only by taking refuge with Lady Salford.”
“I think you give yourself too little credit,” Ellie interjected.
Prudence held up a hand. “I know my failings. Solitude does that, you know — gives us a chance to chew endlessly over what we might have said or done or been.”
“It’s not so bad as that,” Ellie said. “And you can’t accuse me of solitude. When is my social calendar ever empty?”
“But you only host lavish crushes. When was the last time you had an intimate tête-à-tête?” Prudence pressed on despite the way Ellie’s mouth compressed. “Your calendar is full, but what do you get from those engagements? Something that enriches you? Or merely peace from the voices in your head?”
Peace. It was what she had told Nick she wanted. But Prudence made it sound so bleak — and Ellie wasn’t ready to give her the point. “When have you ever known me to have doubts?” Ellie asked.
Prudence saw through the diversion. Still, her voice softened. “I only guess, Ellie. Perhaps…perhaps I need to understand you so I can see what I would have to do to secure my own independence. But my current guess is that you haven’t enjoyed being the merry marchioness — you’ve survived it.”
“Leave me,” Ellie ordered suddenly, with the same abrupt, frosty tone she used when Lucia, or Marcus, or anyone else stepped out of line with her. “If you’re going to prattle on about things you know nothing of, then leave.”
Prudence didn’t even flinch. “That tactic may find success with Madeleine. She is so shocked when you don’t pour your heart out that she stops asking. But I know, Ellie. I feign amiability just as you feign cynicism.”
“You believe my cynicism to be an act? I assure you, it’s not. People will use you for their own ends, Prudence. And you will do things that are unforgivable. With your family history — even with what Amelia did to you in Scotland — I thought you would understand that.”
Their friend Amelia had spent the previous summer trying to “save” Prudence from an arranged marriage she desperately needed — only to be compromised by, and later married to, Prudence’s would-be fiancée. But Prudence just sighed. “If all you let yourself do is lament the past in your studio, it’s little wonder you think you believe what you just said.”
“I don’t think it — I know it.”
“And yet you save people. What would have happened to Lucia, do you think, if you had believed her transgressions to be unforgivable? Or to Madeleine — she and Ferguson never could have married without your help. Why do you help people if you think betrayal or your own failings are the inevitable outcome?”
Ellie couldn’t respond. Her blocked response was an almost physical experience. Her mind drained of words, just as her breath was knocked out and her throat closed against her. Prudence, the friend Ellie had thought to take to Europe with her, the woman Ellie pitied for having less freedom and money and prospects and all the rest…
“I’m not kind, Prudence,” she said. Her voice was low, and she couldn’t look Prudence in the eyes. “You are remaking me in your own image, not the one I deserve. It’s not altruism or genteel goodwill that drives me. Just the regret that I didn’t stand for myself when I should have, and the desire to stop others from making the same mistake.”
She sipped her chocolate, but the bitter concoction brought her no joy. When she finally dared to look at Prudence, there was no shock there — only consideration.
Finally, Prudence spoke. “I am sure a vicar would tell you to be more selfless. But in the face of great personal disappointment, you chose to help those who needed your help and found what enjoyment you could in the rest of your life. Your decision to give others the chance you didn’t have, rather than trying to take it away from them…that says all I need to know about your character.”
Ellie believed her. It was the belief that struck her, even more than Prudence’s words. The woman Prudence described — it was how Ellie wished she saw herself on the days when everything was dark.
It wasn’t much — not a proclamation that Ellie was a hero, or a saint, or any other superlative. But if she believed it, if that assessment of her character was correct, then she was human — not the goddess Nick had made her into, not the fallen soul she’d believed