The Courteous Cad (25 page)

“Best of luck,” Henry replied. “You know the knave never wins.”

The men’s eyes met again, and for the first time that evening, William sensed hostility behind Henry’s smile. He gave his rival a curt bow and strode off in search of the lady.

Prudence did not move from the cluster of women as he neared. He was forced to approach them, capture their attention, and endure an endless round of introductions. Finally, he focused on the one he sought.

“Miss Watson, I wonder if I might have the honor of the next dance.” He assessed her reaction but could make nothing of it. “Unless you have promised it already?”

“I am not engaged,” she told him. Without bidding her friends farewell, she linked her arm through his and moved toward the dance floor. “I had not planned to attend tonight. You must believe me.”

“I do believe you, though I cannot understand why you would absent yourself. You are the most beautiful woman in the room, and every man who dances with you must consider himself fortunate indeed.”

As he turned her into the dance, his hand rested for a moment at her waist. At the intimate touch, her green eyes darted up, meeting his. They circled the floor together, each unable to look away.

“You danced with Mr. Locke,” he said in a foundering effort to initiate conversation. “I met his son. Your sister’s husband is an amiable man.”

“Sarah is blessed to have married Charles Locke. He is very good to her.”

“And you? Are you blessed as well?”

“Indeed. But not as Sarah is. She and Mary have known true love—its beauty and its agony. I have known only its heartache.”

As the dance parted them, William struggled to understand her meaning. Did her heartache arise from the loss of Walker the blacksmith? Had it something to do with Henry Carlyle? Or might it be a reference to William himself—to the many obstacles that seemed determined to part them?

“Are your efforts to enhance the worsted trade rewarded tonight?” she asked him when they came together again and joined a line of dancers moving down the floor. “Do you find your aims achieved?”

“My true aim for this evening had little to do with the trade and much to do with you. Prudence, I beg you to speak plainly. Do you and Delacroix have an understanding?”

“What is your meaning, sir?”

“Do you love him?”

“He is more nearly my brother than any other man. In that way, I love him well.”

“How can you tease me?” he demanded. “You know my feelings for you are unchanged. Once you loved me too. I doubted you; I distrusted my own heart; I did all in my power to convince myself we could have no future together. Even now, when I consider the facts, I know it must not be. Yet I cannot rest.”

She drew away from him, circled with another man, and returned. When she spoke again, her voice was tinged with despair. “If you know it must not be, why do you persist in your effort to make me love you? Stop at once, I beg you, or I shall come undone!”

“Prudence, nothing I say or do can
make
you love me. But if you do, only say the words and bring me some relief.”

“Relief for you and increasing agony for me? Is that your desire?”

“No, indeed. My agony must always be the greater, for I hang suspended like a spider over a flame. If we cannot speak the truth, Prudence, I—”

“Truth about love? No, I cannot. I must do as God leads me. That is all there is, and it is enough. Do not ask for more, William.”

The music died; the dancers bowed and clapped. He took her hand and led her from the floor. “Will you give me the next dance?” he asked. “Or accompany me outside onto the portico, where we might find a place to speak privately?”

She hung her head for a moment, pain written across her face. When she looked at him again, her eyes were rimmed in tears. “I have promised this dance to Henry. I do not wish to speak to you further. I find I cannot confess the truth about my feelings or my actions. I am all confusion. You must understand that I am not set against you, William. Far from it. If the situation were different, if our paths had not been laid out in such contrary fashion, perhaps this moment would not be so difficult. But we are not intended to walk through life together, and we must accept it.”

“How can you know that? We have hardly given love room to flourish. Do not dismiss me, Prudence. I will not be so easily shed.”

“I shall never cast you off, William. You must leave of your own accord. Henry comes now. We cannot meet again.”

She made him the briefest of curtsies and hurried away. Smiling as she neared, Henry caught her about the waist and spun her into the dance. She did not look back.

Fourteen

Outside the ballroom, William stood on the long portico that opened into the garden. At least an hour had passed since his dance with Prudence. Henry Carlyle and other suitors vied to fill her card, but William made no effort to add his own name to the list.

Instead, he had used the evening to good advantage. Speaking to guests he had invited personally, he singled out the men most interested in investing in his worsted enterprise. Most had agreed to make the northward journey to inspect the mill and then to speak with their stewards about a financial stake.

Now, one shoulder leaning against a marble pillar, William surveyed the moonlit lawn that swept downward, away from the house. Near a gravel path, roses budded on thorny branches. Daffodils, their golden petals folded away for the night, filled a pair of garden beds. Intricate knots and twists formed a hedge maze in the distance.

William sighed as he studied the complex pattern. The roads he had taken in life had been no less contorted. He had blundered his way through the years, crashing now and again into a wall or a blind alley. His mistakes nearly fatal, he had wandered aimlessly, brushing often against death, financial ruin, depravity. Lost in the maze, he had at last stumbled upon the awful truth.

He did not know where he was going.

Aware of no destination, he might have continued staggering through the labyrinth. What he had known of right and wrong would have continued to blend, their edges blurring until he had little sense of honesty, ethics, justice, or integrity. But one monumental transgression had stopped him cold, split the gray into black and white, and pointed his way out of the maze.

As he stood staring at another one now, William saw suddenly that Prudence had been right. Good and evil were diametrically opposite. Benevolence could never be mistaken for malevolence. They were too different. God had neatly divided light from darkness. William understood this now, but what was he to do with his newfound awareness?

