The Perfect Mistress (52 page)

"Oh, yes.
Please
, Gabrielle, let me offer you a strong shoulder to cry upon." Pulling her slowly, steadily into his arms, he ran a hand over her hair and urged her head toward his chest. "Let me offer you refuge. I will count my night complete, my passion fully requited, if you will but consider me…

your special
friend
."

"What is it?" Catton said irritably as Shively dragged him by the sleeve toward the terrace doors. "I was just getting on famously with that scrumptious Miss Froelich. What's going on?"

Shively halted and leaned close with a smirk. "Arundale's got Sandbourne's hot little piece in the gardens. You've got to come and see—"

Catton thrust back, scowling. "Sandbourne's piece? You mean his wife?"

"The delectable Gabrielle herself." Shively's face glowed with the effects of both liquor and licentious delight. "Come on, this should be fun."

Catton scowled with comprehension. With a look back toward the drawing room, he followed Shively uneasily into the gardens and out toward one of the bowers that was shrouded in moon shadows. There he glimpsed two others of their rakish set lurking behind a hedge, peering at something beyond it. This was a wicked game indeed, he realized. It wasn't just a bit of seduction; it was a calculated bit of humiliation, played out before an audience.

"No. Truly, your lordship, I must be getting back—please—" Her words carried a frantic edge that the others behind the hedge seemed to find viciously amusing. Catton backed away. When Shively and the others were absorbed in what was happening beyond the hedge, he turned without a sound and headed back into the house at a run.

Pierce stood in the dining room, suffering the prattle of Lady Jane Montgomery and Maribel, the dowager duchess of Devonshire. They were so pleased, they told him, to meet his lovely wife and were so gratified to see him "settled" at last.

"How fortunate you are to have found a young woman of such generosity of spirit and such compassion," the duchess rattled on. "You never know what you're getting with these 'modern' girls. I've heard from several persons how your wife spurned the notion of a costly wedding trip to donate the funds to the London Foundling Hospital. Would that other wives showed such charity…"

He managed to squirm through that interminable encounter, only to walk straight into another. Lord Asbury, one of the Conservative leaders in the House of Lords, took him aside and with great aplomb announced: "Dashed clever of you, Sandbourne—that Foundling Hospital business. Always good to be seen as compassionate toward widows and orphans and the working classes. Keep it up until you're reestablished, then get out of it. No need to waste time on something the women can do."

Barely constraining himself, Pierce withdrew into the entry hall, where he glanced longingly at the front doors and was caught yet a third time. Lady Elsie Hartshorn, old Sir William's wife, was both old enough and crusty enough to actually say what was on the minds of half the matrons present:

"That wife of yours seems to be doing you a world of good, Sandbourne.

Always said that was what you needed… a good woman to make a good man out of you…"

He felt as if steam must be coming out of his every pore before he managed to get away. A good woman. He didn't need that pretentious lot to tell him Gabrielle was a pearl, nor that she had been cast before one of society's prime swine—and she had managed to make a better man out of him.

He stopped dead in the middle of the drawing room, feeling a wave of insight breaking over him. The changes he had so dreaded and fought had already taken place. She hadn't
made
him a better man; she had
made him
want to be one
.

Then, what the hell was he so afraid of? What was he doing living in a hotel… isolating himself from her… spending sleepless nights trying to fight his own needs, denying himself something that was as necessary to him as air. It made about as much sense as holding his breath until he turned blue.

And was just about as childish.

"Sandbourne!"

Through his kaleidoscopic thoughts, he caught sight of a frantic Catton bearing down on him. "Catton? You look like you've seen a—"

Catton seized him by the arm. "It's your wife," he murmured. "Arundale lured her into the garden." He waited for the first part to register and held Pierce's arm tightly, as if expecting a drastic reaction to the rest. "And they are not alone."

Catton's grim expression embroidered a wealth of meaning around those terse statements. Lured into a garden… with others looking on. It was Sutterfield's wife, all over again. A member of their group had lured the vain and licentious wife of an aging peer into darkened gardens during a society ball, for a quick, hot bit of pleasure, while a group of puerile profligates hid in the bushes and watched. Pierce had been one of those in the bushes. And so had Arundale. Now Arundale had lured his wife out…

Gabrielle
. Pierce felt a surge of white hot fury rising through his gut, invading his chest, then erupting in his head. "Where?" he demanded, in a voice that scraped the bottom of its register and picked up brimstone.

"No, your lordship—
please
—don't—"

Gradually, in the last few minutes, words of comfort had turned to suggestive whispers, gentle touches to unwanted caresses, and solace to a frightening sensual demand. Gabrielle had finally shaken off her haze of grief and despair enough to realize the danger of her situation—locked in Arundale's embrace, held forcefully against his body in a dark, isolated garden.

"I insist you release me, immediately," she demanded, shoving at him.

He laughed coarsely, releasing her just enough to force her arms down her sides and trap them there. "Not yet—not when I am set to give you a taste of my—
esteem
." He proceeded to give her a revolting taste of his liquor-soaked mouth instead.

"Let me go!" She wrestled with all her might, struggling to avoid his wet, avid lips and failing. A second time he forced his mouth down on hers, probing her clamped lips crudely with his tongue and trying to push her down onto the stone bench with the force of his weight.

"
Nooo!
" Frantic to stay upright, she managed to catch and brace herself with her hands. "Let me go," she choked out, feeling his body rubbing against hers, shuddering with revulsion as his wet mouth slid down the side of her neck. "I warn you, I'll scream—"

"Playing hard to get, Cleopatra?" he taunted, panting with both excitement and exertion, as he tried once more to pin her mouth beneath his. "That's not like you."

