The Perfect Mistress (31 page)

Anger and confusion and humiliation boiled over inside him.

"Well, it appears you'll get what you wanted after all, Gabrielle," he said to her, with a bitterly sardonic edge. "You'll soon be a married woman." He broke free of the bishop's grasp and looked down at him. "If you would do me the mercy of applying to Canterbury for a special license. The sooner it is over, the better."

He snatched his coat up off the floor and strode out, slamming the door behind him.

After the vibrations of his angry departure subsided, the duke, the bishop, and the prime minister stepped out of the room to allow Gabrielle to dress.

They stood clustered in the hallway, their faces grim and eyes downcast, not speaking. After a while, the duke cleared his throat.

"This is a most painful and demeaning incident," he said grimly. "I must rely on your discretion, gentlemen, to keep the circumstances of this marriage from becoming fodder for the despicable public curiosity."

Both Gladstone and the bishop nodded in agreement. The secret would be kept, secure among the three of them.

Or so they thought.

Just down the hall, a pair of worldly eyes peered from a crack in a doorway, glowing with devilish pleasure at recognizing two of the three faces in the hall. The shouting and banging that had so alarmed the maître d' had intrigued Peter Atcheson, Lord Arundale. He had temporarily abandoned pursuit of his own pleasures to spy on the comings and goings.

After a time, he saw his erstwhile companion in debauch, Sandbourne, charging from the room with his coat in his hand and his shirt half undone.

And just how he caught enough of the tall gent's words to interpret what was happening. William Gladstone… the bishop of London
… the
circumstances of the marriage
…

He fairly crowed with glee as he watched Sandbourne's delectable little

"cousin" emerge from the private chamber, minutes later. Putting it all together, he closed the door and gave a wicked laugh. Sandbourne had just been caught with his breeches down and was going to have to marry the chit!

"Arundale, you beast, you're ignoring me," came the petulant voice of his companion. He turned back to the voluptuous and accommodating creature with the indecent neckline and the kohl-rimmed eyes.

"I'll make it up to you, lovey. Wait until you hear what I just saw…"

At the duke's insistence, Gabrielle went with him to his house in Mayfair.

Still numb with shock, she descended from the coach and was bundled through a high entry hall and up a sweeping staircase, followed by the empty echoes of her footsteps on the cold marble steps. On the second floor, she was installed in a guest chamber, where—in accordance with the duke's terse decree—she would stay until he came to get her for the wedding ceremony.

She sat down miserably on the bench at the foot of the bed, watching the door close and hearing a key scraping the lock. After a few moments, she lifted her head and looked around the elegant little room—at the delicate white French furnishings, blue flocked wallpaper, and the pretty, lace-draped bed. She was in her father's house for the first time in her life…

not as a daughter or even a guest, but as a damaged bit of goods that had to be "set right." After nineteen years of pretending she didn't exist, the duke had just swooped down on her life, claiming jurisdiction over her.

As her numbness wore off, those last awful moments in the restaurant came flooding back over her in dark, suffocating waves. Mr. Gladstone, the duke, the bishop, and Pierce… all arguing, posturing, discussing her as if she were an object. But the worst of it had been the accusation in Pierce's gaze when he looked at her.

The freedom and control that he so prized had been taken from him. But the choice she sought and her dream of a decent, civil, liberating marriage had been taken from her. In a moment of weakness, in a rush of desire, the die had been cast.

And what was left? A ruined bride and a bitterly resentful groom. What sort of marriage would that be?

The duke of Carlisle went barreling through the doors of Maison LeCoeur, sending Gunther racing for Gabrielle's rooms with orders to pack her things and have her maid and her bags ready to go in a quarter of an hour.

"He's early!" Rosalind cried at the sound of his voice. She jumped up from the divan in her boudoir, ripped the black silk sleeping mask from her face, and sent her maid scurrying to bring her most exotic dressing robe. But before she could change her loose-fitting tea gown, the door to her private sanctum banged open and the duke stood in the opening, looking as if he had just ridden hell-bent all the way from Africa.

"Augustus,
darling!
You're here!" She rushed to him with outstretched arms, her eyes glowing with surprise and pleasure.

"How dared you?" he thundered, stopping her in her tracks.

"How dared I what?" She stood teetering, blinking with confusion. "What is wrong, my darling?"

"How could you, Rosalind?" He paced away from her, his chest heaving and his eyes hot. "My own daughter—my very flesh and blood!"

"Your daughter? Gabrielle?" She gasped, thinking that something must have happened to her. "Is she all right? Tell me!—she isn't hurt, is she?" She hurried to his side and seized his sleeve.

"She's worse than hurt—she's ruined," he declared, shaking her hands from his arm and stalking away. "And I am told
you
are to blame."

Rosalind blanched. "Ruined? What are you talking about?"

"As I was making my way north from Portsmouth, I received an urgent message from William Gladstone saying that my daughter was in grave peril. I rushed to London and discovered that my daughter had been the victim of a foul and depraved seduction… by the earl of Sandbourne—one of the worst scapegraces in London. And when I confronted him—caught him in the very act—the scoundrel claimed
you
had initiated and endorsed it!"

"A seduction? That's absurd, Augustus. How could he possibly seduce her? They were already lovers… or were to be soon." His nostrils flared, and she realized she needed to explain. "Gabrielle is mad about him. And I believe he sincerely loves her. Why, he's courted and wooed her… shown her nothing but the greatest generosity and consideration. I admit that, having heard his reputation, I had reservations about his character. So I put him to the test. And he proved himself more than worthy. I gave them my blessing only a few days ago."

"Good God—you admit it openly!"

