by Mary Balogh
It had felt very good. Sometimes it was good to give in to such illusions.
Provided one remembered soon enough that it was illusion and not reality. Provided one remembered that she was being paid very well to create just such an illusion. Provided one recalled that even at Kit’s whorehouse that very first time, when she had never set eyes on him before, she had smiled at him as if he were the only man in the world and pleasured him as if he were the only man ever to have possessed her.
Provided one remembered that she was a woman. Just as his mother had been. And just as Helena had been.
Sometimes he wished that he had not brought her from London with him at all. And often he wished that he had left her in her own bedchamber, to be used only occasionally, when his body cried out for her.
THEY HAD BEEN AT BROOKHURST FOR ALMOST A month when the Earl of Severn arrived unannounced one afternoon.
“My mother and Connie have taken themselves off to spend a month or so with Pru and Theo and the children,” he said, shaking his friend heartily by the hand. “I excused myself from accompanying them and came here on the chance that you would be in residence, Ger. You are going to entertain me for a couple of weeks.” He grinned.
“I would have invited you,” Sir Gerald said, “if I had thought you were going anywhere while still in mourning, Miles.”
Priscilla was slipping quietly from the room. But the earl’s voice stopped her when she had her hand on the doorknob.
“Prissy?” he said. “Did Gerald bring you down here, too?” He was walking toward her, his hand outstretched, she saw when she turned to look at him. “The country air must agree with you. You are looking remarkably pretty.”
She looked at his hand, swallowed, and placed her own in it. “Thank you, my lord,” she said, and would have continued on her way.
“You are not leaving on my account, are you?” he asked. “You must not do so. Ger, command your lady to stay, if you please. And where did you leave your manners this morning? My tongue is hanging out for a cup of tea.”
“Nothing stronger?” Sir Gerald said. “Tea, Miles?”
“Tea in the presence of a lady,” the earl said with a grin.
“Sit down, Priss,” Sir Gerald said.
Lord Severn waited for her to sit before taking a chair himself.
She sat quietly with her hands folded in her lap while the two friends exchanged news and banter. And she gradually relaxed. He had made her feel like a lady again, the earl, just as he had when he had called on her in London with Gerald.
And he really was the most handsome man she had ever seen, she thought dispassionately. Doubtless every second female who looked at him fell hopelessly in love with him, and yet he seemed not to be a conceited man. She of course was not one of those females. There was no corner of her heart left to lose.
“Prissy,” Lord Severn said, turning to smile at her, “we are being very ill-mannered talking of people you do not know. Connie is my younger sister, Pru my elder. Pru has two children already and is swearing to have five more before she settles into a dignified middle age. I am not at all sure I will have the energy to play uncle to seven energetic youngsters.”
“But doubtless some of them will have grown to a quieter stage of maturity by the time all seven of them are out of the cradle, my lord,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, “the voice of sense. Is she always so grave and so wise, Ger?”
Sir Gerald smiled at her.
“Gerald,” she said that night when she was undressing for bed, “I feel very embarrassed. I ought not to be here when the Earl of Severn is visiting you, but I do not know where I should go. Do you wish me to return to London?”
He frowned at her. “This is my home,” he said, “and I have chosen to bring you here, Priss. Anyone who does not like it can stay away or take himself off as soon as he knows the truth of the matter. But you don’t have to worry about Miles. He likes you.”
“Does he?” she said. Certainly the earl had impeccably good manners. Whether or not he liked her she did not know. And even if he did, she supposed that he might find it distasteful to be staying at a home where the owner’s mistress was in residence.
“I am wearing one of these infernal shirts again,” Sir Gerald said irritably, “and I have dismissed my valet for the night. Come and open the buttons for me, Priss, will you?”
She crossed the room to him.
“There,” she said a few moments later. “You just have to slip them through the buttonholes, Gerald, instead of tearing at them.”
“That’s easy enough for you to say,” he said, smiling ruefully at her, “when you can manage to sew all those delicate stitches into your cloth. My fingers won’t always do what I tell them to do.”
“Yes, they will,” she said. “On a keyboard they are faultless, Gerald. I will not hear you constantly belittling yourself.”
He was laughing when she looked up into his face.
“Now I know how to draw a compliment from you,” he said, pulling his shirt free of his waistband. “You sounded quite cross then, Priss.”
“I was cross, too,” she said, laughing back at him. “You are a very special person, Gerald, and do not even realize it.”
“We had better go to bed,” he said, “before my head swells too large to balance on my shoulders.”
For a few days she succeeded in keeping out of the earl’s way whenever Gerald was not with her. Yet when the three of them were together, he would invariably draw her into the conversation.
She was playing the pianoforte in the drawing room one morning when Gerald had ridden out on business as usual and Lord Severn had gone into the village. She had finally given in to the temptation to play a week or more before, having sat and listened to Gerald on several occasions. She hoped that the servants would never have occasion to mention the fact to their employer.
But when she finished a Haydn sonata that she had been practicing for several days, she jumped about on the bench, aware suddenly that someone was standing silently behind her.
