A Precious Jewel (30 page)

She got up awkwardly to set the kettle over the fire again. “I am not a lady, Gerald,” she said. “Neither am I a whore. I was both but am neither. I am Priscilla Wentworth, resident of Fairlight, supporting myself partly on earnings that I saved and a generous settlement from my former employer and partly on light employment I have been given in the village here. That is all. No labels. Just Priscilla Wentworth. You need not marry me, Gerald, just because you think you must make a lady respectable. You would not have dreamed of marrying me if I had come from the gutter, as you have always supposed.”

“Priss.” He was on his feet too, hovering behind her. “That is not the reason. Have I given you the impression that it is? I suppose I have. I am so clumsy with words. There is the child. It’s my child. Ours. I have to give you the protection of my name. I must …”

She turned to smile at him, her anger of a moment before fading again. “No,” she said. “No, Gerald. It is good of you. There are not many men, I believe, who would feel responsible for a child begotten in such a way or for the child’s mother. But it is not a good enough reason. And I really do not need the protection of your name. I can scarcely believe it is true myself, but I have been accepted here. I even feel loved here. Here I will not be a fallen woman or my child a
bastard. I cannot marry you, Gerald. I would always be burdened by the knowledge that you had married me because of who I am and because you had got me with child. And you would always be burdened by the knowledge that you had been forced into something that you had never wanted in your life.”

After all, she did not want him. He had hoped. He had done more than hope. He had dreamed—ever since his realization of the truth at Severn Park a week before. Even more so since his visit to Kit’s. He had dreamed throughout his journey from London, picturing it all, the way it would be, himself the hero of the dream.

He drew a package from an inner pocket of his coat and handed it to her.

“It took me almost a week to get this,” he said. “It is not an easy thing to do. But I did it. I thought at last I would be able to use it.”

She looked down at the special license he had put in her hands. He was that serious, then. The idea of marrying her had not been a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had spent a week getting a special license. The words on the paper blurred before her eyes for a moment.

“Gerald.” She handed it back to him. “Thank you, dear. You have always been very good to me. But I will not burden your life with a wife you have never intended to take. Come and visit our child if you wish—as often as you like. I hope you do. But we must not
marry. I know you were fond of me. I would prefer to keep that, to be able to think that you will remain fond of me. Perhaps you can do something for our child when he is older—send him to school, perhaps. Or her.”

“Priss.” He stared at the license before taking it back and returning it to his pocket. “I want to marry you. I asked you because I want it.”

She shook her head.

“Well, then,” he said. “There is no more to say, is there? I’ll go back to London tomorrow. I’ll return when the baby is born. You will let me know?”

“Yes,” she said.

He turned without another word, stumbling against the chair he had been sitting on earlier, and found his way to the door. He was outside, with the door closed behind him, before the tears came. He strode off to the cliffs rather than walk back along the street to the inn where he had put up and risk having to pass someone.

And Priscilla, inside the cottage, sat back down on her chair, her hands resting on the swelling beneath her bosom, staring at the kettle, which was humming on the fire again. Two cups of tea grew cold on the table at her elbow.

Fool, she told herself. Fool.

Heaven had been within her grasp and she had rejected it. All of her most impossible dreams could have come true. She could have been married the very next day. To Gerald.

And she had sent him away. Because he had asked for the wrong reasons. Noble reasons, perhaps. But the wrong ones.

Fool. Fool. Fool.

And just a short while ago she had been so happy to see him. He had seemed to be a part of the contentment that her life in the village and her advanced pregnancy had brought her. But a little more than the contentment, too. He had been the missing something that held contentment back from being perfect happiness.

Her lover had come to her again and she had been completely happy. She had not expected permanence, only a brief visit. But then she had never expected permanence with Gerald. She would have been contented with a few hours or perhaps even a few days of happiness. She could have returned to her contentment afterward.

Yet, now she felt bereft. Empty, as she had felt the day she left him. Raw with the pain of loneliness and loss.

