The Perfect Mistress (11 page)

"I-I have been a man who enjoyed his freedom, Mrs. LeCoeur," he said, still recovering from the revelation of Gabrielle's identity. Shifting uncomfortably on his chair, he cast about for a plausible explanation for desiring a change in his singular and hitherto hedonistic mode of living.

"Indeed," she said, lifting an eloquent eyebrow. "But, a titled man with a considerable fortune who has no wife and has had no affairs of substance…"

Her gaze raked him like subtle claws. "It gives rise to certain… questions."

"Questions?" he echoed, feeling his gut contract.

"Are you quite certain it is a
mistress
you want? and not a 'bully companion'?"

He visibly stiffened. Her matter-of-factness rivaled her daughter's! Not since schoolyard foolery had anyone suggested that his tastes ran to anything but women. "Madam. I am
quite
certain." He desperately seized upon what he hoped would pass for an explanation. "Of late, the lure of stage lights and fast company seems to have lost much of its appeal. I find I now desire… a different sort of companionship… a deeper and more thoroughgoing experience of love."

"
Alors
—you claim to have been in love before?" the Frenchwoman said.

"For how long?" the aging country girl asked, leaning forward an inch.

"With what sort of woman?" the Baden-Powell creature demanded, lowering her chin, looking as if she might charge at any moment.

Muscle by muscle, his body tensed with shock. He was accustomed to a subtle bit of bargaining in acquiring his pleasures, but nothing in his varied and worldly experience had prepared him for sitting in a civilized drawing room, defending his amorous history over tea… before a quartet of astute and unflinching women of the world. He straightened irritably. He did not intend to spread the details of his involvements before them to be picked over like the carcass of yesterday's hen.

"What man of experience has
not
been so engaged by a member of your fair sex?" he said, surprising even himself with so rational and diplomatic an assertion. "Suffice it to say: early attachments are seldom lasting ones. One's judgment requires time to mature. But, I confess, I had not realized the full extent of my change of heart until I saw Gabrielle." He watched Rosalind cast a sidelong glance at her friends, who returned it with speaking looks that he was at a loss to interpret.

"And just what was it about our Gabrielle that captured you so, your lordship?" Rosalind asked with that cool, impenetrable smile.

"Captured me. Yes. Quite. The perfect way to express what happened the instant I set eyes on Gabrielle…" He shifted again; his chair seemed harder and less hospitable with each passing moment. He glanced about. "Will she not be joining us? I had expected to see her…"

"But of course," Rosalind said, pinning him with a look that was unabashedly critical as it lowered to his empty hands. No flowers, no chocolates, no token of esteem and affection, it said clearly. He unfolded his hands and spread them tightly, palms down, against his thighs. "It is only that, in such delicate matters, some things are best left to
la maman
," she continued. "You must understand: Gabrielle is a tempestuous young girl, whose fiery passions and emotions sometimes run ahead of her judgment.

As her mother, I must exercise
restraint
for her and see to her best interests."

The glint of determination in her eye said that despite her voluptuary profession, she possessed the necessary amount of that austere virtue. "Tell me, Lord Sandbourne, are you a gaming man?"

"I sit a few rounds, from time to time," he said, stiffening back and feeling the wooden carvings on the top of the chair digging into his spine.

Rosalind nodded, glancing at the others, who again communicated something with their eyes. "You belong to a number of clubs, I assume. Do you normally dine there of an evening, or do you prefer your own cook?"

"My own cook, most evenings." From the sidelong glances they exchanged and the looks on their faces, he wasn't certain how his answers struck them.

"Clubs and restaurants can be so noisy and difficult," Rosalind announced, phrasing her agreement in terms oblique enough to discourage optimism. "How much better to have a quiet meal in the company of a kindred and comforting companion."

In short order he was asked a dozen more questions, ranging from how long he had employed his valet and cook, to the size and character of his wine cellar in town, to how much of the year he spent in the country and whether he intended to travel abroad in the coming year. Additional inquiries elicited from him the facts that he seldom entertained at home, had no intentions of marrying in the foreseeable future, and kept open accounts at Asprey and Co. and Garrard's, jewelers, at Agnew's gallery in Bond Street, with the perfumer Floris, and at Liberty's, Harrods, and a number of the finest haberdashers, wine merchants, and silk drapers in London.

Clearly, he was being interrogated with regard to his reliability as a potential protector, and with a forthrightness that quite shocked him. But their insufferable curiosity did not end with his social habits, personal tastes, and fiscal condition; it extended to his very person. Four pairs of experienced eyes surveyed him thoroughly, if discreetly, from stem to stern.

He could feel them analyzing the quality of his barbering, the cut of his coat, the wear of his boot heels, and the grace of his gestures… even the way he moistened his lips. And if the intimate probing and faint luminosity of their gazes meant what he thought they did, his sensual potential and amorous equipage were also being judged… with professional precision.

It was all he could do to keep his seat, much less his poise. No one in polite society—not even the most brazen of mamas—would have dared
mention
his solvency, personal tastes, or amorous reputation, much less question them. But, here, in the demimonde—this underlayer of society, which existed to stimulate and satisfy upper-crust males like him—

apparently nothing was taken for granted; rank and wealth, even desire itself, were subject to challenge. Here, things were appallingly reversed; women assessed and passed judgment openly upon men, the way men were wont to evaluate females in the so-called respectable world.

And the only clue to how he was faring in their estimate lay in the bewildering play of glances between them, a form of communication that mortal men were not privileged to understand. A sort of… "feminese."

After a pause, Rosalind fixed a searching look on his burning face and smiled at whatever she saw. "I am still waiting for your answer, your lordship, to the question of what it was about Gabrielle that you found so captivating." He could have sworn the lot of them edged forward in their seats—lady hawks eyeing their helpless prey.

