“Those rooms will be fine,” she said.
“You’re not another uncle, are you?” Chelsea piped up.
“No, missy, I ain’t. Name’s Jim,” he replied.
“Thank goodness. One uncle at a time is quite enough to be going with, don’t you think?” Chelsea asked, causing Julian, behind them, to choke on a laugh he dared not utter, for fear of hurting the child’s feelings.
Anna, back stiffening, moved on through the door. Over her shoulder the child looked back at her new relative.
“I like you, Uncle Julian,” she said. “And my mama does too. Don’t you, Mama?”
Anna, murmuring something unintelligible, fled.
XVIII
It was well past midnight when the scream shattered the silence. Anna sat bolt upright in bed, needing no more than a few blinking seconds to realize what was happening. As that first shattering shriek was followed by another and another in a seemingly never-ending wave, she leaped from her bed, grabbed her wrapper from where it lay across the foot of the mattress, and flew from the room, fumbling to drag the wrapper on over her nightdress as she ran.
Chelsea was having another nightmare.
They’d come frequently right after Paul had died, frightening Anna with their intensity. At Gordon Hall they’d come less often, and since their return to Srinagar Chelsea had had none at all. Anna had hoped that they were a thing of the past as her daughter adjusted to her father’s loss.
Clearly her hope had been premature.
The door to Chelsea’s room was open. Kirti was already there, hovering over the child, her face anguished. An oil lamp sputtered and hissed on a table near the bed, casting an uncertain circle of illumination. By its light, Anna took in the all-too-familiar sight: Chelsea was sitting bolt upright, her arms straight down at her sides with her fists clenched and pushing against the mattress, her eyes huge and her mouth stretched wide with the screams that pealed forth.
Anna knew from grim experience that, although the child’s eyes were open, she saw nothing beyond the nightmare in which she was trapped. There was no reaching her in this state; the nightmare must be allowed to run its course. Then Chelsea, exhausted, would fall back into a heavy sleep. In the morning she would have no recollection of the events of the night.
“Memsahib, it comes again!” Kirti’s voice was strained.
“It’s all right, Kirti. I’ll deal with it,” Anna said in a quiet voice, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside her daughter. Even as Anna reached out to smooth back the tangled skeins of the child’s hair, the screams began to lessen in intensity.
“Shh, chicken. Mama’s here,” Anna murmured. To her surprise, Chelsea’s eyes focused. She was suddenly clearly aware of Anna’s presence. “I had a bad dream,” she said.
“I know, darling. Do you want to talk about it?”
Chelsea buried her head in the hollow between Anna’s neck and shoulder. “It was Raja Singha—he was standing over me. He was looking at me, Mama!”
Anna could feel her daughter trembling. “That doesn’t sound so very dreadful.” Her voice was deliberately light.
“It was. It was! He looked so—mean. As if he hated me.” Chelsea lifted her head from Anna’s shoulder and looked beseechingly at her mother. “And he said, ’Soon, little missy.’ ”
The quavering voice touched Anna to the heart. She gathered her daughter closer, pulled her head down to pillow on her shoulder again, and began to rock her back and forth.
“It was only a bad dream,” she said soothingly. “It’s all right. Go back to sleep.”
“Why does Raja Singha hate me?” Chelsea was already relaxing against Anna. Anna’s arms tightened around her daughter.
“He doesn’t hate you, Chelsea. He’s very fond of you. Bad dreams aren’t real.”
“This one seemed real.”
“They always do. Shh, now. Close your eyes.” Anna brushed a kiss against Chelsea’s temple.
“Sing to me, Mama. Like you used to.” The little girl’s voice was drowsy, her body heavy and trusting. Remembering how she used to sing Chelsea to sleep before Paul’s death, Anna felt her heart clench. She hadn’t done so in all the months since—how could she have let her own grief so blind her to her daughter’s needs? With a catch in her throat, Anna began to hum the long-familiar strains of a lullaby. Then the words came back to her, and she sang them softly, rocking Chelsea back and forth all the while. In a short time Chelsea’s even breathing told Anna that she was asleep. Carefully she eased the child down onto her pillow. Chelsea sighed and turned onto her side. Her lashes fluttered once, twice, then closed again. Instants later it was clear she was deep asleep.
