A Precious Jewel

by Mary Balogh

  She gave herself up to an enjoyment of their honey moon, knowing all the dangers of so relaxing her guard, knowing that honeymoons always end, that life intrudes again sooner or later. She could only hope that in their case it would be later.

  It was two weeks after the Earl of Severn left. Two weeks and three days of love.

  She recognized the exact moment when it came to an end. And she accepted it with a heart that immediately locked itself against hopelessness and despair. She had had her honeymoon, her two weeks and three days of heaven. Many women never knew as much in a lifetime.

  She was at the lake, having walked there one morning while Gerald was out on unavoidable business with his bailiff. She was sitting on the low stone wall of the bridge, looking out across the water. She had not brought a book with her. She was content during those days merely to sit and dream when he was not with her.

  She saw him coming through the trees, his step eager, a smile on his face. She felt her love well up inside her like a tangible thing, and returned his smile. When he came to the end of the bridge, she reached out her arms to him.

  “I have been waiting here for you,” she said. “I knew you would find me.”

  And he stopped. The smile on his face lost its animation and gradually died over the span of perhaps one minute, during which time he neither moved nor said a word. When he did speak, the honeymoon was over.

  She knew it, and lowered her arms, and accepted it.

  HE WAS TOTALLY and quite consciously in love. He had always been in love with her, he supposed—with her small and softly feminine body, with her dark and shining curls and wholesome prettiness, with her eager, mobile face and warm smile, with her quiet good sense and practicality, with her unfailing good nature.

  But he had never trusted her. She had been an experienced whore when he met her and had been trained by Kit Blythe, who had a reputation for being one of the best instructors in London, if not the best. It was Priss’s profession to be all those things he had fallen in love with, her way of earning a living. And she had done well for herself. Life as his mistress was undoubtedly more luxurious and less demanding than life at Kit’s.

  Or perhaps it was himself he had never trusted. He had never in his life had a good relationship. Oh, there was his friendship with the Earl of Severn. But never a good love relationship. He had been incapable of inspiring love in his father, and his mother’s love had not lasted beyond his infancy. Priss too, if he allowed himself to relax into his fondness for her, would let him down.

  Of course she would let him down. He was merely the man who paid her salary.

  He had always held her at arms’ length, determined to take only physical comfort from her, and not even allowing himself to become dependent upon that. And he had always planned to let her go before it was too late for him. He had always thought of the end of his lease on the house in London as the time when he would settle with her and find his temporary comfort with other women.

  Never with a mistress again. Never again.

  But he had done something he had not tried to do in years, something he had been afraid to try. He had done it without conscious thought and without a consideration of his fear. He had reached out to her to comfort her, to give something instead of always taking. For the moment he had forgotten that the hand that reaches out to help always gets slapped aside. He had given to her.

  And it was only after he had given there beside the lake that he realized what it was he had given. It was himself. And he realized that in giving he had received. He had received all the wonder of love, all the closeness to another human being that went far deeper than the mere sexual union of bodies and that did not depend at all on the medium of words.

  He was deeply and consciously in love. And accepted her love for him—it was not all completely feigned; he would never believe that—and his for her as a gift.

  And yet he said nothing to her. He did not need to—that was one reason why he said nothing. It was there between them, so obvious that even a third person could not miss it. Miles had had no intention of leaving quite as soon as he did. And Gerald did not know the words—that was another reason. He had never been good with words or swift with thoughts. There was no way of putting into words what was there in his heart and his head and his eyes and his body—and that he saw reflected in her.

  There were no words. He did not try to find them. There were only the words of everyday conversation, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the communication that was all the time binding them together beyond the words.

  “You should see it in autumn, Priss,” he told her when he took her on the long trek over the lawns behind the house and through the trees and up the hill the afternoon after Lord Severn left. “A riot of color in all directions. I remember coming up here as a very small boy—I think it must have been with my mother—and twirling about and about to see all the reds and oranges and yellows blur into lines until I fell down.”

  She laughed with him and unlaced her fingers from his in order to spread on the grass the blanket she had carried beneath one arm.

  “It is a lovely scene even in summer,” she said. “Did you ever sled down the hill in winter, Gerald? Or is it too far from the house? I remember….” But she turned to smile at him and did not tell him what she remembered.

  “There was only me,” he said. “I don’t recall any children from the village coming out here in winter, though there were some tree-climbing sessions and torn breeches and spanked bottoms in summer.”

  She laughed again as he reclined on one elbow beside her and sucked on a blade of grass. And they both fell silent as she clasped her knees and gazed about her and he gazed at her. He made love to her before they opened the picnic basket, just as he had made love to her that morning before luncheon, and as he would make love to her all night except when sleep cheated them of pleasure.

  He did not lose touch with reality during the two weeks that followed. He was in love and he basked in the glory of that love with his lover. But he knew that love never lasted. He had seen proof of the fact too many times with the people he had trusted and loved.

