Talk of the Ton

by Rebecca Hagan Lee

Suddenly, she broke off her argument and directed her next words at Jonathan. “You’re English?”

  “Yes.”

  Her face lit up in delight. “So am I.”

  Jonathan stared at her unusual garments and in a rare, unguarded moment said the first thing that came to mind. “I would never have guessed.”

  She caught the teasing note in his voice and smiled. “What would you have guessed?”

  “An Arabian princess. Or a Greek goddess . . .”

  “Then you would have been wrong,” she pronounced. “For I’m English through and through.”

  “You don’t look English through and through, and you don’t sound it either,” Jonathan told her.

  She frowned. “How do I sound?”

  “Like a French spy,” he answered.

  She bristled at that, and Mustafa reacted immediately, tightening his grip around Jonathan’s shoulder. “I’m not French,” she told him. “Or a spy. I despise Bonaparte and the whole French navy.”

  “I believe the lady doth protest too much,” Jonathan quoted. “For you speak the language like a native.”

  “As do a great many other Englishwomen,” she retorted. “And men. And if I speak French like a native, it’s because I’ve had a great deal of practice. My English may sound faulty to you, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m English just the same.”

  Strangely enough, Jonathan believed her. There was something very real and very convincing about her declaration that she was English. If she was lying, she was an expert at it. She didn’t seem to be trying so hard to convince him that she was English as she was herself. And Jonathan thought that if he accused her of being French one more time, she just might break into “God Save the King.” So the question he had to ask was what an English girl was doing with a Saracen bodyguard at a cottage in Kent? Especially a cottage that should have been empty. Jonathan opened his mouth to ask her, but Mustafa stopped him with a torrent of unintelligible words directed at the young woman.

  “What did he say?” Jonathan demanded a translation as soon as the giant Saracen finished speaking.

  “He wants to know what you’re doing here and why you broke in.”

  “I didn’t break in,” Jonathan told her. “I used my key.” He slowly opened his hand, and the iron key he hadn’t had time to pocket fell to the stone floor with a clatter.

  The young woman set the lamp on the floor as she knelt to retrieve the key. And when she lifted the lamp once again, Jonathan could have sworn he saw the sparkle of a precious gem in the indention of her navel.

  His mouth went dry as she moved closer, opening her palm so Mustafa could see the key and the tiny brass plum attached to it.

  She listened intently while Mustafa spoke, then turned to Jonathan.

  “Does he still intend to kill me?” he asked.

  “That depends,” she replied coyly. “Have you committed a crime for which you deserve killing?”

  Jonathan smiled at her directness. “Not tonight.”

  “How do you feel about losing a hand?” she asked.

  “I’m against it,” Jonathan answered honestly. “As I’m opposed to violence against my person in any form.”

  “Then answer truthfully,” she directed. “He may not speak English, but Mustafa is an expert at discerning lies. He can detect them in any language, and he believes you’re a thief or an assassin who came by this key dishonestly. And in Mustafa’s world, the punishment for thievery is the forfeiture of a hand.”

  “Dare I ask the punishment for would-be assassins?”

  “Beheading,” she answered.

  “I’m neither a thief nor an assassin,” Jonathan answered. At the moment. Although Jonathan silently acknowledged that his work with the Free Fellows League might require him to become both at any time. He looked the young woman in the eyes and discovered that her eyes were an extraordinary shade of blue. “I’m a traveler on my way home from the Cinque Ports.”

  “And you live here? In Plum Cottage?”

  Jonathan started to shake his head, then thought better of it. “No. I live in London.”

  She swung the key from her fingertip. “Then why do you have a key to this house?”

  “So I would have a warm, dry place to sleep should I desire to spend the night rather than continue my journey.” He frowned at her.

  “How did you come by it?” she demanded.

  “The man who owns the cottage gave it to my friend, who gave it to me.”

  “And the name of the man who owns this cottage is?”

