A Precious Jewel

by Mary Balogh

“Mm,” he said, waking and rubbing his cheek against the top of her head, kissing her just above her ear. He shifted position a little, spread one hand over her stomach.

  She closed her eyes, memorizing the moment, wishing she could suspend time. Why did one have to move on into the future? Why could one not choose to remain in an eternal present?

  “Priss,” he said, moving his hand over her, “too many cream cakes. Or perhaps it is the jam tarts.”

  She froze.

  “I am going to have to talk to Mrs. Wilson,” he said, “and get her to starve you for a few weeks.”

  She kept her eyes tightly closed. He kissed her above the ear again.

  “I’m teasing,” he said, his voice amused. “You are not taking this as a scold, are you, Priss? I don’t mind if you put on a little more weight. You are just a little bit of a thing, anyway.” He ran his hand again over the soft beginnings of swelling. “You feel good.”

  She set her hand over the back of his and laced her fingers with his.

  “Gerald,” she said after he had fallen silent again.

  “That voice,” he said warily. “I know something serious is coming when you speak like that. Have I hurt you? I didn’t mean to, Priss. You always look pretty to me.”

  “No,” she said, “I am not hurt.”

  “What, then?”

  “I have had another letter from home,” she said. “It was not from my parents this time. It was from a—a friend. A man friend. We were going to be married before I came here.”

  His arms were still about her.

  “He was unable to support me,” she said. “But he has his own cottage now and regular work. He wants me to come home, Gerald.”

  “To stay?” he asked.

  “To stay.”

  “He knows about you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “He says it does not matter. He wants me to go home and marry him.”

  There was a lengthy silence.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked.

  “I think perhaps I should,” she said. “I used to be fond of him.”

  “Used to be,” he said. “You are not now?”

  “It is an opportunity that will not come again,” she said. “It is not that I have grown tired of you, Gerald, or want to leave you. You have been good to me. But girls like me do not usually have the chance to marry and have homes of their own and perhaps child—” She swallowed convulsively. “And perhaps children!”

  “No,” he said. “I suppose they don’t.”

  There was another long silence.

  “You are going, then?” he asked.

  “I think perhaps I ought,” she said.

  “Priss,” he said, “what is he like? Is he likely to throw any of this in your face at some time in the future? You should not do it if there is any chance he will start calling you a wh—. You should not do it if it is ever going to be humiliating for you.”

  “No,” she said. “He is not like that, Gerald. He still loves me, and he blames himself for what has happened to me. He wants to make it up to me.”

  “And you love him too, Priss?” he asked.

  She closed her eyes so tightly that she could see lights behind them. “No,” she said. “But I was fond of him and think I can be fond of him again. It is not that I want to leave you, Gerald, but I have the chance to be married and respectable again.”

  “I think you should go, then, Priss,” he said. “I really think you should.”

  “It is not quite decided yet,” she said. “I have to reply to his letter and wait for him to send for me. But I think I might.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You would be foolish not to.”

  “Yes.”

  He lay behind her for quite a while longer, holding her against him with both arms.

  “I had better go, Priss,” he said at last. “It does not seem right to be holding another man’s woman. I had better go.”

  She pressed her cheek against his arm. “It is not that I am tired of you, Gerald,” she said, “or that I wish to leave you. If this had not happened, I would have been content to be your mistress for as long as you wanted me. Perhaps I still can. Perhaps he will not write back.”

  “Well,” he said, easing his arm from beneath her and sitting up at the side of the bed, “if he does, I think you should go, Priss, provided you really want to and provided you are sure he will not cut up nasty at some future time. I really think you should. I’ll be glad to know that you are well settled.”

  “Will you, Gerald?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I have never liked the thought of your going back to Kit’s when we finally break up, Priss. You know that. You have a lot to give to one man. You were not made for a whorehouse.”

  She did not turn off her side. She lay faced away from him as he dressed.

  He set a hand on her shoulder as he was leaving. “Good night, Priss,” he said. “I’ll call the day after tomorrow. Just to see if you have decided anything definite. Perhaps I will take you for a walk if the weather is good.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll be ready, Gerald.”

  “Not for bed, though, Priss,” he said. “Just for a walk.”

  “Just for a walk,” she said.

  He squeezed her shoulder and left.

  If this was despair, she thought, closing her eyes, not moving, setting her hand over her slowly rounding womb, then it was hell enough. Hell could be no worse.

  SIR GERALD HAD had a great deal on his mind even before going to his mistress’s house. He had been in a bad mood, something she had detected and soothed away within half an hour of greeting him in her parlor. She had restored him to good humor in her usual quiet, sensible way.

  “It cannot be as bad as you think,” she had said. “I will not believe it of Lord Severn. He would not do anything quite so cynical, Gerald. Or if he did, he would make the very best of it afterward. I know he will. You will see that I am right.”

  “I suppose so,” he had said, frowning. “But it is for a lifetime, Priss. Too long a time even if he knew the woman. A lifetime is always too long a time. Marriage was something dreamed up by a sadist, believe me.

