Page 5 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
Chapter 1
London, 1880, Twenty-Five years later
Prudence no longer desired to be good.
Or, rather, to beaGoode.
It was why she stood at the gate to Miss Henrietta’s School for Cultured Young Ladies at midnight, her chest heaving and her resolve crumbling. She’d come all this way. And she wanted this. Didn’t she?
Just one last night of freedom. One night of her own making. Her own choosing.
One night of pleasure before her father foisted her off on the highest-ranking noble desperate enough to have her at nine and twenty.
Three months.Three monthsuntil her life was irreparably ruined, and she’d have to love, honor, and obey the most notorious spirit-swilling, mistress-having, loud-mouthed, and fractious idiot in all Blighty.
George Hamby-Forsyth, the sixth Earl of Sutherland.
He’d marry her because she’d an obscene enough dowry to cover his debts and still maintain a generation or two.
Notbecause he loved her.
God, what a fool she’d been!
For the umpteenth time, the tragedy of her gullible nature slapped her until her cheeks burned. Had it only been yesterday she’d found out her happy engagement was a farce? That everyone around her knew she would be wretched and humiliated, and still expected her to go through with it?
That the two people closest to her in the world hadn’t loved her enough to tell her.
The scene forever tormented her, illuminated just as clearly as it had been in the brightness of the late afternoon sun the day before. Every decision she’d made a perfect mix of timing and luck until she’d stumbled upon her own tragedy.
Pru had been pleasantly exhausted after spending a day with the seamstresses for her extensively fine wedding trousseau. Her sister Honoria had accompanied her, along with their oldest friend and neighbor, Mrs. Amanda Brighton of the Farley-Downs Brightons.
“Do let’s go to Hyde Park,” Pru had gestured expansively toward the park in question, shaking Amanda’s arm in her eagerness. “I’m dying to sweep by Rotten Row and take a few turns on Oberon.”
“I’m game for it.” Honoria, her eldest—already married—sister, had lifted her nose and squinted into the distance where the horse track colloquially known asRotten Rowbustled with the empire’s aristocracy, both human and equine.
Amanda was more Honoria’s age than Pru’s—which was three years older—but she and Amanda shared a blithe and energetic nature that made them natural mischief-makers and thereby the swiftest of friends.
Honoria, though a beauty, was born to be a dreary proper matron, and fulfilled her vocation with dreadful aplomb.
“I wouldn’t at all mind examining the new stags on the market,” Amanda said with a sprightly grin lifting her myriad of freckles. She tucked one arm into Pru’s and the other into Honoria’s, and nearly dragged them both toward the square.
Prudence’s ride along the row had been every bit as exhilarating and satisfying as she’d imagined. Friends and acquaintances had called out their hearty congratulations, which had produced the sort of smile that she felt with her entire self.
It’d dimmed when she’d a brief encounter with Lady Jessica Morton, who was the reason everyone had called her “Prudunce” in finishing school. But even her spinster nemesis had gritted out her felicitations. Had Jessica’s smile been on a dog, it would have been called a snarl, and Prudence had to fight a spurt of victorious wickedness.
Jealousy was such an unflattering color.
Oh, it wasn’t her best quality, this, but ithadfelt indescribably good to “win,” for lack of a better word. Her entire life, she’d come in second. Second eldest and second prettiest of the four so-called, “Goode girls.”
Second married, as well.
But to an Earl! And not justanyEarl, but one of the most marriageable bachelors in the realm. Her happy engagement was delicious any day but became pure truffled pleasure when trotted out in front of Jessica.
Bidding a cheerful farewell to the retreating back of her childhood antagonist, Pru had handed Oberon to one of the grooms, and set off to meet the ladies for tea.
Bouncing her riding crop off her thigh in high spirits, Pru had searched for them, eager to share her bit of gossip about her conversation with Jessica.
She found Honoria and Amanda on a bench with their heads together. They admired a group of smartly dressed young men prancing about on thoroughbreds and sipped thin glasses of lemonade that sweated in the summer heat.
