by Лорен Уиллиг
On the other hand, it did provide her an opening. Leaning forward, she made a show of settling the statuette into position, running her hand suggestively over its curves. “Nor, from what I’ve heard of your career, do you care overmuch for the strictures of the law, my dear, dear Sir Leamington.”
Fiske continued to leer, but it had a somewhat perfunctory quality to it. Between his absurdly high shirt points, his eyes were watchful. “And what have you heard of my . . . activities, dear Lady Frederick?”
Penelope arched an eyebrow and her back. “Alarmed?”
Fiske bared his teeth. “Interested.” With a show of nonchalance, he added, “I saw you and our young Daniel in tete-à-tete earlier this evening.”
“Daniel? As in the lion’s den?” Not an inapt description of the company. In the corner of the room, the worthy Residency matrons were glowering at her from behind their fans, sharpening their claws on her reputation.
Didn’t they know she was immune to that sort of thing? Penelope smiled brilliantly at them, eliciting a wholesale retreat behind their fans. Mr. Cleave was also watching, with a concerned expression on his face that suggested he was debating with himself whether it was incumbent on him to intervene on her behalf. Penelope winked at him, partly to reassure him, partly to annoy the fan brigade.
As for Captain Reid . . .
The Bible had all sorts of interesting things to say about adultery. And coveting one’s neighbor’s ass.
Penelope turned back to Fiske with a toss of her head. “I should have thought there would be other Biblical locations more to your liking. Sodom and Gomorrah, perhaps. I hear they’re lovely this time of year.”
Fiske was not amused by her Biblical exegesis. “As in Daniel Cleave. Has Mr. Cleave been telling tales about me?”
Penelope batted her eyelashes with exaggerated innocence. “Are there tales to be told?”
Something in her expression must have reassured him of her ignorance, because Fiske smiled a cat-and-canary smile, a smile of deep, private satisfaction. “You would be surprised at the tales I could tell.”
Penelope leaned forward so that her bosom pressed against the yielding neckline of her gown. The sapphire pendant of her necklace dangled in the hollow between her breasts. It had been a present from Freddy, a morning gift. She could see Fiske’s eyes following the glittering bauble. She shifted to give him a better view. “Try me.”
“You offered Pinchingdale a kiss for a glass. What do I get in return for information?”
“That,” murmured Penelope, her breath stirring the hair at his temple as she leaned forward to whisper in his ear, “depends on what you have to offer.”
Fiske smiled an infuriatingly superior smile that made Penelope itch to slap him. “Is that what you told old Freddy?”
It was an effort to keep her voice low and sultry. “And what would you say,” she whispered, “if I were to tell you that I already know?”
Fiske wasn’t smiling anymore. Good. “What do you know?”
“About your little club. Among other things.” Penelope made her voice as suggestive as she knew how, which was very, very suggestive, indeed.
“Right.” Obviously, it meant something to Fiske. He dropped the leer and his voice. “What do you want?”
What was it that Henrietta had said the spy called himself? A fuchsia? A frangipani? No, another flower. After the conversation she had overheard on the balcony, Penelope thought it exceedingly unlikely that it was Fiske whose coming they were supposed to await, but it was worth a go. One never knew where a stray shot might hit, especially with such men as Freddy called his intimates. Ammunition was cheap.
Undulating towards him, Penelope tapped a finger against the roughly engraved ruby stickpin protruding from his cravat. “I find myself exceedingly partial to marigolds.”
Penelope’s gentle tap bowled him over backwards. Fiske rocked backwards and kept going, flailing for balance, with a look of startled alarm that might have been owing to the marigolds, the Madeira, or the fact that the table against which he had toppled wasn’t nearly equal to holding his weight. His mouth opened and closed in his favorite guppy imitation.
“Marigolds?” he croaked, latching on to Penelope’s arm to steady himself.
Penelope stumbled but held firm, arm to arm, practically in embrace. “One would do,” said Penelope, watching him closely. “If it were the right one.”
Freddy had had enough. With a prolonged scraping noise, he shoved his chair back to the table, grabbing Penelope by the arm as one might a wayward child.
