She let out a harrumph sound that had him hiding a grin but when he glanced back he found her hesitating. “Pru?”
“It’s Miss Pottermouth.” But her protest lacked the heat it ought to have.
He arched a brow, waiting her out. This wasn’t the first young woman who was intimidated at the thought of performing for him...the musical genius.
The thought made him smirk as he waited for her to overcome her nerves.
He ought to have known better. Pru was not one to submit, not without a fight.
“This is highly improper,” she said, crossing her arms in defiance. “You are a marquess’s nephew, you should not be tutoring young ladies.”
“Why are you so caught up on my potential title?” He hated the fact that she’d caused his cool demeanor to slip, but he hated it even more that she would not cease reminding him of the duties and obligations that he dreaded. He took a deep breath. “I told you I neither want it, nor plan on it—”
“Yes, but—”
“What is your real problem here?” he demanded.
“You are not fit to be a tutor.”
He blinked once. Twice. “Excuse me?”
Her nostrils flared with her inhale, the only sign that she was flustered. Not angry, he thought. Just...nervous. On edge.
How odd.
“This is beneath you,” she continued.
Now he was actually growing concerned. “You think that this is beneath me?”
“Of course it is,” she huffed. “Tutoring young ladies? Getting paid for it? It’s...unseemly.”
“How kind of you to worry about my reputation.”
She rolled her eyes at his dry tone. “I’m not worried about you.”
He could practically see her scrambling for an excuse. “I’m worried about your uncle’s good opinion, that is all. Surely he cannot approve of this new business you’ve gone into—”
“On the contrary. He’s relieved to find that I have some ambition, after all. This all started because he cut me off, you know—”
“No!” Her gaping stare was nicely shocked.
“Yes. He and all the other upright morally superior stuffed-shirts of the ton have decided that my new pastime is one to be commended.” He made a show of rolling his hand as he bowed low. “A youthful rake making amends for his past misdeeds...at your service.”
He heard a choking sound. A scoff, no doubt. He looked up, ready to find a sneer on her face.
He felt as though he’d been smacked upside the head to discover a genuine smile instead. It faded quickly as she looked away but for a moment there...for just a second he’d thought…
Had he made her laugh?
The surge of triumph was bizarre and completely out of proportion to the situation. And yet, he couldn’t deny the heady pleasure of having once—finally—made priggish Pru laugh.
“So you’ve managed to convince your uncle that you have reformed then?” she asked.
He shrugged. If this was anyone else talking he would have lied. He would have spun a tale about how he had indeed seen the errors of his ways after his years of carousing with other young gentlemen of the ton, spending too much money for the pleasure of drinking and dining and gambling.
But truth be told, he did not regret those activities. Nor did he feel wrong for being a man of leisure. It was merely that he’d grown bored with it, that was all. “My uncle is hardly suffering some mistaken assumption about my basic character.”
“And what is that, exactly?” She rested a hand on her waist and jutted a hip out to the side. He knew she was not trying to appear enticing...but she still succeeded.
He looked away quickly, temporarily stunned into stupidity over the thought that he had just been ogling Prudence Pottermouth, the world’s least appealing female.
He glanced back. Or, at least, she had been. At what point had that changed?
She was waiting for an answer and he shook off all thoughts of distraction. What was his true character? Well, she ought to know better than anyone. “Why, I’m a knave, of course.”
He gave her his best wicked grin and got a sneer in response.
This was more like it. Enemies to the end. Her sneers were far more familiar and put him back on even footing.
“If you’re still such a scoundrel then why did you agree to help me?”
“For the money, of course. My uncle cut me off last year, and I’ve been paying my own way ever since.”
She blinked in surprise. “Really?”
He nodded.
“Good for him.”
A shocked laugh escaped before he could stop it. “Yes, well, now that you understand my motives and I yours—”
“What do you know of my motives?” Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion again.
He moved toward her slowly. “Tell me, did something happen to you as a child to make you so suspicious all the time?”
She sniffed. “Yes. I was forced to be playmates with a heathenous neighbor who lived to torture me.”
He started to laugh which made her eyes narrow even further.
“I developed the good sense to be wary whenever he seemed too pleased with himself.” She arched one brow. “His pleasure could only ever mean my doom.”
“Your doom!” he crowed. “Oh, I like that. A frog in your bedding could hardly be considered your doom.”
Her lips twitched and he could practically see her cataloguing his every indiscretion, ready to hurl them at him as she always did. She couldn’t bear to let an occasion pass when she could throw his bad deeds in his face.
But that was the past, and this was his present, and his future…
He gave his head a sharp shake. He had no desire to think of the future. He had a mission to complete and while willful and obstinate, he was certain he could help Miss Prudence Pottermouth.
“Your motives,” he said, bringing them back to the topic at hand. “That seems easy enough to suss out, even for one such as me.” He eyed her from head to toe, trying not to grin when her blush spread.
