The Perfect Mistress (17 page)

"Mme. Marchand led us to the hospital and orphanage each week to do charity work. I saw the women who came, and as I grew older and spent more time there, I heard their stories. I held the children on my lap and watched the mothers walk away… some with hearts that were breaking and would never mend."

She came back to the present and found herself staring into the flowers, but seeing the faces of children. For some reason she added, as much to herself as to him: "Those women need someone to speak with them, to speak for them. And for their children. Especially the children. They had no part in their mothers' wretched choices, but they had to pay for them, all the same." She glanced at him and was halted by the intensity of his stare.

Blushing, she picked up the flowers again and began to pluck excess leaves from the stems. But there was no censure in his face or his silence, and gradually she was drawn to continue.

"Working with the children was the best part of what we did. We taught the littlest ones how to dress themselves and how to talk. We read stories to them and taught them songs. As they got older, we taught them to write their letters and their names, eventually how to do sums. And when they were old enough, we began to teach the boys to garden and the girls to sew." Her eyes grew luminous. "One of the hardest things about leaving France was leaving them. I don't think I could ever leave a child of mine. I don't know how anybody could."

Pierce watched her remembering her time in France and saw the power of those memories in the sadness that settled in her expression. The strength of her views was a bit unsettling, for it was clear that she spoke from experience. And that experience had marked her in profound and unusual ways—with a mesmerizing clarity in her words, a softness in her eyes, and an unmistakable depth in her conviction. He felt an odd tightness in his chest. A minute later, she looked up, shaking off that somber mood to put the final two blossoms into the arrangement.

"I'm going to have a dozen children," she declared, forcing a lighter tone as she gathered up the stem cuttings and debris and rolled them up in the soggy tissue.

He smiled, scarcely able to take his eyes from her. "And you say you're not romantic."

"I most certainly am not," she said, glaring as if he'd accused her of something vile. Then she uncovered the chessboard she had placed on the table earlier and lifted it. "Ah, there it is. I assume you play. Most gentlemen do."

"Chess?" He winced and put his hand to his stomach as if the prospect disagreed with him.

"It's one of my favorite pastimes."

"It's deadly," he said with a surly tone.

She studied him for a moment, realizing a compromise was called for.

"I'll make you a bargain. Play chess with me today and tomorrow you can choose what we do." She saw the spark her proposal struck in his eyes and immediately amended it. "Within reason, of course."

A smile spread slowly over his features. "Of course."

There was some disagreement over the venue for their joust of intellects, and they settled on a compromise: the divan with the chessboard propped on pillows between them. He suggested she take the white, since it was her favorite color.

"White is
not
my favorite," she said, puzzled. When he stared pointedly at her dress, she held up a flounce disdainfully between two fingers. "Surely you don't think I dress this way because I like it?" She rolled her eyes and began setting up the black chessmen on her side of the board. "I'm nineteen… well past the 'maiden trade,' as you so succinctly put it," she said, quoting him. "The white and ruffles are my mother's idea. She and her friends think I should look as young as possible until I dispose advantageously of—"

She reddened and concentrated on arranging her playing pieces. His chuckle said he knew exactly what her mother wanted her to dispose of advantageously. And when she couldn't resist stealing a glance at him, the light in his eyes said he wouldn't mind being the one to help her dispose of it.

Wicked man. The heat that rushed into her cheeks was humiliating.

"It's your move, your lordship," she declared.

"Not until you call me Pierce," he insisted. After a brief silence she relented.

"You have the first move…
Pierce
." It didn't feel right to call him that. It was so… personal. Still, he hesitated, and when she looked up, he looked rather smug.

"I have already made the first move, Gabrielle."

And what move was that? she wondered. The move into her boudoir, into her thoughts, into her stray
imaginings? She gave him her best no-nonsense glare. The
man was a master at double meanings.

"Truly, Gabrielle. I have made the first move." He gestured to the board and she looked down to find that he had indeed moved a piece, pawn to queen three.

They played at a leisurely pace, trading pieces and
being courteous and civil, as the tradition of the game required… until she took his queen in an unexpected move and he protested. It was a legitimate capture, she argued.

It was a sneak attack, he insisted, launched while he was distracted by the play of light in her hair. She laughed and said that he shouldn't have been staring at her in the first place. To avenge her strategy of distracting him with her treacherous charms, he vowed a full assault upon her king. And he would take no prisoners.

But in point of fact, he took several in quick succession: four of her pawns, a knight, and a rook. She gasped, scandalized by his lack of gallantry and promptly seized his bishop, three pawns, and
both
rooks. He nabbed her bishop and wiped out her pawns. She retaliated by taking his knight and several pawns and then chasing his king into a corner.

"Bloodthirsty wench!" he sputtered, moving his king into a pocket of his own pieces, then realizing too late that he had also moved into a trap. He started to pick his king up again, and she cried foul.

"You took your hand away!" she declared, her voice rising, her eyes narrowing.

"I did no such thing—my hand is still right here—" He sat up straighter, lifting the piece and waggling it. "When I remove my hand, my turn is finished, not an instant sooner."

"You did take your hand away—now it's my turn…"

At that moment, outside the door, Gunther was passing by on one of the errands Rosalind had concocted for him, duties that took him past Gabrielle's boudoir at regular ten-minute intervals. Alarmed by the sound of their raised voices—arguing about whose hands went where—he headed for Rosalind's boudoir to report.

