Talk of the Ton

  “I’m already ruined in London society,” she reminded him.

  “I’m not,” Jonathan said. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to preserve my good name.”

  India gave an unladylike snort. “If it’s all the same to you, Lord Barclay, I’d like to preserve my neck. If it comes to losing my reputation or losing my life, I’ll gladly forfeit my reputation and yours, too, if it’s necessary. I don’t have a choice. Gold has already changed hands. If you leave Plum Cottage without me, Mustafa will—”

  “I’ll take care of Mustafa,” Jonathan vowed. “He won’t hurt you.”

  “Mustafa will kill me,” India said. “Unless you keep him from it and—”

  “By this time tomorrow, Mustafa will be on his way to Istanbul.”

  “Can you be sure he won’t bribe someone to let him go? That he won’t come back here and strangle me once you’re gone?”

  No, he couldn’t. He couldn’t be sure of anything except that his life was about to change. But he didn’t know if it would be for better or for worse. “I thought you said he’s eager to return to Istanbul.”

  “He is,” she confirmed. “But not until he fulfills his obligation to the sultan. And after what we just did to him . . .” She shuddered. “You don’t know Mustafa. He’s more afraid of failing the sultan than he is of you. If you don’t relieve him of his duty now, he’ll find a way to come back and kill me. Or pay someone to do it.”

  “How long have you been alone here with him?”

  “A week.”

  “And he didn’t harm you. . . .”

  “He had no reason to harm me then,” she explained. “Now, he does.”

  “What reason?”

  “You,” she said.

  Jonathan groaned.

  “And me,” she added. “Mustafa hates women, hates traveling, hates being bested, and hates me.”

  Jonathan closed his eyes and thought back to the newspaper articles he’d read about the taking of the HMS Portsmouth and the murders and abductions of her passengers and crew by the gang of Barbary pirates who owed their allegiance to the dey of Algiers. “Why does he hate you?”

  Lady India didn’t answer.

  Jonathan tried again. “How long have you known him?”

  “Nearly five years,” she answered. “He took charge of me the day I arrived at the Topkapi. We didn’t get on well. And I’ve lived in fear of him ever since. . . .” India shuddered again as the memories of that horrible day came rushing back. She looked at Jonathan. “He was every bit as ill-humored then as he is now.”

  “Who chose him to accompany you? And why would he agree?”

  “The sultan chose him,” India said. “And neither Mustafa nor I had a choice. The sultan’s insistence that a bodyguard accompany me was included in the terms of my release. And as the sultan’s most trusted and highly regarded eunuch, Mustafa was the sultan’s obvious choice.”

  Jonathan wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. “Highly regarded what?”

  “Eunuch,” India answered matter-of-factly. “Mustafa is the chief eunuch of the harem. He resides in the women’s quarters and presides over the harem. He has the power of life and death over all of us.”

  “Lud!” Jonathan swore, eyeing the giant with a kind of newfound and grudgingly wary admiration. No wonder the giant smoked tobacco and weighed over twenty-five stone. Food, drink, tobacco, and the hookah were the only pleasures of the flesh left to him. “I’d be ill-humored, too, if a sultan forcibly removed my . . .” Jonathan remembered he was in the presence of a lady and caught himself in time to choose his words more carefully. “If I had to live surrounded by women twenty-four hours a day and was unable to pleasure any of them.”

  India frowned at Lord Barclay’s ignorance. “Mustafa still has his tongue and his fingers and toes.”

  Jonathan coughed, choking on her unadulterated frankness. Lady India was no ordinary young English miss. She’d been forced to live a life that few people, except perhaps prostitutes, could imagine. He lifted his eyebrow as she continued. “Like the other eunuchs, he is quite capable of pleasuring his favorites with those. But becoming a eunuch rendered him incapable of the primary means of physical pleasure. The only men, other than the sultan, allowed to look upon or touch any female in the harem, are eunuchs. That ensures that the children born in a sultan’s harem are all his.”

