by Mary Balogh
She could not expect to inspire love in either man or woman for what remained of her life, she had been told. Only perhaps among females of her own kind.
She knew why Miss Blythe had been so incredibly cruel. Even as she had cringed and wept and wanted only to die she had known that Miss Blythe was doing what she must do. For only a woman who knew herself and reality without illusions could hope to survive in such a situation without losing herself completely. A woman who was with child was particularly susceptible to hopes and dreams. She must know that there was no hope and no substance to her dreams. Otherwise, she would not be able to cope with the reality of what was to come.
She had been destroyed, as Miss Blythe had intended she should. She had also been put together again, badly shaken, and weak from her ordeal. But together nevertheless, with the hope that she would eventually be whole again. For she was still Priscilla Wentworth in the most private part of her life. It was just that she had to accustom herself to the knowledge she had always had—that she was two quite different persons and that there was no bringing together those persons.
Perhaps.
Even at the time she had not been quite sure. What she had had with Gerald could never have lasted—she had never expected it to do so—but it had been real, nevertheless. There had been a gentleness, a tenderness, even a friendship, between them. There had been a relationship. She was sure there had been. She had not been merely a body to him to be used and enjoyed and discarded.
She had loved him. She still did and always would, she believed. Perhaps it made sense to train girls at a whorehouse never to see their clients as persons, never to allow even the smallest degree of feeling to intrude into the business they conducted with those clients. But it was impossible—surely it was—to be a man’s mistress for almost a year without learning to know him and understand him. And knowledge and understanding brought with them a reaction—feeling.
How could she have lived with Gerald for almost a year without coming to know him as a man who had warmth and tenderness to give and a fear of giving? How could she not have seen that he had been deprived of love through much of his childhood and boyhood and was now afraid to love? That he was a man of only average intelligence, who felt himself inferior to other men and unworthy of anyone’s regard?
How could she have lived with him and not come to love him deeply?
She must put him from her head and her heart and her life, Miss Blythe had said. She had been nothing to him except his paid whore.
But even if it were possible to do as she had been told, she would not do it. The only explanation she would be able to give her child for bringing it into a world where it must live with the stigma of bastardy and a mother who had been a whore was that she had loved his father. That she still loved him. That he was worthy of being loved.
And so, even when she left London, numb with the pain of her parting from Gerald, paralyzed by the knowledge that she would never see him again, she was putting herself back together again, knowing that there was after all more to her life than Miss Blythe believed. Even when she left, she knew that she no longer wanted those two separate beings to live for ever apart in her body: Prissy and Priscilla. She was going to meld the two, make them one, risk having both rejected.
But at least she would have herself back. Her total identity back.
The package Gerald had left on the table in the parlor contained an amount double that he had agreed on as a settlement—if he were the one to end the connection. If she was very careful, she would be able to live on it for a long time. And her jewels, even though she felt almost as if she would rather die than sell them, would keep her and the child for some time longer.
For five years? Probably not. But she would not think of that for a time. The present had pain of its own to offer. She could not also shoulder the burden of the future. Besides, Vicar Whiting had said that the people of his village had a way of helping their own in times of adversity. And both he and his wife had spoken as if they wanted her to be one of their own.
The warmth that the thought brought to her was almost too wonderful to bear.
LIFE WOULD GET back to normal, Sir Gerald kept telling himself over the ten days following the severance of his relationship with his mistress. Life was normal. It was just that Priss had gone and he had not quite adjusted to the fact that he could no longer take himself off to her house whenever he wanted companionship or comfort.
He was foolish to have kept her for so long. He would not have done so if he had only had more experience in breaking off with mistresses. Miles had seemed to have no problem at all with Jenny after just two months and seemed quite unperturbed by the highly public manner in which she was choosing his successor.
What if it were Priss? he thought. What if it were Priss strutting her wares in the park each afternoon, decked out like a duchess, and allowing half the besotted male population of London to pay court to her there?
What if it were Priss? Would he charge at the whole pack of men like a mad bull? Or would he challenge them one at a time?
There were plenty of entertainments with which to keep himself busy. There was Lady Trevor’s ball the night Priss left and his obligation to dance with Lady Severn. And there was a whole ocean to be drunk dry when it was over and a hangover to occupy his mind and body the next day—without Priss’s magic hands to soothe the headache or her lap to lay his head in.
There was dinner to attend at Miles’s house later that evening with Miss Seymour as their other guest, and the theater afterward. And the gradual realization that Lady Severn was trying to match him with her friend. She had already invited him to Severn Park for the summer. It was altogether probable that Miss Seymour had received an invitation, too.
And there was the waking up one morning with a tickle at the back of his throat and a nose that insisted on being blown almost constantly as soon as he got out of bed, and a fever that built through the day until he shivered with the cold and burned with interior fires. By the following morning, when the Earl of Severn called on him and thought at first that he had a hangover again, he was feeling thoroughly irritable and sorry for himself and angry with Priss for not being there to nurse him back to health.
