The Perfect Mistress (55 page)

The duke of Carlisle had been approached on a matter of great national urgency that evening as he sat in his club. A crime against order and decency was being carried out at that very moment, the conservative guardians of Britain declared, and they called upon the duke to do his duty to queen and country. William Gladstone, they informed him, was at that very moment embroiled in a revolting debauch in the city's foremost brothel, and several men of unimpeachable standing were needed to serve as witnesses.

In just such a fashion, the earl of Westover and the renowned jurist and justice of the Queen's Bench Sir Henry Maynard had also been recruited for the task of standing witness to the prime minister's depravity. They had arrived at the notorious Pavilion, with Colonel Tottenham and two uniformed constables, bent on carrying out their grim duty as nobles and leading men of the realm. But, instead of witnessing Gladstone engaged in hideous debauch, the group discovered an eloquently outraged young woman, primly dressed and bonneted, sitting on a bed facing four half-naked ladies of the evening.

The duke's eyes widened as he found himself staring into his daughter's face. For a moment he was struck perfectly dumb, unable to comprehend the sight of her, there in the most fashionable brothel in all England.

"What the hell are
you
doing here?" he roared above the confusion and consternation breaking out among the others.

Gabrielle panicked for a moment, unable to make sense of the fact that her father was there, staring at her in growing horror. Once again she was caught up in a scandal, and once again he was the one doing the catching.

Her heart pounded, her mind raced. This time there was more at stake than just a bit of personal humiliation. Reputations, whole lives, hung in the balance. She was literally
sitting
on two political careers!

"I might ask the very same of you, sir!" she came to life, springing to her feet, clutching the book to her bosom. "Who are
you
and what do you think you are doing… breaking into this room?" For a long moment, she entreated her father with widened eyes, beseeching him not to expose her. His hesitation gave her the time and the courage to seize the initiative. Flinging a hand toward the women on the bed behind her, she took a stand before the group of men. "Heaven knows, these poor women have little enough privacy and time to call their own. I will thank you to please leave. And close the door after you!"

"Time to call their own? What is going on here?" one of the other gentlemen demanded.

"Can't you recognize a bit of rescue work when you see it?" she rejoined.

She had to be half mad, facing the pack of them—facing her own father and behaving as if he were a total stranger. She could see him teetering on the brink of speaking and prayed he wouldn't give her away.

"Where the hell is he—Gladstone? I know he's here somewhere—what have you done with him?" A tall, pinch-faced fellow in military style dress paced about the room in mounting frustration, then rushed to the bed drapes hanging from the half canopy and tore them from their ties, searching behind them. He turned a suspicious eye on the bed, but one of the prostitutes slid to the side of it, crossed her arms under her breasts.

"
Ohhh
, no ye don't," she said, sticking her chin up at him. "Ye don't climb in this bed unless yer willin' to pay for it."

"Pay for it?" Tottenham fairly choked on the words. He could scarcely insist that he had every right to be there… on the grounds that he had
already
paid for it.

"She come to read to us," one of the other women spoke up with a hostile look.

"Yeah. Paid to give us a bit o' time away from the gents… to 'rescue' us."

The duke's confusion was being overwhelmed by the general consternation. Gabrielle could see his mind working, could almost read his thoughts in his face. If he identified her, he would, by association, bring an avalanche of humiliation down on his own head. Whatever she was really doing here, he could not afford to have her identity exposed.

Gabrielle's knees weakened under her father's furious regard. With as much dignity as she could summon, she sat down on the side of the bed.

"This healing time, in these poor women's lives is very precious, gentlemen.

If you insist on staving, then you are welcome to pull up a chair and listen."

She gave them an accusing stare. "In fact, I think it might do you a world of good to hear a few words on the subjects of purity and decency." Turning back to the women, she lowered the book, opened it, and glanced for the first time at one of the pages. Blushing scarlet at the picture that greeted her, she looked up with widened eyes. The professionals simply smiled.

"A-as the writer of Ecclesiastes says…" She improvised desperately, hoping it would sound convincing, employing some of the rescue talk old William had given her. "What good is it to toil upon the earth? What does it avail? What good are riches, or fame, or beauty, or even pleasure… if you have no purpose, if you wander lost in a wilderness, estranged from all that is good and honest and decent?" She looked up from the book with the colored image of two bodies lasciviously entwined burned into her vision.

Her throat tightened so that she had to force out the words. "You need not be a slave to men's desires. You can make your lives pure again… make your bodies once more into the vessels of the eternal that they were meant to be. You can choose. You can reclaim your dignity, virtue, and personhood…"

"He's not here, Tottenham," the duke said, turning on the colonel.

"What sort of ridiculous game is this?" the earl demanded in high dudgeon.

"He must have finished early… or been warned that we were coming,"

Tottenham protested, feeling thwarted and foolish. When the others turned on their heels and stalked from the room, he could only shake a finger at Gabrielle demanding, "Don't you move, young woman—you've a great deal to answer for!" Then he hurried after his witnesses, apologizing profusely and framing excuses for his faulty intelligence, all the way to the street.

For a moment they sat in tense silence, listening to the voices fading in the hall. Then a thump under the bed set them scurrying to lift the bedclothes and help Pierce and the prime minister out into the air and light.

The effects of the drug were quickly wearing off, and Gladstone was regaining consciousness, if not mobility.

"Where am I?" He blinked, trying to focus his vision.

"You're safe, Mr. Gladstone," Gabrielle said, putting her arm through his and motioning Pierce to help him as well. "And we're going to get you out of here."