  “But an eunuch . . . ” Jonathan shuddered. “I can almost feel sorry for him.”

  India shook her head. “Don’t waste your pity on Mustafa. He receives his pleasure in other ways.”

  Jonathan was almost afraid to ask. “What other ways?”

  “He derives great pleasure from disposing of unwanted and troublesome concubines,” she answered. “He is particularly fond of slowly strangling them with the silk cord you used to tie his hands. And that would have been my fate had the sultan decided not to release me.”

  Bloody hell. Jonathan really didn’t want to know that. “Why did the sultan decide to release you?”

  “I have blue eyes.”

  “Very blue,” he agreed. “And quite becoming.”

  She blushed at the compliment. “Not to the sultan. He found them troublesome, especially since the women in the harem were convinced that I was the devil in female form. I caused Mustafa and the sultan no end of trouble because the women in the harem believed I was capable of black magic and of bewitching them.”

  “You mean you aren’t?” Jonathan teased.

  India blinked in surprise.

  “Because I feel quite certain that you may have bewitched me.”

  Chapter Six

  “Have I, my lord?”

  An hour ago, Jonathan would have sworn that Lady India didn’t engage in the fine art of flirtation, but now, he wasn’t so sure.

  “You must have.” Jonathan looked into her dark blue eyes. “For it’s the only explanation for what I’m about to do.”

  “What are you about to do?” she breathed.

  Kiss you. Jonathan inhaled deeply, unable to stop himself as he reached out and caught her chin up with the tip of his finger. “I’m about to throw caution to the wind and relieve the sultan’s eunuch of his responsibility and escort Lady India Burton on her triumphant return to London.” He gave her every opportunity to refuse or to escape, but India stood looking up at him, and Jonathan gave in to the impulse. He tilted her face up to his, then leaned down and gently covered her lips with his own.

  As she closed her eyes and accepted the kiss, it was quite obvious to Jonathan that it was her first.

  But what she lacked in finesse, she made up for in sweetness and enthusiasm. Jonathan savored the taste of her, reminding himself that despite her ardor for kissing, she was untutored and deserved more tenderness than raw passion. And he devoted himself to giving India everything she deserved. He nibbled at her lips, then traced the texture of them, lightly brushing them with his. Jonathan touched the seam between her lips with the tip of his tongue, showering India with pleasure as he tasted the softness of her lips and absorbed the feel of her mouth; poring over every detail, every nuance of her lips and mouth and teeth and tongue, with a single-minded determination to give pleasure.

  India moved closer, shivering in delicious response as Lord Barclay abandoned her lips and kissed a path over her eyelids, her cheeks, her nose; brushing his lips lightly over hers once again before he continued on his path to the pulse that beat at the base of her throat.

  Jonathan broke the kiss the moment he felt Lady India trembling in his arms. He stepped away, silently cursing himself for his weakness, as he put some much needed distance between them. “I apologize, Lady India.”

  India opened her eyes and looked up at him. “For kissing me?”

  “For taking liberties,” Jonathan answered. “Because I’d no right to presume that you would welcome my attentions.”

  “You had every right to presume I welcomed your attention,” India told him. “For it’s true.” She blushed. “I wan
ted you to kiss me. And if you hadn’t kissed me first, I would have kissed you as soon as I determined the best way to go about it.”

  “Going about it is easy,” he said, bending his head to her upturned face once again. “Just close your eyes and offer an invitation. . . .”

  He brushed her lips a second time. “It’s the stopping that’s hard.”

  “Then don’t stop,” she told him. “Do it again.”

  Jonathan knew he should refuse. But India was sweet, amazingly innocent, and incredibly tempting. As he used his tongue to tease and tantalize, he couldn’t help but marvel at his good fortune. She had spent years in a seraglio, and yet Lady India had never been kissed the way he was kissing her. In some part of his brain he realized that if she was an innocent in the art of kissing, she might also be innocent in other ways. And he had no right to take that innocence away from her. He ended their second kiss and stepped back once again.

  India opened her eyes, read the look on his face, and sighed. “Please don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind.”

