by Mary Balogh
“But the weather is so warm,” she said. “And it will not rain until later this afternoon, Gerald.”
“Even so,” he said. “You should not wander away, Priss, without letting me know where you are going. What if I had twice as much work as I do? I would have wasted precious minutes looking for you.”
He could not believe the stupidity of his words or the irritability of his tone. It was almost as if the voice was quite divorced from his brain.
“I am sorry, Gerald,” she said. “It will not happen again.”
He spent the afternoon in his study, standing at the window watching the clouds move in, and sitting at his desk, his head in his hands.
What a prize idiot he had made of himself in the past two weeks, he thought—starry-eyed and lovesick over a whore. He thought of her as she had been at Kit’s. He thought of all the other men who had possessed her there, calculated the numbers, wished he could put names and faces to them. He thought of the one who had smacked and bruised her face and deliberately visualized all the possible perversions the man had then subjected her to—and paid her for performing.
But, no. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He was being unfair to Priss. It was not her fault that life was as it was and circumstances were as they were. It would be unfair to hate her and want to degrade her merely because she was doing well the job he had employed her to do.
And if she was a whore, then he was a man who found it necessary to employ whores because he was no good at real relationships.
He got to his feet and wandered to the window again. She had been right. It was still not raining, though it was going to do so.
“Priss,” he said to her when they rose from the dinner table that evening after almost an hour of stilted conversation and loud silence, “I am going back to the study. There is still plenty to do, and I have made arrangements to leave the morning after tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Don’t wait up for me,” he said. And he drew a deep breath and said what he had not thought he would have the courage to say. “In fact, you might as well sleep in your own room tonight. I won’t disturb you then when I come to bed.”
“As you wish, Gerald,” she said.
“You might as well stay in there tomorrow night as well,” he said, “and get plenty of rest ready for the journey. Journeys are always exhausting.”
“If you wish,” she said. “I shall say good night, then, Gerald.”
“Good night, Priss,” he said, glancing down at her mouth and turning to stride away in the direction of his study.
He spent the next four hours getting thoroughly and methodically drunk, the first time he had done so since the night in London when he had gone to her afterward. This time he kept away from her both for the rest of the night while his bedchamber spun around at too dizzying a pace to allow him to close his eyes and during the next morning when his headache felt as large as the house.
PRISCILLA RELAXED AGAINST the cushions of the carriage and watched the scenery pass the windows. Soon—after two weary days—London would appear and she would be back home again.
Home! Yes, it was home, her workplace downstairs.
the rooms in which her real identity lurked upstairs. She longed to be back there, back upstairs.
Gerald, she saw, turning her head from the window for a moment, was looking out the window opposite. Their shoulders almost touched, but did not quite do so.
“We will be there soon,” he said, feeling her eyes on him. “We will both be home soon, Priss.”
“Yes.” She smiled at him.
“It will be good to be home,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The journey has been a long one.” He reached out one hand, but before he could touch hers, he returned it to his knee. “You must be weary, Priss.”
“Not too badly, Gerald,” she said. “The carriage is comfortable.”
All through the journey she had been making plans. He was tired of her. Their honeymoon had come to an abrupt end three days before. He had grown tired of her, as she had known he would sooner or later. She was not going to make a grand tragedy out of the situation despite the feeling of dull despair that gnawed at her consciousness. She would not let it in.
Soon, as soon as he decently could, he would break off with her, settle with her, and be on his way. Perhaps he would do it as soon as they arrived back in London, though she did not believe so. Gerald often found it difficult to be decisive. Perhaps he would continue with her for a few weeks or a few months. Perhaps until Christmas. Perhaps until the lease ran out on the house.
She wanted to end it herself. When one knew that an inevitable end was approaching, and emptiness and pain, it was sometimes better to do something to hasten that end, to feel that one had some small measure of control over one’s destiny.
She should end it herself. She should tell him when they returned to her house that she no longer wanted to live there or be in his employ. She should tell him that she was eager to return to Miss Blythe’s or to begin some other life.
Except that perhaps she was no more decisive than he. And the thought of returning to a life of whoring, of offering herself to more than one man each day and to any man who cared to pay for her favors, was nauseating and terrifying. It had not been so bad the first time because she had really not known what it would be like. She had not looked beyond that first terrible deflowering. Now she did know.
No, she could not go back. And yet if she left Gerald now she would probably have to. She had saved almost every penny of her earnings, and she had her diamond and emerald bracelet, but they would not be enough to keep her until the age of thirty.
If she stayed with Gerald, she could earn a little more money, another few months of freedom once she was finally alone. And if she waited for him to cast her off, she would be entitled to a larger settlement. Miss Blythe had arranged for that. If she was the one to leave him, the settlement would be small.
She wanted to end a relationship that had become nothing but pain. But real life forced her to be practical.
