Chapter 18

Prudence sat in the big comfortable bed and stared at the wall. On the other side of the wall, her friend brooded. Alone and hurting. Cora would not let Prudence in. She'd knocked, she'd asked, and she'd been sent away.

"Just do not run away while I'm sleeping," Prudence had begged, ear and palms pressed against the locked door.

Cora's muffled response came after a long pause. "I will not. I promise."

That exchange an hour ago, and an hour after she'd left the dining table, hoping that by skipping an after-dinner drink with Ben and his grandfather, she might offer Cora comfort.

Cora did not want comfort, but… somehow… Prudence did. So odd. Nothing horrid had happened to her. She'd saved Cora from ruining herself in front of a brothel. She'd met Ben's terribly lovely grandfather, and soon, perhaps tomorrow, she would return home, finish the Season, and… and what?

The future seemed a void. Now that Lord Norton knew about Cora and the books… could they continue? The house party they'd experimented with during the last week, would that survive? And if not, what then? What would give her life purpose? What would fill up her hours?

And just as confusing—Mr. Benjamin Bailey. His intentions… she'd questioned them from the beginning. She'd flung those questions out the window now. Torn those suspicions to shreds when he'd harnessed a horse to the gig and secreted her away from Norton Hall in pursuit of Cora in the dim hours of the early morning. He would not do all that if he did not want her.

She gathered the blanket up to her chin as she leaned against the headboard, pulling her knees to her chest, clutching to her certainty along with the folds of cloth. So difficult to trust a man like him could want a woman like her. Like trying to believe in fairy stories when you're old enough to understand they are not true. Never have been. Illusions.

No. She closed her eyes and burrowed her face in the blanket. She would not let doubt defeat her. His every action spoke of want, of desire and longing. For her. If she could not believe him, well, that impugned his honor. She'd be branding him a liar. The fault remained with her. She flung herself out of bed and wandered to the mirror, forced herself to view her reflection there. Not as beautiful as Lottie. Not as sweet as Annie. Not as interesting as the twins. No, no. She shook her head. Don't look for what is not there. Look for what is there, for what Ben sees. What Cora sees. She pressed her eyes closed so tightly fireworks danced across the black field of her eyelids. Then she opened them. And looked again.

Her long hair waved down her back, reaching almost to her rear. It caught the wavering candlelight and looked a bit like fire-warmed bronze. She liked it—the color and how it fell in soft waves. Her lips shaped an unexpected smile. She liked how that looked, too, a bit… impish, a bit defiant, too. She'd never have used those words to describe herself, but perhaps women who organized naughty libraries should be described in such terms.

She met her own gaze in the looking glass. Saw the doubt swimming there in eyes that could not seem to decide on a color. Blue or green? Doubting or confident? Her eyes could not make a decision; they would always be both, depending on the circumstances of lighting, what gown she wore…

Perhaps she would always be both, too. Doubting. And confident. Not confident yet, but perhaps soon. She'd work on it. She closed her eyes and made a mental to-do list, putting herself as item number one. Not Cora or her recitations, not the library. Just Prudence. Just… loving herself.

A knock on the door stole her breath and flung her eyes wide open. Soft as it had been, her heart still raced. She would always remember the knock that had roused her from sleep so many years ago now, the innocent sound a harbinger of her parents' deaths, her great aunt's pale, round face so filled with sorrow Prudence had known in an instant—the world forever changed.

Had something happened? To Cora? Or to Ben?

"Prudence?" She knew that muffled voice. Another soft knock.

She opened the door, and Ben tumbled inside her chamber, closing—and locking—the door behind him. No look of doom about him, no paleness. Only high color and his big body moving fast, only purpose and determination.

"What are you—"

He kissed her. Hands cupping her cheeks and hips surging into her. He took big, swallowing steps, marching her backward as he parted her lips with his tongue and ravished her.

A man. Kissing her. In her bedchamber. At night. The most intimate of moments. Should be at the very top of her list.

He bit her bottom lip, tugged it, clawed his hands up her back, gathering her shift in a knot against her skin. Her body jolted into a life it had only begun to know, a life of wanting.

What list? What doubt?

Only Ben and his hands, Ben and his lips, Ben and his low growl just next to her ear. She moved without much thought, following his lead, going where impulse led her—his soft hair, his rough jaw, his broad shoulders, his hard abdomen. So easy to explore with only that thin layer of linen between his skin and hers.

