Claire

by A. S. Harrington

  She stared unseeing at her slender fingers curled over the copper tub, instead seeing her father’s strong, unmistakable hand, and the letter that she had discovered unfinished in the drawer of her father’s writing table in that pleasant pink house in Faro the week after he died. With that short note had been pages and pages of— of gossip and rumor, of conversations, of plans and reports. Unposted; she did not know how many of those small packets of information had gone from the pleasant pink house in Faro, the unlikely center of the crossroads of war. The address on the packet was to Varian Drew in care of the English consulate at Madras, India, and its contents were perfectly damning.

  She did not know how they had managed it, but her father and her husband had been . . . spying for the French.

  The exquisite face stared at her motionless hand a moment longer; the blue eyes closed suddenly, in a moment of trembling, uncontrolled anguish. Caro deus, she had wept enough. It had been a year, and she had sobbed, and cried, and grieved, and there was nothing that could erase that sickening feeling that washed over her when she realized that her heart— the whole of her soul— was soon to be destroyed by her own volition, by her own hand. Caro deus; would it have been too much to ask to have come home and fallen into Varian Drew’s arms and told him that she loved him, to have known nothing of it, to have been left ignorant of her husband’s guilt and her father’s culpability?

  At the quiet knock, her eyes flew instantly to that awful door as it opened slightly. Claire, closing her eyes once again, let loose a stream of Portuguese.

  “Consuela, the water’s still lovely and warm. Another few minutes?”

  But the voice was deep and very, very English. “Claire— ”

  The eyes were instantly open. “What is it?”

  “I’ve— I hope you don’t mind; I shan’t stay but for a moment,” he said, opening the door and coming inside, and stopping abruptly when he saw her in her bath, her head all that was visible above a froth of sweet-smelling foam that was as heady as a glimpse of heaven. He recovered himself immediately; he saw doubt and a little trepidation and a great deal of discomfort in her gaze, and something else, too, of which he was not quite certain. He came inside and set down a box on her dressing table. “I brought something for you to wear tonight, you know, and I must go out for an hour or two, and I only wanted that you should have it first. You don’t mind?”

  Claire’s clear blue eyes watched him uncertainly as he crossed the room to lay down the box and then retreated. She gave him that expressionless smile that did not go past her lips. “You’re very kind to think of me, Lord Banning; I— ”

  “Varian! I am determined that you shan’t start out by reminding me of my very advanced age,” he said, with a glimmer of amusement that reminded her suddenly of how he had been so long ago.

  “Varian,” she repeated, as she had whispered to herself in that pristine chamber on hot, unbearable nights, in that pretty pink house in Faro beneath the almond trees, as she drifted into her dreams. “Thank you. I shall wear it with pleasure.”

  “With mine as well,” he said, and the door closed, and with it, her cerulean eyes. In a little while, Consuela appeared to rinse her hair and comb it until it was dried, and then coil it around her head in the style of the Portuguese bellezas. When Elena came inside with her gown, perfectly pressed, Claire pointed to the box and directed the maid to open it.

  Diamonds lay arranged on white satin inside the box, fiery blue-white diamonds, twenty-five perfect stones arranged in a parure fit for a queen, the largest in the center, with deep blue sapphires and silver encasing the shimmering diamonds in the most delicate and exquisite manner. The two women gasped; Claire held out her hand and closed the clasp around her neck, fastened the earrings, and then raised her eyes to peer, a little defiantly, at herself in the mirror.

  It was as if Varian Drew had memorized the color of her eyes and found the gems to match. As if he had had the necklace made for her.

  Claire stared at herself in the mirror for a moment, and then drew in a breath, put on that faint, impersonal smile, and rose to go downstairs.

  For some incomprehensible reason Varian Drew had been listening for her; he had sat the last quarter of an hour in his library, a glass of sherry in his hand, immaculate in evening breeches and hose and coat, and had listened for Claire’s step on the stair. He heard it just as Stiles opened the door to Tony Merrill, and with a small sigh, he stood and went out into the hall, throwing his friend a speaking glance as Stiles took his rain-flecked coat and hat.

