The Golden Leopard

by Lynn Kerstan

  “I have attempted to conceal my feelings,” Pageter said stiffly. “I thought I had succeeded. She has no idea of this, I am sure.”

  “Probably not. But as an unwitting expert on doomed love, I could not mistake the symptoms when I saw them in you. The thing is, you can have Mariah. If fortune allows, I shall serve her up to you on a platter. Never mind that it is properly your task to dispose of Talbot. I know you will not.”

  Pageter’s face was as red as the ten of diamonds he’d just played. “To kill a man in order to possess his wife would be dishonorable.”

  “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? You confuse protecting her, which you ought to do at whatever cost, with having her, which raises all those bothersome ethical dilemmas about honor and decency and guilt. Lucky for you, I have nothing to lose that is not already lost. But if I fail to dispose of Talbot, you’d bloody well better be ready to let go your stiff-lipped British sensibilities, gather up your lady, and take a runner.”

  “Even if I did as you say, Lady Mariah would never countenance it. And I could not in conscience go against her wishes. Her regard for high principles is among the reasons I have always admired her. We share a common fealty to honor and duty.”

  “Honor is well and good in its place, I suppose, but it makes a damn cold bedfellow. And duty, I have learned, is a matter of interpretation. Shivaji’s duty is to kill me. Mine is to kill Talbot. As a soldier, you have no doubt killed in the line of duty. The men you killed thought it their duty to kill you. Where is the moral imperative? In the commandment, Thou shalt not kill? Is it permitted to kill in order to save your life, or someone else’s life?”

  Pageter, looking troubled, gathered up his cards. “We do as we are taught, I expect.”

  “Generally speaking. Then comes along a circumstance that our lessons failed to cover, and we are required to make an independent decision. Often a quick decision, and always a hard one.” Duran sorted his hand. “I know you would give your life to protect your lady. Can you not relinquish your honor to keep her safe?”

  “As you are doing?”

  “It’s simple for me. I have no honor to surrender. I shall dispose of Talbot because I like to stay busy.”

  In silence they played out the hand, Pageter inscribing a false score because neither of them had been paying attention. “What should I do, then?”

  “Decide where you wish to go and let me know your decision. Make arrangements with your banker. Take Mariah to the ship and wait there. If I arrive before you sail, it will mean I’ve eluded Shivaji and Talbot is no longer a threat. Then I’ll be off to stir up trouble in a new country while you get leg-shackled in England. But I should advise you the odds on that scenario playing out are not good.”

  “I will ask her,” Pageter said, transparently averse to doing so.

  “That’s not good enough. Convince her. There isn’t time for moral hemming and hawing.” Duran shuffled with practiced fingers and dealt the next hand. “I need another favor, if you will. Have an apothecary prepare a sleeping powder or draught, something that will be undetectable in wine, and make sure it’s effective but harmless. I’ll need instructions for its use. And no one is to know of this.”

  “You wish me to procure narcotics?” Pageter produced a grim chuckle. “Good God. Before I have the opportunity to sacrifice my honor for Lady Mariah, you will have filched it all away.”

  Leaving Pageter to wrestle with his exacting conscience, Duran devoted his next days and nights to pleasure. To Jessica’s pleasure as well as his own, to be sure, but in bed, they became one and the same thing. He held nothing back from her, nor she from him, except the truth.

  He had never mistaken her for a fool. He believed, but could not be certain, that she still thought Shivaji no longer meant to harm him. But she had become increasingly chary of revealing her thoughts. She never spoke of his declared intention to leave her when the terms of their arrangement were fulfilled, nor did he. It sat in the corner, their awareness of his going, like a corpse at the marriage feast.

  With so little time remaining, he refused to squander a moment of it in sleep. While Jessica dozed late into the morning, he joined the earl’s guests, all of them thirty years older than he would ever be, in the breakfast room for sirloin, eggs, and strong coffee. He went fishing with his father-in-law, found a book in the library that he liked and wanted to finish, thought up ways to make Jessica laugh.

