by Mary Balogh
He had not been looking forward to the day. He had attended a ball the evening before—one of the infernal events of the Season that he had felt obliged to show his face at. Before he had been able to escape to the card room and a relatively pleasant evening, he had met an old acquaintance of his father’s and the man’s hopeful daughter hanging on his arm.
He had danced with the daughter and had found himself somehow being drawn into inviting the girl to go driving with him the following afternoon. That was the trouble with females, he had always found. They could trap one into doing things one had had no intention of doing and could leave one wondering how it had all happened.
He did not enjoy driving out with young ladies. There was too much danger that their wiles would trap him into some other commitment.
Miss Majors had been clinging to his arm, confiding all sorts of secrets about bonnets and feathers and fans in her breathless voice. He had been aware that he had brought her out too early and had been sorry for the fact. If he had chosen the more fashionable hour, there would have been a press of other carriages to stop for and a whole arsenal of other people to converse with.
He had been concentrating on the conversation, not allowing his thoughts to move ahead to the evening. He had not wanted to be trapped into saying something impulsive. The girl had been dropping hints about her eagerness to visit Vauxhall Gardens one evening. He had carefully avoided taking the bait.
And then, glancing ahead to the trollop who was flirting with the two dandies on horseback, and annoyed that he was escorting a young lady who ought not to be exposed to such sights, he had become suddenly aware that the girl was Priss and that having spotted him she was walking on, trying to look as demure as a maid.
He had been white with fury.
“I don’t think that lady should be out alone, do you?” Miss Majors had whispered to him, drawing her head closer to his. “Papa would not allow me out alone. But then, perhaps she is not a lady. Do you think perhaps she is not, Sir Gerald? How shocking that would be.”
He had murmured something soothing and raged inwardly.
He was still in a fury when the evening came. He sat alone at home instead of going to White’s to eat, as he had planned. And he ended up eating far too little and drinking far too much. He was late setting out for his mistress’s house.
“Gerald,” she said, when he stalked into the parlor unannounced. She got to her feet and stretched out her hands to him. “How lovely it is to see you again.”
“Lovely indeed,” he said. “How long has it been now? Let’s see.” He set one finger to his chin and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “All of six hours, has it been?”
“Oh, that.” She flushed. “They were just being foolish, Gerald. They were not really harassing me.” She lowered her hands when it became obvious that he was not going to take them.
“I’m sorry I came along when I did,” he said. “I spoiled your fun, Priss.”
“Spoiled my …?” She clasped her hands in front of her. “I was not encouraging them.”
“Were you not?” he said. “When you were wearing such a deuced pretty dress and fetching bonnet and were walking all alone in the park? You might as well have had a placard about your neck, Priss, to announce that you were for hire.”
“Must a woman walking alone be assumed to be selling herself?” she said. “It was a lovely day, Gerald, and I wanted to feel the sunshine on my face and to enjoy the beauties of nature. I could not help it that there were gentlemen there who were no gentlemen. They were to blame, not I, though they did move away when they saw that I was not interested in their advances.”
“You have a maid, do you not?” he said. “Why did you not take her with you?”
“I am twenty-three years old,” she said. “I am able to look after myself. If I had had Miriam with me, I would have felt obliged to make conversation with her. Sometimes I would prefer to be alone with my own thoughts. Sometimes I would prefer to be free. Did I embarrass you?”
“You deuced well did,” he said. “What would I have done if they had been harassing you, Priss? Jumped down from the barouche and got in there with my fists flying?”
The usual color had deserted her face, he saw when he glared at her. Her jaw was tight.
“I would not have expected any help,” she said. “I could have looked after myself.”
“I suppose one more tumbling would have been neither here nor there with you,” he said.
He was immediately sorry. He was furiously angry with her, and with good reason, he believed, but he prided himself on being a gentleman. He thought she was going to slap him and made no move to defend himself. Instead she turned sharply away and hurried from the room—not into their bedchamber.
He sat down on one of the chairs and lowered his head into his hands. Devil take it, but he had never been so angry in his life. And all the forces of right were on his side. But it was just like a woman to turn the tables on him and make him seem the guilty party.
Seem! What he had said to her was vulgar, to say the least. It had also been hurtful. He had meant to hurt her.
He clenched his fist and banged it on the arm of the chair as he got to his feet. The devil! He had known from the start that he was doing the wrong thing. He should never have set her—or anyone else—up as his mistress. He might have known that his life would become hopelessly tangled as soon as he took on responsibility for a female. He should have left her where she was and let Kit worry about her. Kit would not stand for her girls roaming out at will, he had heard.
He had one foot on the lowest stair before stopping to think. He had told her that the house was hers. She had never invited him upstairs.
Devil take it. Hell and damnation!
“Prendergast!” he roared.
The manservant appeared from the nether regions of the house.
“Go upstairs,” Sir Gerald said, “or send one of the maids upstairs to ask Prissy to wait on me in the parlor at her convenience.”
