“Who is it, then, I’d like to know?” she answered pertly.
“What’re you doin’ here?” he asked.
Bella pointed to a corner where an auburn-haired woman of middle age dined with a grey-haired fellow in captain’s garb. “Cap n Blayton wrote her he was coming, and she took me along to meet him. Weren’t proper, she said, for a lady to come alone. I don’t think she’ll be a widow much longer,” the maid confided in lower tones.
“But you here still, and your mistress gone? Why ain’t you with her?”
“I had enough of them heathens,” Bella said firmly. “Anyways, that little Jane was just begging to go, though what good she’ll do my poor Miss Amanda, I couldn’t say. That child don’t know a comb from a coal scuttle. But she learns quick enough, and she’ll do on the ship, I expect, and there’ll be plenty of proper maids in Calcutta. Mr. Roderick—that is, his lordship—he’ll see to it. And if he don’t, why that wicked old woman—”
“Ah, my lass, never mind ‘em,” said Jessup as he took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “Only come sit by me, do, and let me look in them snappin’ black eyes o’ young, sweetheart. I missed you somethin’ fierce, I did.”
***
Lord Felkoner was arguing heatedly with an exhausted sea captain when another gentleman noiselessly entered the shipping office.
“I’ll pay you double. Triple,” the viscount shouted. “I’ll buy the damned ship.”
“My lord, it isn’t mine to sell,” the captain said patiently. “Besides, we’ve only just come. The cargo’s not unloaded.”
“If you please, there are several other—”
“They’ve all just come, dammit. Isn’t there one curst vessel –”
“Felkoner,” a quiet, firm voice interrupted.
Philip turned. “My lord,” he said stiffly.
“Another voyage East, I take it? Calcutta perhaps?”
“It’s none of your damned business, my lord.”
“I’m afraid it is,” his lordship answered. He nodded towards the door. “Come along, my boy.”
Philip’s eves blazed and his posture grew rigid. I’m not your damned boy, my lord. Furthermore—”
“Oh, be quiet, Felkoner. And do mind your language. You set a bad example for the seamen. Now come along.”
“I’m not your hired help any longer. Find someone else—” A pistol flashed into view and Philip’s sentence dangled unfinished.
“My lord,” the alarmed captain began.
“Now you just look out the window, captain,” Lord Hedgrave politely suggested. “You are an intelligent fellow. You’ve seen and heard nothing.”
He gestured at the door with the pistol and Philip obediently moved in that direction.
“Don’t try anything foolish, my lad,” the marquess softly advised. “There’s not a trick you know I didn’t learn years ago, while you were still crawling about in skirts.” He paused briefly before adding, “Though for the life of me I couldn’t say which of us is the greater fool.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Two sari-clad women stood at the carved vetiver entryway. In the moonlight, the garden was a wonderland of silver and shadow. The flowers’ voluptuous fragrance drifted to them on a light, warm breeze.
“Anumati’s night,” said the rani. “The time is fitting to unfold my tale.”
“You’ve kept me waiting long enough,” Amanda said. “Nearly a month. I’ve been here.”
“Nearly a month here, five months upon the ship, and still you weep.” The rani turned away from the entry. “We must find a lover to dry your tears.”
“I have had quite enough of love, thank you.” Amanda followed the princess back into the chamber. “It offers precious little rapture to compensate for the madness.”
“That is because you did not take him into your bed,” the rani calmly returned. “But it is useless to speak to you of these matters. You have confused notions of sin.”
As they sank onto the cushions, the princess signaled to a servant, who brought in the hookah. With another signal, all the servants vanished.
The two cousins smoked quietly for a while, the only sound in the room the bubble of the pipe.
“I lied to you,” the rani said at last. “I am an excellent liar. The skill has many times saved my life. At other times, it brought me what I wanted. Tonight, however, I shall try not to lie very much.”
Amanda laughed. “Why, thank you, Mother.”