  Changed his mind? Lost it, perhaps, but not changed it. He had acted on impulse, given in to his desire, and kissed her. And he knew immediately that he’d made a huge mistake. It was all right to think about kissing her, as he had ever since she’d walked through the doorway, but actually tasting the sweetness of her lips, not once but twice . . . that was a mistake.

  “About taking me to London?” she prompted when he took too long to respond.

  “Well,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t leave you here.”

  “Oh, thank you, Lord Barclay!”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he warned. “Surviving a London season may prove every bit as challenging as surviving life in the sultan’s harem.”

  India gifted him with a brilliant smile. “This is England, my lord. People in London may criticize me and gossip about me behind my back. Here members of the ton may crucify my reputation, but no one can ever force me to hide my face or bow my head again. And I’ll never again have to worry about Mustafa strangling me in my sleep.”

  Her words tore at Jonathan’s heart. He understood that sort of fear. He knew what it was like to lie awake at night, afraid to close your eyes for fear of the monsters that preyed upon you while you slept. Once upon a time, he’d been terrified of the monsters in the dark, convinced they would come for him in the deep of night and carry him off.

  Once upon a time, he’d been the youngest and weakest boy in the Knightsguild School for Gentleman, and he’d lain awake at night frightened and alone and crying for his nanny. Knightsguild had been one long, unending nightmare for Jonathan. He knew what it was to fear the darkness, knew how it felt to pray for someone to watch over him, someone to reassure him and keep the monsters at bay. And he knew what it was like to wonder if his prayers would ever be answered.

  Jonathan had been lucky. His guardian angel had occupied the cot beside him, and ten-year-old Jarrod Shepherdston, twenty-second Earl of Westmore, founding member of the Free Fellows League, hadn’t failed him. Jarrod had sworn that he’d protect him and dispatch any monsters that dared to enter their dormitory or attempt to lay a hand on Jonathan. Jarrod had kept watch so Jonathan could finally close his eyes and sleep through the night. And Jarrod had protected him in other ways as well. He’d kept the bullies from using Jonathan as their whipping boy and deflected the instructors’ and the headmaster’s sarcasm and ridicule from Jonathan’s narrow shoulders to his broader ones whenever Jonathan stammered in the classroom or struggled to keep up on the playing field. Jarrod Shepherdston had helped Jonathan build his confidence and to make friends with the other Free Fellows.

  Jonathan stared at Lady India. She’d done nothing to deserve her fate. She had had every reason to believe she was safe the day she and her governess boarded the ship that would take her home to Calcutta. The HMS Portsmouth was, after all, one of His Majesty’s naval vessels, and Lady India’s grandfather one of His Majesty’s naval commanders. She had no reason to think that she might fall into the hands of Barbary pirates who would sell her to a Turkish sultan for their own gain. And once she’d been imprisoned in the Topkapi palace, she had no reason to believe that she would ever be free again.

  Jonathan let out a breath. He had waited most of his life to become a Free Fellow, and suddenly, remaining free from marital encumbrances in order to serve his country in the clandestine war against Bonaparte seemed far less important than offering this one young woman his protection. For if ever a lady deserved a champion to protect her from the monsters she feared and from the monsters she’d yet to meet, it was she. And Jonathan intended to be that champion. Fate had sent him to Plum Cottage, and fate wouldn’t be denied.

  “I promise you, come morning, you needn’t worry about Mustafa ever again,” Jonathan told her in an echo of Jarrod’s long-ago promise.

  “Must we wait until morning?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he told her. “Because, as you pointed out, we cannot move him without help, and my horse is in no condition to help. But he should be up to the task by morning. If not, I promise I’ll find some other way.”

  “No promises,” she whispered, “not unless you know you can keep them.”

