The Courteous Cad (30 page)

“Will you join us in the drawing room, Miss Watson?” As she spoke, Olivia gently touched Prudence’s arm. “The chill air here in the garden cannot be good for your fragile health.”

“It is nothing but a cold, Lady Thorne, I assure you.” Prudence dabbed her nose with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. In the two days since returning from Manchester, her voice had grown hoarse and her nose began to drip. She was mortified at the idea of sniffling her way through tea while William Sherbourne glared at her across the table.

“Truly, I am well enough,” she reiterated. “I enjoy watching the mists curl across the moor.”

“Yet more than one young lady has been undone by a trifling cold. Do come inside and warm yourself by the fire. I am sure we should all welcome your presence at tea.”

“Thank you, madam, but I am quite sure of the opposite. I have made a fool of myself and caused your family no end of trouble. I cannot think of any way to apologize that might bring an end to this torment.”

“My dear Prudence, you judge yourself too harshly. You intended your involvement with the mill to bring about nothing but good. How can you be faulted for that?”

“Very easily, I assure you. Your husband’s brother will help you count the ways.”

Chuckling, Olivia shook her head. “You must not think ill of William. He chastises you because it is much easier to be angry than to be in love.”

Prudence gave a short, humorless laugh. “Love? Lady Thorne, you are mistaken indeed on that account. William hates me. I deceived him. I led the mill workers astray. I have been nothing but trouble to him from the moment he saw me tumble into a muddy puddle.”

“You have troubled him, indeed, but I wager it is his heart that aches far more than his vanity. His mill will soon be serviceable again. I have no doubt that William intends to employ those workers who return to the mill, and all will be well. Better, in fact. Despite my dear husband’s qualms, William’s reforms can do nothing but increase productivity, build loyalty, and lure the very best of Yorkshire’s weavers to his mill.”

“Reforms?” Prudence shivered as she spoke the word.

Olivia slipped off her own shawl and wrapped it around Prudence’s shoulders. “Did he not tell you? Well, you must ask him yourself, for see how he comes even now? William— how happy I am to find you in the garden! Perhaps you can persuade Miss Watson to join us for tea, where I have been utterly unsuccessful. And you must tell her about your reforms, for I have just learned that she knows nothing at all about them. But do not tarry long. Tea waits for no one!”

With a brief wave, Olivia hurried off toward the great house and the warmth of its massive fireplaces.

William turned a stony gaze on Prudence. “I wish to inform you that your sister has sent a message to me by courier. I received it just now in the library. Mrs. Heathhill writes that she will arrive at Thorne Lodge tomorrow morning. She asks me to tell you that she intends to depart the same afternoon, taking you with her and intending never to return to Yorkshire lest her family incite further calamity upon mine.”

Though Prudence had been at Thorne Lodge for the better part of two days, this was her first encounter with William. Sequestered in her room, she had been nursing her cold with ample rest and much reading. His sister-in-law had informed Prudence that William was meeting with his overlookers in the effort to put his mill back to rights. Now she saw by his glowering expression that his wrath had not abated.

“Thank you for relaying the message,” she said, dipping him the slightest of curtsies. “I am sure Mary cannot come too soon.”

“I assume your sisters knew of your ruse.”

“They did—and tried to steer me from it. You must not blame them.”

“No, indeed. I am content to lay all the fault upon you.”

Though she felt sure she should shrink into herself with humiliation, Prudence discovered that her own ire prevented it.

“You enjoy my misery,” she stated. “This does not surprise me. I believe your greatest happiness arises from abusing others and making them feel as wretched as possible.”

The brown eyes sparked. “Do you speak only of yourself, or do you include the entire human race in your catalog of those whom I have abused?”

“Not everyone,” she replied. “Yet you have caused more than enough pain and despair to those whose lives you have tainted.”

Prudence read the flicker of guilt that crossed his face. William knew he had been the cause of much agony. He was well aware of his grave sins—not only in regard to the late Miss Bryse, but also toward his own child, abandoned by the father he would never know.

“You are a wicked man, William Sherbourne,” she declared. “But I cannot hate you. Rather, I pity you the joy and satisfaction you might feel had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner throughout your life.”

“Wicked. Evil. These are the labels you paste on me. Not long ago, you told me you had ceased to see the world in black and white. You confessed that your own sins had made you aware of the gray morass into which most of us fall. Yet now I see you have reverted to your former position. You call me evil, and by that pronouncement, you elevate yourself to the opposite character. You are good. Perfect, in fact.”

“I am hardly faultless, sir,” she snapped back, turning her shoulder on him. “You know that only too well. I am guilty of many things, yet your wrongs are far graver than mine.”

“Are they? And how is that?”

“You ruin lives.”

“By operating a worsted mill?”

At this preposterous response, she whirled on him. “Do you think I speak of the mill? No, indeed! You are a bad man where
women
are concerned, and I have no doubt you will suffer greatly for your iniquities.”

“And you are a good woman where
men
are concerned? Spare me your self-righteous indignation, madam. I am the witless buffoon who has succumbed to your wiles so often as to realize at last your duplicitous nature. You, Prudence Watson, are the wicked one.”

“Wicked?” She covered her mouth with her hand, recalling suddenly the endless line of men with whom she had toyed, her secret trysts with Mr. Walker, and her dalliances with William even as she plotted to bring about the downfall of his mill.

“Oh, you are right,” she blurted. “I am bad. Perhaps as bad as you but . . . but . . .”

“Who is good, Prudence? Who is truly good but God Himself? And which of us is good enough to please Him? Who may stand before Him guiltless? None. I cannot rattle off Scripture so easily as you, yet my reading of the Epistle to the Romans taught me that all have sinned, and St. John’s Gospel assured me that Jesus Christ provides our only path to God. No one approaches the Father apart from Him.”