“Ah, I am a dreadful mother, but it cannot be helped,” the princess said with a shrug. “Here is some truth: My husband gave Richard Whitestone the pearl in reward for taking me away. It is true the Englishman later abandoned me. I only failed to mention that I pursued him to Bombay. There, through means I will not tire you by describing, Padji and I tricked him and stole the pearl. My lover did not discover the theft until he was well upon the sea.”
“You stole it for revenge. That’s understandable.”
The Indian woman nodded. “He loved me. He had not intended this, but it happened. This I know, just as I know he would have remained with me, but for an accident of Fate. He was the youngest of four sons. Shortly before he fulfilled his bargain with my husband, my English lover learned a fire had consumed his family home, and killed all his near kin at once. Thus he gained a great tide he’d never dreamed would be his.”
‘“Now I understand,” Amanda said, her voice tinged with bitterness. “That’s why he left you. He’d not want a pack of half-breeds to carry on his illustrious name.”
“Certainly he would not. You saw how your mother was treated—and she merely a part Indian. I understood his reasons and saw his wisdom. Nonetheless, all his reasons and wisdom were blindness and folly. He married a noble English lady and they lived, loveless, as other noble couples do. I learned of it and rejoiced, just as I rejoiced when their union bore no fruit. No sons, no daughters. Richard Whitestone threw away a great love... and ended with nothing.”
“That,” said Amanda, “is just as he deserves.”
“So I reminded him. I made the pearl the symbol of his folly. Each year, on the anniversary of the theft, he received a letter from me. I taunted him cruelly. He is stubborn, proud, and hot-tempered. To provoke him has never been difficult.”
“No wonder he became so obsessed with the pearl.”
Amanda gazed thoughtfully at the mouthpiece in her hand. “Yet it wasn’t the pearl he wanted, was it?”
“No, but to believe so was far less humiliating to such a man than to admit the truth.”
Amanda looked up to meet the rani’s dark, liquid gaze. “Why did you give it to me?” she asked.
Her cousin sighed. “A complicated story. Lord Hedgrave has agents throughout India. For years, however, I found it easy enough to remain inaccessible. I waited until his wife was dead. Then I came to Calcutta, and awaited the approach of his pawns. Naturally, their clumsy attempts failed. To behold the Lioness is not to capture her. Eventually, I thought, the marquess must come himself, as I’d countless times dared him to do.”
“But he didn’t. He sent the—that thief.”
“When I first came to Calcutta, the Falcon was unknown. Within a few short years, all India spoke of him. By that time, I had met you, and discovered a heart like mine beat in your breast. Like mine,” the rani added with a smile, “were my heart not quite so black with sin. A lioness lives within you, nonetheless.”
“I’m no lioness. I haven’t a fraction of your wisdom or experience. Why give it to me?” Amanda demanded. “You knew how naive I was—and how unscrupulous he was. You were a match for him. I wasn’t. Didn’t you care what happened to me? Did you want Hedgrave to get the pearl?”
The princess reached out to take Amanda’s hand. “I knew you would never let him have it,” she said quietly. “Never. You know that as well, Amanda.”
“I don’t know anything like it, and I can’t believe you could be so reckless as to rely on me. You didn’t have to. You could have relied on yo
urself. Why did you have to make a perfectly simple matter so devilish complicated?” Amanda disengaged her hand and took up her neglected pipe. “This is no explanation at all,” she grumbled. “I might have expected it.” She inhaled deeply of the lightly scented smoke.
“There is more,” said her cousin imperturbably. “I shall—” She stopped and listened. “Someone comes.”
Amanda, too, heard footsteps in the hall beyond. She looked up.
Padji’s immense form filled the doorway. “If you please, mistress,” he said with every appearance of disgust. “Visitors.”
Amanda tensed. “Roderick,” she whispered. “He’s found out I’m here.”
The rani shook her head. “At this late hour?” she answered Padji reprovingly. “Send them away.”
Amanda relaxed and brought the comforting pipe to her mouth again.
Padji did not move.
“If you please, mistress, they are mad,” he said. “One holds a knife to my back. The other a pistol.”