"She is quite lovely," he said a bit testily, seizing the first thing that came to mind. What
maman
would not wish to hear that her daughter was ravishing? "Stunning, in fact. Exquisite. Beautiful beyond bearing."

"Perhaps… if your tastes run to shoeless, dripping wet, terrified schoolgirls," Rosalind responded, with a vinegar-and-honey smile. He tightened his grip on his knees.

"She is clever and delightfully… unpredictable," he declared emphatically.

"Which was evident, no doubt, from her penchant for strolling the London streets at night, alone, and in the middle of a raging downpour."

Rosalind raised her chin a notch, positively daring him to try yet another vapid bit of flattery.

He took a deep breath and leveled a sizzling look on his chief inquisitor, seeing her in a new light. Despite her romantic proclivities, she was apparently accustomed to dealing with the realities of relations between the sexes in a forthright manner. In the matter of her daughter's future, she insisted on truth, not ephemeral niceties. Very well, he would give her

"truth"… and then see if, like most women, she claimed to want it while secretly preferring the sweetness of deception.

"To be honest, I cannot for the life of me understand what I find so compelling about the little vixen." He glanced from one elegant courtesan to another, dropping all pretense of romantic delicacy and with it, much of his tension. "All I know is that my fingers itch, my blood pounds in my veins, and my loins begin to burn whenever I look at her. Last night she made me laugh, made me think, and made me
stop
. God knows, that alone puts her in a class by herself." He saw the way their eyebrows rose and knew his defiant candor had just sealed their opinion of him. He risked little by adding: "I want Gabrielle a great deal. And I am willing to be generous."

There was a long moment's pause, in which he could hear the ticking of the gilded mantel clock above him and the thudding of his heart in his ears.

Then Rosalind rose abruptly and reached for the bellpull. When her Viking houseman arrived, she draped her hand on the back of her chair and struck a dramatic pose. Pierce fully expected to be thrown out of the house on his ear. Instead, she gave the houseman a dignified nod.

"Gunther, please ask my daughter to join us."

5

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O
n the floor above, Gabrielle sat at the writing desk in her boudoir, sealing an envelope. "Please,
chérie
, take care," her maid, Rue, entreated from across the desk, anxiously eyeing her ink-smudged fingers and the red sealing wax she was pressing onto white vellum. "There is not time to change your dress… His lordship is already here."

"I'm finished," she declared handing the little Frenchwoman the letter.

Rue immediately laid it aside and began rubbing the ink from Gabrielle's fingers with a damp cloth. "Remember, you are to deliver it as soon as I go downstairs. Promise me, Rue."

"
Oui, oui
… I promise."

Gabrielle had spent the better part of the night pacing and thinking, fleshing out her plan to find a husband and marry as quickly as possible.

The greatest difficulty seemed to be finding men of suitable standing and temperament and approaching them on the notion of matrimony. There had to be some logical, safe, and respectable way of obtaining introductions to suitable gentlemen. Every possibility she conjured ended in a mountain of obstacles… until Rue delivered her morning tray, on which lay copies of
The
Times and the
Pall Mall Gazette
. Newspapers!

Suddenly she had known exactly what to do.

Rue dragged Gabrielle to her feet to put final touches on her cascade of ringlets and fluff the row of ruffles that plunged down the front of her bodice. One of the upstairs maids had already brought word that Lord Sandbourne had arrived. Now Gabrielle looked at the clock and realized a quarter of an hour had elapsed and her mother still hadn't sent for her.

"What could be taking them so long?" She paced back and forth. "What could she find to talk about with him for a quarter of an hour?"

"She is
la maman
. She speaks of you,
naturellement
," Rue answered, with a very French shrug.

"I don't want her to speak of me." Gabrielle lost some of the color in her cheeks. "She is supposed to be impressed with the earl, call me down to tea, see how enraptured we are, and…" She scowled, deciding just what the next logical step in their passionate affair should be. "… and then release us with her blessing for a carriage ride or a walk in Hyde Park."

"Since when does your
maman
do what she is supposed to do, eh?" Rue wagged her head. "She is a mistress of the game,
non?
"

Gabrielle stumbled back against the divan and sat down, heedless of the fragile flounces that trailed down the back of her skirt. Rue had a point.

There were a few things Gabrielle hadn't had time to consider in her plan…

chiefly, her mother's shrewdness in matters of romance. With rising concern, she thought of the tidbits of erotic wisdom Rosalind had tossed off in her presence. Her mother probably couldn't have achieved the pinnacle of London's demimonde without learning how to read the lust in a man's eyes and gauge the sincerity of his promises, whether passionate or financial.

Adding to Gabrielle's anxiety was the possibility that, if pressed, the worldly and libidinous Lord Sandbourne might prove a less than convincing suitor. Just now she was having some difficulty recalling what it was about him that made her think he would appear to be the perfect lover. What if, in her desperation, she had misread him?

"He's down there with her right now," she said with a groan, as the magnitude of her attempted deception came crashing down on her. Her mother was "mistress of the game," and Gabrielle was a mere novice… who would prefer not to learn the game at all.

Just as she pushed to her feet, Gunther appeared at the door to summon her to the drawing room. She hurried to the pier glass for one last rehearsal of a "besotted" smile. The maid was at her heels in an instant, pinching her cheeks and clucking over the silk violets she had flattened by sitting.

"Really, Rue." Gabrielle tried to shield herself from the maid's primping fingers.

"But, you must be glowing—pink with delight,
non?
' Rue said, leaving no room for dissent as she batted Gabrielle's hands away and pinched on.