The Perfect Mistress (2 page)

"Wicked girl—how could ye speak such to yer mother? Marriage, o' all things!"

"A vile affront to
l'amour."

"A cold, filthy bargain… a veritable desert of duty and dullness."

They fanned Rosalind with a silk pillow, waved a small blue bottle under her nose, and wetted a handkerchief with cooling toilet water to dab on her temples. She soon revived, and once assured that her condition was not serious, the trio of experienced courtesans turned their attentions to Gabrielle, determined to set her straight on the nature of marriage.

"You have not the slightest notion what wives must endure,
ma petite
."

The Frenchwoman, Genevieve, shook a finger at her. "They must bear both the weight of a man's name, as well as the hideous rules of society."

"Wives mus' bear with th' evil tongues of gossips and jealous rivals and well-meanin' friends," the country girl, Clementine, declared. "They get saddled with bawlin' kids an' cantankerous relations at holidays and old bores at parties… an' have to sit through charity meetin's an' church—"

"A man's devotion"—aristocratic Ariadne took it up with a vengeance—

"his passion, his generosity—is always directed at the source of his pleasure and happiness… his
mistress
, not his wife!"

Rosalind struggled up onto her elbows and then, with the others' help, got to her feet and stood trembling before Gabrielle.

"The women of our family have been mistresses and courtesans for at least four generations. Your great grandmother was the enduring passion of two different earls of Brentwick and your great aunt, Theodora, who left you such a tidy sum in her will, died at seventy with the distinction of never having been loved by less than a duke of the realm." She paused for a moment, narrowing her gaze on Gabrielle. "You were born of a grand passion, and that is your destiny. You were meant for love and romance…

to be the hunger in a man's eyes and the fire in his soul. You were meant to be the
desire
in a man's life, not the
duty
. You were born to be a great mistress, like your mother!"

Gabrielle lurched from her seat, whirled, and gripped the back of the chair with whitened fingers. "And what if I don't want to be anyone's grand passion? What if all I want is a
husband
… a dull, respectable sort of a fellow who will depart each morning at nine and arrive promptly back on the doorstep at eight, ready for slippers and a book by the fire?" The way Rosalind swayed and emitted a choked sound from behind the hand she had pressed to her mouth only spurred Gabrielle's determination.

"What if I want cottage pie, tea at four o'clock, and Sunday mass at St.

Paul's—instead of chateaubriand for two, champagne at midnight, and a risqué revue at the Grecian Saloon? What if I want a house full of children stringing popcorn for a Christmas tree and calling cards that have 'Mrs.

Somebody-or-other' printed on—"

"Gabrielle,
non!
" Genevieve cried, anxiously patting Rosalind's limp hand.

"Mother Mercy—listen to ye, girl!" Clementine declared, horrified.

"How could you be so heartless?" Ariadne demanded. "So reprehensibly willful and
modern?
"

"It is just my insensitive and 'modern' nature, I suppose," she replied, with the turbulence of her heart flooding into her voice. "Proof that I am not suited for anything so exalted as being the great passion of an important man's life."

For a moment they were struck dumb. The possibility of her truly rejecting a life of comfort and ease, of passion and pleasure, was simply beyond them.

"Enough!" Rosalind threw up her hands in maternal frustration. "Take yourself back to your rooms this instant, young lady, and prepare yourself to fall in love. I intend to see you settled with the great love of your life within the next two months… with the count or with another suitable nobleman."

"I—but I
cannot
—" Anger, fear, and desperation rose within Gabrielle in dark successive waves. Struggling to stay above that rising tide of despair, she held her head high, snatched up handfuls of her skirts, and strode furiously for the door.

The wall vibrated as the door slammed behind her, and not an eye blinked nor a muscle moved in the chamber until the last echo of her departure died away. Rosalind was the first to move. She clasped a hand above her pounding heart, teetered to the divan, and sat down on it with an uncharacteristic "plop."

"Where did I go wrong?" she said incredulously. "I gave her every luxury, every advantage, and this is how she repays me… by demanding a
hus-band!
" Her voice cracked over the last word and she choked out:

"Marriage… of all things!"

She fumbled among the silken pillows, searching for her missing handkerchief, and was handed a substitute out of Genevieve's bodice.

Dabbing her heated face, she looked up into her friends' stunned faces. "I…

I have waited too long… I see that now. I should have brought her home from France earlier. But I thought it would be good to give her a bit of travel first. Gentlemen so like to speak of their travels in intimate conversation, and I assumed she would…"

She halted, realizing that she had assumed far too much with regard to her only child. Worse—she had ignored recent hints of trouble in Gabrielle's lack of interest in acquiring a new wardrobe, her refusal of milk baths and massages, her spiritless attempts at music and conversation, and the increasing frequency of her megrims and womanly indispositions. How had things come to such a pass?

Staring into the distance and into the past, she looked for an explanation in the way Gabrielle had spent the years she was cloistered behind the walls of L'Académie Marchand, just outside Paris. She had sent Gabrielle to the exclusive school for a thorough and genteel education: lessons of all kinds, from art and music to dancing and horsemanship, and improving lectures on literature, art, history, philosophy, and the natural sciences. Regular reports from Gabrielle's headmistress had painted a glowing picture of her development: she had an excellent mind, natural artistic talent, an angelic singing voice, and stunning skill at the pianoforte. She was a great favorite amongst the other girls, as well… Rosalind froze, with her eyes widening at what she glimpsed now in perfect hindsight.

"It was that wretched school!" she announced, her horror deepening. "The other girls! Dear God—she was thrown in with all those blue-blooded daughters being groomed for a life as society's proper brood mares.

Marriage." She made a face as if the word itself left a foul taste in her mouth.