  He knew that sooner or later he would realize with his heart as well as his head that Priss was a totally ineligible lover. He knew that he would fall out of love with her just as surely as he had fallen in and that, when the time came, she would be merely his mistress again and perhaps not even that. He would make a settlement on her and go on his way while she moved on to another protector.

  And he knew that she would fall out of love with him. There was no such thing as permanency of love with women, and Priss was not in the business of love, only in the business of giving the illusion of love.

  He accepted the fact that what they had would not last. But he wanted it to last as long as possible and pushed back into his unconscious mind the certainty of the end.

  And despite himself he started to trust her. He started to relax. He started to be happy.

  He came upon her in the rose arbor one afternoon after enduring a brief visit from the son and daughter of his closest neighbor. She was reading.

  “Ah,” he said, “the loveliest corner of my whole property.”

  She set the book aside and smiled at him. “Yes,” she said. “There is nothing more perfect than a rose, is there?”

  He plucked a deep red bud, careful not to prick his fingers, and threaded it into her hair, as he had done on a previous occasion.

  “Yes, there is,” he said, looking down into her eyes. “When I set them together, I can see that there is, Priss.”

  It was the closest he ever came to putting into words his feelings for her.

  He leaned down and scooped her up into his arms and sat down with her. She smiled and nestled her head on his shoulder. When he looked down at her after a few silent, comfortable minutes, it was to find that she was asleep. They had been awake much of the night before.

  He rested his cheek against her curls and closed his eyes. There was no gestu
re more touching than to fall asleep in another’s arms, he thought. Just like a child. He felt trusted. And trusting, too.

  Despite himself he began to trust her, to believe that perhaps after all he was worthy of being loved.

  He wanted their idyll together to last forever. He knew it would not last that long, but he made plans to keep her there at Brookhurst, alone with him, away from the world, until it did end.

  It ended two weeks and three days after it began. And it did not end gradually as he supposed he had expected it to happen. It ended in the span of perhaps a minute, perhaps less.

  It ended, leaving him shattered and bewildered and unhappy and wanting only to get away from there and away from her. Away from himself.

  SIR GERALD HAD COMPLETED HIS BUSINESS WITH his bailiff. He had not rushed. He never did so when involved with duty. But he felt a rush of happiness when he was free again at last, and hurried to the house to find Priscilla. She was not in any of the daytime rooms or in the conservatory. Neither was she in the rose arbor, he found when he glanced in there. She would be at the lake. It seemed to be her favorite place.

  She was there, he saw as he strode through the trees. The pink of her dress contrasted with the green of the trees and grass surrounding her. She was sitting on the wall of the bridge, her image reflected among the lily pads in the water below her.

  He wanted to be with her. He wanted to touch her, to be enclosed in the magic that was her. He smiled when he knew she had seen him, and hurried toward her. She reached out her hands when he came to the end of the bridge in that gesture of welcome that had always been characteristic of her.

  “I have been waiting here for you,” she said. “I knew you would find me.”

  And something jarred in him. Some long-suppressed memory.

  Helena. His stepmother. His father’s second wife, whom his father had married exactly one year after the death of his first. She had been nineteen at the time, he fifty-four. Gerald had been fourteen.

  Helena. So very much like Priss that he was dazzled now by the resemblance. Her hair had more reddish hues than Priss’s and had been longer. She had been a little taller, perhaps, with a more generous figure. But so like Priss. Always happy, always warmly smiling, always generous with her time and attention.

  She had been the one person in his father’s life, Gerald had often thought, whom his father had loved. He had adored her, pampered her, lavished gifts on her. And she had always glowed in his presence, young though she was to have a husband so much older.

  Gerald had still been hurting when the marriage took place, still bewildered by the realization that his mother had lived for five full years after he had thought her dead, still in misery over the knowledge that she had not loved him after all.

  Helena had soothed the hurt and finally taken it away altogether. She had been a friend to him—an older, wiser friend who had brought the sunshine back into his life. She had always found the time to talk with him and to listen to all the pent-up frustrations and uncertainties and hopes and dreams of a growing boy. She had shielded him from his father’s impatience with him. She had helped him with his studies, sitting patiently with him for hours while he memorized poetry and history, explaining with unending patience facts about numbers that eluded his understanding.

  He had grown to love her dearly. Not as a man loves a woman, and not quite as a son loves a mother—she was, after all, only five years his senior. He had loved her as one friend loves another older and wiser friend. He had worshipped her.

  She had always loved the outdoors and had laughed merrily whenever her husband had fondly accused her of doing so only because she knew she made such a pretty picture against the background of flowers and trees. She had had a habit of going up behind him, circling his shoulders with her arms, and kissing his cheek. Gerald had always marveled at how she could make so free with his grim father, and at how his father clearly liked it, though he rarely smiled.

