That may have been the most authentic piece of himself that he could have shared, and he hadn’t said anything about her at all. For a woman who could not manage to say much at any given time, she certainly understood the importance of what could be kept hidden. No matter what else she learned about Camden Vale, that would be a point she would hold above all the rest.
“And I don’t have any home but London,” he finished, looking at Prue with some pride. “London is it, and London is all. There. Four things.”
Prue watched him for a long moment, waiting to see if he would explain any of the things he had said.
He watched her as if he expected the same.
And no one said a word.
Slowly, the edges of her panic began creeping back in, reminding her that it had not fully abated, that the distractions could only go so far…
She cleared her throat and patted the horse again. “Do you know, I can’t even remember the names of the men who tried to dance with me last night?”
“No?” he answered, ignoring the awkward avoidance of explanation over the things they shared just as she had done.
She shook her head. “I rarely can. I have so much else going on that names and faces tend to fall by the wayside. Not exactly a fine example of a proper London miss, am I?”
“With as many Seasons as you’ve endured, I think we can grant you an exception with names and politeness.”
Prue winced at that, though she knew he probably did not mean for it to sound as painful as it did. If he heard what he said, he gave no indication.
So many Seasons. So many people.
So many faces.
“Is there anyone of significance that I should note here?” she asked, her voice shaking a little, though she did not stammer once. “On the off chance that it comes up.”
“Well,” Camden mused, “surely you know Mr. Davies.”
She rolled her eyes and nodded at that. “Of course.”
“He’d be a good match for you, once he decides if he is going to be his own man or his mother’s creation.”
Prue clamped down on her lips to avoid laughing out loud. “That’s not entirely fair.”
Camden gave her a look. “His mother invited the women. He invited the men. None of the men have a fortune to rival his, and he is intentionally supposed to be the most attractive one. What can you derive from that?”
“Well…”
“No really, think about this.” He moved his horse closer to her, his eyes suddenly lit. “There are plenty of wealthy women in London, and plenty of men to match them. But this is a specific group of people. None of your other Spinster friends are here. Why?”
“I refuse to speculate on motivations,” Prue snapped, no longer finding humor in this. “Parents may go to extraordinary lengths to help their children make a good match, and if he chooses to go along with that, why should we criticize it?”
He raised a disbelieving brow. “This isn’t about a good match. This is about financial gain. That’s it. You of all people should know that.”
“Oh,” she said with some venom, her mind clouding with everything that had been building up within it, “because I am a poor, plain, shy, stammering spinster who has never managed anything resembling courtship? And now I am so very fortunate as to have an inheritance that makes me suddenly a prospect to gentlemen with monetary gain in mind for a marriage? Yes, I understand that is the only reason I am here. Why else would I be? I had nothing to offer before, and now I do. There couldn’t be anything else in store for me, so it is quite lovely that I suddenly have so much money as to make me appealing.”
Camden stared at her with wide eyes, no hint of the teasing, relaxed man from before.
Slowly, almost so slowly she couldn’t feel it, her cheeks heated, and she felt the familiar waves of emotion begin to roll in. She wrenched her gaze away, letting the tide of heat and irritation wash over her.
“There is so much more to being a spinster than sitting in corners and being neglected,” she whispered, though she knew he would hear. “I have a fortune now, and while I despise the attention from the men only wanting that fortune, there is a small, rather neglected part of me that hopes, despite everything stacked against me, that a good match can be found in the midst of them all. Not a love match, but a good one. I may have been dragged here by my mother, but just because I cannot handle the increase in attention does not mean that I have given up on everything else.”
There was still silence beside her, though she could see him out of the corner of her eye.
“I don’t know what you are playing at, Camden Vale,” Prue managed, feeling her panic coming on, “b-but I cannot disp-parage anyone for t-trying to settle their f-future in the way they f-find best. So, d-don’t expect m-me to join in y-your attempts.”
“Steady,” he said softly, “steady…”
It was too late, she was too far gone, and her breathing became labored. “I c-can’t… I’m n-not…”
“Molly, stop,” he ordered. “You’re all right. Stop.”
Impossibly, despite her anxieties, Prue gasped at that, the firm command that was neither harsh nor given in a raised voice. She found the air and the calm, and could slowly, shakily exhale. No need for the pattern, not when she had been stunned out of her impending attack.
Molly?
She looked at Camden feeling suddenly bone-weary and thoroughly drained. He appeared no less surprised.
“Forgive me,” he said quietly, his tone somehow vacant. “I don’t know why I said her name.”
Prue wet her lips, the choking sensation fading from her throat. “I remind you of her. It m-makes sense.”
Camden shook his head. “But not enough to forget you.” His brow furrowed deeply and he looked away for a moment. “Forgive me.”
“All right,” she replied.