“Will you excuse us, Fiske, old thing? I need to have a word with my wife .”
Brilliant. Freddy would choose just the right moment to remember his conjugal duties.
Penelope favored him with a smile dripping with acid. “Oh, is that what I am? It is, isn’t it? Funny, how easy that is to forget.”
Freddy manhandled her across the room, onto the balcony, where the mummers had long since packed up their props. Insects cruised idly through the guttering light of the remaining lanterns. “What was he telling you?”
Penelope slapped at a mosquito as it attempted a landing on her arm. “Darling, I hadn’t thought you cared. Are you afraid he’ll reveal all your little secrets? Or perhaps,” she added meditatively, “your not-so-little ones. Pity, the way those have of coming out. Or sometimes falling down flat on their arse.”
“You,” said Freddy through clenched teeth, “are embarrassing me.”
Penelope drew herself up to her full height. “You generally do that for yourself. I would imagine my contribution would be negligible.”
“You were flinging yourself at my friends!”
Personally, Penelope would have called it less of a fling and more of a shimmy, but she doubted syntactical precision was Freddy’s primary concern.
She ran her tongue across her lips in a deliberately sultry manner. “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”
Freddy’s lips tightened with annoyance. “You’ve got it backwards. You’re the goose. I’m the gander.”
“More like a rooster, strutting your cock in every walk,” flung back Penelope, with deliberate crudeness.
Freddy’s hands formed an automatic fig leaf over the area in question. “Don’t be absurd.”
Penelope followed up her advantage, like a boxer closing in on an opponent. “You needn’t bother coming to bed tonight. I don’t want you there.”
“Did you think I was planning to?” Freddy’s blow snuck under her guard, hitting her where it hurt. Penelope stiffened as though slapped. Softening, Freddy held out a hand, his voice taking on a wheedling note. “Now, Pen — ”
Penelope jerked out of his reach. Was that all he thought she was worth? A fist to the ribs and then a pat on the head like a dog? That was Freddy for you, always convinced he could charm his way out of anything with a minimum amount of effort for himself. “Don’t ‘now, Pen’ me. Go ahead. Go play with your little strumpet. But don’t object if I amuse myself as I see fit.”
When charm didn’t immediately succeed, sullenness invariably followed. Now was no different. Freddy dropped the smile, his brows drawing together in a threatening way. “Don’t push me, Pen. Or I’ll — ”
Penelope laughed contemptuously. It was like being kicked by a cocker spaniel. “What? Divorce me?” They both knew how impossible that was. “Or just deny me your conjugal companionship? I assure you, it will be no great loss.” She looked pointedly at the placket of his breeches.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be free of me for the next few weeks.” When she looked at him blankly, he made a gesture of exasperation. “Berar? The hunting? I told you about it.”
No, he hadn’t. He must have told her . The other one. The thought that she was interchangeable, just another woman in his bed, made Penelope’s temples ache, like the beginning of a migraine. They didn’t even look anything alike. They didn’t speak the same language, for heaven’s sake. How hard could it be to keep them
straight?
How many others were there?
In a tone of exaggerated patience, Freddy said, “The First Minister invited me to Berar for the hunting. Fiske, Pinchingdale, and I will be gone a fortnight.”
Penelope remembered the First Minister’s sinister, rotting face. What was it Captain Reid had called him? An asp? There was a story going around that even snakes wouldn’t bite him, for fear of dying of his venom. Penelope wondered, briefly, whether she ought to warn Freddy off, to repeat any of what Captain Reid had told her.
She looked at her husband, golden and arrogant in the lantern light, and felt a familiar surge of irritation. He was so sure of himself, so bloody sure.
Fine, then, thought Penelope, with a fine fit of Irish temper. Let him make his own bed and lie on it. With whomever he pleased.
“Enjoy,” she said flippantly. “Do try to shoot the birds and not yourself.”
She didn’t ask where he intended to sleep. She found that she didn’t want to know.