  “You could have warned me, you know,” he said, in a low voice, hearing that rustle at the top of the stairs and eyeing his old friend in a most unfriendly manner, “that my wife was come home a goddess,” and when Tony smiled, a bit ruefully, Drew turned, and raised his eyes to watch her descend that staircase over which he had gone to so much trouble, those long, hot years in India, to buy back. In that moment, it all seemed very much worth it, to see a whisper of ivory silk at the top of the stairs, and then to watch, quite unable to look anywhere else, that graceful lady coming toward him.

  If she had been beautiful in her traveling dress after having spent all day in a carriage, there were no words left to describe the lady who came slowly down the grand staircase of Banning House for the first time. She was dressed in watered ivory silk and Spanish lace, with her gleaming black hair piled in a crown above her head and a faint blush lying pink against the white of her dress, with her shoulders almost bare except for those sapphires and diamonds, and long gloves that reached past her elbows. There had never been a woman such as this, surely—

  “My dear Claire, how delightful to see you again,” he heard Merrill saying as his friend trod toward the stairs and took her hand and kissed it, while Varian stood speechless and motionless.

  He stood very still for a moment longer, recalling the energy that had come from somewhere the morning he killed Balaghat, after the tiger had ripped four perfectly parallel, deep slashes from his shoulder to his thigh, and he had thought in that instant that the damned beast had won again, and that he would die, after all, not in a debtor’s prison, but rich as a nabob, in the dirt of India. And then he had called on his last reserve of strength; he had somehow found his knife again, scrambling past those deadly claws, and had driven it home between those lashing paws and that mouth of bared fangs, never faltering, knowing that it was his last chance, indeed, a chance past what should have been his last chance.

  And he had won.

  “Darling,” he said quietly and came to take her hand in his, and raised it, suddenly intent on nothing more than the simple gesture of carrying a woman’s hand, not too ardently, to his lips. When he had tucked her hand under his arm, he had seen instant cognition in Tony Merrill’s eyes. “You have done the impossible; you have managed to outshine that set of diamonds,” he said casually, and she laughed calmly, as though she were in the habit of parrying just that sort of comment without the least thought, and with a final, slight smile to his friend Tony Merrill, they went in to dinner.

  They came home at midnight from the Globe, where they had seen a very excellent production of Twelfth Night. Tony Merrill declined to come back to Cavendish Square for a cognac because, he claimed, he was used to keeping country hours, and told them goodnight instead at the theatre and called a hack to his house in Portman Square.

  So it was they came home alone, in silence. Varian thought perhaps she was tired, for she had finished a long and arduous journey. But when the carriage stopped, Claire opened her eyes without speaking, accepted his hand, and allowed him to lead her inside.

  “Shall you have a cognac with me? Or do you wish to go straight up to bed? I know you are tired,” he said quietly, after Stiles had taken their things and locked the door and gone away.

  “Yes, I am,” she admitted, without looking at him, and smiled slightly in the light of the single lamp burning at the top of the stairs. “Perhaps another evening. Goodnight,” and nodded politely.


  He did not release her hand from his arm, and perhaps he should have; he stared at her for a moment, with a carefully shielded blue gaze and a small, encouraging smile, and then he said, “You are certain that you’re married to me?”

  His abrupt teasing brought forth some vestige of that child he recalled so well, laughing at him by Merrill’s lake. “No; I shan’t believe you unless you bring out your cane.”

  “It’s long ago burnt,” he said lightly. The blue eyes looked down into her face. “Rather a gruesome story. Shall I offend you if I tell you how?”

  “Why should I be offended?”

  “Because it has to do with that tiger skin in my library,” he said. Without thinking he led her casually across the hallway, toward the stairs, and without demur, without resistance, she allowed him to lead her upstairs. “After I killed him, the women at Vellore skinned him and cut up the meat for their children, whom he had been eating, and then the men— six of them had died that month trying to kill him— took his bones and built a fire of them. I threw my cane at the top of the pyre and bled all over— ” He halted at the top of the stairs, suddenly conscious her small intake of breath, of a tensing of her hand over his arm. She was staring at him with her eyes unreadable in the darkness of the upstairs hallway. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have told you. It’s a rather gory tale.”

