A Precious Jewel (27 page)

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.

T
T 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?

It hampered his inquiries. He was able to find no trace of her in his walks about the village or on his rides in the surrounding countryside. He was as discreet as he knew how to be, and yet eventually, sitting in the village tavern with a pint of ale on the table before
him, he had to ask if anyone knew of a Prissy, who had worked in the kitchen of his sister’s house in London, and whom his sister had begged him to ask after on his way west. No one knew any Prissy. Certainly not one who had recently returned home from London.

“There is Bess,” one young man suggested with furrowed brow. “Bessie, some calls her. It sounds a bit like Prissy, don’t it now?”

“Bessie has never been farther than five miles away in all her born days,” someone else said with scorn.

“Both her parents are still alive,” Sir Gerald said. “And several younger brothers and sisters.” She had left his sister’s service in order to return home to marry, he went on to explain. And no, his sister had neglected to furnish him with the girl’s last name—a foolish oversight.

The men gathered at the tavern looked collectively thoughtful and collectively shook their heads. No, this Prissy was not from their village.

“There was Miss Wentworth from the house, of course,” the same young man who had suggested Bessie said. “She were Miss Priscilla Wentworth, weren’t she, before she took herself off from here when his worship and lordship decided to come down here and be king and duke and bishop and lord mayor all rolled into one?”

The man who had treated the young man scornfully before did so again. He clucked his tongue. “The
gent is talking of a wench that worked in a kitchen, Ned,” he said. “Keep your trap shut if you can’t get no sense to come out of it.”

The youth retired into an injured silence.

The rector later confirmed what Sir Gerald already knew in his heart. Denbridge was not Priss’s home. Miss Blythe had misled him or Priss had misled her.

He did, before he returned to London, draw his horse to a halt outside the gates of Denton Manor and gaze along the straight driveway to the neat early Georgian manor, which was the home of Mr. Oswald Wentworth, he had learned. Miss Priscilla Wentworth, daughter of the late owner, and cousin of the present one, no longer lived there.