“What the hell … ?” The deep voice behind her caused Anna to jump. Julian Chase, clad only in a pair of breeches that had, from the evidence of partially fastened buttons, been hastily pulled on, stood with one arm raised, leaning against the doorjamb as he surveyed the room. Anna got a blinding impression of bronzed muscles and black hair before she dragged her eyes away. Standing, her movements deliberately unhurried, she pulled the bed coverings over her sleeping child, then straightened.
“You’ll stay with her, Kirti?” she asked the old ayah quietly.
“Of a certainty, memsahib.”
Anna started to move away, then hesitated. “Kirti, no one’s been in here, have they? Not Raja Singha?” The question was so ridiculous that Anna felt foolish asking it, but Chelsea had seemed so convinced. Perhaps Raja Singha had popped in just to check on the child. Although, to Anna’s knowledge, he had never done such a thing before.
“No, memsahib No one.” Kirti glanced away. When she looked back, there was a faint shadow in her almond-shaped eyes. Was it fear?
“Is anything the matter?” Anna asked sharply. The troubling expression vanished.
“What could be the matter, memsahib? You need not worry over the little missy. I will stay with her. She will not be alone.”
Anna’s vague suspicions were banished. She knew that Kirti loved Chelsea as her own child. The situation was exactly what it seemed. Chelsea had simply suffered another of her recurring bad dreams. In fact, it was probably a good sign that the child had awakened and been able to recall this one. Surely it meant the nightmares were losing some of their power.
“Watch over her, Kirti,” Anna said softly. Dismissing the idea that Chelsea’s dream had any basis in reality, she turned back toward the doorway—and Julian Chase.
“I’m sorry you were awakened,” she said stiffly, doing her best to ignore his half-naked state as Julian stood aside to let her pass. “Chelsea had a nightmare.”
“Good God.” He took one final look at the tiny child now sleeping peacefully in her bed as Anna pulled the door shut behind her. “It sounded like someone was being murdered. Does she have them often?”
“From time to time. Since Paul died. Chelsea was very attached to her papa.”
“Poor little mite.” He was frowning, his brows drawn together over eyes that looked black in the shadowed hall. Only the light that spilled through the open door of the green room, which he had claimed for his own use, and the tiny fairy light at one end of the hall saved the hall from the tomblike darkness of the rest of the house.
“Yes.” Anna was all too conscious of how very alone they were in the night. He was so close she could feel the heat of his body, smell his indefinable scent. As Ruby had predicted, his chest was covered with a thick mat of black hair. Above it his shoulders were broad and heavy with muscle. His upper arms bulged in clear evidence of the strength she had only been able to guess at before. His abdomen above the barely fastened breeches looked hard as a board.
In a flash Anna remembered the unspeakable things he had done to her—had it been that very afternoon?—and the wantonness of her own response. Just thinking of how he had made her feel caused her throat to go dry. Her lips parted to suck in air, her eyes traveled once more of their own volition over that mesmerizing bare chest, and it entered her mind to
wonder breathlessly if he was still—how had he put it?—”caigy.”
Dear Lord forgive her, she was!
At the realization her heart pounded, and her breath caught in her throat. She could not, would not let him sense how subject she was to the base hungers of her own body. He would take instant advantage if he knew. Already he was watching her like a beast eyeing prey.…
“I used to have nightmares myself,” he said.
“You?” She blinked at him, so surprised that she momentarily forgot all about his disturbing state of undress.
Julian nodded. “I was a child once, you know.”
“That’s difficult to believe.” Despite her discomfort in his presence, Anna had to smile at her mental image of Julian as a little boy. “What were they about?”
