The Perfect Mistress (27 page)

Sitting up, she realized they were stopped at the side of the narrow lane, within sight of the London Road. Knowing traffic was generally brisk on that road, Jack had stopped to warn Pierce and to offer to put the top up.

The sense of why he had thought it prudent to stop brought a belated flush to Gabrielle's face.

Moments later, she sat across the carriage from Pierce, smoothing her skirts and repinning her hat, which had been knocked off during their kiss.

She knew she should feel guilty, but somehow she didn't. His kiss had restored some balance, filled some void within her. It was the only good thing that had happened to her all day. It felt honorable and decent and right somehow, and it took a while for her to understand why. In reaching for her just now, in embracing her through her pain and frustration and tears, he had intended his kiss for comfort as much as passion. It meant he saw her as a person… not just a desirable "trinket."

But as the spell of his kiss gradually wore off, she was left with the painful awareness that nothing had really changed. She had eliminated all of her marital prospects, still needed a husband, and still had no future. She glanced at Pierce. Her feelings for him were growing ever more powerful and compelling. And she hadn't the slightest notion of how to combat them, except to find another man—a
husband
—and let marriage put her dangerous passion for him safely beyond her reach.

As they pulled onto the London Road, Pierce watched her fixing her hat and reclaiming her control, now as calm and proper as she had been improper and out of control minutes before. In spite of himself, he began mentally searching through his acquaintances, trying to think of a man who might make a reasonable match for her. He thought of the lords, MPs, bank managers, secretaries and under secretaries in government bureaus, industrialists, and out-and-out merchants that he knew. And he couldn't think of one man, married or single, whom he believed could equal, appreciate, or even understand her.

Then he realized there was
one
.

But there was no man less suited for marriage or less likely to marry her.

He wrestled with both his higher and lower impulses, and the contest was decided by his newly resurrected conscience. As much as he wanted her, he would have to give her up to what
she
wanted: a respectable and passionless future. He would have to help her find a pleasant, safe, tolerably dull husband… a man who would understand how wonderfully unique she was and wouldn't try to control her too much.

Praying that such conscience-ridden thinking was not a harbinger of more soul-searching and moralizing and ways-mending to come, he vowed to keep his desires to himself and, for once,
be
the gentleman he usually just pretended to be.

When they arrived at her home, she slid to the edge of the seat, obviously expecting him to dismount first. Instead, he took her by the hand and made her look at him. The traces of sadness in her eyes caused a peculiar fullness in his chest.

"I'll help you," he said quietly.

"What?" she said, feeling her heart beginning to skip beats at the sincerity she glimpsed in his handsome face.

"I'll help you find a husband—a proper husband. Someone with lots of money and little enough sense to leave you to your own devices. I'll introduce you."

"You will?" She felt as if a dark husk had just slid from her heart, and she forced a smile, hoping he wouldn't notice the moisture rising in her eyes.

"What a rotten thing to do to me, Pierce St. James, to help me and make me beholden to you for the rest of my natural life."

"Oh, I expect to be paid," he said, trying not to see her tears. "When you're settled, you'll have to write me a limerick, once in a while," he said, his voice strangely thick. "And, of course, you can name your firstborn after me."

She somehow managed to get out of the carriage and make it up the steps and inside the house. When the doors closed behind her, she leaned back against them and let the tears come.

12

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A
message from Colonel Tottenham was waiting for Pierce when he arrived home that evening: Gladstone was likely to "walk" that night. Pierce crumpled the paper and ran his hands over his face. It meant another miserable night in a damp carriage—following, watching, waiting—when there were a thousand things he'd rather be doing.

He trailed Gladstone from a dinner at his friend Lord Rosebery's, to his official residence in Downing Street, and then waited for the old man to emerge once again and head for the Haymarket or the East End. But Gladstone didn't leave his house again that night. Sometime after midnight, well after the lights in the household had been extinguished, Pierce ended his vigil and went home, seething about the faulty intelligence he had received.

Thus, the next morning, when word arrived at his house that Gladstone intended to go out again that night, he was vaguely annoyed. The fact that Tottenham wasn't able to tell him where Gladstone was going only added to his deepening mood. He had other things on his mind.

He had promised Gabrielle introductions. The fact that he had agreed to help her snare one of his fellow bachelors into marriage was proof of her detrimental effects on him. Clearly, the sooner he got her safely married off, the better. He gave some thought to what might be a proper and dignified venue for such introductions and sent word to her that they would attend the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta
Iolanthe
at the Savoy that night.

Thus, he stood, that evening, in the entry of Maison LeCoeur, watching with a surge of pleasure as Gabrielle floated down the steps in a haze of midnight blue silk chiffon. For the first time since he had known her, she was wearing a fashionable, lower neckline and her hair was swept up in a sophisticated style. Her movements were sure and womanly, and her eyes were bright with the womanly pleasure of knowing she looked her best. She was nothing short of breathtaking.

"I shall have to call a dozen men out before this evening is over," he grumbled good-naturedly as he pressed a kiss on her hair, for her mother's benefit, and tried not to inhale her perfume. Her quiet laugh set his fingertips tingling.

But the minute they stepped into the lobby of the Savoy Theater, Pierce revised his estimate of a dozen duels—upward. It seemed that every man they passed halted in the middle of his conversation and turned to watch her walk by. Pierce saw them staring at her figure and her neckline and, knowing his reaction to them, now wished that she were wearing something much more concealing. A wave of whispers and murmurs spread through the assemblage like ripples through a pond, and before long they were surrounded by a number of handsome young drakes in full evening dress, all greeting Pierce like an old friend and seeking an introduction to his stunning companion.

