Chapter 25

Darkness, candlelight, a room of enraptured ladies, and the tall pillar of a veiled woman standing in the middle of the room, barely moving. Steady lines of poetry seemed to come off her in waves, holding the audience in thrall.

Prudence barely listened. She stood by the door, guarding the room's only entrance. They'd never held a poetry reading so close to a ballroom before. Faint strains of music from the string quartet wafted toward them. Had she made too much of Lottie's special flower storage room? Would someone wander about looking for it, to see the truth of what they'd read in the London Lady's Almanac?

She tried to focus on Cora, but her tale sped right toward tragedy, and Prudence wouldn't stomach sad endings tonight. She slipped through the door and into the hall. Better to keep watch out here. And better to focus on her victories. Not a month ago, she'd failed to organize just such a reading—caught first by her brother, then by Ben. Then everything brought to a grinding halt by Cora's ruination.

Could have been Prudence. She'd never been so grateful for another woman's loss. But she could not quite bring herself to wish she could trade places with her friend to alleviate her sorrow. Because then she could not have Ben.

Did she want Ben? She loved him, but…

She pulled the folded article about Lottie's ball she'd clipped out of the periodical Ben had printed. He'd done what she'd asked. And beautifully so. She'd kissed it when she'd first laid hands on it, had to wash the ghost of ink off her lips.

The door at her back opened, and Prudence swept to the side, allowing the ladies to spill into the hallway. They made a silent procession, eyes glassy with tears and hands clutching their hearts. Cora had gutted them. Hopefully that would please her.

Lady Templeton stopped next to her after everyone else had filtered down the hall and out of earshot. "Well done, Prudence."

"Well done, what?"

"The London Lady's Almanac is quite an ingenious idea. You've found a way to use that manly future baron of yours to great advantage."

Hers. She had tied that ribbon round his wrist.

Lady Templeton peered at the cut article Prudence held. "The paper is quite innocuous. Only those who know will guess its purpose. And now you do not have to bumble around during an evening trying to get everyone where they should be. You may, my dear, enjoy yourself. Now, go find your Mr. Bailey and do just that."

"I do not know if he is mine anymore."

Lady Templeton laughed, a high, cartwheeling thing that seemed to bounce off the walls. "Oh, my dear, I do apologize for laughing so, but he most certainly is yours."

"And how can you know?" He'd lied to her, after all.

"Because when I arrived at the specified shop on Fleet Street, a man was busy taking down one sign above the door and hanging a new one."

Prudence folded the bit of paper back into its neat squares, making each fold with careful precision. "That means nothing. He's just bought the shop. Of course he'd change the name. He told me what he wishes to change it to. Bailey's Prints. Just like his parents' shop in Boston."

"That is not what the sign said." Lady Templeton smirked as she walked away.

"Now what the…" Prudence ran after the older woman. "What did it say, then?"

"I think it will be more fun for you to find out for yourself." She winked, then disappeared down the hall and into the ballroom.

Before the door closed behind her, the sounds of merriment flooded the empty hallway, nearly drowning Prudence. If sounds could have color, these would be golden. And when the door slammed closed, cutting off that golden wave, Prudence floated toward it.

She hesitated, her hand on the door handle. Lady Templeton had told her to enjoy her evening. She'd never attended a ball with diversion in mind. Either she'd faced it with fear of rejection or with the steely purpose of a woman on a mission, ready to slay any distractions. To float among the dancing others, laughing and… falling in love… An impossibility.

She used to think that.

Now she chose to think differently, just as she'd chosen this gown which showed more of her collarbone and decolletage than usual, that shone pink and blue, dawn and the evening sky in the candlelight. Just as she chose to release her fears every time she looked in the mirror.

And she had another choice to make. About Ben.

She opened the door and stepped into the noise and chaos of the ballroom. Lottie had worked her magic, and millions of white blooms of all sizes decorated the walls and sconces and tables and chairs. Most organic, but many paper, folded with sharp precision. The curtains and tables had been draped in green velvet, and the furniture made of the same upholstery. The quartet wore green and white and gold, and every woman had been given a white bloom for their coiffure, every man one to pin to his lapel.

Prudence could not help but feel brave stepping into such a fairy land, pulled forth by the music as if by an enchantment. She ached to dance.

