by Laura Parker
Devlyn lifted his right hand and stared at the despised hook. He did not like the way people stared at him when they noticed it, as if they feared he might turn and snare them on the end of it at any given moment. Mr. Simmons could scarcely look away from it. The one time he gestured with it to make a point the solicitor all but swallowed his tongue. After he left the law offices he noticed that London’s streets were full of the lame and blind, war-ravaged soldiers who had fared no better and sometimes worse than he. Yet his greatest loss was not a true war wound.
Swearing hard against a lack of memory, he turned the bottle up to his lips and pulled at its contents, drinking a good portion. Even so, he knew it would do no good. There were not enough spirits in all of Christendom to stave off the pain and rage gathering behind his eyes.
Inexplicable anger slithered and writhed through him until he gripped the bottle so tightly he felt he could crush it in his bare hand. Now he was to be plagued by relatives who would no doubt expect him to remember them.
“You say the dowager viscountess has come here to see me?”
Bersham swung around from his observation of the footman’s task, more startled than he liked to be. The viscount had already asked him twice about Lady Abbott. It was the wine, of course. Wine’s in, wits out!
He moved closer to the chair where his lordship still sat like a stone. “Not precisely, my lord. The viscountess did not know you were in residence. She came to town on business.”
“Damn the dowager’s privilege! I want no guests while I reside here. Order up their carriage and send them all packing!”
Bersham searched his mind for a prudent answer. “Lady Abbott did say she expects her daughters to return to Croesus Hall presently.” Silence met his effort “The journey is some three hours in good weather. A heavy mist such as has come on this evening could add half again the time. Now a good early start in morning …”
Lord Sinclair did not answer or move or even indicate that he had heard the old retainer. There was only unnerving silence underscored by the soft hiss of flame.
Bersham gave the signal for the footman to abandon what was left of his task. “If there be nothing else, my lord, we will withdraw.”
Bersham retained all the faculties of his youth but had an old man’s bones to deal with. He had only time to cringe in alarm when the bottle Lord Sinclair loosed flew past his shoulder and struck the door behind him, shattering and spraying the old retainer with it’s contents.
“Out! Get out!”
Bersham just managed to pull the door shut behind himself before a second claret bottle shattered against the hundred-year-old carved oak door.
“Mad! That’s what he be!” the footman cried like a scalded maid.
“Drunk!” Bersham pronounced with the wisdom of all his years of experience. “Madness is for commoners.” The nobility could afford to label their excesses eccentricity.
Japonica was discovering that there were a great many ways to be uncomfortable in an English household. Croesus Hall, smelling of dust and cinders and dampness, had beds that seemed to be made of clumped sand. The Shrewsbury townhouse, the latest installment in her understanding of Farangi living, boasted a draftiness that had no equal in her experience. The wind whistled in at the edges of the windows, billowing out the heavy drapes spread across them in defense. Once the fire burned down, the downdraft in her small fireplace rattled like a loose wheel cover. The cold supper Bersham provided had soured her stomach, helped along by the news that the viscount would not under any circumstances see her or any of the Shrewsburys. She was still tossing when somewhere deep in the house a clock struck the hour of two.
The first cry sat her straight up in bed. Straining against darkness more like a blanket than a void, she listened for some sign of life within the house. Had she been dreaming?
The second cry, a man’s roar of pain, cut off as it reached its keening peak and set her teeth on edge.
“Dear Lord!” she cried as she fumbled for the flint. Someone was being murdered under this very roof.
Her hands trembled so badly that she had to strike the flint half a dozen times before striking a spark that caught the tinder. As it did, a series of long moans began. She moved the tiny flame toward the candle by the bedside, and whispered a prayer for salvation against the horror unfolding beyond her door.
She was not a coward, but as she reached for her bed shawl and stuck her feet in her slippers she wondered if opening her door would be a wise thing to do. What could she do for the poor soul suffering at the hands of an assailant? She had not even a stout stick with which to arm herself. Grabbing up the slender candlestick, she looked about for something that might serve as a better weapon.
The sound of running footsteps sounded in the attic above and she realized in relief that the servants had been roused. From her baggage she plucked a small dagger Aggie had packed for her, “To keep away them thievin’ English,” took a deep breath of courage, and headed for the door.
No sooner did she lift the latch than five young women in nightcaps forced the door open.
Peony and Alyssum flung themselves on her, almost over-setting her. “Help us! Please!”
“Yes, save us!” Laurel shrieked. “We’re about to be murdered in our beds!”
Hyacinthe, driven for once beyond her faint contempt, arrived with nightcap askew and eyes wide with fear. The candelabra she held swayed dangerously. “You must do something!”
Cynara, the last to squeeze through, closed the door again and quickly bolted it. “It’s the devil come for us!”
“Hush, hush,” Japonica commanded, though she felt as shaken as the young women looking to her for protection. She ushered them away from the door. “What did you see and hear?”
The cries started up again before any of the girls could speak. Peony wailed and tucked her face into Alyssum’s shoulder.
“Someone’s being done to death!” Laurel whispered as if afraid her voice might bring a similar doom upon her.