  He tried not to think of all the time he’d wasted, the friends he’d lost touch with, the love that had curled around a heart that would soon cease to beat.

  Most difficult of all, he resisted Jessica’s silent efforts to hold him inside her at the climax of their lovemaking. To deny her grieved him, but if he gave her a child she might not marry again, as she ought to do, and secure her mother’s legacy.

  Now and again he considered the problem of escaping High Tor. Arjuna, dispatched to inform the Others their search was over, had returned, and whenever Duran stepped outside the house, he felt again the sensation of being watched. His hope of escaping, he was forced to acknowledge, was little more than a mirage.

  But the hidden passage at Holcombe’s Folly had given him an idea, and some of the information he’d elicited from his father-in-law looked promising. Although the manor house at High Tor dated to the early sixteenth century, much of it had been torn down and rebuilt over the years, and other parts added on. There was no telling what might lie within its moorstone walls.

  Family history was encouraging as well. The Carvilles had remained staunchly Catholic long after it became dangerous, and High Tor had been a small center of rebellion until the eleventh Earl of Sothingdon elected to play safe. This was a family that might have found it necessary to conceal a priest or make a quick and secretive departure.

  At an opportune moment, Duran confessed an interest in historic houses with hidden passageways and asked the earl if any were to be found at High Tor.

  Sothingdon, engaged in pulling in the plump salmon he’d just snagged from the Dart, gave the question little thought. “None I know of,” he said. “Never been interested in such things.”

  Disappointed, Duran held out the netted pole and complimented him on the fish. A secret exit would have been too easy. And for as long as he could remember, nothing had come easily.

  “Mind you,” said the earl, “Jessica used to slip the net. For some offense or another, Lady Sothingdon would order her confined to the house, but she’d invariably go missing. We never knew how. Allies among the servants, I always figured. They liked her. Probably took her down the back stairs and out through the kitchen.”

  Probably. But Duran was reminded of the night he’d spent in her room when she suffered the headache, of the lone candle on the mantelpiece, of his curiosity when it flickered in the hot, motionless air.

  On Wednesday morning, while Jessica and Pageter paid a call on Mariah, he had an opportunity to investigate. To throw Shivaji off the scent, he went to breakfast as usual, yawned over his plate, pleaded exhaustion, and returned to the bedchamber for a lie down. The servants were to inform him if Sir Gerald arrived, but otherwise, he did not wish to be disturbed.

  Alone in the unlocked bedchamber, left that way to avoid suspicion, he began by methodically sealing the windows, closing the curtains, and stuffing a blanket up the chimney. Then he lit several candles, lined them up along the mantelpiece, and watched the flames.

  Nothing. He moved them to other positions, and others. Each flame remained as unbending as a Calvinist spinster. The candles went to the flagstone hearth then, with equally disheartening results.

  He pulled up a chair and sat, rubbing his chin and considering what he knew. He hadn’t imagined the flickering candle that night, but it might have been caused by a trick of the air coming through the chimney. Rising, he withdrew the now-sooty blanket, rolled it up, and for lack of anything better to do with it, kicked it under the bed. The candles he realigned along the mantelpiece. Then, stepping back, he studied the fl
ames.

  There! The one to his left, near the edge of the mantelpiece, swayed like a belly dancer. But what of it? If the flame was stirred by air from the chimney, he’d learned nothing of use. He could scarcely get out that way.

  Back to the chair for more contemplation. Jessica’s childhood escapes belonged in the mix, but confiding in her was out of the question. He had sworn that she would have no part in his escape, and for her safety, she had to be kept clear of it.

  Odd that only the one candle was affected. Rising, he moved it an inch to the right, another inch, and a little more. The flame steadied. Might there be a crosscurrent? After returning the candle to its original position, where the dance resumed, he retrieved another blanket from the chest, unfolded it, and stretching his arms as wide as they would go, held the blanket against the wall. His motion sent the candle into a frenzy, but when he held still, the candle flame did so as well.