The light of late afternoon turned to dusk in the room. But she continued to sit and stare into the dying fire.

T
HE LAMP HAD
been lit, the fire built again, the teacups cleared away and washed together with the dinner dishes. Priscilla had forced herself to eat. She sat down
finally with her favorite book and read the sonnet he had studied at school.

“ ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ ” she read. “ ‘Thou art more lovely and more temperate.’ ”

There was a knock on the door.

Who? she thought as she got slowly to her feet. Gerald? But she did not want him to come back. It had taken her a few hours to pull herself free of the dreadful lethargy that had kept her sitting in a darkened room and staring into glowing ashes. Please let it be someone else, she prayed silently as she pulled back the bolt and opened the door.

“Priss?” he said. His face looked haunted.

She found herself doing what she had always done when he came to her. She held out her hands for his.

“Gerald,” she said. “Come in.”

“I just thought of something,” he said, coming inside and releasing her hands to close the door. “I was sitting in my room at the inn when it struck me. I should have thought of it sooner. I never could think fast, could I?”

“Gerald,” she said. He was gazing at her with eager, anxious eyes. She reached up without thinking to cup one of his cheeks in her hand.

He covered her hand with his. “It was because you weren’t convinced, wasn’t it?” he said. “You thought it was just because I knew who you were and because of the baby. You did not quite believe it was because I love you, did you?”

“You did not mention love, Gerald,” she said. She brushed at the lapel of his coat with her free hand.

“I did,” he said frowning. “I did, Priss. It is the only reason. I must have said it.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t live without you,” he said. “I don’t know how, Priss. I keep thinking to tell you something or ask you something. Or I keep thinking to come to you with some problem or with a headache or a cold or something. And then I remember that you are not there. Or I walk past the park or the British Museum and miss you until it hurts. I can’t sleep properly at night. And I keep thinking of how you always used to be there last summer when I was awake and kept me company and put me back to sleep again. And when I am sleeping, I wake and reach out for you. And you are not there.”

“Gerald,” she said, lifting her hand from his lapel to cup his other cheek.

“I came to trust you,” he said. “I never thought to trust again after my mother and after Helena. I never told you about Helena, did I? My stepmother? I’ll tell you someday. I trusted you, Priss, because you were always good to me and never demanding and always so sweet and even-tempered. When you lied to me and disappeared and I thought it was because you had not liked to tell me that you had grown tired of me, I wanted to die. I didn’t, of course, and I went about my daily business and then went down to Severn with
Miles and the countess. But all the time there was the feeling in me that I would prefer to die if only it could be arranged.”

She bit her upper lip.

“You aren’t crying, are you, Priss?” he said, brushing a curl back from her face, blotting a tear from her lower lashes. “It makes a pathetic story, doesn’t it? I didn’t mean to put it quite like this. What I meant to say was that perhaps this afternoon you did not realize fully that this was the reason. That you are the only thing in my life that makes me want to live it, Priss. Like some priceless little jewel in the middle of a desert. Or something like that. I never was good with words.”

“No,” she said, swallowing to take the high pitch from her voice. “I didn’t realize what you meant this afternoon, Gerald.”

“I thought you didn’t,” he said. “And then it struck me, Priss.”

“What did?” she asked.

“You didn’t read the license, did you?” he said. “I mean, you saw it was a special license, and you gave it back to me because you didn’t want to use it. But you didn’t read it, did you?”

She shook her head.

“Read it,” he said, reaching into his pocket while she dropped her hands away from his face. “Look at the date, Priss. The date it was issued.”

She looked down at the paper and followed the direction of his pointing finger. “April,” she said.

“You can check it with Kit if you like,” he said. “It was before I went to Wiltshire, Priss. I took it with me just in case you decided you would settle for me instead of that swain who wanted you back. I thought that perhaps, after seeing him again, you would realize that you were no longer fond of him. I thought perhaps you would take me instead.”

She bit her lip again for a moment. “You said this afternoon that you were going to offer me a higher salary,” she said.

