Chapter 11
“Prudence, you and I have matters we need to discuss,” Leonard said over breakfast the following morning.
He watched her closely to see how she would respond.
The truth was that he was almost more interested in her reaction to this declaration than he was in how she would explain herself for what was to follow.
He wanted to know whether she knew already what she had done wrong and would acknowledge it or whether he was going to have to explain it to her.
Whichever was the case, she didn’t seem willing to give him anything. She looked up from her coffee and met his eyes, but she said nothing at all.
Leonard waited a moment longer, hoping to see whether she would buckle.
She didn’t.
I have to give her credit for that. She’s formidable. Very strong. And I suppose that is a good thing because it means she’ll handle it well when the time comes for me to leave her on her own. It means I won’t have to worry about how she’s doing.
Of course, I might have to worry about what she’s doing.
He cleared his throat. She obviously wasn’t going to answer him, so he would have to move along with his point. “I see that you’ve made some amendments to our household finances,” he noted.
Her eyes widened slightly, almost imperceptibly, and Leonard suppressed a smile.
She hadn’t known what he was going to say, but now that she did, it was clear that she had anticipated trouble.
Perhaps she hadn’t realized he would catch on to her actions as quickly as he had.
She isn’t used to people who are a match for her, but I am.
She recovered quickly and nodded. “That’s true,” she told him. “I did do that.”
“And may I ask why?”
“Well, all I did was increase the pay of the staff by a very modest amount.”
“I’m aware of what you did. I didn’t ask you what you’d done, did I? I asked you why you had done it. Are you able to provide an answer to that question?”
“You gave me a budget,” she said. “My understanding was that I was free to do whatever I liked with that money.”
“Within reason.”
“Is paying my staff not reasonable?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Your staff?”
“They will be, won’t they, once you take your leave?
” she asked. “I mean, I know that you’ll continue to pay them from the usual fund that is set aside for that, but I’ll be the one they serve day in and day out, and surely, if I feel they deserve a little more for their efforts, that is a fair decision for me to make. Don’t you agree?”
“My staff have always been fairly paid,” he told her. “Better paid, in fact, than many people in similar positions. Is it your intention to imply otherwise?”
“It’s not my intention to imply anything at all,” she said coolly. “But if I have money, and if I’m truly allowed to do what I like with it, this shouldn’t be a problem. You should take no issue with my supplementing what the staff is paid.”
“Is it some kind of test?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you doing this out of a desire to see how I’ll react to it?”
“Of course, I’m not.” She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. “Though, since you put it that way, I don’t quite know why you are reacting like this. Is it a problem to increase what people are being paid by such a small amount?”
“The problem is that, whatever you may think, these people work for me,” Leonard said.
“I hired them. I brought them into this house. It’s true that they will be spending more time with you than with me once I leave for the country, but that does not mean that you take over their contracts.
They still work for me. If you wanted to make changes to something about the way they are compensated for their work, the proper thing would have been to speak to me about it—and that’s what I expect you to do in the future if you want to make changes like that. ”
“Well, you didn’t set restrictions when you gave me my allowance,” she said. “If there was something you didn’t want me to do with that money, it was your responsibility to tell me that.”
“I would have thought you would know you shouldn’t make changes to the way I run my household without talking to me.”
Prudence sighed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Leonard.”
Leonard set his fork down slowly, hardly able to believe what he was hearing. “Have you forgotten who you’re speaking to?”
“Of course, I haven’t,” she said. “I’m speaking to my husband.
I’m speaking to the man who told me that I would have all the rights and privileges of a duchess if I agreed to marry him.
Well, isn’t it one of the privileges of a duchess to manage her own household?
It is my household, Leonard. It’s yours, yes, but it’s mine too.
If I want to pay my staff a bit more than you might have chosen to give them, surely that’s a decision I am authorized by my position to make.
Or do you truly feel that I should have to ask you before doing anything at all, as if I myself were a member of your staff instead of your wife? ”
“I didn’t say that. You shouldn’t put words in my mouth.” He glowered at her. She was impossible.
“What you said was that I had overstepped my bounds and that to ensure I wouldn’t do that again, you wanted me to check with you before doing anything at all,” she told him.
“And you also told me that you’re going to be leaving for the country soon.
