by Lynn Kerstan
“But she’s all right now?”
“I suppose so. It’s been more than ten years, of course. I always thought she was different after that, but maybe it was just a matter of getting older. She was such a hoyden back then, wild as a feral cat: She’d have dared anything. Now she’s calm and poised and controlled all the time, as if she’d drawn in her own reins and snipped them off at the bit. She holed up at Seacrest for years. Friends offered to sponsor her for a Season in London, but she wouldn’t even go to dances and parties in the neighborhood.”
David looked over at Michael, his face full of sadness. “I wish you could have known her before the accident. She used to play the lute, and sang songs that made you want to weep because they were so beautiful. Something happened to her throat when she was hurt, and now she can’t sing at all. Her hair changed, too. It was guinea gold like her mother’s until the accident. Then it went dead white, like an old woman’s, and stayed that way for nearly two years. Now it’s spectacular, of course, the color of moonlight, but her voice never came back.”
Michael felt as if something was pressing on his chest. “What about her mother?”
“Mrs. Holcombe died when Mira was eleven or twelve. It was horrible. She had a cancer, and it took a long time. But afterward, Mira insisted that everything go on as it had done. There were always guests, to lift her father’s spirits, and she played hostess. It made her grow up quickly, I suppose. Nothing much changed until about three years ago, when Mr. Holcombe became ill. I was away again, this time studying in France, and when I returned, Seacrest had been closed down. I was told they had gone to stay with her father’s brother at his castle in Somerset.”
“Castle?”
“Well, Old Holcombe was always a bit eccentric. Did you never meet him? His estate borders Longview. He was trying to make a name for himself with the Royal Antiquarian Society, or some such thing, and bought a fallen-down castle in the Mendips. To raise the money he sold about everything he had except his house and land, which were entailed to his brother. Then he moved to the castle and set about restoring it. He died not too long ago. The castle was willed to his nephew, who went out to India some years and hasn’t been heard from, Mira tells me, for a long time.”
That filled in some of the gaps, Michael was thinking as they led the horses from the field and onto Robinson’s Lane. But he wanted to know more about her. Hell, he wanted to know everything about her.
“You like her.” David grinned at him. “I knew you would.”
“Don’t be an ass. I don’t like anyone.”
“You always say that. But I think you don’t want anyone to like you.”
He’d forgot how well David Fairfax knew him. “Almost no one does like me, which saves me a lot of trouble. Then there’s you. For no accountable reason, you like me, and you cause me no end of trouble. There’s a lesson there for one of us.”
“Must be for me,” said David, more cheerfully than he’d said anything the entire afternoon. “You read me more lectures than an Oxford don.”
“And you pay me as little attention as you did them. Listen to me now, though. I need a favor.”
“Anything. As always.”
They made the turn onto Paradise Row. The horses began straining forward, sensing a rubdown and a bag of oats directly ahead. “Hari has found himself an enclave of people from the Punjab, and one of them claims to be a cousin. That could mean to the thirtieth degree, but family is everything there, and tonight, the cousin is getting married. I’ve promised to attend, and unless this one differs from every other wedding I attended in India, it will last well into tomorrow. You are to spend the evening at Beata’s, and if you find it necessary, you’ll sleep in my Casina. Watch out for Miss Holcombe. Assure yourself she is experiencing no difficulties. If she remains in her cottage, invent an excuse to stop by.”
“Is something wrong?”
“She says not. But I want to be sure of it. She mustn’t know I’ve spoken to you.”
“You do like her!” David was practically crowing with satisfaction. Then he looked up, spotted the stable yard gate directly ahead, and drew in his feathers. “I wish we didn’t have to go in there,” he muttered.
But they did, and stable hands and stableboys and even the stable-yard cats emerged from wherever they had been to watch the mortifying arrival. Michael saw them staring at his chest and looked down to see that his shirt was torn and streaked with blood. He’d felt the pain from his rough landing, but hadn’t realized the damage done him by harness leather and metal studs.
“An accident, sir?” The Scots ostler regarded him with disapproving eyes.
“Only to me.” Michael let go the reins he’d been holding and stepped away from the horses. “I fell off. Fairfax here is a capital whip, but I couldn’t keep my balance on that bench, and down I went. When I refused to get back up there, he insisted on walking with me. I’d better stick to riding, don’t you think?”
“If you say so, sir.” Reaching over, the ostler plucked a fragment of cabbage leaf from the horse’s flank. “And what be this?”
“What’s left of lunch,” Michael said as David gave the ostler a coin and began to slink away. “We stopped for a salad.”
Chapter 8
Michael poured himself another large tot of brandy and carried it to the window.
The rain had let up, yielding to drizzle. A rectangle of light, broken by the shadow he cast, shone on the ground outside, and lanterns from a passing ship glowed orange in the distance. It was probably after midnight. He’d stopped winding the clock because its chime woke him up, and his pocket watch had been given over to a larcenous Egyptian camel driver.
Hari always knew what time it was, with the same mysterious instinct that told him when someone was lying and where a water hole could be found. But Hari had taken to spending most evenings with his Punjabi friends, seldom returning before dawn. Sometimes Michael accompanied him, but not tonight.
