A Precious Jewel (6 page)

“The thing is,” Sir Gerald said, running one hand through his hair, “that I intended to put an end to it last night, Miles. I was going to change to a different girl or leave there altogether for a while.”

The earl laughed. “After visiting her three times a week for the last two months?” he said. “It sounded to me as if you were pretty keen on her, Ger.”

“That’s the trouble,” Sir Gerald said. “I don’t intend to get pretty keen on any female. As soon as they get wind of it, they get their fangs in. And then you are lost forever. I hate women. It’s just too bad they are necessary to one’s well-being.”

“Ger.” Lord Severn got up from behind the desk in his library and strolled to the fireplace, where he set one elbow on the mantel. “Females make up at least half of the human race. Is it not a little nonsensical to generalize about them, to believe they are all the same beneath the skin?”

“They are,” Sir Gerald said fervently. “They like to own and possess. They like to pretend to tender feelings, but in reality their own comfort is the only thing of any importance to them. They are clever, vicious schemers. Trust a woman and you are lost for life.”

The earl clucked his tongue. “Yes, they do like to manage,” he said. “Witness my mother and my sisters, for example. But usually it is a benevolent despotism, Ger. They have this enormous compulsion to try to arrange for the happiness of the men in their lives without ever thinking to consult the man’s wishes
first. But there is no particular malice in most of them.”

“I shouldn’t have done it, anyway.” Sir Gerald got abruptly to his feet and crossed the room to the window. “She has already had me take her to the house and agree to let her choose the furnishings tomorrow. And she has already decided that our bedchamber will be the room adjoining the parlor instead of the master bedchamber upstairs as it should be. It will be more convenient, she said.”

“And it probably will, too,” the earl said, laughing again. “Desire can cool quite abominably in the passage from downstairs parlor to upstairs bedchamber, Ger. One must make the choice between a cooled desire or a hard bed on the parlor floor. Your Prissy sounds like a sensible wench. And you did tell her that the house is hers, did you not say?”

Sir Gerald frowned. “I would not have done it if some oaf had not cuffed her and bruised her,” he said, “and forced her into some perversion she would not give me the details of. I saw blood, Miles, I swear, and look where it has led me.”

“Whores have to take their chances,” the earl said. “It comes with the profession. And Kit would have seen to it that it did not happen again. I don’t believe you would have reacted the same way with any other girl, Ger. You fancy this girl. You might as well humor yourself and do her a favor. Becoming a mistress is a
step up in the world, after all. Enjoy her while you have her.”

“But how am I to get rid of her?” Sir Gerald asked.

“Think of that when you finally weary of her,” Lord Severn said with a grin. “A good fat settlement and some sparklers for the throat or ears usually do the trick quite nicely, I have always found. It is something of a blow to one’s pride, but most girls are quite happy to be handed on to someone else after a while.”

“Kit has made me sign an agreement that looks after the settlement,” Sir Gerald said.

The earl threw back his head and laughed. “Good old Kit,” he said. “She treats her girls rather like daughters, doesn’t she? Your Prissy must be a favorite of hers.”

“The
favorite, apparently,” Sir Gerald said with some gloom. “I really do feel quite trapped, Miles. It was almost like signing a marriage contract.”

“Well,” his friend said, “you have to remember, Ger, that in reality it was no such thing. I wish I could go to the races. Would you care for a ride out to Richmond just for the mere sake of a ride?”

“Why not?” Sir Gerald said with a sigh. “I can’t go to Priss until she leaves Kit’s the day after tomorrow. It would look a trifle impatient, wouldn’t it?”

His friend laughed again and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Ger,” he said, “I can hardly wait to meet the girl.”

P
RISCILLA COULD NOT
remember a happier day since before the deaths of her father and brother. She had been frantically busy, seeing to the arrival of the furniture and draperies and carpets, directing workmen as to their placement, using her own meager strength to move furniture that after all did not look quite right where it had been first placed, arranging draperies into pleasing folds, interviewing half a dozen girls for the two positions available on her staff.

She had had a bath and washed her hair before dinner and had put on the rose-pink evening gown with the flounced hem that had always been her father’s favorite, though it was now woefully old-fashioned. Her bruise, she had been happy to see at an anxious glance into her mirror, had faded to a dull yellow.

She wandered through from the master bedchamber with its simple furnishings to the smaller bedchamber next door, which was furnished only with a chair and table and easel. Her few books were beside her bed in the bedchamber. Her paints and paper and pens and needlework were in the smaller room, which she had named her workroom.

This would be her private world, the world Gerald would not see, the world she would inhabit when not working. She felt thoroughly happy as she looked about her. She had not had a private world at Miss Blythe’s even though she had been fortunate enough
to have several hours of every day to herself, alone in her room. But the room had been the same one in which she had done business for three hours of each day.

Now her two worlds could be kept separate. She felt almost like a real person again. She felt less dominated by that oppressive label that reduced her to only a body to be used for men’s pleasure. She felt less of a whore.

She looked about her one more time with pleased satisfaction and turned to the stairs. Gerald had left a message that he would call on her during the evening. She did not know the exact time, as she had always done at Miss Blythe’s. But it did not matter. She loved the downstairs, too, and had spent more time and money on its furnishings. She had wanted her work environment to be a pleasant one.

She had wanted it to please him.

She stood up when she heard the knock on the outside door and waited for her manservant to answer it and to announce her visitor. She held out her hands to him.

“Gerald,” she said. “How lovely to see you.”

“Hello, Priss,” he said, taking her hands and squeezing them. “You have settled in, then?”