“The nightmares?” He shrugged. Anna got the impression that he was being deliberately casual about something that had once bothered him a great deal. “About being in the Royal Navy, mostly.”
“Were you in the navy?” she asked, suddenly fascinated.
He nodded, then grinned. “Though not by choice, you may be sure.”
“Tell me about it. How old were you?”
Julian leaned a shoulder against the wall and folded his arms over his chest. “Eight when I went in. Ten when I ran away from it. In between, I was at sea for two hellish years.”
“Were you impressed?” Stories of boys stolen away from their homes and forced to serve in the Royal Navy were common in England.
Julian shook his head. “Not exactly. My loving father simply handed me over.”
Anna’s eyes widened. “Your father—you don’t mean Lord Ridley?”
“The very same. The grandmother who had raised me died, and my uncle—my mother’s brother—took me to Gordon Hall. The gypsies—my mother’s family were gypsies—had no use for me. They despised me because I had Anglo blood. And, of course, there were the emeralds. My uncle knew my father had them, so he thought to trade me for a fortune in jewels. The emeralds once belonged to my mother’s family, you see; my father originally acquired them through her. Unfortunately for my uncle, he had no notion of just how ruthless my father could be. The old man pretended to agree, accepted me, handed over the emeralds—and then the next day my uncle’s body was discovered not far from Gordon Hall. The emeralds, as we both know, somehow made their way back into the old man’s possession. As for me, his unwanted embarrassment of a son—he hadn’t known I existed until I showed up at Gordon Hall—I had nearly a week to imagine that I’d found a home. Then, without any warning, his lordship had me carted off to London where I—poor trusting child—was escorted aboard a ship. The servant who’d brought me to London disappeared. Then I discovered that I’d been bound over to serve as cabin boy on a Royal Navy vessel. There were two cabin boys when we left London. The other didn’t live through the voyage.”
He stopped then, took in Anna’s wide-eyed gaze, and grinned suddenly. “Oh, don’t look so horrified. Despite a few less-than-pleasant experiences, I survived, and very handily, too.”
“But you had nightmares,” Anna said softly.
He studied her for a moment in silence, his eyes inscrutable as they moved over her face. “Are you by any chance feeling sorry for me?” he asked, amusement lacing his voice. “That’s rather like the lamb pitying the wolf, isn’t it?”
He caught her hand and carried it to his mouth before Anna knew what he was about. As he pressed his warm lips against her knuckles, Anna suddenly, vividly, became aware of how vulnerable she was. Just out of bed, she was clad only in her thin nightgown and wrapper, while Julian was positively indecent. And his mouth on her hand was sending shivers clear down to her toes.
“Frightened, little lamb?” he asked, turning her hand over so that he could press his mouth to her palm.
For a moment longer Anna stood transfixed by the dizzying effect of his mouth. Then, recovering herself, she clenched her hand into a fist and jerked it from his hold.
He watched her mockingly, but made no further attempt to touch her.
“Good night,” she managed to say with a modicum of dignity. But when she would have moved toward her own room, his hand came out to close around her elbow, stopping her.
“Anna.…”
Even that innocuous touch unsettled her. It was all she could do not to jerk her arm away.
“What is it?” she asked breathlessly, refusing to lift her gaze higher than his black-bristled chin as she battled her shameless inner demons. Even through the layers of her wrapper and nightdress his hand seemed to burn her arm.
“In case you’re worried, I wanted to set your mind at ease: I’ve decided against selling Srinagar.”
Her gaze flew to his, her eyes widening with surprise.
“Why?” she asked.
He looked suddenly uncomfortable. The hand on her arm tightened before being removed.
“I’d not turn you and your daughter out of your home,” he said, and there was a gruff undertone to the words. “You need have no fear about that.”
“What about the emeralds?” It sounded too good to be true, and she was wary.
He grimaced. “I’ll find some other way to get them back. And when I do, I’ll leave, and you may have this benighted place to yourself.”