  “Lord Davies,” Jonathan answered. “Carter, first Baron Davies. And my friend is Lord Grantham. He’s married to Lord Davies’s daughter, Gillian, and is obviously unaware that you and your—whatever he is—are staying here, or he wouldn’t have given me the key.” He faced the young woman. “Now, if you’ll be kind enough to ask Mustafa to release me, I’ll forgo the pleasure of sleeping in Plum Cottage and join my horse in the stable.”

  To Jonathan’s amazement, she grinned. “Then you weren’t sent to spy on me? Or do me harm?”

  “Do I look or sound French to you?” he asked.

  “The French aren’t the only people who employ spies,” she replied.

  That was true. As well he knew, since he was an English one. But she—whoever she was—hadn’t been part of his assignment. Or anyone else’s, as far as he knew. She was simply an unexpected complication at the end of a long mission. As far as the Free Fellows were concerned, Plum Cottage should have been empty.

  Jonathan took a deep breath. “If I’d been sent to spy on you, I would have known you were here. And you would never have known that I was here. And if I’d been sent to do you physical harm, you’d be harmed. But obviously that isn’t the case. The fact is that my horse lost a shoe several miles down the road. I’m cold and wet and tired and vastly disappointed to find that the one time I decide to make use of my key to Plum Cottage, it’s already occupied. Even by someone as lovely as you.” Jonathan sighed. “I hate to disappoint you, miss, but I’ve absolutely no idea who you are or why you’re here.”

  She pursed her lips in thought and tilted her head to one side in a manner Jonathan would have found enchanting under different circumstances. “Although I have an idea of what you are, I have absolutely no idea who you are or if what you say is true.”

  “My horse is munching grain in the stable out back,” Jonathan told her. “He’ll vouch for me.”

  “Is he a talking horse that he can vouch for you and answer my questions?”

  “Of course not,” Jonathan replied. “But the mere fact that he’s there will vouch for the fact that I’m telling the truth.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Jonathan frowned. “He doesn’t have a name.”

  “Of course he does,” she countered. “And if he belongs to you, you should be able to tell me his name.” She pinned him with her gaze. “You don’t know his name, do you?”

  “I call him Fellow.”

  “Most original! Especially since you don’t know his name.”

  “The fact is that he isn’t actually my horse,” Jonathan began.

  “You said he was,” she accused.

  “He’s borrowed.”

  She widened her eyes, toying with him, pretending to be shocked in order to test him. “So, Mustafa is right. You are a thief. A horse thief and a housebreaker.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jonathan insisted. “One friend loaned me a horse, and another friend gave me the key and offered me the use of this cottage.”

  “You appear to be very fortunate in your choice of friends.”

  “That’s true,” he admitted. “I am extremely fortunate in my choice of friends. I don’t have a cozy little cottage on the route to the coast, nor do I keep horses in London, but I have friends that do. Whenever I need a horse, I borrow one. I may not own the gelding in the stable, but we’ve been together long enough to get acquainted. The tendon in his left front leg is slightly swollen and feverish
, and he’s missing both front shoes. One shoe is buried in the mud somewhere between here and Dover. The other is hanging on a bent nail outside his stall door. I hung it there shortly after I removed it. Send Mustafa to check,” Jonathan suggested. “I’ll wait here.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “I don’t know why, but somehow, I believe you.”

  “Why shouldn’t you believe me?” Jonathan demanded. “Since I happen to be telling the truth. And my delight at garnering your trust is matched only by my desire to have this blade removed from my throat. So, now that we’re acquainted, miss, do you think you could persuade this behemoth to lay it aside?”

  “Lady.”

  Chapter Four

  Jonathan blinked in surprise. “I beg your pardon . . .”

  “It’s lady,” she replied. “Not miss. I haven’t used it in quite a while, but my title is lady. Lady India Burton. My father was—”

  “Travis, second Earl of Carlisle.” Jonathan had a talent for remembering family names and the titles connected to them, a talent that came in handy in his line of work and one that was second nature to him, since he’d spent most of his formative years memorizing every family name and title in Debrett’s in preparation for his succession to the title. He might have been born the son of a younger son, but his mother had never given up hope that he might one day succeed to the title of Earl of Barclay. Lady Manners’s hopes had been realized when Jonathan’s uncle, the tenth Earl of Barclay and his father’s older brother, died without male issue. Lady Bradford Manners’s husband hadn’t inherited the title, but her son had. And his mother considered Jonathan’s succession and her insistence that he prepare for it her greatest accomplishments.

