The Perfect Mistress (15 page)

Years of classical training at the piano… a fortune in music lessons… and she plays him French beer hall songs!"

Gabrielle paused at the end of the next verse to gauge Pierce's reaction. He was leaning on the side of the piano, watching her with a stunned expression, and she challenged him to sing the next verse.

"What—me? sing?" He laughed shortly at the absurdity of it.

"Well… I suppose we are not all born musical," she said, oozing a uniquely feminine sort of condescension. She ran expertly through another chorus while gazing steadily at him, and he straightened, realizing she was serious. "Or perhaps you don't know the lyrics…"

Nettled by her forthright challenge to both his pride and his male dignity and reserve, he sniffed. "Of course I know the words… along with everyone in the entire East End of London." Soon his reluctant baritone blended with her music, growing gradually louder and more confident.

When he had run out of verses, she went straight into another song he recognized: a rollicking rendition of "Whoops, Alice!" He knew the words to that one too and rendered them with as much dignity as it was possible to maintain while singing about a four-hundred-pound girl who gets stuck in a window while eloping.

After an extra chorus, she finished with a musical flourish and looked up at him, her cheeks rosy and her eyes sparkling with mischievous pleasure.

He was breathing as if he'd run a foot race; his face bronzed and glowing.

He sat down on the bench beside her, holding himself taut. She drew her hands from the keyboard. For a long, moment they stared at each other, breathing with the same rhythm, their pulses racing, their lips parted and eyes glowing. Neither spoke; each was reluctant to disrupt the strange sense of connection that had risen between them.

But after a moment, she lowered her eyes and dusted her fingers over the keys, and he shifted uncomfortably on the bench.

"Where in heaven's name did you learn a thing like 'Whoops, Alice!?

Your mother will be scandalized… probably bar you from ever playing again."

"No, she won't," she said with a prim little smile. "I'll just tell her that you specifically requested it. I'll tell her it's
your
favorite song."

He choked out a laugh. Then, sobering, he took a deep breath and tugged down his waistcoat. "You are a saucy bit, Miss LeCoeur. I can see your mother has her hands full with you."

"She has indeed." And the look she gave him made him wonder if he might have his hands full as well.

Time slipped away as Gabrielle played several more common ditties and then a few country songs she remembered. When she was reduced at last to a musical rendition of "Old King Cole," she knew it was time to stop. A discreet knock at the door confirmed it.

Gunther stood outside with a pained expression. "Your mother requests that you and his lordship join her in the drawing room for tea… before he departs."

As they trailed the majordomo downstairs, Gabrielle stole glances at Pierce's now unreadable face and braced for the worst. And yet, she couldn't bring herself to repent or even regret her behavior. Not only had it kept both her mother and his amorous impulses successfully at bay, it had also given her a shameless amount of pleasure.

In the drawing room they found Rosalind and Ariadne Baden-Powell waiting, a bit pale and tight-lipped but otherwise models of matronly courtesy. They poured tea and made small talk as if determined to take a stopped keyhole and a bizarre program of beer hall tunes and nursery songs in stride. Their worldly aplomb had been sorely tested—the tilt of their chins proclaimed—but they had seen and heard stranger things in their years in the demimonde.

When the clock struck half past five, Pierce expelled a discreet sigh of relief and stood to take his leave. Gabrielle rose to see him to the door, feeling her mother's gaze boring into them all the way to the front door. She took special pains to stand close and look up at him with a beaming smile.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," she said, hoping he would agree.

"If you don't mind having your eyebrows singed. Your mother must be made of pure phosphorous. Rub her the wrong way and…"

"Yes… well… Perhaps you'd better bring me something when you come tomorrow. My mother sets great store by a man's generosity." She halted and looked up at him with a trace of anxiety. "You will come tomorrow?"

He nodded.

She relaxed. "I know—
flowers
. Bring me a huge bouquet of flowers.

Smelly flowers—they're her favorite kind."

He considered her a moment. "I'm not supposed to be courting your mother," he said calmly. "What is
your
favorite kind?" The notion struck her with unexpected impact.
Courting her
. She glanced up and found his eyes dark and serious.

"I don't think I have one," she said, feeling a shiver run down her spine.

"Any flowers will do. I'll write you out a bank draft, tomorrow, to reimburse you for the expense." She stepped back, offering him her hand. His gaze intensified as he held it a moment before pressing a soft kiss on her palm.

"Tomorrow at three." He nodded curtly, donned his hat, and strode out the door.

She stood for a moment, staring at the door after Gunther closed it.

Phantom warmth remained in the center of her hand, the lingering heat of his kiss… the touch of those handsome, supple, expressive lips. She shook herself mentally. Worldly lips, expert lips, filled with irresistible half-truths that smoothed the way for both his will and his passions. He was the sort of man that mothers usually warned their daughters about. She scowled. Not
her
mother, of course…

She turned to the stairs, but was halted abruptly by the sound of her name.

"Gabrielle!" Her mother's strident tones floated out from the drawing room, and she realized she was caught. "I should like to have a word with you, young lady!"

That evening, Pierce dined at Brooks's, indulged in a few hands of cards in the venerable club's game room, then wound his way to his imposing mansion in Hyde Park. He wasn't in the mood for male companionship just now. Since five-thirty that afternoon, he had been feeling restless, physical, and aroused… and he knew exactly where to lay the blame.

