The Perfect Mistress (47 page)

Carlisle lifted his glass, downed his drink in two swallows, and sank back into his foul mood. "Infernal women," he said morosely. Pierce knew instantly the source of his troubled state. "There's no pleasing them. A man hasn't got a chance in hell. I gave her every damned thing she ever wanted… a house, an income, clothes, jewels… luxury, travel, pleasure…"

He leaned forward and continued in a furious whisper: "I've even been
faithful
to her! What the hell more does she expect?"

He waved to the barman to bring another glass.

"
Respect
." With his forehead propped in his hand, he fixed a bewildered gaze on Pierce. "That's what she wants now. Wrote me a letter. Says I never played chess with her. Goes on and on about how she never got to ride horses or smoke a cigar or to wear pink dresses, for God's sake. I think she's gone mad—that's what I think. Gone completely off."

With some of the turmoil purged from his system, he tugged his vest down and shifted his attention to his son-in-law. "Is my daughter well?" he asked, sticking out his chin as if expecting an argument. "She is my daughter, you know. I always knew that, no matter what her mother says."

"She is well enough," Pierce said, thinking
poor bastard
and struggling to keep his thoughts out of his expression.

"Take a lesson, Sandbourne." The duke pounded a finger on the tabletop to punctuate his advice. "If your wife starts prattling on about chess and

'respect' and smoking cigars… take a firm hand to her, straightaway. Don't stand for any of this 'respect' nonsense, or next thing you know, she'll be calling you a damned 'hypocrite,' kicking you out, and changing the locks on the doors!"

Pierce finished his drink as quickly as decency allowed, excused himself, and headed for the door. Rain or no rain, he had to get out of there.

Mercifully, the head porter was able to secure him an umbrella for the walk back to the Clarendon. In the dark and wet of the street, Pierce exhaled and set his jaw grimly. The duke's words of wisdom had come about a month too late.

The success of Gabrielle's Cleopatra gambit was a source of great pride to Gabrielle's advisory committee on passion, who gathered the next afternoon in Gabrielle's chambers, for tea and details. They managed to drag a summary from a red-faced Gabrielle, who, to their disappointment, stubbornly refused to provide particulars. And when asked to give their opinion of his disappearance the next morning, they unanimously agreed it was probably "morning-after nerves." Men, they declared, were prone to pigheaded independence and were deathly afraid of admitting to needing a woman too much. And according to her committee, that fear was most pronounced on the morning after a long, salty bout of loving.

To Gabrielle's relief, Parnell knocked on her chamber door with a request that she join Lady Beatrice in the drawing room to receive a caller—the duke of Carlisle. Rosalind shot to her feet with widened eyes and insisted on accompanying her.

When they arrived in the drawing room, the duke was planted before the cold hearth with his feet spread, his hands gripping his lapels, and his chin set at a determined angle… that loosened at the sight of Rosalind. "What the devil are you doing here?" he demanded of his former paramour.

"I have come to stay with my daughter awhile." Rosalind declared, putting a protective arm around Gabrielle's shoulders and refusing to be intimidated.

"I might have known that you would be involved somehow," he said irritably.

"Involved with what? What am I accused of doing now? Corrupting the government? Bringing down the Church of England?"

The duke reddened, and his neck veins swelled. "I prefer to speak with my daughter alone."

"You may speak freely, Your Grace," Gabrielle said, glancing at Lady Beatrice and Rosalind. "I have nothing to hide from my mother or my mother-in-law."

The duke shifted a critical gaze from one woman to the other, then drew himself up straighter. "Very well. Are you aware, young woman, that as we speak, your husband is being vilified all over London?"

"What?" Gabrielle's knees weakened.

"Sandbourne is being made the subject of gossip and unsavory jest throughout the city. Your forced vows are not only common knowledge, they have become an excuse for the worst sort of invention and defamation.

Fabrications about Sandbourne's activities are cropping up all over the place.

Just last night I heard it being told about my club that a naked tart had herself rolled up in a rug and delivered to him!"

"Why that is… preposterous!" Gabrielle turned beet red and cast a look of alarm at her mother. "Pierce is an honest, decent, and upstanding man."

"Well, that is not the way society sees it, my girl." The duke stalked over to stare down at her. "He's not a randy young blade anymore, he's a married man. And as such, he is required to keep both his baser urges and his household in check." He glared at Gabrielle in a way that made it clear that he regarded her as belonging somewhere between "household" and "baser urges."

"If a man cannot manage his private life and his household, how can he possibly be expected to manage the public trust?"

Gabrielle was speechless. The details of their marriage and of a romantic gesture gone awry had been parlayed by malicious tongues into a ruinous combination. He was slowly being ostracized because he had chosen to pursue his pass—

His
passion
for her. Her eyes widened. The idea that passion could prove dangerous for Pierce was nothing short of astonishing to her. She hadn't imagined that his desire for her could possibly have such dire consequences on his life and career. Always in her thinking, it was women who paid the price of passion. She hadn't imagined that men could be held to account for their passions as well… or that the rules of conduct for a married man and for an unmarried man in public life were different.

"Whatever your differences with your husband, you'd better set them aside, my girl… and soon," the duke declared.

Gabrielle looked from her father's glower to Lady Beatrice's distress, and her heart filled with a jumble of emotion. She headed abruptly for the door.

Lady Beatrice followed and caught up with her in the upstairs hall, just outside the master chambers.

"Gabrielle—"

"I'm partly to blame for all of this," she said, facing her mother-in-law. "I have to do something to help." She paced a few steps away, then back.

"What can I do?"

