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going to meld the two, make them one, risk having both rejected.
But at least she would have herself back. Her total identity back.
The package Gerald had left on the table in the parlor contained an amount double that he had agreed
on as a settlement if he were the one to end the connection. If she was very careful, she would be able
to live on it for a long time. And her jewels, even though she felt almost as if she would rather die than sell
them, would keep her and the child for some time longer.
For five years? Probably not. But she would not think of that for a time. The present had pain of its own
to offer. She could not also shoulder the burden of the future. Besides, Vicar Whiting had said that the
people of his village had a way of helping their own in times of adversity. And both he and his wife had
spoken as if they wanted her to be one of their own.
The warmth that the thought brought to her was almost too wonderful to bear.
Life would get back to normal. Sir Gerald kept telling himself over the ten days following the severance
of his relationship with his mistress. Life was normal. It was just that Priss had gone and he had not quite
adjusted to the fact that he could no longer take himself off to her house whenever he wanted
companionship or comfort.
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He was foolish to have kept her for so long. He would not have done so if he had only had more
experience in breaking off with mistresses. Miles had seemed to have no problem at all with Jenny after
just two months and seemed quite unperturbed by the highly public manner in which she was choosing his
successor.
What if it were Priss? he thought. What if it were Priss strutting her wares in the park each afternoon,
decked out like a duchess, and allowing half the besotted male population of London to pay court to her
there?
What if it were Priss? Would he charge at the whole pack of men like a mad bull? Or would he
challenge them one at a time?
There were plenty of entertainments with which to keep himself busy. There was Lady Trevor's ball the
night Priss left and his obligation to dance with Lady Severn. And there was a whole ocean to be drunk
dry when it was over and a hangover to occupy his mind and body the next day without Priss's magic
hands to soothe the headache or her lap to lay his head in.
There was dinner to attend at Mües's house later that evening with Miss Seymour as their other guest,
and the theater afterward. And the gradual realization that Lady Severn was trying to match him with her
friend. She had already invited him to Severn Park for the summer. It was altogether probable that Miss
Seymour had received an invitation, too.
And there was the waking up one morning with a tickle at the back of his throat and a nose that insisted
on being blown almost constantly as soon as he got out of bed, and a fever that built through the day until
he shivered with the cold and burned with interior fires. By the following morning, when the Earl of
Severn called on him and thought at first that he had a hangover again, he was feeling thoroughly irritable
and sorry for himself and angry with Priss for not being there to nurse him back to health.
And if that were not bad enough, the earl, being insensitive enough not to realize that a fellow was
thoroughly out of sorts when he had a fever and a stuffy nose and a raw throat and when his mistress had
just abandoned him in his need, slammed him one on the jaw when he happened to make a less than
complimentary remark about the countess.
It seemed, Sir Gerald thought from the depth of his gloom after his friend had left a short while later, their
quarrel having been patched up. that Miles was coming to care for his wife after all. The thought made
him feel even more wretchedly womanless.
He went to Jackson's Boxing Saloon a few times and even sparred himself on one of those occasions.
He left with a red and tender nose for his pains. And he lived at White's almost more than he lived in his
own rooms and always put himself in the middle of the largest and most lively group he could find. He
went to the races and to Tattersall's. He went on a picnic to Richmond with a party organized by the
Severns and was relieved when Lady Severn's brother took Miss Seymour off his hands.
And always he thought of Priss, wondering where exactly she was and what exactly she was doing at
that precise moment. He did not know, he realized in some astonishment a day or two after she had left,
exactly where she was. She had never named the place where her family lived. It was a strange and
rather disturbing realization.
Was she living with her parents? Or was she married already? Or were she and her betrothed waiting
for the declaration of banns? And was she happy with her decision? Was she relieved to have left him
behind? Was she fonder of her husband or her betrothed again now that she had seen him once
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more? Was the man able to look at her and see only Priss and not the whore she had been?
He wished he knew. He wished he knew if she was contented or if she was having second thoughts.
But what would he do if he did know that she was regretting her decision? Go and fetch her home
again?Home'' And was it likely anyway that she would regret taking her chance for respectability and
want to return to being his mistress instead?
The unwilling thoughts about her that almost constantly churned about in his head did nothing to improve
his general mood of irritability.
He went to Kit's one evening, intending to see her, to find out if she had heard anything from Priss, if she [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]