not be said that I had the most beautiful creature in England under my care and I allowed her to be married in her old gown.”

“Prudence is more beautiful, and anyway, Charity’s dress can hardly be old, she said—”

“Pah! Out of my way, you foolish boy, I cannot waste time bandying words with a man who has only one thing on his mind.” She swatted him aside like a fly and bustled past.

“Aunt Gussie!” Gideon was shocked.

His aunt turned, her black-button eyes sparkling with mischief. “Well, you do, don’t you, Rake Carradice?” She tilted her head and gave him a very knowing look. “Or are you going to suggest the idea of bedding Miss Prudence hasn’t crossed your mind, hmm?”

To his chagrin, Gideon felt his face reddening. “Well, dammit, of course it has crossed my mind—but only in the most honorable way,” he retorted.

“Said the man who swore he’d never, ever marry.” She peered up at him and laughed. “And you’re blushing! The hardened rake is actually blushing!”

“If I’m blushing, it’s for your atrocious manners, Aunt Gussie.” Gideon scrabbled for a shred of dignity. “It is hardly proper behavior for an aunt to quiz a man on his love life! Your time in the Argentine has—”

Aunt Gussie laughed delightedly. “The libertine lecturing on propriety—oh, I
am
enjoying this. When a rake falls, he falls
so
hard.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “There’s not a particle of use telling me of your intentions, honorable or not, dear boy—I’m only your aunt. Speak to Miss Prudence about it, and don’t waste any more of my time! I have a wedding to organize!”

“Yes, but that’s the problem,” retorted Gideon, exasperated. “She won’t even see me!”

But his aunt was off, sailing from the room like a small battleship in a high wind.

“Well, what about this ribbon? Do you think it matches your new dress or not? Or is it not quite the right shade of blue?” The Merridew sisters frowned over the ribbon.

“Perhaps a shade too much lavender in the tone. What about this one, Charity?” Faith suggested. Charity chewed her lip, undecided.

“Take them all to the window, and we shall compare them to your satin in the daylight,” Prudence decided.

They trooped to the window and scrutinized various ribbons carefully against a small piece of celestial blue satin from Charity’s new wedding dress. “I think the darker blue will look the best against—” Charity began.

“Look! It’s Phillip! It is! It is!” shrieked Hope suddenly. “Outside, Prudence! In the street there! See! I
wasn’t
mistaken the other day.”

Prudence looked to where her sister was pointing and froze. Phillip? She stared through the window. It
was
Phillip. Here. Strolling down a street in Bath. Vaguely, she felt ribbons slithering from her slackened hold. Some part of her heard her sisters exclaiming and chattering as her mind tried to grasp it. Phillip wasn’t in India. He was here in Bath. Bath. But how? When had he come home? Her mind tried to make sense of it, but it kept slipping out of her grasp.

“Go on, Prue. Don’t just stand there. Run out and catch him,” Hope urged her.

Prudence turned and blinked. She felt almost dizzy. Hollow. Even a little bit sick.

Her sisters beamed at her. “Isn’t it wonderful, Prue?” exclaimed Charity. “Phillip will have no idea you are here. What a marvelous surprise for you both. He’ll be thrilled.”

“Yes,” Prudence said dazedly. She tried to gather her senses. “I wonder what…I mean, why…” She glanced back out of the window and it was true. Phillip Otterbury was strolling along the opposite pavement, as large as life, jauntily swinging a cane as he perused the contents of various shop windows through a quizzing glass.

“Hurry!” Charity urged, taking the last of the ribbons from Prudence’s limp fingers. “Before he disappears again!”

“Yes, yes, I must.” Prudence hurried out into the street, then stopped abruptly. What would she say to him after all this time? She took another few steps toward him, and stopped again, suddenly uncertain as questions crowded in again. Why was he in Bath and not in Norfolk? Why hadn’t he written to let her know he was returning? How long had he been back in England? Was that why he hadn’t he responded to her letters these last few months—because he was in England and her letters had gone to India?