“I’ll be leaving London again tomorrow,” he said abruptly, and her heart turned over within her. “I have been promising to visit all sorts of people. I should call on my aunts. I must do it now without putting it off again as I have done so many times. I’ll probably be away for a month or two.”
“Early autumn,” she said. “It will be a good time to travel, Gerald. Neither too hot nor too cold.”
“Yes,” he said.
The carriage was passing through some of the outer streets of London. They would be home soon.
“The lease on the house is good for a long time yet,” he said. “I’ll pay you three months’ salary in advance, Priss, just in case I am away longer than I expect.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“You will be glad of the holiday,” he said. “You have worked hard through the summer. I have been pleased with you.”
She turned her head away to look sightlessly through the window. His voice was stiff, stilted. She guessed that he was feeling embarrassed, awkward. She did not believe that he had meant to be cruel.
But she could not imagine more cruel words. She had worked hard. He had been pleased. She would be in need of a holiday.
She waited for his coachman to put the steps down when the carriage stopped outside her house. She waited for Gerald to get out first and hand her down. Mr. Prendergast was already holding the door of the house open, she saw. Her housekeeper was standing beyond him, curtsying to Gerald, smiling at her.
Gerald stood in the hallway with her, surrounded by her trunks and bags, waiting for the servants to disappear.
“I’ll be on my way, Priss,” he said. “You will be glad of a rest, I imagine. You need not prepare to receive me tonight. I will be leaving as early in the morning as I can. I’ll see you on my return.”
“Yes,” she said. She smiled at him, having to make a conscious effort to use the sm
ile she had learned and practiced at Miss Blythe’s, the one that came from deep behind her eyes. “Have a safe journey and pleasant visits, Gerald.” She reached out her hands to him, not sure if she should do so or not.
He took her hands after looking down at them for a few moments. “You are a good girl, Priss,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”
“Yes.” She hid far behind the practiced smile as he raised one hand to his lips and kissed it.
And he was gone. The hallway was empty except for her luggage. He was gone. For a month or perhaps two or even three. Probably forever. He would probably not come back, but would settle with her through someone else, his man of business perhaps.
She closed her eyes and tried to recall the details of the last time they had made love. A long, long time ago. Early in the morning three days before with the sun shining through the window of his bedchamber and the breeze flapping the curtains at the open window. An eternity ago.
He had touched no more than her hands in the past three days. And now he was gone.
“Mr. Prendergast,” she called, “will you bring my things up, if you please?”
She smiled at him when he appeared at the end of the hallway and turned to climb the stairs with a straight back and a spring in her step.
SIR GERALD STAPLETON left London a little more than a week after returning from the country, and stayed away for two months. He visited a cousin he had not seen since school days, a friend who had married and moved into the country to stay two years before, and the Earl of Severn. He called upon his aunts, his mother’s sisters, only when he was ready to return to London and had almost decided that he would not go at all. The only time he could remember meeting them was during the week of his mother’s funeral, and they had both ignored him on that occasion.
almost as if his thirteen-year-old bewildered, hurt person had not existed.
Lord Severn, whose mother and younger sister were still from home, was surprised to see him.
“What, Ger?” he said, shaking him firmly by the hand on his arrival. “On your travels? But where is Prissy?”
“Priss?” Sir Gerald said. He had just spent a number of weeks trying, unsuccessfully, to keep her beyond the boundaries of his mind. “I could hardly bring her here, could I, Miles?”
His friend grinned. “I suppose not,” he said. “It is very easy to forget that Prissy is not respectable. I am amazed that you have been able to tear yourself away from her. One could scarce see your head when I left Brookhurst, Ger, for the moon and stars clustered about it. And about hers, too, I might add.”
“Nonsense,” Sir Gerald said. “I just happened to be hot for her for a few days, that’s all, Miles. She has a certain skill between the sheets, you know, that makes her quite irresistible at times—one of Kit’s girls and all that. I have her back in London waiting to keep me warm through the winter. I don’t think I’ll keep her beyond the spring, though.”
He hated the carelessness of his own words, their vulgarity, his disloyalty to the magic of those two weeks—and to Priss herself.
“Well,” the earl said, “I’m sorry to hear it, Ger. I like Prissy. She is a real lady.”
“Yes,” Sir Gerald said. “She is a good advertisement for Kit’s training, is she not? Could we talk about something else? I had my fill of Priss this summer. When are you planning to move to Severn Park?”
They did not talk about her again but spent a pleasant two weeks together, riding and hunting and fishing.
It was only at night that she haunted him. Even after two months he would wake and turn to her only to find the bed beside him empty and cold and his loins aching for a woman who was far away. And his arms aching. And his heart.
Perhaps, he thought sometimes, gazing out into darkness, perhaps it had not mattered. Perhaps it did not matter that everyone he had ever loved had rejected him. Perhaps it did not mean that no one ever could love him forever.
Perhaps Priss could.