  But he does not know the girl and chose her quite deliberately because she is plain and mute and dull.”

  “First impressions are often deceiving,” she had said. “You have a headache, Gerald? Let me fetch some lavender water and soothe it away for you.”

  He had not had a headache, but he had not said so. He had allowed her to take his head in her lap and bathe his temples with lavender water and smile down at him. He had allowed her to baby him and make him sigh with contentment and feel again that life was good even if Miles was a chucklehead.

  The earl had come back to his rooms with him from White’s the evening before, gloomy because his mother and his sisters were on their way to town for the Season, as was the young lady they had chosen for his bride, and her family.

  “If you could set before me the plainest, dullest, most ordinary female in London,” he had said, “or in England for that matter, I would make her an offer without further ado.”

  Sir Gerald had laughed at him. “It would be better to be like me, Miles,” he had said, “and just tell the world in no uncertain terms that you will remain a bachelor as long as you please, and that will be for a lifetime, thank you kindly.”

  Sir Gerald had not taken his friend seriously despite his continued gloom.

  “My ideal woman,” the earl had said a while later, “is someone who would be nice and quiet, who would be content to live somewhere in the country and be visited once or twice a year. Someone who would make all the matchmaking mamas, including my own, fold up their tents and go home. Someone who would fade into the background of my life. Someone I could forget was there. Does that sound like bliss?”

  “Better still to have no one, even in the background,” Sir Gerald had said.

  “That seems not to be an option.” The Earl of Severn had got to his feet. �
�I should be going. It must be fiendishly late. I had better go to Jenny and enjoy myself while I still can.”

  He had not taken his friend seriously, Sir Gerald thought. It was all very well to talk in such a way. Acting was another matter.

  But he had met his friend earlier that day at Jackson’s and left with him to walk to White’s. It seemed that the earl had met his dull, ordinary woman when she had come to his house that morning to beg his help in finding employment, pleading a distant relationship. He had promptly offered her employment—as his countess.

  “You have done what?” Sir Gerald had asked, almost causing a collision with a lady and gentleman walking behind them when he had stopped abruptly on the pavement. But his ears had not deceived him.

  “I have offered marriage to an impoverished relative who called on me this morning,” the Earl of Severn had repeated. “Miss Abigail Gardiner.”

  They were to be married by special license in two days’ time. And that reminded him, Sir Gerald thought, stumbling home from his mistress’s house, his mind a bewildered blur of thoughts he did not feel inclined to sort through for the moment, that he would not be able to take Priss walking in two days’ time. He had promised to be best man at Miles’s wedding.

  The world had gone mad.

  And Priss was going to leave him. But he refused to look at the yawning emptiness that he knew would be there waiting for him when she was gone. It was not even certain yet that she would go. Perhaps her country swain would change his mind when he realized that she was willing to accept his offer.

  Anyway, he would think of her leaving when she left.

  He went straight to bed, burrowed his head far beneath the blankets, and waited out the remainder of a sleepless night.

  PRISCILLA HAD NOT BEEN TO VISIT MISS BLYTHE for several weeks. She had felt too sure that her former governess and employer would see the truth, and she had not yet steeled herself to asking for the help she knew she would need. She went the morning after her talk with Gerald.

  “Priscilla, my dear,” Miss Blythe said, removing her spectacles from the end of her nose and closing her book, “how lovely. I have been wondering if you had fled the country. Do have a seat. I was relaxing for a few minutes after spending an hour with a new trainee. I am not at all sure that the girl will do. Her vulgarity is very deeply ingrained.”

  “I have not known you to fail yet,” Priscilla said with a smile, kissing the offered cheek before seating herself.

  Miss Blythe’s eyes passed over her. “I have been wondering why you had not called,” she said. “Now I can see the reason.”

  “It is so obvious?” Priscilla asked.

  “To a trained eye,” Miss Blythe said. “Your face is rounder, Priscilla, and your breasts fuller. How far along are you?”

  “Close to four months,” Priscilla said.

  “You are one of the fortunate ones, then,” Miss Blythe said. “Some women swell like balloons after only a month or two. Does Sir Gerald know?”

  “No.”

  “And how do you explain its happening?” Miss Blythe asked, seating herself in her favorite chair again.

  “I was careless,” Priscilla said.

  “Despite your training?” the other asked. “I suppose you thought you could take your ease all night beside your employer and not have to bear the consequences. I suppose you forgot that you are always at work and never at pleasure when lying with a man, Priscilla. It was one of the first facts you learned.”

  “Yes,” Priscilla said. “I was careless.”

  “I suppose,” Miss Blythe said, “you forgot that you are a person only when not with a client or employer, that with him you are an object. You forgot that objects are without emotions and must be carefully looked after if they are to be kept in order. You forgot, Priscilla?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I did.”

  “And I suppose you forgot,” Miss Blythe continued, “that your employer is not a person, not anyone you would care to know, but merely a male creature to be pleasured. I suppose Sir Gerald Stapleton has become a person to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are in love with him, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  Miss Blythe sighed. “You have forgotten all of your training,” she said. “Every bit of it. And I suppose you were surprised to find that you were with child.”

