by Mia Marlowe
Quinn called her name, but she could no more have stopped her palm from covering the diamond than she could stop her heart from beating.
As it happened, that was something Baaghh kaa kkhuun intended to do for her.
“Viola! Viola!” Quinn would have leaped across the table if he’d thought it would get him to her side faster. He shoved the French count across the room. “Out of my way.”
She was lying on the floor in a heap, having collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Her eyes were open, but unseeing, her face pale as parchment. Her body was limp except for one tightly clenched fist. Quinn dug the cursed diamond out of her curled fingers and slammed it back on the table, not caring where the damn thing went.
She sucked in a rasping breath and blinked three times.
Quinn clutched her to his chest.
She whimpered. “Away. Need to go. Away.”
Quinn scooped her up. She trembled violently. “Somebody send for a physician to tend my wife.”
He strode from the room and took the stairs two at a time up to their chamber. By the time he laid her on the bed, she’d stopped trembling but her breath still came in shuddering gasps. Quinn lit the candle on the nightstand and its light wavered uncertainly over her drawn features.
Neville rushed in, dragging behind him a man who claimed to be the ambassador’s doctor. For once, Quinn was grateful to see Beauchamp.
The physician checked Viola’s breathing with a mirror held beneath her nostrils. It fogged reassuringly. He put an ear to her chest.
“Is your wife increasing, my lord?” the doctor asked.
Quinn blinked in surprise. “I don’t know. We haven’t been together long.”
“It doesn’t take long,” the doctor said with a wry grin.
“Could that cause her to . . .”
He had no words to describe the strange scene he’d just witnessed. It was as if she were overpowered by the diamond, as if it took her, and she was powerless to resist.
“Women who’re bearing do all sorts of odd things,” the doctor said. “I’ve seen them keel right over and nothing to be done.”
“You can’t help her?”
“I didn’t say that.” The doctor reached for one of Viola’s hands, but she pulled it away from him. “What’s amiss here?”
Quinn took her hand and she allowed him to uncurl her fingers. The center of her palm was red and blistered around an angry mark roughly the size of the diamond.
“She’s burned herself on something and it’s set off some ill humors, no doubt.” The physician rummaged in his bag and drew out a blood encrusted lancet set. “Bleeding always steadies a body.”
“No,” Viola said weakly, cradling her hand. “It doesn’t even hurt. No bleeding. Quinn, please.”
“You heard the lady,” he said. One of his friends in India was an army surgeon who was fastidious about the cleanliness of his saws and lancets. It made sense to Quinn not to mingle Viola’s blood with remnants of the doctor’s previous ill patients. “What else can we do, doctor?”
“I suppose I could mix up a purge for her, if her ladyship will deign to listen to my advice,” he said loftily. “After all, Lord Cowley trusts me implicitly.”
“Then he must be fonder of chamber pots than I,” Viola said, rolling on her side so she faced away from the doctor. “I need rest, that’s all.”
“Hmph! She evidently has no need for a physician since she’s capable of self-diagnosis. Here’s a salve for her hand if she’ll let you use it on her.” The man gave Quinn a small jar, replaced his instruments and closed his bag with an injured snap. “However, Lady Ashford will have to find rest on her own. I don’t provide lullabies. Or laudanum, if that’s what she’s angling for. Too much resorting to opiates in my opinion.”
Quinn agreed with the sentiment. He’d lost a couple friends to opium dens. He ushered the doctor and Neville out the door, then returned to hitch a hip on the edge of the bed. “Viola, what happened to you?”
“Go away.” Her voice was strong and full of vinegar. Though she was pushing him away, her obstinacy eased his fears for her.
“Not until you tell me. Something made you ill. I want to know what happened. Do you think the doctor might be right?”
“Not likely.”
“So you don’t think you might be . . . with child?”
“No. You don’t need to worry about that. My curse just ar—” She caught herself before she became indelicate. “Well, I’m certainly not bearing in any case.”
