A Precious Jewel (19 page)

“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 smile 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.

S
IR
G
ERALD
S
TAPLETON
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.

I
T 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.

But it was as if those two weeks and three days had never been. She led the way into the inner room, closed the door behind him, turned for him to unbutton her dress, and stepped out of it—she had removed all her undergarments before coming downstairs earlier. She undid the buttons of his shirt and lay down on the bed on her back, watching him.

Just as if those weeks and days had never been.

He stood beside the bed for a few moments, gazing down at her so that she wanted to reach out and take him by the hand.
Put it into words
, she wanted to tell him.
I cannot read your eyes
. But she said nothing. It was not her place to speak.

“The usual, if you please, Priss,” he said.

It was the only indication that there had ever been anything else between them. He had not had to give her instructions since she was at Miss Blythe’s.

She smiled and opened her arms to him. “It will be as you wish, Gerald,” she said. “Come, then, let me give you pleasure.”

His body was so very familiar, slim and pleasingly well muscled, with the smell of a remembered cologne. She knew so well how to fit herself to him, how to tilt herself and yet remain relaxed so that he could reach deeply into her. She knew the slow thrust of his body, the developing rhythm, his long steady enjoyment of the act of love. She knew when to ease her hips from the bed so that his hands could slide beneath. She knew the final deep, firm penetrations, the warm gush of his seed deep within. She knew the almost soundless sigh against the side of her face.