The Betrayal of the Blood Lily pc-6

by Лорен Уиллиг

  “You’re welcome,” he said, but he made no move to move on. Instead, he seemed to be debating something with himself. His fingers tightened fleetingly over hers. “Watch yourself with Fiske,” he said.

  And then, before she could question him further, he had released her, riding at a brisk trot along the gravel path towards the Residency proper. Blast the man! Penelope considered riding after him, but she doubted it would be of any use. He would only plead the pressure of his appointment. Sulkily, she surrendered her reins to one of the grooms and allowed herself to be helped from her horse. Reid knew something about Fiske that he wasn’t telling. But what?

  Ask your husband, he had advised her. Fine. She would. Looping the train of her riding habit up over one arm, Penelope stomped into the house.

  “Freddy!” she bellowed.

  It wasn’t the regiment proper that Henrietta had mentioned as being the problem, was it? The regiment had been a recruiting ground for gentlemen interested in the practice of polite perversions. Could perversions be polite? Impolite perversions, then. It wasn’t inconceivable that that was what Reid had known about and condemned. There was something of the Presbyterian minister about him, all stiff-faced morality. It made an interesting change.

  “Freddy!” she hollered.

  He wasn’t in the drawing room or the bedroom or the tiny room that did service as a book room. Following a servant’s direction, Penelope made for the back of the house, to the complex of rooms that made up the zenana quarters, although goodness only knew what Freddy would want there. According to the other wives, all the bungalows in the Residency had them, a suite of rooms designed to accommodate a bibi , or native mistress, along with the complex of companions and servants considered necessary for such an individual. “For the bachelors,” Mrs. Dalrymple had explained primly, although Penelope doubted it was only the bachelors who had made use of such an arrangement.

  True to the servant’s word, she found Freddy in the corridor that connected to the old zenana quarters.

  “You were looking for me?” he said, hastily drawing the door shut behind him.

  “What in the world are you doing back here?” demanded Penelope, trying to peer around him. “You aren’t planning to stick me into a zenana like the Resident’s wife, are you?”

  Freddy managed a sickly smile. “It takes a deal of imagining to picture you in purdah. There isn’t a zenana quarter wide enough for you. What did you want me for?” he asked, looping an arm around her shoulders.

  Penelope rested her head familiarly against his side. That was something to be said for Freddy; he made a very comfortable bolster. At least, he usually did. Today, his chest was stiff beneath her cheek. “Why is your friend Fiske coming?”

  “I told you. He’s on his way to Mysore,” said Freddy, steering her away from the zenana quarters.

  Penelope let herself be steered. “Why Mysore?”

  “Because that’s where the regiment is. Shouldn’t you be changing out of your habit?”

  “Was he a member of that club you belonged to? The Hellfire one?”

  Freddy’s arm dropped from around her shoulders. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said stiffly.

  Penelope backed into the bedroom door, using the momentum of her movement to push it open. “Of course, you do,” she said, grinning up at him with her back against the door. “Lord, you’re as red as a peony. Don’t be all miss-ish, Freddy! I know all about your little orgies.”

  Freddy adopted a superior expression. “I doubt you know all about it.”

  “How much is there to know? An orgy is an orgy.” Penelope’s knowledge of orgies was limited largely to the fact that the Romans used to have them, but she doubted it took much imagination to figure out what they got up to. Depravity was depravity the world over, and generally not terribly creative. “Was Fiske a member of your little club?”

  “It wasn’t so little,” muttered Freddy, resenting the slur on his branch of the Naughty Hellfire Club.

  Men. So predictable. “Fine. Your large club, then.”

  Freddy scowled down at her. “Why so interested?”

  “I simply want to know what to expect from Fiske,” said Penelope loftily. “As your wife, it is my duty to entertain your friends.” Ha! Let him pick fault with that one. Her halo was shining nicely. It was a sentiment of which even her mother could hardly disapprove.