He swung his head back around. “Not for that. For what I said. Prue, I’m not a fine gentleman like the others, so I often say and do things I probably ought not. I never meant to cause you grief or anxieties. Surely you must know that about me, at the very least. Our friendship and association were begun under those understandings.”
That was true, and she could nod in acknowledgement of them.
He nodded in return. “I’m a terrible friend, which is why I have none at present. I’ve forgotten how to behave with them, so I will require some leniency as I try to do better by you.”
“I think you will find me most lenient,” she said without a stammer, and rather pleased to have done so.
He smiled at that. “Yes, you are probably a very lenient, understanding creature, are you not? Always see the good.”
“Hardly,” Prue protested with a rough laugh. “That would be my friend, Izzy. I see the good and the bad, and I am not nearly as nice as one would expect a shy girl to be.”
“That’s promising.” Camden smiled further, seeming much more like himself already. “Right, shall we turn back? I’ll tell you all the names of the others here, and by the time we reach Tinley, you’ll be ready for them.”
She made a face. “I suppose, though ready seems a poor word choice.”
He laughed and turned his horse, waving at the groom, who turned as well.
Prue rode back at a faster pace, letting Camden tell her all the names he wished, though she would not remember many of them. She was only partially listening.
Molly. She wished that she knew just what Molly had been like, what she had meant to Camden, how similar they truly were. Their impediments sounded rather closely connected, even if they were not identical. The premise for helping one who stammers could not be very different, so it only made sense that he would find similarities in attempting to calm Prue when it came to it.
It wouldn’t work if she were genuinely having an episode, but it could help to ward off the worst of it.
He had said on the first night that they had met that she reminded him of Molly, and she hadn’t minded then. She wasn’t entirely sure she minded
now, except it picked at her thoughts in a rather insistent way.
Was he spending time with her and helping her because he wanted to help Prudence Westfall with her difficulties? Or was he trying to find a way to somehow be reconnected with the cousin he had lost? Were his motivations from a selfless place, or one of a painful selfishness?
Did it matter, if it resulted in the same thing?
She wasn’t sure, and she was not sure she wanted to know.
Perhaps she should not be so comfortable with him. The ease of their first meeting had caused her to have more confidence in him, and in this, than she probably should have. She had never seen herself as being particularly naïve, but she supposed that was what this was.
If only Georgie or Grace had been here with her. They could have helped her to see things for what they were and to act in a manner that would benefit everyone without any trouble at all.
But they were not here. And if they were, they would have to be told about her fortune, if they did not know already, and they would want to know why she had not informed them of it before.
Change, she supposed, was the only reason she could offer. She did not like change. She had not wanted things to change. She was the quiet, mousy Spinster, the one without particularly strong convictions, and nothing of significance to offer to any man. But with little to offer, one stood a chance of a good match that could actually mean something rather than one entered for less favorable reasons.
With a fortune, she was suddenly a prospect for far more than before, and her place within the Spinsters would have to alter. She would still be the quiet, mousy one, but now she would need to be more like Charlotte, turning down offers of marriage because they did not suit, refusing courtships when they were thrust upon her, and being forced to consider every man that approached her as a potential marriage candidate.
She did not want any of that.
If she married, she wanted comfort, not wealth. She wanted companionship, not fortune. She never wanted to doubt that her husband had married her for any reason that she could not be proud of.
Not this. Anything but this.
When they arrived at the stables, the groom helped Prue dismount and was very kind about it. She smiled at him gratefully and started back to the house without waiting for Camden.
He hurried behind her, slapping his gloves in one hand. “Prue? Are you all right?”
“Just thinking.” She gave him a weak smile. “We’re a miserable pair, aren’t we?”
He frowned at that. “I’m not miserable, and I don’t want you to be. Can we be hopeless instead?”
Prue’s smile miraculously became genuine. “Yes, by all means. Let’s be hopeless.”
He tapped the brim of his hat with his crop and moved around the side of the house to enter another way.
Prue shook her head. Camden Vale might have been the strangest man she had ever met, but he was rather entertaining, in his way, and he really was a good sort.
Confusing, but good.
She returned to her rooms with a quiet sigh and began removing the worn riding habit without the maid, who had seen her come and could be heard trotting down the hall.
“Prudence!” her mother barked from her bedchamber. “How dare you go out riding alone at a place like this!”
“I w-was escorted, Mother,” she called back, shrugging the jacket off. “By a g-groom and…”
“That is not what I mean!”
The maid arrived and started helping Prue out of the rest of her things, and Prue decided she was not going to inform her mother of just how she had spent her morning. There was no point to it.
Her mother appeared in the doorway to her bedroom, still in her nightgown. “You are only to go riding out in the company of others, Prudence! That is the whole point of our being here! No more time alone, do you hear me? I am going to make some arrangements for you at breakfast. You will draw with the other ladies, in the same room. You will sew with the other ladies, also in the same room. You may be excused from participating in the musicale this evening only because you are abysmal in that area, but you will attend, and you will be pleasant.”
