A Precious Jewel (9 page)

“They wanted to confirm that I would be at Lord Hervey’s for dinner and with his theater party tonight,” he said. “I had almost forgotten about it. I had better get you home, Priss. Have you seen enough?”

“Yes, I have,” she said, though in reality she could have walked for hours more, her hand on his arm. “It was very kind of you to bring me, Gerald. I am grateful.”

“You need not be,” he said. “You are my mistress, Priss. It is only right that I take you about when I am able.”

“Thank you,” she said.

She was able to return to her book that evening and concentrate on the story. It had been a lovely afternoon. He had returned her to the house and kissed her hand on the doorstep before vaulting back into the seat of his curricle and driving off while she raised a hand in farewell and Mr. Prendergast stood behind her, holding the door open as if determined to prevent her escape.

“I shan’t see you for a few days, Priss,” Gerald had said before leaving her. “I have got my name included in a deuced house party Majors has organized out in the country for his daughter’s birthday. Friday to Monday. One of these long weekend affairs. I’ll see you when I get back.”

“Have a lovely time, Gerald,” she had said, giving him her warm smile. “I am sure you will enjoy yourself.”

He had pulled a face.

She was glad he had not wanted to go. A long weekend. Friday to Monday, and this was Thursday. That meant that she could not expect him before Tuesday. Almost a week—again.

But it would not matter, she thought. She could live upstairs for almost a week. She could be Priscilla Wentworth for almost a week.

How she would love to go to the theater, she thought with a sigh as she opened her book. Just once. She would not be greedy about it. Just once when a Shakespeare play was being performed.
As You Like It
, perhaps, or
The Merchant of Venice
.

Just once. With Gerald.

She immersed herself in the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

S
IR GERALD ARRIVED BACK IN LONDON RATHER
late on the Monday evening. He was in a thoroughly bad mood. He made his way immediately to White’s, where he proceeded very deliberately to get drunk.

For some reason that he could in no way fathom, Majors had conceived the notion that his daughter would do very well as the future Lady Stapleton. And the daughter appeared to have fallen in quite eagerly with the plan.

Sir Gerald had spent the whole of the long weekend determinedly following about and conversing with Miss Majors’s aunt and even flirting with her a little. The woman was sixty if she was a day, so a little flirtation seemed harmless. Instead of being deterred, the brother and niece seemed to have decided that Sir Gerald was already making himself one of the family.

He had been invited to accompany them all to
Vauxhall and the opera within the following two weeks. And what could he have done when the invitations were made face-to-face and so unexpectedly that he had not been given even a moment of time in which to think up suitable excuses? He had accepted the opera invitation. The best he had been able to do with the Vauxhall one was to frown, stare off into space, and declare that he was not at all sure that he was not committed to some other entertainment on that particular evening, though he could not for the life of him remember what.

The opera! Devil take it, he hated the stuff. He did not mind music. Indeed, he played the pianoforte for his own amusement when in the country and had once been told to his infinite discomfort that he had some talent at the instrument. But he hated opera. It was nothing but screeching sopranos and tragic heroes and heroines dying with great dramatics all over the stage.

And Vauxhall. The chit would have him up one of the darker, lonelier alleys before he knew it if he did not pay attention every moment of the evening. And the father would be greeting him with an expectant smile at the other end of the alley.

But he would be damned before he would let that happen. He was not going to be trapped into any leg-shackle this side of the grave. He would definitely discover that he had another engagement for that evening.

“Getting a trifle foxed, ain’t you, Stapleton?” Lord Barclay commented cheerfully a little after midnight.

“I must be a slowtop, then,” Sir Gerald said gloomily. “I expected to be more than a trifle foxed by this time.” He raised one hand to summon a waiter.

“Has that new ladybird of yours kicked you out already, Stapleton?” someone else asked.

Sir Gerald examined the liquid in his glass and swirled it about before downing it in one gulp. And that was another thing. Priss. He had scarcely been able to get his mind off her all weekend. He had tossed and turned each night wanting her. He had counted the hours until he could go to her on Monday evening.

He had pictured her standing in the middle of her parlor, small and dainty, her hands reaching out to him in welcome, her face lit up with the pleasure of seeing him. He had pictured the delicate arch of her spine as he unbuttoned her dress, her arms reaching up to him from the bed, the warm and soft welcome of her body beneath his.

Damnation! He should never have done it. He should have left her where she was. Kit would have dealt with the man who had abused her. Anyway, she was just a whore who must expect occasional abuse. It had not been his concern at all.

Somehow during one of the nights at Majors’s, when he had been half asleep, half awake, the pictures of Priss had got all mixed up with pictures of his
mother. The warm smile, which extended all the way back into the depths of her eyes; the welcoming arms; the warm, soft body; and the sense of being wanted and welcomed.

His mother had died suddenly when he was eight years old. She had just disappeared. He had not been called to her deathbed or taken to her funeral. It was all of five years later when he had discovered that there had in fact been no deathbed and no funeral. His mother had grown tired of living with his father and had taken herself off to live with her two unmarried sisters.

She had not taken her young son with her or said good-bye to him or written to him or ever sent him any presents or any other token of her love. That meant that she had grown tired of him, too, that she had never loved him, that all her protestations and shows of love had been so much playacting.

There was no real welcome in Priss’s face, either, or in her arms or her body. She was just damned good at her profession—she had been trained by Kit, of course, and Kit was generally recognized as the best. Priss was a woman working for a living and doing a thoroughly good job of what she did.

He must not begin to take the illusion for reality.

He would not go to her, he had decided. He had come to White’s instead to get drunk.