“Go
on!
” Hope gave her a push from behind. “He’s right there, Prue! What’s the matter with you? Hey, Phillip! Phillip Otterbury!” she called, and waved, oblivious of the curious looks they were receiving.

Phillip turned, a slight smile on his face as his gaze swept the street. His jaw and his quizzing glass dropped as he spotted them. He glanced quickly around him, as if to check whether he was observed, and then simply stood and stared at Prudence.

She stared back. He wasn’t moving. Why not? Her gaze swept over him. He looked different, as Hope had said—thinner and browner and not as tall as she had remembered—but he was unmistakably Phillip. He was still handsome—more handsome than she remembered, though not as tall. His golden hair was burnished, brushed into careful curls and looking even fairer against the darkened color of his skin. Phillip was back in England.

“He looks very fine and elegant, does he not?” she heard Faith murmur behind her. And indeed, he was very fashionably dressed in breeches of the palest primrose, high, white-topped boots, and a coat of bottle-green, padded extravagantly at the shoulders, nipped in tight at the waist, and embellished with large, silver buttons. His shirt collar was high and stiffly starched, supporting a starched necktie of complicated design. He wore a very high-crowned hat and carried a black lacquered cane. She didn’t remember Phillip as being interested in fashion, but it seemed he now was. It was, after all, more than four years…

“Go
on
, Prue! What’s wrong with you?” Hope pushed her again. Prudence’s other sisters crowded in behind her, murmuring encouragement.

As if in a trance, Prudence slowly closed the gap between herself and Phillip. Why didn’t he move? What did that look on his face mean?

And then suddenly they were face-to-face.

“Phillip,” she said, then not knowing what to do, held out her hand.

He quickly glanced around him, then took it, frowning. “Prudence, my dear girl, it
is
you! I thought I must have been mistaken. What on earth are you doing in Bath?”

Prudence blinked. Over the years she had imagined this moment hundreds of times. She’d imagined all sorts of places and had enacted many different scenes in her head. Not one of them bore the faintest relation to this mundane meeting in a public street. “My sisters and I are visiting friends here. I could ask you the same question, Phillip.”

He cast another glance back up the street and said hurriedly, “Oh, me, too, me, too. Visiting friends—that is to say, colonial acquaintances. Mere acquaintances. Nobody you need worry about.” He peered past her. “Good grief. Your little sisters have grown up a great deal, have they not?”

“It has been more than four years.”

He laughed heartily, as if at some witticism. “Four years! Yes, indeed, how time does fly.” He pumped her hand energetically. “I am delighted to see you, delighted, my dear. Though I might wish our meeting was not in so public a place. I cannot believe you here are in Bath.” He gestured, taking in the whole street. “Amazing coincidence.”

He seemed very nervous, thought Prudence. Ill at ease. She supposed it wasn’t surprising. She felt quite peculiar herself. She couldn’t believe that this was Phillip, that he was here in Bath, and not thousands of miles away. “How is your mother, Phillip? Is she here, too?”

“No, she is at home, with my father. Who are you visiting? Anyone we know?”

“Well…” Feeling a little awkward about explaining how she and her sisters were fleeing her grandfather, Prudence tried to think of some innocuous way to explain her presence in Bath. “Charity is to be married tomorrow.”

“How nice! To whom?” he said, looking back the way he’d come.

“She is to be married to the Duke of Dinstable.”

He started. “Good heavens! A duke! How very splendid. I must congratulate her.” He waved at the girls, who had been hanging back. At his signal, they hurried forward excitedly, only Grace hanging back. As they drew nearer, he lifted his quizzing glass to observe them and exclaimed, “Well, you never told me Charity had grown into a beauty! She’s a regular little diamond! No wonder she snagged a duke, even without the disadvantage of your mother’s connections. In fact, all your sisters are dashed pretty, Prudence, if I might say so.”

“What do you mean, the disadvantage of our mother’s connections—” began Prudence indignantly, but before she could finish, her sisters arrived, and the conversation was swamped as her sisters pelted him with questions, the questions Prudence had been too stunned to ask.

