Free A Precious Jewel by Mary Balogh Page B

IR GERALD ARRIVED BACK IN LONDON RATHER late on the Monday evening. He was in a thoroughly bad mood. He made his way immediately to White’s, where he proceeded very deliberately to get drunk.
    For some reason that he could in no way fathom, Majors had conceived the notion that his daughter would do very well as the future Lady Stapleton. And the daughter appeared to have fallen in quite eagerly with the plan.
    Sir Gerald had spent the whole of the long weekend determinedly following about and conversing with Miss Majors’s aunt and even flirting with her a little. The woman was sixty if she was a day, so a little flirtation seemed harmless. Instead of being deterred, the brother and niece seemed to have decided that Sir Gerald was already making himself one of the family.
    He had been invited to accompany them all toVauxhall and the opera within the following two weeks. And what could he have done when the invitations were made face-to-face and so unexpectedly that he had not been given even a moment of time in which to think up suitable excuses? He had accepted the opera invitation. The best he had been able to do with the Vauxhall one was to frown, stare off into space, and declare that he was not at all sure that he was not committed to some other entertainment on that particular evening, though he could not for the life of him remember what.
    The opera! Devil take it, he hated the stuff. He did not mind music. Indeed, he played the pianoforte for his own amusement when in the country and had once been told to his infinite discomfort that he had some talent at the instrument. But he hated opera. It was nothing but screeching sopranos and tragic heroes and heroines dying with great dramatics all over the stage.
    And Vauxhall. The chit would have him up one of the darker, lonelier alleys before he knew it if he did not pay attention every moment of the evening. And the father would be greeting him with an expectant smile at the other end of the alley.
    But he would be damned before he would let that happen. He was not going to be trapped into any leg-shackle this side of the grave. He would definitely discover that he had another engagement for that evening.
    “Getting a trifle foxed, ain’t you, Stapleton?” Lord Barclay commented cheerfully a little after midnight.
    “I must be a slowtop, then,” Sir Gerald said gloomily. “I expected to be more than a trifle foxed by this time.” He raised one hand to summon a waiter.
    “Has that new ladybird of yours kicked you out already, Stapleton?” someone else asked.
    Sir Gerald examined the liquid in his glass and swirled it about before downing it in one gulp. And that was another thing. Priss. He had scarcely been able to get his mind off her all weekend. He had tossed and turned each night wanting her. He had counted the hours until he could go to her on Monday evening.
    He had pictured her standing in the middle of her parlor, small and dainty, her hands reaching out to him in welcome, her face lit up with the pleasure of seeing him. He had pictured the delicate arch of her spine as he unbuttoned her dress, her arms reaching up to him from the bed, the warm and soft welcome of her body beneath his.
    Damnation! He should never have done it. He should have left her where she was. Kit would have dealt with the man who had abused her. Anyway, she was just a whore who must expect occasional abuse. It had not been his concern at all.
    Somehow during one of the nights at Majors’s, when he had been half asleep, half awake, the pictures of Priss had got all mixed up with pictures of hismother. The warm smile, which extended all the way back into the depths of her eyes; the welcoming arms; the warm, soft body; and the sense of being wanted and welcomed.
    His mother had died suddenly when he was eight years old. She had just disappeared. He had not been called to her deathbed or taken to her funeral. It was all of five years later when he had discovered that there had in