“Oh, miss, don’t go out!” Alyssum cried when Japonica turned back to the door.
But the desperate cries were too much for Japonica to resist. Someone was in trouble. Someone must help. That someone seemed to be her. “Wait here,” she said firmly. “Bolt the door behind me. I will return when I can.”
None of the girls protested, but Peony blurted, “Oh, miss, do be careful.”
Chapter Nine
Once the door closed behind her, her candle cast its feeble light a few paltry feet in front of her. Beyond that was blackness. Fear enveloped her for an instant, chilling her to the bone. Then a faint halo appeared at the far end of the hallway. In its glow she recognized the haggard face of the Shrewsbury butler. As she hurried toward him she saw a woman join him.
“What is going on?” she demanded of the stocking-capped Bersham.
“I cannot say, my lady.” He indicated the double doors at the end of the hall. “That’s his lordship’s room.”
“Have you been in?” she asked as moaning continued behind those closed doors.
“’Tis locked, my lady, by his lordship’s own hand,” said the woman Japonica supposed to be the caretaker’s wife. “My Jem’s gone round to try the other door.”
“Is there not another key?”
Bersham produced it. “But we’ve no right to open it against the master’s wishes.”
“No right… ?” A new cry cut through her question. She snatched up the key. “I have the right.”
She saw frightened glances pass between the butler and woman. But the plight of the man beyond the door was more compelling than their apprehension.
“He must be ill or injured. Nothing to fear in that,” she said to fortify herself, for illness was something with which she had experience. Still, her hand shook as she set the key in the lock and turned it.
The room was as dark and cold as a crypt. The fetid odor of illness reached her quickly, a sickly reek of ret
ching and chamber pot. The unpleasant smells came almost as a relief. The occupant was ill, just as she supposed.
“Wait here.” She squared her shoulders and lifted her candle to spread its light as she moved purposefully into the room. “Lord Sinclair?”
Her gaze quickly swept the space, seeking a figure in the gloomy corners. The doors of an old-fashioned cabinet bed hung open on their hinges. In the dimness beyond she spied the indistinct figure of a man who suddenly pitched forward, arms flailing. “Allah the Merciful, stop the pain!”
Japonica started. It was not just his actions but the fact that he had spoken in Persian that astonished her. She moved closer as he continued mumbling in a hodge-podge of Persian, Hindi, and obscure Arabic dialects she did not know.
“Lord Sinclair? Are you ill, my lord?” She pitched her voice at an unaccustomed octave and volume.
As if her words had shoved him, he tipped suddenly backwards onto the mattress, arched his back and dug his heels into the bedding. His face contorted in the throes of a new agony as a harrowing bellow rose up from him.
That unholy sound propelled her back a step. Perhaps she was mistaken. Perhaps he was not ill but mad, suffering a fit!
She had never dealt with a lunatic but she had heard that the mad were oftentimes dangerous and unpredictable.
A hiss of pain issued from his lips as he began to twitch. Every muscle in his body went rigid, and the tendons in his arms and neck stood out in vivid relief. Even as she reached for the dagger in her pocket he cried out, “Allah be merciful! Take my life!”
The anguish of his despair touched her more deeply than her own fear of who and what lay before her. She replaced the knife and once again cautiously approached the bed.
As the ring of her candlelight fell directly across the bed he fell silent. Though he had sounded fully alert, his eyes were shut. Was he asleep? Could any nightmare seem so real to its victim?
“Lord Sinclair?” Her voice was softer now, for she had always heard it said that startling awake a sleepwalker might kill him.
He turned his face toward her but his eyes did not open. With his black hair disordered by his thrashing and his shirtsleeves dangling, he looked more like a scarecrow than master of the manor. In the shadows his face was strangely dark and deeply furrowed, whether by age or torment she could not guess. He did not look at all like an Englishman. Was this, truly, the new viscount Shrewsbury?
All at once his chest began to move up and down again in great heaves as if his lungs were about to burst.
She quickly set down her candle and reached out to shake him by the shoulder. The risk of death could not be worse than the torment of his present state. “Wake up, sir. You are dreaming.” When he did not answer, she repeated the words in Persian. “Wake up, burra sahib. You are dreaming.”
His rigid stance collapsed and his body sank back against the bedding. After a long moment during which she held her breath, he opened his eyes. Dark with pain and unfocussed, they roamed aimlessly in their sockets until she spoke again.
“You must rest easy. You are ill.”
He turned his head sharply toward her. When his gaze found hers it was she who whispered a frightened, “Bismallah!”
Golden eyes stared up at her, eyes she could never forget, eyes that had blazed through her every waking thought for months and still invaded her dreams when she was too tired to resist. The eyes of the Hind Div.
For the space of three heartbeats she felt herself swept back by a gale of emotion to another bed in another darkened room in a land far away. Those eyes had taunted and teased and beguiled and challenged and seduced her into the first act of recklessness in her once ordinary life.
The cold dank world receded until the fragrance of incense and exotic perfume seemed to fill the room. A warm breeze carried the faint pluck of a harp and shiver of a tambourine …
“No!” In panic she brought her hands up to her eyes. This must not be!
