‘I thought if I married a really, really moral man that it would counteract the shame of having been dragged down by an habitual drunkard.’
So that explained why she’d married Mr Murgatroyd—one of the most moralising, narrow-minded men in the whole congregation.
‘Because no matter how many good works I did,’ Aunt Charity continued, ‘people were never going to forget the...the degradation...of my marrying a man who turned out to be the very opposite of what I thought...and now I’ve done it twice!’
She burst into tears again.
Gregory calmly walked over, took the glass from her hand, replenished it and handed it back. The contents went the same way as the first.
‘Mr Murgatroyd promised me he would take me away from it all. That if he could only have some capital he would make us so rich that we could shake the dust of Stoketown from our feet and live like kings. I should have known better than to trust in a handsome face and lying lips,’ she finished bitterly.
‘What happened to the money?’
‘He invested it in a canal. A canal that never got dug. No chance of getting any sort of refund. And with you getting so near to coming of age, and not being the sort we could trust to be discreet about our shame, we had to do something. You wouldn’t marry any of the men we knew would have covered it up. So he came up with a new plan.’
‘To discredit me? And abandon me?’
‘No!’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Not at first,’ she continued, looking a touch shamefaced. ‘We were going to emigrate. All of us. We lied about taking you to Bath, it is true. Our destination was Liverpool all along. We intended to tell you the truth when we got there. But then we stopped at that funny little inn and saw...him...’ She gestured to Gregory with her empty glass. ‘Mr Murgatroyd said as how he wished to spare me an embarrassing scene at the dockside when we broke the news to you. And asked wouldn’t it be better to leave you behind and start our new life without any reminders of the past? Because he was sure if we took you with us you would be bound to do nothing but complain and ruin our fresh start. And now I know I shouldn’t have listened, but it was so tempting,’ she wailed. ‘He could always make me believe anything he said. Oh, what a fool I’ve been.’
‘You left me at that inn because you thought I’d ruin your fresh start? How...how could you?’
‘Well, it wasn’t as if you were going to come to any harm, was it? Mr Murgatroyd made sure he—’ she waved her empty glass at Gregory again ‘—was completely insensible before he carried you into the room, and I undressed you. I sat there all night. And the moment he began to stir I made all that commotion and brought crowds of people in before anything untoward could happen. You were never in any danger.’
Aunt Charity had sat there all night? It put a slightly different complexion on things, but still...
‘But you just left me there. You abandoned me. What did you think would happen to me?’
Aunt Charity blinked. ‘Well, we assumed you would go straight back to Stoketown, of course.’
‘And how was I supposed to get there?’
Aunt Charity looked confused. ‘Somebody would have told you how to get a seat on the mail.’
‘The mail coach?’
‘I don’t see why not. We left enough money for you to travel swiftly and to tide you over for a good few months until you got on your feet again. Though I see we needn’t have bothered,’ she ended with a sniff, looking round the study and then at Gregory. ‘It’s just typical for you to end up with a duke.’
‘You left Prudence money?’ Gregory was frowning, looking from one woman to the other.
‘Yes. Twenty pounds. As you very well know,’ she said indignantly. ‘It would have come in very handy in our new lives, let me tell you. Quite a sacrifice it was, parting with that amount. But I insisted.’
Prudence pressed one hand to her forehead. She supposed it might be true. That her aunt had left her some money. Aunt Charity would have seen her tuck her reticule under her pillow when she’d brought her that hot milk. She might have put some money in there.
‘And all my things? What did you do with those?’
‘Your things? Why, I packed them all up neatly and had them sent back to Stoketown by carrier as soon as we arrived in Liverpool. In fact it was while I was doing that that he gave me the slip,’ she added bitterly. ‘He said he was going to see about our berth on the ship, but when I got back to the hotel from the carriers it was to find all his luggage gone.’