by Mary Balogh
Sir Gerald left Tattersall’s and began to walk aimlessly. He had never thought of his relationship with Priss as anything sordid. Even when he had taken her as his regular whore at Kit’s it had not seemed sordid. He was a normal young man with normal appetites, satisfying them in a thoroughly normal way at a whorehouse that had a reputation for cleanliness and skilled girls.
Priss was his mistress, the woman he housed and paid to give him regular and exclusive access to her body and the satisfaction of his needs. There was nothing unusual about such an arrangement. He benefited, Priss benefited, everyone’s interests were served, and no one got hurt.
There was nothing sordid about it.
Sir Gerald looked up sharply to find himself the object of a furiously shaking fist and a stream of hair-raisingly colorful language. It seemed that he had crossed a street with his head down and caused a near collision between a gentleman’s phaeton and a vegetable cart. It was the carter who was excited. The gentleman was grinning.
“Who is she, Stapleton?” he yelled. “You had better keep yourself alive for her, old chap.”
Sir Gerald grinned back at him and raised his hat to the carter.
He could not associate vulgarities like “plowing” and that other one Ramsay had used with Priss and what happened between them in their bed.
Priss was too good to be described in coarse terms. Not good in the way one would expect a whore to be good, perhaps, but good in the way one would expect a wi—. Well, she was good. She satisfied him utterly and always had. Even that very first time she had given him precisely what he had asked for. He could not remember a time when she had failed to please him in bed.
And yet he had told Ramsay in that careless tone men tended to use when talking of women, especially women they used only for sex, that he would have thought of dropping Priss too if he had not leased the house for a year.
Would he? Was he keeping her only because he had paid for the house anyway and might as well get value for his money? Would he drop her if he had to pay out more rather than keep her over the summer so that she would be there for him when he returned to town in the autumn or winter?
Devil take it. He stood still on the pavement and did some mental calculations, frowning down at the ground. It was early July. He would spend the second half of the month at Brookhurst and all of August and September. Often he stayed for October, too, and sometimes for November. Two years before he had stayed until after Christmas.
Probably he would be away from Priss for three months.
He walked on. Three months. Yes, it would be a good thing, too. It would give him time to get his head and his body clear of her. After three months he would be able to see his association with her in better perspective again. And he would keep her over the winter, until the lease ran out the following May. No longer than that. He would begin to feel too tied to her if he kept her longer than a year.
Perhaps he would not keep her so long. Perhaps he would finish with her before Christmas and let her stay out the lease on the house so that she could look about her at greater leisure for a new protector.
Devil take it. He had better look after her, that new protector. He had better not start talking in public about plowing her or anything ugly like that. Not if he knew what was good for him.
Sir Gerald looked up in some surprise at the door of his mistress’s house. He had not realized that he was walking in that direction.
“Is Prissy at home?” he asked Prendergast, handing the man his hat and cane when he stepped inside the hallway.
“Upstairs, sir,” the manservant said. “I shall send Miriam up to inform her that you are here.”
Sir Gerald stepped into the parlor.
“Gerald,” she said, coming in no more than two minutes after him. “How lovely.”
Priss had the gift or the training always to make him feel that seeing him made her day special. There was always a lightness in her tread, a glow in her face, a warmth in her eyes. He took her hands in his and squeezed them.
“I did not have anything to do,” he said, smiling at her ruefully. He had never made that admission to Priss before. Besides, if he thought about them, his words had not been very complimentary. Did he come to her only because there was nothing else to do?
Did he?
“I’m glad,” she said. “And so you came to me, Gerald.”
“Priss,” he said without ever realizing he was going to say what he did, “who taught you to act so much like a lady?”
She smiled. But this time—or was he just fancying things—the smile did not extend all the way back into her eyes. It stopped at a barrier just this side of her soul.
“Miss Blythe, of course,” she said. “Have you not heard that she is the best teacher of young women in London, Gerald? I am partial, of course.”
“Yes,” he said. “You must be her prize pupil of all time, though, Priss. You must be a good learner.”
“So she said.” She smiled at him again. “And thank you for the compliment, sir.”
“I am not surprised that you were her favorite,” he said.
“I think all her girls are her favorites,” she said. “She cares, you know, Gerald, despite her profession and ours. We are people, you know, we whores.”
“Don’t call yourself that,” he said, frowning. “You aren’t a whore, Priss. You are my mistress.”
“Yes,” she said.
He realized that he still had her hands in his. He released them.
“You came to London from the country?” he said. “From where?”
“From somewhere else.” The smile had moved forward in her eyes so that it was quite shallow.
“What did you do there?” he asked. “What did your father do? Your family?”
She shook her head slightly. “I am your mistress, Gerald,” she said. “In that capacity I will do all in my power to please you. I have no past and no future. Just this present reality. I am your mistress. Will you come into the bedchamber and let me give you pleasure?”