"The wretch!" Rosalind, who was sitting with Clementine and Ariadne, gasped and shoved to her feet. "I
told
him she was new at this—"

Before anyone could respond, she was out the door, heading for Gabrielle's chambers. Her friends caught up with her at about the same time her better sense did.

"I have to know what is going on in there!" she whispered, motioning for quiet as the muffled sound of Gabrielle's impassioned voice reached them through the doors. Her anxiety soared. "I have to do something."

"Whatever ye do, ye mus' be discreet," Clementine counseled sagely.

"Discreet, hell—call the constables and have the bastard carted off!"

Ariadne declared in a fierce rasp.

Rosalind waved them to silence as Sandbourne's deep, wicked laugh seeped through the cracks around the doors. It was enough to rouse her maternal instincts to fever pitch. She turned on Gunther with a flame in her eyes. "Champagne—hot or cold—it doesn't matter. Just hurry!"

As he ran for the wine cellars, she wrung her hands, paced, and listened.

It seemed like forever before he came rushing back with a rattling tea cart draped with linen and laden with a silver ice bucket and goblets. Frantically, she waved him toward the door and gathered her friends back against the wall, out of sight. He knocked and waited, tugging his vest down and recovering his breath and dignity.

The door opened and he rolled the cart inside. Moments later he exited and the door closed behind him. His ears were red as he faced his mistress and reported: "It is chess. They are playing chess."

"Chess?" Rosalind felt her friends' shock and tried to hide her own distress. "Well, she is new at this, after all." She met their incredulous looks with an upraised chin. "And his lordship seems to have peculiar tastes.

Perhaps he finds 'taking the queen' stimulating."

"Champagne. Again." Gabrielle stood with her hands on her waist, glowering at the distinctive green bottle canted inside the silver ice bucket.

"Well, I believe I am ready for a little refreshment," Pierce said, rising carefully so as to not upset the chessboard. "Losing is dashed thirsty business."

He opened the champagne and poured. He laughed at the sour face she made each time she took a sip and warned that she probably should acquire a taste for it… since the current fashion in better circles was to serve champagne at
weddings
.

With a withering glare, she looked about for some way to get rid of the wretched stuff and poured it into one of the palms by the piano. He watched her, thinking about her objections to romance, wondering what had caused her great antipathy toward things that most young women her age cherished fond hopes and dreams of.

"Just what do you have against romance and passion, anyway?" he asked.

"I've experienced a generous sampling of both and have always found them rather pleasant."

"Oh, it's not that I have anything against them… as long they're not foisted upon me," she declared lightly, as she came back to the divan and began to set up her side of the board again. "But, personally, I think they're overrated. All that heart-racing passion and knee-trembling excitement." He noted a rise in her shoulders and faint tightening of her mouth, though her tone remained light. "Rapture and splendor require a great deal of preparation and maintenance, you know.

"Take food, for example. Grand romance requires an elaborate diet: oysters, Turkish apricots, champagne, caviar, lobsters, pomegranates, chocolate—which are all very dear. Then there are the rafts of servants required to clean and freshen everything—the linen and laundry bills alone are staggering—and there are florists and jewelers and perfumers. The decor in a boudoir must be updated frequently to keep the surroundings interesting, which means new curtains, furnishings, and carpets. And of course, there must be regular changes in a mistress's wardrobe, lest she become a bit
passé
. That means hours at the dressmaker's and more hours in toilette. Every garment, no matter how great or small, is scrutinized for its allure. And that doesn't begin to account for the hours spent reading papers, books, and journals, keeping current as a conversationalist." His eyes were glazing over. She chuckled and changed course.

"I've tried to tell my mother it's not for me, but she refuses to listen. She insists that I am destined to take my place in her world and is adamant about turning me into a seductress of the first water… like her."

"The perfect mistress," he supplied, turning it over in his mind, seeing it from a new perspective. He hadn't imagined so much work went into something as seemingly spontaneous as passion. "But, you've decided to become a
wife
instead. Forgive me, sweetness, but what makes you think you would like wifery any better than mistresshood?"

"Wives don't have to bother with all that romantic nonsense. They don't have to worry about constantly pleasing a man and keeping him enthralled and satisfied. They have a
contract
for life."

He started with surprise, then hooted a laugh. She grabbed for the toppling chess pieces and reddened.

"It's true. In marriage,
he
provides the income and the residence and the place in society;
she
creates and maintains a home, and takes care of his needs and the children. It's a much neater, tidier arrangement all around.

Nobody has to worry about the ecstasies of love or stoking the fires of romance or being continually swept up in great tempests of passion."

He watched her lift her chin and realized she was serious. She believed that marriage was a dry, bloodless, sexless bargain… an assignment of roles and resources made with society's blessing. Where would she get such an idea? And why on earth would she want such a thing?

"Well, Gabrielle, I don't want to disillusion you, but I've seen a number of marriages in my time, and I don't think any of them have been quite as neat and tidy as you make it sound. In fact, marriage can get downright messy at times."

"Well, it can't be any more messy or difficult than maintaining a scintillating love affair for twenty years." She looked down to escape his gaze and began busily setting up the chess pieces. "If a husband gets tired of a wife, he can't just walk away and refuse to ever see her again… so a wife is much freer to do and to be what she wants."

A husband cannot just walk away
. It was a telling comment, and it didn't take much thought to deduce the source of that idea. It was a glimpse of her mother's life, through her eyes. By her own words, her mother was the perfect mistress… a seductress of the first water. She was also a woman who had spent her life, or at least the last twenty years of it, constantly making herself alluring to a man who could throw her over at any moment.