she does is reach for it and put it on. She sweeps the floors and shakes the mats and washes the dishes and pegs out washing and makes me and Ben tea and is learning how to cook. She even does some mending when she sits down. She brings sunshine into this house.'
Joshua looked at Ben, who flushed and dipped his head and worried at a stone buried in the road with the toe of his boot.
'She does that,' he said. 'And she is not a little girl no longer neither.' He looked up into Joshua's face with something like defiance in his own. 'She is a woman grown.'
Miss Palmer had voiced a concern over the number of times Prue declared that she loved Ben Turner. She said it of everyone, of course, and meant it of everyone. But there was a way she had of saying it with regard to Ben, Miss Palmer had said, that she could not quite explain in words.
'You love her, do you, Ben?' Joshua asked quietly.
Ben's flush deepened, but he did not look away. 'It is not my place to love Prue-Lady Prudence,' he said. 'You need not worry about me, my lord. I will not forget my place.'
His title was spoken with slight emphasis and some bitterness, Joshua noticed. He sighed.
'No, I did not expect you would, Ben,' he said. 'I wanted to thank you for befriending her. I do love her, you see.'
'I have never left her and Ben alone together,' Mrs. Turner said. 'Nor ever would. I know better than that, though I know Ben wouldn't never forget himself.'
Joshua smiled at them both, nodded genially, and offered Freyja his arm. They walked back in the direction of the inn, where they had stabled their horses.
'Strangely,' he said, 'I had never considered the problem of Prue's growing up. Because she will always be a child in many ways, I suppose I had expected that she would remain a child in every way.'
'It is a mistake often made of women in general,' she said, 'the assumption that they do not have needs to match those of men. Prue is not a child, is she? She is a woman. And Ben Turner has seen that. Probably she has seen that he has seen, and the attraction of the cottage is more him than his mother. What will the marchioness do if she discovers the truth?'
'She will try sending Prue to an asylum,' he said, 'where she will be locked up and chained and beaten and put on public display and treated like an animal.'
She looked sharply at him. 'Even she could not be so cruel,' she said.
'She would have done it when Prue was a child,' he said, 'if my uncle for once in his life had not exerted himself. She is talking of doing it now if she is forced by my return to remove to the dower house with her daughters.'
Freyja inhaled audibly. 'If I do not take my fists to that woman's face before I leave here,' she said, 'I will be a candidate for sainthood-and I believe that would be a dreadful fate. What are you going to do about it? You are Prue's guardian, are you not?'
'Until I am convicted of murder, yes,' he said. 'What ought I to do, Freyja? Encourage her to marry a fisherman?'
He smiled at the look on her face. Such a prospect must be beyond the wildest imaginings of any member of the proud Bedwyn family. Except that he had learned since going to Lindsey Hall that Aidan had married the daughter of a Welsh coal miner and that Rannulf had married the daughter of an obscure country parson and granddaughter of a London actress. Yet Eve and Judith were as well accepted by the rest of the family as if they had been duchesses.
'Perhaps,' she said, 'Prue is capable of making her own choices in life. Josh, she held my hand yesterday afternoon when we were climbing up the hill behind the house. It was not because she needed my help but because she believed I needed hers.'
'You froze me in my tracks when I once made that mistake,' he said. 'Though we were about to go down rather than up, I remember.'
'I know,' she said. 'But I was touched. I know what you meant when you told me she is full of love and brimming over with it. And so innocent that one fears for her. Perhaps we ought not to fear for such people but for ourselves whose experience has taught us not to trust one another or life itself.'
He looked at her in some astonishment. Her voice had lost all its customary hauteur. It was almost shaking with emotion. All because Prue, thinking her lonely, had taken her hand?
'I should talk to her, then?' he asked. 'Will you come with me?'
She looked more herself then. 'Eve would be a far better choice,' she said. 'But, yes, I will come. Josh, whatever am I doing here at Penhallow? Why am I not still in Bath, promenading in the Pump Room every morning and taking tea in the Assembly Rooms?'
'I believe, sweetheart,' he said, 'you perceived a rogue and could not resist brightening up your life for a spell by taking on the challenge of trying to keep pace with him. Besides, it is better for you to be here with me than expiring of boredom there, is it not?'
'A rogue,' she said as they turned into the cobbled stableyard of the inn and an ostler hastened to lead out their horses. 'Is that what you are, Josh? Life was so simple when I had no doubt about the answer.'
He turned his head and winked at her.
The following morning was cloudy, windy, and altogether rather dreary. Joshua had gone out early again with his steward and Aidan. The marchioness had asked Constance to run an errand for her in the village and at the last moment had suggested that the Reverend Calvin Moore accompany her. Alleyne, perhaps seeing the tight look on Constance's face, had asked Chastity if she would like to go too, and the four of them had departed together, the marchioness's dagger glances piercing Alleyne's back.
She was a tedious enemy, Freyja concluded. Very different from Freyja herself or any of the Bedwyns for that matter, she did not simply burst out with open hostility and fight fairly. She had set something in motion, and she was prepared to wait for it to come to fruition. In the meanwhile, she acted the gracious, wilting hostess to everyone. Her gentle smile seemed to have been painted on her face.
