The Perfect Mistress (30 page)

…

Downstairs, in the private entry of The Montmortaine—the door used by the stylish restaurant's most discreet clientele—the maître d'hôtel was being beset by three men demanding to know the whereabouts of the earl of Sandbourne and his guest.

"We shall have the room number
and
the key," William Gladstone demanded, leaning into the little Frenchman's face, scorching him with righteous fire. "And don't come again with that nonsense about him not being here—I know he is here. I followed him here myself, three quarters of an hour ago!"

Indeed, since the previous evening at the opera, either Gladstone or his friend Edward Hamilton had dogged the earl's footsteps and observed virtually every movement he made. They had seen him call for the girl and take her for a ride in the park, had puzzled over the couple's visit to the church, and had deduced with alarm what was about to happen the moment the pair disembarked from the earl's carriage at the private entrance to The Montmortaine.

Gladstone had learned the previous evening that the duke of Carlisle was back in England, making his way toward London. He had sent the nobleman a message telling him that his daughter was in peril, urging him to hurry on to the city with all speed. When Gladstone saw the earl ushering the girl into the side door of The Montmortaine, he knew there was no time to waste. He dispatched Hamilton to the duke's house, praying that the nobleman had heeded his message and returned straightaway. Then he sent an urgent summons to his friend the bishop of London, declaring that a moral crisis was afoot and he was needed as witness.

The restaurateur looked at the trio of powerful men bearing down on him

—a duke of the realm and a bishop of the Church of England and the prime minister—and knew he was in trouble. "Please, Your Graces," he croaked out, "I c-cannot!"

"See here, you little vermin—" The barrel-chested duke of Carlisle seized him by the lapels and jerked him up onto his toes. "I shall take this place apart with my bare hands, if I must. My daughter is being ravished in this hellhole, even as we speak, and if you don't wish to be brought up on charges, you shall hand over the damned key!"

Gladstone and the bishop intervened to keep him from throttling the fellow, but the fury in the duke's countenance had already done its work.

The maître d' led them up the stairs to the room, imploring them to recall his other patrons and be discreet. But the duke, in high dudgeon, tried the door and in a booming voice demanded, "You in there! Open this door—

immediately!" When there was no response, he set his fist to the door and repeated his demand. "Open the door, Sandbourne… or I swear I shall break it down!"

When Gladstone and the bishop added their voices to the commotion, the maître d' glanced frantically at the heads appearing in doorways, up and down the hall, and produced the key.

Through the pleasure haze in their senses Pierce and Gabrielle heard the voices outside the door. When the pounding began, Pierce peeled himself from her body and sat bolt upright, shaking his head, trying to make his mind function. He pulled himself away from the sight of Gabrielle's darkened eyes and deliciously revealed body, to swing his gaze to the door, where someone was shouting his name and demanding entrance. In earlier days, in other beds, he would have been on his feet in a wink and heading for the nearest window. But this wasn't a bed and Gabrielle wasn't anybody's wife, and the banging and shouting didn't make any kind of sense to him.

Suddenly there were a number of voices and the pounding rocked the door in its frame. He just managed to pull Gabrielle up with him when the door flew open with a bang and the room was invaded in a rush.

He was on his feet in an instant, spreading himself between Gabrielle and the intruders, his legs braced and his fists clenched, ready to defend both himself and her. "Get the bloody hell out of—" he shouted, starting for them and stopping dead after only two strides. Into his mind and into his life burst a chillingly familiar presence.

For a long moment, he stared in deepening shock at the penetrating brown eyes, craggy features, and unruly white hair belonging to his quarry of recent days: William Gladstone. The sight of the prime minister, here, his eyes ablaze with hypocritical righteousness, sent a broadside of confusion slamming through Pierce.

"You!" he choked out. It was all he could do for the moment to grapple with the shock of being invaded at such a critical moment… He couldn't make any sense at all of the fact that Gladstone was the one doing it. Then his gaze broadened to take in the two men who accompanied Gladstone—

both older men, one moderately short and wearing a clerical collar, the other considerably taller and wearing riding clothes, a recent tan, and a furious expression. "How dare you break in on us like this? You have no right—"

"No—
you
are the one who has no right!" The tall, robust-looking man thrust forward sharply and was quickly restrained by his two companions.

"Defiling my daughter—dishonoring my family—"

"I'm not defiling anyone, I am simply spending time with—" Pierce halted, glancing over his shoulder at Gabrielle, then back at the man in Gladstone's grip. "Your
daughter?
" He stared at the strong, angular features, the graying hair, and the deep-chested physique, realizing they were vaguely familiar. Memory meshed with perception, and it struck him like a thunderbolt: this was the duke of Carlisle—Gabrielle's father!

"There is obviously some mistake here," Pierce said furiously, backing toward Gabrielle with his arms out to the sides, trying to shield her from their scrutiny.

"The only mistake here, sir, is your failure to reckon with the vigilance and honor of the House of Carlisle!" the duke declared, puffing with indignation, looking every inch the outraged father. "How dare you, sir, think to trifle with my daughter?"

"
Trifle
with… ?" A tide of hot chagrin washed over Pierce as he thought of how readily, even eagerly, he had dismissed the idea that Gabrielle's noble paternity should make a difference in his dealings with her. After all, it hadn't mattered to Rosalind. It had never occurred to him that the duke might have other ideas.

"I have taken Gabrielle as my mistress, with her mother's full knowledge and consent," he asserted.

"M-mistress?" The duke stiffened against Gladstone's constraint, blustering, "That is a damned lie and an outrage. My daughter is no—no
harlot
. Why, I ought to call you out and shoot you down like the lying dog you are."