She stood on the balcony for a long time, the night breeze making her skin prickle beneath the fine sheen of nervous sweat that had formed during her fight with Freddy. In the distance, the blackbuck roamed through the Resident’s preserve while mynah birds called to one another through the scented trees. She had been left in possession of the field, but she had lost the battle.
Penelope’s ungloved hands tightened around the balustrade. Who was she fooling? It was a battle she had never had the slightest chance of winning. She had thought, for a time, that she might bind Freddy to her by sheer force of fascination — but she obviously hadn’t been fascinating enough. In this setting, she felt stunningly provincial, in a way she had never felt in London or Bath, too gangly in her form, too garish in her coloring, too blunt in her speech. You’re worth ten of him, Captain Reid had said. Out of pity, Penelope reminded herself. He hadn’t wanted her either. At least, not that way.
By the time Penelope returned to the drawing room, Mrs. Ure had eaten all the sweetmeats and dragged herself home to bed; the crowd at the card table had flung in their hands, settled their debts, and gone home; and all the rest had evaporated away to their own beds or other pursuits. Only the Resident and Captain Reid remained, discussing some matter of business at the deserted card table.
Penelope heard the words “guns” and “missing” before the Resident noted her presence and rose hastily from the table.
“Lady Frederick! I had thought you had gone home.”
“I was enjoying the view from your balcony.” How ironic that after her long series of indiscretions on balconies, her experience on this one should be so entirely chaste. It was decidedly déclassé to be caught lurking on balconies with one’s own husband or, even worse, by oneself.
The two men exchanged a look.
“If you will excuse me,” said Captain Reid, to his superior.
“Of course.” The Resident nodded his thanks, and before Penelope could protest that she didn’t appreciate being passed around like a parcel, he gave her a perfunctory smile and a “Good night, Lady Frederick,” leaving her alone with Captain Reid.
They faced each other across the debris of the night’s entertainment, the guttering candles, the dropped sweetmeats, the spilled wine.
“There was no need for you to offer to see me home,” Penelope said belligerently. “No one appointed you my guardian.”
“I’m not offering as a guardian,” he said tiredly, and Penelope noticed that, unlike the other men, he didn’t seem to have been drinking. It was past three in the morning and he would be up and riding by six. If she hadn’t been fool enough to proposition him, she would be riding with him. “I’m offering as a friend.”
“Oh.” For once in her life, Penelope found herself entirely at a loss for words. “Thank you.” The words felt foreign to her tongue. She didn’t say them often.
“No need for thanks,” he said practically. “It isn’t far.”
Maybe not in yards, but Penelope felt as though she had just gone a much longer distance than that. Her head hurt too much to parse it out. She was more grateful for the escort than she cared to admit. The Resident, with a fine sense for self-preservation, had placed Freddy in the bungalow farthest from the Residency proper. Without her gloves and shawl, Penelope felt oddly bare. Considering the depth of her bodice, it was absurd to feel quite so unclothed just from the lack of a little kid leather on her hands, but she did.
It made her feel very young and very unsure of herself, which was all, she told herself, pure bollocks. She hadn’t been unsure of herself when she was young, and now that she was an old, married matron, she ought to be even less so.
“Did you ever find your missing guns?” she asked, just to say something.
“My — ? Oh.” Whatever Captain Reid had been thinking about in the moonlight, it had been just as absorbing, and not entirely pleasant. He shook his head as though to clear it. “No. No, we haven’t.” He grimaced. “It’s something of a sticky situation, with everyone swearing right and left that he’s done what he was supposed to do.” They paused within striking distance of her bungalow. “You should be all right from here.”
The old Penelope would have cast him her sultriest look and asked mockingly if he didn’t consider himself man enough to see her to her door.
The strange, new Penelope who appeared to have replaced her didn’t do anything of the kind. She just took a step back, nodded her head once, and said stiffly, “Thank you.” Like a gawky schoolgirl, she jerked her head towards the front of the house. “Will I — see you tomorrow morning?”
It was too dark to make out his expression, but there was something comforting about the way he stood there, steady and solid.
“I’ll be where I always am,” he said.
Penelope drew in a deep breath, feeling more herself again. She would have missed her morning exercise, that was all.
