A Precious Jewel (10 page)

Priscilla decided that since she could not silence the girl or ignore the sound of her voice, she might as well
draw amusement from the stories. And so she still enjoyed her walks, though not on the level that she could do so when alone.

She visited Miss Blythe one afternoon and spent four whole hours—neither of them could believe how much time had passed when Priscilla finally got to her feet to leave—talking about books and paintings and poetry and music and a whole host of other topics that had nothing to do with simple gossip.

“Goodness,” Miss Blythe said with a smile, “we have not even discussed the weather, Priscilla. Whatever can we have been thinking of to neglect that topic? And such a beautiful summer we are having, too.”

“Yes,” Priscilla said. “The parks are lovely, Miss Blythe. Have you been out?”

Her old governess looked severely at her. “You are not wandering about alone, are you, Priscilla?” she asked.

Priscilla laughed. “Only once,” she said. “Gerald caught me at it and threatened to take me over his knee if he ever caught me again. I believed him. He was furious.”

“Good for Sir Gerald,” Miss Blythe said. “He is treating you well, Priscilla?”

“Yes.” Priscilla smiled. “I have always liked him.”

Miss Blythe sighed. “If only circumstances had been different,” she said. “But no matter. That girl of
yours will be heartily sick of the sight of my kitchen, Priscilla. You had better go and rescue her.”

“Your cook will doubtless be the one who needs rescuing,” Priscilla said with a laugh. “Maud never stops talking.”

It had been a wonderful week, Priscilla told herself. It was almost like old times, except that her father was no longer there. But it had been a hard week, too. Every afternoon and every evening she had expected Gerald but he had not come.

Had he grown tired of her already? Did he regret setting her up as his mistress? Was he embarrassed by the memories of that night, when he had vomited three separate times into the basin beside the bed and talked drunken nonsense for much of what remained of the night? Had he remembered calling her his mother once? Did he find it hard to face her after spending the morning and part of the afternoon on the sofa with his head in her lap while she had bathed his temples with lavender water and smoothed her hand lightly through his hair?

She missed him. It was dreadful. She should rejoice at the week’s respite she had had from having to perform the essential function of her profession. But she missed him.

He came back finally quite late on a Sunday evening, when she had already undressed for bed. She heard the knock on the door and stood silently and expectantly in the middle of her bedchamber until
Miriam tapped on her door and told her that Sir Gerald Stapleton awaited her downstairs.

She removed her dressing gown and her nightgown with feverish hands and drew on her rose-pink evening gown. She drew a brush through her hair and pinched color into her cheeks. She ran lightly down the stairs.

“Gerald,” she said, going to him, her hands outstretched and seeing with some relief that he was not drunk, “how lovely to see you.”

“Hello, Priss,” he said, squeezing her hands and releasing them. “It must be almost a week, is it? How time flies. I have been busy.”

She smiled and a knife she had not known was lodged in the region of her heart twisted a little.

There was a brief silence.

“Will you come to the bedchamber?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, “that is why I have come. I can’t stay long, Priss. I just thought I would look in on you.”

“It will be as you wish,” she said, closing the door of the bedchamber, beginning the ritual of her occupation.

He said not a word and did not once look into her face until he was leaving. He allowed her to pleasure him in the usual way and took a great deal of time about it, as he liked to do. And he slept on her afterward for almost half an hour, as he had always used to at Miss Blythe’s. And then he rose and dressed
himself, as he had always done there too, telling her that he had to go.

He looked at her before he left. She was sitting on the side of the bed, wearing a dressing gown, as she had always done at Miss Blythe’s. He touched her chin with one knuckle.

“Thank you, Priss,” he said. “You are very good.”

She smiled warmly at him. “I am here to give you pleasure, Gerald,” she said.

He left without another word.

Priscilla sat on the edge of the bed for a long time before rising to begin the cleansing ritual.
You are very good
, he had said. A very good whore. Very good at following directions. Good at opening herself to him and holding herself still for him while he took his pleasure from her body in the way he best liked to do it.

Yes. She had got the message. She was very good at reading messages, too.

T
HERE HAD BEEN
two days of rain, but the sun was shining again on Monday. It was a good day for an outing. It was the day he would have been going to Richmond with Miss Majors and a party of her friends if he had not wriggled out of it by pleading a prior engagement, Sir Gerald remembered.

Well, his prior engagement would be with Priss. He would take her to the Tower of London. Doubtless she
would be impressed with the Crown Jewels and delighted with the menagerie. Females usually were. And he remembered telling her once that it was his duty to take her about since she was his mistress.

He could permit himself an afternoon out with her, he decided. In the past week he had clearly established to her the real nature of their relationship, if she had ever misunderstood it, though he had to admit that Priss had never ever been demanding, even in the smallest of ways. More important, he had convinced himself in the past week that he could relegate her to the proper place in his life.

There was Lady Leighton’s ball to attend that evening and his obligation to dance the opening set with Miss Majors. Yes, he could allow himself an afternoon with Priss.

She was in the hallway tying the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin when he arrived.

“On your way out, Priss?” he asked, looking into her startled face. It was the straw bonnet, he saw, the one he liked.

“Oh,” she said, “just for a walk, Gerald.” She smiled. “With Maud, so you must not frown at me like that. But I will be delighted to entertain you instead.” She pulled free the strings of her bonnet.

“I have come to take you to the Tower,” he said. “That is a devilish pretty dress, Priss. Is it new?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I have had it an age, and it is dreadfully out of fashion, I am afraid.”