There were a number of pleasure palaces in St. James that would welcome his money and presence, he knew. And should he be inclined to more private indulgence, there were several loosely married ladies who would be more than eager to put his needs to rest. But the relief he needed had nothing to do with those all too transient pleasures. He couldn't get Gabrielle out of his mind. And he knew in his very sinews that he would not be satisfied with a substitute, however lovely or accommodating or inventive.

Anticipation was a unique sort of pleasure, he had learned; one that required a certain maturity and a surfeit of other pleasures to desire and then to learn to enjoy. It manifested itself in a divine and languid tension that heightened awareness and in a poignant, almost painful appreciation of sensation. It made a man notice things like the many different colors in a woman's hair, the subtle language of her movements, and the variations of texture in her skin. And it tutored him on the inner workings of his own body, on the capacity of each vessel and sinew, as his blood coursed and his breathing quickened and his muscles tensed with wanting.

Tonight, Pierce St. James was being tutored in spades.

He arrived at his house earlier than expected, to find his butler, Parnell, waiting for him, pacing alongside the great curved stairs of the entry hall.

Whether it was a glimpse of the fellow's ashen face or something more subtle and primal in the air itself, he felt a chill that announced a dread presence in his house. As Parnell hurried to take his hat and gloves, Pierce sensed what the fellow would say even as he began to speak.

"I tried to reach you at your club, my lord…"

"When did she arrive?" Pierce demanded, glancing up the stairs.

"Just before five." Parnell leaned closer and lowered his voice. "I said you might not be home until quite late. Perhaps you could return to your club…"

Pierce felt a new kind of tension coiling around his stomach, beginning its merciless squeeze. He had looked forward to spending the balance of the evening in his study, with a good book, a fine brandy, and a fat cigar. His plans were rained. It was either flee his own house or find himself trapped and run through an emotional mangle intended to make a perfect bedsheet of him—render him flat and colorless and endlessly conforming.

"Send word to Jack not to unhitch the horses," he ordered, snatching his hat and gloves back from Parnell and heading for the door. Just as he reached it, the sound of his name rang out in the entry, and he froze.

"Pierce!" An imperious female voice with all the charm and lilt of a hot locomotive brake, burst out over the hall. "So there you are. And about time, too."

The flurry of swishing silk and the emphatic clack of heels on marble steps galvanized him. He turned like a block of granite. Descending the stairs was a robust woman in her fifties, with hair streaked with gray and a face rounded—though not softened—by time and appetite. Her movements were brisk and energetic, and her dark eyes were bright with internal fires.

She strode across the entry hall with her emotional weapons stoked and primed. Instinctively, Pierce took a step back.

"I sent word this morning that I was coming, but your wretched houseman"—she flung a contemptuous hand at the red-eared Parnell as she drew up before Pierce—"wasn't at all prepared for me. I've spent the last two hours airing and freshening my own rooms. Scarbury never would have permitted such sloth. My quarters would have been ready at a moment's notice, or there would have been hell to pay!" She leveled a glare on the butler that said she was more than ready to step into the old butler's shoes and serve up a bit of perdition herself.

"What are you doing here, Mother?" Pierce demanded.

"I was under the impression that this was still
my
home as well," she declared, turning back to her stony son, "—at least until you come to your senses and take a wife." She settled back on her heels, with her hands clasped, assessing him with a look of disgust. "As if any
decent
woman would have you."

"Mother—" he warned with a growl.

"Not that it is any real concern of yours what I do—since, God knows, you have no natural feelings toward your family—but I've come to London for a bit of shopping."

"Shopping?" He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the aristocratic features, once-dark hair, and unholy arrogance that had served as templates for his own. He crossed his arms, resolved to wait as long as necessary. There was more to her visit, he was sure of it, and if he waited in unblinking silence, she would eventually tell him what it was. One moment passed, then another, and the quiet became burdened with the bitterness of old clashes and the specters of expectations unmet and dreams denied.

Stubbornly, he stared at her and she at him. The air around them heated.

"Very well," she said, discharging the tension unexpectedly and lowering her pitch and tone to what, for her, was a conciliatory level. "I have been talking with Lady Marjorie, Countess Havershom. She has a niece… a lovely and quite respectable girl… and I think you should—"

"Damnation!" he thundered.

"Pierce St. James—I will not be sworn at in my own house!" she barked back. "I have come to see to it that you do your duty to your family and your title, that you take a respectable wife and make an heir. Decency and duty may not be to your tastes, but they come inextricably bound to the wealth and privilege you so enjoy with such abandon. You have obligations to the family, and I intend to see that you honor them. I want you married by the new year, and I want a grandchild by the Christmas after. And I swear to you, you will not see a farthing of my inheritance until you have married and produced an heir."

"Damnation!" Shoving his hat on his head and his ' hands into his gloves, he spoke curtly to Parnell. "Tell Jack I'll be waiting on the turn." The butler took off through the house at a run, and Pierce jerked open the front door.

When he stalked defiantly out the door, she started and went after him.

"How dare you walk off when I am still speaking?" she demanded, following him out onto the landing as he strode angrily down the front steps. "Come back here—I haven't finished with you, young man!"

But he had finished with her… a number of years ago. She stood on the landing and watched him climb into his carriage and rumble off into the night, escaping her… just as his father always had. And in the midst of her outrage and turmoil, she felt the same deep and painful sense of loss growing within her. She turned back to the house, wilting slowly, and mounted the stairs to her old chambers, feeling her bones speaking to her of the many years they had climbed those stairs. By the time she reached her rooms the fires that had crackled in her eyes were dying, snuffed by the same faults and hurts that over the years had turned every new start into a false hope.