“You’d better get some sleep then, hadn’t you?” she tossed over her shoulder, and scrambled up the steps to the veranda.
It felt good to get the last word. It felt even better to know that Captain Reid was still standing there, watching her, making sure she got safely home. Such as it was.
Someone had considerately left a single candle burning in the bedchamber, sending wobbly shadows undulating across the untouched bedclothes. There were no piles of clothes on the floor, no husband sprawled snoring across the center of the bed. True to his word, Freddy had taken himself off to bed elsewhere.
Penelope couldn’t bring herself to care.
Contorting her arms around her back to try to reach the tiny row of pearl buttons at the back of her dress, Penelope tried to reclaim the hurt and indignation she had felt earlier in the evening, but the closest she could come was a sense of mild exasperation, with herself as well as Freddy, and an overwhelming relief that he would be away for at least a fortnight.
A fortnight of early morning rides.
With an impatient tug, Penelope gave up on the buttons and yanked the dress up over her head. A pearl button skittered across the floor. It wasn’t a real pearl anyway, so it was no great loss. There were dozens of others like it, rather like Freddy. Penelope carelessly tossed the dress into a corner of the room and turned her attention to the pins in her hair. Drawing out the anchoring pin, she shook her hair free, enjoying the sound of its rustling around her shoulders — and heard an answering rustle from the side of the room.
Frowning, Penelope peered into the wavy surface of the mirror, where the satiny fabric of her discarded dress had begun to ripple, like moonlight on the water. Penelope stilled in the act of reaching for the clasp of her necklace. She really hadn’t had that much to drink.
Penelope put out a hand to steady the mirror, but the dress continued to rustle, undulating in waves on the floor. A forked tongue flicked out from beneath the embroidered hem.
In the wavering light of the single candle, a cobra wiggled itself free of the folds of satin and began coiling upwards on its speckled tai
l, its beady eyes fixed on Penelope.
Chapter Eighteen
In the mirror, the snake’s obsidian eyes fixed on Penelope, its pointed tongue flicking in and out of its mouth.
Something about the beady eyes in that wrinkled face, with the hood arching to either side reminded her of the malevolent, ruined face of Mir Alam, the man even a snake wouldn’t bite.
Too bad it wasn’t Mir Alam in the room instead of her. The two reptiles could have had a reunion.
Penelope held herself very still, rather hoping that the snake might take her for a piece of furniture, of no more interest than the post on the bed or the legs of the chair. It was not, she feared, the sort of creature with whom one could come to an amiable arrangement. The snake blocked both the door to the veranda and the door to the hall. She would have to run directly across its path either way and she was willing to wager it could strike faster than she could run.
What did one do about a cobra? Not scream or run or flail, she knew that much. Not that there was any danger of that. Her body had frozen out of sheer instinct and seemed to be intent on turning into a pillar of salt on the spot. Did snakes eat salt? Penelope dismissed that thought as immaterial. What she needed was a scythe, a sword, even a poker or a shovel. But there was nothing of the kind, not even one of Freddy’s ivory-handled canes. The servants were all asleep. There would be no one to hear her if she screamed for help. No one except the snake, of course, who was uncoiling in her direction with a slow determination that Penelope found distinctly unnerving.
Freddy kept a pistol in the dresser drawer.
Penelope’s fingers tingled with nervous energy. It wasn’t much, but it was a chance. If only he had left it where it was supposed to be. It would be just like Freddy to flounce off on a whim, leaving her alone with a cobra. Please, God, Penelope thought, let him not have taken the pistol with him.
Keeping her eyes on the creature in the mirror, Penelope felt blindly for the drawer handle, wincing at the screeching noise the drawer made as she drew it open. Venom dripped off the snake’s fangs, or perhaps that was just the sweat beading off her brow, clouding her vision. Her shift clung damply to her chest as she inched her fingers forward, trying to keep her back as painfully still as any dowager might demand. She could feel the drops of sweat trickling down her spine. Each seemed to take an eternity to travel its way down, vertebra by vertebra, each drop assuming mammoth proportions.