Lady Beatrice frowned and grew thoughtful. "The only way to deal with malicious gossip is to hold your head up and supplant it with something positive… to make new stories for people to remember instead of whispered gossip."

Gabrielle's mind started to race. It was time she began behaving like a real friend—seeing to Pierce's welfare, helping him. She considered Lady Beatrice's words.

"Then I need something that will show his better side—his decency, his compassion… his generosity…" Her eyes lighted. "I think I know just the thing!"

Below, in the drawing room, Rosalind faced the duke through a charged and deepening silence. The sight of his drawn face and eyes ringed from sleeplessness had jarred her numbed feelings. Feeling a treacherous softening toward him, she tried to resurrect her anger and sense of betrayal.

"A bit late to take an interest in our daughter, don't you think?"

"Better late than never." He sighed tightly. "I cannot do anything about what is past, Rosalind. I can only try to do something about the present."

She tried not to look directly at him, but felt her gaze drawn inescapably toward his. Those gray eyes that she had seen change through every conceivable shade of passion, sent a crushing wave of longing through her chest.

"Can you do something to help them?"

"I can contact a few men I know in government, make it known that Sandbourne has my support… noise it about at Brooks's and at the Carlton that the rumors are nothing short of slander." He ran his hands down his face, trying to think what else was within his power. "I don't know how much good it will do, but I suppose… I might arrange to be seen with them in public."

That was a major concession, Rosalind knew.

"Thank you, Augustus," she whispered, her eyes misting. "It means a great deal to me that you would try to help our daughter."

For a long moment they stood, their gazes locked, their faces reddening.

Details—a curve, a scent, a certain dip of lashes, a subtle shift in stance—

crept into their awareness, reminding them both that the powerful attraction Rosalind had so carefully cultivated through the years was still there. She searched his beloved face and experienced a sensual warming that was always a prelude to pleasure. He searched her lightning blue eyes and felt a hot clutch of need constricting his chest.

"Get your things, Rosalind," he said, his voice husky and commanding.

"I'm taking you home."

It was a moment before his response chilled her half-melted senses.

"What?"

"I said, get your things. You've made your point. I'll give you your blessed 'respect.' Now, get your hat… I'm taking you back to Maison LeCoeur."

Her eyes slowly widened, as his orders sank in.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't be stubborn, Rosalind. I'll give you what you want… I'll play chess and ride horses… You can wear pink every damned day if you want.

It's time you quit this meddling in the girl's life and came home where you belong."

She stared at him, incredulous. He offered not a single word of love or understanding or reconciliation. "I cannot believe I was with you all those years… that I slept with you and loved you… and all that time, I scarcely knew you."

"Dammit, Rosalind, you're talking in riddles again," he fumed. "Of course you knew me—every way it was possible for a woman to
know
a man."

She gasped. "I've heard all I intend to hear." She started for the door, but he caught her by the elbow. "Unhand me." Wrenching free, she scalded him with a look. "You are without a doubt the most pompous, selfish, insensitive lout I have ever met. You don't want me, Augustus… You want a whore, a housekeeper, and a nanny. Well, go hire them and leave me be!"

While he sputtered, she turned on her heel and strode for the stairs in the center hall. He watched her go, with her head up and her bustle swaying, and had an irrational urge to seize her and carry her off—like some Sabine woman!

"Pigheaded woman," he rumbled, starting for the doors.

"Pigheaded man," came an unexpected response. Lady Beatrice stepped into the doorway, her eyes glowing and her expression set with a uniquely feminine disdain. She had been returning to the drawing room to retrieve her knitting when she realized it was still occupied and paused, within hearing of all that transpired.

"I beg your pardon," he said, backing a step.

"You're behaving like a fool, Carlisle." Beatrice advanced, sending him back another step. "You haven't the foggiest notion what she is about, do you?"

"This is none of your concern, Lady Sandbourne—" He drew himself up to his most formidable posture, only to find his display bettered by Beatrice's presence.

"You used her for your pleasure and convenience, without a single thought for what she wanted or needed."

"That's not true. I gave her everything she wanted: a house, a carriage, a

—"

"Oh, she was highly paid. But a highly paid
what?
To you she always was, and still is, more whore than woman. You bark orders at her, demand that she obey as if she were a servant or child. And you're positively scandalized by the notion that she might want something in her life
besides
you
.

"Well, this may come as a nasty surprise to you, Carlisle, but she does have ideas and yearnings that have nothing to do with your precious male hide. She is clever and witty, and she has a good—if regrettably reckless—

heart. She thought you loved her and was willing to live with you outside the bonds of wedlock."

"She is my mistress, for God's sake!" he declared, trembling with thwarted possession. "Mine. God knows I paid enough for the privilege. After all I gave her…"

"
Yours
, you say—as if you owned her—like an expensive painting or a cellar of vintage wines. She was a possession you bought and paid for, not a woman who agreed to live with you and love you. You
do
think she's a harlot, Carlisle."

His own words, reflected and interpreted for him, stopped him cold. For the first time, he realized that he had thought of Rosalind as his, body and soul. She
belonged
to him. The thought disturbed him, even as he clung to it.

How dared she want more than he had given her? How dared she be more than he had known?

"I am shocked by your bluntness, Lady Sandbourne," he declared.

"Age has its rewards," she said with a perceptive smile. "Chief among them is the right to speak one's mind when one sees pride, arrogance, and stupidity ruining people's lives."

Stung, the duke stormed out of the drawing room and out of the house.

Beatrice watched him go and felt a rush of memories… another argument, another man stalking out. But after a moment, that old tension faded, and she smiled ruefully.