The Perfect Mistress (50 page)

"
Charitable
and generous?" He stared at her, finally seeing the full scope of her maneuverings. "Damme, if you're not a piece of work," he snapped.

"The vows are scarcely a month old, and already you're ordering and rearranging my life. Deliberately seeking out Liberal company, invading my hotel rooms, disposing of chunks of my fortune, and now roping me into charity work with penniless orphans… all under the guise of repairing my reputation. Well, it won't work. I am who I am. And no one who has spent time with me will put stock in such nonsense."

"Then, perhaps it is time to change whom you spend your time with," she responded hotly. "Perhaps you should begin spending time with people who see hope and decency in the world around them, instead of hypocrisy and intrigue on every hand. Perhaps you should spend some time with people who have faith in you and care about you. Perhaps it's time you made some real friends instead of just political allies who can turn on you with every change of wind."

Her words stopped him cold.

For the last week he had stumbled about in a haze, clinging to his anger so that he wouldn't have to face the sharp loneliness he felt without her. In truth, he had always been alone—he saw that now. He had always had companions in leisure, allies in politics, and connections in commerce; he had played cards and plotted elections and made financial deals with a number of men. But with all the time and experiences he had shared with them, there was scarcely one of them he could genuinely call a friend. And when his reputation began to suffer recently, there was not one person who came forward to defend him or even commiserate with him. Not one.

A pair of luminous blue eyes came into focus before him. No, there was one.

Her.

His heart began pounding and his chest felt crowded, his palms dampened. Against his better judgment, he looked into her eyes. He had never needed, never longed for friendship or love before his time with her.

He hadn't even understood what they were. He might have gone on his whole life enmeshed deeper and deeper in empty pleasures and pointless political intrigues if he hadn't cynically accepted her proposition… if they hadn't "pretended to sin"… if he hadn't come to see her as a woman and a friend. If he hadn't come to love her.

The turmoil he had struggled all afternoon to contain, now burst its bonds, raging free. He was in love with Gabrielle. Thoroughly. Irrevocably.

There was no escape and no compromise. It was there inside him, like a layer of bedrock newly exposed… part of the foundation of him, impossible to dislodge or to ignore.

He felt the control he had fought so hard to preserve slipping from his grasp.

She saw it all—the confusion, the anger, the fear—and knew something was happening in him. Impulsively, she reached for one of his hands. He tensed with resistance.

"Perhaps it's time you spent less time interfering with my life," he declared, "and spent more time getting on with your own."

Even knowing that those words came out of his fear and turmoil, she felt their sting in her heart. Struggling with her hurt, she finally subdued it enough to make one last try.

"Pierce, I know I've upset and embarrassed you and invaded your house… and it probably seems as if I'm trying to take over your very life.

That was never my intention. I only wanted to be a true and loving mate, a partner in your life." Moisture rose in her eyes. "I cannot change the fact that we are legally married. All I can do is try to give you back some of the choice that was taken from you." She searched his taut and troubled face.

"I am willing to be your wife, your lover, or your friend." Her voice was barely a whisper. "But you have to tell me what you want. The choice is yours."

He stared at her, emotion rising in him, then abruptly rapped on the window of the cab. The driver slowed and pulled to the side of the street, and Pierce bolted from the carriage as if the hounds of hell were after him.

As the cab lurched into motion, Gabrielle slid to the window and looked back at him through a stinging blur… watching his formidable figure growing smaller and more distant, until he was out of sight.

She had just gambled everything on the love he guarded so tenaciously.

She had tried to resurrect the friendship between them by helping him repair the damage she had inflicted upon his reputation. And instead of recalling the bond of caring and respect that had once existed between them, her efforts had only driven a deeper wedge between them. His hurtful words repeated over and over in her head.

It's time she got on with her own life, he said.

A life without him.

For two weeks, Beatrice had assiduously courted the guardians of the guest list of the Albermarles' Derby Ball. There was, in fact, a whole round of dances planned for the night following the running of the immensely popular Derby at Epsom Downs, in late May. But it was the Albermarles'

ball that ranked as one of the premier social events of the London season.

All of London society aspired to it, but only four hundred of the "upper ten"

were graced with invitations.

Beatrice had drawn upon every social debt, favor, and bit of goodwill owed her in the upper strata to see to it that they received invitations.

Despite all of her work, she had been unable to secure an invitation until Gabrielle's and Pierce's successful appearance at the Mortons. The invitation had come by messenger, the morning after the dinner party. True to her nature and station, Lady Beatrice was weak-kneed with relief one moment and indignant the next at the idea of being invited so late to something of such magnitude. Unthinkable of them, she declared, to presume she wouldn't have another engagement elsewhere.

Fortunately, however, she had planned well ahead for the event. A suitable ball gown was the first thing she had ordered for Gabrielle on their very first shopping expedition. She had spent some time drilling Gabrielle on the order of precedence and the elaborate etiquette required at such an event. And she had even taken some of the family jewels out of the vault to be checked and cleaned by her jeweler.

The one thing Beatrice couldn't have anticipated, and was at a loss to cope with, was Gabrielle's deepening reluctance toward the ball. Beatrice and Rosalind were aware that Gabrielle and Pierce had had words when he brought her home from the foundling hospital. Gabrielle remained somewhat vague about the content of their exchange, but the impact of it was certainly clear. She behaved as if she might never see him again.

