The Perfect Mistress (22 page)

"They
began
by planting? Dear God—there's no telling what sort of outrage they're perpetrating on my poor garden." She snatched up her skirts and started for the door, drawing the others up and along with her.

The best view of the garden was from Gabrielle's boudoir. Deciding quickly, she led the others up the stairs and invaded her daughter's sitting room. But on the way to the window, she caught sight of the yellowed palms by the piano and turned aside to investigate.

"I don't know what they're doing in here," she said with alarm, examining the drying fronds, "but whatever it is, it's killing my potted palms."

"There they are," Genevieve said, standing at the window, pointing.

Rosalind rushed to join her, and the others crowded in around them, staring down into the walled and thickly planted garden. There, where a patch of tilled earth and a border of clipped green grass met, lay two figures

—one light and one dark—entwined. Even from a distance, it was clear that they were deeply and mutually engaged in amorous indulgence.

"Would ye look at that," Clementine said, shaking her head.

"It would seem they are lovers indeed." Genevieve smiled softly.

"That rosebush has worked its spell, I'd say," Ariadne murmured wistfully. "You know, 'the lady and the gardener' was always one of my Gerald's favorites."

"My little Gabby has a lover," Rosalind said in a whisper, watching her daughter discovering her passion. A jumble of feelings rose in her as that evidence of Gabrielle's powerful physical attraction to the earl melted her doubts. Her eyes began to glisten.

The four of them stood watching for a long time, their faces softening, each recalling memories of youthful pleasures and the thrill of passionate discovery. When Genevieve glanced at Rosalind, she saw emotion welling up in her friend and reached for her hand, reassuring her. Ariadne reached for the other one, and Clementine patted her shoulder. After several minutes, Rosalind roused and sighed with a bittersweet smile.

"I believe I've seen all I need to see," she said thickly, giving her friends'

hands a squeeze as she turned away from the window. "Come, let's give them a bit of privacy." The constraints of clothing, time, and place finally seeped through the sensual haze that had enveloped them. Pierce raised his head and dragged a hard breath, working to focus his eyes. Feeling strangely thick and heavy from the weight of blood in his loins, he pushed up onto his elbows and looked down at Gabrielle. Her skin was flushed, her lips were swollen with the effects of his kisses, and the centers of her eyes were dilated with desire. She was the very image of a woman aroused.

The sight of her unfolding passions aroused something new and unexpectedly sweet inside him. She was his, he sensed, in a way she would never be any other man's. He had just awakened pleasure in her… proved to her that she was no different than the rest of humanity, that she had the same desires and passions, the same need to be touched and loved. And now that he had finally roused her passions, he knew that he wouldn't be satisfied until he claimed them in full.

Gabrielle lay beneath Pierce, feeling dazed and molten. Wild, glorious currents of liquid heat were swirling through her limbs and pouring into the core of her. She ached and throbbed in places she hadn't even realized could provide sensation, much less such divine and enthralling pleasures. As he moved away, she suffered a mad impulse to drag him back, to join their mouths again, and to feel his body pressed tightly against hers once more.

But as he pulled her upright with him, some internal balance swung back into place and her molten wits began to solidify and function again.

Molten. Liquid. That realization blew through her consciousness in an icy blast, condensing the steam in her senses into a sobering shower of self-awareness. Dearest heaven, it was a short step from liquid to… This stirring sensation meant she had…

The realization rattled her to the very core of her being. This tumult of feeling meant she was susceptible to pleasure and capable of passion, deep, knee-trembling, heart-racing passion. He had kissed her, and she had responded by embracing and touching and wriggling, like a pure wanton.

Her eyes widened and she fingered her newly sensitive lips. How had this happened to her?

She glanced up to find Pierce beside her, brushing his trousers and ruined sleeves, and she stared hungrily at his bronzed face and dark eyes, absorbed in the riveting sensuality of his movements. It wasn't just her, it was
him
.

She hadn't stood a chance against his good looks, sophistication, and vast carnal repertoire. With his knowing eyes and tender hands and irresistibly wicked smile, the man could probably pull an amorous response from a post. And she wasn't exactly made of wood.

Determined not to let him see how deeply she was affected, she shrugged off his assistance, scrambled to her feet, and began tidying the skirts that only a short while ago she had declared were of no consequence. From the knees down, her dress was full of dirt and there were smudges on her bodice.

When she straightened and turned to him, Pierce froze. "Gabrielle," he choked out, trying not to laugh, "your dress!" He seized her by the shoulders and turned her around. "And the back is even worse."

"It is?" She strained to see over her shoulder and found the entire back of her bodice covered with dirt. "Oh, dear! I have to get inside and change before my mother sees this and—" She halted and glanced away in embarrassment.

"—thinks I've been playing 'the gardener and the lady' with you?" He snatched his coat from the tree branch and settled it around her shoulders.

"Here, this will cover the worst damage."

" 'The gardener and the lady'?" she said, scowling as they hurried down the path toward the terrace.

"A very old game… started in the Garden of Eden."

They hurried through the morning room and down the hallway, heading for the stairs. But as they rushed across the entry hall, Rosalind's voice floated down from the stairs above them and they halted in their tracks…

caught
.

"Here they are now," Rosalind said with a pleasant lilt, speaking to her ever-present trio of women friends. But as she neared the bottom of the stairs and the disreputable state of their appearance came into focus, her smile faded. "Dearest heaven—what's happened to you?"

There they stood, looking like a pair of overgrown urchins: he in a begrimed shirt and trousers with dirt-caked knees, and she in a soiled and grass-stained gown and his smudged coat. They had ruddy, dirt-streaked faces, and their eyes glinted guiltily as they pressed closer to each other.