“As you see,” she said. She twirled about, her arms extended. “What do you think?”

She had not been extravagant. Everything had been chosen very carefully with an eye to comfort and
color and economy. He had given her carte blanche when she went shopping, but she had not wanted to waste his money. She did not know how wealthy he was. Besides, money was never to be wasted.

“Very pretty,” he said. “I see what you mean about color, Priss. The greens all blend together, don’t they?”

She smiled at him. “Like a spring garden,” she said. “Is it not cozy? Will you come through to the bedchamber?”

It was decorated in blues, as her room at Miss Blythe’s had been and her room at home. But this was her favorite room of the three because she had chosen everything herself. It was simply decorated but cozy, she thought. Even the coverlet on the bed was a delicate blue. She had turned it down.

“I like it,” he said. “You have done well, Priss. And it is convenient, as you said.”

“May I offer you refreshments?” she asked.

“No,” he said, turning to her. “I just came from dinner at White’s.”

She felt a little awkward with him. It was different somehow. She smiled, deliberately injecting that warmth into her expression that she had practiced so carefully during her training and used throughout her working hours.

“You wish to go to bed?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

She turned, comfortable again now that their
encounter had taken its usual turn. His hands worked at her buttons.

“This is pretty,” he said. “Is it new?”

He had given her an allowance for clothes, part of the agreement that Miss Blythe had drawn up.

“No,” she said. “I have had it for ye—” She stopped herself. “I bought it when I started to work for Miss Blythe. I am able to wear it now that the weather is warmer.”

She slipped out of the dress and turned to him. As usual during her working hours, she wore nothing beneath. She smiled at him again, without conscious effort this time. And she was struck by the thought that for tonight and for as long as he chose to employ her he would be her only client. And she had always found it easy to please him, partly because his demands were so few and partly because in pleasing him she pleased herself.

She lay down on the bed and watched him as he undressed. She liked his body. He was not particularly tall or particularly handsome or particularly muscular. He had none of the attributes of the ideal man of most girls’ imaginations. And yet he pleased her. To her he was beautiful. She reached out her arms to him as he approached the bed and prepared to accommodate her body to his.

“Come,” she said, as she had not said since their first time together, “let me give you pleasure.”

“In the usual way, Priss,” he said, and she closed her
eyes, set her hands flat against the mattress, and raised her knees as he mounted her.

“Mm,” he said almost an hour later, waking and turning his face into her hair. “It’s time for me to go, Priss.”

“As you wish,” she said, her fingers playing with his soft curls. “But your time is no longer limited to one hour.”

“So it isn’t,” he said, rolling off her and lying beside her on the bed, something he had never done before. He lay there looking at her. “It is a comfortable bed.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him and settling the blankets up over his shoulders again.

“I should go,” he said.

She said nothing for a while but just enjoyed the feeling of lightness caused by the removal of his body from hers. She enjoyed seeing him lying there beside her and reveled in the luxury of knowing that she did not have to hasten him on his way in order to prepare herself and the room for another man.

“Gerald,” she said, “I have had so much enjoyment in the past two days. You cannot imagine. It was like a dream come true to have a whole house to furnish yesterday.” She laughed. “I don’t believe Mrs. Wilson enjoyed herself, though. Her tastes are very different from my own. She wanted me to decorate this room in scarlet. She thought it would be what you wished. In scarlet! Can you imagine? You would not have liked it, would you?”

“I like it as it is,” he said. “It is more you, Priss.”

“I don’t believe I would be able to bring myself to entertain you in a scarlet room,” she said with a laugh. “I would feel like a wh—Well, I would feel uncomfortable.”

“I would not have liked scarlet,” he said. “You were quite right, Priss.”

“Well, there,” she said. “It is as I told Mrs. Wilson. I have known you for two months, I told her. I know how to please you. I had so much fun today, Gerald. I had the workmen put everything where I had imagined it going, and then I could see that almost nothing was right after all. So I moved everything until it was all just so.”

“I hope you did not move anything alone,” he said.

“Mr. Prendergast helped me with the heavier pieces,” she said. “But I had the feeling that he was impatient with me.” She laughed. “Not that I allowed that to deter me. I wanted my house to be just perfect. And I wanted it to be perfect for you so that you will be happy here.”

He reached out a hand to cup one of her breasts and stroke its peak with his thumb. He had never touched her there before.

“You have done well, Priss,” he said. “You are a good girl.”

She smiled and swallowed against the ache his hand was sending up into her throat.

“May I bring a visitor one afternoon?” he asked. “I have a friend who wishes to meet you.”

Her stomach performed a somersault. A friend? Wanted to visit her? She searched his face for a clue to his meaning. But he had said that he did not wish to share her any longer.

“The Earl of Severn,” he said. “He wants to meet my new mistress, Priss. He is in town for only a couple of weeks. He is in mourning for the old earl and will be back in the country soon. We have been friends since university days. May I bring him? I told him the decision would be yours, since this is your house.”

She still was not quite sure of what he meant by a visit, but she could hardly ask him.

“Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow, Gerald? Is he like you?”

“Alas,” he said, smiling ruefully, “he is probably the most handsome man in all England. Not like me at all, Priss.”

It had been a foolish question. No one was ever like anyone else. And no one could be quite like Gerald. He was one of a kind. She cared not at all for the most handsome man in England.

“Will I be expected to swoon at his feet, then?” she asked, laughing at him.

He grinned back. “Only if you really wish to impress him,” he said. “Otherwise a simple ‘how d’ye do’ will suffice.”