A Precious Jewel (23 page)

The following two evenings followed the exact same pattern.

He came one week after his last visit, during the afternoon, when she was out walking with Maud. Mr. Prendergast informed her when she came in that he was awaiting her in the parlor.

And so after all she had to greet him with flattened hair and wind-reddened cheeks and nose and a mind unprepared for what she would say.

“Gerald,” she said, rushing into the room. She hurried toward him, her hands outstretched. “I did not know you were coming. I am so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

He kept his hands behind his back. “Hello, Priss,” he said.

She lowered her hands and smiled at him a little uncertainly. “Shall I go and comb my hair?” she asked. “And get ready for you, Gerald? Are you willing to wait for a few minutes?”

“To go to bed?” he said. “I don’t know, Priss. Is that what I want to do?”

She looked at him silently for a few moments. “You
do not want it, Gerald?” she asked. “Tell me what I may do for you, then. How can I make you comfortable?”

“I don’t know if you can,” he said. “I thought it did not matter, Priss. It never mattered at Kit’s. I paid for pleasure. It did not matter who the girl was or what she thought of me provided she did what she was directed to do. I thought it would not matter with you. You always did as you were told. You always knew how to please me. You still do. And I would wager that if I took you to bed you would give it me as I like it best. You would, wouldn’t you?”

“I am here for your pleasure, Gerald,” she said.

“Precisely,” he said. “But the thing is, Priss, that you are not just any girl any longer. I suppose I have been with you too long. Maybe you are right about that. You aren’t just any woman’s body to me any longer. You are Priss. And I don’t think I could derive any pleasure from being with you if you are tired of me. It should not matter because it is your profession and I pay you to do just that, don’t I? But I can’t do it any longer, that’s all. So what do you want, Priss? Only promise me one thing. You won’t go back to Kit’s, will you? I don’t want to think that any man who fancies an hour’s sport will be able to have a go at you.”

It was her chance. Her chance to end things with a fair degree of amity. It was her chance to draw maximum benefit from their separation, since he was the
one suggesting an immediate breaking off of their relationship.

“Tell me what you want,” he said. “I just can’t bed you if the money is the only thing making you willing to do it, Priss. And don’t come any closer. I don’t want you touching me.”

“Gerald,” she said. “Oh, Gerald, I am not tired of you. It is just that—that they wanted me to go home and I thought I might as well if you were growing tired of me. I thought you surely would be after almost a year. And there was … There was the summer and—and the autumn. And I did not want to think that perhaps you did not know how to break it off with me.”

She stopped talking and stared lamely at him. “I am not tired of you, Gerald. And it is not just the money. You were always my favorite, you know.” She could feel herself flushing. “You were the only one with whom it was never—unpleasant. It has never been unpleasant with you. It is my profession and of course I had to do it before even when it was unpleasant. But it has never been so with you. Giving you pleasure has always given me pleasure too.”

“Has it, Priss?” He looked at her wistfully. “I am not much of a man, am I? And I never learned how to please a woman. I don’t …”

“I like you better than any other man I have known, Gerald,” she said. “And you please me well enough.”

“Even last summer?” he said. “You were not disgusted, Priss? I did not work you too hard?”

“It was not work.” She whispered the words, hurt now herself. “You know it was not work, Gerald. You know it.”

He smiled a little uncertainly. “I think it was the summer, Priss,” he said, “and the warm weather and the rustic surroundings.”

“Yes,” she said.

He reached out one hand to her and she placed one of hers in it. “You will tell them that you have a job you do not wish to leave, then?” he asked.

She nodded.

He drew a deep breath and let it out. “Let’s go into the next room, then, shall we?” he said. “No, Priss. I don’t care that your hair has been messed by your bonnet. It looks good enough to me. And I don’t care that you have clothes on under that dress. You can remove them next door. Come with me? Now?”

Fool
, she thought as he led her by the hand into the bedchamber and closed the door.
Fool, fool, fool
. She was one month with child already. A practiced eye, a less innocent eye than Gerald’s, would perhaps already see the beginnings of change in her breasts. She would have to be away from him within the next two months.

