The Perfect Mistress (19 page)

"It would have been better if she could have actually seen it." She gazed ruefully at the white tissue and the blue satin ribbon. Placing it on the tea table, beside the vase filled with yesterday's flowers, she went to the desk to get out her bankbook. "But it's still proof of your generosity. Just tell me how much—"

"I didn't bring it for your blessed mother, Gabrielle, I brought it for you."

He glowered at the sight of her pen poised above a blank bank draft. "I spent half a day picking it out—the least you can do is open the damned thing."

She glanced at the box, then up at him in genuine dismay. "Oh, but I could never accept a gift from you, your lordship. Why, it wouldn't be proper."

"Let me get this straight. You
can
accept it if I give it to you as part of a pretense, but you
cannot
accept it if I give it to you as myself, person to person." He gave her a furiously sardonic smile. "Forgive me—I do tend to get a bit lost in the ethical intricacies of these things. You pretend to be my lover and spend hours locked away with me, purportedly engaged in wild, illicit passion. But you refuse accept a trifle from me because it might offend your precious notions of propriety?" Picking up the package, he stalked over and thrust it into her hands.

"Open it!" he demanded.

She hesitated, surprised by the intensity of his reaction and confused by the intensity of hers. Her heart was beating faster and her mouth was beginning to dry. A gift. For her. From him. She told herself it was probably a bad sign—first a kiss, then a gift. She flicked a glance around the suggestive opulence of her boudoir and worried that he was being influenced by their unfortunate surroundings.

Still, she would have to open it sooner or later; her mother would expect a report. She carried it to the window seat and began to remove the ribbon and tissue. Inside was a black pasteboard box embossed with a gold emblem touting a shop in Regent Street. She lifted the lid and uncovered a pair of shoes—dainty party shoes with elegant French heels—made of white satin brocade and trimmed with a delicate blue bow and ribbon rosettes.

"If they don't suit you as a gift," he said, with a hint of gruffness, "think of them as reimbursement for the pair I pitched out the carriage window."

A gift of shoes from a man to a woman was considered shockingly suggestive and highly improper. But considering the "proper impropriety"

of their strange relationship, a gift of shoes from him to her was somehow rather fitting. And if she had chosen for herself, she couldn't have found a pair that delighted her more. Even the color was perfect. She stroked them gingerly, then, without quite realizing what she was doing, pressed one to her heart as she looked up.

"They're beautiful. But, the ones I lost weren't nearly so grand."

The shimmer of pleasure in her eyes caused a queer fullness in his chest.

It was something like an ache of need, only it registered too high in his body to be recognizable as any of his usual desires. He took a deep breath, trying to force it down into his loins, where it undoubtedly belonged. And as she set the shoes back in the box, he felt a slightly irrational urge to prolong the curiously intimate feeling between them.

"Aren't you going to put them on?"

"Oh, well… I don't think…" She looked at them, then at the plain black slippers on her feet.

The next instant, he was on one knee beside her, and before she could protest, he had seized one of her feet and removed her slipper. When he slipped one of the gift shoes on her foot, there was a space between her foot and the shoe. He sat back on his heel, looking at it in dismay.

She watched the red creeping up his neck and collecting in his ears. He had expected them to fit. He apparently hadn't considered that they might not be the right size, and that made her suspect that he probably had never bought shoes for a woman before. The sight of his embarrassment and disappointment caused something in the middle of her to soften dangerously. Just at that moment, he seemed so human, so ordinary. So accessible.

"Well, clearly these won't do," he declared, starting to remove the slipper.

"No." She brushing his hands away. "They're fine." With a determined smile, she took off the shoe, ripped off a piece of the tissue wrapping, and stuffed it into the toe. She gave the other one the same treatment, then stood and lifted her hem a few inches to gaze at her feet. With the stuffing hidden in the toes, the shoes appeared to fit perfectly. "They're beautiful."

He stood beside her, looking at her feet, then staring into her eyes when she lifted them to him. He felt a conflicting swirl of embarrassment and relief and bruised male pride. The overture he had intended to turn into a seductive gift had been reduced by his thoughtlessness to an empty romantic gesture, fit only for impressing her mother. Until she rescued them. Oddly, he didn't feel embarrassed at all now; he felt nothing but pleasure. And he didn't want to think about why.

Tearing her gaze from his, she busied herself setting the box aside and rediscovered the book she had been reading when he arrived. It reminded her of what she had intended to tell him the minute he came through the door.

"I have some bad news, I'm afraid." She waved him to a seat on the sofa and joined him, walking carefully in her tissue-stuffed shoes. "After yesterday, I'm forbidden to play chess with you again."

He clapped a hand to his heart. "I'm devastated."

She scowled. "I'm serious. And so was my mother when she lectured me last night on the dangers of appearing too much the bluestocking. 'A woman who flaunts her learning has a great deal yet to learn,' she insisted. And she drew up for me a list of appropriate activities, things guaranteed to charm a gentleman."

"Guaranteed?" He raised his eyebrows. "I should like to see that list."

"At the very top of it was"—she made a face—"poetry reading."

"Poetry?" He winced.

"I confess, that was my first reaction too." She leaned forward, energy flooding into her countenance. "But in this case, I think she may be absolutely right. I also think she may be listening." With a glance toward the door, she stood up, opened the slender book she held.

"So much for doing what I wanted today," he grumbled.

" There was an old lady of Harrow,' " she read in a mock stentorian voice.

" '
Whose views were exceedingly narrow.

At the end of her paths

She built two birdbaths

For the different sexes of sparrow.' "

She watched his jaw drop, savoring his surprise, then with a mischievous grin launched straight into another.

