A Precious Jewel Read Online Free Page B

for a week in order to conduct some business related to his new position. He was in deep mourning for the death of his predecessor and unwilling to appear anywhere in public.
    Sir Gerald shrugged. “She has the best girls,” he said. “Everyone agrees on that.”
    “But three times a week, Ger?” The earl laughed again. “You did say three?”
    Yes, he had indeed said three. It sounded quite excessive when expressed in his friend’s voice. It hadused to be once. And then a couple of months before it had increased to twice. In the past few weeks it had been three times, and the days between were beginning to pass with interminable slowness.
    “Well,” he said, frowning and gazing at the inch of brandy left in his glass, “I vowed a long time ago, Miles, that I would never engage a mistress. She would be sure to get too possessive and it would be too deuced embarrassing to put an end to the liaison. It’s simpler just to go to Kit’s.”
    “But three times a week.” His friend was doing a deal of laughing, Sir Gerald thought with some irritation. “The same girl each time, Ger?”
    Sir Gerald was beginning to wish he had said nothing. Perhaps he would not have done so if the earl had not asked him how Kit was doing. They had used to go there together occasionally.
    “Prissy,” he said. “She suits me. Does as she is told and all that.”
    “And for how long have you been wearing a path to her bed?” Lord Severn asked. His voice and his face were still damnably amused, his friend noted.
    Sir Gerald shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Since spring, I suppose. March, I think it was. I remember her talking about spring flowers the first time.”
    “For two months.” The earl got to his feet, took Sir Gerald’s empty glass, and crossed to the desk, on which the decanter had been set. “I am going to haveto meet this paragon. Pretty is she, Ger? A lively armful? But need I ask that if you are calling on her three times a week?”
    Sir Gerald wished more than ever that he had not raised the subject. He was feeling unaccountably annoyed, though he did not know why. “Pretty, yes,” he said. “She suits me, Miles.”
    “Well,” the earl said, handing a full glass to his friend again, “all of Kit’s girls are carefully trained to suit any man’s needs, if I recall correctly. Devil take it, Ger, it’s an age since I had a woman. This being an earl and being in mourning are constraining, to say the least. And my mother and the girls are making ominous rumblings about my duty to the human race, most notably to my earldom. I am going to be shopping at the marriage mart as soon as I throw off these blacks, I strongly suspect. I envy you Kit’s and your Prissy.”
    The conversation moved on to other matters.
    But he really had been going to the girl for all of two months, Sir Gerald mused as he walked home later that night, and far more frequently than he had ever visited any other whore. But Prissy suited him so well. There were no damned tricks with Prissy. No sexual tricks, that was. Of course, there was the trick she had of welcoming him each time as if he were the only man in her life and the only person who really mattered to her. There was a glow, a warmth, about Prissy that made one forget that she was merely a whoreplying her trade even when one knew very well with one’s head that it was nothing else.
    Not that he wanted it to be anything else, of course. He wanted no entanglements whatsoever. He went to Prissy so often because she was just plain damned good in bed. That was all. She was the only woman he had possessed who always did exactly as he directed. All her predecessors had not believed, it seemed, that he was quite unadventurous in his sexual tastes.
    Prissy knew now how to please him, and she did just that. So well, in fact, that he had started to see far too much of her. He should call on Kit some time and ask for a different girl. Or he should stay away from there entirely