She was silent searching his face as she weighed his words. He looked both very handsome and overwhelmingly masculine standing over her with his head slightly bent to make his words more accessible to someone with her lack of inches. The distant light behind him cast blue-black glints in the rough disorder of his hair. His eyes gleamed at her, his skin glowed tautly bronze.
To her dismay, Anna found herself almost liking him. The sensation frightened her, and she vowed to fight it for all she was worth.
“Then I certainly hope you recover the emeralds with all speed,” she said curtly, and, turning her back on him, she walked with regal dignity along the hall to her room.
With every step she took she could feel his gaze boring into her back.
XIX
Over the next few weeks Srinagar was positively inundated with callers. Clearly Charles, or possibly Hillmore, had spread the word that Anna’s brother-in-law had arrived from England. Hungry for news from home, whole families came to visit. Anna entertained them, smiling falsely while she claimed Julian as a near relation, which she supposed, if the story of his birth was true, in a convoluted way he was. It was almost impossible to imagine that he could be Paul’s half-brother. From his height to his coloring to his blatant masculinity, Julian was as different from Paul as it was possible to be.
The morning after Chelsea’s nightmare, he had questioned her closely about her disposal of the emeralds. Anna had told him what she remembered of the vendor and his location, relieved that he didn’t repeat his original demand that she accompany him to identify the purchaser. Later that day Julian had left, only to return a few days later, empty-handed. The vendor had evidently pulled up stakes and moved on.
After that he and Jim were gone much of the time, traveling to various cities both separately and together in search of the emeralds. Anna got the feeling that it was not their monetary value that interested him, but she had made up her mind not to question him, indeed not to allow herself to think of him as other than a not-very-welcome house-guest.
He had revealed a little of his past to her the night of Chelsea’s nightmare, and she had found herself first pitying and then liking him. To learn more about him might soften her toward him even more, arid that could be dangerous to her peace of mind. Already she had to remind herself that he was no gentleman, but a rogue and a thief and very likely a womanizer as well. If her wayward body sometimes had other notions about him, why, she ignored its contrary urgings. She was a widow, a mother, and a lady born and bred. She would not allow herself to pant after Julian Chase!
Sometimes, when Julian was not off on what Anna secretly had come to think of as his quest, he would join her and her callers in the parlor for afternoon tea. In
his absence, of course, she was obliged to answer questions concerning him, which could occasionally get tricky as there was little she actually knew about him. At least, very little she could admit to. But when he was home, the situation was, if anything, worse.
Antoinette Noack, the land-rich widow of a cinnamon nabob, was perched beside her on the sofa one afternoon about a fortnight after Julian’s appearance, taking ladylike sips of tea while she pumped her hostess for information about the new arrival. Across the room sat Helen Chasen with her eighteen-year-old daughter Eleanor. Eleanor was conversing with Charles, while Helen looked on benignly. With her nut-brown curls and wide brown eyes, Eleanor was lovely. She was also, as an only child whose father owned a vast cinnamon plantation, extremely eligible. But suitable men were rather thin on the ground in Ceylon. Like Mrs. Noack, Eleanor and her mother had hastened to Srinagar to look over Anna’s brother-in-law as soon as they heard about his arrival.
It was all Anna could do not to groan as Mrs. Noack asked yet another question about Julian.
“Your dear brother is so charming—how is it that he isn’t married? Or, oh dear, perhaps I’ve been insensitive and he’s widowed, or …”
Anna, who’d been enduring similar intrusive inquiries for almost a quarter of an hour, swallowed the sudden urge to invent for Julian a wife and five kiddies at home in England. “My brother-in-law has had too much success with females to choose one in particular with whom to spend his life, I believe. I hesitate to say it of such a near relation, but I fear he is something of a rake.” She took a sip of tea, hoping that, in her own small way, she might have thrust a spoke in Julian’s wheel. No such luck, of course. Mrs. Noack’s gray eyes positively sparkled at the thought.
“A rake? Surely not! Rather an extremely charming gentleman.”
“How kind you are to see it that way.” Anna’s response verged on dryness.
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