And yet she had just declared her love for him, in so many words. She had just allowed him to begin a new and indefinite phase of their relationship.

Fool
, she thought as he undressed her with his own hands and as she undressed him. She was allowing
him to make love to her again. It was not going to be the usual coupling. It was going to be love. His hands were already at her waist, arching her into his body. His tongue was already stroking into her mouth. She was already responding.

Ah, Gerald, Gerald.

“You were very close to your family, Priss?” he asked her much later, holding her in his arms, against the relaxed warmth of his body.

“Yes,” she said.

“It must have been hard for them to see you go,” he said, “and hard for you to leave.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know when you left,” he asked, “what you would do?”

“No,” she said. “I suppose women never do. They always assume, I suppose, that there will be a respectable position available. I don’t believe any woman enters this profession from choice, Gerald. At least I have never known any such woman. All the girls at Miss Blythe’s simply had nothing else of value to sell.”

“Your family must have been upset,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But they must love you very much,” he said, “to tell you that it makes no difference to them. They must love you to want you back anyway, Priss.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I am going to send you on a visit to them,” he said.

“In the spring, Priss. For a month. Perhaps two. No, not two. For six weeks at the longest. I’ll send you when spring comes.” His fingers were stroking gently through her curls.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Gerald.”

“I want you to be happy,” he said. “It will make you happy, Priss?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, then,” he said, “you must go. I’ll arrange for it.”

He was sleeping five minutes later.

Priscilla closed her eyes and breathed in the warm masculine smell of his cologne. The back of her throat and her chest ached and ached.

T
HE
E
ARL OF
Severn came back to town early in February and took up residence in his house in Grosvenor Square. He had left off his mourning and was ready to do some living, he told his friend.

They went to the opera together one evening, but Sir Gerald ended up walking home alone afterward while the earl made his way to the green room. Three days later, when Lord Severn finally arrived again at his friend’s door, bathed and clean-shaven and dressed in fresh clothes, but with shadowed, somewhat bloodshot eyes, it was to announce that he had set up a new mistress.

Jenny Gibb, dancer, had the reputation of never
looking lower than a duke and fifty thousand a year for a protector. She could afford to be particular since there was very little argument over the claim that she was the most beautiful, most curvaceous, and most fascinating creature to grace the capital in a decade.

Of course, Sir Gerald thought, pouring both of them a brandy, Miles was probably her male counterpart, bloodshot eyes and general sleepless appearance notwithstanding.

“I thought you said it was going to be at least a week,” he said, handing the earl a glass.

“Ah, Ger,” his friend said, “it would have been, too, with any ordinary woman. But the fair Jenny is no ordinary woman. Far from it. I am going to need a two-hour workout at Jackson’s every morning to stay fit enough for her. Not one wink of sleep, Ger. Not one. And strenuous acrobatics every minute of the time. Three nights and two days of it.”

“You aren’t boasting, by any chance?” Sir Gerald asked.

“I?” the earl said. “Boasting? You forget I have a year’s energy and frustrations to work off. How is Prissy? Are you still with her?”

“Still with her,” Sir Gerald said. “I am going to send her into the country next month or the month after to visit her family. They wanted her to move home, but she decided to stay for a while longer.”

“Ah,” the earl said, “true love is winning its way, is it, Ger?”

Sir Gerald frowned. “That’s nonsense talk, Miles,” he said. “Priss is my mistress and deuced good at her job, too. Not like Jenny or anything like that, but then I don’t look for anything like that.”

“No,” the earl said with a smile, “I could have guessed that Prissy is not anything like Jenny, Ger. But then Prissy is a lady. Jenny is not, for which blessing I shall be eternally thankful. Any decent cattle at Tattersall’s these days?”

“You want to look?” Sir Gerald asked. “I’ll come with you for an hour. I have promised to take Priss to the British Museum later on.”

The earl laughed. “Culture with your mistress?” he said. “A strange combination. Perhaps an erotic combination? Are you going to show her the Elgin marbles?”