Her answer gave him a strange feeling of relief. He did not know what he had been about, asking her those questions. If she had answered them, he might have been lost forever. She might have become irrevocably a person to him. Not just Priss, but a person.
Lost forever? He frowned as he followed her through to the bedchamber and shrugged out of his coat. And what the devil did he mean by that?
“I have no buttons today,” she said with a smile. “Only pins. I can manage on my own.”
She undressed quickly before him as he plucked absently at his neckcloth and the buttons of his shirt.
“You will be pulling your buttons off and incurring the wrath of your valet and your tailor if you tear at them like that,” she said, coming toward him when she had stepped out of her own clothes. “You are not usually so careless, Gerald. Let me.”
Her smile and her light tone took away any impression of nagging from her scolding. He stood still while she opened his shirt and pulled it from the waistband of his pantaloons. She touched his chest with light fingertips before crossing to the bed and lying on her back in her usual position, waiting for him.
“Priss,” he said, “I am going to take you to Brookhurst with me for the summer.”
Was he? Was that what he had come here to say?
Her mouth formed an “O.”
“There is no point in having a mistress if she is far away from me for three whole months and perhaps even longer, is there?” he said.
He lowered himself on top of her as he usually did, waited for her to adjust her body to his, slid his hands beneath her, and mounted her.
“I don’t want to be without this for three months,” he said. “It’s good with you, Priss.”
He heard and felt her swallow.
“Your family?” she said. “Your servants? Your neighbors? Will they not be outraged?”
He had not thought about it. He had never planned to take her with him. He had not given the matter a consci
ous thought.
“I don’t have any family there,” he said. “They are all dead. The servants may think what they please. The neighbors can still visit and I can visit them. There are plenty of places for you to go, Priss, where you won’t run into them. I’m taking you, anyway. If anyone does not like it, then he can stay away. It won’t matter to me. If it comes to a choice between you and the approval of my neighbors, then I’ll take you.”
He began to move in her and sighed his appreciation against the side of her face. This was exactly where he wanted to be. He wondered he had even thought of Tattersall’s or anywhere else when there was Priss to be visited and bedded.
“Gerald,” she said, “should I not be consulted?”
He stilled and lifted himself to look into her face. “Why?” he asked. “You don’t want to come, Priss?”
“I don’t want to be the cause of scandal,” she said.
He frowned down at her. He did not want to think. His body was aroused for action.
“You will do as you are told,” he said. “Should you be consulted? No, you should not. I pay you to be my mistress, Priss, and to do what I tell you to do and go where I tell you to go.”
He felt her stiffen.
“I think you sometimes forget that,” he said. “Perhaps I give you too much rein.” She stared up at him.
“You will be coming with me,” he said, “because I say so. I’ll not hear another word from you on the matter.”
He looked away from her eyes. He looked at her shoulders, with their creamy skin and delicate bone structure.
“Relax your body for me, Priss,” he said.
She obeyed him instantly and he lowered his face into her curls and finished his business with her more quickly than was his habit. He did not enjoy their coupling at all. He was angry. Angry with her for voicing concerns that should have been his own, for pointing out to him all the rashness of his decision. Furious with himself for sounding so much like his father.
For being so much like his father. Autocratic. Bad-tempered. Always right. Contemptuous of the women in his life. Treating them as if they were things, not persons.
“Priss,” he said, rolling to one side of her almost as soon as he was finished in her, keeping his arms about her and bringing her over onto her side to face him. “Priss?”
She stared blankly across at him.
“I want you there,” he said. “I will not be comfortable without you. And I want you in the country for the summer. You will enjoy it, won’t you? You come from the country, don’t you? I don’t see much of my neighbors, you know. Most of the time it will be just you and me. I want you to see it all. I want to show it to you. It’s important to me, my home.”
She stared at him.
“Will you come?”
“Do I have a choice?” she asked after a pause during which he thought she was going to say nothing.
He swallowed. “No,” he said. “But I want you to want to come, Priss.”
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I want you willing. I don’t want you sulking the whole time. I don’t want to see you unhappy.”
“Gerald,” she said. “I try to please you. Not just because you pay me for my favors and not just because you are a man and stronger than I and able to enforce obedience at your will. I try to please you because it is my wish to do so, because I have freely chosen to be your mistress and to satisfy your physical needs. I could have stayed at Miss Blythe’s, and I would have done so if I had not wanted to come with you and please you. I don’t like it when you speak to me as you spoke a little while ago.”
He got up from the bed and began to dress. He turned to her when he had secured his pantaloons at the waist.
“Very well, then, Priss,” he said. “The choice will be yours. Come if you will. Stay here if you would prefer. I’ll not force you either way. You can have an easy summer if you wish, with no one to please except yourself. You have earned a holiday because you have always pleased me very well indeed and never ever denied me. I shall be leaving in a little over a week’s time.”
There was a certain impishness in her smile. “I shall be ready,” she said.