“Yes, Christ makes us clean,” she agreed, humbled at the recognition of her many failings. “You have read more of the Bible than I supposed, and you are quite right about our sin. All the same, God loves us. He did not go to the trouble of sending us His Son merely to point out our transgressions. I am convinced that Christ came to save us, to die in our place. Anyone who trusts in Him is acquitted.”

“Acquitted? Do you believe that, Prudence? Do you truly believe it?”

The somber tone of William’s voice took her by surprise. “Of course I do,” she said softly. “If we but ask, God forgives all our sins.”

“All?”

She thought of the abandoned baby. “Forgiveness is an odd thing. God pardons us if we ask, yet He rarely removes the earthly consequences of our wrongdoing. For some, the penalty spreads, afflicting everyone around us with pain and sorrow.”

“I imagine God must find it rather easy to forgive. It is far more difficult for others to pardon us and for us to pardon others. Forgiving ourselves is hardest of all.”

“Yet not impossible.”

With that, he bowed. “I wish you good afternoon, Miss Watson. I am to be away from home on business all day tomorrow. It is unlikely we shall meet again.”

As he turned to walk away, Prudence called out. “William!”

He halted. When he faced her again, she saw agony written in his eyes and suffering in the turn of his mouth. “What is it, Prudence?”

“Reforms. Olivia spoke of reforms at your mill. She said I must ask you.”

“I described the reforms to you already. A ten-hour workday. A school for the children. Better food. My employees’ rebellion had nothing to do with my instituting reform. They have you to thank for the improvements. I was swayed more by the petitions of a pretty girl. My laborers’ seditious march threatened my resolve, but I concluded that the changes are for the best. Good day.”

Stunned, Prudence watched him walk away. A ten-hour day. Better food. A
school
for the children!

“Upon my word,” she murmured. “I succeeded after all.”

William made every effort to be out when Prudence and her sister left Thorne Lodge. Early the next morning, he rode to the mill alongside his brother. Randolph was in a jolly humor, eager to tease William and joke about one thing after another—though his mood was little appreciated by the younger Sherbourne.

Both men were gratified to find most of the looms, carding engines, spinners, and other machinery back in operation. Shamefaced, none of the laborers dared to look up from their work as their masters inspected the building from the smithy upstairs to the waterwheel below.

“She will be gone when you return to the house,” Randolph observed as he and William sat on a low stone wall beneath the mill to watch the massive wooden wheel turn. “Did you not wish to bid her farewell?”

His brother was speaking of Prudence Watson, of course. Despite the woman’s treasonous deceptions, both Randolph and Olivia persisted in making references to her beauty, her keen wit, her good intentions toward the needy, her happy financial situation, and her family’s beneficial connections in society. In short, they did everything but insist that William propose marriage to the young lady at once.

“I bade her farewell yesterday,” he told Randolph. “It was a weighty conversation for two people so prone to being frivolous. We discussed the Bible.”

Randolph shot him a look of disbelief. “And how did you find it?”

“Mysterious but true.”

With a laugh, Randolph elbowed his brother. “Come, man, enough of your nonsense. When do you plan to see her again?”

“I have uncompromising plans
never
to see her again.”

“But you love her. More to the point, she loves you. You witnessed the mighty battle I fought to win my dear Olivia from the clutches of those who tried to part us. Will you let Miss Watson escape without putting up the smallest effort to keep her?”

“She does not want to be kept, nor do I wish to keep her.”

“Because she upended your tidy little world of mill, moor, and hearth?”

“My world has never been tidy, brother. You know that better than most.”

Randolph fell silent for a moment before speaking again. “William, you are not the same man you were before this last outing with the Royal Navy. Did something unpleasant happen that you have not told me?”

“At sea? No, indeed. I am a fine officer. I make my king proud at every opportunity.”

Randolph laughed. “I am sure you do. But what about ashore? I met the two Bryse sisters—both of whom admired you—and I heard rumors of other women who esteemed you greatly. I begin to wonder if you lost your heart to one of them.”

William reflected on the face of Caroline Bryse as she lay dying. It was not his heart that had been lost at that moment. It was his youth, his naiveté, his careless immorality, his swaggering love of himself above all others.

“If you will allow me to keep one or two secrets from my elder brother,” he told Randolph, “then I shall be much obliged. Have no fear on behalf of my good humor. I assure you, it is quite intact.”

“But you will talk to me if the need arises? As the eldest of three, I am not accustomed to taking lightly anything amiss with my brothers.”

“Be assured—”

The clattering of wooden clogs on the iron stairs near the waterwheel halted William’s words. He turned to find Richard Warring bearing down on them.

“Sirs, I beg you to come above!” the overlooker cried out. “She is returned! That woman is returned even now!”

“Who is returned?” Randolph asked.

William already had guessed. “Miss Watson, I believe, pays a final visit to the scene of her great insurrection.”

“Indeed she do, sir!” Warring was breathing hard. “She allowed as she came to bid the others farewell, but I don’t believe a word of it. No, sirs, I think she is come to inflame the labor again and make them run off to London with her!”

“Thank you, Warring,” William said as he stood. “I shall see to it that our guest minds her manners. You are dismissed.”

As the man pounded back up the stairs, Randolph shook his head. “You must see Miss Watson again in spite of your good intentions to avoid her.”

“She avoids me as much as I avoid her. Contrary to the assertions made by you and your dear wife, Miss Watson and I do not like each other.”

Starting for the stairs, William heard his brother chuckling behind him.

“That, my dear man,” Randolph said, “is a bald-faced lie.”