Quinn was surprised to feel a stab of disappointment. If she was pregnant, it would give him an excuse to press her again on the subject of marrying him. “Does . . . do you often swoon when the custom of women comes upon you?”
“No. This is not something we’ll discuss.”
“Then what is it?” he asked, frustration creeping into his tone. “How can I help you if you won’t tell me what’s happening to you?”
She rolled over and looked up at him, her eyes clear, if a little bright. Her cheeks were pink with health. “You’ll think I belong in Bedlam.”
He smiled at her. “I already think that half the time, so you’ve nothing to lose.”
She covered her mouth with her hand for a moment, her brows drawing together in distress. “But I’ve never told anyone.”
“Have I given you reason to trust me?”
She nodded slowly.
He leaned over her and cupped her cheek. “Trust me with this.”
She swallowed hard. “When I was a child, I loved seeing my mother’s rings and necklaces and ear bobs, but I was never allowed to touch any of them. So my sister and I made daisy chains and fashioned love-knot pendants from locks of our own hair. On my eighth birthday, my father gave me my first piece of real jewelry. A moonstone ring. My birthstone.”
Quinn was glad her father had taken note of her wants, but couldn’t imagine how the story related to her collapse at dinner. He thought it was best to humor her so she would continue talking. “You must have been happy.”
She shook her head. “I threw it down the well and told my parents I didn’t know where I’d lost it.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t sleep.”
He raised a questioning brow.
“The moonstone wouldn’t stop whispering to me.”
CHAPTER 24
Viola covered her face with both hands. “There, you see. You think I’m a lunatic. I can see it in your eyes.”
“No, I don’t.” He schooled his features into an impassive mask. She’d already told him her sister was dotty. Perhaps madness did run in her family and she was afflicted with a mild case, too. At least he hoped it was mild. “What”—he stopped, wanting to choose his words with care so she’d continue to confide in him—“what did the moonstone say?”
She arched a brow at him. “You don’t think gemstones speak English, do you?”
“No, of course not. How . . . silly of me.” He took the hand that had suffered the burn and stroked the back of it. “What language do they speak?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “Not a human language. Just sounds, vibrations, screeches sometimes. Every stone is different.”
Her mania had a sort of logic to it. If she was hearing voices, at least they weren’t encouraging her to fly out a window or hack her family to pieces.
“That’s how I can tell if a jewel is genuine. Paste gems are silent. Jet is the only stone I can bear for any length of time.”
“Not very talkative?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “They merely hum. It’s really rather pleasant.”
Very logical. Her tale had the ring of truth, even if it was too outlandish to take seriously. “I take it the Blood of the Tiger spoke to you this evening?”
“Yes, but I could bear the sound because the jet and silver muted the power of the diamond’s voice. When I became ill this afternoon, it was because I heard the stone arrive and wasn’t wearing my shi
elding.”
Her story was beginning to make sense. She did recover from that bizarre flash fever after donning her jet jewelry. “Score one for hokum,” he said under his breath.
Fortunately she didn’t seem to hear him. “Usually I have to touch a stone to hear it, but the Blood of the Tiger is very powerful.”
There was a glaring flaw in her tale. “Several of the ladies at supper touched the diamond. No one else at the table was struck down.”
“I’m beginning to think it’s rather like hay fever. Some can work in a garden all day with no ill effects and others develop puffy eyes and runny noses at the first sight of a flowering plant. No one else at the table was susceptible to gems,” Viola said. “Except perhaps the Comte de Foix. He’s the one who insisted on seeing it after all. He must have sensed it was near. And of course, Mr. Chesterton. He took care not to handle the stone directly and he’s wearing a jet and silver ring. Except . . . he’s not really Mr. Chesterton.”
“Who is he then?” Quinn’s chest ached. She was making less sense by the moment.
“I don’t know, but he’s not the Mr. Chesterton the ruby in Paris showed me.”
Quinn’s gut roiled. She was more ill than he realized. “The ruby showed you?”
