A Precious Jewel (15 page)

“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.

T
HEY 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.

“P
RISS
.”

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.”

He smoothed his hand over the back of her head. Her curls were warm from the heat of the sun.

“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.

“Come,” he said when she was finally quiet again. He fumbled in a pocket and drew out a handkerchief. “Let me dry your eyes, Priss. There, that’s better. All the wetness gone. Here, take the handkerchief and blow your nose. That will clear out the nasal passages and make you feel better. Better now?”

She nodded and set the wet handkerchief down on the grass. She hung her head forward so that he would not see the redness of her face.

He wanted very badly to comfort her. He wished he knew how. He had always been so awkward about women. He lifted her chin with one hand.

“No,” he said, when she grasped his wrist, “don’t hide from me, Priss. It is just me. Just me.”

He looked down at her mouth. He had never kissed a woman. It was a strange thought under the
circumstances. But it was true. He had come close once, but he had never done it. He did not know how to do it.

He closed his eyes, lowered his head, and kissed her. And lifted his head again sharply. She was looking up at him, her eyes wide. She had felt sweet. Very sweet. Warm and soft. He could feel the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. He could hear the droning of innumerable invisible insects.

He touched her lips with his tongue before joining his own to them again, tracing their outline, pressing against the seam. She was very still in his arms. He could feel her lips trembling against his tongue, and then she opened her mouth and moaned as he thrust his tongue once inside.

“Priss.”

He laid her back against the grass, struggling out of his coat, rolling it to make a soft pillow for her head. And he brought himself down half across her, cupping her chin with one hand, drawing down her lower lip with his thumb, plunging his tongue into her mouth, taking instant fire at the heat and moisture and softness he found there. She moaned again and sucked inward on his tongue.

He wanted to give her comfort. He wanted to give her pleasure. But he did not know how. He had only ever taken both from her, instructing her on the exact positioning and movement of her body that would give him the maximum pleasure.

He did not know how to love her.

He touched her with unpracticed hands, moving them over her, wanting her to feel good. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes and temples, her chin and her ears. He kissed her mouth again, stroking into her with his tongue. She looked up at him with wide and wondering eyes when he knelt up beside her once more.