The Perfect Mistress (38 page)

"I am here because I learned that your bounder of a son abandoned my daughter after only one night," Rosalind charged, stepping from behind Gabrielle. "I came to be certain she is all right and to comfort her."

"To sponge off the rich relations, you mean," Beatrice declared shortly, folding her arms.

"It can scarcely be called 'sponging' when I have brought provisions and staff, not to mention some of Gabrielle's dower goods with me." She glanced around the center hall with a scathingly critical eye. "From the looks of things, she will need all of what I have brought her and more to make this place habitable."

Beatrice reacted as if slapped. "It is clear that one must be blunt with a creature of your ilk," she declared, advancing on Rosalind, who held her ground with a haughty look. "It is unthinkable that a woman of your

'profession' would inflict herself upon a decent and respectable house. By coming here you embarrass your daughter and call attention to her distasteful origins."

"There is nothing
distasteful
about Gabrielle's origins," Rosalind declared, her nostrils flaring and her chin lowering. "She was born of a great love and a soul-searing passion."

"I will not stand for such talk in my house!" Beatrice was suddenly on her toes, her fists clenched, her ample bosom puffed with outrage.

"What?
Passion?
It's probably the first time the word has been uttered in this house in a generation!"

"Please!" Gabrielle lurched between them, sending the dueling mothers each back a step. "Mother, this is not your house!" Then she turned to her mother-in-law and straightened to her full height. "It is unfortunate, Lady Beatrice, that my mother's presence offends you. But she has come a very long way, and it would be positively un-Christian to turn her out."

Beatrice settled back on her heels, struggling with her outrage at being spoken to in such a fashion, in her own house, not to mention being reminded of her Christian duty by someone with such a flagrantly

"distasteful" background. Giving Gabrielle a narrow glare, she retreated in a huff to the unsullied reaches of the west wing.

Gabrielle's knees wobbled at the realization that she had just defied her mother-in-law. Somehow she knew she was going to pay for it.

The next moment, Rosalind was at the door, beckoning to a number of familiar faces—Gunther, Aberdeen the cook, Colette, Rosalind's lady's maid, and Lucia, the head parlor maid who functioned as Rosalind's housekeeper.

Dear heaven, Gabrielle thought miserably, she couldn't escape her past even in exile in the netherlands of Sussex.

Rosalind had brought two carriages, containing herself and part of her household staff, and a wagon, bearing a generous stockpile of provisions; she had intended to be prepared for whatever disgraceful circumstance she found Gabrielle in. Among the provisions were two trunks of fine linen, barrels of hand-painted china, silver flatware, and several very fine paintings, intended as a part of Gabrielle's "dowry." Rosalind had also arranged for the transport of Gabrielle's grand piano, which wouldn't arrive for another day, due to the care with which the instrument had to be transported.

It took only an hour or two to settle everyone into sleeping quarters, but it was clear that it would take—as Onslow so succinctly put it—"until hell freezes over" for Rosalind and her staff to settle into anything more than that at Thorndike. Gabrielle introduced Gunther to old Onslow, Aberdeen to Millie the cook, and Lucia to old Frieda. Each of Rosalind's staff was rebuffed by his or her Thorndike counterpart… but refused to be deterred.

By evening, each had invoked Gabrielle's name to set himself or herself up with duties paralleling those of the Thorndike staff.

By dinner, tensions were cresting in the house. Nowhere was that more evident than in the kitchens, where two cooks and two sets of dishes were separated by the narrowest of margins, and in the dining room, where the two mothers were separated by the length of a twenty-foot table.

When the food was served—plain cottage pie on the St. James end, braised beef tips in Madeira on the LeCoeur end—Gabrielle found herself again caught squarely between two mothers and two menus, representing two entirely separate and irreconcilable worlds. Seated halfway between, Gabrielle was served by both Gunther and Onslow, but she couldn't seem to swallow a bite of either cuisine.

"Thank God, I thought to bring you some decent wine and brandy. This place is as dry as a bone," Rosalind remarked, lifting her glass to Gabrielle.

"Better bone dry than half embalmed," Beatrice declared with a disdainful sniff. "Spirits slow the mind and loosen the virtue. They should be outlawed for women under forty."

"Under forty?" Rosalind sat forward with a recklessly defiant smile. "By that standard it would be another
ten years
before I could touch a drop of brandy."

Beatrice's eyes narrowed. "Is that so? That does surprise me… since I've heard that you were started in your dubious 'trade' by none other than Admiral Lord Nelson, who we all know died in 1805."

"Mother, please!" Gabrielle's entreaty stopped Rosalind's hot response before it was uttered. Rosalind gave a "
tsk"
of annoyance and shifted irritably in her chair. But she couldn't stay silent long.

"You're not eating, Gabrielle," she said. "And poor Aberdeen has come so far and worked so hard to make you something tasty."

"She shows considerable sense," Beatrice put in. "Wine, red meats, and rich foods are not good for a young girl."

"She is not a young girl anymore," Rosalind said archly. "Your son saw to that."

"Well—I never!" Beatrice's hands came down on the table with a smack.

"Come now, I'm certain you must have… at least
once!
"

"I will not be spoken to in such a manner"—Beatrice was on her feet in a flash—"in my own house… by a common
tart!
"

"
Former
tart!" Rosalind pushed up from her chair with her head held high.

"I am no longer in that profession."

For a moment there was an utter and awful silence in the great dining room. Gabrielle's horror at the outbreak of open hostility was overcome by her shock at her mother's bold announcement. "Mother—what are you saying?"

"I meant to tell you in a different way, my dear." Rosalind steadied herself against the table and lifted her head to a defensive angle. "I've left the duke.

Forever."

