tirade before she could grab the bit more firmly between her teeth. “Did you say you don’t own any gowns? Not even one in which to travel to Freddie’s? You’ve nothing but breeches?”
“Oh, close your mouth, Daventry, unless you’ve always longed to catch flies with your tongue. Of course I don’t have any gowns. I was only a child when I came here, and once Grandmother MacAfee was gone, Shadwell decided that my brother’s castoffs were more than sufficient for a growing female. And it’s not as if I go tripping off to church of a Sunday or receive visitors here at MacAfee’s Madhouse, which is what the locals have dubbed the place.”
Banning took a long, assessing look at Prudence as she stood in front of him in the dim candlelight. He had already noticed that her honey-dark hair was thick and lustrous, even if it did look as if she’d trimmed it with a sickle and combed it with a rake. Her huge, tip-tilted eyes, also more honey gold than everyday brown, were far and away her most appealing feature, although her complexion, also golden, and without so much as a single mole or freckle, was not to be scoffed at.
Of average height for a female, with an oval face, small skull, straight white teeth, and pleasantly even features, she might just clean up to advantage. If London held enough soap and water, he added, wishing she didn’t smell quite so much of horse and hay.
There wasn’t much he could tell about her figure beneath the large shirt, although he had already become aware that her lower limbs were straight, her derriere nicely rounded.
“You know something, Angel?” he announced at last, draping a companionable arm around her as they headed for the staircase, just as if she was one of his chums. “I think we’ll go easy on any efforts to coax you out of your cocoon until we’re safely in Mayfair. I wouldn’t want Shadwell to start thinking he’d be giving up an asset he could use to line his pockets.”
“I don’t understand,” Prudence admitted, frowning up at him. “Shadwell’s always said I am worthless.”
“Not on the marriage mart, you’re not,” Banning told her. “Now if we’ve cried friends, perhaps you could find a way to ferret out some food for me and my reluctant entourage before we all fade away, leaving you here alone to face Shadwell’s wrath on Friday when he discovers his dirt bath already occupied.”
“Oh Christ!” Prudence exclaimed, proving yet again that it would take more than a bit of silk and lace to make her close to presentable. “Bugger me if I didn’t forget that. We’ll have to clear out before Friday, won’t we?”
As they reached the bottom of the staircase, Prudence took her guardian’s hand, dragging him toward the kitchen and, he was soon to find out, her secret cache of country ham. “I suppose we could still leave tomorrow, if you find some way to bring Lightning with us.”
“Lightning being Molly’s foal,” Banning said, wondering if he had been born brilliant or had just grown into it. “I supposed it could be managed. My, my, how plans can change in a twinkling. I imagine I shall simply have to endure Rexford’s grateful weeping as we make our way back to London.”
THERE WERE ONLY A FEW things Banning wished to do before he departed for London, chief among them taking a torch to the bed he had tossed and turned in all night, unable to find a spot that did not possess a lump with a talent for digging into his back, but he decided to limit himself to indulging in only one small bit of personally satisfying revenge. He would inform MacAfee that his money supply had been turned off.
Dressed with care by a grumbling but always punctilious Rexford, and with his stomach pleasantly full thanks to Prudence’s offer to share a breakfast of fresh eggs and more country ham out of sight of her grandfather, the marquess took up his cane and set out to locate one Shadwell MacAfee.
Resisting the notion that all he would have to do was to “follow his nose,” Banning inquired his employer’s whereabouts of Hatcher, who was lounging against one peeled-paint post on the porch of the manor house, then set out in the direction the servant had indicated.
He discovered Shadwell sitting cross-legged beneath a tree some thirty yards behind the stable, his lower body draped by a yellowed sheet, his hairless upper body—a mass of folded layers of fat that convinced Banning he would never look at suet pudding in the same way again—exposed to the air. His eyes were closed as he held three oak leaves between his folded-in-prayer hands, and he was mumbling something that, in Banning’s opinion, was most thankfully unintelligible.
“A jewel stuck in your navel might add to the cachet of this little scene, although I doubt you’d spring for the expense, eh Shadwell?” Banning quipped, causing MacAfee to open his black-currant eyes.
“Come to say goodbye, have you, Daventry?” MacAfee asked, beginning to fan himself with the oak leaves. “But not before you poke fun at me, like the rest of them. I’ll outlive them all—you too. Have myself the last laugh. You’ll see. Purification is the answer, the only answer. Dirt baths, meditation, weekly purges. That’s the ticket! I’ll die all right, but not for years and years. And I’ll be rich as Golden Ball while I’m at it. Have everything I own in banks and with the four percenters. Yes, yes. It’ll be me who laughs in the end.”
Banning raised his cane, resting its length on his shoulder. “Dear me, yes, I can see how gratified you are. And all it cost you was the life of your grandson and the affection of your granddaughter. Henry went to war and to his death, to escape you, and Prudence can’t wait to see the back of you as she leaves this place. You’ve a fine legacy, MacAfee. I can see why you must be proud. And what a comfort all that money will be to you in your old age. Or are you planning to have your coffin lined with it?”
“Henry was a wastrel and a dreamer, like his father before him, and gels ain’t worth hen spit on a farm,” MacAfee stated calmly, moving from side to side, readjusting his layers of fat. “This land is no good anymore, Daventry, any fool can see that, even you. And a house is nothing more than a house. It is a man’s body that is his main domicile, his castle. Why, in the teachings of—”
“She’s been allowed to run wild,” Banning interrupted, not wishing to hear a treatise on dirt baths or purgatives. “She’s grown up no more than a hoyden, although at least your wife was with her long enough to give her something of a vocabulary and a sense of what is proper, for which I am grateful—even if the girl delights in her attempts to shock me. She’s lonely, bitter, mildly profane, purposely and most outrageously uncouth—and I lay the blame for all of it at your doorstep, Shadwell.”
“She’s one thing more, Daventry,” MacAfee said, smiling his near-toothless grin. “She’s yours. Now, go away. Hatcher will be arriving shortly with my purgative. I prefer to evacuate any lower intestinal poisons out of doors, you understand.”
Longing to beat the man heavily about the head and shoulders, but adverse to touching him even with his cane, Banning turned on his heel to go, saying only, “I hope you’ve had joy of Prudence’s allowance, for you’ll not see another groat from me.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong, my boy. I will see it every quarter, like clockwork, if you hope for Prudence to inherit any of my considerable wealth,” MacAfee warned, causing Banning to halt in his tracks. “Ah, that stung, didn’t it, Daventry? So upright. So honest. So much the responsible guardian. But you hadn’t thought of that, had you? All that lovely money. It’s up to you now. I’m to cock up my toes someday, as we all must, and worthless little Prudence is now my only heir. Do I leave my lovely blunt, my security, to the chit, or do I give it all over to the Study for Purgative Restoration?”
His grin widened to disgusting dimensions. “What to do, Daventry, what to do?”
“I’ll want your solemn word as a gentleman,” Banning said, hating himself for bowing to the man’s demands but unable to cut Prudence off from funds that rightfully should be hers. “Now, this morning, before I take my leave of this hellhole.”
“Of course, Daventry. You have it,” MacAfee said soothingly as Hatcher appeared, carrying a large jug of some vile-smelling elixir and