But first she must find Ben. She stepped into the throng, popping up on tiptoe, searching.

"Lady Prudence."

She whirled around. "Oh. Lord…" What was his name again? She could only ever remember he was The Heir. "Talls…by?"

He bowed, and when he popped back up, he said, "Yes, the Marquess of Northam's heir."

"Of course."

"You are looking quite lovely this evening, my lady. Nicer than I've seen you look before if you do not mind me saying. Quite transformed. For the better." She pursed her lips. She did mind, but he apparently could not tell. "I would be honored if you would dance the next set with me."

"Lady Prudence?" A tap on her shoulder. A gentleman stood behind her, one of the suitors who'd paid her court before Lottie's scandal last year. He bowed low and raked his gaze over her form as he straightened. "I, too, would be honored if you would dance with me."

"Why?"

He blinked. "Why… because… because you are a pretty lady."

"Did you think me pretty last Season? Do you think my sister well enough wed that you may court me anew?"

His mouth fell open. "I-I-I—that is to say… you looked just like all the ladies, and—"

"No, I do not think I will dance with you." Where was Ben? She popped up on tiptoe again. There—a flash of caramel-streaked hair moving out from behind a pillar, backing toward her corner of the ballroom. Ben. Her heart smiled. And then plummeted because as he backed toward her, two women followed. They batted their lashes and fluttered their fans. They laughed. And she could not know how Ben accepted their attentions.

She'd never seen women pay Ben attention before. She found it—

"Lady Prudence," Lord Tallsby said, "that dance? The quartet is striking up a waltz."

She faced him. "No, thank you. The last time we danced, you insulted me."

His turn to act the flopping fish. "I would never insult a lady!"

"You told me you courted me only because my sisters were not available. I call that an insult."

"I… well, I did not know you hid such bright plumage, my lady. I misspoke."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not a bird, Tallsby, and I will no longer accept your attentions. You may leave."

He inhaled so deeply his nostrils flared alarmingly wide. But then he spun and left, so if his nostrils ripped to shreds under the force of his exhalation, Prudence would not have to witness it. Thank goodness. She had more important things to observe. Namely Ben's back ever toward her, two handsome ladies in clear pursuit.

She pushed through two gentlemen and ducked around a third, trying to get to Ben's side. He might need her help. Or he might not. Perhaps he enjoyed the ladies' attentions. Her stomach flipped. Oh, she did not like that a bit.

"Lady Prudence!" Another man's voice, jolly and high. A hand caught her wrist, whirling her around. Another suitor from last Season, and with him two other gentlemen, all looking at her with clear approval in their eyes. "I am delighted you returned to Town for the end of the Season. My friends have been hounding me for an introduction." He gave her their names, and they each in turn offered smoldering smiles above lingering knuckle kisses.

"Will you save a dance for me?" the jolly fellow asked.

"And I as well," the first knuckle kisser demanded.

"And the lady would not be so remiss as to leave me off her card, I hope." The second knuckle kisser batted his lashes.

And Prudence backed, slowly away from them, curling her kissed hand against her chest. She'd told Tallsby off, and she'd sent the other fellow packing for his bad behavior, but she could not be so rude to every single man in London. She did not possess a good enough explanation for that. Saying I am in love with another could not work because she could not announce that to the world when she remained unsure of the other's feelings.

The truth, though. He'd lied to her, and still she loved him. Because he was more than that moment, more than that bad decision. She only wished it had not built such doubt so sky-high inside her.

She retreated backward several more steps, ripping her dance card off her wrist. "Here." She shoved it all three gentlemen, and they lunged for it, three gloved hands wrapping round the slim gold chain at once, snapping it. They looked at each other in wide-eyed fright, then slowly turned dismayed gazes to her. They held the blasted bits of her dance card like holy relics.

"No matter," one said, clearing his throat. "Still works. See?" He tied the chain together.

"Bravo," another said. "You may write your name first."

"And you next," the third said, patting his comrade on the back.

They nodded, passing round her dance card, quite pleased with themselves.

A perfect moment to disappear into the crowd. Let them keep her dance card. She did not need it. Prudence took another quiet step backward. And ran into something. Someone because though the object at her back felt hard as marble, it was warm as well. She looked over her shoulder. At the same time, the someone looked over his shoulder.

