The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

by Lauren Willig

  Gwen resisted the urge to follow it to its logical conclusion. Instead, she wrung out the cloth with a little more force than necessary, saying, “This isn’t the first wound you’ve taken, is it?”

  “Told you.” The Colonel bared his teeth in what was meant to be a smile. “Old campaigner.”

  He drew in his breath between his lips as Gwen dabbed the damp cloth against the crusted blood on his chest, swabbing away the clots of blood, the caked-on dirt, the tiny—but deadly—flecks of fabric. It all had to go, every last speck of it.

  “This is going to hurt,” she warned him, rather belatedly.

  “It already does,” quipped the Colonel.

  Gwen gave him a look as she dipped her cloth back in the rapidly reddening water. It was almost clean enough, although hard to tell with the fresh blood oozing out. She’d clean it with brandy next.

  She did her best to keep the Colonel distracted. “You’d quibble with Satan himself, wouldn’t you?”

  “Only”—the Colonel’s voice was barely audible, but he made the attempt all the same—“if he had—half so quick a wit—as you.”

  His voice was weak and cracked, but something about the gallantry of the gesture touched Gwen, despite herself. “Flattery won’t make this hurt any less, Colonel.”

  She could tell the opiate was beginning to take effect. The keen blue eyes were starting to glaze, his lids to tremble.

  “William,” he mumbled.

  Gwen paused with the brandy bottle poised over the Colonel’s bared chest. “What was that?”

  “If you’re—to see me—in this little—you’d best—call me—William,” said the Colonel, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he subsided into merciful oblivion.

  Chapter 8

  Ride though they might, there was no escaping the dreadful force of the curse of the Gypsy queen. His armor discarded beside him, Sir Magnifico fell fitfully into fevered sleep in the forest glade. Plumeria employed all her arts of healing, but none of her soothing draughts, none of her cooling potions, was of the least avail. He twisted and writhed, crying out in a language strange to her ears, his glazed eyes fixed on sights beyond her mortal comprehension.

  “I am cursed!” cried

  “Oh, what curse is this!”

  “Curse this blasted curse!”

  “The curse has come upon me!” cried bold Sir Magnifico.

  —From The Convent of Orsino by A Lady

  He had lost his regiment.

  William fought his way through the jungle. There was a fire burning somewhere; he could see the light of it, orange against the sky, against the blackening trees. Sweat beaded on his brow, dripped down his face as he battled his way through the brush. His shirt clung to him, sopping wet, but his mouth was dry, drier than he had imagined possible. Why hadn’t he brought water with him? He didn’t know.

  Somewhere in there, one of his children was calling to him. He wasn’t sure if it was Lizzy or Kat; all he heard was the high, childlike cry: “Papa! Papa!”

  She was just ahead, just a little ways in front of him. If he could just make his way through the vines, the clawing, clinging vines that held him fast, pulling at his arms, looping around his legs. The more he fought against them, the tighter the foliage bound him. His collar was too tight, that blasted high gold-frogged collar. He ripped at it with his fingers, fighting for breath. There was a burning pain in his side; it hurt when he moved.

  A tiger moved in the underbrush, its sleek orange pelt the same color as the fire in the distance, banded in black. William froze, but it was moving, moving on, sliding back into the brush, seeking other prey. He looked where it had gone, but the sun was too bright; it hurt to look into, and the sweat was dripping into his eyes, blinding him.

  “I live here,” said Kat, looking at him with such scorn that it hurt like a blow.

  He tried to follow her, but the vines were in his way, the blasted vines, yanking and tearing at him, and just ahead, he could hear laughter, Lizzy’s laughter, the high, clear laughter of the six-year-old she had been.

  “I broked the vase,” she said, looking up at him, all wide-eyed innocence with mischief lurking behind, and he hugged her as hard and tight as he could, trying to keep her safe, until he opened his arms to realize that there was nothing in them, nothing in them at all.