“I startled you,” the earl said with a smile. “I do beg your pardon. The French windows were unlatched and I was drawn by the sound of music. You have a fine touch.”
She stood up, her heart pounding. “Please, my lord,” she said, “don’t tell Gerald.”
His eyebrows rose. “He does not know?” he said.
“He plays himself,” she said. “Very well.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “That gives you something in common.” He looked closely at her.
“He believes himself so lacking in accomplishments,” she said. “But he has this, and I believe he is proud of it even though his father was contemptuous of his talent.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, “the late Sir Christian Stapleton. There was not one grain of humor in the whole man, I believe. You are afraid that you outclass Gerald, Prissy?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “He is far more talented than I. But perhaps he would not realize that. Besides …”
“Besides being extremely kindhearted,” he said, “you are a fraud and you do not wish Gerald to discover the fact.”
She swallowed and took a hesitant step backward from him.
“You are the poet, too?” he asked.
“Poet?”
“There is a love poem—alas, incomplete—beneath the blotter in the library,” he said. “I could not quite believe that even knowing you would have sent Gerald off into such flights of fancy, and the housekeeper seems rather too prosaic a soul to have tried her hand at anything of such sensibility. I thought it must be you, Prissy.” He grinned at her, his blue eyes dancing, a dimple denting one cheek.
“Oh,” she said.
“Did Gerald interrupt you before you finished?” he asked. “And you forgot to return for it? I do assure you it is quite safe. I would imagine that Gerald does not use the desk with any great frequency. And your secret is safe with me. Does he at least know that you are literate?”
“
Yes,” she said.
“Ah.” He smiled again. “I am a very inquisitive fellow, Prissy. You will never know how much willpower I am going to have to use to do what I am about to do. I am about to turn around and stroll back out through the French windows. Do continue your playing if you wish. I shall come tearing back here if I should see Gerald riding over the horizon before he is expected.”
He turned and suited action to words.
Priscilla did not sit down again at the pianoforte. She went racing off to the library in a veritable panic.
THEY HAD BEEN for a stroll, the three of them, along a grassy, shaded avenue lined with busts and urns, which the late Sir Christian Stapleton had brought back with him from his Grand Tour.
Priscilla had an arm linked through Sir Gerald’s. She was feeling entirely happy. The weather was hot, without being oppressively so, and she had found the company congenial. They had done a great deal of laughing. She was feeling, she thought privately, quite like Priscilla Wentworth again.
“The devil!” Sir Gerald said as they came in sight of the house and saw a carriage drawn up before the front steps and three figures standing in a group on the terrace. “This is not the time of day for a social call, is it?”
It was well past teatime.
“It looks like a traveling carriage, Ger,” Lord Severn said.
“It is, too,” Sir Gerald said as they drew a little closer. “It’s that ass Ramsay. He said he might call in on his way from Brighton to Bath. I’d hoped he would forget. That is Horvath with him. Who is the other? Do you know him?”
“Never seen him in my life,” the earl said.
Priscilla tried to draw her arm free, but Sir Gerald clamped it to his side again.
“There’s no need for you to take yourself off, Priss,” he said. “You met Ramsay and Horvath at Vauxhall.”
“I could slip into the conservatory, Gerald,” she said.
Lord Severn took her free arm and drew it through his. “I can understand you wishing to avoid such a tedious encounter, Prissy,” he said, “but we cannot allow you to escape when we have to endure it ourselves, can we, Ger? Smile, my dear. We are about to be sociable. Incidentally, my friend, I hope this is not how you and Prissy talked about me before I came within earshot on my arrival. What a lowering thought.”
Sir Gerald snorted.
“We could not pass by, old chap,” Bertie Ramsay said, clapping Sir Gerald on the shoulder after there had been a great deal of handshaking and laughter, “without stopping in to sample your hospitality. Could we, chaps? ‘Stapleton is expecting me,’ I told them, ‘and will be disappointed if you don’t come with me.’ All the more the merrier when one is incarcerated in the country, after all, what? Ah, Prissy? You here, too? I just spotted you standing back there.”
Priscilla inclined her head to him and Sir Gerald drew her arm through his again.
“You remember Prissy, Horvath,” Mr. Ramsay said. “From Vauxhall? When I still had Lettie on the mount? Biddle, make Prissy’s acquaintance. Stapleton’s mistress. One of Kit’s old girls.”
“Perhaps we should step inside,” Sir Gerald said. “You must all be ready for refreshments. It must be hot inside a carriage on a day like this.”
“Keep your eyes to yourself, Biddle,” Mr. Ramsay said with a roar of a laugh. “I have the first bid, old chap. I made a gentleman’s agreement with Stapleton the last time I saw him—it was at Tattersall’s, Stapleton, do you remember?—that I get the next shot at Prissy when he drops her. You remember that, Prissy girl. The next shot is mine. We’ll see if I can plow a little deeper than old Gerald here.” He winked.
Priscilla jerked her arm free and fled along the terrace.
“Now she has dashed off like a frightened rabbit, you idiot, Bertie,” Mr. Horvath said as the three men turned to enter the house. “She wouldn’t have you now if you could offer the Crown Jewels on top of twice what Stapleton pays her. Subtlety is what you need to woo a female, my boy. Subtlety.”