“To go with me?” He frowned.
“To go with you.”
He buttoned his shirt and knotted his neckcloth with careless fingers. “Women!” he said. “I’ll go to my grave not understanding them any better than I did the day I was born.”
“Gerald,” she said, “you cannot go out onto the street looking like that. You would turn every head. Let me tie it for you.” She got up from the bed, and his eyes moved over her appreciatively. She did not, as she usually did after their couplings were over, reach for her dressing gown.
“Untie it completely,” he said, his hands at her small and warm waist. “And undo those buttons again, Priss. It is a new shirt and the infernal things are too small for sense and sharp at the edges, too. And then get back into bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired. And there is no saying what I will be feeling after a sleep.”
She smiled and pulled his neckcloth loose. The barriers behind her eyes had all been lifted again, he saw when he looked into them.
SHE GOT TO KNOW HIM BETTER AFTER THEY HAD moved to the country, but she was not at all sure that she wished to do so. Her heart ached with the new knowledge and all the evidence it brought that he was a real person, with all the complexities and inconsistencies and pains and pleasures of a real man. It had been better, perhaps, to know him only as her employer, to know only his body with any degree of intimacy.
They arrived at Brookhurst early one evening, too tired to do anything but sink gratefully into baths, eat sparingly of a lavish meal that the cook had prepared in anticipation of their arrival, and retire to bed. He spent one hour in hers before retiring to his own.
But the next morning, though cloudy, was warm and inviting. Both had awoken to the loudness of silence and the chirping of birds and the distant barking of a dog. He took her outside after breakfast to show her the part of the park closest to the house.
“It is not a large estate,” he said, drawing her arm through his. “We were never among the grand landholders of England. But it is large enough and the park has always been zealously preserved.”
“It is lovely, Gerald,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment and breathing in the warm smell of summer vegetation.
“The formal gardens are old-fashioned,” he said, “but I would not have them changed after my father’s death, although I had a head gardener who was bursting with progressive ideas.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “The colors and smells are glorious.”
He led her to the side of the house, where there was a small rose arbor surrounded by trees. He led her through a trellised archway into an enchanted world of delicate blooms and heady perfumes.
“My mother’s,” he said. “It was her pride and joy.”
“You have no family left?” she asked him. “Did she die long ago, Gerald?” She released his arm in order to cup a pink bud gently in her hands and breathe in its fragrance.
“She died when I was thirteen,” he said. He laughed. “I discovered that she was dead at the same time as I discovered that she had been alive.”
She looked up at him inquiringly.
“My father told me she was dead when she left us,” he said. “I was eight at the time. Priss, what mother would leave her son at so young an age, eh? I had thought she was fond of me, fool that I was. And then when I was thirteen he told me she was being brought home for burial, and we were both plunged into the farce of deep mourning, five whole years after I had suffered all of a child’s grief at her loss. It seemed she had been living all the time with my aunts.”
“I am so sorry,” she said.
“Why?” he asked, looking at her coolly. “Were you responsible for anything that happened?”
She shook her head. “And you were an only child?” she asked.
&
nbsp; “I was the one that escaped, so to speak,” he said. “There were an alarming number of miscarriages and stillbirths, I gather. Something like six before me and four after me, though I may have the numbers wrong.”
She closed her eyes. “Ah, poor lady,” she said.
He shrugged. “It made it easier for her to abandon her responsibilities,” he said. “She might have felt obliged to stay if there had been more of us, especially if there had been one still at her breast. One of those stillbirths happened only six months or so before she died the first time.” He smiled and plucked a rose to weave into her hair. “You would think she would have loved the one child to live, wouldn’t you?” he said.
“Oh, Gerald.” She touched the lapels of his coat. “Are you sure she did not? Could an eight-year-old understand the complexities of what was going on in the adult world around him? Perhaps she had no choice but to leave you.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he said, turning away abruptly and striding out through the arch. “She was a woman, after all.”
Priscilla went after him and walked silently beside him. He had his hands clasped behind his back. He did not offer his arm.
“You are the wise one, Priss,” he said. “You know how to stop yourself from having children, stillborn or live. Whenever you wish to take yourself off, you can do so with a clear conscience, can’t you? And in the process you will save a few poor mortals from imagining that there is such a thing as love in this world.”
“Gerald,” she whispered. And she was not sure if the intense pain she felt and the tears she fought were for the cruelty of his words or for the bleak disillusion that he had carried forward into his life from the age of thirteen.
He took his duties as landlord very seriously. She discovered that within just a few days of their arrival. He rode out almost every morning to visit his tenants and laborers, sometimes not arriving back until well after luncheon. And he talked about their problems and concerns and suggestions to his bailiff and sometimes to her, with furrowed brow. He usually stopped himself after a few minutes with her.
“But I must not bore you with man talk, Priss,” he would say. “You must tell me to be quiet when I start prosing on.”