With each request for an introduction, he felt more pressed and irritable, and he finally excused them both and ushered her into their box to escape.

As the overture began and the curtains rose, he was glad for the darkened theater; it hid the grimness of his mood.

At intermission, when they emerged and descended onto the mezzanine, where champagne was being served to the more affluent patrons, they were again beset by an even larger group of gentlemen, headed by two familiar faces. Lord Arundale and Lord Shively had seen them in their box and headed for them as soon as the last note of the first half sounded.

Gabrielle stayed close by Pierce's side and returned their greeting, while declining to respond to their extravagant praise. She did her best to deflect their interest, but her modesty only seemed to inflame their desire to impress her through flattery. Shively tried to engage her eyes directly, and Arundale contrived to stand beside her and managed to run his hand up the curve of her back before she could pull away. His only response to her cool, censuring look was the glitter of unrepentant pleasure in his eyes.

As a predominantly male crowd enlarged around them, Gabrielle was perilously close to becoming the sensation of the evening. Gowned ambiguously between "rosebud" and full flower, she was too beautiful to be entirely pure, too modest to be anything else. She was a tantalizing mystery: an unknown "cousin" that the rakish Lord Sandbourne seemed to actually treat as a cousin. His protective stance and respectful attendance on her, a major departure from his usual behavior, gave credence to the possibility of kinship.

News of the earl's lovely cousin sifted down through the less fashionable and more sedate layers of theatergoers, as well. Among that group was one whose interest in Lord Sandbourne's new companion had a rather different motive.

As he descended from his borrowed box to the mezzanine, William Gladstone caught sight of the libertine lord who had become one of the thorns in his political side in the last three years. His dark eyes slid to the earl's lovely companion, a supposed "cousin." The "introducing houses" and brothels of London were filled with women who began their descent into degradation as a "pretty cousin."

Poor thing, he thought to himself, caught in the jaded earl's clutches. If only she knew the pain and disgrace that lay in store for her with that opportunistic beast.

Drawn by the irresistible combination of beauty and the hint of illicit passion, the prime minister edged through the crowd to get a closer look. As the young woman smiled warily, enduring the press of people demanding introductions, something in her voice and the shape of her face seemed hauntingly familiar to him. Light hair… square face… memorable blue eyes.

He watched for a while, trying to remember where he had seen them. Then she said something about "my mother," and his eyes lighted with surprise and recognition. He knew that voice, that face, those eyes. He knew where their owner had come from, and he knew the trouble she was in. He turned and made his way from the crowd, his brow knitted with concern.

The attention Gabrielle attracted gradually overwhelmed her. The avid smiles and hungry stares, the press and heat of that throng of male admirers grew steadily bolder and more oppressive. When she drew back against Pierce and looked up at him, there were traces of panic in her eyes. She whispered that she needed to find the ladies' retiring room, and Pierce obliged by making a path through the crowd with his sizable frame, then ushering her down the hallway toward the ladies' room. He seemed relieved when she proposed that she remain there until the opera resumed.

With her nerves on edge, Gabrielle endured the stares and chilled silences of the other women and thought of the crush of men outside. The attention thrust upon her was more frightening that flattering. Those men with their heated stares and suggestive smiles… she shivered, just recalling them.

Somewhere, she told herself, there had to be a man willing to marry her despite her illegitimate birth and extravagant education. But tonight, as she searched each face and form that loomed up before her, hoping one would strike some spark of recognition in her that would say he might be the right one, her hopes had begun to sink.

One was too boy-faced, another too visibly arrogant, another spit when he spoke, another's fashionable lisp set her teeth on edge. The next was too sly, and the one after that too jaded… or too lusty, or too pretentious, or too eager. A lord, a knight, an MP, and a banker… After a while their names and faces began to run together. Then she had looked up at Pierce's powerful, reassuring form and realized why they all seemed so lacking. In her mind, she was comparing their qualities to Pierce's wit and consummate self-assurance, to his honesty and compassion. And she realized, with a sinking feeling, that Pierce's formidable shadow would probably cast a pall over her future husband as well—no matter how good or decent or honorable he proved to be.

When the ladies' room was empty and sufficient time had passed for the performance to start, she opened the door and peered outside. The hallway seemed deserted. Taking a deep breath, she stepped out into the corridor and started for the main mezzanine and the steps to the boxes.

As she passed the cloakroom, someone grabbed her arm and pulled her into the dimly lit room, then thrust her back amongst the cloaks and wraps.

She would have screamed, but a hand clamped over her mouth. As she focused on her captor, with her heart pounding, she found herself staring into a familiar pair of dark eyes set in a craggy face and beneath a familiar cap of wiry white hair.

"Mr. Gladstone," she whispered as he removed his hand.

"You
are
the one," the old man said, frowning. "I knew it—I've a memory for faces."

She was too stunned to speak again. Her mind crowded with conflicting memories and feelings; Pierce's charges against him, Gladstone's righteous zeal, her unfulfilled bargain with Pierce to gain information about him, fear of discovery…

"You were telling the truth, then. And Sandbourne was the nobleman your mother insisted you take to your bed. If I had known his identity—"

"No, no—he wasn't the one my mother pressed me to take." Her voice sounded tight and desperate in her own ears.

"Then she lost no time in finding you a worse one. The man is nothing short of contemptible—makes no secret of his sordid affairs and makes no apologies to the poor women he seduces and ruins. Just to be in his company is to suffer a blow to a woman's reputation." He stepped back to look her over, then shook his head. "I cannot bear to think of what he has done to you—"