“Hey, Stapleton,” someone was saying with a laugh,
“the brandy is supposed to be poured into the glass, old chap, not on the table.”

There was a general roar of mirth as Sir Gerald adjusted his aim.

He would not go to her tomorrow, either, or the next day. She would be expecting him tomorrow. Let her wait. Let her know that she was not an essential, or even an important, part of his life, that he could take her or leave her. Let her know that he led a busy life apart from her, that she had only the one function in his life, and that he did not need that with any great regularity.

Let her know that she was nothing more than his mistress.

Miss Majors, he thought at the same moment as he realized that he had succeeded in getting himself very drunk indeed, brayed when she laughed. He did not like her laugh. And she did it too damned often.

“Hey, Stapleton,” someone was saying, “I think you have had enough, old chap. Let me help you home. I’m going your way, anyway.”

“No, you ain’t,” Sir Gerald said, setting his glass very carefully down on the table, which insisted on swaying with a quite irregular motion. “I’m going to P-p…, to P-pr …”

“To Prissy’s,” the same voice said. “It is two o’clock, old chap, and you are about as far into your cups as a man can get without drowning in them.”

“Prissy’s,” Sir Gerald said, swaying to his feet.
“That’s the place. Got to go there. She ’xp … She’s ’xpecting me.”

“Not at two o’clock in the morning,” the voice said. It sounded faintly amused. “And she wouldn’t enjoy having you vomit all over her, take my word on it.”

“Priss won’t mind,” Sir Gerald said. “She’s ’xp … She’s waiting for me.”

And it seemed as if the mere wish had brought it about. He was banging the knocker without stopping at the door of the house he had leased for Priss and wondering vaguely how he had got there and what had happened to the owner of the amused voice. He rather thought that both the owner and the voice had accompanied him onto the street, but he did not know for sure. He did not much care, either, he thought, laying his forehead against the door while continuing to bang the knocker.

“Prender … Prendergast,” he was saying, “tell Priss to come to me in the parlor, will you? Or is she there? She’s ’xpecting me.”

“It is half past two, sir,” the servant said in a poker voice. “I will inform Miss Prissy, sir.”

Sir Gerald rested one arm along the mantel and his forehead on his arm. It would have been rather pleasant to go to sleep, he thought, if the room would just stay still when he closed his eyes instead of floating off into space, taking his stomach with it.

“Gerald?”

His mother’s sweet voice. She would put him to
bed and tuck him in snugly and smooth away with her hand and her voice all fear of the devils and ghosts that lurked in shadowy corners and in large wardrobes.

“Gerald?” She touched his arm.

“Priss.” He turned and caught her up in his arms, arching her slender body to fit against his. Ah, yes. “I didn’t have to come, y’know. I could have gone home. But you were ’xpecting me. Didn’t want to dishpoint you.”

“Gerald,” she said, her arms up about his neck. “Did you walk here? All alone? Come and lie down, dear.”

“Can’t,” he said. “The infernal room won’t stop spinning, Priss.”

“I know,” she said. “Come and lie down and I shall fetch you some water and some coffee to drink. Are you thirsty?”

“I’m foxed,” he said.

“I know, dear,” she said. “I shall take care of you. Come and lie down. I shall loosen your neckcloth and help you off with your clothes.”

She took him by the hand and led him into the bedchamber and sat him down on the edge of the bed. And she talked to him in a quiet soothing voice, though he did not listen to the words, and loosened his clothing, and eased him back until his head was lying on a soft pillow. She lifted his legs to the bed. At one point she was telling Prendergast to prepare some
coffee and to bring some water in the meanwhile. He was sipping on the water, her arm beneath his neck.

Her fingers felt soothing against his head.

“Deuced room won’t stay still,” he said.

“It will be better once the coffee has come,” she said.

“I’m going to be sick,” he announced suddenly, sitting up sharply.

“I have a bowl here ready for you,” she said.

A slim, cool hand stayed firmly against his forehead all the time he was retching up a quantity of liquor.

“Devil take it, Priss,” he said perhaps minutes, perhaps hours later. He was lying back against the pillows again, the taste of strong coffee in his mouth. “Why did I come here? This is damned humiliating.”

“You are better here with me than at home alone,” she said. “Lay your head on my arm, if you wish, Gerald, and try to sleep. In the morning, I will soothe your headache with lavender water and make sure that the house remains quiet.”

He turned gingerly onto his side and nestled his head gratefully on her shoulder. He breathed in the warm, clean soap smell of her. He was naked, he realized. She was wearing a silky nightgown.

God, he felt wretched. But she felt so good.

“Priss,” he murmured, settling one hand at her small waist, “I missed you.”

“And I you,” she said.

He felt her lips brush softly against his temple.

He lost consciousness.

S
HE DID NOT
see him for five days after the night when he had come to her so drunk that she wondered how he had found the right house.

It was hard. There had been days when she had been working at Miss Blythe’s—many of them when she had dreamed of being her own person again, her time her own, her home her own, her body her own. And it was blissful, she told herself often during those days, wandering from room to room upstairs, rearranging her books, restacking her stories and poems, spreading her embroidered cloth over a table to see what it would look like when it was finished, arranging her easel so that the field of daffodils she was painting would catch the light from the window—it was blissful to be able to be Priscilla Wentworth again.

The chambermaid she had hired enjoyed walking, she discovered, and so the two of them sallied forth a few times each day to shop or visit the library or stroll in one of the parks. The only trouble with Maud was that she liked to talk without pause, recounting all the gossip of London belowstairs—and some from abovestairs, too—in a hurried, confidential manner.