A Precious Jewel

by Mary Balogh

  But today she had gone down, drawn by the sparkle of the sun off the waves of the sea and by the sunlight on the sand. The sky was deep blue, the sea a shade deeper again. It was a perfect day in an imperfect summer.

  But it had not by any means been a dreary summer. As she tackled the climb back to her cottage, telling herself that there was no hurry, that she might take all of half an hour if she pleased, Priscilla counted her blessings. And they were many.

  There were some younger people and families on the farms surrounding the village, but in Fairlight itself almost all the inhabitants were older people, living either alone or in couples. They had taken her into their hearts and had made her excitement at the approaching birth their excitement. They were forever plying her with words of advice, frequently conflicting. There was Mrs. Whiting, for example, who would have her sit all day long with her feet elevated, if she had her way. And there was Miss Cork, who recommended a brisk walk along the beach every morning and evening.

  Mr. and Mrs. Jinkerson, who had retired from the pressures of running a business in London seven years before, offered her a job. Mrs. Jinkerson was frequently lonely, her husband explained, and could not get about as she had used to do. Both of them would be more grateful than they could say if Miss Wentworth would keep her company—say for three afternoons a week? They would be pleased to pay her for her time.

  Priscilla had assured them that she would be delighted to give Mrs. Jinkerson her company but that she had no wish to be paid.

  But they insisted.

  “People who have been in business, you see, Miss Wentworth,” Mr. Jinkerson had explained to her, “are easier in their mind if they pay for every favor. Then there can be no question of debt.”

  Priscilla had accepted their goodness, knowing very well that Mrs. Jinkerson was never lonely, but had a whole host of friends in the village. And it had never been noticeable that she found it difficult to get about, either.

  Other villagers were beginning to touch upon the idea that they could use this or that help with their daily lives—never anything onerous or ungenteel. Mr. Fibbins, for example, found that his eyesight was failing him at the age of seventy-two and that he needed someone to read his favorite books to him if he was ever to read them again. And, of course, he would be pleased to pay for the favor.

  Priscilla paused in her slow upward climb and set a hand below the swelling of her pregnancy in an attempt to ease some of its weight. The sun had moved over to the west. Someone was standing beside the path at the top of the cliff. But the sun was behind him. She could not see who he was. She was in for a scold, she thought with a smile, if it was Vicar Whiting and he bore tales home to his wife.

  The villagers took care of their own, the vicar had said during his very first visit to her cottage. He had spoken the simple truth. She had been accepted as one of their own.

  She resumed her climb. Her blessings were so many that sometimes in the privacy of her own cottage she wept with the wonder of it. She was being given a second chance.

  And if sometimes in the evenings when she was at home behind the drawn curtains of her windows, she felt a loneliness, and a longing for the sound of one particular voice and the sight of one particular face, then she would turn her thoughts to her child, who would be born within the month.

  She would not be lonely when her child was born. And perhaps it would be a son. Perhaps he would look like his father. But son or daughter, fair or dark, the child would be half Gerald’s. She would find something of him in the child.

  Sir Gerald watched her come slowly up the sandy path. Although she had looked up at him, he knew that she had not recognized him. The late afternoon sun was behind him.

  He had difficulty catching his breath for a while. She was huge with child.

  Despite the slowness of her progress, there was an easiness about her movements, a look of relaxation, as if she had nowhere in particular to go and no time limit in which to get there. She looked happy.

  And her face matched the image, he saw when she drew closer. Her eyes were dreamy, her lips drawn up into the suggestion of a smile. She was wearing the straw bonnet he had bought for her the previous year.

  Finally, when she was quite close to him, she looked up at him again, shading her eyes.

  “Hello, Priss,” he said.

  She stood quite still for a long time, the sun full on her, making of her a glowing, vital creature, large with the evidence of her fertility. Her expression did not noticeably change.

  The strange thing was, she thought, that she was hardly surprised. The final stages of her pregnancy had made her lethargic, dreamy, not quite centered on reality. She thought of him and dreamed of him almost constantly.

  She knew he was real, that he really was standing there. But she was hardly surprised.

  “Hello, Gerald,” she said. And she walked up the remaining stretch of the path to join him on the clifftop. “I did not believe that she would have told you.”

  “I don’t believe she would have,” he said, “if I had raged or threatened. I think she finally came to realize that if she ever wanted her sitting room to herself again, she must tell me where you were.”

  He was not wearing a hat. The sun was playing with his hair, making of it a fair halo. He looked so very familiar. Oh, so very dearly familiar.

  “Why?” she asked. “Why did you want to know, Gerald?”

  “Priss,” he said. “You should have told me. Why did you not tell me?”

  He had always thought her pretty. He thought her beautiful now. That was his child, he thought, looking down at her great bulk, which was arching her back slightly. His. And hers. It was their child.

  “I had broken the rules,” she said, “and committed the cardinal sin of whores. I allowed myself to be got with child.”

  “Priss,” he said, “you were not a whore. You were my mistress. My woman. I cared for you. Did you not know that?”

