The Perfect Mistress (5 page)

"I don't care what else you do, just don't scream," came a deep, cultured voice. "God, I do hate it when females scream."

After sufficient time for his words to sink in, he removed his hand, paused, then sat back across the carriage. She lay crumpled in the footwell for a moment, catching her breath. Then she scrambled up onto the edge of the seat. The coach was sumptuously appointed; lined with silver gray brocade, upholstered in gray silk plush trimmed with silk cording and tassels, and fitted with a sterling carriage lamp and brazier. And it was moving at a fast clip. Eyeing the door, she made a hasty calculation of the damage she would suffer if she managed to fling herself from the vehicle at that speed…

"It isn't worth it," her new captor declared, as if he had read her thoughts.

She snapped a glance at him from her tensely cocked posture and froze as she found herself staring at a face that was somehow both dissolute and divine. Beneath a black silk top hat, a set of finely carved features were framed in a large, handsomely proportioned oval—dark eyes, a slightly aquiline nose, broad, high cheekbones, a wide, sensual arc of a mouth that just now was canted at an unsettling angle. It was an intriguing dark masterpiece of a face; for a moment it robbed her of speech.

He made a sound, deep in his throat, that might have been a laugh.

"Well, well… You are a prize. I had no idea the old boy had sunk to such levels."

The mention of the old man made her wonder if "William" might have sent him after her. But some nuance in the way he spoke discredited that possibility. She clamped her arms around her waist and tried to quell her growing fear.

"Stop this carriage at once, and let me out."

"I don't intend to hurt you," he said in businesslike tones. "On the contrary, if you cooperate, you will leave this coach a richer woman." Out of the folds of his black evening cloak, he produced a five-pound banknote and held it up between two finely gloved fingers.

She stiffened.
Cooperate?
Her face flamed. For the second time tonight she had been mistaken for a tart and abducted! Was every man in London out tonight in a carriage, dragging women off the streets for a bit of illicit pleasure?

"A fiver," he said, watching her carefully, amusement playing at the corners of his mouth. "Better than your usual rates, I would think."

"I don't have 'rates'… usual or otherwise," she declared. "And who are you to be dragging women off the streets and taking indecent liberties?"

"I don't want your 'liberties,' sweetheart, I just want a bit of talk. I'll match whatever your last customer gave you."

"I don't have a 'last customer,' either." Her teeth were beginning to chatter. "However it may ap-pear, I am not in that unenviable trade."

"No?" He smiled coolly. "You just spent the better part of the last hour in the company of a certain old man. I know because I saw him drag you into his carriage, then into his house." He leaned forward sharply, and she tried to slide to one side to avoid him. But her sodden skirts were stuck to the velvet of the tufted seat and held her bottom fast.

"This is yours," he said in deep tones, waving the banknote suggestively,

"if you tell me, in explicit detail, everything the old bugger did to you."

The sound of the rain pounding on the carriage roof intruded, reminding her of the cold, relentless peril of the streets. Her body began to quake with a chill as she stared at the banknote and wondered desperately if it was enough to hire a hansom cab.

He watched her eyeing the money. "Holding out for more, eh? Very well, I'll match whatever the old cod gave you. What was it—a 'tenner'? I can't imagine him going any higher than that… what with his passion for thrift, strong currency, and a balanced budget." He gave a "
tsk
" of annoyance.

"Was it twenty?"

"It was warm cocoa and biscuits," she said irritably, bracing for his response.

Surprised, he studied her response for a moment, then gave a wickedly sardonic laugh. "Of course. He picked you up off the streets, carried you to his house, and fed you warm cocoa and biscuits."

"
Fancy
biscuits, dipped in chocolate," she insisted, pausing to fortify herself with a breath. "And if you want to know the rest, you'll have to agree to take me home."

"Home?" He leveled an incredulous look on her. "To some windowless room in Whitechapel?"

"To my home in"—she suddenly thought better of mentioning exactly where until he agreed to the bargain— "In the West End."

He raked a calculating look down her disheveled form, deciding. "Very well. Tell me what I want to know and I'll take you home."

Having ventured that much, she dared more… reaching down to drag the brazier closer and propping her feet atop it. As the rising heat invaded her icy limbs, she jerked her sluggish wits back to the perils at hand.

"Well… he took me into his house and sat me down and went on and on about the evils of the flesh and reforming my ways," she began. "And about how the road to purity and holiness is difficult, but that if I apply myself to it I can become a veritable temple of… eternal something-or-other." She tilted her chin up, refusing to look directly at him, but catching, at the periphery of her vision, the way his eyes narrowed. "It's true! And he offered to help me make a new start, as a housemaid or a charity house matron… or a shopgirl in a hat shop."

His mouth clamped into a quivering line. "A charity house matron? How uncharacteristically
inventive
of him." He leaned back and lowered his chin, so that the brim of his hat put his eyes in shadow. "The 'housemaid' and

'shopgirl' gambits are certainly familiar. They're favorites of a number of the gentlemen of St. James. But a 'charity house matron.' Ranks as something of a quirk, I would say. And what part did he intend to play? The birch-wielding chairman of the board? A heavy-breathing contributor, perhaps?"

She scowled.

"All I know is: an old man dragged me into his kitchen, made me sit by the fire, shoved biscuits into my hands, and preached at me about my supposedly vile and immoral life. Then his wife came—at least he called her

'dear wife'—and when he trundled her out of the kitchen, I seized the chance to escape." She drew herself up with as much dignity as her chilled blue blood could muster. "Now… please take me home."

He paused, stroking his chin with a gloved hand as he studied her.

"You don't know who he is, do you?" he demanded, folding his arms.