“If I maintain contact with a gem long enough, it sends me a vision.” She sat up, as if to emphasize her point. “The ruby we almost pinched in the ambassador’s office showed me the real diamond and its courier. I saw that the Blood of the Tiger would come through Hanover, even though I couldn’t tell you at the time. I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
“Fancy that.”
She evidently didn’t hear the irony in his voice. “But I thought a short bald man would be carrying it. The jet and silver shield protected me from the diamond’s voice this night, though I could still hear it.” She shivered. “I shouldn’t have touched it, but when the Blood of the Tiger sets itself to charm, you have no idea how compelling its song is.”
Quinn hadn’t heard a thing while the diamond was shuttled round the table.
“When I touched it, the diamond showed me the real Mr. Chesterton’s murder.” Her face crumpled. “It was horrible, Quinn. He begged and cried and—”
She covered her mouth with her hand and fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. “Oh, God, he wanted to live so badly,” she said between gasping breaths. “Even after he . . . oh, Quinn, the man who killed him and took his place . . . he may look like a person, but he’s really a beast.”
She was sobbing inconsolably. Quinn put his arms around her and held her while she wept. An anvil settled on his heart. The woman he loved was mad and he feared her malady was beyond anyone’s power to help.
“Hush, now,” he said softly. He was a wealthy man. He’d find someone who understood the workings of an ill mind. They’d travel to the best sanitoriums in Europe looking for a cure. America, even, if need be. “It’ll be all right.”
“How? How can it be all right that a man was murdered and no one knows and—” She turned in his arms and slanted a look at him. “You don’t believe me.”
“If it’s any consolation, Sanjay would believe every word.”
“But you don’t.” She pulled away from him.
“Viola, I’m a simple man. A soldier. I trust what I can see. What can be proven.” He tried to smooth her tumbled hair, but she batted his hand away. “Try to look at it from my perspective. There’s nothing to support what you say.”
“You want proof?” She glared at him, her eyes brittle as glass. “Fine. I know what happened at the lake when you were a boy. I saw your brother drown.”
“What did you say?” Quinn’s face blanched and Viola’s insides wilted. He was covered with guilt.
“You’re not a simple man. Not just a soldier. You’re a baron, in line for a viscountcy because your brother died. I’ve been trying to deny what I saw, but I can’t any more. You’re hiding a terrible secret. I saw you do it.”
“Do what? What are you talking about?”
“Do you remember the day I fainted and had that headache in Paris?”
He nodded mutely.
“I had touched your signet ring while you were shaving. I thought it would tell me more about you, and I guess it did.” The horrific images she’d tried to forget rushed back to her. “The stone showed me that day at the lake.”
Quinn didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He seemed to be holding his breath.
“Your brother was floundering in the water. I saw you running along the dock, then you reached out a hand to him. He loved you so. He thought you were trying to help him.” Her throat threatened to close over the words. “Then you held him under.”
Quinn rose and walked to the window, leaving the circle of light thrown by the candle near her bed. He leaned against the sill. Backlit by the moonlight, he was a dark male shape outlined in silver.
“That’s not what happened,” he finally said. “It wasn’t me.”
“But I saw you.” From her vantage point, through Reggie’s eyes, she’d seen very little actually. Water weed and the underside of the rotting dock. But Quinn’s young face in her vision was crystalline in its clarity. She’d remember Reggie’s sense of terror and betrayal till she breathed her last. “I saw only you.”
“Then your vision wasn’t complete,” he said wearily. “My father was there, too.”
“Are you saying he’s the one who did it?”
“Reggie was too soft, he always said,” Quinn explained, with quiet bitterness. “Our father was never satisfied with either of us, but at least I showed some promise on a horse and could manage a cricket bat. Reggie was . . . a gentle soul. I loved my brother. I would never hurt him.”