They kissed and kissed until she could do nothing but cling to him, nothing but lean against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, letting him hold her and kiss her and what felt like… love her. They kissed until growling madness became soft surety. Him going nowhere. Her hanging on. Their hearts happy to beat in a steady rhythm next to one another. They kissed until she realized how hard he was against her belly, how needy she felt between her legs. And they kissed until she stopped it with a sigh and spoke into the V of his shirt, open at the neck, revealing a dark slice of skin dusted with hair.

"Why are you here?"

"I thought that clear." His voice hoarse as if he'd spent the last half an hour screaming. When she did not answer, he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze. "You're not questioning me again, are you? I've had quite enough of that, Lady P."

She shook her head. She… was not questioning his desire for her. "Did you come to talk? Or kiss? Or… something else entirely?"

"Oh, sweets, something else entirely." He lifted her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles, burning her up with a naughty, gaze-locking grin the entire time. He flipped her hand, kissed her palm, her wrist—he froze. He scowled. "Prudence, what is this?" His fingertips lightly outlined a bruise there.

"From the boathouse, I suppose. When you"—she cleared her throat—"shackled my hands to the wall."

He cursed. "I hurt you." He loosened his hold on her so her hand lay open on top of his palm. The bruise, glowing and accusatory. "I hurt you." His voice softer, damning.

She flipped her hand, wove their fingers together, and fit her palm inside his bigger one. "No. I mean, yes. But"—she shivered—"I do not seem to mind. I… I like it when you are not so gentle. I like it when you tease, too. Though gentle is lovely, too." Her cheeks so hot that they'd surely burn to ash. "The words you find to say to me… they make me feel as if I could fly."

He squeezed her hand, kissed her temple. "I will give you every nice word you could ever need, and a rough tumble when you wish it. Still, I will not hurt you."

"It's curious, but…" How to say this without seeming addled? "When I see the bruise, I know it was no dream—what we did in the boathouse. When I brush against it, and it pains me, I know there was a moment in time when a man wanted me so much he… he lost control a little bit. I like knowing it was not a dream. I like knowing… I can make you lose control."

He crushed her to him, stroked his fingers up and down her back. "You should not need a bruise to know you're wanted, Prudence." He dropped to his knee before her, hands slipping away from her body and into his pocket. "You asked me why I came here." His hand reappeared quickly and along with it, a ribbon. He held it up to her. "I used to carry bits of ribbon about before I cut my hair. To pull it back and out of my way. I still do, actually, though I don't need them anymore. I suppose it has become a habit. But it's good I have it now. I had planned to give you nothing but my word, myself, tonight."

"Ben, what are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious?" He tied the ribbon round her wrist, covering the bruise. "I want to marry you. The night I fell overboard, I lost the last bits of my mother and father. Her ring, the last pamphlet he ever printed with his own hand. I'd always kept them in my pockets, you see."

She hit her knees before him, curling her hands against his chest. "Your poor pockets are so burdened. Cigars, rings, newspapers, and ribbons. No wonder you need such baggy trousers."

"Can we focus, Prudence?"

"I am focused. On the problem of your pockets."

He cupped her neck and took her mouth in a quick kiss, retraining her attention, and when he released her lips, she looked up at him with serious eyes.

"Losing the ring, the paper… it was more than that, wasn't it?" she said.

He caressed her neck with his thumb, up and down in a rhythm which helped him speak. "I lost those tokens of my parents that night. But, perhaps, if I tie this ribbon tight enough, I will not lose you." He fondled the ribbon on her wrist. "And every time you feel it there, know a man wants you. Know I want you." His gaze lifted from the ribbon, focused on her. "I want you to be my wife. And before you ask why, let me educate you." He took a breath and wet his lips, then held her with a look that traveled so deep within her she would never be able to dig it out.

"I see myself better when I am with you. My mind calms and focuses and the tangled, never-ending list of things I must do, and times I must do them by, simply straighten themselves out. They give way, entirely to one thing. One person. You. It is not why I began courting you. It happened slowly. A little bit in the garden that night. A little bit while walking the London streets. A little hidden behind a pack of dog arses and splayed across a chaise. A lot, I must confess, in front of my horrid attempts at organization. I have an uncontrollable fantasy now of spreading you naked across my ledgers and notebooks, but only after you tidy them first. Watching your mind work quickly to put things to rights…" He huffed a laugh. "A little bit of foreplay I never anticipated needing so badly."

She laughed, too, because something like joy but brighter—the brightest thing she'd ever felt—bubbled up inside her, and it must get out. As laughter. As the uncontrollable curve of her widening smile.

He reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. "Prudence?"

"Hm?" She could barely even make that sound around the width of her grin.

"Will you marry me?"

Somehow, she managed to tame her lips into a straight line, raise a brow. "I thought you would ask me to be your secretary."