“I don’t know anything about fashion,” he said. “Fashion is just to keep the ladies buying, if you were to ask me, and the gentlemen too, if it comes to that. But I do know that it suits you, Priss.”

“Thank you,” she said. “The Tower, Gerald? Are we going to see the armory and the weapons and the dungeons?”

“Oh, nothing too heavy,” he said. “Nothing to addle the female brain. I thought you would enjoy seeing the animals. The elephant is a great favorite, so I have heard.”

She was tying the ribbons of her bonnet again. “I would prefer to see the weapons and the armory, if you please,” she said.

“Not the animals, Priss?” he said. “There are birds, too, apparently.”

“If it is all the same to you, Gerald,” she said, “I would rather not. I cannot bear to think of animals being held in captivity. I think they should be free in the wilderness and the birds free in the sky.”

“But then no one would ever get to see them close up,” he said.

“But in paintings we would,” she said, “and in our imaginations. Besides, is it right to deprive another creature of its liberty merely for our pleasure?”

He shrugged. “All the old armor and stuff it will be, then,” he said. “I just hope you will not be horribly bored, Priss. How about the Crown Jewels?”

“It would be splendid to see those,” she said.
smiling warmly at him. “Are you going to take me there, Gerald? How kind you are.”

“Well,” he said, “I have to take you about, Priss, don’t I? And I was busy all last week.” Busy going mad with loneliness and boredom, he thought.

She did not, as he expected her to do, wander quickly through the armory and past all the weapons, picking out only what might be called pretty. She examined everything in minute detail. He would have been mightily bored himself if he had not simply enjoyed watching her absorption and admiring her blue muslin dress, which he could not for the life of him see as being unfashionable. He felt a surging of pride when an elderly gentleman glanced at her once and then returned his eyes for a more appreciative look.

“Oh,” she said with a sigh when they were on their way at last to see the Crown Jewels, “so much history, Gerald. We are surrounded by all this richness of our heritage.”

“You wouldn’t be nearly as fascinated, Priss,” he said, drawing her arm through his, “if you had had to read through history books and sit through history lessons as I was forced to do.”

She smiled at him. “Perhaps not,” she said. “Sometimes it is an advantage to be a woman of no education, I suppose.”

“Believe me,” he said, patting her hand, “it is. As soon as we have finished in here, I am going to take you for an ice.”

“Are you?” she said. “What a lovely afternoon this is turning out to be, Gerald.”

He remembered the night before as he drove her home in his curricle. He had treated her more like the whore she had been at Kit’s than as the mistress he had set up in his own establishment. He had been so determined to break from the growing dependency he felt on her during those last weeks when she had been at Kit’s and the first little while she had been with him that he had behaved entirely according to a preconceived plan.

But it had not been satisfactory. He had left her house and wandered aimlessly about the streets for hours before returning home to bed and lying awake for another few hours. He might as well have stayed with her as he had wanted to do.

It was late afternoon. He had a ball to get ready for. He should drop Priss off at the door and continue on his way.

“Thank you for a lovely afternoon, Gerald,” she said, smiling brightly at him as he lifted her to the ground.

She was such a tiny little thing, he thought. His hands almost met about her waist. And she weighed no more than a feather. The poke of her bonnet did not reach quite to the level of his eyes.

“Will you come in?” she asked him. “I will have tea brought to the parlor.”

“It is not tea exactly I have in mind, Priss,” he said.

“It will be as you wish,” she said, preceding him up the steps as he watched the feminine sway of her hips.

He wondered many minutes later if their beddings brought her any pleasure at all. She always lay so very still and gave no sign or sound at all. He raised himself on his forearms and looked down into her face.

Was there a certain dreaminess in her eyes? he wondered. But if there was, it disappeared immediately to be replaced by the practiced smile, the one whose warmth seemed to proceed from the depths of her soul.

He watched her as he moved in her, pushing himself deep inside her. She held his eyes, the smile fading a little.

“Gerald,” she whispered to him, “am I not pleasing you?”

“You are pleasing me very well,” he said. “You always do, Priss. You are a good girl.”

He continued to watch her after she had closed her eyes. After a while her teeth caught at her lower lip and he knew that his scrutiny made her self-conscious. He lowered his head against her curls and proceeded with his slow lovemaking.

And for the first time he wondered about her, about the life she had lived before becoming a whore, about the forces that had led her willingly or unwillingly to adopt that profession, about her thoughts, her hopes, her dreams.

He should not have come inside the house with
her, he thought. The afternoon had been a good one. He should not have brought her to bed when he was feeling pleased with her and even affectionate toward her. He did not want her to be a person to him.

Priss.

Just his mistress, not a person.

He slid his hands beneath her to hold her steady and drove himself to a quick climax.

It was just sex with Priss. Sex for him, business for her.

He felt her twitch at the bedclothes with one foot, as she usually did. The blankets and her arms settled warmly about his shoulders. He turned his face into her soft, sweet-smelling hair and allowed himself to slip into sleep.

L
IFE FELL INTO A PATTERN THAT PRISCILLA DID
not find by any means unpleasant. She had a great deal of time to herself and used every moment of it to be busy. The day never seemed to have enough hours in it. She grew dissatisfied with writing stories and began to write a whole book. And she became absorbed with her characters and caught up in their emotions so that hours could pass that seemed more like minutes.

Gerald came to her frequently, sometimes every day for a week, sometimes with gaps of several days between. She learned to expect him daily but not to live for his coming. She learned to enjoy his company and their physical encounters for what they were worth without giving in too strongly to the illusion that he was her lover, though the illusion was always there in the part of her that she knew to be fantasy.