With the help of the four professionals, who stood watch and secreted them down the back stairs, they managed to get Gladstone out the door and down the alley to their waiting carriage. But when they arrived at the coach, a form stepped out of the shadows, and they found themselves facing an irate duke of Carlisle.

The sight of them, bearing the sagging prime minister of Britain between them, was the duke's second nasty shock of the evening. Upon leaving the bordello, he had used his indignation with Tottenham to insist upon taking a cab home by himself. Then he quickly retraced his path to the brothel, located the rear entrance to the place, and spotted a carriage waiting a short distance away in the alley. The coach bore a crest, which he guessed would prove to be Sandbourne's, so he stationed himself in the shadows to confront his wayward daughter. Now he discovered his scandal-prone offspring in league with her scapegrace husband, spiriting the head of the British government away from an orgy in a brothel!

"What the hell is this?" he demanded when he could use his tongue again.

"Don't just stand there," Pierce ordered, "open the door and help us get him inside."

Taken aback by their disregard for his righteous ire, the duke hesitated a moment. Then, sensing the urgency of getting Gladstone out of sight, he did as Pierce commanded. When he had helped hoist Gladstone into the carriage, he boldly climbed in after them, glaring at them in the dim light as the carriage began to move.

"We did it!" Gabrielle said, sagging with relief and smiling at Pierce.

"What's happened to me?" the old man buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. "My head hurts… and I cannot seem to s-stand on my own…"

"You've just been rescued from the queen's bed, Mr. Gladstone,"

Gabrielle said, tidying his crumpled collar and disheveled coat and giving Pierce a saucy look. "By a woman you once rescued, a gentleman you once ruined… and four rather expensive ladies of the evening."

The prime minister was understandably confused. The duke was understandably bewildered and outraged. And as they proceeded to 10

Downing Street, the story of how they came to learn of Gladstone's plight came tumbling out. Certain elements—Pierce made certain they remained anonymous, since he had no ironclad proof of their connection to Disraeli—

had set out to catch Gladstone in a sexual indiscretion with the prostitutes he was wont to try to "rescue." Failing that, they had decided to entrap him instead—drug him and install him in a bed in a brothel, where he would be

"discovered" by unimpeachable witnesses. Pierce had learned of the plot and told Gabrielle. Together they decided to rescue the prime minister.

When Gladstone had been safely delivered into his wife's hands—via the back door and the kitchen Gabrielle remembered so vividly—they climbed back into their carnage and sat in deepening silence, enduring the duke's censuring stare.

"Mr. Gladstone is not a debauchee. You know how he watched over me.

He really does try to rescue the women he talks to on the streets," Gabrielle explained. "It was nothing short of criminal that they tried to make a man of his stature and accomplishments into a figure of public ridicule. We simply couldn't allow that to happen."

"All right—I'll grant that something had to be done," the duke said grudgingly. "But whatever possessed you, Sandbourne, to take your wife on such a dangerous venture?"

"Take her?" Pierce looked at Gabrielle, glowing in the light of the streetlamps they passed, and laughed. "I couldn't stop her." Feeling her hand stealing into his on the seat, beneath her skirts, he squeezed it and grinned at her.

When they delivered the duke to his house, he paused in the carriage door and gave his unconventional daughter one last disapproving look.

"Take a word of advice, Sandbourne. If you have any sense at all, you'll take that wife of yours in hand and keep a firm grip on her at all times. If you don't—mark my words—you'll live to regret it."

As they headed home in the darkened carriage, Pierce pulled Gabrielle into his arms and she curled contentedly against his chest.

"He's right, you know," she said softly.

"Your father?" He set her back enough to look at her. She had that mischievous look.

"If you have any sense, you
will
take me in hand." She seized his hand and slid it to her breast. "Frequently."

He chuckled. "What am I going to do with you?"

"I have a few suggestions," she said, rubbing her cheek against his shirt front. "One of which I saw in a book tonight—I had no idea they put such things in books. And another I've had in mind for some time."

"Plotting again?"

"I have never
plotted
," she objected. "Well, not very much. What I have in mind is more in the way of a
proposition
."

"Another one?" He groaned. "The last one you made me resulted in my being imprisoned in your boudoir and forced to romance you and seduce you… then to marry you. I was forced out of my bed, my house, and very nearly out of my mind—not to mention nearly being drummed out of society and the Conservative party…"

"Well, the worst that could happen to you in this one is that you would become a father." She gave him a glowing smile. "You've made me a mistress, a wife, and a friend. I'd like to propose that in the next year or so, you do your best to make me a mother."

He pulled her hard against him and kissed her until she was dizzy.

"I accept."

«
^

Late April, 1886

S
andbourne House was awash in lights and merriment that cool spring evening. A gala party was underway, celebrating Pierce's appointment to the cabinet in the newly formed Liberal Government, headed by none other than William Gladstone. For the better part of the last year the Conservatives had held office, but their government had finally collapsed in disarray. Now, for an unprecedented third time, the Grand Old Man had been asked to form a government, and he was quick to select a rising young Liberal, the earl of Sandbourne, for the cabinet.

Gabrielle stood midway on the stairs, dressed in a champagne white silk gown with a teal satin bodice decorated with elaborate white cutwork embroidery that distracted the eye from the fact that her middle was starting to expand again. Gazing out over the festive crowd, she felt a glow of warmth at the sight of the friends and acquaintances she and Pierce had made over the last three years enjoying their hospitality. Through the drawing room doors she could see Pierce greeting friends and accepting congratulations on his appointment, and she smiled and set a course for him.