A Precious Jewel by Mary Balogh

nothing was right after all. So I moved everything until it was all just so.”
    “I hope you did not move anything alone,” he said.
    “Mr. Prendergast helped me with the heavier pieces,” she said. “But I had the feeling that he was impatient with me.” She laughed. “Not that I allowed that to deter me. I wanted my house to be just perfect. And I wanted it to be perfect for you so that you will be happy here.”
    He reached out a hand to cup one of her breasts and stroke its peak with his thumb. He had never touched her there before.
    “You have done well, Priss,” he said. “You are a good girl.”
    She smiled and swallowed against the ache his hand was sending up into her throat.
    “May I bring a visitor one afternoon?” he asked. “I have a friend who wishes to meet you.”
    Her stomach performed a somersault. A friend? Wanted to visit her? She searched his face for a clue to his meaning. But he had said that he did not wish to share her any longer.
    “The Earl of Severn,” he said. “He wants to meet my new mistress, Priss. He is in town for only a couple of weeks. He is in mourning for the old earl and will be back in the country soon. We have been friends since university days. May I bring him? I told him the decision would be yours, since this is your house.”
    She still was not quite sure of what he meant by a visit, but she could hardly ask him.
    “Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow, Gerald? Is he like you?”
    “Alas,” he said, smiling ruefully, “he is probably the most handsome man in all England. Not like me at all, Priss.”
    It had been a foolish question. No one was ever like anyone else. And no one could be quite like Gerald. He was one of a kind. She cared not at all for the most handsome man in England.
    “Will I be expected to swoon at his feet, then?” she asked, laughing at him.
    He grinned back. “Only if you really wish to impress him,” he said. “Otherwise a simple ‘how d’ye do’ will suffice.”
    His hand had moved to her shoulder and was rubbing warmly down onto her arm. And then it was ather waist, turning her onto her back again, and he was moving over her and pushing her legs wide with his knees once more.
    “Just lie still, Priss,” he said. “I really should be leaving.”
    She set her hands lightly at his hips, closed her eyes, and concentrated on breathing slowly and evenly. Sometimes the hardest thing in the world was to lie still and relaxed. Her inner muscles wanted to contract, to draw him more firmly into her, to draw pleasure inward. Her legs wanted to lift from the bed to hug him more closely. Her hands wanted to press more firmly, to feel his rhythm and make it her own.
    She lay still and relaxed, breathing slowly, ignoring the spirals of desire that curled upward from the area of his activity through her womb and into her breasts and up into her throat and behind her nose.
    “Ah,” he said at last, a world of satisfaction in the sound.
    She moved her hands upward to rearrange the blankets about his shoulders. She slid her feet down the bed so that her legs lay flat on either side of his. And she turned her face until she could feel his cheek against the top of her head.
    S HE WAS IN the parlor waiting for them, Sir Gerald was told the following afternoon, when he arrived at his mistress’s house with the Earl of Severn. He was gladof that. He was glad that she did not have to be summoned from the rooms upstairs. She had not offered the evening before to show him those rooms.
    She was looking very pretty, he thought with some pride when they were admitted to the parlor by Prendergast. She was standing in the middle of the room, wearing a light sprigged muslin dress, her dark curls freshly brushed, that natural blush of color high on her cheekbones. She did not, as she usually did, hold out her hands to him. She looked at him rather uncertainly, a smile on her lips.
    “Priss,” he said, striding toward her, carrying the hand she finally lifted to