The Perfect Mistress (28 page)

"He has done
nothing
to me," she protested. "However it may appear, I am
not
Lord Sandbourne's mistress. I told you the truth before, and I'm telling you the truth now. He is a friend, who has agreed to pose as my protector so that my mother will not press me to take someone else." She halted, realizing that the entire tale of her deception would only muddy the waters, when she needed desperately to clear them. "I have never taken a lover. Not then, not now."

"Not
yet
, you mean," he said, straightening and taking her by the arm.

"Then there may still be hope. Come, my child, I shall see you are secreted

—"

"You don't understand." She wrested her arm from his grip, realizing that his opinions of Pierce were every bit as dire and flawed as Pierce's opinions of him. "You don't know him as I do. He has become a dear and trusted friend." With every word, his incredulity deepened. "Truly, Mr. Gladstone, he is a wonderful man. We've spent a good bit of time together in the last week, and he has gone to great lengths to help me. He has taken my part against my mother's designs and has given me his protection and the use of his carriage. He is patient and thoughtful and decent. He's been nothing but honest and forthright with me. He is helping me to find a husband."

"You poor child—"

"You must believe me." She grew desperate as she realized just how improbable her story must sound to him, how absurd it would have sounded to her only a week ago. "The earl is no threat to me or to anyone."

But as soon as she said it she thought of Pierce's designs on Gladstone himself and looked down, hoping that awful knowledge wasn't somehow evident in her eyes.

"Something must be done," he said with quiet indignation.

"No!" She looked up, reading his determination in his piercing eyes. Her only hope, she realized, was to be perilously candid with him. "My only hope is to make a marriage, and I will never make an honorable marriage if my name and the circumstances of my birth are made part of a public scandal." As the thought of "scandal" crossed her mind, she realized there was still more at stake. "There are my parents to think of."

"Yes… your parents." He studied her rising alarm and reached for one of her hands, to hold it comfortingly between his. "Who is your father, my girl?

You have spoken of him as a titled man. Does he know what is happening to you?"

She looked down at her hand, captive in his, and smiled bitterly. "He is off on a great hunting safari, somewhere. He takes no interest in me. You must understand, my mother has been his consort for more than twenty years and—"

"Twenty years?" The number clearly astonished him.

"I suppose now you will doubt that, as well. But it is true." She curled her fingers around the old man's hand and squeezed, pouring every bit of her desperation into her plea. "After tonight I will have a number of marriage prospects, but they will all disappear at the first breath of scandal. If you have any care for me, any thought for my best interest, then you will do nothing, nothing at all. God willing, I will soon be a respectably married woman and all of this will be forgotten."

Before he could stop her, she jerked her hand from his and dashed out into the corridor and along the mezzanine to the steps leading to the boxes.

He lurched to the door and watched her hurrying back to the earl, and his hands balled into fists of frustration at his sides. The treacherous Sandbourne had done his work well on the girl… had her believing he was gallant and noble and that he would help her find an honorable situation with a husband. He had promised her a marriage, of all things, when his antipathy for marriage was almost legendary in the clubs.

She was headed for heartbreak and infamy; he was certain of it. He had never seen a woman in greater need of a rescue.

He tugged his vest down and gave his rumpled evening coat a brush as he made his way back to his own box. Something would have to be done.

And the sooner the better.

"Did you catch the name of that young girl with Sandbourne?" Gladstone asked a trusted acquaintance, Edward Hamilton, as the glittering lobby of the Savoy slowly emptied of people after the performance. Together, they watched the earl escorting her quickly through a cordon of male admirers and into his carriage.

"I believe he introduced her as Gabrielle La—something." Hamilton shrugged.

"Gabrielle La
Something
… whose father is a nobleman and whose mother is a high courtesan…" Gladstone considered it for a moment. "Have any of the higher-ranking lords been absent from the country for a while… say, on a hunting safari?"

Hamilton thought for a moment. "Come to think of it, Carlisle applied to the queen some time ago for some sort of African jaunt. I saw his letter."

"Carlisle? The duke of Carlisle?" Gladstone's dark eyes flickered as he searched some internal vision. "He had a mistress, didn't he? I remember now—a liaison of long standing. What was her name? Rosamund…

Rosalind… something…"

"LeCoeur." Hamilton came up with it after a moment. "Now, there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. They used to be the talk of the 'upper ten.' There was even a child, I believe."

"A
daughter
." Gladstone's eyes widened with recognition, and his shoulders straightened. New determination filled his aging frame. "So, that is who she is. The duke of Carlisle's love child. Small wonder she's terrified of dragging her father into it." His eyes narrowed. "Well, perhaps it's time someone made the duke—and others like him—tend a bit of what they have sown."

He clapped his friend on the shoulder as the next coach drew up. "Here is your carriage now, Hamilton. Do me a good turn, my friend. Follow Sandbourne's carriage for a bit and see where he takes the girl. It is imperative that I learn where he takes her. Send word to my residence… I'm going straight home."

It took the entire second half of the performance for Gabrielle's racing heart to calm. She expected Gladstone to lead a pack of constables into the box at any moment to seize Pierce and charge him with some hideous offense against moral decency. When the performance continued, uninterrupted, her panic slowly subsided, and she began to think. Her second encounter with Gladstone put her in a very difficult position with Pierce. She didn't know whether or not to tell him about seeing the prime minister, knowing now that there was great animosity between them, and knowing how wrong they were about each other. Pierce hadn't said anything about her part of their bargain in several days. And nothing she could report of her conversation with Gladstone would help Pierce prove anything against him.