  “It was— two years ago, in— in June,” she said, almost inaudibly.

  Drew’s eyes narrowed as he gazed down at her. “Yes, it was. Did you hear of it?”

  “I— ” Her eyes were shielded against him instantly. “I must have. I— ”

  “Claire— ”

  The sapphires rose and fell on that flawless skin in the faint light of a lamp from her room as they came down the hallway and halted. She was shaking, and it struck him forcibly in that instant that were she as weak as a kitten, all his remaining strength was a puny force against her power; he was no longer capable of withstanding her. If she was a tigress, then his last chance had deserted him in the hallway below, for she had certainly won.

  “Claire— ” He drifted the barest whisper of a kiss over her smooth cheek in an instant of longing, of physical desire so tangible that he felt its breath. Then her face was turned slightly; her lips, those tiny dimples on either side of her mouth, were beneath his, warm, soft, delicious, sweet-scented breath, a taste of nectar on her tongue.

  Dear God.

  It was Varian’s last rational thought for a long moment, as he gathered that exquisite creature into his arms and closed his hand around that small waist, and laid his fingers along the curve of her back. Claire came to him unreservedly, passionately, as though she were as overcome as he. Somehow he found the hollow of scented skin beneath her earring, and then that velvet-smooth crevice of her shoulder. The diamonds were gone; they came inside her chambers, past the small parlor to the burnished bed-chamber beyond, a single lamp lit, and the door closed against the world.

  With a fainting madness surrounding them, trailing ivory silk and lace over the carpets, Varian Drew kissed his wife in that first fire of discovery, discovery that this dark-haired, blue-eyed innocent he had married, quite unknowingly, wanted his embrace, wanted his mouth and his tongue, with a passion that left him breathless.

  He drifted his lips behind the silk as he slid it tenderly from her skin; he burned at the touch of her slender fingers, eager and sensual, as she drew away the white linen of his shirt. Finally she stood before him in creamy, bare splendor, like shimmering ivory in the lamplight. With light hands over her shoulders, he brought her into his embrace, until her arms locked around his neck in that first bittersweet anguish of touching. There was a tiny gasp as he felt her fingers trail over those four perfectly parallel scars that ran white down the golden skin of his chest, and she drew away slightly, those vivid blue eyes large on his face.

  “I thought you had died,” Claire said suddenly, staring at him in the lamplight; “I knew, you know, by— by whatever means, and I thought,” she repeated simply, that square chin trembling faintly as she lowered her gaze, “that you had died. I was sure of it.”

  “How,” he asked, “did you know?”

  “A feeling,” she whispered, and shaking her head, as if it were impossible to explain; she clung to him suddenly, and there was hardly power in him to draw breath at the tremor that ran through her, and likewise through him.

  Desire.

  What word shall there be for that exquisite learning of her body, that longing torment that raged over him, that raced like a torrent over them both? What pleasure can be assigned to teaching her of his passion, to that feather-light seduction of her hands, to her whisper of delight in his ear, in an exquisite tempting of his own hunger? What yearning can describe the mastering of his own impatience, and what agony the devouring of his heart in that last acquiescence as she came to him completely: his wife. He was halved, he was whole, he was torn asunder, he was complete in the same instant that she cried out, once, in pain.

  “Claire— darling Claire, I did not mean to hurt you,” he whispered, willing himself into stillness, holding her gently in his arms after that first ecstasy of entering her, and then rolling off her slightly, easing his weight onto his elbow, smoothing her hair with his hand. “I should stop.”

  “No, it was just an instant,” she whispered against his ear and then kissed it. “It’s necessary.” She found his mouth and kissed him. “Varian, please— don’t go.”