Blushing was new.
He liked it. It meant that while she might treat him as the boy he once was, she saw him as the man he’d become.
“You wish to marry,” he said softly. “And you are expected to marry well.”
She sniffed.
“Is it still that Benedict chap you’re set to marry?”
She pursed her lips.
His mind was racing back to the bits and pieces of gossip he’d picked up over the years. There was an understanding between the families and to be honest, he’d been surprised to find that she returned to the Dowager Demon’s house unmarried. He hadn’t given her much thought since she’d been shipped off to that finishing school years ago, but if he had he would have guessed that she’d been happily married by now.
Well, not happily.
Pru never did anything happily.
“I thought that agreement was as good as done—”
“Yes, well, apparently not.” Her voice was clipped, her lips curved up in that sneer he despised. And yet…
There was a flicker of uncertainty there that made it impossible to come back at her with a barb about how she had likely driven off the poor man.
Her gaze flickered away from his. “Aunt Eleanor fears I’m not quite…satisfactory.” Her throat worked as she swallowed and he wondered how much it pained Miss Perfect Pru to admit it.
“So music is your fatal flaw, I assume.” He tried for teasing but was horrified to find that his tone fell just shy of sympathetic.
That would not do. Neither of them wished for his pity.
She nodded. “You assume correctly.”
He rocked back on his feet. After years of hating Pru’s smugness and her superior attitude, he was horrified to find that he liked this humble side of her even less.
She looked...shorter. She seemed to be shrinking right in front of his eyes. He tilted his head to the side. Had she always been so small?
Funny, he’d
always seen her as a formidable enemy. A sword-wielding virago from Greek mythology. Of course she wielded sharp words in lieu of a sword, but even so, the image had stuck in his mind and finding out now that she was—well, human…
It was upsetting.
Her gaze flicked up to meet his and she stiffened. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“As though you feel sorry for me.”
He scoffed. “Trust me, Pru, you are the last person I’d feel sorry for.”
“Good.” She straightened and he had a flash of the warrior, and the world righted itself nicely. She glanced toward the pianoforte with the sort of set chin and straight shoulders one would expect from a soldier going into battle. “I will master this topic, and once I do I will prove to my aunt and to...to everyone that I can be the perfect wife.”
“Perfect,” he repeated. Ought he to tell her that no one is perfect? He eyed her closely. It seemed cruel to burst her newfound hope. “Of course you will.”
She shot him a quick look. Suspicion again. She feared he was mocking her...and he was. But only a little.
He moved to stand beside her so they were both facing the instrument. “You will master music, Pru.” He grinned. “I will make sure of it.”
Her expression wavered between wariness and hope. “Truly?”
He leaned down, catching a whiff of a floral scent that was soft and sweet and beguilingly feminine—and totally at odds with every other hard edge of her personality. “I promise.”
5
She shouldn’t have been surprised that a man like Damian was making promises he couldn’t keep.
What was more shocking was that he seemed to be unaware that he would fail. “Right.” He lifted a fist to his mouth, his expression uncharacteristically grim as he eyed her hands on the keys as though they were a riddle he could not quite solve.
She just barely held back a sigh. After all, for three days straight now he had made good on his promise.
Or at least, he’d tried.
He’d tried harder than she would have thought he was capable of trying. For a gentleman who’d made a name for himself as a lazy ne’er-do-well, he was shockingly devoted to this cause.
She grimaced as she followed his gaze to her fingers, which were rather stumpy as her aunt had helpfully pointed out over supper the night before.
She moved her hands from his critical gaze now, wiping them on her skirts. As always, the moment she lifted her hands to play, the metronome ticking away above her head and her new tutor hovering behind her, her silly palms grew clammy. Her fingers felt frozen. And her heart…
Well, her heart seemed to be in competition with the metronome, racing faster and faster until it left that relentless even ticking in the dust.
“This is not working.” His words were gruff and quiet, but they struck her like a bolt of lightning.
She jumped out of her seat, panic rising up her throat. “Please do not give up on me.”
His eyes widened but she’d known this moment was coming—it always came eventually. Even Miss Grayson’s kind old music instructor had patted her hand gently and told her she was a lost cause.
Not in so many words, of course, but the meaning was the same.
“Pru, we cannot—”
“Please.” She clasped her clammy hands together pleadingly. Her pride raged. Her sense of fairness rebelled. But she’d been bracing herself for this moment for the last few days and had promised herself that she would not let him go without a fight.
For, whether she wished to admit it or not, she needed his help.
Badly.
It might be in vain, but she had to at least try not to humiliate herself in front of her aunt and her would-be husband. If her aunt was correct, and entertaining was so vitally important to Mr. Benedict then she needed to be up to snuff.
Or at least passable.
At this point, she would settle for passable.