In the end, it was that fact that made her decide not to tell Pierce about her meeting with him. It was probably best just to let the entire issue remain at rest. When the singers took their final bows and Pierce ushered her to the cloakroom, then out to his carriage, she searched the crowd without catching so much as a glimpse of William Gladstone. But they were halfway home before she finally heaved a sigh and relaxed. When Pierce's hand reached for hers in the darkened carriage, she looked at him and her heart skipped a beat.

"We won't do that again," he said, watching her tension draining.

"It was overwhelming. All those…
people
." She meant
men
.

It
had
been overwhelming. And infuriating. Pierce had come within an inch of losing his temper and his vaunted self-possession. They had jostled and ogled and leered at her as if she were meat on a spit and they were starving. Then they flattered and cozened and appraised her with insultingly transparent intentions. It was humiliating to belong to the same sex.

Earlier, he had believed that Gabrielle was searching for a husband in too low a class. But, in truth, tonight had shown him that higher class was no guarantee of manners or decency or morality. The plain-spoken mill owner from Reading had shown more basic decency toward her than any of the randy "gentlemen" they had just encountered.

In the quiet darkness, he saw her eyes shimmering, felt her hand trembling in his. A streetlamp suddenly shone through the coach window, casting a golden halo about her. Then it faded as abruptly as it came, leaving her lingering image in his mind, bathed in light. She was so lovely, so bright, so desirable… and so damned illegitimate.

Tonight, watching the behavior of London's upper-class males and her reaction to them, he realized that there probably wasn't a man amongst them who would give her what she wanted. No man with any pride or passion would marry a woman as beautiful and sensual as her, deposit her in some prosy little house in the country, and pretend she didn't exist for months at a time. And any man who
would
do such a thing to her probably didn't deserve her.

His thoughts went around and around, on that dismal track… which gradually narrowed and focused his reason to one final, drastic conclusion: There was no such thing as a good marriage for Gabrielle LeCoeur.

He stared into her tense face as he helped her down from the carriage and saw her to the door. All of his instincts told him that she had just taken stock of the possibilities for her future, as well. And she was intensely miserable.

He gave her a smile and stroked her pale cheek.

By the time he climbed back into his carriage, he knew there was only one course left open to him. The most decent and noble thing he could do…

was to make her his mistress in earnest.

Pierce arranged to call for Gabrielle promptly at three the next day, with the expressed intent of taking her riding in Hyde Park. He arrived on horseback to collect her, with another mount in tow, looking inexpressibly elegant in a black coat, buff riding breeches, and tall black boots. Her mother had not provided for new riding clothes, so she was able to dress comfortably in the riding habit she had always used in France: a hunter green tailored cashmere jacket, a black skirt, and a black hat made in the style of a gentleman's top hat.

The air was damp and cool, and high clouds kept the sun from being too bright. If it hadn't been perfect weather for a ride, the prospect of being outdoors and on a horse again would still have made it seem the balmiest of days to Gabrielle. It was a true liberation—from her mother's frantic household and from the tyranny of her own thoughts. They rode through Rotten Row, which at this time of day was all but deserted, then along the curving lake known as the Serpentine. They were stopped twice by acquaintances of Pierce: one the heir to a mercantile concern and the other a career diplomat. Each time Pierce made proper and congenial introductions.

Both gentlemen showed interest in pursuing an acquaintance with her.

They were both pleasant fellows, reasonably attractive, gracious, and well-mannered. Gabrielle tried to smile and be polite, but she felt
alarmingly empty at the prospect of spending her future
with either of them. Those meetings, and her disturbing reaction to them, subdued her spirits and dampened her enjoyment of the rest of the afternoon.

Pierce watched her sobering mood and her attempt to be gracious and pleasant to her potential suitors, and he felt
a guilty relief that she hadn't reacted more favorably to them. It only confirmed and supported his plans for the rest of the afternoon.

After a while, he consulted his watch, then led her
down through the city to St. Margaret's Church, on the
grounds of Westminster Abbey. The organist was practicing in the empty church, and with a finger to his lips, Pierce bundled Gabrielle up the rear stairs to the choir loft in the balcony.

There, he took off his coat, spread it on one of the pews, and bade her lie down on it. With some bewilderment, she complied. But soon she found herself engulfed in the most heavenly music she had heard in years. He sprawled on the floor beside her, leaning against the pew, with his head back and his eyes closed.

When the music stopped, they stayed for a while, savoring the silence.

"Why did you bring me here?" she said quietly, sitting up.

He leaned forward and looked around at the peaceful expanse before them, bathed in the dappled light from the stained glass windows. "I thought you might enjoy the music. I come here, sometimes, when I need to think or to be alone."

"Do you need to think about something?" She settled a thoughtful gaze on him. "Is something wrong?" He rose and slid onto the pew beside her.

"Not wrong, really." He scowled, giving lie to that assurance. "It's just that… I'm afraid I have to ask you to make good on your part of our bargain. Gladstone is back at his scurrilous activities, and I need evidence of it. I don't like asking you, Gabrielle, but I do need your help."

She looked down at her gloved hands and prayed that none of what she had withheld from him the night before was visible in her face. "What do you want me to do?"

"Just meet him on the street and see if he wants you to talk with him. If he does, you bring him back to a certain restaurant, where I'll be waiting."

He put his hand over hers. "I won't let him hurt you, Gabrielle."

She felt the warmth of his gaze and heard the regret in his tone. He honestly believed the prime minister was guilty of corrupting and misusing the women he tried to help reform, and the only way to convince him otherwise was to meet with Gladstone and report the truth of what the prime minister said and did.