  Gerald often used to seek her out to share some confidence. He had sought her out one summer day when he was eighteen. The twenty-nine-year-old Sir Gerald could no longer remember what it was that had sent him hurrying so eagerly to find her. But he had known to seek her out at her favorite place—the lake.

  She had been sitting on the wall of the bridge, wearing a low-cut pink dress, her image reflected among the lily pads in the water. As pretty as a picture. His father was quite right. Gerald had hastened his steps.

  “I have been waiting for you,” she had said. “I knew you would find me. So tell me all about it, Gerry.” And she had smiled her warm smile and reached out her hands for his.

  He could no longer remember what it was he was to have told her all about.

  He had closed the gap between them and put his hands in hers. And he had talked eagerly on about something—he could no longer recall what. Poor foolish boy. She had had all his love, all his trust, there in her two hands.

  “Gerry,” she had said when he paused for breath, squeezing his hands, “you are all grown up, aren’t you? And such a very handsome young man.”

  He had known that to be a bouncer. He had started to grin. But there had been something in her face.

  “The young ladies must be turning their smiles and their wiles on you already,” she had said. “Are they, Gerry?”

  He had probably blushed.

  “Ah, but you will need someone very special,” she had said. “Is there anyone special?”

  He had shaken his head.

  “You are a virgin, Gerry?” she had asked in her soft, sweet voice.

  Suddenly he had been aware of birds chirping, insects droning, silence.

  “The first time should be beautiful for you,” she had said. “It should be with someone who will know how to make it so.”

  She had smiled into his eyes and released one of his hands. With her free hand she had slid her dress off one shoulder and downward to expose a generous and creamy breast, its tip pink. And she had drawn his hand against it and beneath it to cup it. She had covered his hand with her own, guiding his thumb over her nipple, pressing inward on it with her own thumb over his. Then she had exposed her other breast in the same way and cupped it with his other hand.

  He had stood still and terrified, the unfamiliar softness and weight of a woman’s flesh in his hands, an uncomfortable heat surging through his body, a painful tightening in his breeches.

  She had not taken her eyes from his face or stopped smiling.

  “Does that feel good, Gerry?” she had asked. “You need not be afraid. Move your hands. Do what you will.”

  He had moved his hands over her breasts, looking down at them, swallowing awkwardly.

  “Oh, Gerry,” she said, her voice changed, husky, “you are so beautifully young. You do not know how I have longed to be touched by a young man. By you. You do not know how I have wanted you this summer.”

  She had reached out her hands and begun to unbutton his breeches.

  He had turned in a panic and run.

  A few weeks later, after two other such encounters, during one of which he had lingered longer and allowed her to fondle him, he had gone to his father and asked if he might go to university, though he had no capacity for learning.

  Perhaps it had been the only time his father had been pleased with him. He had gone to Oxford very shortly afterward and lost his virginity to a thin and pockmarked chambermaid two days after his arrival there.

  The only time he had seen Helena after that was at his father’s funeral almost three years later. She had been heavily veiled in black and had never once looked directly into his eyes. She had taken the legacy her husband had left her and disappeared from her stepson’s life.

  It all flashed through Sir Gerald’s mind as he stood at the end of the bridge again, looking again at a pretty, pink-clad, eagerly welcoming, warmly smiling woman whom he loved and whom he had begun to trust.

  Just as he had trusted Helena with the fragile emotions of a boy whose mother had abandone
d him and whose father was disappointed in him. He had learned with Helena—finally—that a woman’s love is a fickle and a selfish thing. He had learned that the only person it was ever safe to trust was oneself.

  And it was gone. All of it. Within the span of a minute or perhaps less. She was Priss, his mistress, the woman who satisfied him utterly in bed and made him comfortable out of bed. A paid employee, marvelously skilled at her profession. And he was the poor fool who could never quite seem to wake up to the realities of life.

  She lowered her hands.

  “It is getting a little chilly, don’t you think?” he said.

  She looked up at the sky. A small cloud had moved across the face of the sun. There were more clouds approaching.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think perhaps we are in for a change in the weather.”

  “We should walk back to the house,” he said. “There are some letters and papers that need my attention.”

  “Yes,” she said, getting to her feet, smiling at him.

  “I have been neglecting them,” he said, turning and clasping his hands at his back as she came down the arch of the bridge toward him and fell into step beside him. “I had better spend the afternoon in the study, Priss.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I shall read. There are so many books in your library that I have not yet read.”

  They walked side by side in silence, not touching.

  “I think we’ll be going back to London soon,” he said. “Tomorrow, perhaps. Or better still, the next day. I have done everything that needs to be done here. The country gets dull after a while. It is time to go back. Will you have enough time to get ready?”

  “Of course,” she said. “It will be as you wish, Gerald.”

  “I think it is going to rain,” he said.

  “Yes.” She looked up at the sky again.

  “You ought not to have wandered so far from the house, Priss,” he said. “You might have got caught out in it and taken a chill.”