And if that were not bad enough, the earl, being insensitive enough not to realize that a fellow was thoroughly out of sorts when he had a fever and a stuffy nose and a raw throat and when his mistress had just abandoned him in his need, slammed him one on the jaw when he happened to make a less than complimentary remark about the countess.
It seemed, Sir Gerald thought from the depth of his gloom after his friend had left a short while later, their quarrel having been patched up, that Miles was coming to care for his wife after all. The thought made him feel even more wretchedly womanless.
He went to Jackson’s Boxing Saloon a few times and even sparred himself on one of those occasions. He left with a red and tender nose for his pains. And he lived at White’s almost more than he lived in his own rooms and always put himself in the middle of the largest and most lively group he could find. He went to the races and to Tattersall’s. He went on a picnic to Richmond with a party organized by the Severns and was relieved when Lady Severn’s brother took Miss Seymour off his hands.
And always he thought of Priss, wondering where exactly she was and what exactly she was doing at that precise moment. He did not know, he realized in some astonishment a day or two after she had left, exactly where she was. She had never named the place where her family lived. It was a strange and rather disturbing realization.
Was she living with her parents? Or was she married already? Or were she and her betrothed waiting for the declaration of banns? And was she happy with her decision? Was she relieved to have left him behind? Was she fonder of her husband—or her betrothed—again now that she had seen him once more? Was the man able to look at her and see only Priss and not the whore she had been?
He wished he knew. He wished he knew if she was contented or if she was
having second thoughts.
But what would he do if he did know that she was regretting her decision? Go and fetch her home again? Home? And was it likely anyway that she would regret taking her chance for respectability and want to return to being his mistress instead?
The unwilling thoughts about her that almost constantly churned about in his head did nothing to improve his general mood of irritability.
He went to Kit’s one evening, intending to see her, to find out if she had heard anything from Priss, if she could tell him where Priss lived. Perhaps he would feel better if he could just get some definite information.
But when he got there he lost his courage and asked instead if any of the girls were free. Perhaps that was what he needed, he thought, with great good sense. Perhaps if he had another woman, Priss would be out of his system. He would realize that he could get from any woman what he had got from Priss.
Christina, a new girl, was free. She was tall and shapely, with long, very dark hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes. She was about as unlike Priss as she could possibly be. And not just in appearance, he discovered over the next half hour. She was one of those girls—most of them seemed to be alike—who believed that a man could not possibly know what he wanted but would surely be delighted by skills he had not asked to have demonstrated.
He had the strange feeling as he dressed and left the girl’s room that he had just committed adultery. He felt rather sick to his stomach. He felt rather like crying and hoped, with a feeling of some alarm, that he would be able to control the urge, at least until he was back in the privacy of his own rooms.
But he did not immediately leave Kit’s. He tapped on her sitting room door before he could give himself time to consider what he was going to say.
“Ah, Sir Gerald,” she said, having called on him to come inside, “do have a seat. How pleasant to see you back here again. You have had an appointment with Christina, I hear. I have her on trial this week. I hope she entertained you to your satisfaction?”
“Yes,” he said. “Have you heard from Priss?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Prissy is no longer employed here, sir,” she said. “But if Christina has not enticed you to a second visit, then I am sure there will be someone else more to your taste. You used to visit Sonia with some regularity, if I remember correctly. She is still with me.”
“Have you heard from her?” he asked. “Is she safe? Is she married yet?”
“Sir Gerald,” she said, “I do not discuss former employees with clients. If you would tell me …”
“I have to know,” he said. “I need to know. I cared for her. She was with me for almost a year. It is not so easy to stop caring after such a long time.”
“Then you may rest easy,” she said. “Prissy is safe and quite happy.”
“Where?” He leaned forward in his chair. “Where is she? She never told me. Not that she ever refused to do so. I never thought to ask.”
“She is safe,” Miss Blythe said.
He got abruptly to his feet. “I want to see for myself,” he said. “I cannot rest until I have seen with my own eyes that she is settled and content. I don’t intend to make trouble, if that is what you fear. I’ll not make myself known to any of her family or acquaintances there. I just want to see her. If she is happy, I will leave immediately. If she is not, then I will bring her back with me. She was not unhappy with me, I flatter myself enough to believe.”
“Sir Gerald,” Miss Blythe said, “do you think you are being quite fair to Prissy? Do you not think it would be distressing to her to see you, to be reminded of what she is trying to put behind her?”
He stared at her for a long time. “Then I will stay out of her sight,” he said. “I will merely make inquiries about her from a distance, perhaps see her without being seen. If I can see that she is contented, then I will leave. You have my word on it, ma’am.”
She looked at him consideringly.
“I am fond of her,” he said. “I will not do anything to hurt her. I want her happiness. I have grown fond of her.”