"Of course I do." The raw indignation in his eyes alarmed her. In all their years together, she had never seen him like this. "I brought her home in January, after her schooling ended and she had toured a bit. It was time to get on with seeing to her future, and I decided to find her the best situation possible: a good and gallant gentleman to take care of her and love her."

"Without a word to me," he charged. "You didn't bother to consult
me
or ask my permission or to discover what
my
plans were for her."

"
Your
plans?" Rosalind gasped. "You've never had plans for her—you've never even acknowledged her." As the shock of his anger wore off, she began to think. "You never asked about her, and whenever we were in Paris and I mentioned visiting her at her school, you seemed bored or impatient and refused to accompany me."

"I knew perfectly well where she was!" the duke blustered, red-faced. "I—

I was not without responsibility toward her. If you'll remember, I
paid
for that fancy school."

"No! You paid for me!" Rosalind swayed closer, her eyes blazing, her chest heaving. "
I
paid for the school! She was always a LeCoeur… my daughter, my responsibility. You made that quite clear when she was born, and I bowed to your feelings and kept her out of your way. I have always taken that responsibility quite seriously, including finding her a suitable protector—"

"A
protector?
" He sputtered. "You sought to turn my daughter—my own precious seed—into a common
harlot
. And worse, you gave her to a man whose only redeeming feature is the depths of his pockets." He stalked closer to her with his eyes burning. "I was hauled to The Montmortaine by none other than the prime minister himself. And in front of him and a bishop of the church, I was forced to witness the sight of my own daughter, half naked, in the arms of a high-living swine. I've never been so humiliated in my life."

He
was humiliated? What about Gabrielle? By his account, he and those others had burst in on Gabrielle and the earl while they were making love, possibly even for the very first time.

"My poor Gabby—she must have been mortified!" She grabbed the duke's arm. "Where is she? What's happened to her? I have to go to her."

"She is at my house," he declared with a dreadful calm, "where she will stay… until the vows are duly and legally spoken."

"Vows? What vows?"

"Marriage vows. He's a high-living rake who has seduced the girl.

Without vows she is little more than a tart to him. She is being married by special license, as quickly as it can be arranged. Possibly a day or two… as soon as an agreement can be reached. I've come to collect her things and her maid."

Rosalind stood looking at him, feeling the cold that had gripped her heart beginning to spreading through the rest of her. She had never seen him like this… so righteous and proper and possessive. So judgmental.

Without vows she is little more than a tart
. Those words turned over and over in her head, and she felt them somehow turning and shifting the earth under her feet. "But, Augustus,
we
have never spoken marriage vows…"

"Don't be absurd, Rosalind." He scowled furiously. "You are my mistress."

"I see." She could scarcely breathe.

He squared his shoulders and started for the door. "The vows will be read by the bishop of London, in one of the chapels… as early as tomorrow. I shall send word when it is done."

"When it is done?" She hurried to intercept him. "What do you mean?"

But from the way he refused to meet her eyes, she knew. "You mean that I shouldn't attend the wedding." She went weak in the knees and caught herself on the back of a nearby chair. Her world was suddenly reeling. "But I'm her
mother
."

"For God's sake, Rosalind, show a bit of sense," he said with a final, imperious blast. "She is marrying an
earl
."

He strode out the door with his patrician pride at full billow. The sound of him bellowing orders to Gunther and the maids drifted back to her through the open door. The scurrying and thudding of feet and the clank and swoosh of trunks continued for some time. And then all was quiet—

hideously quiet.

Rosalind stood just as he left her, motionless, frozen in disbelief.

She might be Gabrielle's mother, he had just informed her, but she was—

first and foremost—his mistress. And mistresses were forbidden to appear at society weddings, even if they were the mother of the bride.

"My God. After all these years…" She swayed and had to catch herself to keep from falling. "He's treating me like a common tart!"

Pierce went straight from The Montmortaine to his club, ensconced himself in the bar, and proceeded to work his way to the bottom of several stout brandies. The barman, watching Pierce's intake and knowing his usual self-imposed limits, took it upon himself to find Pierce a bed in the sleeping rooms above and to steer him into it. Thus it was nearly noon next day before he arrived once more at his own house in Hyde Park.

There was a healthy growth of beard on his face, his hair was rumpled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was walking as if he were afraid his head would topple from his shoulders at any minute. But his racked exterior was only a pale reflection of the damage the previous day had wrought inside him. Guilt, anger, humiliation, indignation, chagrin, regret, mawkish melancholy… there wasn't a single dread emotion in the entire human repertoire that he hadn't wallowed through in the night just past. And each had left behind some trace of itself in passing.

That Gladstone had humiliated him—trumped him at his own game—

was bad enough. But that he had used Gabrielle to do so made it damn near intolerable.

Somewhere in the middle of his second brandy the previous night, while going over and over the disaster in his mind, he realized that the old man had spoken to Gabrielle of the Savoy and of the fact that Pierce had offered to help her find a husband. Both were things Gladstone would have known only if he had seen and spoken to her at the theater. With further thought, Pierce realized that Gladstone couldn't have known where they were going to be today. He hadn't even told Gabrielle his plans for the afternoon. The old man must have set someone to watch them… looking for an opportunity to "rescue" Gabrielle.

The fact that he had been watched and followed in an attempt to discredit him, sent a bolt of outrage through him. It was worse than ungentlemanly.

It was low and cowardly. It was mean-spirited and calculating. It was patently
un-British
. For the moment, it escaped him that he had done the very same thing to Gladstone.

But, if truth be told, the worst part of the entire thing was that the old man had used Gabrielle to get to him. He had seen her with Pierce and plied his hypocritical "rescue" nonsense with her to… When a further possibility occurred to him, he felt as if all the blood in his body had drained to his feet.