“Why didn’t you have him?” Dammler asked when she finished.
“I don’t know,” she answered, smiling to think how quickly she would have had him, had he ever asked.
“Have you ever regretted not marrying?” Obviously he considered marriage at her advanced years out of the question. The cap, of course…
“No. Oh, no, I have my work, and I enjoy it.”
“And so do we all! I am happy you showed Mr. Springer the door. I know him you see, and always found him a bumptious fellow.”
“You know him!” she gasped, then remembered too late that Ronald Springer had gone to Cambridge, had been there, apparently, at the same time as Dammler.
“Yes, he was at college with me. Not the same department, but I remember him very well. A pompous ass, always getting straight A’s. He can’t be very old. I thought he was around my age.”
“Whereas I, of course, am seventy-five!” she retorted.
“Oh, ho, I've done it again. Pushed the foot right into the big mouth.” He put his face into his hands and grimaced. “Forgive me?” he asked, looking at her with playful fear. She laughed, but still some slight resentment lingered, and he set about talking it away. “It seems to me you managed to learn more of life in your backyard and study than I did in all my travels. There’s more sense in your books than in a tome of philosophy.”
She was forced to object to this flattery, but was overruled in his finest manner until she was restored to spirits. As well as thinking her older than she was, or perhaps because of it, he also assumed her to be worldlier. He spoke of things that shocked her, but she was determined not to show it. She had no desire to appear like an insular little country bumpkin, but occasionally she was found out, and he would laugh and say he was debauching her.
To Clarence’s and Miss Mallow’s delight, Lord Dammler called again a third day to drive her out. Prudence was bothered once again to have to put on her same plain round bonnet and navy pelisse, so very spinsterish- nowonder he took her for an old, unmarriageable lady. She was bothered even more that Clarence was on hand to tease them.
“So you two are off again,” he beamed, rubbing his hands in pleasure. “You are cutting all her other beaux out,” he added. Prudence hadn’t a beau to her name, and Clarence of all people must know it.
“I am making myself a host of enemies, no doubt,” Dammler returned pleasantly.
“Ho, they are all jealous as can be. This will make them look lively.”
“What nonsense you talk, Uncle,” Prudence said, tying up her bonnet strings as fast as her fingers could move.
“I guess I know a suitor when I see one,” he laughed merrily. “She is as sly as can hold together,” he added aside to Dammler. “She never tells us a thing. You will be having the banns read before she admits it. What a girl.”
Dammler looked more surprised than pleased at this, and took Prudence to task about it the minute they were in his carriage.
“Is it possible your uncle takes us for lovers?” he asked in a choked voice.
Prudence would gladly have put a noose around her uncle’s neck and pulled it tight, but she had to make it seem a joke. “You must know you cannot dance such attendance on me without having fallen under my spell. All my callers are suspected of concealing a ring in their pockets which they try at every opportunity to put on my finger. But you know what a sly creature I am. I keep both hands in my pockets. Mr.Murray was highly guilty, until he mentioned his four children. It is all that saved him from the altar.”
As he already had categorized Clarence as a fool, Dammler accepted this answer in good part. Eager to kill the subject, Prudence said immediately, “I ought really to be shopping today. I am in need of a new bonnet.”
“Don’t let me deter you,” he answered with the greatest alacrity.
“Oh dear, is it that bad?” she laughed. Strange how she could already accept anything from him without embarrassment. Really he was the easiest person to get on with.
He darted a look at her, hesitantly, but soon laughed. “You look a quiz in that round bonnet, Miss Mallow. It is for protection from your legions of suitors I know, but I have been wanting to suggest a new one since the first day we drove out together. Let me take you to Mlle. Fancot, in Conduit Street. All the go. I take all my-uh-friends there.”
“I don’t think I want that sort of bonnet,” she returned.
“Afraid you’ll be taken for a lightskirt? You won’t. But I would like you to look less like a maiden aunt as I mean to be a good deal in your company, and preferably not under your uncle’s roof.”
With such an enticement as this held out to her, he could have demanded a whole new wardrobe and got it. “Mlle. Fancot it is.”
A neat turn was executed in the middle of the road, and they proceeded to Conduit Street. “Oh, I haven’t much money with me,” she remembered.
“Put it on tick. Everyone does. I’ll vouch for your credit. I daren’t suggest paying for it.”
“You had better not. They’ll mistake me for one of your-ah, friends.”
“No they won’t!” he laughed, so hard that she could not like it. Was she that old looking?
Miss Mallow was in the habit of purchasing her bonnets, and most of her other necessities (she rarely bought a luxury), at the sale counter at the Pantheon Bazaar. Though she had lived in London for some years, she had never been in the elegant small shops, had no notion such grandeur existed in mere commercial buildings. There was glowing mahogany and velvet drapery everywhere, and the saleswoman looked like a very fashionable young lady.
“Good day, Fannie,” Dammler said, as they stepped in.
“Bon jour, Lord Dammler," Fannie replied. She smiled a smile Prudence could only describe as lascivious-looking up at him through her lashes with a parting of the lips.
“My-cousin wants a new bonnet. Something dashing.”
Fannie’s bold gaze flicked over Prudence with very little interest. “Bien entendu. This way, mam’selle.”
“No, no, don’t shove her off in a closet, Fannie. I want to see what she’s buying. Bring the bonnets out here.”
Fannie smiled and swayed across the store in such a provocative way that Prudence felt quite ashamed to be of the same sex. She looked out the window to avoid looking at Dammler, who was completely absorbed in Fannie’s departing figure. Fannie reappeared a moment later with an armful of bonnets surely designed in heaven. They were not hats at all-they were miniature gardens, with slips of satin roses nestled in beds of soft green, bound up with narrow bands of ribbon.
“How about this one?” Dammler asked, lifting out a buff coloured chip straw with a band of buds around the joining of the rim and poke. “Try this one, Miss Mallow.” She tried it, and it was so beautiful she decided to have it, even if it cost two or three guineas. Fannie mumbled a few words that sounded strangely like five guineas, but she surely could not have heard her aright.
“Do you just want the one?” Dammler asked.
Was it possible a lady ever bought two bonnets at one time? Even as he spoke he lifted another delight from Fannie’s hands. It was a glazed navy straw, with a daring tilt to the brim, and one blood red rose dripping over the tilt. It looked positively wicked, and totally irresistible. She tried it on. “That’s more the thing, don’t you think, Fannie?” Dammler asked.
“Very nice. Charming,” Fannie said to Prudence. “You like it, mam’selle?”
Prudence was too overcome to agree. She looked like the woman she had recently been longing to be. Sophisticated, a little naughty, almost beautiful.
"I'll take it,” she said, without even thinking about the price.