The sense of what was happening finally penetrated Gabrielle's double shock of being caught with Pierce in flagrant dishabille and by
her father
. It had been years since she had seen him. Had it not been for the recent portrait of him in her mother's boudoir, she might not have recognized him.

She could make no sense at all of his wrathful presence here.

"No!" She scooted to the edge of the divan, clutching her clothes together with her hands. "Please—it's not his fault!" As she made to rise, her drooping petticoat slid part way down her hips, and she sank back onto the divan with her face crimson. The bishop rushed forward, peeling off his coat and wrapping it around her.

"I agreed to meet him," she said in a shame-constricted voice, staring up at the bishop's scowl, then Gladstone's grim look, and then at her father's glare of paternal indignation. "I am to blame for all of this."

"It was most assuredly
not
your fault, my girl," Gladstone declared, coming to stand over her, searching her distraught face with a grave expression. "You were betrayed by your mother and seduced by this worldly and despicable beast. What chance did you have against such treachery? I haven't had a minute's peace since I spoke with you at the Savoy. I resolved last night to do all in my power to rescue you. The Almighty knows, someone needed to do so."

"But it's true. I wanted to be his mistress. It was my choice—I agreed to it."

"You agreed?" the duke said. "How dare you agree to such a thing?"

"I am nineteen." She held her ground and met his gaze. "Old enough to choose for myself."

"I don't care how old you are." The duke advanced on her, taken aback by her brazen attitude. "You're my daughter… and no daughter of mine will be permitted to make a harlot of herself!"

"Can't you see what she is doing, Carlisle?" Gladstone intervened, holding the duke back by the arm. Then he turned to Gabrielle. "It's no good protecting Sandbourne, my girl. Only last night you declared to me your desire for a decent and respectable life, a marriage. You said he was helping you to find a husband. Think, child." He waved a gnarled hand, calling her state of undress into evidence and wagging his head. "Is this how he helps a young woman to find a husband and an honorable marriage?"

Gabrielle looked up at the prime minister, her eyes stinging with shame.

How could she explain that until an hour ago, that was exactly what he had been doing. How could she convey in any sense the unusual relationship that had grown up between them? The uncommon respect and restraint Pierce had shown toward her? How could she explain the delicate balance of determination and desire that had existed between them… or the despair she felt in realizing that she would never look at another man, never feel about another man the way she felt about him? How could she explain that for one short hour, out of all the many hours they had spent together, she had relaxed her guard and embraced the passion in herself, and in him…

and it had brought her to this?

She couldn't say it, any of it, in a way that would make them understand.

So she sat, mute, her head and heart clamoring with regret and fear.

"You have affronted my personal honor, sir. Sullied my daughter beyond all recourse… except one." The duke confronted Pierce with his neck veins at full swell. "You shall marry her, Sandbourne, and set this right."

"M-marry her? But that's absurd." Pierce took a step back, looking as if he'd just been gored.

He turned to glare at Gabrielle, sitting in a jumble of disheveled garments, with her fair hair tumbled about her shoulders, and her lips swollen from the ardor of his kisses. Her arms were wrapped tightly about her, as if she were holding herself together. Suddenly all he could see was the shame in the haunting luminosity of her eyes. The rest of his words stuck in his throat.

"It may indeed be absurd to expect that you act the gentleman and own your responsibility for this foul disgrace," the duke declared furiously.

"Nevertheless, that is what I demand of you." He had watched the way Pierce stared at Gabrielle, and put his own construction on Pierce's reluctance. "I see—you thought there would be no consequences to face because she is a bastard. Well, she is not just any bastard… she is a
Carlisle
bastard. And as such, she surely has blood blue enough to mate with the likes of
you
."

Pierce stiffened. He was within a heartbeat of planting his fist in the duke's pompous face.

"No, please," Gabrielle said in a choked voice. "He doesn't have to marry me. Nothing happened between us. I haven't been truly ruined."

"Haven't you?" the duke said thickly, glowering at her appearance. "What decent man would want a wife who has been demeaned in such a fashion?

Whose morals and judgment cannot be trusted? What man of honor would be content with"—he looked pained—"another man's leavings?"

The bishop stepped quickly in front of Pierce to restrain him, holding him by the shoulders and staring up into his burning eyes. "However objectionably he puts it, the duke is right, Sandbourne. You must marry the girl. In the law and in the church, it is the only remedy for such a trespass.

You chose to pursue and seduce her. Now you must live with the consequences of that choice."

The calm authority of those words somehow reached through the anger and turmoil in Pierce.
Choice
. Was that what he had made? He had desired her, sought her, and pursued her until she surrendered. He had meant to make her his mistress and give her his support and protection. But, with a few brief kisses and caresses, his entire world had been turned upside down.

Now he had to make her his
wife
.

He looked at Gladstone and read in the old man's eyes an unmistakable glow of satisfaction at seeing him caught in a personal disgrace. The injustice of it—being held to account, for pleasures he had not even enjoyed, by the randy old hypocrite he had intended to catch in just such a fashion. The irony of it came crashing down on him, dousing him with humiliation. He had begun by using Gabrielle to pursue Gladstone. And Gladstone had ended by using her to ruin him.

He turned back to Gabrielle, trying to make his mind work, searching for excuses, alternatives, a way out. And he realized there was none. Together, the three had the power to wreck his reputation and his political standing if he refused to marry her. The sight of her sitting there, weighted with shame, roused his conscience to fever pitch. He had intended to help her, to protect her, and he had brought her to this. If he refused to marry her, what would become of her? But if he agreed to marry her, what would become of him?