She desperately wanted it to be true. Viola scoured her memory. There’d been a look of panic on young Greydon’s face as he pounded down the length of the dock. Then Reggie had disappeared beneath the surface again and she’d only seen the sickly green water. Their father might have been following at a distance and joined Quinn on the dock while Reggie was beneath the surface.
“I should have gone in after him, but . . . I was afraid. I’d heard a drowning person will take his rescuer with him often as not. I tried to reach Reggie from the dock, but my arm wouldn’t stretch far enough.”
Viola searched her vision. Yes, that much was true. Greydon had leaned out, his fingers splayed, his eyes wide.
“I was a damn coward,” Quinn said. “And Father was so disgusted by Reggie’s flailing attempts to swim, he held him down. ‘To toughen him up,’ he said.”
Lord Wimbly had said Lord Kilmaine was hard on his boys. According to Wimbly, the viscount claimed to have been at the lake when Reggie tragically drowned. Now that she thought about it, Quinn’s boyish fingers wouldn’t have covered Reggie’s entire crown the way the long, strong ones in her vision did. Quinn’s version of the facts made sense. She hoped it was the truth.
“Oh, Quinn.” Viola’s chest ached for him. No wonder he didn’t want to be called Greydon because it was one of his father’s names.
“I don’t think he meant to, but he held him down too long. He was so angry when Reggie drowned. As if it was my brother’s fault for dying. I thought he was going to throw me in next,” Quinn said with a catch in his voice. He rubbed his forehead as if he could rub out the memory. “ ‘Sons are easy enough to get,’ he said. He told me I’d better keep my own counsel if I knew what was good for me.”
“You were only a child. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s always felt as if it was.” He slumped onto the bed by her feet. “The truth will never come to light. It would kill my mother. My father will never be called to account.” He ground a fist into his thigh. “It’s so damn unfair.”
Viola realized that was why Quinn railed so against injustice wherever he saw it. Why returning the diamond to Sanjay’s people was so important to him. If he righted other wrongs, somehow, he was making up for the wrong done to Reggie. The wrong that could never be undone.
<
br /> “There is a Higher Court,” she whispered. “Your father will face a reckoning someday.”
“I hope you’re right.” Quinn looked at her searchingly. “Do you believe me?”
Viola nodded. She loved this man. She had to believe him. “Do you believe me?”
“It’s hard, but I have to.”
She moved to the end of the bed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “Let us agree to keep each other’s secrets.”
“Agreed.” Quinn turned and tipped her face up to his, sealing their bargain with a deep kiss.
“I’m sorry I touched your ring,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong of me, like reading your private journal.”
Quinn gathered her in his arms. “I’m glad you did. I don’t want to have any secrets from you. I doubt I’d have believed yours any other way.”
She smiled at him. “Careful. You’re giving me permission to be nosy.”
“Since your vision about Reggie wasn’t completely accurate, I’m giving you permission to ask me anything instead.” A frown pulled his brows together. “If the vision from the lake was incomplete, do you think you might be wrong about Mr. Chesterton, too?”
She explained that when she’d had the vision of Reggie’s death, she’d experienced it all through his eyes. Her other Sendings had been viewed from a safe distance, which enabled her to see clearly what the stone wished her to see. In this case, there was no ambiguity. She was certain the man posing as Mr. Chesterton was a cold-blooded killer.
She shook her head. “We don’t have to wonder what he intends. That diamond will never make it to the queen’s collection. At some point, he’ll switch it and try to fob a lesser stone off on the queen’s men.”
“Then we’ll simply make the switch for him,” Quinn said. “I have a ruby we can leave as a substitute.”
“He’ll know,” Viola said. “He’s like me. Jewels speak to him.”
Quinn cocked a brow at her. “All right, I’ll trust you on that. You’d know, if anyone would. What do you suggest?”
“We steal it outright.”
“Fair enough. We’ll have to be ready to fly afterward then, but I’m changing the rules. When we go for Baaghh kaa kkhuun, I’ll be the one who actually lifts it. I don’t want you to touch it. Not ever again,” Quinn said. “Is that understood?”