"Ben!" she said.

"Thank God." He grabbed her wrist and tugged her toward the dance floor where dancers had begun to waltz.

"Mr. Bailey!" One of the women who'd been pursuing him waved her fan in the air. "You've still not signed my dance card!"

"Nor I, Mr. Bailey," the other called. "I'll save you a dance."

Ben groaned, wrapping a hand around Prudence's waist.

"Lady Prudence, your dance card!" Her previous suitor waved the ruined card above his head.

Another of the gentlemen snatched it away. "I'll just write my name twice if you do not mind!"

"I do mind," she growled.

But Ben took her hand and squeezed, and her frustration boiled away into nothing. She wanted to lay her forehead on his chest and breathe him in, but she looked up at him instead. Freshly shaved, hair perfectly coiffed, glinting more yellow than usual in the candlelight. His evening suit fit to perfection, revealing the breadth of shoulder and thickness of muscled limb she'd had the pleasure of calling hers for so very brief a time.

"My. No wonder you've collected admirers. You quite take the breath away, Mr. Bailey."

"Those women didn't care about me before. And what about you?" His gaze roved down her form as he swooped her in a circle. "Spectacular."

"The gentlemen do seem to like it. I as well. I much prefer it to what I had planned to wear before."

"Not the gown, Prudence. You. The gown is pretty enough, but you, Lady P, you glow."

And she felt it, waltzing in his arms, felt strong everywhere he touched her, everywhere he didn't, too.

"How did the reading go?" He asked the question right next to her ear, his breath whispering across her neck and cheek.

After a shiver raced down her spine, making it difficult to speak, she said, "Perfectly. Thank you. For printing the almanac. May we count on you in the future?"

His grip tightened. "I'm afraid I can't answer that."

Her heart sank so low she almost tripped over it. "Ah. And why is that?"

"I've sold the shop. Only the new owner can say what is printed there."

She did trip now and over her own clumsy feet. "Ben, no! Why?"

He righted her so quickly no one likely noticed her stumble, and he danced her toward the edge of the ballroom, leaning low to whisper in her ear once more. "Because I love you."

She stopped dancing entirely to study his face. Not a hint of a lie or an omission there. But then she'd not seen it before. Should she trust him? Was trusting a choice, too?

"Two fellows are coming our way," he said, holding her upper arms. "They are no doubt intent on securing a dance. If that is your wish, I will release you and watch you dance every last set with fools I want to send flying through a window. I'd like to hear my bones crack against theirs, but more than that, I want you to see how wanted you are. How absolutely irresistible you are. So, I will stand here clutching my fists behind my back and watching every last time one of them touches you. If that is your wish."

"And if I do not want that?" she breathed.

"Then there is something I wish to show you." He took a step toward the open door that led into the front hallway and held out a hand to her. "The choice is yours."

The two gentlemen were almost upon them, and they knew they'd been spotted. Handsome, grinning, harmless, and finally, finally attentive to her.

She took Ben's hand, and together, they fled into the night. They ran past the line of coaches outside the house, and Ben hailed a hack. He settled on the opposite side of it from her, and she missed his touch. He'd said he loved her, but he sat so far away.

"What is it you have to show me?" she asked as the hack jerked into motion.

"I'd rather you see it, Lady P." He looked out the window. "What I said in the ballroom. I mean it. I know you cannot trust me right now, but I hope you will one day. And before one of those fools from the ballroom turns your head."

"If they are fools, Mr. Bailey, they cannot turn it."

"That I believe."

"They did not see me until I donned a pretty gown and held my head high." She looked out the window, too, at London dark and shadowy rolling by.

"And those ladies this evening did not see me before. But you… you said once, Prudence, after Norton's wedding, that you did not seek to change me. Do you remember?"

She tried to pull the moment, the words, from her memory, could not. Though she could not remember ever wanting to change him.

"I accused you"—he moved across the space between them to sit beside her, still not touching her—"of wanting to change me. And you said you did not wish to change me, but my schedule." He laughed. "I think I began to fall that very moment. It was clear from your tone you did not seek to placate me or flatter me. No lies in your curt words. How many others would have jumped at me with a list of things to rearrange on my person? Your brother and Norton certainly did. Not you. Hell." He lifted a hand, and she saw just in the periphery of her vision, how gently he touched and outlined the gauzy puff of her sleeve. "I'm a right arse. But I swear I speak the truth when I say I love you."