  That was it, then. Somewhere behind the blanket, there was another source of air. Elated, he tossed the covering aside and examined the wall. Pale green damask met the paneled cherrywood wainscoting, ornately carved, at about the level of his waist. There was an opening concealed by the wood carving, he was sure of it. And amid the whorls of flowers, birds, faeries, and fanciful animals, there must be a trigger to release the latch.

  But an hour later, after poking and prodding every inch of eligible territory, he was still confronted with a closed wall.

  From sheer frustration he gave thought to kicking it in. Then, starting this time from the bottom, he knelt and worked his way from left to right, feeling for a bit of wood that yielded to pressure. Some time later, only three inches from the floor, a thumb-sized unicorn shifted when he touched its rump. Barely shifted, though, and nothing else happened. He played with it every which way, but the slight motion had no effect on anything but his patience.

  Sitting back on his heels, he put himself in the place of the craftsman who had fashioned the panels and the means of opening them. It would have been serious business, with lives at the hazard should enemies figure how to break through. He’d have devised something clever and obscure to fool a pursuer, but easy to locate by a harried fugitive who knew the secret.

  Perhaps not one trigger, but two or three, pressed in sequence or simultaneously? It made sense, and besides, he was running out of time and options. Several other unicorns pranced around the wainscoting, so he tried them all in various combinations, but without success. There was nothing for it but to push his original unicorn at the same time as every other figure on—No, wait.

  What does the unicorn seek, and what is it seeks the unicorn?

  A virgin.

  That ruled out the flowers and probably the birds as well, leaving the faeries. Who might or might not be virgins, to be sure, but he was going to give them all the benefit of the doubt.

  He didn’t have to. The third faerie, when mated with the unicorn by dint of his fingers pressing them both at once, turned the trick. He heard a scraping sound, a click, and then a groan of unoiled hinges as a small section of wood swung inward.

  Hallelujah.

  The opening, perhaps eighteen inches high, was about the width of his shoulders and lay precisely against the floor. He’d have to wriggle like a snake to pass through.

  His first instinct, to go exploring straightaway, ran up against a soldier’s common sense. He began by stretching out on his belly and thrusting a candle through the opening, illuminating a crawlway thick with cobwebs and dust. He could not tell what lay beyond the reach of the light.

  Well, he couldn’t go in there wearing clothes. Shivaji, who tended to his small wardrobe, would draw bothersome conclusions from dirty or missing items. Peeling down to his drawers, he decided to play it absolutely safe and removed those as well, leaving him clad only in the golden bracelet.

  He looked down at his naked body. Already scratched, scabbed, and bruised from his cross-country adventure, it could take on a few more abrasions without attracting notice. But not too many. He required a bit of covering, and Shivaji did not tend to Jessica’s wardrobe. Rifling through her clothing chest, he located a cotton petticoat, tore it into long strips, and wrapped them around his knees, elbows, and palms. The last segment was used to pad the deadly bracelet.

  All fine as far as it went, but he was going to be moving low to the ground. Certain vulnerable bits of his anatomy remained unprotected and would be, well, dangling. Back to Jessica’s stock of underclothing.

  Shortly after, wearing his bandage-guards, the bracelet, and a pair of knee-length female muslin drawers edged with lace, he slid two lit candles in brass holders through the opening and slithered in after them.

  The narrow crawlway extended only a few feet before connecting with a stone staircase, equally narrow but with more headroom. Not enough of it, though. Even doubled over, he could not descend the stairs on his feet. After maneuvering to a sitting position on the top step, he went down on his haunches, holding out the candles like a figure of Shiva carrying tokens of Agni, the fire spirit.

  Next came a landing, followed by another flight of stairs. The wall to his left felt warm, and soon he heard the muffled sounds of voices and the clanking of metal. He must be passing alongside the kitchen. Then a second landing, a third staircase.

  At what he guessed to be cellar level, the stairs ended in what might have been, a century or two earlier, a small storage room. The remnants of worm-eaten shelves were attached to the cinder-block walls, and he saw on the floor the remains of hemp sacking, insects, and mouse droppings.