  It had all been clear in his mind during his journey from London. He had pictured the scene, rehearsed the words, imagined her broken and bewildered. The Priss who had always met him with a warm smile and outstretched hands and a spring in her step would now be the one needing to be taken up into outstretched arms. He would be the strong one, the one in command of the situation.

  She was smiling at him with that new smile, the dreamy one that came straight from her impending motherhood.

  “Yes, Gerald, I did,” she said. “I did. And I cared for you, too. But I had broken the rules. I had been careless. I had to take the consequences.”

  “It is not fair, is it,” he said, looking into her eyes, marveling that there was no bitterness there, “how everything is enjoyment for us men, provided we have the money to pay for our pleasures, while it is the woman who must take all the responsibility and bear all the burden of the consequences if she is careless, as you put it. Priss, the child is mine. I put it there. I am as responsible as you.”

  She was grateful. She did not know why Miss Blythe would have broken all her own rules and sent him to her. But she was grateful. She knew now that this was all she needed to make her contentment complete—Gerald visiting her, acknowledging his paternity of her child, telling her he had been fond of her.

  Except that tomorrow there would be pain again when he was gone.

  She would not think of tomorrow.

  “Will you come to my cottage?” she asked. “I have a kettle always boiling.”

  “You must sit down, Priss,” he said, offering her his arm. “Is it a very heavy burden?”

  “Mrs. Murdoch—she is the midwife—says that it will fall soon,” she said. “Then I will be able to breathe more easily. Of course, then I will find it more difficult to walk. But it will not be for long. Once it has fallen, it will be almost ready for the birth.”

  “Priss.” He set one hand over hers. “When?”

  “Two, maybe three weeks,” she said. “Did Miss Blythe warn you that this is what you would find?”

 
“I knew,” he said. “You must have thought me an incredible simpleton, Priss. Too many cream cakes, indeed. If Miles had not said the exact same thing to the countess just a week ago, I might never have opened up my eyes.”

  She preceded him into the cottage and bent over the fire, where the kettle was singing merrily. “The countess is increasing?” she said. “Is Lord Severn happy? I am glad for him.”

  “I came, Priss,” he said. “I would have come months ago, as soon as I discovered who you are, but the only reason I could think of then for your having lied to me was that you had grown tired of me after all and wanted to leave. So I let you go.”

  She looked up from her task of pouring boiling water into the teapot. “Oh, no, Gerald,” she said. “You knew that was not the reason. I told you it was not.”

  “But what was I to think, Priss?” he asked.

  Her hands paused suddenly on the tea cozy as she fitted it over the teapot. She looked up at him.

  “After you discovered what?” she said.

  “I went down to Denbridge,” he said. “It was just after you left, Priss. I wanted to make sure that you were settled happily. I was going to take you back if you weren’t, offer you a higher salary, maybe. Kit told me where to go. I didn’t realize until after I had left there that the Miss Priscilla Wentworth I had heard mentioned was you. But I put two and two together in my usual tortoiselike way. Why did you not ever tell me, Priss?”

  “Downstairs I was your mistress, Gerald,” she said. “Upstairs I was myself, someone different. It seemed important to me to keep my two identities separate.”

  “And you could never share your real self with me?” he asked. “I thought we were friends, Priss. I thought you knew I was fond of you.”

  “I was your mistress, Gerald,” she said. “You paid me to lie with you.”

  He sat down and set a hand over his eyes. “But it was more than that,” he said. “It was, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it more than that, Priss? To me it was.”

  She set a cup of tea on the table beside him and sat awkwardly opposite him.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said. “I am glad you have come. I have thought of you a great deal in the past few weeks.”

  “There is a clergyman here?” he asked. “I saw the church. Will he marry us tomorrow, do you think, Priss? I don’t want to wait any longer. I don’t want the child to be born out of wedlock.”

  He knew he had said the wrong thing. For the first time her expression changed. Devil take it, he thought, but he was so gauche. No formal proposal? No going down on one knee and all that stuff that women set such store by? He ran a hand through his curls.

  “There will be no marriage, Gerald,” she said. “Is that why you have come? It is good of you. Yes, it is good of you. But please. Let us talk of something else. Tell me more about Lord Severn and his bride.”

  “Priss,” he said, “you are a lady. You are Miss Wentworth of Denton Manor.”

  No. She did not want this. She did not want this memory of him.

  “I am the woman you met at Miss Blythe’s, Gerald,” she said. “The woman you employed as a mistress for almost a year. I am not suddenly different just because you now know that once upon a time I was Miss Wentworth of Denton. I was not marriageable when I was just Prissy. There is no difference now.”

  “But there is, Priss,” he said. “I know I should have realized it. The evidence was staring me in the face. But I did not. I never suspected that you were a lady.”

  She got up awkwardly to set the kettle over the fire again. “I am not a lady, Gerald,” she said. “Neither am I a whore. I was both but am neither. I am Priscilla Wentworth, resident of Fairlight, supporting myself partly on earnings that I saved and a generous settlement from my former employer and partly on light employment I have been given in the village here. That is all. No labels. Just Priscilla Wentworth. You need not marry me, Gerald, just because you think you must make a lady respectable. You would not have dreamed of marrying me if I had come from the gutter, as you have always supposed.”