  “You needn’t worry about entertaining Fiske,” said Freddy, with some asperity. “I’ll take care of him.”

  “Not orgies in the house?” murmured Penelope, gazing provocatively up at him from under her lashes.

  Out of sheer habit, Freddy started to reach for her. But at the last moment he checked, sidestepping with an alacrity that almost made her lose her balance.

  “You smell like horse,” he muttered, not meeting her eyes.

  Penelope walked her fingers up his shirtfront. “Call for some water and we can bathe.” Freddy enjoyed the bath. It helped that there was always someone else on hand to clean up the spilled water after.

  Freddy shook her off. “Not now, Pen,” he said, striding towards the door.

  Turning her head, Penelope delicately sniffed her shoulder. She didn’t smell that bad. How did he think he smelled after a morning in the saddle? Not much like roses, that was for sure.

  Penelope drew herself up to her grandest height. “Don’t tell me you’re actually working for once,” she said caustically.

  The suggestion of work horrified Freddy. Work smacked of trade and trade smacked of . . . well, people like Penelope’s maternal grandfather. The sort of people one pretended not to know.

  “I am the Special Envoy,” he said indignantly.

  “I know, I know,” said Penelope snidely, turning away from him to unpin the coil of her hair in front of the cheval glass. “You’re far too special to actually get anything done.”

  In the mirror, she saw the door start to swing before she heard the resounding slam. Penelope frowned at herself in the mirror. Arguments with Freddy were only productive when they ended in bed, something that they appeared to be doing less and less.

  It was Charlotte who had expressed the hope that being exiled to India might be the making of Penelope’s marriage. Penelope had scoffed at the notion at the time, but secretly, the idea had appealed to her. Going off to a strange place, with no one to turn to but each other — it did make a certain amount of sense, didn’t it? Even if it had come from Charlotte, the most hopeless romantic since King Arthur’s Round Table had ceased active recruitment. But it hadn’t worked that way. They had done well enough on the boat. Freddy might have been distant in other ways, but he had always, always come back to bed.

  On the boat, he hadn’t had any other options.

  Penelope frowned at her own face in the mirror. It wasn’t a beautiful face, although men, cockeyed with port and desire, had often called it so. Her bones were too stark, her lips too wide, her nose too thin for beauty. She wasn’t beautiful in the way Mary Alsworthy was beautiful, or even, in her own quiet way, Charlotte, with her porcelain prettiness. She ought, her mother had often said in disgust, to have been a boy. What she had — what she had always had — was nothing more than a pure animal instinct for attraction that drew men like dogs to a bitch in heat. As it had drawn Freddy.

  Apparently, not anymore.

  Untying the stock at her neck, Penelope felt a quiver of unease at the memory of that quick step away, at the way he had deliberately avoided looking her in the eye. He had scarcely looked at her at all.

  Penelope forced a deep breath through her lungs, baring her teeth at herself in the mirror in an entirely unconvincing smile. No point in refining too much on Freddy’s moods. He might simply be feeling the heat. Or was it only after she had asked him about Fiske that he had suddenly grown cold?

  It was, wasn’t it? Like Captain Reid, he knew something he wasn’t telling her.

  Since there seemed no opportunity to seduce any information out of either ma
n, she would have to rely on Henrietta instead. Twisting in her seat, Penelope saw that the letters she had left on the breakfast table had been dutifully transferred to her writing desk, pending reply. The pile looked awfully thin, though. Henrietta’s letter had been five sheets thick, closely written on both sides.

  It wasn’t there. The Dowager Duchess of Dovedale’s letter was. Even the brief missive from her mother, left crumpled in the kedgeree that morning, had been carefully ironed into legibility and replaced among the rest of the post. But Henrietta’s letter had been left out of the pile.

  That was irritating. Penelope heaved herself up and swished her way out of the room, trailing the train of her habit behind her. The heavy wool pricked at her through her sweaty shift, but she didn’t want to take the time to change; she wanted her letter and she wanted it now.