  Lady India’s face lit up as Jonathan completed her sentence. “You knew him?”

  “I knew of him,” Jonathan told her. “His success with the East India Company was legendary. My deepest condolences, Lady India,” he offered. “I heard a distant cousin inherited the title.” He stared at her clothes as a glimmer of a memory surfaced. “India Burton.” He breathed her name. There couldn’t be two Lady India Burtons. She had to be the one who had been abducted from the ill-fated HMS Portsmouth by Barbary pirates and—

  “Yes.” She knew the moment he recognized her name and realized what had happened to her. “I am that India Burton.” She drew herself up to her full height, straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin a notch higher, and met his gaze without flinching. “And you are?”

  “Jonathan Manners, eleventh Earl of Barclay. At your service,” he drawled. “I’d bow and kiss your fingers, but I prefer to keep my throat intact.”

  India laughed in spite of herself. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Lord Barclay.”

  Jonathan glanced skyward. “I wish I could say the same, but under the circumstances . . .”

  Mustafa snapped an order at her in the language Jonathan assumed was Turkish, and to Jonathan’s surprise, India retaliated in kind.

  “Is this where he slices my throat? Or shall I simply bleed to death from the collection of cuts I garner each time you anger him?”

  He spoke in a conversational tone of voice, and India was more impressed by Lord Barclay’s courage than she wanted to admit. Lord Barclay might not realize the danger, but India knew that Mustafa was perfectly capable of slitting his throat or of strangling him without so much as a hint of remorse. She had seen him do both to wayward concubines and the lovers they’d met in the gardens or paid to have smuggled into the harem. The fact that she no longer belonged to the sultan and was no longer bound by the laws of the seraglio meant nothing to Mustafa. And the fact that the man who had breached the threshold of Plum Cottage was English and ignorant of the laws that governed the sultan’s concubines and his chief eunuchs or the fact that he had broken most of them meant even less.

  Mustafa was notoriously short-tempered, and India had spent the sennight since her arrival at Plum Cottage living in fear. The captain of The Bengal Princess had told her her grandfather had been delayed, but Lord Davies or someone else would come in his stead. Thank goodness he had. And thank goodness the man had arrived before the sultan’s most trusted eunuch tired of waiting for someone to relieve him of the responsibility of the sultan’s most troublesome concubine. India was acutely aware that Mustafa could have very easily disposed of her long before her grandfather or Lord Davies’s emissary arrived.

  “Mustafa ordered me to cover my face,” India said. “He reminded me that to look upon my unveiled face carries a sentence of death for any man other than my lord and master.”

  “Am I now under Mustafa’s sentence of death for looking upon your face as well as for being a suspected assassin?”

  “You would be,” India told him. “Except that I reminded Mustafa that we are in England because Sultan Hamid accepted my grandfather’s gold in exchange for my return. I explained that Englishwomen are not required to cover their faces, and an ignorant English infidel could not be expected to know the sultan’s customs or laws or recognize him as my lord and master.”

  “I can tell how well that explanation sat with Mustafa by the length and depth of the fresh cut upon my neck,” Jonathan replied. “Do you think that for the sake of my neck and our newfound friendship, you might refrain from arguing with the man at least until he releases his hold on me?”

  “I can try,” she agreed, “but I can’t promise.”

  In that case, Jonathan decided, it was better for him to take care of the ill-tempered giant himself. “Prick me once more with that blade,” Jonathan warned, “and you will live to regret it.”

  “He doesn’t speak English,” India reminded Jonathan, gesturing for Mustafa to release him.