  All this way for nothing. Discouragement lodged in his throat like a rock.

  But he’d come too far to give up yet. There was a door-shaped outline to his left, probably leading to the cellar proper, but it had been bricked over. Lifting the candle, he examined the mortar. It appeared crumbly and far older than Jessica. If she had used the tunnel to escape the house, she’d have found another way out of this room.

  He studied the floor. The layers of detritus. The slightly clearer area near the far corner to his right. He’d learned one lesson from the entrance in Jessica’s room—when in doubt, look low. Sure enough, a push at a cinder stone smaller than the others dislodged it straightaway, and its companions on either side could be pulled out and set aside with ease.

  The next stage of the journey was through a tunnel so small he could navigate it only on elbows and knees. When it became too difficult to proceed with a candleholder in each hand, he left one behind him.

  The passage curved. Curved again. And then his arms and head came into a tunnel that was nearly as tall as he was. Scrabbling through the opening, he stood and stretched his cramped muscles.

  The air was fresher here. There must be an opening to the outside not too far away. He let out a vigorous sigh of relief and, to his horror, saw the candle flame go out.

  Careless! But not disastrous. Not yet. A warning, though. He’d found his way to the exit, or near to, but next would come Talbot. And always, always, Shivaji. In the future there would be no margin for error, no recovery from a mistake.

  In inky darkness, he felt his way along the tunnel. Originally dug out by tin miners, he reckoned, and linked to the house by an especially enterprising Carville. Trailing his fingers along the way to orient himself, he guessed he must have come a quarter of a mile or more from where he’d begun.

  Just when he was congratulating himself, he ran smack into a pile of rocks.

  But the news wasn’t all bad. From overhead came a few slivers of light, pronging down like dagger blades, and with imagination filling in the black spots he could trace the outline of a trap door that must be partly covered with debris.

  He was nearly afraid to give it a try. Should a boulder have been pushed atop the exit, not unlikely if someone had discovered the trap door and decided to seal it off, he would have to try and find where it was from the outside. And that he could not do without Shivaji or one of his minions taking note. Either the trap door opened now,
or it was useless to him. Heart pounding, he raised a hand and pushed.

  Resistance. Another push.

  The trap door went up an inch. Two inches. Three. Hosanna!

  He let it drop again. When the time came, it would readily open and he could hoist himself up and out. That was all he needed to know.

  Amazed at his good fortune, he made his way swiftly back the way he’d come. Now he had a sterling chance of escaping, a God-given, Jessica-inspired exit from the house that Shivaji didn’t know about.

  The notion of departing early, perhaps even that night, slid into his mind. And slid quickly out again. Old territory. He had already fought this battle with himself. When he might have ducked off with the leopard, he had instead put himself back in the assassin’s grasp. And the reasons for it had not altered. They would hold him here until he’d accomplished what he meant to do.

  In the bedchamber, he stripped off the wrappings from his knees and elbows, removed the lacy drawers, and stashed the lot in the crawlway. Remembering the blanket under the bed, he tossed that in as well. He used the pitcher of water in the dressing room and the water from a pair of flower vases to wash himself down. The dirty towel joined the pile of linens behind the wainscoting, along with two fresh candles. Later, he’d filch a tinderbox.

  With the panel closed and the room in order, he speedily dressed, settled on a wingback chair with his ankles crossed on an ottoman, and was immersed in Pride and Prejudice when Shivaji came to tell him that Sir Gerald had arrived.

  His heart jolted up to double time. It would be tonight after all. Just as well. No one would be expecting him to act so soon.

  “Colonel Pageter and Lady Jessica must be notified before they return to the house,” he told Shivaji on his way to the writing table. “Will you see a message delivered?”

  “I will send Arjuna.”

  Marveling at the unquestioning agreement, Duran scribbled two notes. The first required Pageter to keep watch over Mariah at the cottage while Mrs. Bellwood, if she would be so kind, removed to High Tor. In the next few days, the earl would need her steadying presence. Jessica was directed, on her return, to enter the house without being seen and take herself to the one room no one would think to search.