But he did not want to risk it. He had come dangerously close during those two weeks to giving up all of himself, everything that was himself, to his love for her. Dangerously close. If he had done so, and if it had happened again, he did not think he would have been able to survive. He really did not think he would.
He was glad he had not risked it. He was better as he was.
She had not even been hurt or bewildered. She had not even asked him what was the matter, why he had changed. She had reverted immediately to the Priss she had been right from the start, right from his first meeting with her at Kit’s.
If she had cried, pleaded, raged, anything—if she had only shown some emotion, perhaps things would have been different. Perhaps he would have risked it. Who knew?
But he was glad she had become the experienced mistress again. He was glad, though it had almost broken his heart, for the evidence she had given him that it had all been playacting for her, merely an act to suit what she had seen he had wanted for those weeks.
He was glad he had not risked the ultimate giving.
He wanted to be back with her. He ached for her. But the more he ached, the longer he forced himself to stay away. And he still did not know, when he finally decided to return, whether he would go to her again or whether he would send a servant to make the settlement with her.
Yes, he did know. He knew that all the way back he would persuade himself that he was going to break with her. And he knew that when he got back, then he would convince himself that it was only fair to tell her face-to-face that this was the end. And he knew that having seen her again, he would postpone the end.
Yes, he knew very well what he was going to do.
But first he would visit his aunts.
IT WAS ALWAYS AMAZING, PRISCILLA THOUGHT as October drew to an end and winter drew inevitably closer, how one always seemed to bounce back from adversity, how life went on when one thought that surely it must grind to a halt.
It had happened before. First when her mother had died when she was only ten years old, and it had seemed that the sun must have been snuffed out, too. And then again when her father had died and there had been the blow so soon after of Broderick’s death. It had seemed that it would be impossible to recover from such a double blow, especially when she had discovered that no provision had been made for her except by her mother’s will and that her cousin would only reluctantly provide her with even the minimum of care.
It had seemed that life could never again hold a moment of happiness when she had come to London and discovered the truth about the finishing school run by her old governess and when it had become clear to her that she would be able to get no employment except what she could find with Miss Blythe. She would not have been surprised if she had not survived her first client as one of Miss Blythe’s girls.
And yet life had in store for her the greatest happiness of her life. It had sent her Gerald in the guise of a client.
For a while at the end of the summer it had seemed that life was too painful and too totally empty to be borne. And yet she had endured. In her upstairs rooms she had become Priscilla Wentworth again. She had resumed the writing of the book she had started in the spring, and she had painted the autumn she saw around her and a portrait of Gerald from memory. She had read and stitched and sung a little, choosing the songs he had played for her during the summer.
She did not try to put him from her mind. She did not try to fall out of love with him. She thought of him constantly and loved him and remembered their times together and waited patiently for the pain to go away and the less piercing ache of nostalgia to take its place.
She walked with Maud a great deal and visited Miss Blythe several times.
She did not expect Gerald to come back. She waited as time went on to receive word from him so that she could plan a more definite future. And as October drew to an end she started to look about her when she was from home, somewhat fearfully, hoping that she would never come face-to-face with him and perhaps see him happy with another woman
. She hoped to be spared that, at least.
It was a surprise to her one morning, then, to receive a note in his own rather untidy handwriting, informing her that he would call on her that evening.
It was a formal little note. But he was to call himself? And during the evening? She stood very still, staring down at the letter. The evening?
She prepared for him and awaited him in the downstairs parlor for three hours that evening, not quite sure if she had made the right preparations, not sure how she should greet him—if he came.
He came very late. It lacked only an hour of midnight. She heard his knock at the door and his voice in the hallway. She stood up.
He was not drunk, as she half expected. He was dressed formally, as if he had come from the theater or from a ball. His fair curls were rumpled from his hat.
She reached out her hands to him and smiled.
“Gerald,” she said, “how lovely to see you again. Did you enjoy your visits?”
“Priss,” he said, crossing the room to her in a few strides, taking her hands, and squeezing them until she almost winced. “Looking as pretty as ever. Yes, I did, thank you. Miles sends his regards. I got drawn into attending the theater with the Bendletons tonight. I’m sorry to be so late.”
She smiled at him, disconcerted by his very direct gaze, uncertain of what her cue was. There was a short silence.
“How may I please you, Gerald?” she asked, and was dismayed to hear her words, the ones she had been trained to ask as soon as she had taken a gentleman into her bedchamber, with a smile to indicate that he might ask almost whatever he pleased, provided it did not go against the rules.
“It has been a long time,” he said.
“Yes.” She continued to smile. “Would you like to come into the bedchamber?”
“Yes,” he said. He looked into her eyes again in that way that had her having to resist the urge to take a step backward. “That is the reason I came.”
Ah. So it was not quite the end, then. Unless he intended to do this first and then tell her. But still not quite the end. One more time, at least.