“Louisa,” Addie sighed.
“Not now, Louisa,” Delilah snapped.
Prudence didn’t mind her teasing. This was the way it had always been between her and Louisa ever since the other girl joined her as a student at this school. While she considered Louisa a friend, the outspoken redhead was in every way her opposite. Prudence disapproved of just about everything Louisa did and Louisa found Prudence to be unbearably sanctimonious. They’d butted heads since day one and while they cared about one another, their relationship was far more akin to siblings who teased and squabbled than true friends.
Or at least, that was what Prudence suspected. She had no siblings so she had nothing to compare it to.
“She knows I’m teasing,” Louisa protested. “Don’t you, Pru?”
“Of course I do,” Prudence said with a weary sigh. “But you must mind your manners, Louisa, if you’re ever going to be a respectable marchioness.”
Louisa’s grin was filled with joy at the mere mention of her upcoming marriage. “Don’t you worry about me, Pru. Tumberland loves me just the way I am.”
Prudence rolled her eyes. Out of habit she looked to Delilah to share in her distaste for Louisa and Addie’s sappy sighs, but Delilah was too busy smiling vapidly just like the others.
Prudence sighed and reached for another sweet.
Perhaps it was for the best that Aunt Eleanor was bringing her back to her country estate. Ever since Delilah had gone and fallen in love, Prudence had become the odd woman out.
While the rest of her friends prattled on about upcoming weddings and talked of true love and destiny, Prudence sat by and listened and tried not to lose the contents of her stomach at the sickening romantic drivel.
Romance was just another word for selfish decisions, as far as Prudence was concerned. Love was just a fantasy, ephemeral and weak. Neither romance nor love ought to take the place of reason when it came to making life-altering decisions.
But she knew better than to try and convince her friends of this. They would look at her like she’d gone mad and then return to their plans for wedded bliss.
She made a rather unattractive and cynical snorting sound as she sucked on her candy.
Yes, it was definitely for the best that she was leaving. This sense of homesickness would pass once the school was out of sight, and her aunt, while perhaps a bit too harsh with her criticisms, had not been wrong.
While Miss Grayson and the other tutors at this school had helped her refine her skills, she was still a failure when it came to music.
To Addie’s point, her great aunt expected Prudence to be perfect. And while that might seem unfair to Addie and the others, it was the way she’d been raised.
Her every decision and choice were with the one aim of becoming the perfect wife for the eldest Mr. Benedict, the son of a wealthy merchant who her great aunt had forged an understanding with when she was only a child.
It might not have been such a fine match as Louisa had made, or Addie, or even Delilah, but it was a good match, considering that her parents had been a disgrace amongst the ton. Her great aunt might have been a dowager duchess, but Prudence was her youngest sister’s youngest daughter’s only daughter.
The only reason she had any prospects at all was due to her great aunt’s sense of obligation. She ought to be grateful that her aunt had found her a marriage prospect at all.
She had not yet had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Benedict’s acquaintance, but her aunt assured her he was the perfect match, and for him she was to be perfect as well. Anything less would be disrespectful to the arrangement.
Oh, it was not a formal arrangement, but everyone knew it would come to pass. Just as soon as she overcame her last fault. Her fatal flaw.
Her eyes narrowed as she shoved the bag of sweets out of sight to avoid further temptation.
Silly music. She despised the topic. Hated balls for the mere fact that they almost always included it—dancing would be rather difficult without it, she supposed.
And yet, she still resented it. She resented even more those people for whom it came so easily. Which, right now, seemed to include every other person in this room.
“In all seriousness, though, Pru…” Louisa interrupted her rapidly rising frustration. “Your aunt really should not talk about you like that. As though you’re just some…some—”
Prudence snapped the trunk shut with a loud click to cut off Louisa’s statement. She did not wish to hear how it would end.
It was bad enough that her friends had overheard that dreadful, humiliating lecture on Prudence’s stubborn flaws and Miss Grayson’s inability to fix them. But to see Louisa, of all people, feeling sorry for her...
It was too much.
“That is enough,” she said, her chin held high as she turned to face her irritating but well-intentioned friends. “We should not have been eavesdropping in the first place.”
To a one, her friends’ expressions fell. The camaraderie of the moment seemed to shift as she spoke. She could see them going on the defensive, as they always did when she became “unbearably sanctimonious” or “a self-righteous know-it-all,” as Louisa put it.
She tilted her chin higher, some of her hurt emotions fading behind the familiar mask of indifference. “It’s my own fault for listening in on a conversation that was not meant for my ears.”
“But—”
“We should never have eavesdropped,” she said again, firmer this time to override Addie’s protest. “I should never have let you talk me into it.”
This last part was aimed at Louisa directly, and her friend flinched. “I didn’t force you,” she muttered, but her gaze fell with a guilty look.
“Now then,” Prudence said with a calm she did not feel. “If you’ll excuse me. I must finish packing if I am to leave for my aunt’s home in the