“Yes, sir,” the manservant said, turning back to the servants’ room. “I’ll send Miriam, sir.”
Miriam was the personal maid Priss had hired herself.
He stalked back and forth in the parlor for longer than half an hour before his request was honored. She stepped inside the door and stood quietly there, looking steadily at him. He stopped his pacing.
“Devil take it, Priss,” he said, “stop looking at me like that. What was I supposed to do? Ask you if you had enjoyed your walk in the park?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is that what you are waiting to hear? I’m sorry. I mean it, too. But I’m not sorry I ripped up at you, and I’ll do it again, too, if I ever see you with so much as one toe outside the door again and no chaperone in sight. Understood?”
There was a quirk of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
“Gerald,” she said, “I am your mistress. I worked at Miss Blythe’s for four months. I am no tender bloom to be protected from the evils of the world.”
“You are my mistress,” he said. “With the emphasis on the my, Priss. And I will not have my mistress wandering about in the park or anywhere else alone, looking and behaving like a tart.”
“A tart,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Perhaps that is just what I am, Gerald.”
“I employ you for my pleasure,” he said. “You are mine, Priss. I told you I did not wish to share you. And that includes having you ogled by the likes of those dandies in the park. You want to walk in the park? I’ll take you there. But I’ll not allow you to go there alone. And I’ll have your promise on that, if you please.”
She half smiled.
“Now!” he said. “And you will look me in the eye when you give it, too. And there will be dire consequences if I catch you at it again.”
“What?” she asked, still with that half smile.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If you ever get me that angry again, Priss, I wouldn’t be s
urprised, if I were you, to find yourself bent over my knee being thoroughly walloped.”
“I promise,” she said quietly.
“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked, frowning.
She flushed. “You don’t, Gerald,” she said. “But I have always done what will please you, have I not? I will do this, too. I promise.”
“I could have wrung your neck,” he said. “And if I had not had that chit with me, I probably would have done it, too.”
“Then I must be thankful that you had her with you,” she said.
He was still frowning at her. “It has been a long week,” he said.
“Yes.”
His eyes roamed over her. “You are wearing that pink gown,” he said. “Because I said I liked it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You thought to distract me from giving you a blistering scold?” he said.
She smiled. “I did not know that you would be angry with me,” she said.
“Devil take it, Priss,” he said, “how did you think I would feel?”
“Don’t get angry again,” she said.
He ran one hand through his hair and looked at her in exasperation.
“Let me give you pleasure,” she said, taking a few steps toward him.
That smile. That sweet voice. He felt instant desire. The witch!
“I can’t stay for long,” he said, setting one hand at the small of her back and guiding her toward the bedchamber. “I promised a few fellows I would look in at White’s and make up a table of cards.”
“It will be as you wish,” she said, closing the bedchamber door behind them. “I am here for your pleasure, Gerald.”
She turned her back on him and he raised his hands to tackle the buttons at the back of her gown.
God, but he had missed her. He wanted her. He slipped his hands through the gaping opening at her back and slid them around her sides and forward to cup her naked breasts before stepping back in order to dispense with his own clothing.
He would stay for an hour, he decided.
IT WAS A lovely day again, and Priscilla had looked several times from the window and sighed. She had taken Miriam with her that morning for a short walk, but the girl had complained almost every step of the way about her bunions. Priscilla had not thought to ask when she interviewed her new maid whether or not she had bunions.
But there was no point in fretting. Her promise had been given the evening before, and she knew she must not set even one toe outside the door. She smiled to herself.
It had not been funny at the time, of course, particularly when Gerald had made that nasty remark about her being tumbled one more time. She was not normally of a volatile temper, but she had wanted for one horrified moment to smack his head right off his shoulders.
Their evening together had never quite resumed its normal course. When they had retired to bed, he had taken her far more quickly and fiercely than usual and had not fallen immediately asleep, but had rolled to her side and lain staring up at the canopy above their heads.
Only one thing had been as usual. He had spoken of leaving, of his obligation to join friends at White’s. And yet he had stayed to make love to her in a far more characteristic manner and to sleep until there was a suggestion of dawn in the sky.
Priscilla returned her attention to Robinson Crusoe when she found herself wondering yet again about the young lady who had been in the barouche with him the afternoon before. He had referred to her as a chit. Would he have called a fiancée or someone of whom he was fond a chit? She shook her head and began reading.
But no sooner had she become absorbed in the story than there was a knock on the door of her workroom and Miriam was informing her that Sir Gerald Stapleton was awaiting her in the parlor downstairs.
Priscilla jumped to her feet, closed her book, and hurried to the mirror in her bedchamber. She was not expecting him. He had not said that he would come. She was not dressed for him. She hurried downstairs, anyway.
“Gerald,” she said, moving quickly into the parlor when Mr. Prendergast had opened the door for her, “I am so sorry I was not here to receive you. What a pleasant surprise.”
He took her outstretched hands and squeezed them. “I came to see if there were any toes peeping over the doorstep,” he said.