  “No,” Priscilla said. “Only surprised, perhaps, that it did not happen sooner than it did. Will you help me?”

  “Of course I will help you,” Miss Blythe said.

  “Not with money,” Priscilla said. “I have almost all my earnings saved, and there are some jewels. And I think perhaps he will give me some sort of settlement even though I am the one to be leaving him. I have told him that a former suitor of mine has written from the country asking me to marry him.”

  “And he believes this?” Miss Blythe asked.

  “He thinks I should go,” Priscilla said.

  “Has written?” Miss Blythe raised her eyebrows. “Does Sir Gerald know that you can read, Priscilla?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He caught me at it when we were at Brookhurst together.”

  “And he believes that your young man can write?” Miss Blythe asked.

  “I don’t believe he has thought about it,” Priscilla said.

  The other woman shook her head. “He must be an incredibly naive young man,” she said.

  “Yes, very innocent,” Priscilla said.

  “He does not know about the child.” Miss Blythe frowned. “When did you last have relations with him, Priscilla?”

  “Last night,” she said.

  “And he does not know? The man must be somewhat lacking in intelligence,” Miss Blythe said.

  “Only in experience,” Priscilla said. “He is not unintelligent.”

  “Poor foolish girl,” Miss Blythe said. “You are besotted, I see. I have a new cottage by the sea, Priscilla. I have never sent a girl there before. You can stay there until after your baby is born. I shall make satisfactory arrangements for it and you may come back here three months after its birth.”

  “I am not giving the baby away,” Priscilla said. “Besides, if I come back here, Gerald will know that I lied to him.”

  “We will talk about it later,” Miss Blythe said. “It will take a week to have the cottage made ready for you. In the meantime, I would keep Sir Gerald from your bed if you can. Your waist must be quite gone already.”

  “Not quite,” Priscilla said. She stood up and held out her right hand. “Thank you, Miss Blythe. I knew you would help me but have been afraid to come and ask and show you how foolish I have been. It is such a relief to have it all off my mind. I shall not take any more of your time. You were trying to relax.”

  Miss Blythe ignored her hand. “Priscilla,” she said, “you have been on your own for almost a year. You were here working for only four months before that. But you were my girl and you are my girl for as long as you come to me for advice and help. You must know that my girls dread these confrontations with me more than anything else in their whole employment.”

  “Yes,” Priscilla said. “I can remember its happening to May when I first came. She cried a great deal even before her interview with you and she cried a great deal more after you had finished with her.”

  “I inspire such dread quite deliberately,” Miss Blythe said. “It is quite inexcusable to involve an innocent life in this rather sordid profession of ours, Priscilla, when a little care can prevent its happening. I want my girls to dread what I have to say so much that they will avoid having to face it at all costs. I certainly wish to ensure that no girl has to come to me a second time. So far I have been successful in that, at least.”

  Priscilla lowered her eyes.

  “You are not exempt, Priscilla, merely because you have always been my favorite and merely because I think of you more as a daughter than as one of my girls,” she said. “You are one of my girls. You are as much a whore as any of them. You
may sit down. It usually takes me about half an hour to point out the error of a girl’s ways, and I would not keep a pregnant girl standing.” Priscilla sat.

  After five minutes she was swallowing repeatedly. She was beginning to realize that the grimness of such an experience had not been exaggerated. After ten, her hands were clutched together. She was feeling rather as if she had been stripped and pinioned in the pillory. Miss Blythe’s words cut her as surely as a whip, knifing across her back and curling cruelly about her sides. After fifteen, she was in tears.

  Miss Blythe sat in silence for several minutes after she had finished, watching the girl who sat before her, head bent sharply forward, shoulders shaking from leftover sobs.

  “Dry your eyes now, Priscilla, and look at me,” she said. “Come. You have more backbone than this.”

  Priscilla dried her eyes with shaking hands and blew her nose. She lifted her chin and looked at her former employer.

  “So you see things as they are again,” Miss Blythe said. “You had a choice, Priscilla. You might have been my secretary or companion and been treated as my daughter. You chose rather to be independent and I must honor you for showing so much pride. But you made your choice. And I made it very clear to you at the time and every single day of your training before it was too late that being a whore is different from being any other worker that there is. One might be a governess or a factory worker for a while and no longer be a governess or a factory worker when one leaves one’s post. When one becomes a whore, one is forever a whore.”

  “Yes,” Priscilla said.

  “You are a whore,” Miss Blythe said.

  “Yes.”

  “It is only in knowing that,” Miss Blythe said, “that you can achieve any happiness at all in life, Priscilla. Happiness for a whore can never come through marriage. There will never be a marriage for you. And it can never come from the men who pay for your favors. Happiness cannot come to a whore from a man.”

  “No.”

  “It can come only from within,” the other said. “For many girls, Priscilla—for most—that means there never can be any happiness at all. You are fortunate. You have your education and your accomplishments and your pride.”