  “Priss.” He was on his feet too, hovering behind her. “That is not the reason. Have I given you the impression that it is? I suppose I have. I am so clumsy with words. There is the child. It’s my child. Ours. I have to give you the protection of my name. I must …”

  She turned to smile at him, her anger of a moment before fading again. “No,” she said. “No, Gerald. It is good of you. There are not many men, I believe, who would feel responsible for a child begotten in such a way or for the child’s mother. But it is not a good enough reason. And I really do not need the protection of your name. I can scarcely believe it is true myself, but I have been accepted here. I even feel loved here. Here I will not be a fallen woman or my child a bastard. I cannot marry you, Gerald. I would always be burdened by the knowledge that you had married me because of who I am and because you had got me with child. And you would always be burdened by the knowledge that you had been forced into something that you had never wanted in your life.”

  After all, she did not want him. He had hoped. He had done more than hope. He had dreamed—ever since his realization of the truth at Severn Park a week before. Even more so since his visit to Kit’s. He had dreamed throughout his journey from London, picturing it all, the way it would be, himself the hero of the dream.

  He drew a package from an inner pocket of his coat and handed it to her.

  “It took me almost a week to get this,” he said. “It is not an easy thing to do. But I did it. I thought at last I would be able to use it.”

  She looked down at the special license he had put in her hands. He was that serious, then. The idea of marrying her had not been a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had spent a week getting a special license. The words on the paper blurred before her eyes for a moment.

  “Gerald.” She handed it back to him. “Thank you, dear. You have always been very good to me. But I will not burden your life with a wife you have never intended to take. Come and visit our child if you wish—as often as you like. I hope you do. But we must not marry. I know you were fond of me. I would prefer to keep that, to be able to think that you will remain fond of me. Perhaps you can do something for our child when he is older—send him to school, perhaps. Or her.”

  “Priss.” He stared at the license before taking it back and returning it to his pocket. “I want to marry you. I asked you because I want it.”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, then,” he said. “There is no more to say, is there? I’ll go back to London tomorrow. I’ll return when the baby is born. You will let me know?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He turned without another word, stumbling against the chair he had been sitting on earlier, and found his way to the door. He was outside, with the door closed behind him, before the tears came. He strode off to the cliffs rather than walk back along the street to the inn where he had put up and risk having to pass someone.

  And Priscilla, inside the cottage, sat back down on her chair, her hands resting on the swelling beneath her bosom, staring at the kettle, which was humming on the fire again. Two cups of tea grew cold on the table at her elbow.

  Fool, she told herself. Fool.

  Heaven had been within her grasp and she had rejected it. All of her most impossible dreams could have come true. She could have been married the very next day. To Gerald.

  And she had sent him away. Because he had asked for the wrong reasons. Noble reasons, perhaps. But the wrong ones.

  Fool. Fool. Fool.

  And just a short while ago she had been so happy to see him. He had seemed to be a part of the contentment that her life in the village and her advanced pregnancy had brought her. But a little more than the contentment, too. He had been the missing something that held contentment back from being perfect happiness.

  Her lover had come to her again and she had been completely happy. She had not expected permanence, only a brief visit. But then she had never expected permanence with
Gerald. She would have been contented with a few hours or perhaps even a few days of happiness. She could have returned to her contentment afterward.

  Yet, now she felt bereft. Empty, as she had felt the day she left him. Raw with the pain of loneliness and loss.

  The light of late afternoon turned to dusk in the room. But she continued to sit and stare into the dying fire.

  THE LAMP HAD been lit, the fire built again, the teacups cleared away and washed together with the dinner dishes. Priscilla had forced herself to eat. She sat down finally with her favorite book and read the sonnet he had studied at school.

  “ ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ ” she read. “ ‘Thou art more lovely and more temperate.’ ”

  There was a knock on the door.

  Who? she thought as she got slowly to her feet. Gerald? But she did not want him to come back. It had taken her a few hours to pull herself free of the dreadful lethargy that had kept her sitting in a darkened room and staring into glowing ashes. Please let it be someone else, she prayed silently as she pulled back the bolt and opened the door.

  “Priss?” he said. His face looked haunted.

  She found herself doing what she had always done when he came to her. She held out her hands for his.

  “Gerald,” she said. “Come in.”

  “I just thought of something,” he said, coming inside and releasing her hands to close the door. “I was sitting in my room at the inn when it struck me. I should have thought of it sooner. I never could think fast, could I?”

  “Gerald,” she said. He was gazing at her with eager, anxious eyes. She reached up without thinking to cup one of his cheeks in her hand.

  He covered her hand with his. “It was because you weren’t convinced, wasn’t it?” he said. “You thought it was just because I knew who you were and because of the baby. You did not quite believe it was because I love you, did you?”

  “You did not mention love, Gerald,” she said. She brushed at the lapel of his coat with her free hand.

  “I did,” he said frowning. “I did, Priss. It is the only reason. I must have said it.”