The smoke she’d just inhaled caught in Amanda’s windpipe, choking her. Coughing and gasping, she watched through streaming eyes as Padji grudgingly moved aside and two men entered the room. Two tall, fair-haired men.
Amanda wiped her eves, but that didn’t help. She was hallucinating. What in blazes was in the pipe?
One of the men was hurrying towards her. No.
“Amanda,” he said. “My love, I—” He halted midstride, his eyes riveted upon the rani.
Dazedly, Amanda looked at her cousin. The princess held a pistol, which was pointed straight at him.
“Back, Falcon,” said the princess. “Your elderly friend will put away his weapon or I shall drive a bullet through your black heart.”
She met Amanda’s startled gaze and smiled. “Men,” she said. “Just like children. They never think.”
Lord Hedgrave—for that was the “elderly friend”— handed Padji his pistol. “Let him be, Nalini,” the marquess said quietly. Your quarrel is with me.”
“Is it?” the princess answered haughtily without looking at him. “I have no quarrels with feeble old men.”
The marquess laughed. “Wicked girl.”
“I am no longer a girl, Richard Whitestone.”
“Perhaps not. Yet wicked you are.”
The rani threw him a careless glance. She lay the pistol down.
The Falcon took a cautious step towards Amanda. She glared at him. “Go to the devil,” she said.
“Ah, Miss Cavencourt,” said the marquess. “I didn’t know you at first. No wonder my travelling companion behaved so heedlessly.” He turned to the rani. “When I first made the lady’s acquaintance, she wore a smock and breeches,” he explained. “The sari is a deal more becoming. Don’t you agree, my lord?” he asked the Falcon.
Midnight-blue eyes bored into Amanda. “Yes,” he answered hoarsely.
“Go to hell,” she said. Her heart pounded so she thought the room must thunder with it. “You sicken me.”
“If my beloved ones so wish it,” Padji offered, “I shall cut out the dogs’ hearts.”
“Perhaps later,” the rani said. “Go away, Padji.”
Padji left.
“You as well, child,” the princess continued. “Take your Falcon into the garden. I would speak privately with this pitiful old man.”
“So you will speak to me, Nalini?” Lord Hedgrave asked as he crossed the room to her. “After all these years, and all my crimes?”
She shrugged. “Perhaps we shall speak. Perhaps I shall poison you. Who knows?”
Lord Hedgrave dropped gracefully onto the cushions beside her.
The Falcon held out his hand to Amanda. “Take me to the garden,” he said softly.
The woman he followed outside was the goddess he dreamed of for eighteen long months. She wore a sari of gold, but the moonlight transformed it to liquid silver, shimmering in sensuous curves about her slim form. Her long, dark hair fell in rippling waves upon her shoulders and back. The sari draped gracefully to conceal one arm. Her other lay bare and smooth, but for the small sleeve of her brocade cboli. Thin gold bangles tinkled as she moved, and behind her trailed the faint scent of patchouli.
She led him down a path thick with flowers and shrubs, then on to the ornamental pool at the garden’s heart. There she stood, her exotic countenance shut against him, her stance cool and straight. Unwelcoming. Unyielding.
He’d been mad to come. Where would he find the magic words to unlock the barrier his folly had built between them?
“Amanda,” he began.
“I don’t even know your name,” she said with chilly politeness. “Your real name.”
Remorse smote him in a swelling ache.
“It’s Philip,” he said. “Philip Andrew Astonley.” He hesitated, then continued doggedly. “Viscount Felkoner. Of Felkonwood, Derbyshire.”
“So that was you,” she said, her tones expressionless. “Mrs. Gales showed me the piece in the Gazette. I should have realised. Felkoner—Falcon. I collect you chose that particular pseudonym to spite your father. The article said you lost two brothers. My condolences.”
He didn’t want polite condolences. He didn’t want polite anything. He wanted to pull her into his arms and make her love him again, make her eyes fill with trust and tenderness once more. How had he thought he could live without that, without her?