  “No,” he said slowly, and moved once, slowly, agonizing over the effort of moderation, and then withdrew slowly from her.

  “Varian— ” she said instantly, her eyes large with dismay. “You didn’t like it.”

  “Oh, no, darling, quite, quite, the opposite,” he said, on a small rueful laugh. “But I can see that you don’t like it just yet.”

  “I do,” she lied.

  “Perhaps you shall like this,” he said, and laid her gently against the pillows and trailed his mouth over her shoulders, across those perfect pink nipples, down the small flat stomach, his hands following. She moved once, involuntarily, on a small gasp of pleasure as he drifted his hands over those slender hips and gently smoothed apart her thighs, and then settled his tongue to tease her into a surprised, eager awakening. He was patient; he felt her hands, a little timidly, come to rest on his head, and then her fingers splayed themselves in his hair, softly, exploring her first excursion into her own womanhood at the insistent rhythm of his tongue. At last she began to shake; with a small involuntary arching of her back, she cried out, and he did not stop, holding those narrow hips against him until she had slowed and stopped, on an exquisite sigh of fulfillment.

  So when he came inside her again, slowly, sensually, inside that warm soft fullness of her, all she said was, “Oh dear God, I had no idea,” and met his motion with her own, slowly at first, until he was sure of her.

  And Varian, god help him, had no idea either, as it turned out, what making love to his wife Claire for the first time would be like. He clung to her in that final shattering explosion of himself into her, breathless and blinded by the force of it, until he came to rest, spent and exhausted, over her.

  And Claire— Claire was crying.

  “My beautiful darling wife, my heart, don’t weep,” he said softly against her ear; he lay there for a moment, still catching his breath, with her warm and supple beside him, enclosed possessively in his embrace, and nuzzled her shoulder. Balaghat had left him with more strength, after drawing from him a bucketful of blood and a quantity of flesh.

  Her voice in his ear was inaudible. “Claire?” Perhaps it was those slender hands pushing at his shoulders, or the way her head turned away from his kiss; a horrible monster closed up his throat, and all he could do was croak out her name. “Claire— ”

  “You’re a beast,” was what she had said. That low, slicing whisper of revulsion cut into him like a hundred Balaghats. “I hate you; go away! Get out!”

  “Claire— What is it? My God— ”


  Tearing at him, she sobbed, struggling away from him, in a frenzy of whispers that he could hardly hear for the sudden roaring in his head. He released her; he released himself, that final meeting of himself, whole, within a heart that he had glimpsed behind those long lashes and had touched, briefly, in that small cry of distress as she had seen his scarred chest.

  Somehow, in another world, he escaped, away, away from that anguished voice that he was not, in the end, certain was hers at all.

  chapter two

  The Deceit

  What had she done?

  The rain stopped in the night; the dawn brought the breathless sunlit, sun-gilded feel of spring that sends lovers straight outdoors towards bowers of honeysuckle and rose.

  It sent Claire Drew downstairs to the breakfast parlor with a small headache and a calm, serene, unreadable face as her husband glanced up from the midst of his paper, with what he hoped was an admirable self-control.

  “Good morning, Varian,” she said pleasantly, pulling her table linen into her lap as Stiles poured out her tea.

  “Good morning, darling,” he said, without thinking. It occurred to him instantly the words were out of his mouth that he ought not to have said it, but he had taken one look at that pink-and-white morning gown against the rich dark coils of her hair and the glow of her skin and the words had been spoken, quite apart from any volition of his.

  “You’re up early,” she observed.

  “Yes,” he said, and folded up his paper and put it away. “Bad habit; I have always risen at six. Care for some kidneys?”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” she said politely, with that smile that he had seen often yesterday, that lovely, expressionless smile that did not touch her eyes. “Tea and toast for me, Stiles,” she said, and the butler bowed and nodded and went away.

  She sipped her tea, ignoring his eyes on her face.

  “I don’t suppose we could talk about it?” he began, reaching over for the tea pot and forcing himself to be casual, off-hand enough to pour himself out another cup and raise it to his lips.