  “He understands,” Jonathan said, knowing instinctively that the Saracen giant understood exactly what he meant; he had simply chosen not to heed the warning.

  Lady India gestured once again for Mustafa to release him, but the Saracen balked. He released a tirade of Turkish and French in a high-pitched voice that grated on Jonathan’s nerves, pressing the knife blade into Jonathan’s neck once again, turning it so the tip nicked his earlobe.

  Jonathan exploded in a flurry of action. Realizing the Saracen’s brocade slippers were no match for his boots, Jonathan lifted his right foot and stomped down as hard as he could on the other man’s right instep. The Saracen gave a high-pitched yelp and abruptly released his hold on Jonathan. Jonathan ducked beneath his massive arm and repeated the maneuver on the opposite instep, then shifted his weight and put the full force of his thirteen stone into the blow as he elbowed the Turkish giant in the chest hard enough to cut off his wind. The curved blade clattered to the floor as the huge man bent double in a futile effort to replace the air that Jonathan had forced out of his lungs.

  India scrambled to retrieve the knife while Jonathan waited patiently for the giant to lift his head before rudely greeting him with a combination of left cross and right up percut to the jaw.

  Mustafa fell back, hitting the stone floor with the force of a boulder, rapping his head against the door frame as he fell.

  “How?” India’s eyes were as big as saucers as she stood looking up at Jonathan.

  “Three mornings a week at Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Academy on Bond Street,” Jonathan announced triumphantly. “Like most bullies, your Saracen friend relies on his bulk instead of his brain. And he’s soft,” he added. “All flab. No muscle.”

  Strangling concubines a quarter of his size with a silk cord didn’t require muscles or brains, India thought. The only requirements for that were unlimited power of life and death over the women in the harem and a complete lack of compassion, and Mustafa qualified on both accounts. She moved closer. “Is he dead?” she asked with a tremor in her voice.

  Jonathan shook his head. “No.”

  “A pity,” India replied.

  “My sentiment exactly,” Jonathan agreed, reaching up to swipe at the rivulet of blood running down his neck. “But I didn’t want to take the chance of ha
ving the sultan lodge a complaint with His Majesty’s government if I killed him. That would require an explanation, and an explanation might do irreparable damage your reputation.”

  India almost smiled at the irony of Lord Barclay worrying about her reputation, when he had to know that nearly five years in a sultan’s seraglio had already damaged it beyond repair. “I suppose it’s just as well,” she said with a touch of wry humor. “For he must weigh a ton. I doubt that we could drag his body out of the cottage, and leaving it here would be a terrible abuse of Lord Davies’s hospitality.”

  “Then the least we can do is bind his arms and legs so we won’t have to worry about him for the rest of the night.”

  India leaned over the fallen eunuch and carefully pulled a long red silk cord from the pocket of his caftan. “Will this do?”

  “It’s perfect.” Jonathan took the cord from her, then rolled the giant onto his stomach and secured his hands behind him. He glanced around for something with which to tie his legs, and India came to the rescue once again. She untied the flowered brocade belt at Mustafa’s massive waist, tugged it free, and handed it to Jonathan.

  Jonathan grinned at her. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “You’re very welcome, my lord.”

  Their eyes met.

  “You’re quick on your feet,” Lord Barclay complimented her as he tied the belt around Mustafa’s ankles. “And you’ve a talent for improvising. You’d do well at Gentleman Jackson’s.” He looped the excess length through the bindings he’d just tied before pulling it up and tying it to the silk cord securing Mustafa’s arms. When he’d finished trussing Mustafa like a stuffed Christmas goose, Jonathan gave Lady India another grin, then rolled the huge man onto his back where Mustafa’s massive bulk would prevent him from working the bindings on his hands and feet and would prevent him from moving at all, because by morning the giant Saracen’s arms and legs would be completely, painfully numb. “If you were a man—”

  “I am wearing trousers. . . .” she ventured, warming to his praise.

  “That you are,” Jonathan agreed. “But you still couldn’t gain admittance—even wearing trousers—for no one would ever mistake you for a man.”