“None of my predecessors will be greatly missed,” he said stiffly. “A pity, because my father at least would have appreciated the irony. He was so certain I’d be the first to go. Not through natural causes, of course,” he added, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “The gallows, perhaps, or some equally sordid conclusion.”
“There’s time yet to prove him right.” She stared fixedly at the water. “You tempt Fate by coming here.”
“I had no choice.” He took a step nearer. She moved two paces back. His hands clenched at his sides.
“I wanted to come after you,” he said miserably. “I wanted to come right away, but I didn’t dare leave his confounded lordship out of my sight for an instant. How he found a chance to write you, I’ll never know. If I’d caught him at it, I’d have broken both his arms myself.”
She didn’t respond.
“Dammit, why didn’t you let Padji kill us both?” he demanded. “There were no witnesses, and—”
“Padji explained that,” she said. “It is bad ton to murder a peer of the realm.”
“Indeed? Well, it’s perfectly good form to kill a thief. He meant to kill me. I saw it in his eyes. But he didn’t. Why?” he asked. “Was that your doing?”
She shot him a brief, scornful glance. “You can thank yourself. It was your last maudlin speech changed his mind. Really, I had not imagined even you could sink so low. Not that it worked quite the way you intended. Oh, he believed you, amazingly enough, but he didn’t spare you out of pity. He decided a lifetime burning in the fires of unrequited love was a more fitting punishment.”
Hot shame swept his face. That was her opinion of him. She thought his dying words merely some pathetic attempt to save his own skin. As though he’d have begged for mercy, when all he’d wanted then was to be put out of his misery. She couldn’t know how wisely Padji had judged.
“Padji knew exactly what he was doing,” he admitted, his face flaming again. “He knew. She knew,” he added, nodding towards the palace. “How, I can’t say. She’s not quite human, is she? But I’ve had time enough to reflect, and I could swear they knew I’d want you the moment I met you. You were meant to be my undoing, Amanda.”
That earned him another disbelieving glance.
“You were,” he went on determinedly. “You undid me utterly. I couldn’t understand how I could be so careless. How I could misjudge, time and again. I, the Falcon. After you stole back the statue—the first time—I spent weeks in London trying to discover where you’d gone. Weeks. The Falcon should have solved that in a few hours.”
“You’d never been on that end
of a robbery before. I daresay the shock addled your wits.” She moved several steps away.
He followed. “Do you really believe that was all? While I was in London, trying to track you down, I learned I’d inherited. All my life my father tried to crush me, as though I were some unspeakable vermin polluting his family. Suddenly, I found myself lord of all he’d denied me: his castle, his vast acres, his money—all mine. Yet the very day I got the happy news, I headed for Yorkshire.”
Her face turned sharply to him, her eyes lit with incredulity. “You knew—before you came—and you travelled all the way to Kirkby Glenham—and worked as my servant? What the devil is wrong with you?”
“You,” he said.
She refused to understand. “It was the damned pearl,” she muttered. “It’s definitely cursed. It makes men insane.”
“It’s nothing to do with the dratted pearl,” he snapped. “The Tear of Joy was a convenient excuse, I admit. It made you a professional problem, and I thought I could solve you as easily as all the others. Yet the truth was always there. I locked it away in the dark, but couldn’t stifle it. It never stopped trying to break out.”
“There’s no truth in you,” she said coldly. “I stopped believing in you the instant I realised who you were. I don’t know what your game is now, and I don’t care. I won’t play.” She moved past him, and headed back the way they’d come.
Philip stood a moment while despair warred with need. He’d journeyed all this way, spent months on another curst ship. This time he’d travelled without her, and the way had been long and lonely indeed. He would not go back to his great, empty tomb of a house without her. If he could not return with her, he’d not return at all.
She’d walked away with cool dignity, unhurried. The Falcon darted after her, and caught her from behind. His hand covered her mouth before she could cry out, while his other arm dragged her back against him. Swiftly he pulled her into a narrow path sheltered by tall shrubs.
She fought him, just as she had that night so long ago, and her blows were no gentler now.
“Stop it,” he growled. “Drat you, stop it.”