" '
There was a young lady of Riga

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;

They returned from the ride

With the lady inside

And the smile on the face of the tiger.' "

"Limericks!" he declared, laughing and leaning back against the pile of cushions.

"Well, it
is
poetry. In the loosest sense, of course."

"Loose poetry." He wiped his eyes. "My favorite kind. Read on."

He watched her defiance of her mother's edicts on romance with fresh insight. Her reading, like her piano selections that first day, was nothing short of rebellion, a full-scale insurrection against her mother's overwhelming requirements.

He understood rebellion, the need to throw off another's suffocating demands and expectations and strike out on a path that was purely your own. He had been embroiled in it himself for years. But her sort of rebellion

—intelligent, civilized, a diabolical imitation of obedience—was so fresh and unexpected. So engagingly inventive. So deliriously playful. So very much like
her
.

As she laughed and her eyes sparkled, he slid the book from her hands, rose to read a few limericks himself, and took a stand with her.

"Limericks?" Rosalind gasped. Gunther had just brought word of what Gabrielle was reading to the earl behind closed doors. "But, I spoke with her.

I specifically told her to read him classical poetry or the sonnets of Shakespeare." With Genevieve at her heels, she hurried through the halls to Gabrielle's chambers and halted several paces from the door, inclining her head to listen intently. Lord Sandbourne's deep voice rumbled forth, but she couldn't make out his words at first. Gradually, his baritone voice raised and became all too understandable.

" '
There was a young lady of Kent

Who said that she knew what it meant

When men asked her to dine,

gave her liquor and wine…'"

Rosalind grayed and staggered, steadying herself on Genevieve's arm.

"Ye gods, it's
him
—he's reading her limericks," she whispered hoarsely, her disbelief turning to horror. "Beer hall tunes and now
limericks
—the man is a cultural wasteland!"

After several more recitations, Pierce paused to let Gabrielle catch her breath. He studied her glowing face and jewel-bright eyes.

"I've a weakness for limericks," he confessed. "I've committed to memory every one of that lot
Punch
published some years ago."

His gaze traveled up and along the sinuous line of her body as she leaned back against the pillows of the divan on her elbow, her legs drawn up to the side so that just her ankles dangled over the edge. Her unconsciously erotic posture and relaxed mood radiated a warmth he found irresistible.

He started toward her, his gaze fixed on those ankles, those shoes… his shoes…

A knock at the door startled them both. He motioned her to keep her seat and answered it himself. Gunther trundled a cart past him, depositing it in front of the divan with word that her mother had thought they might like some refreshment.

As the houseman opened the bottle of champagne, Pierce strolled about the room with his hands clasped behind him, using the opportunity to take slow, deep breaths. By the time Gunther withdrew, Pierce had managed to reclaim his control, if not his good humor, and found himself standing before her bookshelves, staring at the titles of the books.

"I must say, Gabrielle, you do have a rather wide-ranging taste in literature. From 'loose poetry' to classical treatises to the plays of the great masters." He came to pour two glasses of champagne and offered her one.

She declined, but then recalled her mother's vigilance and rose to pour it into the potted palm.

"If I had known they had such things in a girls' school, I'd have petitioned for entrance to one myself."

She smiled, settling once again on the divan. "Well, I wouldn't lay the blame entirely on Marchand." She looked toward the window, focusing on something far away with a look that was the essence of longing and regret.

"You miss it, don't you… your French life."

"Yes." She came back to the moment from wherever she had been.

"Ironic, really. I hated it at first." She took a deep breath. "Lessons, tutors, a bright and unconventional headmistress—my mother had seen to everything.
Almost
. I don't believe she had counted on all that learning producing a person with ideas of her own. She must have thought of me as some sort of dutiful sponge, soaking up whatever culture was put in my way and rendering it up upon command." She broke into a small, defiant smile. "And she hadn't counted on my complete lack of desire."

He studied the rebellious glint in her eye. She had convinced herself she had no passions… when all a person had to do was watch her play the piano, listen to her talk about the French women and their children in the foundling home, or experience her laughter to know that she was a very passionate woman. He smiled to himself. It was a mark of her sexual inexperience. And inexperience was an easy thing to remedy.

"About these lackluster 'juices' of yours… Whatever gave you the notion that you have no passion in you?"

"I should think that would be perfectly obvious," she said, sitting up primly and feeling heat blooming in her cheeks. "My aptitude and responses are dismal at best."

"They are not."

"Really, your lordship." She slid to the edge of the divan.

"
Really
, Gabrielle." He leaned back on the cushions and looked her over appreciatively. "I've had some experience in these matters, and in my judgment you show a good bit of promise. Though, I admit, you could do with a bit more in the way of enthusiasm."

"The question of my sensual capacities is moot," she declared hotly. "I'll have no need of them, now or later. I remind you, your lordship, I intend to become a wife."

"Indeed? Well I have known a few wives with considerable 'juices.' "

His laughter washed over her, drenching her with confusion. He found her notion of wifehood highly amusing. Insufferable male! He seemed to think his experience with illicit
amour
made him an authority on all relations between the sexes. She turned to her desk, trying to recoup and to think of something to keep him busy.

Her eyes fell on the books on the top shelf of her collection, then drifted down to light on a book stuck on the very bottom shelf. Smiling, she stooped to pluck it from the shelf, and when she would have stood up, she found him bending over her, watching her intently. Instead of pulling back to give her room to straighten, he remained where he was… so that she had to either press back against the bookcase or find herself nose to nose with him.