Sounds of scuffling and confusion erupted behind them. A cry rang out and a body came hurtling through the hedge behind them, just missing the bench, then sprawling on the gravel path before it. An instant later, a second body joined it, and both lay groaning in shock on the ground. Startled, Arundale straightened and loosened his grip on Gabrielle. Panicky with desperation, she wriggled her arms up between them, and, as a third form came crashing through the hedge, she shoved with all her might and broke free. Lurching from the bench, trembling so that she could scarcely stand, she staggered back with her arms clamped around her waist. And she discovered Pierce standing over the two on the ground with his fists clenched and his chest heaving.

"Pierce!"

He looked up and stared at her for a moment, taking in her crumpled gown, her swollen lips and the fear and shame visible in her eyes. Then he reached down and lifted one of the men partway by the front of his coat.

"S-Sandbourne—we didn't mean anything—I swear!" the wretch stammered. "W-we were just having a bit of a joke—we were just watching

—it was all Arundale's idea!"

"Lying bastard," he snarled, giving the wretch a shake and dropping him back on the ground. "I ought to thrash you within an inch of your worthless lives." From the way the pair flinched, it was clear they thought him capable of it. "If I ever catch you even looking at my wife again, I'll have your guts for garters—do you understand?" When he nodded, Pierce backed a step, allowing him to get to his feet and back away. His ashen companion shrank back on the ground, then scrambled up, nodding.

It took a moment for the horrifying reality of it to assemble in Gabrielle's head. Those men had been in the bushes… watching… while Arundale tried to…

It had been some sort of plot to ruin her good name, to humiliate both her and Pierce. In her distress over Pierce she had fallen right into a vicious trap that could have destroyed both of them.

"Come now, Sandbourne… We were just having a bit of fun," Arundale declared nervously, rising and spreading his hands in a mocking gesture of conciliation.

"Fun, Arundale? Luring my wife into a darkened garden and forcing yourself upon her, while these fools look on, is your idea of
fun?
"

"It used to be
your
idea of fun—or have you forgotten?"

"Damn you!" Pierce lurched toward him, and Arundale fell back by the same amount.

"I hardly had to force myself on her, Sandbourne." Arundale's eyes darted to Gabrielle as he tried to redirect Pierce's fury. "It is a wise man, who knows his own wife. Surely, by now you know yours—the way she teases and flirts, the way she leads men on. She insisted we have some privacy, begged me to stay with her, to hold her… said you didn't pay her proper attention. She offered to let me take your place in her bed, since you don't seem so inclined…"

"No!" Her voice sounded hoarse and desperate in her own ears. "It's not true."

"Take a bit of advice, Sandbourne," Arundale offered, taking Pierce's pause and the tumultuous look he was giving Gabrielle as signs that he was entertaining serious doubts about his wife's character and fidelity. "Keep her locked up, if you expect to have any confidence in your heir…"

"Dear God," she choked out.

Those words unleashed a surge of fury in Pierce. He pivoted, lunged, and drove one fist square into Arundale's midsection and the other into his face, sending him sprawling back onto the path. Then he stood over the rake's crumpled form, with his shoulders swollen and his fists still clenched.

"You filthy, lying bastard. I do know my wife—every aspect of her. And because I do, I know exactly who is to blame here, Arundale. There is not a more trustworthy woman on the face of the earth… nor a more honorable person. She is not capable of deceit."

Gabrielle felt dizzy and confused, and her knees wobbled beneath her.

Her heart was pounding so loudly that she feared she had heard it wrong, somehow.

"You're the one who needs to be locked up, Arundale. You and the rest of these buffoons who follow you around like mindless fools. I swear to you, if you ever so much as look at Gabrielle again, I will take immense pleasure in tearing you limb from limb." He turned to the others. "And you—Pattersall, Grandley—if I hear a whisper of this anywhere, you may be certain I shall come looking for you. And you will wish the breath that uttered that gossip had been your last."

In shock, half-blinded by tears, and unable to speak for the constriction in her throat, she saw him coming for her. Her knees gave way when he touched her shoulders, and she sagged against him, grabbing the side of his coat. A moment later, he had lifted her up in his arms and was striding through the darkened gardens.

24

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H
e located the gate at the side of the garden and carried her into the stable yard, which was filled with rows of stylish coaches and carriages. After a brief search, he spotted his own vehicle and carried her directly to it.

Depositing her on the seat, he climbed onto the hub of one wheel and called for Jack. The driver came at a run and informed him that it would take a while to get the carriage out, since several coaches had to be moved before they could reach the street.

"Do what you can. Take us straight to the house." Pierce ducked inside the carriage with her, closed the door, and sat for a minute, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. The only light was that which came from the torches and carriage lamps outside.

After a time, she looked up at him with eyes that glistened in the dimness. "I'm sorry, Pierce. I just went out onto the terrace to collect myself, and suddenly he was there, lending me his handkerchief and telling me he wanted to be my friend. I suppose I should have known better, but I was so upset, and he seemed so sympathetic."

"Hasn't anyone ever told you that appearances can be deceiving?"

She wrapped her arms around her waist. "I suppose I deserve that. You said he was a vile, miserable wretch who only wanted one thing from a woman." She took a shuddering breath. "And you were right."

"Appearances are often deceiving." He gave her a pained smile. "But, sometimes, what appears to be a rat really is a rat." He reached up to stroke her cheek and found it damp. He handed her his handkerchief, and she wiped away the remnants of her tears. "I told you, sweetheart, I know that group. I used to be a part of it." He caught her chin on his finger and tilted it up to him. "And it's taken me a while to come to terms with the idea that I'm not the man I used to be, and that you are responsible."