The Perfect Mistress (40 page)

She closed her eyes, and Pierce's face, his smile, and his warm laughter rose in her mind and filled her heart, warming, brightening it. She thought of shoes and roses, of vows and kisses, of all the sweet possibilities that had caused her to turn to him that afternoon at The Montmortaine.

"I want a husband… and a lover," she said softly, smiling through the prisms of her tears. "And I want both of them to be Pierce. I want to sleep in the same bed with him and eat at the same table. I want to talk with him and laugh with him and to see him smile at me the way he did before. I want to be a part of—no, a
partner
in his life. And I want him to be a partner in mine.

"I want to ride horses with him, to play chess with him and win. I want to plant roses with him and play the piano with him and read bedtime stories…" She paused and looked up, thinking of that rocking horse on the third floor. "I want to fill the nursery upstairs with our children, and with music and laughter. I want to grow old with him. I want to look at him when I'm sixty and say that I'm glad he's still my"—she caught her breath as the word unfolded in her mind and in her heart—"my
friend
."

As Beatrice listened, that outpouring of longing went straight to her heart.

It was difficult to imagine her worldly, licentious, and cynical offspring being friends with any woman. There were precious few
men
he would grace with that distinction. But there was no doubt in her mind Gabrielle was telling the truth.

"Pierce St. James," Beatrice declared, "is spoiled and stubborn and jaded.

He cannot bear being confined or restricted in any way. He is much too bright and far too handsome for his own good, and he's positively enjoyed the libertine reputation he has made for himself. I'm not certain if he has a scrap of conscience left in him." Her rounded face softened just enough to reveal the lines that her worries about her son had etched in it. "Are you certain you want him, my girl?"

Gabrielle seized on the hope she sensed underlying her mother-in-law's words.

"Yes, I want him," she said, feeling those words claiming her, somehow setting her course.

"Then, if you want him, you'll have to be strong enough to stand up to him, to make him accept you into his life. You cannot allow him to stuff you away in the country and drag you out of mothballs once a year to parade about under society's nose."

"I could never abide the smell of mothballs."

"You would have to go to London… meet him on his own ground… take him on, toe to toe. It is only fair to warn you, London society can be quite difficult."

"No more difficult than living a solitary life… married to the man I want and need, and yet separated from him."

At that, Beatrice's smile dimmed. Gabrielle could see her struggling with something. A doubt? A decision?

"It has long been a goal of mine to see Pierce decently wedded and settled in a sensible and proper life… both for his sake and for the sake of the grandchildren I have wanted for so many years." A moment later, Beatrice banished the mist in her eyes. "You will need entrance and introductions and advice. People will be eager for scandal. Lord knows, my son has always provided the club hounds of St. James with more than enough grist for their gossip mill." She set her chin in a way that made her look startlingly like Pierce. "I'll do it. I'll help you."

Gabrielle was speechless for a moment, trying to take it in. Lady Beatrice was offering to help her make a life with Pierce?

"Why?" She searched Beatrice's face. "Why would you help me?"

Beatrice paused, sorting both her emotions and her words. "I held the boy too tightly for too long, and he has never forgiven me for that. The die is cast between us. But if I never have his forgiveness or his respect, at least I may have the satisfaction of helping to set his feet on a higher path… and helping him to have the home and family life I was never able to give him."

She squeezed Gabrielle's hand. "Be a good wife to him, my girl. And make him give you the care and respect a good wife deserves."

Gratitude shone through Gabrielle's tears.

"And I'll help too, my Gabby," Rosalind declared, her eyes glowing with maternal devotion.

"You?" Beatrice raised her chin and peered down her nose at Rosalind.

"What do
you
know about London society?"

"Mercifully, not a thing," Rosalind said, tartly, drawing herself up straight.

"On the other hand, I know a great deal about men and about seduction.

And seduction is precisely what Gabby must engage in if she has her heart set on your libidinous beast of a son." She turned to Gabrielle with a knowing smile. "There is no quicker way to get past a man's defenses than to rouse his passions. If you want him, you'll have to be in his mind and under his skin constantly… until the day he turns around and you're really there, making wild and passionate love to him."

"That is appalling," Beatrice declared, looking genuinely disturbed.

"No, that is
passion
." Rosalind smiled with the sensual aplomb of one of the demimonde's great aristocrats. "Something that is very much a part of your son's life and a part of his desire for my daughter." She looked deep into Gabrielle's eyes. "If you want to live with that man, then you must use his passion to soften his heart and his head. And there is no one more able to tutor you in the arts of love than I."

It was true, Gabrielle realized. Pierce had wanted her and had loved her tenderly on their one night together, despite his anger and his distrust of her. She had to rouse that desire for her again and use it to claim a foothold in his world.

Then it struck her:
if she wanted Pierce for a husband and a lover, she would
have to be both a wife and a mistress
.

It felt as if her feet had touched solid ground for the first time in weeks, and she was able to straighten above the bewildering flow of her life to glimpse things from a stunning new perspective. Who said women had to choose between just two paths? Who said a woman had to forfeit passion to be a good and respectable wife? Who said a woman who enjoyed a man's loving must be immoral and depraved? Just who decided these wretched things, anyway?

For the first time in her life,
she
decided.

She looked at her two tutors—one a pillar of society and the other the pinnacle of the demimonde—and understood that out of their mistakes and difficulties, out of their pain and disappointments, new possibilities were being born for her.

It was as if the sun came out in her face. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkled with jewel-like intensity. With the pair of them helping her, Pierce didn't stand a chance.