“Yes, Mother,” Prue replied as her eyes glazed over.
“Honestly, girl, I don’t know why anyone would invite you anywhere if it weren’t for your money.”
“Neither do I, Mother.”
“Hurry up and change. Miss Perry will be going down to breakfast soon, and you must learn what you can from her.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Chapter Six
One’s choice of words is crucial to one’s character, and one’s choice of actions speaks volumes of the same. One requires words, the other thought. Which just proves that you can only trust evidence of both, as anything else isn’t indicative of anything.
-The Spinster Chronicles, 4 February 1817
He’d called her Molly.
Molly, of all things.
He hadn’t even been thinking of Molly when he’d called her Molly, so he had absolutely no reason to have done so.
And he’d heard her stammer when he’d apologized for it. That was a significant sort of stammer, and it had echoed in his mind the rest of the day, into his dreams the night before, and throughout breakfast now.
Molly?
Prue was not Molly. Not even close.
They could not have been more different in looks and temperament, as Molly had never been shy a day in her life and Prue was paralyzed with it. But they did share that vibrant streak riding through everything else, however hidden Prue’s was. Even their stammering was different, in both sound and reason. Molly had stammered incessantly, and Prue only conditionally.
Molly had been his best friend, and Prue…
Well, he wasn’t really sure what Prue was, or how to feel about her. She constantly surprised him, and generally, surprises were not pleasant for him, but in her case, it seemed to be. If nothing else, she’d made this house party almost enjoyable for him, which was miraculous.
Or it would have been enjoyable if he’d been able to spend any more time with her. Since their ride that morning, he hadn’t even been able to exchange pleasantries, let alone have a conversation. She was surrounded nearly all the time, and not even by men vying for her attention.
The men had gone out shooting after breakfast, and the ladies had stayed behind, much to the dismay of a few. And the shooting had been dismal. Camden wasn’t sure how it was possible, but none of the men gathered at this house party had the ability to carry anything by way of substance in conversation.
He’d had the best shooting day of his entire life, but only because he’d been too agitated to be as haphazard about his aim as he usually was. It hadn’t given him any favorable points with the others, who complained he was stealing all the grouse from them, but it did satisfy him.
And he had wanted to share his triumph with Prue, but returning to the house had led to being forced into admiring all the artwork of the ladies. Prue’s was no better and no worse, earning equal praises, if not a little more. And as the entire gathering had been present, Camden could not even whisper something moderately entertaining or comforting to her.
He’d heard her faintly stammering from across the room, and her face had been the color of a sunset, her eyes lowered.
It irked him to see her so uncomfortable and not be able to do anything about it. But she did not seem to be in much distress beyond her usual vices, given that the men seemed determined to praise every woman with the same effusiveness. Less overpowering, he supposed, if the cloud of perfumed words was spread about.
After forced admiration, they all had to wash and change for dinner, which had been fairly harmless as far as formal meals went, though he had been seated next to two of the silliest girls he had ever come across in his entire existence. They had learned relatively quickly that he was not the talkative sort, and so their attentions had been diverted to the other men surrounding them, and Camden was only referenced when a dry comment was req
uested.
Prue did not speak much, he noticed, but Miss Perry seemed to be mindful of her, which comforted him. Miss Perry was a good sort of girl with an easy manner, and she would be a good companion for Prue if they wished to maintain any kind of acquaintance after this.
He hoped she would. He did not know any of the other Spinsters, but surely it could be good for Prue to associate with others that were not so meanly relegated.
Provided, of course, that her mother was not controlling every moment as she seemed to be doing now.
While the other chaperones seemed to be letting their charges have some freedom and leeway, Mrs. Westfall watched her daughter like a hawk, and that was entirely unfair to hawks in general. Prue stayed the exact shade of a strawberry for the entire meal. No one else seemed to pay attention to it, but if they had seen Prue at various events throughout London, which he had not, perhaps they were used to seeing her look like this.
If that were true, he wondered why none of them had done anything about it yet.
Actually, a better question might have been why hadn’t he done anything about it yet.
Standing here in the back of the room, waiting for the required presentation of musical abilities from those who may or may not have been in possession of the talents necessary for such displays, Camden couldn’t have said exactly why he was waiting. Or what he was doing. Or how he felt about any of this.
He had the sneaking suspicion that it was more than curiosity and nothing like entertainment.
But he couldn’t be sure.
Prue looked well, flushed cheeks and lowered eyes aside. She was dressed just as finely as any of the other girls this time, nothing at all lacking in her appearance. At least four of the girls were wearing the same off-white color, two with patterns, while Prue and Miss Perry’s gowns were without.
She looked like all the rest tonight.
The Spinster and I (The Spinster Chronicles, Book 2) Page 7
