The Perfect Mistress by Betina Krahn Page A

burning face and smiled at whatever she saw. "I am still waiting for your answer, your lordship, to the question of what it was about Gabrielle that you found so captivating." He could have sworn the lot of them edged forward in their seats—lady hawks eyeing their helpless prey.
    "She is quite lovely," he said a bit testily, seizing the first thing that came to mind. What maman would not wish to hear that her daughter was ravishing? "Stunning, in fact. Exquisite. Beautiful beyond bearing."
    "Perhaps… if your tastes run to shoeless, dripping wet, terrified schoolgirls," Rosalind responded, with a vinegar-and-honey smile. He tightened his grip on his knees.
    "She is clever and delightfully… unpredictable," he declared emphatically.
    "Which was evident, no doubt, from her penchant for strolling the London streets at night, alone, and in the middle of a raging downpour."
    Rosalind raised her chin a notch, positively daring him to try yet another vapid bit of flattery.
    He took a deep breath and leveled a sizzling look on his chief inquisitor, seeing her in a new light. Despite her romantic proclivities, she was apparently accustomed to dealing with the realities of relations between the sexes in a forthright manner. In the matter of her daughter's future, she insisted on truth, not ephemeral niceties. Very well, he would give her
    "truth"… and then see if, like most women, she claimed to want it while secretly preferring the sweetness of deception.
    "To be honest, I cannot for the life of me understand what I find so compelling about the little vixen." He glanced from one elegant courtesan to another, dropping all pretense of romantic delicacy and with it, much of his tension. "All I know is that my fingers itch, my blood pounds in my veins, and my loins begin to burn whenever I look at her. Last night she made me laugh, made me think, and made me stop . God knows, that alone puts her in a class by herself." He saw the way their eyebrows rose and knew his defiant candor had just sealed their opinion of him. He risked little by adding: "I want Gabrielle a great deal. And I am willing to be generous."
    There was a long moment's pause, in which he could hear the ticking of the gilded mantel clock above him and the thudding of his heart in his ears.
    Then Rosalind rose abruptly and reached for the bellpull. When her Viking houseman arrived, she draped her hand on the back of her chair and struck a dramatic pose. Pierce fully expected to be thrown out of the house on his ear. Instead, she gave the houseman a dignified nod.
    "Gunther, please ask my daughter to join us."
    5
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    O n the floor above, Gabrielle sat at the writing desk in her boudoir, sealing an envelope. "Please, chérie , take care," her maid, Rue, entreated from across the desk, anxiously eyeing her ink-smudged fingers and the red sealing wax she was pressing onto white vellum. "There is not time to change your dress… His lordship is already here."

    "I'm finished," she declared handing the little Frenchwoman the letter.
    Rue immediately laid it aside and began rubbing the ink from Gabrielle's fingers with a damp cloth. "Remember, you are to deliver it as soon as I go downstairs. Promise me, Rue."
    " Oui, oui … I promise."
    Gabrielle had spent the better part of the night pacing and thinking, fleshing out her plan to find a husband and marry as quickly as possible.
    The greatest difficulty seemed to be finding men of suitable standing and temperament and approaching them on the notion of matrimony. There had to be some logical, safe, and respectable way of obtaining introductions to suitable gentlemen. Every possibility she conjured ended in a mountain of obstacles… until Rue delivered her morning tray, on which lay copies of The Times and the Pall Mall Gazette . Newspapers!
    Suddenly she had known exactly what to do.
    Rue dragged Gabrielle to her feet to put final touches on her cascade of ringlets and fluff the row of ruffles that plunged down the