“What’s wrong, my lady?”
The flat common speech in prosaic English spun her about.
In the doorway stood Bersham and the caretaker’s wife. The world suddenly righted itself. Her mind was playing tricks on her. This could not be the Hind Div. This was Lord Sinclair, the new viscount.
“Nothing, nothing’s wrong,” she said.
Nothing’s wrong. The words reverberated through her mind. But her pulse and her coinage did not believe her head. Both galloped away, spurred by the shock, while her legs trembled with the urge to flee. Why had he spoken to her in Persian?
A moan from the bed sent her spinning in place.
“Not possible,” she said under her breath, and forced herself to take a step toward the bed. Yet, if she wanted to know the truth she had to look upon him a second time. She picked up her candle and approached again.
She paused just beyond his grasp and stared, her gaze as shy and alert as an antelope at the edge of a clearing. The longer she stared the less certain she became of her own instincts.
She had not really seen the Hind Div’s face. Almost any kind of countenance might have been hidden by his cheetah markings. Yet there were differences. The Hind Div’s skin was bronzed by the desert sun. Now that she held the candle closer, dissolving the shadows, she realized she had been mistaken about this man’s coloring. He was as pallid as the sheet on which his head rested. Distorted by pain, the shape of his mouth was nothing like the one that had offered her such stunning kisses she could feel them in the pit of her stomach. She remembered the raven’s wing blackness of flowing tresses. A strip of silver as thick as her thumb plowed through Lord Sinclair’s short dark hair.
The need to deny fed her first judgments ever more excuse and contrast. Many Englishmen, military officers mostly, passed through Persia every year. The cleverer often learned the language of their regional posting. Unremarkable that he should know a few phrases. The man lying there so weak and pitiful was nothing like the all-powerful and dazzling being she remembered. The color of his eyes was coincidence. In every other way he was nothing like the man in whose bed she had lain captive to the rapture of his passion.
She was nearly convinced when he opened his eyes again and met her gaze. The jolt of his golden regard threw her into a panic as strong as ever. Could anyone who had witnessed it confuse that gilded stare? Who was this man!
To her amazement, he was first to look away. “Ah, peri, you come to torment me.”
Was he still dreaming? She could not be certain. “I am no fairy, burra sahib.” She reached out slowly and lightly skimmed her fingers across his sweaty brow. “Feel my touch. We are both real.” And in being real, he could not be the Hind Div, she added in her thoughts.
“I am in such torment….” He broke off to swallow. This time when he looked at her his red-rimmed eyes seemed to see past her into a realm she could not imagine. “No one can help me.”
“As Allah wills it I will try.” She did not know why they continued to speak in Persian but the language seemed to comfort him.
He tried to rise up on one elbow, the slow awkward movements of a man in pain. “I must escape!” He said the words so softly she was not certain she heard him correctly.
“Escape?” The influence of the dream must still hold his mind prisoner. “But this is your home.”
“Lies!” Sweaty and shaking, he collapsed upon the bed.
The instinct to comfort drove her to rest a hand on his shoulder. She felt under her fingertips the hard muscle and bone beneath skin baked by fever. “I do not lie. You are ill, that is what causes your confusion.”
For a moment the light in his eyes wavered like a gutted candle, his life force no more substantial than a flicker of flame in the wind. “If you would truly help me, peri, then stop the pain. Even if you must take my life, I beg you, end my misery!”
The hopelessness of his plea shocked her.
“My lady?”
Frowning, she turned her head toward the do
or where Bersham and the housekeeper still lurked. “Lord Sinclair is ill, Bersham. Fever has made him delirious,” she said loudly. She directed her next words to the woman. “I need a basin of very warm water and soap. And you may tell the young ladies in my room to return to bed. It is only illness that awakened us all. Come in, Bersham, I will need your assistance.”
“Very good, my lady.”
“Arrack!” the viscount whispered hoarsely.
Bersham frowned as he neared the restless man on the bed. “What is he saying, my lady?”
“He is asking for strong spirits,” Japonica answered with a bit of asperity in her tone. Now that she thought of it, the smell of wine was strong in the room. “Does he often drink himself into a stupor?”
Bersham answered with the tact of one who knew that the viscount was now his employer. “His lordship did enjoy the benefits of the cellar today.”
“Perhaps too much so,” Japonica answered as she noticed the claret bottles on the floor. This man might well be suffering the well-known terrors of a dissipated roue. Yet that would not explain the fever. Something else, surely, is wrong. “He has sweated through his shirt We must change it before he catches a chill.”
“Very good, ma’am.”
But as the butler reached to unbutton his shirt, Lord Sinclair suddenly lashed out at him. “Keep away!”
Bersham gazed uncertainly at Japonica. “If you hold his shoulders I will do it.”
Before she could slip the first button free, the viscount rose up with a roar of rage. He knocked Bersham to his knees with a blow from his right forearm and grabbed Japonica’s wrist in his left hand and pulled her down so close that she could feel his hot breath upon her face. “So, you have come back, Bahia, to kill me!”