"I don't care who he is," she answered crossly. When he continued to stare at her, she added: "Obviously a wild-eyed reformer, devoted to the notion of purging the streets of loose women." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't know who
you
are either."

A laugh vibrated his shoulders, a deep, husky sound that made her want to reach for the door handle. He leaned forward, sending her smacking into the back of the seat as she recoiled from both him and the peculiar tension he created in her with the slightest movement.

"You just spent the better part of an hour, if not in the arms, at least in the clutches of the prime minister of Britain. That was none other than the Grand Old Man himself, William Gladstone." His face lighted with a taut, annoying smile. "Now that you know the exalted nature of the company you've just…
kept
… wouldn't you like to change your story a bit?"

Her eyes widened, then narrowed in confusion. Old William was the prime minister of Britain? She had just been abducted, dried out, and preached at by the queen of England's first minister? It was too absurd to credit.

"I don't believe you," she said refolding her arms protectively over her breasts.

"That makes us even," he said almost genially. "I don't believe you either."

"He couldn't have been the prime minister of Britain."

"Oh, but he was," he said. "You see, William Gladstone—that scrupulously upstanding member of society, that devout thinker, social philosopher, and diabolically canny politician—has a penchant for ladies of the night. He prowls the streets after dark, looking for prostitutes and accosting them, under the pretext of doing 'rescue work.' He drags his poor victims into some vacant hallway or alley or doorway—sometimes even into his official residence on Downing Street—and takes his grim satisfactions, before callously turning them back onto the streets." His dark gaze drilled into her. "Now, are you ready to tell me more?"

Gabrielle didn't know what to think. The prime minister taking advantage of fallen women under the guise of rescuing them? She tried to recall what Gladstone had looked like in the London newspapers they had occasionally received at Marchand. The likenesses had varied widely and more often than not were hideous caricatures. This man seemed so much older that she honestly couldn't say if there was a similarity.

"There isn't anything else to tell. He took me to his house, tried to get me to confess my wickedness and depravity, and pleaded with me to reform my shamefully debauched ways."

"And did you? Confess your wickedness and debauchery? Renounce all your fleshly depravity?"

"Of course not. I am not depraved."

"Of course not," he echoed, smiling.

Pierce St. James, earl of Sandbourne, relaxed back against the plush seat, abandoning for the moment his dogged pursuit of William Gladstone's sexual indiscretions, though he was far from convinced that he had the truth of the matter. He had just spent the entire evening in a miserably cold and damp carriage, trailing the prime minister through a howling storm, in hopes of gathering evidence of a scandal that would prove grounds for a crown inquiry and might topple the old man's creaking government. And he had nothing to show for it but a bone-deep chill and a cock-and-bull story of hot cocoa and biscuits.

But Pierce St. James was a very patient man. He had long ago learned the truth of the saying that all things come to those who wait. He had adopted and practiced that wisdom as a central tenet of his existence. The night was young yet, he told himself, and he still had Gladstone's haughty little piece in hand. He might yet wring something useful from her… if he could get her to let her guard down. He smiled. That shouldn't be a problem. Pierce St. James was nothing if not an expert at getting women to lower their guard.

Banishing the self-righteous visage of William Gladstone from his mind, he focused his attention instead on the girl huddled on the seat opposite him. She was young and fresh and surprisingly self-possessed; a far cry from the worn and filthy creatures who usually plied their trade in the Haymarket on such a night. But then, William Gladstone was known to be selective in his efforts to recruit fallen women into the ranks of the reformed.

He chose his candidates for "rescue" with a connoisseur's eye for the combination of beauty and licentiousness in a woman.

Pierce slid his gaze over her flimsy gown, noting the firm young curves it clung to like a second skin. She had large blue eyes and hair that was probably quite light when it wasn't a mass of wet tangles. As his attention came to rest on her face, he felt an unexpected curl of carnal curiosity winding through him. Her face was square, framed by a high forehead, prominent cheekbones, and a surprisingly strong jaw. Her nose was straight and slender, her brows finely arched, and her mouth…

His gaze settled on her cold-blushed lips. They were generously curved and held with just enough stubbornness to give them a bit of a pout. It was the kind of mouth a man could feel just by closing his eyes. The kind of mouth that made a man wonder if there weren't still a few oral pleasures yet to be discovered. It was a moment before he realized that those lips had moved, and he had to reconstruct her words in his mind.

"I've told you what you wanted to know," she had said, looking perfectly indignant. "Now take me home, as you agreed."

"You most certainly have
not
told me what I want to know," he countered, eyeing her speculatively. He sensed that there was more to the story than she had yet revealed. "Nor, I think, have you told me the entire truth. And until you do, I'm afraid I cannot let you out of my sight."

"The
truth
is that I am a decent young woman who was caught in a rainstorm and accosted and assaulted by two insufferable"—she thought better of the term she intended and substituted—"
men
. And I insist you honor your word."

"Oh, a
decent
young woman." His eyes widened in belated understanding.

That was undoubtedly her hook, the gambit she used to interest and involve her gentlemanly patrons. And he had to credit her; it was damned convincing. With her fresh face and artful indignation it probably worked like a charm. "I'm sure you're a regular 'rosebud.' "

Heat bloomed in her cheeks, and she abandoned her huddled posture to draw herself up straight. "You want the truth? Fine. The truth is, my father is a wealthy and influential man." Then on impulse she added: "In fact he is a titled man. And I am going to be married… to a respected gentleman."

"You are betrothed?" He searched the lines of her face. She was nothing if not an imaginative chit, inventing at the drop of a hat, a maidenhood, virtue, a wealthy father—a
titled
man, no less—and now a respectable betrothed.