She laughed. “Were you really checking up on me?” she asked. “You do not trust me to keep to my word, Gerald?”
“I told you that if you wanted to walk in the park I would take you,” he said. “It is a lovely day again. I have come to take you to Kew.”
“To Kew Gardens?” she said, her eyes widening. “You are going to take me there, Gerald?”
“That is the general idea,” he said. “You had better run and fetch your bonnet. The straw one you were wearing yesterday, if you will.”
She smiled before turning away in order to run up the stairs two at a time while Mr. Prendergast in the hallway below looked disapprovingly after her. Her father had always called her as pretty as a picture in that bonnet.
She was going to Kew. He was taking her to Kew, she told her smiling reflection in the mirror as she tied the strings of her bonnet at a jaunty angle to one side of her chin.
“To the botanical gardens?” she asked him when they were bowling along in his curricle.
“You said you like to see nature,” he said. “I am going to show you nature, Priss.”
“I have never been,” she said. “In fact, I have not been to many places in London at all. I went straight to Miss Blythe’s when I came here.”
He looked at her sidelong and said nothing. And she felt herself flush. She had never told him or any other man in London anything at all about herself. She did not want to do so. She was content to be Prissy to those men, even to Gerald. If she said nothing to anyone, she could more carefully guard Priscilla Wentworth in the privacy of her own heart. She could the more surely preserve her identity.
“There is a pagoda there?” she said. “And temples?”
“Anything you care to see,” he said. “It is a veritable pleasure gardens, Priss.”
“But the botanical gardens,” she said, “are what I wish to see the most.”
It was a magical afternoon. He took her on his arm and they strolled for what seemed to be hours, seeing all that was to be seen. She was enchanted, though she did criticize the buildings.
“The pagoda looks so out of place in an English landscape,” she said. “Don’t you think so, Gerald? I suppose that in a Chinese setting it would look quite splendid. But such things cannot be easily transplanted.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I always thought it rather pretty.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, flashing him a smile. “It is pretty, Gerald. But a little out of place, nevertheless. And the temples are perhaps a little pretentious.” She looked at him, amused. “But very picturesque, I must admit.”
“Yes,” he said. “I have always thought so.”
Sir Gerald Stapleton, Priscilla thought in some amusement, was not a man of discriminating taste. But it did not matter. She loved him anyway. Oh, she loved him very dearly.
There was only one brief incident to spoil the magic for a moment. Another group of strollers hailed Gerald and he walked over to speak with them after hesitating for a moment, leaving her to stand on the lawn they had been crossing. He rejoined her after no longer than a minute, and Priscilla looked away from the curious glances of the two ladies and the amused one of one of the gentlemen.
It was a reminder to her that indulging in her fantasy was not at all appropriate to the occasion. She was not visiting Kew Gardens with her husband. She was his mistress and therefore to be kept quite apart from his more respectable acquaintances.
It was not something to become upset over. She was not upset. She would not allow the incident to spoil her afternoon. She had long before reconciled her mind to what she had been forced to become.
“They wanted to confirm that I would be at Lord Hervey’s for
dinner and with his theater party tonight,” he said. “I had almost forgotten about it. I had better get you home, Priss. Have you seen enough?”
“Yes, I have,” she said, though in reality she could have walked for hours more, her hand on his arm. “It was very kind of you to bring me, Gerald. I am grateful.”
“You need not be,” he said. “You are my mistress, Priss. It is only right that I take you about when I am able.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She was able to return to her book that evening and concentrate on the story. It had been a lovely afternoon. He had returned her to the house and kissed her hand on the doorstep before vaulting back into the seat of his curricle and driving off while she raised a hand in farewell and Mr. Prendergast stood behind her, holding the door open as if determined to prevent her escape.
“I shan’t see you for a few days, Priss,” Gerald had said before leaving her. “I have got my name included in a deuced house party Majors has organized out in the country for his daughter’s birthday. Friday to Monday. One of these long weekend affairs. I’ll see you when I get back.”
“Have a lovely time, Gerald,” she had said, giving him her warm smile. “I am sure you will enjoy yourself.”
He had pulled a face.
She was glad he had not wanted to go. A long weekend. Friday to Monday, and this was Thursday. That meant that she could not expect him before Tuesday. Almost a week—again.
But it would not matter, she thought. She could live upstairs for almost a week. She could be Priscilla Wentworth for almost a week.
How she would love to go to the theater, she thought with a sigh as she opened her book. Just once. She would not be greedy about it. Just once when a Shakespeare play was being performed. As You Like It, perhaps, or The Merchant of Venice.
Just once. With Gerald.
She immersed herself in the adventures of Robinson Crusoe.
SIR GERALD ARRIVED BACK IN LONDON RATHER late on the Monday evening. He was in a thoroughly bad mood. He made his way immediately to White’s, where he proceeded very deliberately to get drunk.
For some reason that he could in no way fathom, Majors had conceived the notion that his daughter would do very well as the future Lady Stapleton. And the daughter appeared to have fallen in quite eagerly with the plan.