He didn’t want company. Nearly two weeks in London, and save for their one encounter at Tattersall’s, no sign of his target. Jermyn had disappeared. A bribed servant knew only that he’d departed later than he’d intended and in a rage, leaving no word of where he was going or for how long. Servants at Tallant House in Berkeley Square were easily bribed, but unreliable. Few had worked there for long, and most were already seeking other positions. The duke, they said, paid cheeseparing wages, demanded the impossible, and expressed his dissatisfaction with his riding whip.
Like father, like son. Michael remembered that riding whip. Bore the scars of it on his back. Not the same whip, probably, but Jermyn would wield it in the same spirit.
Four generations of Tallant dukes had been stodgy supporters of the monarch and conservative politics, but then came his great-grandfather. The fifth duke, reputedly mad, risked the family’s small fortune on the South Sea Bubble and lost the greater part of it. The sixth duke drank heavily and gambled recklessly—two vices that ran in the bloodline—and the seventh, Devil Keynes, lost everything that wasn’t entailed.
He’d still managed to cut a fashionable figure in London, but his family lived in squalor. The estate in Kent, Longview, had long been in near ruin, and he sold the last of the paintings and furniture to keep up his wardrobe and stock the London town house with candles and coal. By the time he’d exiled his second wife and younger son to Scotland, the creditors were snapping at his ankles. Years later, blackballed at White’s, mocked in the newspapers and broadsheets, he put a pistol to his head.
That was the official report, at any rate. By that time, Michael had been in India for two years. When word came of his father’s death, he’d celebrated with a bottle of good brandy and a pretty nautch dancer. He was just turned one-and-twenty then, wild as a lynx, securing gemstones on credit from even wilder Afghan traders and selling them in the south through a network of marginall
y trustworthy brokers. With the money, he recruited and trained a small mercenary force, their sole mission to destroy his brother’s India trade.
Or it had been. He’d not yet come to terms with the end of his India campaign, or prepared himself to confront the only thing left for him to do. A primal sin. Fratricide.
Sometimes he knew beyond question it was necessary. Other times, like Hamlet, he questioned everything he knew to be true. At the age of ten he had seen his brother, seven years older, push a young maidservant to her death under the wheels of a carriage. He had told his mother what he saw, and not long after, they were both sent to the Highlands. He never saw his father again.
One thing hadn’t changed, though. Thinking about his murderous family always made him want to forget them. And the only way to do that was to drink.
He took a swallow of brandy and stared out into the wet black night. Blinked. Looked again. A shadow emerged from the screen of trees lining the property, flitted behind a hedge, disappeared again into the mist.
Or perhaps he had only imagined it. Ghosts were his constant companions. They lingered in corners, curled at the baseboards, prowled through his dreams.
And one of them lived across a small patch of grass, the solitary white tigress, tending the cub who was her father. A woman so far from the reach of Michael Keynes that she might as well be living on the moon. He avoided her because she wanted him to, but he could not stop his thoughts from following her through her days and nights. She was at the villa now, perhaps in conversation or reading, while Mr. Holcombe enjoyed the company of his friends. Later, accompanied by a servant with a torch, she would wheel him back to the cottage, and after a time, the lights would go out. Only then would he go to his own bed.
He kept vigil, like a knight before the altar, like a courtly lover admiring his unattainable lady from a distance. It was stupid. Not at all in his character. Sheer madness. Still, he longed to give her something that would keep her safe, make her happy. But he had nothing she wanted. Or if he did, she wouldn’t accept it. Not from him.
He moved to the window overlooking the Holcombes’ cottage, where a lantern hung near the door. No sign of the intruder, if indeed there had been one, but he decided to keep watch, just in case. And so that Miranda wouldn’t catch him lurking there, he closed the curtains all but an inch and drew up a chair.
He was just lifting the glass to his lips when there came a sharp rap at the door. His hand jerked. Brandy spattered over his shirt. Swearing, he lurched to his feet and went to see who’d come to bother him at this time of night.
It was a female, her limp wet bonnet concealing her hair and most of her face. Rainwater streamed down a dark, bedraggled cloak, puddling at her feet. “It is you,” she said in a harsh voice. “I wasn’t sure. Will you let me in?”
“That depends. Who the devil are you?”
“Can’t you guess?” Her laugh grated like metal on metal. “I’m your sister-in-law.”
Bloody hell. He stepped aside to let her enter. Nancy? Noreen? Something that started with an “N,” he was fairly sure. They’d never met. He had been at Oxford when Jermyn married an Irish heiress, had read the news in the Times, hadn’t given a damn.
He watched her fumble with the frogged clasps of her cloak, supposed he ought to help her and went to do so. She batted his hands away. “You’re drunk,” she said. “I can smell it.”
“Come back when I’m sober, then.” But she wasn’t going to leave, not after sneaking herself here in the rain, not until she’d said what she’d come to say. He went into his room, stripped a blanket off the bed, and tossed it over a chair near where she was standing. She’d got her bonnet off. Red hair corkscrewed around an angular, thin-lipped face. Her eyes were small and angry.
