“I should never have sent you to that school,” her aunt continued. “Miss Grayson clearly allowed you to be as lazy as ever.”
“She did not—” Her protest died in her throat under her great aunt’s withering glare.
Her throat felt choked under the heat of it.
She hadn’t been silly enough to defend herself—nothing she said or did would convince Aunt Eleanor that she was anything other than lazy, fat, and ungrateful. But she couldn’t sit by and let Miss Grayson be slandered.
Miss Grayson, who’d been so kind to her. Even during those moments when the others merely tolerated her, Miss Grayson had treated her with love and kindness.
Almost like a mother.
The thought made her lips twitch upwards. Miss Grayson was not even a decade older than her and she had ten times more beauty than Prudence ever could. She hardly fit the role of her mother.
An older sister, perhaps.
Whatever her role, she ought not to have her name or her school in jeopardy merely because Prudence was a failure at music.
“It wasn’t Miss Grayson’s fault that I haven’t mastered music, Aunt,” she forced herself to continue despite the wicked glare.
“We’ll see about that.”
Prudence blinked in surprise at the cryptic comment. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have taken it upon myself to find you a new tutor. One who has a great reputation for making young ladies such as yourself find the discipline necessary to mastering the pianoforte.”
Prudence straightened with alarm. Images of harsh instructors from her past came back to haunt her as well as the sting of their ruler when she failed to perform without error.
Which would it be? Or had her aunt found someone even more fearsome for her to learn from?
The thought left her winded with a whole new terror that had nothing to do with the spinster life that loomed ahead of her and everything to do with torturous, painful lessons.
“Lord Damian comes highly recommended.”
“Damian?” she repeated without thinking.
“Surely you remember the Marquess of Ainsley’s nephew. He’s made quite a name for himself as a music tutor among the ton.” Her eyes narrowed on Prudence with scorn. “He will whip you into shape or you and your hopes of marriage are as good as done for.”
She blinked once. Then she blinked again. Shock didn’t begin to cover it. Amusement warred with disbelief which battled with incomprehension.
Surely she wasn’t talking about the Lord Damian.
That man wouldn’t know the word discipline if it slapped him across the knuckles.
No, there was only one word that Prudence associated with Damian. And that word…?
Rake.
2
Prim, proper, and utterly impossible. Those were the words that came to mind when Damian tried to recall Miss Prudence.
His lips curved into a sneer at the memory of her when they were young. All goody-two-shoes propriety, even as a child. He and his brother and the other neighboring children would be climbing trees and racing across the meadow or wading in the river, but Prudence?
Oh no. She would never.
He rolled his eyes, only dimly aware of his uncle’s voice intruding on his admittedly childish thoughts.
He really ought to have overcome his dislike of the neighbor girl, and he might have if she hadn’t been the one to get him into trouble at every turn.
A tattletale, through and through.
Even now she was giving him grief and he hadn’t seen the girl in years.
“Damian, are you listening?” His uncle’s brows were arched so high they nearly reached the older man’s thick dark hair, which these last few years had been showing signs of his age as gray edged his temples.
“Er…” No. The answer was clearly no, he had not been listening.
His uncle, the Marquess of Ainsley, sank back in his seat with a weary sigh that made him sound decades older than he was.
Or perhaps that was Damian’s doing. He seemed to have a special knack for making his uncle sigh with weariness.
“You cannot be serious with this music tutoring business,” his uncle said now.
His uncle was a good man. A kind man. Gruff, no doubt, and filled with the sort of old-fashion ideals that made him and all the others of his ilk such a bore to be around. But a good man, nonetheless.
“I am indeed, serious,” Damian said with a pleasantness he hadn’t quite felt since discovering who his new pupil would be.
Prim and prudish Prudence.
Insufferable little brat.
But, money was money, and her great aunt’s money would spend just as well as any others, even if hers would be a good deal more loathsome to earn.
Not that he would ever tell his uncle that.
“Aren’t you at all concerned with your future? Your reputation?” His uncle’s thick brows were drawn together now in confusion and despair.
“Ah yes, my reputation.” Damian smirked. “Perhaps someone ought to have thought about that before cutting me off.”
Wrong thing to say.
Some said the eyes were the window to the soul. For the marquess, the eyebrows were the window to his mood.
When they drew down like this into a fierce glower, it was clear Damian had pushed too far.
“Is that a threat?” his uncle growled. “Is this some sort of childish blackmail, a spoiled child’s idea of comeuppance, perhaps?”
Damian shifted in his seat, discomfited by his uncle’s sharp tone. “No, of course not.”
Not anymore, at least. It had started out that way. Hiring himself out as a music tutor had been a way to thumb his nose at his guardian out of frustration when his funds and life as he knew it had been shut off.
After an admittedly debaucherous stint in London with his friends from school, his uncle had cut off all funds. Rather than tucking his tail between his legs and hurrying home with promises to curtail his revelry and live the life of a pious saint, he’d done the opposite. He’d gone off on his own, determined to make his own way. Tutoring young ladies in music had been a bit of a laugh