"That has to be where she got the notion."

"A fancy French lady school… o'course they'd fill 'er head with

'respectable' nonsense," Clementine said, leveling an accusing look on Rosalind. "All that talk of 'proper this' and 'decent that'… it'd be enough to dry up anybody's juices."

Rosalind flinched. She hadn't thought about the social milieu her daughter inhabited, only about the fact that she was being well educated…

well out of the way.

"Her juices are
not
dried up! My Gabrielle has as many 'juices' as anyone in this room!" She straightened regally. "She is
my
daughter, after all… an uncommon beauty… a creature of quixotic spirit, of deep but unawakened passion." Rising, she began to pace with a smoldering drama that had held a duke of the realm spellbound for more than a score of years. "And a
wife
—

merciful heaven! She's far too beautiful, educated, and refined for any but the highest nobility. Surely she knows that the circumstances of her birth would make such a match impossible for her. Who on earth does she think she would marry?" She paused and glared into the distance and the future, as if by sheer force of will she could direct it. "No, she is meant to be a
lover
.

She'll make a splendid courtesan—the perfect mistress! She'll have a famous and fabulously romantic liaison, or my name isn't Rosalind LeCoeur!"

New determination filled her. "I want her settled and this entire business out of the way before the duke returns from his safari. Genevieve, can you call on the count and try to persuade him to see her again?" The Frenchwoman sighed and nodded with a pained expression that indicated she held little hope for an affirmative response. Her doubt caused Rosalind to frown and tap her chin with a calculating finger. "Still… to be safe, I ought to send for my cousin, Bertie. He has access to all the best clubs. I'll have him search for another prospect—a young lord—an earl at least—with deep pockets, an eye for beauty, and a weakness for unapproved pleasure."

She sailed out the doors, and the others followed her to her daughter's suite in the east wing, where she threw open the doors of Gabrielle's apartments and charged inside.

"Gabrielle Augustine LeCoeur… show yourself!" Rosalind demanded, stalking across the thick carpets of the brocade-clad boudoir and pushing back the door of the gilded bedchamber. "I have a few things to say to you, young lady!"

It was empty.

Moments later, Rosalind stormed from Gabrielle's chambers with her complexion mottled and her eyes glowing blue fire. "Gunther!" she called furiously for her majordomo, who appeared instantly at the end of the hall.

"Where is she—where is Gabrielle?"

The houseman winced as he reported: "Miss LeCoeur left the house some minutes ago, madam. In something of a state."

Gunther, as it happened, possessed something of a genius for understatement.

Moments before, Gabrielle had gone storming down the staircase and had nearly bowled over the sizable houseman as she blew past him and out the front doors. Hatless, gloveless, without a proper escort or even a sensible wrap, she had fled down the steps, into the street and into the oncoming night. Through a haze of turmoil and humiliation, she made her way past the imposing residences of the fashionable Eaton Square and darted down the alley that led to the mews behind it. The modest lane was bustling with the activity of servants and tradesmen: last-minute deliveries for dinner and teams being ferried to carriage houses in preparation for the evening's social engagements.

In the last three months, when she could no longer bear the excesses of her mother's house, she had slipped out through the servant entrance to walk the service lane behind the house. The sights and sounds of honest work and ordinary, spontaneous interactions always acted as a balm on her overstuffed senses. But just now, they provided no such relief. With her head down and her vision blurred, she bumped into uniformed servants, was jostled by children, stepped square into the middle of a horse pile, and narrowly missed being trampled by a brace of horses in the hands of an inexperienced groom. By the time she reached Belgrave Street, streaming tears made it difficult for her to see her own feet, much less the stares of the people she passed.

Born of a grand passion… your destiny… meant for love and romance
… Her mother's words kept turning over and over in her head, proclaiming her fate and then demanding her assent. She had been born of a searing and illicit passion and was predestined by her birth to plunge into the same steaming hedonism from which she had sprung. Her mother believed it. Her mother's cadre of aging courtesans believed it. And together they had planned her future accordingly. Whether she liked it or not, she was ordained to be "the hunger in a man's eyes and the fire in his soul."

She gritted her teeth in frustration and swiped at her wet cheeks.

She didn't want to be a hunger or a fire or an itch or an ache… or anything else connected with tumultuous passions and transporting emotions! She wasn't anything like the fabled Rosalind LeCoeur, the stellar beauty whose charm had so captured the desires of the duke of Carlisle that he had refused to remarry after his wife died and had made his mistress his consort.

Gabrielle LeCoeur had no romantic proclivities at all. None whatsoever.

No soaring desires, no scintillating allure, no exquisitely turned sensitivities.

In point of fact, she had never felt the slightest carnal stirring or curiosity.

When the other girls at Marchand had sighed and scrambled to the windows for a glimpse of the local count's handsome son riding past the school gates, she hadn't been troubled by the slightest twinge of excitement. And she had made it through an abbreviated grand tour of the continent and three interminable months of sensual bombardment in her mother's house without so much as a flicker of amorous interest.

And she was perfectly content without it. Passion, she had learned in the village of d'Arcy, was nothing but a passage to infamy and heartbreak for a woman. She had seen its devastating effects over and over in the faces of the wretched women who came from Paris to deliver their illegitimate and unwanted children into the hands of the sisters who operated a foundling hospital there. And she had seen it in the haunting faces of the little children who crowded around her and clung to her skirts when she and her schoolmates went to the hospital to do charity work. Faces among which, but for an accident of birth, might have been her own.

A woman had but two options in the world, those experiences had taught her. She could be either a wife or a mistress, and the thing that separated the two was passion. Somewhere along the way, a woman had to choose.