“No,” the Earl of Severn said quietly, laying a firm hand on his friend’s arm. “Sorry to spoil your fun, Ger, but this one is all my pleasure. One broken nose or jaw guaranteed. Two or three if their owners don’t button up their lips fast. Go to Prissy.”
“I have a murder to commit first,” Sir Gerald muttered between his teeth.
“Sorry,” the earl said, “there will be nothing left for you to murder after I have finished with him. Go to Prissy.”
Sir Gerald clenched his fists at his sides, glared once venomously at the unconscious backs of the three new arrivals, who were already disappearing inside his house together with the liquor they must have consumed in great quantities within the past hour or so, and strode off.
The Earl of Severn flexed his hands at his sides a few times and called after the three men.
“Ramsay,” he said, “you’ll not be going inside after all, I am afraid, my dear fellow. Something to do with contamination and fumigation, I understand. I fear I must be growing rather hard of hearing. Would you care to come closer and repeat what you just said concerning the lady who was standing here a few moments ago?”
“Oh, I say,” Mr. Ramsay said, retracing his steps back down to the terrace and chuckling with amusement. “Prissy? A lady, Severn? That’s a laugh, that is. Prissy was one of Kit’s whores. Didn’t you know? Half of London had her. She was always eager to spread …”
One moment later he was lying on his back, his jaw shattered, staring at the sky just as if it were full night and all the stars twinkling down at him.
“I say,” Mr. Horvath protested, keeping his distance. “Not fair, old chap. You are one of Jackson’s prodigies, ain’t you? Handy with your fives and all that?”
“Do you have anything to add concerning Stapleton’s lady?” the earl asked, looking steadily at him. “If so, step closer so that I will be sure to hear.”
“I?” Mr. Horvath said. “I don’t know the lady any more than I know Eve, Severn.”
“And you?” The earl turned to the silent Mr. Biddle.
“Never heard of her until a few minutes ago,” that gentleman said hastily. “Looked a perfect lady to me, though.”
“Ah,” the earl said. “Perhaps the two of you would be so kind as to assist your friend into your carriage. There is an excellent inn just two or three miles beyond the village, I have been told. It is well stocked with beverages, too, by all accounts. Or if you would prefer to travel farther toward your final destination tonight, I would estimate that there are still a few hours of daylight left.”
He stood watching, his feet set apart, his hands clenched at his sides, until the carriage with its cargo of three foxed young dandies had rolled farther down the driveway.
“PRISS.”
Sir Gerald had found her at the small lily-covered lake among the trees, a beautiful part of the park that he rarely visited. She was at the end of the lake farthest from the arched stone bridge, lying facedown on the soft grass, her head on her arms.
“Priss?” He sat down cross-legged beside her and spread one hand over the back of her head.
“Give me a little time, Gerald,” she said, her voice sounding unexpectedly normal. “I shall come back to the house in a little while. I just need some time alone.”
He sat quietly beside her and kept his hand on her head.
“It was all my fault, Priss,” he said. “I should have let you go to the conservatory. And I should have smashed his nose as soon as his eyes alighted on you. As it is, I had to leave that pleasure to Miles. He really will smash bones, too. He is a Corinthian, you know. I suppose you would have guessed. He has a splendid physique. But it should have been me to do it, for all that.”
“It was no very dreadful thing,” she said after another brief silence. “Only his language was rather coarse, and I found it humiliating to have those other men, and particularly Lord Severn, hear what he said. But he spoke only the truth. I am your mistress, Gerald. And I was one of Miss Blythe’s girls.”
“Gerald?” She turned over onto her back suddenly and looked up at him. “You did not really say that at Tattersall’s, did you? You did not say—how did he phrase it?—that he would have the next shot at me when you grow tired of me? Please say you did not say it.”
He closed his eyes and bent his head forward. “Priss,” he said, “don’t ask that. Don’t you know me better than to ask that?”
She continued to gaze up at him.
“No,” he said. “Why should you? I took you to Vauxhall with those men, did I not? I let you be in company with them and with that girl who thought all the vulgar talk and all of Ramsay’s public pawing were funny. And I did it, I took you there, only so that another young lady would see me with you and stop setting her cap at me. But no, Priss, I did not say that at Tattersall’s, though I did not pop Ramsay on the nose when he suggested it. I am sorry I did not. And I am sorry that I allowed this to happen today.”
She did not answer him. And looking down into her eyes, he could see the traces of redness about them and on her cheeks. She had been crying. She had been deeply hurt.
“Priss,” he said, touching the backs of two knuckles to her cheek and watching her widen her eyes in a vain attempt to prevent two tears from spilling over onto her cheeks.
She tried to smile at him and lost control of her facial muscles altogether.
“Priss,” he said, leaning down and gathering her close into his arms. “Don’t cry.”
But those words only released the floodgates, as he might have expected. He knew nothing about giving comfort to a woman. He held her against him as she sobbed, rocking her against his chest, patting her back, feeling helpless and frustrated. He wished he knew how to give her comfort.