As he crouched by the hearth to build up the fire, he heard her cloak drop to the carpet with a squishy sound. “Do you want a drink?” he asked. “There’s brandy, whisky, and claret.”
“I’d like tea.” She came to the fire, holding out her bare hands. She was shivering.
“There isn’t any. I wasn’t expecting guests. What do I call you? Your Grace?”
“I don’t care. Norah, if you like. I know you are wishing me somewhere else, and I am wishing there was someone else I could apply to. But there isn’t. You probably won’t help me either, but I had to try.”
He tossed another log on the firedogs. “What do you want me to do? Kill Jermyn?”
“Would you?” She gave a sour laugh. “Someone ought to. Did you know he killed your father?”
Michael nearly dropped the poker he was holding. “I was told he shot himself.”
“It was made to appear that way. I found out several years later, when Jermyn threatened to do to me what he’d done to him. It was perfectly safe to tell me. I couldn’t testify against him, even if I’d found the courage, and back then, I could never have done so.”
“And now? I doubt you’d get far with an accusation at this point.”
“That’s not it.” With a shudder, she collapsed onto a chair. “Might I have the blanket, please?”
He draped it over her and poured out a glass of claret, which he placed on the table within her reach. Please, she had said. She must be getting close to making her request, a request he didn’t want to hear. “Was it you I saw coming through the trees? Are you being followed?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet. Jermyn believes me to be in Scotland, but one of the men he left to guard us will soon let him know otherwise. He intended us to die there, a winter accident, I suspect. Or perhaps there would have been a few months’ delay. For him to take us there, followed too soon by our unfortunate demise, might have looked suspicious. Although I doubt he concerns himself with being caught out. He believes there is nothing he cannot get away with, and indeed, he keeps proving that to be true.”
“Exile to Scotland—and I speak from experience here—isn’t necessarily a death sentence. Are you sure of his intentions?”
“Quite. I have failed to produce an heir, it is unlikely that I will, and he does not want you next in line to the title.”
“On that much, we are agreed. I don’t want it, either. Let the title revert to the Crown and the family name drop out of history.”
“An admirable sentiment, except there are two daughters to provide for. And Jermyn has, by foul means I am sure, restored the family fortune and recovered most of the unentailed properties. Unlike your father, he has a great deal to bequeath, and he wants a son of his body there to receive it.” She raised a sly eyebrow. “Are you certain the title and fortune hold no interest for you?”
“None whatever. Where are you staying?”
“Last night, at a filthy inn near Hampstead. Jermyn will find it easy to track me there. Probably anywhere I go,” she added with a shrug. “That cannot be far, since I spent my last coins on tea and soup for breakfast. But I did not come to you for money or protection. I want you to find my daughter, Corinna.”
He met her gaze, felt a rush of anger. His plans did not allow for unwanted relations who’d got themselves in trouble. “This is going to get complicated, isn’t it? Very well. We’ll take care of you first. Something to eat, something to wear, and a safe place for you to go. You can stay with me for the present, but there are too many nosy servants around for safety. And at some point, Jermyn will look for you here.”
“So long as you hear my story first, and promise to help Corinna. What happens to me is of no concern.”
“Understood. But if you want my help, we go about it my way.” He glanced down at his brandy-stained shirt, leather breeches, and scuffed boots. A good thing Beata liked him to make a spectacle of himself. He retrieved a jacket from the armoire in his bedchamber, ran a brush over his disordered hair, and returned to the sitting room. Norah looked to be almost asleep in her chair, but she sat stiffly erect when he spoke
her name.
“Be strong a little while longer,” he said, closing all the curtains and extinguishing most of the lights. “Get out of those wet clothes. There are more blankets in the bedchamber, and towels. Take whatever you need. I’ll be back shortly.”
Chapter 9
On a rainy December night, even Palazzo Neri could lure only two score of pleasure seekers, and most of them had come to toss dice or play cards. Beata was holding court in the Sala dei Medici, and in the reading room, a handful of historians dedicated to the restoration of Richard III’s good name were gathered for a meeting.
Mira had left her father there with them. Most were old friends, and two had spent considerable time at Seacrest in the days when her parents made room in their home for impoverished scholars or those with nowhere to spend holidays. It pleased her to see how well he was loved and respected, and how eagerly they solicited his opinions.
It also made her feel unnecessary, which she found surprisingly hurtful. But since these were patient men who had no difficulty with his painstaking efforts to communicate, she had no reason to avoid mingling with Beata’s guests, as he so greatly wished her to do.
A few days earlier, a trunk full of Lady Jessica’s made-over gowns had been delivered to their cottage, and he’d required her to parade before him wearing each one. Then he insisted she order several pairs of matching gloves, and shoes as well, even though she still owed several hundred pounds to Mr. Callendar. Such a waste.
And yet, he was in better spirits than he had been for a considerable time. Instead of being inward turned, like an invalid, he was behaving exactly like a doting father with a daughter to fire off. She couldn’t bear to disappoint him.