  None of the servants, questioned in her halting Urdu, had the least recollection of having seen a folded packet of paper lying about on the floor or on a table or anywhere else at all. It was not, she was told with degrees of polite demurral by fifteen different servants, within their job descriptions. It took some time to find the person whose sole job appeared to be clearing the breakfast table. The letters had been removed, he confirmed, and placed on the writing desk. How many? After considerable back and forth, with some helpful interjections from those more accustomed to making sense of Penelope’s attempts at Urdu, a count was reached. Three.

  “But there were only two on my writing desk,” said Penelope, with considerable frustration. Seeing the apprehension spread across the manservant’s face at her tone, she waved a hand through the air. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sure it’s not your fault. Not . . . your . . . oh, bother. How does one say that in Urdu? It must have fallen somewhere after you put it there. Fallen down — down . Oh, never mind.”

  She should never have skipped her lesson that morning. It served her right for being all supercilious about the anonymous note-writer’s French grammar, which was by far better than her Urdu. At least if the smothered smiles of the servants were anything to go by.

  “Carry on!” she called in English, and swept back to her room with as much dignity as she could muster. There was no mystery to any of it. The movement of the fan must have blown Henrietta’s letter off her writing desk. It was probably wedged under the armoire, or scattered page by page under the bed, and she wished she had never even started in on it with the servants.

  Flinging herself to her knees, Penelope checked under the bed. Nothing. Save a spider who retreated as hastily at the sight of her as she did from it. Penelope dealt it a killing blow with a rolled-up newspaper and looked broodingly around the room, thwacking the flat of one hand with the rolled-up paper as she thought. The blasted thing had to be somewhere .

  But no matter where she looked, Henrietta’s letter was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shifting, I accidentally kicked one of the albums off the bed.

  It thumped, spread-leafed, to the carpet. Dropping the notebook I had been holding, I scrambled cursing off the bed. After uncounted hours curled up on the coverlet with a growing pile of Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s old notebooks, my limbs didn’t want to move properly. My own notes, scrawled erratically with one hand, already filled a good half of the small spiral notebook I kept for those emergency occasions when a computer wouldn’t be feasible.

  Fortunately, the album didn’t seem to be hurt. At least I had had the good sense to bump into one of the newer ones rather than one of the fragile old relics of Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s colonial wanderings. This one was made of sturdy modern material, with thick metal rings holding the plastic-covered pages in place. Murmuring apologetic noises to the abused plastic, I smoothed the cover closed, carefully checking for damage. None of the pages seemed to be bent, but something had fallen out. Plucking the sheet of paper from half-beneath the bed, I squinted at it curiously.

  It wasn’t a photo. But it also quite definitely hadn’t been on the floor before. It was the beginning of a letter, written on thick, cream-colored stationery with Mrs. Selwick-Alderly’s name embossed on the top. I couldn’t see who it was addressed to; this must have been the second page, and only a draft, at that. It was heavily crossed out and interlined, in a way I would never have expected of my fastidious hostess. But she had clearly been in the grip of some strong emotion while writing the letter. The first full line, written ruler straight across the top of the page, read, “To act on something that must cause those who love you so much unhappiness can only be accounted the most base self-indulgence.”

  There it was again, that word, “self-indulgence.”

  I tried to remember why it sounded so familiar, why I could hear Mrs. Selwick-Alderly pronouncing it so clearly in my head. After a moment, the memory snapped into place. That was how she had referred to Colin’s mother, condemning free spirit as merely another term for self-indulgence.