  The scene shifted, and he was at a party, in the tedious social round of Calcutta. He couldn’t stand these things, for the most part, but it was necessary, necessary if he wanted to get Alex a good appointment. A district of his own to govern—that was what Alex needed, and he would do it well and fairly, not like some of those oafs just out from England who couldn’t even speak the language. Alex was a good lad, but without guile. He didn’t know how to play the game, which was why William needed to do it for him, his last gift to his son before he went away across the seas, to that alien and icy island his parents had held in such contempt.

  A government official’s wife was tugging at his arm; he could hear her overbred accents: “Colonel? Colonel?”

  He tried to smile back at her, but there was a weight against his lids, and suddenly it wasn’t an English lady; it was Maria calling him, his Maria, her voice shrill with concern, “William? William!”

  “I’m here,” he tried to say. “It’s all right.”

  But it came out all slurred, as though he had been drinking. Drinking. He had drunk a great deal after Maria had died, running up the bills in the mess, port, claret, rum punch, whatever would temporarily dull the ache of her absence, his best girl, his better half.

  “William? You’re dreaming,” she said.

  She always had been a practical woman, his Maria, even when she was imaginary. It had been a very long time since he’d dreamed of her, those dreams in which he was always following, following, reaching for her, his hand brushing nothing but empty air.

  This time, his hand caught the end of a sleeve, made of a fabric that was fine and smooth between his fingers.

  “This isn’t good,” he heard the woman say.

  William fought with his heavy lids, struggling to open them. He blinked, dazzled by brightness.

  Whatever apparition stood before him, it wasn’t Maria. Surrounded by an orange halo, she wore only a long white shift that had slipped from one shoulder. She held a candle in one hand, throwing the light across her face, creating strange planes and shadows. She was terrible in her beauty, the sort of goddess at whose feet one laid offerings of grain and flowers. Her long hair streamed unbound around her shoulders, black and silver, the silver over the black glowing like mother-of-pearl in the moonlight. There were candles lit behind her, a semicircle of them, shining through the thin lawn of her gown, outlining the shape of her long, slim legs, the curve of her waist.

  “You have a fever,” said the apparition. She leaned over him, and her long black hair brushed his bare chest, sending chills straight through him. “William, do you hear me?”

  He nodded to show he understood, although he didn’t understand at all. He was bound in whatever strange spell this might be. She glittered black and silver, light and shadow. He reached up a hand to touch her hair. It slid through his fingers like silk, not the cheap, adulterated stuff of the back-alley bazaars, but a courtier’s best finery, heavy and rich, chased in silver.

  “Beautiful,” he said, and his voice sounded strange and slow to his ears. “Beautiful.”

  He wasn’t sure if he spoke in English or in Hindi. It didn’t matter. Goddesses were above such minor matters as translation.

  She twitched her hair away, bundling it back behind her. The movement made her white robe slip from her shoulder, revealing a collarbone as carefully wrought as any ivory carving by a Moghul emperor’s master sculptor.

  “Bother,” the
goddess muttered, and laid a hand against his forehead. It was blissfully cool, her hand. He tilted his face up towards it, towards her. “You’re burning up.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. There were flecks of flame on either side of his eyes. She seemed to glow and shimmer as she turned to the table, mixing something in a glass.

  She held out a chalice to him, cupped in two hands. “Drink this,” she said.

  It smelled strongly of spirits and something more, something musty, like incense. Obediently, William lifted his head and drank. The metal of the cup was cool beneath his hands, but the liquid scourged his throat going down. He coughed, weakly, and she held a cloth to his lips, her dark hair swinging down between them, tickling his bare shoulder.

  She set down the cup and tested his forehead with her hand. “With any luck, this should bring the fever down.”

  Her hand cooled wherever it touched. He felt her fingers like balm against his brow, his cheek. He caught them in his hand, brought them to his lips, pressing a kiss against her open palm.

  “Delirious,” she said. “Distinctly delirious.”