  The village of Pymley lay two miles north of Plum Cottage, off the main road. There was a pub there and a blacksmith and livery. Colin paid the blacksmith in Pymley extremely well to keep Plum Cottage’s stable in fresh hay and grain and to keep silent about it. And Jonathan had recruited laborers from Pymley for other tasks. They knew he paid extremely well for hard work and for prudence. He knew he could trust them to help him remove Mustafa from Plum Cottage to the coast and to keep silent about it.

  “I can keep this one,” Jonathan told her. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll take care of everything. But now, I’m dead on my feet. All I want is a warm fire, a hot meal, a glass of brandy, a soft bed, and four or five hours of uninterrupted sleep.” Jonathan heaved a sigh, then picked up his saddle pouch and turned toward the back door. “But under the circumstances, I’m willing to forgo the meal, the fire, the brandy, and the soft bed in exchange for the sleep.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Jonathan recognized the fear in her voice. “To sleep in the stable.”

  “You’re going to leave me here alone with Mustafa after what we did to him? What happens when he wakes up?”

  “He’ll be securely tied and unable to move,” Jonathan replied. “Just as he is now.”

  India bit her bottom lip in trepidation. “You needn’t forgo the soft bed, the glass of brandy, or the warm fire if you know how to build one,” she told him. “The cottage has two bedchambers, both with soft beds and fireplaces. And there are decanters of spirits on the side table in the sitting room.”

  He was incredibly tempted. But he was a gentleman, and she was a young lady whose reputation had already been sullied through no fault of her own while she’d been the sultan’s captive. He wasn’t going to add fuel to the flame of gossip by compromising it once again now that she had finally returned home to England. “I thank you most kindly for the invitation,” he said. “But as you are an unmarried young woman and I am an unmarried gentleman, ” Jonathan stressed the word, reminding himself that was the case even as he informed her of it and inched toward the door. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t dead. Or made of stone. Jonathan knew himself well enough to know that his state of near exhaustion made resisting temptation harder instead of easier. “Since we are unchaper oned, it’s best that I seek shelter elsewhere.”

  “But we are chaperoned,” she insisted. “Mustafa is here.”

  “A sultan’s eunuch is hardly a suitable chaperone,” he replied.

  “On the contrary, Lord Barclay.” India shook her head, focusing her gaze on his handsome face rather than the fascinating wedge of thick, dark hair that was visible through the opening of his shirt. “Chaperoning is what the sultan’s eunuchs do best. After all, they chaperone and care for three hundred seventy of the sultan’s concubine
s every minute of every day.” She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “What’s left of my reputation is safe.”

  “Not with him unconscious.”

  India gave him a speculative glance, then turned and began to pace the confines of the small kitchen. “Did you know that the Admiralty and the Foreign Office wish to host a series of balls in my honor when I return?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Will you attend?”

  Jonathan drew in a deep breath. “I don’t generally move in Admiralty or Foreign Office circles.”

  “Would you attend if I invited you?”

  “Lady India . . .” When she looked at him with those big, blue eyes, Jonathan found her almost impossible to resist.

  “I don’t know anyone in London except you.”

  “You’ll meet plenty of other people at the Admiralty Ball,” he said.

  India nodded. “Yes, I’m sure I’ll meet plenty of people at the Admiralty who wish to use me for their own purposes.” She stared at Jonathan. “People who want to hail my return as a diplomatic triumph and trot me out and show me off at every opportunity.”

  “You don’t know that—” he began.

  “Yes, I do,” she answered. “That’s one of the reasons my grandfather asked to borrow Plum Cottage and sent The Bengal Princess to fetch me. Captain Marks gave me a letter from my grandfather. In it Grandfather explained that he couldn’t fetch me in person without alerting the Admiralty and the Foreign Office, and he didn’t want to alert the Admiralty or the Foreign Office because he didn’t want my homecoming to become . . .”

  “A political circus,” Jonathan concluded.

  Lady India nodded. “A political frenzy was the term Grandfather used.”

  “That was good of him,” Jonathan replied, heartened by the news that her grandfather hadn’t ransomed her from the sultan in order to throw her to the wolves. “Your grandfather seems like a fine man, one who has your best interests at heart. He must love you very much.”