18

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D
usk was falling as Pierce walked along the streets of Mayfair three days later. He had just spent an interminable afternoon in Conservative party meetings at the Carlton Club, listening to choleric lords and potbellied landowners rail against the depredations of Gladstonian liberalism, and growing increasingly annoyed. When a speaker launched a virulent personal attack on Gladstone's sanity and integrity, the rebuttals that formed in his mind sounded disturbingly like Gabrielle's voice:
These men are much too
eager to judge based on appearances
.

Even after he purged her voice from his mind, its influence lingered. As every strident argument was put forth, he found himself thinking about his party's fierce opposition to Gladstone's "liberal" measures. For just a moment he let himself think seriously about what facts might lie behind the

"appearances" or outside "the obvious" that formed the core of his party's positions. The resulting stream of unanswered questions left him feeling on edge and sent him for the door.

By the time Pierce reached his house on Park Lane and strode up the carriage turn, he was bone weary and looking forward to a double jigger of brandy, a good long soak, and a fat cigar. But the instant Parnell opened the door and Pierce caught sight of the pile of baggage and crates sitting around a piano in the middle of the entry hall, he felt a prickling on the back of his neck and sensed that lightning was about to strike… again.

"What the hell is all this?"

"I tried to reach you, your lordship," Parnell said, looking more frazzled than Pierce had ever see him. "They arrived this afternoon, with no warning

—"

"They?" He gave the valises and trunks a cursory look, then settled his attention on the half-crated piano, which seemed ominously familiar.

"Your mother and Lady Sandbourne. They arrived just this afternoon, with that other woman. They insisted I put Lady Sandbourne's things in
your
chambers. But not knowing your wishes, your lordship, I left them here for the present."

Halfway through a groan, he realized that Parnell had made a distinction between his mother and Lady Sandbourne. The sense of it burst over him.

"Lady Sandbourne? Gabrielle?"

Parnell motioned toward the drawing room. With each step Pierce took in that direction, the tension in his middle wrenched tighter.
Gabrielle. Here
. He found his mother in her usual chair, at her ever-present needlework, and across from her sat none other than Rosalind LeCoeur, reading a pamphlet of some sort. The sight of his priggish mother and his scandalous mother-in-law together in the same room—in his house—rendered him momentarily speechless.

"Good God," he finally uttered, causing them to look up.

"Well, if that isn't just like you." Beatrice set her knitting aside and rose regally. "Not a single word of welcome for your family."

"Family?" he choked out. He focused briefly on Rosalind, then looked at Beatrice in confusion.

"I've left that wretch, Carlisle," Rosalind explained. "And I simply could not bear staying in that awful house just now. Your wife and your mother were gracious enough to invite me to stay with them while I decide what to do with myself."

Pierce blinked, scarcely able to take it in. Rosalind had split with the duke? His mother and his wife had invited her to—

His wife. Scanning the room, he found Gabrielle rising from the window seat on the far end.

She was clad in a periwinkle blue moiré with a fitted bodice, and her hair was caught up in a loose twist. The stark simplicity of her dress emphasized her memorable curves, and its color heightened the intense blue of her eyes.

She might have stepped straight out of one of his fevered dreams.

"Why aren't you at Thorndike?" he demanded irritably.

She glanced at the women, who now stood not far away. "I… we… have some
shopping
to do."

"Shopping?" He fairly choked on the word—a euphemism, he knew, for all sorts of nefarious and underhanded female doings. He wasn't a complete idiot. He knew a plot when he saw it. He looked from Gabrielle to Beatrice to Rosalind, watching their silent and inscrutable exchange of "feminese."

They had taken over his house, and now intended to trap him, to control him… to… He had to make a stand, exert husbandly authority, or he was doomed.

He turned back to the door and thundered for Parnell, who arrived at a run. He ordered his carriage brought around immediately, then turned back to Gabrielle.

"Perhaps I didn't make myself clear when I told you Thorndike was to be your home. I shall certainly be more emphatic this time. Get your gloves and your wrap," he ordered, summoning every bit of masculine prerogative he possessed. "You're going back. Tonight." When she hesitated, he narrowed his eyes and seized her by the wrist. "Very well, if you insist on doing things the hard way…"

"I am not going back," Gabrielle said quietly, digging her heels into the thick pile of the rug.

"Oh, yes you are."

"I most certainly am not. At least, not until you go too."

"Fine. I'll take you. Right now." He tried to pull her along, but she strained against his iron grip. He shot a look at the two mothers, warning them not to interfere. "Dammit, Gabrielle, I shall carry you if I have to."

"Very well." She sank abruptly onto her knees, surprising him and defeating his belated attempt to keep her on her feet. "Carry me if you must." She primly rearranged her bustle to one side, then sat back on the floor.

"Fine!" he ground out. The next minute he was on one knee beside her, seizing her around the waist and sinking an arm beneath her knees. Her sputters of surprise were gratifying—she clearly hadn't expected him to carry through with his threat. But that first pulse of satisfaction quickly gave way to sobering reality as he strained to lift her. As he swayed and rose, she gave a cry and both of her arms flew around his neck. Steadying himself and trying to better his grip on her, he found himself panting, inhaling her scent. Roses—why the hell did she always have to smell like roses?

He strode for the front doors, trying not to breathe any more than necessary and getting nothing but red-faced for the effort. By the time he reached the front door, he was realizing that he'd made a major tactical mistake in picking her up so quickly and stalking out. Now he had to stand and wait for Parnell to return to open the heavy doors for him. Then he would have to stand and wait for Jack to bring the carriage around.