  The words ran like water against his ears, a gentle burbling, musical and meaningless. He was in a pleasure garden, a pleasure garden such as the Moghuls made. There was a fountain in the center, a fountain tiled in shades of palest blue and green. The water sang sweetly, water glistening in the sun like diamonds, as brightly plumed birds whirled above, diving in and out of the spray. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers, of frangipani, jasmine, and lotus blossoms. William felt drunk on the scent of them, the scent of the flowers and the sound of the water and the beauty of the woman lolling on the divan beside him.

  She made to pull her hand away, but William kissed the inside of her wrist, where her pulse beat blue against her ivory skin. He could feel her shiver, even in the blazing heat of the day.

  “Lakshmi,” he appealed to her in Hindi, “goddess of beauty and fortune—”

  “What—,” she began, but he twined his hands in the black silk of her hair and drew down her mouth to his, stopping her words with a kiss.

  She tasted like flowers and brandy—or maybe she tasted like flowers and he tasted like brandy. He was floating with the sensation of it, swirling round and round like the birds around the fountain. Her lips weren’t cool anymore; they were warm on his, warm and sweet. He had wronged her if he thought her coy. She kissed him back, kiss for kiss, matching her ardor with his, no ivory goddess but warm and vital in his arms, her hair falling like a screen around them both.

  They parted, panting. He could feel his own chest moving up and down with the exertion of it, and a pain he didn’t care to heed, not now, not here in the garden.

  He bracketed her face with his hands. Her eyes were wide and startled, dark against her pale face, her hair wild around her shoulders.

  “This is a dream.” He didn’t know why the woman in the pavilion was speaking English, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if nothing made sense when everything felt exactly right. “A fever dream.”

  He followed a strand of silver through the darkness of her hair, like moonlight on water. He traced it past the curve of her throat, smoothing the hair back, away from the place where her linen shift fell away from the hollow of her shoulder.

  “In that case”—William pressed a kiss to the sweet spot between her neck and her shoulder, letting his lips trail along the length of the throat that arched so obligingly for him—“I don’t want to wake. . . .”

  He tightened his arms around her, but she was already slipping from his grasp, leaving him to fall into a deep, dream-ridden sleep, in which a moon-tinged goddess danced tauntingly through a garden maze just past his reach.

  * * *

  Gwen stumbled back, catching herself on the edge of the table. Her hair fell about her in wild disorder; her shift was halfway off her shoulder. There was no need to catch her own reflection in the panes of the window to know that she looked thoroughly ravished.

  In front of her, the Colonel had slipped into sleep. Into pleasant dreams, it seemed. There was a smile on his lips as he slept.

  Gwen’s hand lifted to her own lips. The fact that her hand was shaking did nothing to improve her mood.

  What in the blazes had just happened? One moment she had been checking the Colonel’s head for fever, the next—the next she had been all but rolling on the mattress with him!

  A fever dream; that was all. A fever dream.

  Gwen rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms beneath the loose sleeves of her shift. Perhaps she oughtn’t have disrobed, oughtn’t have let down her hair, but the Colonel had been fast in drugged sleep, and even if he hadn’t been, she was she, the epitome of respectability, everyone’s maiden aunt, steeled and girded against human desires.

  These sorts of things didn’t happen to Miss Gwendolyn Meadows, spinster. That word was her shield and her armor. Well, the word and her sword parasol. But she hadn’t had to beat anyone off—at least, not in that way—for quite some time. A beady glower and a sharp retort had been all the deterrent she needed, until she had arrived at the point where there really wasn’t anything to deter anymore. Not that she minded, of course. She’d done with all that long ago.

  In the uncertain light of the guttering candles, the mirror cast back her own image to her, dark hair around a pale face, lips swollen, eyes wide and uncertain. For a moment, it was like looking back in time, a reflection of her younger self, twenty-two, proud and foolish. So very, very foolish.

  A trick of the light; that was all.

