A Gentleman Never Tells(87)
She opened her eyes and turned away from the window. Maybe if she submerged herself in her painting, she could keep thoughts of Brent at bay. She looked at the blank canvas. What should she paint this lovely afternoon? Landscapes, flowers, fruit, or Brent—she smiled to herself. She wasn’t good with portraits, or she might be tempted to paint him.
Gabrielle walked behind her father’s desk to look over his bookshelf in hopes of seeing something that might spark an interest of what to paint. Her fingers sailed along the spines as she read titles from history, science, plants, and poetry, but nothing she saw gave her any new ideas. A three-drawer mahogany chest covered about three feet of the last four rows of books. Gabrielle looked at the chest and realized she had no idea what was behind it. Curiosity got the best of her, and with great effort she pulled it away from the shelving and pushed it aside. The hidden shelves were stacked with books covered in what must be years of dust.
She lifted her skirts, dropped to her knees, and continued her search of the book titles. One of the first books she looked at was on botany. She took it off the shelf, blew the dust off it, and thumbed through the pages, hoping to discover the sketch of a rare plant or flower, but found nothing. She coughed from the dust and fanned the air in front of her nose before putting the book back in its place. Another book showed diagrams of the constellations and for a moment she thought about the possibility of painting the night sky and filling it with stars. She laid that book on her father’s desk as a possibility and continued her search.
Gabrielle skimmed every title until she made it to the very last book on the bottom shelf. There was no title on the spine. That seemed odd. She took it off the shelf and opened it. The cover had been wrapped with some type of heavy canvas. Thinking it must be a very old and rare book, she carefully opened it to the first page and read, The Art of Being a Most Pleasing Mistress .
“Hmm,” she said aloud. “A book that could be beneficial when I become mistress of my own house.” She laid it on her father’s desk beside the constellation book and rose, leaving the chest where it was so the housekeeper could have the area cleaned.
There was very little inspiration from her father’s bookshelves, but a night sky filled with stars was something she’d never thought about painting. She would do that. She walked over to the window and picked up a small box of paints. Making the entire backdrop midnight sky was the first thing she needed to do. While that dried, she would look at the sketches and decide which constellations she wanted to put in her sky. She found the jar of dark blue oil and spread it on her palate. She swirled her brush in the paint and then started making wide, sweeping strokes across the beige canvas. But it wasn’t long before Brent’s face came to her mind, and she smiled as she brushed.
Thoughts of him always made her stomach tingle. She wanted to remember and recapture what she felt every time he kissed her, caressed her, or breathed against her skin. Softly she laughed to herself and turned to look out the window to the clear blue sky. How could she want to paint anything dark on one of the warmest and most beautiful afternoons she’d seen in weeks?
Gabrielle laid the brush back on the easel and walked over to her father’s desk. She picked up the book about being the mistress of a home. Maybe if she curled up in the settee and read about running a kitchen and keeping housewares in good order, she could keep her mind off the viscount.
She opened to the first page and read:
Being a mistress is not for every woman, but it can be very satisfying, yes, even quite rewarding for the few elite women who choose to become one. There were no books, no friends, no one to offer help to me when I became a mistress, so I write this book in hopes that someday I will find a company brave enough to publish this valuable guide, bookshops brave enough to sell it, and ladies or gentlemen brave enough to buy it and use it.
Having been a successful mistress for more than thirty years, I am well qualified to write this compendium of most useful and even helpful hints. It is my honor, and I believe it is my duty, to pass on the knowledge I have acquired in the art of pleasing and satisfying a man. No well-heeled gentleman of any station in life should be without a mistress to take care of his bedchamber desires. Every well-bred gentleman knows, duly expects, and deserves to have a wife who is too sheltered, too delicate, and too timid to master the art of sexually pleasing him, and he would, of course, never have the inclination to teach or force her into doing what a well-trained mistress already knows how to do.
Gabrielle looked up from the book. Sexually pleasing? She felt hot and cold all at the same time, and her heart started to beat faster than it should. Surely this sort of pleasing didn’t mean what she thought it did. Could it?