  With renewed interest, I peered down at the piece of paper. The cross-outs made it hard to read, but the next line read, “I should not have thought that even you could be so blindly selfish as to leave two grieving children deprived not only of a father, but of a mother, too. If you will not think of William, think at least of them and temper your own desires for the space of ” — she had crossed out at least five alternative word choices, finally settling upon — “for a space in which reason and moderation might prevail. What seems imperative today may not be so tomorrow, and in the process, how many lives affected? I should not take it upon myself to interfere into your personal affairs upon a mere whim, but this — ”

  Here the writer’s words failed her in a sea of black ink. I could see the spiky b, t, and l of “betrayal” poking out among the general blackout, but the rest was unclear. Betrayal. It seemed an unusually strong word. There was stronger to come, under the wash of black ink. I squinted at the heavily scratched-out lines, trying to make out the letters. Was that “treason” there, a little after “betrayal”? I couldn’t quite tell.

  The letter picked up again in a calmer vein, as if the storm of emotion had washed itself out. “If you must — as, indeed, I hope you will not — a space of time abroad would seem the wisest course.” Her pen had faltered on the word “wise,” as though doubtful as to its use in that context. “But I hope you will not. Do not make me ashamed to call you my — ”

  A creaking sound down the hall jarred me out of my absorption. I banged my head against the mattress in my haste to stuff the letter back into the pages of the album, return the album to the box, and dispose myself innocently back among the Indian notebooks, breathing as quickly as though I had just been caught with my hands in my hostess’s jewel box. Mrs. Selwick-Alderly might be indulgent enough about my foray in search of photos of an adorable, small Colin, but I doubt she would feel the same way about my reading her personal correspondence, especially correspondence such as that was.

  I grabbed up a notebook at random and plunked it open on my lap, just in time. The door swung open on a widening arc, and a sleek brown head poked through.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, forgetting to try to look scholarly and absorbed. “Hi!”

  Serena kept one hand on the door, as though unsure of her welcome. “I didn’t mean to disturb you,” she said, hovering in the door frame. “Please don’t mind me. I just came to collect a pair of earrings from Aunt Arabella.”

  I half-scrambled, half-slid off the bed, my wool pants tugging up against my calves as I slithered down. “You’re not bothering me at all. I was just about to call it a day anyway, before I overstay your aunt’s hospitality.”

  As I said it, I realized it was true. The early dusk of winter had fallen, leaving it full dark outside, bringing into relief the cheerful circle of light cast by the bedside lamp. From across the way, I could see the dim reflection of a television screen through the window. It must be getting on towards dinnertime, at least. Judging from the profusion of cream-colored cardboard cards on the mantel, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs.
Selwick-Alderly had evening plans. She had let me stay behind to keep on researching while she went out once before, but I couldn’t expect her to make a habit of it. No matter how nice she was being about it, it was still an imposition.

  On an impulse, I asked Serena, “What are you up to tonight?”

  Serena ventured a small, shy smile. “Watching Emmerdale ?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure, but I rather thought that we might just have shared a private joke. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Serena had a sense of humor — according to Pammy, she had been very clever in school — but I had never had a chance to see it before. Probably because I was generally talking. Or Colin was there, and — let’s be fair — when Colin was around, I didn’t notice terribly much about anyone else.

  “What would you say to a movie? There’s the new James Bond playing at the theatre in Whiteley’s. I guess that’s pretty out of your way, though.”

  “No, I’d love to go,” said Serena hastily, pushing her hair out of her face with both hands. “Unless — that is — unless you’d rather wait and see it with Colin.”

  “Not at all,” I said firmly. “He doesn’t need to see me drooling over Pierce Brosnan. It might hurt his feelings.”

  I got a full-fledged smile that time.

  I waved my mobile in the air. “I’ll just check for show times.” Our breath misting in the cold night air, we bundled into a cab. I almost never took cabs — a student stipend only stretches so far — so it felt wonderfully decadent to be coasting off into the night in a big black car to indulge in gratuitous entertainment in the middle of the week. The sharp air had brought a tint of bright color to Serena’s thin cheeks. We scrambled into the back of the cab in a flurry of high heels and dropped gloves and trying to figure out who had accidentally sat on whose coat in the confusion of scooting across the black leather banquette.