For a moment, Gabrielle just stared at her, unblinking, scarcely able to fathom what she was hearing; Her mother and the duke… separated?

"Why?"

Rosalind came down the side of the table opposite her, swaying, her eyes alight with internal fires. "Because he's a despicable swine. The lowest and meanest kind of a hypocrite. He was incensed that I arranged a future for you without his permission… accused me of trying to sell you into harlotry.

I tried to tell him you were in love with Pierce and he was in love with you, and that I had secured your future as best I could. He was outraged—

sputtered and blustered about his
daughter
, as if you were some bit of property upon which another man had dared poach. Him and his johnny-come-lately fatherhood… His real concern was his own precious name and family reputation. The vaunted 'House of Carlisle.' Then to placate his precious male notions of 'honor' and 'decency,' he proceeded to sell you into something even worse than harlotry—a forced and loveless marriage."

She leaned over the table, and her voice lowered to a passionate rasp. "Do you know… he forbade me to attend your wedding? Apparently I am an embarrassment to him. The wretch! To think of all the years I gave him…

all the love and care and passion… all the times he said it didn't matter what society said."

Hurt and anger boiled over into scalding hot tears. "What kind of love can it be if a man is ashamed to acknowledge the woman he beds as the mother of his child?" As the tears burned streaks down her face, she whirled and made straight for Gunther, who stood nearby with a newly opened bottle of claret. Snatching the bottle from his hands, she sailed out the doors.

Gabrielle was stunned. The one constant in her life had been the soaring love and searing passion of her mother and her father. She had felt rejected by it, and had, in turn, rejected it as an example and a guide. But she had never once doubted it.

Poor Rosalind… learning after so many years that the great love that had dictated and circumscribed her life was not what she had always believed.

Oddly enough, Gabrielle felt no vindication, no satisfaction that Rosalind was at last learning the price she had paid for her grand passion. Gabrielle felt only sadness and a pang of sympathy. She, too, had paid the price of passion.

Rousing to the feel of Beatrice's gaze on her, she excused herself to her rooms.

Beatrice watched Gabrielle leave and, in some shock, sank back into her chair at the table. After a time, she looked up at Gunther and beckoned to him.

"Is there any more of that claret?" she mumbled. "I believe I could use a taste of it, myself."

17

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I
n the world of the London clubs, word traveled quickly of the earl of Sandbourne's matrimonial demise. Whenever he appeared at Brooks's, the Carlton, or the Saville, where he held memberships, he was greeted by stiff congratulations, awkward silences, and curious stares on the part of his fellow members. More than once he turned unexpectedly and saw a whispered conversation stop and heads jerk guiltily. Finally, in the bar of the Saville, liquor loosened the tongue and the discretion of Edward Dimsdell, Lord Catton, enough for him to offer condolences—giving Pierce a glimpse of the rumors that swirled, unseen, around him.

He had been brought to the altar by force. The gossips had somehow gotten wind of that devastating fact and had either ferreted out or astutely guessed that it was a seduction gone awry. The details, however, varied from version to version. According to some gossips, he was guilty of seducing his beautiful lady cousin; according to others, he had gotten snared by his own contriving mistress; and still others spread a tantalizing tale of his being caught with the bastard daughter of the duke of Carlisle… the love child born of his longtime mistress.

By its very nature, gossip selected out the more dramatic, and before long the most widespread and credited account was the most sensational one.

The tale of a seduction, an angry duke, and of the prime minister's involvement in forcing Sandbourne to the altar made juicy telling in clubland and beyond. Just how far beyond, Pierce was appalled to learn when he responded that same evening to a summons from Colonel Tottenham.

It was after twelve when he arrived at Le Ciel and was shown up the stairs to a room just across the hall from the one where he had attempted to seduce Gabrielle that first night. The red velvet decor was disturbingly familiar, so much so that he had difficulty, at first, concentrating on the introductions Tottenham was making. Two of the three men were well-known Conservative members of parliament, Cornelius Harrison and William Tyburn, and the third turned out to be none other than Everett Sewell, the private secretary of Benjamin Disraeli, the former prime minister and lifelong enemy of William Gladstone. And suddenly Pierce knew the identity of the highly placed "someone" who had recruited him for the task of gathering evidence on Gladstone.

"We were most aggrieved to hear of your situation, Sandbourne,"

Tottenham said gravely, pouring him a whisky and waving him into a chair at the table.

"My
situation?
" Pierce's gut tightened as he settled onto that seat, feeling their eyes focused on him.

"A damnable shame." Harrison glanced at the others. "We never would have guessed the old man might get wind of our plans and go on the attack."

"You have my personal guarantee, Sandbourne," Tottenham said, rocking forward, "that it wasn't leaked by any of my people. I have no notion how the old cod heard of your activities and managed to target you."

"Never meant to make you a sacrificial lamb, old man." Tyburn, a bluff old knight from Cobham-on-Tyne shook his head. "Sorry about the rub you are in."

"And dragging Carlisle into it… unforgivable. The old reprobate will stop at nothing." Sewell, Disraeli's secretary, templed his fingers and looked down his nose.

Pierce looked from face to face, reading in their comments and their eyes that they knew the truth of the "rub" he was in and of Gladstone's involvement in bringing it about. Of course they would know, he told himself, containing his defensive anger; they were men whose stock-in-trade was information. Still, it shocked him to hear his own conjectures about Gladstone's motives stated by others. Had the old man truly known that he was trying to collect evidence? Or had Pierce simply been the victim of the old man's hypocritical crusade against other men's vices?

"Sadly, what is done is done." Tottenham looked to the others, gathering consensus for his next pronouncement. "And, of course, this means we shall have to find another way to expose Gladstone's indiscretions." He saw Pierce's surprise and winced. "Sorry, old man. You're useless to us now.