“If you did not want to marry me,” he said. “If perhaps you wanted to take me on only for another year or perhaps two or until you really did grow tired of me.”

“Gerald,” she said.

“And you can see that I had the license long before I knew about the child,” he said. “I got it for only one reason, Priss. You must see that now.”

“Yes,” she said, handing it back to him. “Yes.”

“Come back to me,” he said. “Please, Priss. Marry me. Or if you don’t want anything so permanent, well, come back to me anyway. And when you want to leave, I will provide for you and the child. I know I’m not much, but I will look after you. If only things had been different, I know you could have done so much better for yourself. You are so intelligent and
knowledgeable and accomplished. I know I have nothing much to offer someone like you, but …”

“Gerald!” she said, and her hands were rubbing hard against the lapels of his coat. “You have everything to offer me. Everything in the world. In the whole universe. Your love. A loyal and a warm and kind heart. Yourself. You are so very worthy of being loved, and all I can offer you is a soiled life.”

He covered her hands with his and held them flat against his chest. He was shaking his head. “You survived, Priss,” he said. “You worked for your living. And I am glad you did or I would never have met you. It is in the past, those months at Kit’s. In the past, where it will stay.”

“You are a baronet,” she said. “I will never be accepted, Gerald. Never received.”

“I think you are wrong,” he said. “There are perfectly respectable people in society who have a far more scarlet past than yours. But even if you are right, it does not matter. It’s you I want, Priss. Only you. We will live it through together, whatever may be facing us. And I know Miles will receive you, and the countess, too. She hugged me when I was leaving and even kissed my cheek. I was never so surprised in my life.”

“Gerald.” She looked at him with troubled eyes. “Are you sure? Are you very sure?”

He smiled at her suddenly, more radiantly than she had ever seen him smile before.

“You are going to say yes, aren’t you?” he said. “I
know that you are. Say it, Priss. I want to hear it. I have dreamed of this moment for months and never believed that it would really come. Say it. Will you marry me?”

She leaned her head forward and rested her forehead between her hands against his chest. “Yes,” she said.

“Tonight,” he said. “I called on the vicar before I came here, Priss, and asked him. We can go tonight. You are going to be my wife before another hour has passed.”

“I thought you did not believe that I would say yes,” she said.

“I didn’t,” he said. “But a fellow can dream. It was a good part of the dream, talking to the vicar and watching his wife throw her apron over her head and burst into tears. I think they must be fond of you, Priss.”

“Gerald,” she said, lifting her head and patting one hand against his heart. “Tonight. Tonight? Now?”

“There is one thing I want to do first, though,” he said. “May I, Priss? One thing I long to do.”

He took her by the shoulders, turned her, and drew her back against him. And he put his arms about her and spread his hands over her, moving them slowly, feeling the new contours of her body, the enlarged firm breasts, the swelling beneath.

“Is it heavy, Priss?” he asked. “The child is heavy?”

“Yes,” she said. “And active. Always kicking and punching me.”

“I wish I had been with you the whole time,” he said wistfully, setting his cheek against her curls as she rested her head back on his shoulder. “I wish I could have watched and felt it grow along with you, Priss, our child.”

“I have told it about its father every single day,” she said.

“Have you?” He turned his head and kissed her. “Priss, I do love you. It was not a ruse to get you to say yes.”

“I know,” she said. “I know that, Gerald. I loved you even before I left Miss Blythe’s, you know. You were always very special to me, right from the first moment I saw you.”

“I don’t know why,” he said. “There is nothing at all special about me, Priss.”

“Then we have a quarrel,” she said, turning her head so that their mouths could meet more comfortably. She smiled warmly into his eyes. “And I shall spend the rest of my life proving that I am right, Gerald. I can be a dreadfully stubborn opponent. I never lose an argument. And I say you are very, very special.”

He kissed her.

“I can’t even turn you around to do this more thoroughly, can I?” he said. “It’s not triplets by any chance, is it, Priss?”