A breeze sifted through his hair as he started down the wide steps leading from the ballroom into the garden. Compelled by the maze, he pondered the very real peril of becoming hopelessly lost in it. But the soupy fog that so often blanketed London had lifted. The scent of new roses and sweet jasmine hung in the air. Hope lifted his spirits.

And then he saw Prudence. Skirts lifted from her ankles, she was skipping down the steps at some distance from him. Seemingly unaware of the couples strolling the alleyways or chatting on the portico, she bounded onto the path and hurried around a large conifer that had been snipped into the shape of a conch shell.

Without considering consequences, William changed course and started after her. A sense of dread told him Prudence was on a mission—and he knew what it must be. Crossing the path at the foot of the steps, he spotted her beneath a large oak tree. Adorned with the pale green leaves of spring, the sweeping boughs nearly concealed her . . . and the man she had run to meet.

His heart heavy, William elected to alter his path once again. He stepped to the entrance of the maze and paused to give the pair a last look. Her blue gown drifting in the breeze, Prudence clasped her hands at her chin, almost as if she were praying. The man pushed his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat. He turned and looked up at the moon, and William saw his face. It was not Henry Carlyle, Lord Delacroix.

Prudence’s midnight suitor was Walker the blacksmith.

“What do you mean
Gag Acts
? I have never heard of such a thing.” Prudence shivered from the chill wind and from her shock at the summons she had received in a curt message delivered moments before by a footman. “I do not understand. You must speak plainly and swiftly, for it cannot be long until I am missed.”

Walker shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Did you know that in January a mob attacked the regent’s carriage?”

She searched her memory. “January . . . that month my sister and I began our journey to the northern counties. We read about the incident in
The Tattler
, I am sure. But I fear we were more . . .” She hated to admit that she and Mary had been far more interested in Miss Pickworth’s society reports than in the distressing news of revolts and protests.

“We read only the briefest account of it,” she concluded.

“Almost immediately after the attack on the regent,” Walker told her, “Parliament took action to prevent a widespread revolution like the one in France. They passed three bills—the Gag Acts, people call them now. First, they suspended the right of
habeas corpus
. Without it, any man can be cast into gaol and imprisoned indefinitely—given no reason, afforded no trial, permitted no opportunity to defend himself.”

“But that is abominable,” Prudence protested. “It is utterly unfair.”

“Unfair but they have done it,” Walker continued. “Next, they prohibited large meetings. No more than fifty men may gather together at any time. Last, they ordered the lords lieutenant to apprehend all printers and writers responsible for seditious material.”

Prudence frowned. “Surely such measures are a threat to liberty, but why do you bring this information tonight? Parliament’s posturing cannot affect me.”

“Can it not? Prudence, you were the first to press for better treatment of the workers at Thorne Mill. Your voice was heard. Your protests took root. Do you suppose the laborers know nothing of the rebellion that led to the Gag Acts?”

“I doubt they have heard even a whisper of that news. Yorkshire is far from London, and your Bettie told me how few of Mr. Sherbourne’s workers can read.”

“Do not underestimate the power of rumors and hearsay.” He pushed his hand into his pocket and took out a sheet of folded paper. “Not half an hour ago, I received this letter from Bettie. She paid the lamplighter in Otley to set out her message to me in pen and ink.”

“The lamplighter?”

“He is the only one among them who can write.” Walker held out the missive. “Bettie tells me that the cotton mill laborers in Manchester are starving. New machines are replacing the spinners, and the people have no food. They have decided to march.”

“March? But they will all be tossed into gaol at once!”

“Perhaps not. It is to be a peaceful march in protest of the Gag Acts. They will carry a petition to the prince regent, asking him to relieve the plight of the poor.”

Prudence took the letter and scanned the scrawled penmanship and badly spelled words. “Bettie says that the workers at Thorne Mill intend to leave Otley, journey to Manchester, and join the march. Oh no!”

“Read on,” Walker said.

She turned slightly to let the moonlight illuminate the page. “The cotton mill workers propose to set out on March 10 from St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester. The worsted mill workers from Otley will accompany them. But this is terrible! They must be stopped.”

“Who will stop them?” His dark gaze pinned her. “You set this in motion, Prudence. You stop them.”

“Me?” She caught her breath as the awful consequences of her heedless actions suddenly unfolded before her. Men and women would be arrested and tossed into gaol. Children would have no parents to tend and guide them. William’s mill would cease to operate. Everyone would go hungry.

Such calamity. And she had been the cause of it!

“I did not intend for this to happen,” she told Walker. “I meant to make their lives better.”

“How? Tea and cakes? Dreams of health, wealth, and happiness? You began this, Prudence, and then you fled to London—to your sisters and the arms of your new love. Did you think you could set the wheels of rebellion in motion and then escape the results?”

“I did not think at all.” She clasped her hands together, praying for answers that would not come. “I am so sorry. I gave the future no thought, for I wanted only to help the present circumstances of the workers.”

“But there is always a future. Life goes on.”

“
You
went on. You left me and never thought of those consequences. Now you have no right to presume you understand the situation of my heart. I have made no attachment to William Sherbourne.”

“But you love him.”

“What I may feel has no bearing on how I must act. When I came to London, I had every intention of returning to Otley, and I am not one to run from a pledge. I shall depart tomorrow morning. The moment I arrive in Otley, I shall do all in my power to put a stop to this reckless march.”