  With hands that weren’t entirely steady, Gwen twisted her hair back away from her face, plaiting it into a braid, pulling it back so firmly that it made the skin at her temples ache. She glowered at the man in the bed, sleeping heavily now, one sun-browned arm flung out above his head, the sheets pulling down over his bare torso.

  He didn’t look the least bit like Tim.

  Tim’s hair had been dark, nearly as dark as hers; the Colonel’s was flame red against the pillow, sun-bleached nearly to blond in some places, threaded with silver in others. Tim had worn his hair long, clubbed back in a queue. She remembered running her fingers through it as he slept, watching him, so convinced of the life they were going to have together on his great-uncle’s horse farm in Ireland. He’d made no secret of the fact that he had no money, but that didn’t matter; she’d had money enough for them both. She was the greatest heiress in two counties, with a tongue as sharp as a razor and an inflated sense of her own consequence.

  She’d had no doubt her father would agree to the match. Why wouldn’t he? He had never denied her anything before. He had encouraged her in her outrageous rudeness, cosseted and praised her. He was proud of her sharp tongue, her quick wit, her hard head.

  “You show them, girl,” he would say.

  And so she had. But not as he’d intended.

  Tucking her hands into her sleeves, Gwen cautiously approached the bed, but the Colonel was out cold now. She reached down to retrieve the sheet, where he had kicked it down by his feet. She’d managed to get his boots off, but she’d left his breeches on. They covered him from waist to knee. The rest was bare.

  She paused with the sheet, shamelessly examining the man in front of her. And why not? It wasn’t as if she’d have the opportunity again anytime soon. It was research, she told herself. Research for The Perils of Plumeria. The last man she had seen so bare was Tim, half a lifetime past.

  No, he didn’t look like Tim. Tim had been a boy, with a boy’s slimness, slight and wiry. The Colonel was a man grown, broad in the shoulder and chest, his arms and thighs heavily muscled from a lifetime spent on horseback. A cavalry man. Tim’s hands had been long a
nd slim; the Colonel’s were wide and broad knuckled, with calluses on the palms and scrapes on the knuckles, from their skirmish this afternoon.

  He had sent those ruffians reeling quite handily, but those same hands had been gentle, even tender, when he had touched her hair, her cheek, her—

  Gwen gave the sheet a yank. That was quite enough research for the moment.

  She looked at his face, the little pucker of pain between his brows. Instinctively, she reached out to touch his cheek, to sooth the hurt away. He moved in his sleep, and Gwen snatched her hand away like a thief caught rifling through someone else’s larder in the night. This was no time to go sentimental, she told herself sternly. He wouldn’t remember a bit of it in the morning. The man was out of his mind with fever. He didn’t know who she was. He’d thought she was someone else; that much was clear.

  Who was she, this Lakshmi? Wife? Mistress? Whoever she was, those caresses had been intended for her, not for Gwen.

  Enough. They were comrades; that was all. Comrades of war. Gwen seated herself at the little table, taking up her notebook and her pencil. Tearing a sheet from the back, she spread it flat against the scarred surface of the table. Next to her, on the bed, the Colonel was talking in his sleep again, arguing with someone only he could see. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead, although the room was chill, chill enough to make her skin prickle beneath the fine lawn of her nightdress.

  They weren’t going to be making the stage tomorrow.

  Gwen grimaced. It was the worst possible timing. If they had the girls neatly in tow, they might have stayed at this miserable inn a week or more while the Colonel recovered, the mystery solved, Jane’s misgivings disproved. But Lizzy and Agnes were still missing, Fiorila was inexplicably in Bath, and she was immured here, guardian of the Colonel’s sickbed. She might, she supposed, call on the Colonel’s daughter, the older one, but it seemed a poor trick to play. The girl had her hands full with her grandmother. She didn’t need a delirious father, as well. And however unsatisfactory their room at the inn, it was better than the floor of Mrs. Davies’s basement apartment.