"His lordship brought me the loveliest rosebush," Gabrielle said, forcing a smile. She was determined to behave as if standing in the entry wearing a ruined dress and gentleman's coat was the most normal thing on earth. "We just planted it."

"And I'm afraid we had forgotten just how messy an undertaking gardening could be," he added gamely, putting a dirty hand to his chest and nodding over it with admirable aplomb. "Sincere apologies."

Rosalind blanched at the state of his sleeves and ignored the "
tsks"
from her friends as she continued down the stairs. "I suppose these things happen when your minds are filled with… other things," she declared with strained graciousness. "But heavens, we must see you set right. Gunther!" She called to the houseman, who was striding through the entry with a freshly polished candelabrum. When he emptied his hands and hurried over, she ordered, "Take his lordship's coat and see what you can do with it. See to it he has what he needs to freshen up… perhaps one of the duke's spare shirts.

They look to be about the same size."

Before Gabrielle could prevent it, Gunther was pulling Pierce's coat from her shoulders. At the sight of her ruined dress, her mother gasped, and her mother's friends made startled noises that were perilously close to laughter.

Pierce cleared his throat uncomfortably. Desperate to get away, she lifted her chin and nodded to her mother, "Mama," then slipped her arm through his and urged him up the stairs.

"If you'll follow me, your lordship," Gunther said, appearing at their side the moment they reached the top of the stairs.

Gabrielle saw Pierce's mouth twitching, suppressing a smile, as he disentangled his arm from her hand and followed the houseman.

It wasn't until she arrived in her boudoir and glimpsed herself in the mirror over the mantel that she fully understood her mother's reaction and Pierce's response. Against the still white front of her bodice directly over her breasts were two large, dark handprints.

10

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R
ue helped Gabrielle change her dress and wash, then pulled her to the dressing table and gave her hair a good brushing. There wasn't time to put it back up the same way, so Gabrielle had her leave it down, bound with a simple ribbon, instead.

She found Pierce sitting on the window seat in her boudoir, sipping a glass of champagne as he stared down at the garden below. He set his glass aside and regarded her with a suspicious look. Her face was rosy with embarrassment, but deep in her eyes he glimpsed a sparkle of unrepentant glee.

"You're going to blame me for this little incident, aren't you?"

"I am," she said with defiant cheeriness.

"Brazen chit." He scowled. "Now I'm to be responsible for rolling you around in the dirt like some crazed heathen. Have you given any thought to the possibility that she may decide I am too 'eccentric' to be your lover?"

She shook her head. "That won't happen."

"What makes you so certain?"

"You're a man, a
wealthy
man. You're permitted any number of

'eccentricities.' " Her smile tightened. "Men can be and do whatever they want, as long as they pay the bills. It's my mother's prime axiom."

"A rather cynical statement for someone who has devoted her life to passion and romance."

"Oh, she never actually says it… she just believes it." Feeling vaguely uncomfortable, she glanced away from his perceptive gaze and spotted a book of plays lying on the tea table. "There they are." When she returned with it, he was still watching her intently.

"If she's never said it, how do you know she believes it?"

"For the last twenty years, her every decision, every impulse, and every thought have been shaped by one man's desires. Yet he could stay or go as he pleased, do or demand whatever he wanted… because he was willing to keep her in luxury." Her chin rose. "It's her golden rule, all right."

He studied the emotion rising in her, then gestured to the opulence around them. "It seems a fairly straightforward proposition, to me. A bit of pleasure for a bit of luxury."

"That's the way it seems to you, is it?"

"Frankly, yes. I mean, she must have had some choice in the matter. And she chose to make a man happy and satisfied in return for a very comfortable life."

"Yes," she said tersely, "she had a choice. In fact she had a world of choices. And she chose him… every time."

The spark in her eyes caught him aback for a moment. There was obviously something here he didn't understand, something important… a key piece of the puzzle of why she was so determined not to believe in love and romance.

She turned away to replace the book in the case, but he caught her by the arm and pulled her to the window seat with him. "Really, your lordship, your champagne—" She tried to rise.

"—will wait." He held her firmly. "You don't think she should have chosen the duke."

She fixed her gaze on her whitened fingers as they gripped the book and she tried to sort through the jumble of thoughts clamoring for expression inside her. When she raised her face to him, her mouth was a sober line and her eyes were luminous.

"In every choice, something is kept and something is discarded. In always choosing him and her grand passion for him, my mother discarded some things that should have been at least as precious to her as he was."

He studied her eyes and discovered the traces of old hurt in their depths.

Her face filled with personal feeling, an expression remarkably like the one she had worn when speaking of the children who were given up by their mothers to the foundling home. After a moment he made the connection in his mind and understood her passion for those abandoned children. She had been abandoned herself, after a fashion.

"Things… like you," he said, to himself as much as to her.

"Yes, me. Among other things," she said, with a remnant of bitterness.

"She sent me away so that I wouldn't interfere with her grand affair. But I soon discovered I had a great deal of company in my fate. Nearly every girl at Marchand was considered 'underfoot' somewhere or other. After a while, with Mme. Marchand's help, we came to terms with it and turned our energies toward learning and growing. We read and talked and studied, and learned to serve, and learned to rely upon ourselves."

She looked out the window, and her voice lowered. "Then, just as we had developed a worth of our own, our families and guardians remembered we existed and began to reel us home, to dispose of us as family assets. The other girls were brought home to become wives. I, however, was sent on a grand tour and then brought home to become a 'trinket'—something for a man to play with."