“Very well, then,” she said briskly, seeming to have come to some decision. “She came from the village of Denbridge in Wiltshire, Sir Gerald. I believe you will find some word of her there.”
His shoulders sagged with relief. He had not really expected that she would give him the information he had asked for. Dealing with Kit Blythe had always reminded him rather of dealing with the Rock of Gibraltar.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, ma’am. I will not do anything to make her unhappy, I promise you. I want only her happiness. Priss deserves happiness.”
“Yes,” she said. “Unfortunately, Sir Gerald, people rarely get what they deserve in this life. Perhaps that is why we have had to invent a heaven.”
It was the only hint of cynicism he had ever heard from Kit Blythe, the only hint of humanity.
And why had he wrung that information from her with such passionate determination? he asked himself as he walked away from the house. He lifted one hand to his face and wrinkled his nose. The girl had been wearing perfume. Priss had almost never worn perfume. She had smelled of clean and wholesome soap. And when she had bought herself some perfume after Christmas, it had had a soft musky scent. Priss had always had impeccable good taste.
Was he really going to go down there—to Denbridge in Wiltshire? Was he? Was he going to so demean himself as to run after a former mistress just like a lovesick puppy? Could he not accept that goodbye meant good-bye?
But she had made her decision so hastily, he told himself, and she had made it somewhat reluctantly, deciding on marriage, he thought, only because she had felt that it was the right decision to make. She had wanted to stay with him. He was almost sure of it. She had sobbed her heart out in his arms when they were saying good-bye.
It was only right to see that she was happy with her decision now that she had met the man again, and to bring her back if she was not. He owed her that.
He would leave the next day, he decided. He had obligations, but he would see to freeing himself from them in the morning. In the afternoon he would set out on his way. He was not going to think anymore. He was just going to do. Once he had seen her and found her contented or even married already, then he would be able to return to town and get back to living again. He would be able finally to put her out of his mind.
He asked for Lady Severn on Grosvenor Square the following morning. But she was from home. It was the earl who came to speak with him.
“I asked her for a set at Warchester’s ball tomorrow night, Miles,” Sir Gerald explained, “but I shall have to excuse myself, I’m afraid. I’ll be out of town. I’m leaving this afternoon, as a matter of fact.”
The earl raised his eyebrows.
“Priss has probably been to the altar and back already and settled down to cozy domestic bliss,” Sir Gerald said. It was what he had been telling himself all night. “But I am going down there to see, anyway. Perhaps if I offer her a raise in salary and buy her a few more jewels, she will come back. Do you think?”
He did not at all need his friend’s opinion. He knew the answer. Priss would come back if she was unhappy—perhaps. She would come back if she was fond of him—perhaps. She would not come back for money or jewels. Not Priss. It was the most foolish idea he had had in a lifetime of foolishness.
“Is that what you want?” the earl asked. “I thought you were feeling a little tied down, being with the same woman for a year.”
Sir Gerald felt uncomfortable. He shrugged. “I was comfortable with her,” he said. “She suited me. She knows how to please me. The damned woman I had at Kit’s last night wanted to tell me what I wanted, but it was not it at all.”
“You haven’t thought of marrying her yourself?” the earl asked.
“Eh?” Sir Gerald looked at him in surprise. Miles suggesting such a thing? It was the one thing his own mind had not even touched upon. Marry his mistress? “Marry Priss? My mistress? Good Lord, Miles, she was one
of Kit’s girls for a few months before I set her up. She was a whore.” He whipped himself with the word, with the conviction that his friend’s suggestion was totally preposterous.
“Why do I get the impression,” the earl said, looking keenly at him, “that you would flatten the nose of anyone else who used that word to describe her, Ger? You are on your way, then?”
“Yes.” Sir Gerald ran one hand through his fair curls. He had that feeling again that he was about to cry. He really should be whipped for using that word to describe Priss. Not Priss. Priss had worked for a living in the only way available to her. She had never been a whore. She was his comfort, his friend, his lover. His lo—. Yes, she was, or had been. Yes she was. She was his love. “I’m on my way.”
She was his love. That was what she was. She was his love.
He did not leave for Wiltshire that afternoon after all, though he told no one that he was still in town. It was almost a week before he left, after running about almost constantly on business that seemed quite impossible for a while, and was frustrating every moment of the time.
But finally he was on his way, chafing at the delay and the greater certainty it brought that Priss would have been married in the meanwhile.
TT WAS INCREDIBLE, SIR GERALD THOUGHT AS HE neared the village of Denbridge in Wiltshire and decided to put up at the Cock and Pheasant Inn a few miles away. He must be even more incredibly stupid than he realized. He did not know Priss’s last name.
She had been with him for almost a year. He thought of her as a friend and even his love. And yet he knew her only as Priss. He winced at the realization of the extent of his attitude of superiority over her, at the way he must have looked down upon her all the time, thought of her as a woman of no particular account. How could one know a woman so intimately for a year and yet know only her first name?