“I assure you, I have been working diligently on the exercises you gave me,” she started, the words coming a bit easier now that her pride was well and truly trampled beneath her feet. She’d rehearsed what she’d say when the time came when Damian decided she was beyond saving and threatened to quit. “I have been working every minute of the day and—”
“That is precisely the problem.”
She blinked up at him. “Er...pardon?”
He pressed his lips together, his nostrils flaring with irritation. “I said, that is your problem.”
“My problem? But you told me to practice and everyone knows that practice makes perfect.”
“Who told you that lie?”
She was only moderately relieved to see that his irritation was giving way to his usual amusement. Even if it was at her expense, she preferred this teasing, mocking Damian. When he was serious—or worse, sympathetic—she knew not what to make of him.
“First of all,” he continued, his arms crossed as he looked down his nose at her. “Perfection does not exist in the world of music.” He lifted a hand to jab a finger in her direction. “That is your second problem.”
Her brows came up. “I have two problems now?”
His sigh was exaggerated. “Pru, you have more problems than I can count, but for now, I am merely concerned with the problems that are making this—” He jabbed a finger toward the pianoforte, “sound like an instrument of torture.”
“I-why that-I never...” Her blustery protests trailed off meekly as her gaze once more fell on the dreaded keys. It had sounded rather like something was being tormented.
Probably the composer’s soul.
Her lips twitched upward at her own self-deprecating joke. Gallows humor at its finest because her failure to master an instrument could very well mean the death of her future.
She scowled down at her fingers at that thought.
Surely not. Of course her aunt said as much, but her aunt was nothing if not extreme. If Prudence had failed to master embroidery then she supposed embellished handkerchiefs would be the defining factor in Mr. Benedict’s quest for a wife.
No, her aunt expected perfection—she demanded it. And Prudence had always done her best to deliver, but in this regard…
She sighed as her hands rested on the keys, making a discordant sound that was somehow superior to her entire performance. “I suppose you’re right. I am hopeless.”
“Who said that?” The anger in his voice had her looking up. He crossed his arms again. “Who on earth told you that you were hopeless?”
“Well, you said that I had—”
“You have problems, yes. Obviously.” He frowned and shook his head. “Really, Pru, were you always prone to such melodrama?”
She bit her lip as she studied him. “So you are not quitting then?”
His brows arched up high, his eyes widening in shock or horror, or perhaps both. “Quitting? Me? Never.” One corner of his mouth hitched up in a lopsided little smile that was at once familiar and utterly new.
Or at least, the sensation it brought about in her was entirely new.
“You have it all wrong, Pru. I’m not about to quit.” He headed toward the glass doors leading to the garden. “Not when I’ve only just begun.”
She hurried after him, glancing back anxiously at the still-open doors. It was one thing to be playing music alone with the door open and servants forever hurrying in and out to keep an eye on them. But now he was leading her away from the house, into the thicket of trees.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Away.”
“Away from what?” She quickened her steps to catch up to him. “Away from good sense, perhaps? It’s freezing out here.”
“Tomorrow I shall remember to bring you a cloak, but for today we don’t have much time and not a minute to waste.”
“For what?” Her breathing was growing ragged and she hated that he wasn’t even slightly out of breath when he smiled down at her.
“For the real learning to begi
n.”
His grin was utterly wicked as he strode ahead until they were out of sight of the main house.
“For the real learning to begin,” she muttered under her breath. How on earth did he manage to make that sound so ominous?
They reached a clearing and he stopped so suddenly she ran smack into his back. He whipped around and caught her as she stumbled back, keeping her from falling on her backside, not that one more humiliation mattered at this point.
The man she’d despised since she was a child was a firsthand witness to her worst failure...what was another fall at his feet?
Despair threatened and she swallowed it down with a frown. “What are you about, Damian?”
He smirked at her use of his given name. After countless prods and teasing she’d finally caved to the improper use of their given names and it seemed to bring him no end of joy.
He didn’t drop his grip from her arms, not even when she tugged. He made a tsking sound, that was part chiding, part soothing—the sort of sound she suspected he made when his horse was scared during a storm.
She frowned at the thought. “Why are you shushing me?”
“I merely want you to relax.” He tugged her closer, wrapping an arm about her waist.
She pulled her upper body away as far as his embrace would allow, her heart surging up into her throat at this intimate contact. He was so close his scent enveloped her and his body seemed to swallow her whole. “I would be far more relaxed if you were to release me,” she said as she pushed against his chest.
He narrowed his eyes. “Calm yourself, Pru, you have my word that I am not attempting to take liberties.”
“Then what are you—oh!” His free hand grabbed hers and held it up. And all at once they were waltzing.
Or he was attempting to, at least. He was moving in time to some tune she could not hear and she was stumbling along with him because...where else could she go?
Like a rag doll in his arms, she flailed wildly until he stopped with a sigh. “Listen, Pru. That is all you are required to do for this portion of your lesson.”
The Misgivings About Miss Prudence: A Sweet Regency Romance (School of Charm Book 4) Page 4
