Mary Balogh - Slightly Scandalous

"Prudence is my daughter," his aunt cried.

"And my ward," Joshua reminded her. "But we will not wrangle over her as if she were an inanimate object. Prue is a woman, and she has a mind and a will of her own. She is capable of choosing her own future, her own course in life, and in fact she has already chosen. She is going to wed Ben Turner."

The marchioness stared mutely at him and then got to her feet to confront him, her face pale and distorted with anger.

"You would wed Lady Prudence Moore to an uncouth fisherman?" she asked him.

"I will be making the announcement as soon as we have returned to the ballroom, Aunt," he said. "Come with me and smile and look glad. Tomorrow we may discuss all that needs discussing. Tonight we have guests to entertain, and we are neglecting them."

But his aunt had looked beyond his shoulder and her eyes had narrowed to slits and her lips had thinned.

"You!" she said, stepping past Joshua to stand toe to toe with Freyja. "This is all your fault! If you had not used your high-and-mighty wiles to seduce Joshua in Bath and snatch him from under Constance's very nose, he would have been betrothed to her by now and we would have been the close, happy family we have always been. And now you have come to invade Penhallow itself and to lord it over all of us with your proud, contemptuous family."

Freyja raised her eyebrows and regarded the marchioness with cold, silent disdain.

Joshua watched, appalled, as his aunt raised one hand and slapped her palm hard across Freyja's cheek. He reached out ineffectually with one hand, but he was too late.

Freyja had drawn back her right arm and punched his aunt in the nose. She went down like a bundle of old rags.

Calvin cleared his throat. The other ladies looked on as if waiting politely for the next scene of the drama. Joshua noticed that one of his aunt's hair plumes had snapped in two.

"I was beginning to be very much afraid," Freyja said, "that she would never give me provocation enough to permit me to do that. I am very glad she did."

By midnight the ball had ended and everyone had returned home, all assuring Joshua as they left that they had never enjoyed a grander evening. The drama with Hugh Garnett in the middle of the ball, Freyja guessed, had only enhanced their delight.

So had the announcement of the betrothal of Prue and Ben, and the bubbling happiness of both for the rest of the evening had brought even Freyja to the edge of tears a couple of times. She had blinked them away quite firmly each time. Lady Freyja Bedwyn was certainly not given to shedding sentimental tears.

Incredibly, the marchioness had returned to the ballroom with the rest of her family. Her nose had been rather red for a while-as had one of Freyja's cheeks-and her two remaining hair plumes had had to be rearranged, but she had pulled herself together and smiled her usual sweet martyr's smile.

Constance had danced the final three sets of the evening, Freyja had noticed with interest, with Joshua's steward, James Saunders, who had not danced at all until then. Constance, usually quiet and dignified and self-contained, suddenly made no secret of the glow of love in her eyes and her cheeks. She really had looked very pretty indeed. After the first five minutes or so, Mr. Saunders was returning look for look.

"It was a wonderful evening, Joshua," Eve said when a few of them were alone in the empty ballroom. The marchioness and the Reverend Calvin Moore had withdrawn. Chastity and Miss Palmer had taken Prue off to bed. Constance had disappeared somewhere with Mr. Saunders. "We have attended similar such assemblies at the village inn at home, have we not, Aidan? But tonight has made me realize that we must invite everyone to our own home, perhaps for a summer garden party or a Christmas party or-"

Aidan laughed and set an arm about her waist. "Or both, my love," he said. "Did you know you were to have so many supporters here tonight, Joshua?"

"Let me just say that I was not surprised," Joshua said with a grin.

"It was priceless," Alleyne added. "I just wish it had come to fisticuffs, though. I would have liked nothing better than to lay out that grinning Garnett fellow. But I suppose it would not have been quite the thing with so many ladies present, would it?"

"I at least got to plant the marchioness a facer," Freyja said. "I was never so pleased in my life as I was when she slapped my face."

"You see?" Morgan threw her hands in the air. "I miss all the fun. You do not tell me anything, Freyja. Whatever happened?"

"It is a long story," Freyja said, "and not mine to tell."

"You all came here to give me your support when it seemed I was to be charged with murder," Joshua said. "I believe you have earned the right to know the truth. I know I can count upon your discretion."

He gave them a brief, bare account of what had been revealed earlier in the library.

"Oh, Prue," Eve said, closing her eyes when Joshua had finished and setting her arm about Aidan's waist. "My sweet, innocent Prue. But she had Chastity and Miss Jewell and Joshua as her champions, and now she is to have that steady, very nice young man, Ben Turner. She will be happy, I believe. I am ready for bed."

Aidan kissed the top of her head.

Freyja gazed at them rather wistfully. She had never seen any public display of affection between them before now.

"I am not," she said. "I need air and exercise and the wind in my face. Take me down onto the beach, Josh?"

Alleyne grinned at her and waggled his eyebrows, but no one voiced any comment or-more to the point-any protest. They all went off to bed while Freyja changed hastily into a woolen dress and a warm, hooded cloak, and sturdy shoes. It was a chilly night-she knew that much even though it was a light night too. They would have no need of any lantern to light their way down into the valley and along the river path. Joshua had changed out of his evening finery too, she noticed when she met him in the hall.

There was a depressing feeling of anticlimax needing to be blown away in the wind. The danger to Joshua was over-after what really had been a wonderfully satisfying scene in the ballroom. All the uncertainties about that night of Albert's death had been put to rest. It was over. There was nothing left to be done.

Nothing to keep them at Penhallow.

Nothing to keep them together.

"Will you stay for Prue's wedding?" she asked.

"Yes," he told her.

"A whole month while the banns are read?" she said. "You will endure all that time here, Josh, because you love her?"

"Yes," he said.

He was not at all the sort of person she had thought him. The realization had annoyed her just a few days ago. Now she was glad he was not, and she was glad she had been given an opportunity to discover the sort of person he really was.

"And what then?" she asked. "Everything here will go on as it always has, and you will . . . what? Wander? Enjoy life again?"

"I have a feeling," he said, "that Constance's marriage will not be long delayed. Her eyes were finally opened to a number of things tonight, I believe. Certainly she was making an almost public acknowledgment of her feelings for Jim Saunders before the evening was over, and he looked as if he was very willing to be persuaded to marry so far above him."

"The match would have your approval, then?" she asked. She wondered what Wulf would have to say if she suddenly embarked upon a romance with one of his stewards.

"It would," he said. "But my approval is supremely unimportant, is it not? Constance is of age and not my ward. And, like Prue, she has a mind of her own and is quite capable of deciding what will give her greatest happiness in life. I cannot think dynastically, Freyja. I was not raised that way."

"You will stay for that wedding too, then?" They were approaching the end of the valley, and the steep hillside no longer protected them from the fresh west wind, which sent their cloaks billowing out to the side.