She closed her eyes and chose.

"I believe you."

Then his hands were on her, cupping her cheeks, pulling her away from the window and dragging her into a long, slow, sweet kiss. She tangled her hands in his cravat and kissed him back until the hack and the world outside the window disappeared. Languid and lazy, as if they had forever, deep and yearning, as if any second it might end.

And it did, the hack swaying to a stop, and Ben breaking the kiss with glassy eyes. He looked out the window. "Come along my passionate Lady P. We're here."

She tried to see where they were, but the dark square of the window held no answers, and she had to blink several times in the black night as he handed her out onto a quiet street.

"It's different at night, isn't it?" he asked, holding her hand and pulling her forward.

"Where are we?"

"Fleet Street."

The heady bustle of the daytime had stilled to a heavy hush. Even Fleet Street slept.

"But why have we come here?" she asked. The shadows began to take shape around her, the brighter colors coming into focus. She knew that blue rectangle. She'd banged on it until her knuckles were bruised the other day. "You've brought me to Bailey Prints."

"No."

"Yes, it is. I—"

"Look up at the sign." He pointed to where it swung in the wind. In the dim moonlight, she could just make out the words.

"Prudent Prints? I… I don't understand. Prudent?"

He looked down at her, taking both of her hands in his. "Yes, like Prudence, I sold the shop to your brother, but with one condition. It will go directly to you in your dowry. And that in any marriage contract you might have drawn up, it will stay in your name and under your control. As its new owner, you will have the final say over what pamphlets or broadsheets or books are published here. In fact, running it, organizing it, schedules—they are all yours to fine-tune and perfect as you see fit. Without any interference from me or anyone else."

A small sound like a strangled cry escaped her, and she clapped a hand over her lips to stifle it. What to say? He had given her what he'd wanted most in the world, and something undefinable welled within her, buzzing her limbs into lightness and pricking multi-faceted diamonds at the corners of her eyes.

"You will, of course," he said, "need someone who knows how the presses work, who has extensive experience in the industry to offer advice now and then, to help fix the machines. Preferably a man who already has a rapport with the workers. I hope you'll accept my application for the position."

She laughed, even as tears rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, Ben. Do not expect me to play favorites. You will have to interview with the rest of the highly competent applicants." But she dove into him, wrapping her arms around his body and laughing and crying into his chest. All the words that weren't right enough tumbled from her lips. "You should not have. You should take it back. How could you?" Words of denial which really meant thank you and I love you and you are forgiven.

He smoothed her hair and dropped kisses on the top of her head. "Because I love you. Because my parents ran their printshop together, and if I truly wish to honor their memory, I'd give myself entirely to love, to you, not to a business."

She sniffed and pushed out of his embrace, looked back up at the sign above the door. "I never knew I wanted to own a printshop."

"You like it?"

She cupped his face and drew him down so close he would not be able to doubt what he saw in her eyes and read on her lips. "I love you, Benjamin Bailey. And your schedule is about to run as timely as the watch in my pocket."

"Lord knows I need it. I don't even own a watch after I broke the last one." He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her tight against him. "I need you." He reached into his pocket and took Prudence's wrist, tied something round it.

She lifted it high so the moon could kiss it. Two ribbons intertwined, one pink, one black.

"Will you marry me, Prudence?"

She nodded and kissed her yes into his lips. She no longer needed a bruise or a ribbon to remind her she was loved, but she would wear these two always. "I love you." Each word a kiss he devoured. Each of his touches asking for more.

"'Ey!" The hack coach's cry broke them apart. "Should I wait here till you tup her or—"

"We're coming!" Ben bundled Prudence back into the hack and set her on his lap as it rolled back toward Noble's home. "There," he whispered near her ear. "Right where you belong. On your Prudence Perch."

"Oh, my best beloved Benjamin Bailey." She sighed.

He nipped at her ear. "Pretty Prudence."

"Beastly Ben." She pulled one end of his cravat loose.

"Mine."

He claimed her with a kiss, and she claimed him, too. When they entered the ballroom together half an hour later, rumpled and satisfied, no doubt remained in anyone's minds—they belonged to each other.