A Precious Jewel Read Online Free Page A

a cheerful and a practical girl. She worked for only three hours a day at the most. She learned to value that fact. For three hours a day she would work, putting all her training into practice and doing a good job of what she did. She took pride in giving the pleasure for which her clients paid handsomely. She took pride in working as hard as any of the other girls, though it was no secret that she was the favorite.
    She was well aware of the advantages of being MissBlythe’s favorite. All her clients were personally chosen for her. She knew that. She listened in some distress to some of the other girls’ stories, though of course even they did not have to suffer indignities more than once from the same gentleman. Miss Blythe ran a very strict house indeed.
    And when she was not working, she tried not to think about her profession or any of the men who came to her regularly for pleasure. She read a great deal and pondered what she read and sometimes sat for hours with Miss Blythe discussing her ideas. She wrote stories and poetry. She embroidered and knitted and netted. And she painted and played the harpsichord that was kept in one corner of the dining room. She walked outdoors as often as she could and enjoyed the beauties of nature that were to be found in London’s parks.
    For all of twenty-one hours of each day she was free.
    She refused to feel sorry for herself. She had spoken the simple truth to Theresa. She did have a great deal to be thankful for.
    She thought suddenly and for no particular reason of her new client of the evening before, perhaps her new regular. Certainly he was going to come again in three days’ time.
    Sir Gerald Stapleton. The only titled gentleman she had ever entertained. He was a baronet. He was also the youngest gentleman she had had and the mostpersonable. He was the only gentleman ever to have demanded that she lie still, that she be utterly passive in the performance of her duties. Pleasing him had been remarkably easy.
    She did not often indulge in fantasies during her working hours. It was one thing that had been firmly emphasized during her training. Work was simply work, a mindless demonstration of certain skills. But she had been a little guilty with Sir Gerald Stapleton. She had lain beneath him imagining that he was her husband, that they were lying on their marriage bed in their own home, that he was begetting their children in her.
    At least, for a while she had imagined that, until she had realized how disobedient she was being to her training. She had been taught, and she would have known anyway, that self-discipline was essential if she was to continue to find her life bearable. Her work and the rest of her life must be kept strictly separate.
    She had lain still while Sir Gerald slept in her arms during what remained of his hour, and had reminded herself very deliberately that he was a stranger. She knew nothing of him whatsoever except perhaps his tastes in sexual activity. He was merely a gentleman who regularly visited a whorehouse for pleasure, and she the whore who had been assigned to provide that pleasure for that particular evening.
    Priscilla folded her embroidery. She opened herbook and prepared to enter the world of
Pride and Prejudice
. Yes, there were some forms of fantasy that must be avoided in the future. Now that she had discovered that it was possible—and she had been warned that it was—she must guard against its happening again.
    On the whole, she hoped that Sir Gerald Stapleton would change his mind within the next few days and return to Sonia after all.

S IR GERALD STAPLETON THOUGHT HIMSELF A creature of habit, much as he hated being so. Sometimes he wished he could be quite free, even of his own nature.
    “So you are spending a fortune at Kit’s, are you?” his friend the new Earl of Severn said with a laugh.
    The two of them were sitting in the earl’s library at his town house on Grosvenor Square, where his lordship had taken up residence