He’d returned to England a couple of months ago. Yes, his mother was well. Yes, he had been home to Norfolk and indeed, he had been extremely surprised to hear they were not at home. And of course, terribly disappointed to miss seeing them, especially since even the younger ones had grown into such beauties! Ha-ha.

No, he hadn’t actually heard anything about scarlet fever—although now that he came to think of it, his mother might have mentioned something of the sort. Of course, he hadn’t called at Dereham Court, not formally—well, no point in that, after all, with their grandfather being the dashed inhospitable fellow he was. And besides which, since they were not at home, there was little p—How did he know they were not at home? Oh, one of the servants must have told him, he couldn’t remember who. Someone had mentioned it, at any rate. Scarlet fever? Well, possibly, that was it. But nobody had suggested they had come to Bath—he would most certainly have remembered that! So had Lord Dereham brought them to Bath to take the waters, after their illness? Oh, they hadn’t had scarlet fever? But didn’t someone just say—? And he’d heard some talk of the old man having broken his—They’d
what!

Run away from Lord Dereham?

He turned to Prudence. “Are you
mad
, Prudence? To run away from your legal guardian? Five unmarried girls? I’ve never heard of anything so ill-judged in my life!”

He held up his hand at the chorus of explanations and justifications that began and said, “Who, may I ask, assisted you in this extraordinary piece of folly? Do you not understand what it will do to your reputations?”

Prudence, casting a minatory glance at her sisters to hush them, said calmly, “The girls exaggerate. It is not the dramatic event you seem to think it, Phillip. Until recently we have been staying with our great-uncle, Sir Oswald Merridew, in London, and were escorted here to Bath by Charity’s affianced husband, the Duke of Dinstable. We are staying in the home of Lady Augusta Montigua del Fuego, so you see, there is nothing to cause the least risk to our reputations.”

“That’s right,” Grace butted in, her hands braced belligerently on her hips. “It’s not fair of you to speak to Prudence like that when you have no idea what’s been happening! She wouldn’t have had to rescue us if you’d been there in the first place! But Prudence always looks after us, and she wouldn’t let anything bad happen, not even to our reputations, would you, Prue?” She added, “And besides, Lord Carradice escorted us to Bath, too,
and
he saved Prudence from a highwayman,
and
he likes Prudence,
and
he’s really nice!”

“Carradice? Never heard of him!” Phillip glared down at her. “Grace, isn’t it? Well, why don’t you go away and look in the shop windows or something, while your sister and I discuss adult matters?”

Charity glanced from Phillip to Prudence and said hastily, “Yes, let’s, girls. Phillip and Prue need to talk privately. Prue can catch up with us in a few moments.”

Grace and Hope looked unimpressed by this suggestion, but Charity was firm in her resolve and coaxed them away.

Phillip turned back to Prudence. “The whole thing sounds extremely havey-cavey to me, Prudence. Scarlet fever and highwaymen! Running away—and I don’t begin to understand why anyone would imagine you needed rescuing! And as for you staying with these so-called friends—I’ve never heard of this Carradice fellow, and I can’t say I like the sound of him escorting you thither and yon. Where is your great-uncle? And as for Lady whoever Montigua del Whatzit! What sort of a name is that, I ask you?”

“It’s an Argentinian name.”

Phillip sniffed. “I knew she couldn’t be English.”

“Lady Augusta Montigua del Fuego is the extremely English aunt of the Duke of Dinstable,” Prudence explained in a tight voice. “Her second marriage was to an Argentinian gentleman but, having been widowed, she has now returned to live in England.”

“Oh. Well, if she is a duke’s aunt, I expect it is all right.”

“It is. She has been wonderfully kind to us, Phillip, and I will not have her disparaged in any way,” Prudence said in a voice that made Phillip blink at her in surprise.

“Well, I wasn’t meaning to—” he began.

“No, I’m sure you weren’t,” she said briskly. “But the street is no place to discuss of this or any other personal matter. You may call on me at Lady Augusta’s house this afternoon.”

“Er, yes, very well.” He bowed stiffly.