For the next two days, each time Parnell answered the door, she sprang to her feet… only to have her expectations dashed when it turned out to be a courier from the jeweler, an acquaintance of Lady Beatrice's, or one of her mother's three friends, who called each day to report on their efforts to call in a few discreet debts of honor to help counter the rumors about Pierce in the male preserve of St. James. But as each day passed without a message or a visit from Pierce, Gabrielle's spirits sank a bit lower.

By that Friday evening, both Rosalind and Beatrice were perfectly bewildered by the apparent failure of their campaign to bring Pierce into the matrimonial fold. They had done everything right, they told themselves.

Gabrielle had charmed society and charmed Pierce. She had roused his passions and proved her prowess in a bed as well as a drawing room. And with her donation to the foundling home, she had gotten him to help both penniless orphans and himself. Validated by such respected philanthropists as Lord Rosebery, word of his patronage and involvement at the hospital was gradually spreading. Everything had gone splendidly.

And for all their successes, Gabrielle seemed no closer to being a part of Pierce's life than when they started.

Rosalind found Gabrielle sitting on a bench in the small, walled garden at the rear of the house, looking as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders. Rosalind sat down on the bench beside her daughter, and a moment later Gabrielle was sobbing in her arms.

"Why do men have to be so difficult?" Gabrielle said, later, resting her head on her mother's shoulder.

"I wish I knew," Rosalind murmured, stroking Gabrielle's hair.

After a few moments, Gabrielle drew a shuddering breath. "What if we never work things out? Do you suppose I'll ever quit missing him…

wanting him?"

"I don't know, dearest. That's one aspect of loving a man I have little experience with." Above Gabrielle's head, Rosalind's eyes also filled with tears. "I'm afraid we'll just have to learn about it together."

23

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T
he early June night was warm and alive with sound, and the sky was as clear as was ever seen in London's soot-laden environs. It was suitably grand finish for Derby Day, and the duke's home was suitably elegant for the most glittering event of that celebration. Albermarle Hall was a veritable palace… a huge, Palladian structure of gray limestone with dramatic arched windows, iron gates, and a full set of gardens, all set on the western edge of fashionable London.

When Beatrice and Gabrielle arrived, they had to wait in a line of carriages to disembark, and once they were through the stately front doors, they were directed up the sweeping center stairs to another line for introduction. As they were announced, they proceeded into the ballroom and straight to the receiving line to greet the duke and duchess and other dignitaries that included the lord mayor of London and the governor of the Derby.

Heads turned and eyes widened as they passed. A wave of recognition rippled out behind them, followed by whispers of surprise. The dowager and the current countess were nothing short of stunning together—so eye-catching, in fact, that most onlookers failed to mark the fact that the earl himself was not with them. It was an effect Lady Beatrice had counted on.

They had sent the invitation on to Pierce, hoping he would accept, but there had been only ominous silence from the Clarendon.

Pierce's mother had purposefully chosen a gown of black moiré, trimmed with ecru white velvet, to serve as the perfect foil for Gabrielle's ecru white satin, trimmed with sinuous black embroidery set with beads. Gabrielle's bodice was cut lower than she was accustomed to wearing, and her shoulders were completely bare, except for the strands of jet bugle beads that draped across her shoulders. At her waist and in her hair she wore gardenias, which matched the color of her dress, and at her ears and around her throat she wore a stunning set of rubies surrounded by a tracery of diamonds—part of the Sandbourne family jewels.

As the strains of the orchestra floated out over the assembled guests, the two women gradually made their way around the ballroom, encountering Lady Morton, Olivia Tyler-Benninghoff, and the countess of Devonshire, along with a number of other new acquaintances. Though no one asked after Pierce, it was soon apparent from their comments that they assumed he must be somewhere else in the burgeoning crowd.

But, there were others who noted Pierce's absence and assigned an entirely different explanation to it.

"Well, well. What have we here?" Arundale's eyes lighted as he spotted Gabrielle coming down the stairs from the ballroom, and he gave Shively a nudge with his elbow. "The incomparable Gabrielle." He nodded toward the gallery outside the ballroom above, then, from his vantage point near the drawing room doors, scanned the entry hall and the grand salon. "Sans Sandbourne. Brazen minx… scarcely a month after her forced marriage, she is out and about in high society."

"And without the annoying encumbrance of a husband," Shively mused.

"I say—it didn't take her long to put Sandbourne out on his ear."

"Clever little tart," Arundale said with appreciation of both her beauty and attributed ambition. "She's already on to fresh game." As he ran his gaze over her elegant gown and exposed shoulders, his handsome mouth twisted into a smirk. "And since we have nothing better to do… let's help her find it."

The doors between drawing room, salon, and dining room had all been thrown open to facilitate the flow of guests, and the music of a string quartet provided a luxurious cloud of sound on which guests floated from one room to another. The house was nothing short of spectacular: gilded ceiling friezes, imposing portraits and monumental landscapes, huge, ornate mirrors, pastel silks and tapestries covering ornate French furnishings.

But Gabrielle attended it all with half a thought, until two male forms loomed up before her, jolting her from her self-absorption. "Lord Arundale, Lord Shively… How splendid to see you," she responded to their approach with a genuine smile. Familiar faces were a welcome diversion from her anxiety, just now.

"Lady Sandbourne!" Arundale put his hand to his chest as if struck physically by her presence. "By the heavens, you're like an angel… a healing for the jaded eye, a balm for the world-weary soul." He gave her hand a kiss of exaggerated reverence, then did the same to Lady Beatrice.

Shively tried to outdo him, declaring over Gabrielle's hand: "You rival Springtime herself tonight… with your vibrant warmth and grace.