Reprise

Reprise Read Free Page B

Book: Reprise Read Free
Author: Joan Smith
Tags: Regency Romance
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she might try. Prudence stood a long minute staring at her, longer than she wanted to. While she kept her eyes riveted on Cybele, she didn’t have to look at Dammler. She couldn’t bear to look at him, but as though her eyes had a will of their own, they turned to him, pulling her head with them. He looked awful--sick and frightened, the way she felt. Her lips moved but no words came out.
    “Prudence,” he said. It was hardly even a whisper-- just a low sigh of regret.
    “Why?” she asked him, the one word all she could utter.
    He couldn’t manage an answer. He just stood, looking at her, as guilty as sin. Then he closed his eyes and squeezed them shut hard, as though to block out his vision of her. When he opened them half a minute later, she was gone. With the last vestige of her strength and wits, she had turned and fled the room, fled the apartment and the building. Clarence was still in the carriage. She got in and said, “Take me home.”
    He thought she was ill; she looked so white, her eyes moist and staring. He shouted to Lady Melvine’s groom to “Spring ‘em.” He would have liked to ask her questions, but deemed her too sick to answer. The novelty of this rather pleased him. Dammler would be dashing over in a minute to see how she did. He would send for Knighton, the royal family’s and his own physician. A little notice in the Observer, perhaps, would not go amiss.
    Back at the apartment, Hettie took Dammler in hand. “Go after her. Make up some story,” she advised him.
    “Hettie, I don’t have to lie! It’s not what you think.”
    “My dear, it is not in the least necessary to sham it with me. I recognize your ladybird.” She smiled quite cordially at Cybele, who smiled back, then hopped out of bed, revealing her gorgeous body, only nominally covered by the wisp of chiffon.
    “Get back in there!” Dammler shouted. She pouted, but obeyed him on the instant.
    Hettie fairly swooned with delight. She hadn’t had such fun in months, and it cheered her to discover Miss Mallow didn’t have such a tight line on Dammler as she had thought. Really it was a shame for him to go getting married so soon. While these thoughts flitted through her mind, Dammler was pulling off his dressing gown, tossing it to the floor, grabbing up a jacket, all in a state of terrible distraction.
    “Stay here!” he called to Cybele, then flew out the door with his black hair falling across his forehead. The carriage was gone. He rushed into the street, hailing a passing cab. He hopped in and directed it to Clarence Elmtree’s address, assuming Prudence had gone home, as indeed she had, arriving there five minutes before him. She hadn’t said a word to Clarence, who thus ushered Nevvie straight into his best saloon, where she had succumbed to shock on the sofa.
    “Nevvie is come to see how you go on. I have sent a boy off for Knighton. He will have her up and about in no time,” he said aside to Dammler. “A very sudden fit came over her. Gave me quite a turn. A weakness--I suppose it is nerves. She was always nervous,” he rambled on. Then as the two remained rigid, glaring at each other like gladiators about to enter combat, he decided to leave them to it. A little lovers’ tiff. They would patch it up better without an audience.
    Dammler was the first to speak. “I can explain everything, Prudence!”
    “I’m not a moron. When I see your mistress in your bed, I know what to think.”
    “I was drunk,” he said, a desperate note creeping into his voice. “You know I had a bachelor’s party thrown for me last night. It’s part of the ritual to try to drink the groom under the table.”
    “Is it part of the ritual to drink him under the sheets, too?” she asked.
    “There were no girls there, if that’s what you’re implying.”
    “Where was Cybele? At home waiting for you?”
    “No! Well--yes, in a way she was. She came to the apartment while I was out, and my butler let her in. She had run away

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