Surely, you can see the impossible position that puts me in, Leonard.
If there are specific things you don’t want me to do, you will need to make note of them because once you’re gone, I won’t have the ability any longer to talk to you about every single idea that enters my mind, so either I’ll be forced to do nothing at all with my finances or else I’ll have to try to figure it out for myself. ”
“Well, I don’t want you interfering with what I pay my staff.”
She sighed. “Is it really such a problem? Does it really matter this much? It’s hardly an increase at all, just a little extra per week. Is the real problem that they’re going to know it came from me, and you don’t want that?”
“Why would that be a problem?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want the staff to think of me as more generous than you. Maybe you don’t want them to like me more than they do you.”
He snorted. “Ridiculous. Many of these people have been with me for years. They’ve only just met you. And besides, they aren’t fools. You may have added a bit on to their pay, but they know the majority of what they receive still comes from me. What you gave them was a token, nothing more.”
“Then why do you object to them having it?” Prudence asked, her voice cool.
Because I think you only did it to vex me.
He restrained himself from answering the question. That couldn’t possibly be all this was, could it? Was he really making a production out of this simply because he thought she had done it to irritate him?
Had she done it to irritate him?
Well, if that was her motive, he was taking the wrong tact, and he knew it. “Very well,” he said, immediately switching course. “You’re correct.”
Her eyes widened. “I—I am?”
“You are.”
“What… precisely am I correct about?”
“You’re right to say that you should be able to decide how to spend your own money,” he clarified.
“You may make your own decisions. I won’t interfere.
Give it all to the staff if that is what you’d like to do—they do serve you more than they will me once I’m gone, so whatever you want to do is fine.
But don’t come to me and ask for more money if you blow through what I’ve given you. ”
“I won’t do that,” she promised. “I won’t disrespect your decision. And… thank you, Leonard.”
He hadn’t expected that. “For what? For admitting you were right?”
“No, I don’t care about being right,” she said.
“I just appreciate when people…” She bit her lip and hesitated as though trying to figure out what she wanted to say.
“I like having my freedom,” she finished at last. “I like it when people recognize that I’m capable of fending for myself.
I didn’t like the idea of a situation in which I would have to ask you about everything I wanted to do.
I’m grateful for the fact that you don’t intend to make me live that way. ”
“Oh,” Leonard said. “Well—no, I suppose that wouldn’t make sense. You are clever and capable, Prudence. I can admit to that much.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“But I do want you to be mindful,” he warned her, wondering how this conversation had shifted so rapidly.
When he had sat down at the breakfast table, he’d been determined that he was going to take her to task for the way she was spending her money, and now, he was telling her that she could do whatever she wanted?
He cleared his throat. “Just make sure that whatever you choose to do—both with your time and your money—that it doesn’t reflect badly on our name or this household.
Remember, you are Duchess of Desford now, and whether we like it or not, people will be judging you.
People will look at you as an indicator of the well-being of my dukedom.
You must remain clear of scandal. So do whatever you would like, just as long as it doesn’t tarnish our reputation. ”
Was it his imagination, or did her lips press together ever so slightly more at that request? Was she upset about it? He couldn’t tell, but something in her expression seemed off.
No, I must be imagining it. What is there in that for her to be upset about?
All I did was tell her not to cause a scandal, and that’s a perfectly reasonable request. My wife is strong-willed, to be sure, but she isn’t the sort of person to go looking for trouble. She wouldn’t do something like that.
He hoped he was right. He didn’t want things to become even more difficult between the two of them than they already had been, and he certainly didn’t want to have to find out that she had been doing things to bring shame upon him.
The whole reason he’d married her was to avoid shame coming to his family.
Soon enough, she would acclimate to her place in this household. He would have to believe in that. And once that happened, there would be no more trouble. He’d leave for the country, and she would be here, and there wouldn’t be any conflicts or anything to worry about.
She was right. He’d overreacted about the news that she was paying the staff a little extra. That had no implications for the future. She would fall in line.
There was nothing to worry about.
He turned his attention back to his breakfast and ate with gusto, doing his best to ignore the fact that, even though she hadn’t argued, she had given him no confirmation that she would comply with his instruction to avoid scandal at all costs.
She would.
Of course, she would.