Sir Gerald flushed. “I most certainly am not,” he said. “I am not having Priss gazing at a lot of naked men.”

The earl threw back his head and laughed. “Did Priss not work at Kit’s once upon a time?” he said.

Sir Gerald put a glass down and got to his feet. “Are we going to Tattersall’s or are we not?” he asked. “I think we had better, Miles, before I end up popping you one on the chin and getting myself knocked senseless as a result.”

Lord Severn looked levelly at him. “Sorry, old chap,” he said. “That was not too tasteful a remark, was it? If I may, I’ll drop by Prissy’s with you and pay
my respects before you bear her off on the culture hunt. I take it the visit is for Prissy’s benefit rather than yours?”

“She has a way of explaining things,” Sir Gerald said. “lf she had been one of my teachers at school, Miles, I think perhaps I would have understood a few things. I might even have turned out to be a scholar.”

The earl clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Today’s food for thought,” he said. “Get me out into the air, Ger, will you? I still have Jen’s perfume in my nostrils even though I almost scrubbed my skin off just three hours ago.”

S
HE COULD NOT
wait any longer, Priscilla thought, staring into the darkness. Not even another week. She had already waited far too long. It was the end of March. If she did not have the type of figure that did not show pregnancy early, she would not have been able to wait even this long. And almost any man but Gerald would surely have noticed long before.

She had delayed and delayed, constantly stealing just one more day and just one more day. Their relationship had entered a new phase of quiet tenderness since January. The passion of the previous summer had not returned, except during some of their love-making, but the dispassionate, almost purely sexual relationship of the autumn and early winter had passed, too. There had been a tenderness, a closeness.
almost like that she imagined existing between a man and his wife in a good marriage once the honeymoon phase of their relationship had passed.

And because of her carelessness she had to destroy it all, both for him and for herself.

His arms were about her from behind. She was lying facing away from him, her head cradled on his arm, her body resting warmly against his. She must end it the next time he called. She must speak to him as soon as he arrived. She had her story all ready. It was just to have the courage to use it.

“Mm,” he said, waking and rubbing his cheek against the top of her head, kissing her just above her ear. He shifted position a little, spread one hand over her stomach.

She closed her eyes, memorizing the moment, wishing she could suspend time. Why did one have to move on into the future? Why could one not choose to remain in an eternal present?

“Priss,” he said, moving his hand over her, “too many cream cakes. Or perhaps it is the jam tarts.”

She froze.

“I am going to have to talk to Mrs. Wilson,” he said, “and get her to starve you for a few weeks.”

She kept her eyes tightly closed. He kissed her above the ear again.

“I’m teasing,” he said, his voice amused. “You are not taking this as a scold, are you, Priss? I don’t mind if you put on a little more weight. You are just a little
bit of a thing, anyway.” He ran his hand again over the soft beginnings of swelling. “You feel good.”

She set her hand over the back of his and laced her fingers with his.

“Gerald,” she said after he had fallen silent again.

“That voice,” he said warily. “I know something serious is coming when you speak like that. Have I hurt you? I didn’t mean to, Priss. You always look pretty to me.”

“No,” she said, “I am not hurt.”

“What, then?”

“I have had another letter from home,” she said. “It was not from my parents this time. It was from a—a friend. A man friend. We were going to be married before I came here.”

His arms were still about her.

“He was unable to support me,” she said. “But he has his own cottage now and regular work. He wants me to come home, Gerald.”

“To stay?” he asked.

“To stay.”

“He knows about you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “He says it does not matter. He wants me to go home and marry him.”

There was a lengthy silence.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

“I think perhaps I should,” she said. “I used to be fond of him.”

“Used to be,” he said. “You are not now?”

“It is an opportunity that will not come again,” she said. “It is not that I have grown tired of you, Gerald, or want to leave you. You have been good to me. But girls like me do not usually have the chance to marry and have homes of their own and perhaps child—” She swallowed convulsively. “And perhaps children!”