"That, too. If you wish. And only if I can take you on top of my desk, across the ledgers, when I wish."

"When I wish, too?"

He kissed her again, toppling her backward onto the bed. He lifted his lips from her only enough to ask with a growl, "Is that a yes?"

"Yes." She clutched him more tightly. "Yes, yes, yes."

He laughed as he kissed her, and nothing had sounded sweeter, tasted sweeter, than happiness on his lips.

"I want one more thing from you," he said, scattering kisses along her jaw, her neck.

"Anything."

"You. Tonight. Right now. I know we should wait, but I feel like I've been watching you forever, watching you and being fascinated at every turn, and I keep thinking if I peel back one more layer, I might see all of you." He pinched her shift, tugged it, pulling the thin muslin tight against her breasts outlining her nipples, hard and tingling. His eyes devoured the sight, fogged over with heavy lust. "There are still layers."

A well-known voice inside she knew, one she needed to silence, spoke up, "What if you peel back the final layer and are… underwhelmed by what you discover?" Why must it be so very hard to look at herself differently? Had she made such a habit of it, of never even looking in the mirror so she did not have to be disappointed, that she could not now change?

"Impossible. Prudence, look at me." His hand firm at her chin, shoved it center, and she found his eyes, serious and dark just above her, demanding everything. "Impossible. Because I love you."

I love you. She had never thought to hear a man say those words to her. But she did not have time to relish them. He continued on at a rapid speed, astounding her with each word he dropped into the soft, heated space between them.

"I love every part of you I have come to know so far. I love Practical Prudence, and Prim Prudence. Who is very close to Proper Prudence. But not quite. And sometimes you are Prickly Prudence. I love her, too. And while you are all the others, you are always Pretty Prudence as well." He wrapped his hand in her hair and smoothed his thumb along the strands of it. "I like this bit of you." He lifted her hair to his lips and kissed it. And then he kissed her cheekbone. "I like this, too. And I particularly love these." He kissed her lip and cupped her breast.

"Which of those?" she asked, breathless and breaking their kiss.

"Both. Of course." He tilted his head, studying her. "Do you know who, surprisingly, I adore?"

She shook her head.

"Punctual Prudence. Can't help it. She drives me wild. No laughing, Lady P. I assure you that it surprised me, too. But… do you know one thing I have never thought of you as?"

She shook her head again.

"Timid. Timid Prudence is not a Prudence I have ever seen. It does not even start with a P."

"There are a great many words that do not start with a P. And some bad ones that do."

"You're ruining a perfectly good argument, Picky Prudence."

"Apologies. Do continue."

"My favorite Prudence is the passionate one. Passionate about helping others, passionate about making sure the world runs like a well-oiled clock, passionate when I touch her, and passionate when she touches me. Then, the passion is quite infectious." He stroked the side of her face, his smile disappearing but from his lips only. In his eyes, it still glowed. "I love you, Prudence, and I can't have you doubting that. What shall I do to convince you?"

She wanted, more than she ever had before, to let go of the doubt which had always bound her round as tightly as her stays. She wanted it more than anything.

So, what if she just… did?

What if it was a choice one must make over and over again—to discard doubt and believe in one's self? Well then, she would make that choice right now, and she would continue to make it every time doubt arose. Because the words trembled on her lips, and she tossed her doubts to the wind and found the courage to say them.

"I love you, too, Benjamin Bailey. I love the bearded beast and the refined man. I love your teasing, and I love your fears. I mean, I wish to soothe your fears. I love that you trust me enough to share them with me. I will hold you every time a storm blows across the skies, distract you in whatever way I know how. I love how much you love your grandfather. And I love how you helped Cora with so few questions. I do not love that you are such good friends with my brother, but I suppose someone must be, and you have a heart kind enough to do it. It does rather make me question your taste, though."

"Let us call it a mutually beneficial business arrangement and not a friendship, then."

She laughed and nudged his nose with her own, closed her eyes. "I love that you have purpose, the desire to achieve everything you wish, even if you do not have the patience for the small things. I even love that. Is that not strange? I hate chaos of any sort, and you are the epitome of it." She brushed a strand of hair out of his eye and tucked it behind his ear. "But I do so love you." And here was another choice to be made. She could let him stay as the world wheeled by from night to morning, or she could ask him to leave. He would not dismiss her preference. But choosing to let him stay felt like choosing to throw away her doubt. It must be done. She wanted it done more than anything.

No, she wanted him more than any. So, she cupped his cheeks with her hands. "Stay tonight, Ben." And then she kissed him. Again and again and again, she kissed him.