by Liz Carlyle
“Just what?” Sympathy had crept into her tone.
“I just need her to be here,” he finally managed. “And I feared she wouldn’t just come—that it would require some pretext on my part—so I thought of the boys. She worships children. One can hear it in her voice.”
Anisha’s delicate brow furrowed. “But why here, Raju? What is she to you?”
His mouth twisted with a bitter smile. “Not what you are thinking,” he answered. “The truth is, she’s a friend of Lazonby’s who’s run into a spot of trouble. He asked me to keep her safe.”
“To keep her safe?” Anisha echoed, her hand coming out to touch his arm. “Then what is she to him? A lover?”
“Just a friend, Anisha.” He straightened up and took a sip of his brandy. “The daughter of his old commanding officer. But don’t let your heart wander in that direction. Promise me. Lazonby is not for you.”
Anisha’s jaw hardened. “And you know best?”
“In this, yes.” Ruthveyn took her firmly by the upper arms. “Trust me, Nish, I have debauched my way through every whorehouse and opium den from Casablanca to Edinburgh with that man. I know his predilections and habits, and vile as they are, I still love him like a brother. But you do not want him—and even if you did, I would forbid it.”
Her long, black lashes swept down. “You can’t forbid it,” she said softly. “But you are right. I must think of the boys. I don’t want to marry again, ever. And as to the other—perhaps loneliness is the better option.”
“Well, I am only warning you off Lazonby. What about Bessett? Or Curran? They are fine young men and…ah, but this is none of my business, is it?” Ruthveyn gave her arms a reassuring squeeze, then let go. “Look, don’t fret about Mademoiselle Gauthier. I shall tell her in the morning you had already made other arrangements. I’ll find another way of keeping her here—at least until her situation is settled.”
Anisha cleared her throat. “That might be awkward.”
“I know,” he answered. “But there’s nothing else to be done. I can’t take her up to one of the Scottish estates. Napier will think she’s run.”
Unease sketched across Anisha’s delicate features. “Raju, what is it?” she asked, touching him lightly. “What do you see? What sort of danger surrounds her?”
“I don’t—” Here, he stopped, and threw up his hands impotently. “I don’t know, Anisha. I don’t sense anything. I don’t see anything. That is the very essence of my dilemma.”
“Ah, yes, your Unknowable!” His sister’s furrowed brow relented. “So she is the one.”
Hands again braced on the sideboard, Ruthveyn dropped his head. “Yes,” he said quietly. “She is the one.”
“You are quite sure?”
He swiveled his head to look at her. “As sure as I likely can be,” he answered, “without thoroughly compromising a lady’s virtue. And pray do not suggest that again.”
Anisha blushed faintly. “But she is so very beautiful with that blond hair and oval face,” she murmured. “Ah, Raju, perhaps I, too, have been hasty. What did you say the lady’s background was?”
He took up his brandy and motioned her toward the pair of worn leather armchairs that flanked the dying fire. “She was governess for a shipbuilder named Holding who lived in Belgravia,” he said wearily. “Two girls, about the age of Tom and Teddy.”
“That sounds familiar.” Anisha twitched her skirts into place, then her head jerked up. “Wait, isn’t he the one who was murdered?”
“Yes. He was.” Ruthveyn sat and drank deep of the brandy, feeling the burn as it rolled down his throat. He needed another drink. Hell, he wanted more than a drink.
“And you fear that next this madman might come after her?”
“Not while she is under my protection,” he vowed. “I think it more likely Napier will try to arrest her.”
“Napier!” Anisha spat, sitting forward in her chair. “Hasn’t he ruined enough lives? He persecuted Rance! He convicted an innocent man.”
“Actually, that was Napier’s father,” Ruthveyn corrected. “Not that the son hasn’t done his part since the old man died.”
Anisha clutched her hands in her lap, looking a little shamefaced. “I have been too hasty in all this,” she said. “I have had rather a bad day, Raju, and my temper is not at its best. If Mademoiselle Gauthier is Rance’s friend, and if she has experience with children…”
Ruthveyn studied his sister for a moment. “What sort of a bad day, Anisha?” he said quietly. “Is your irritation about something other than Grace?”
“Hmm,” said Anisha. “Already she is Grace to you.” But she did not look at him.
“My dear, what is wrong?”
On instinct, Ruthveyn bent to catch her gaze, but it was of limited use. The Vateis could rarely read one another—and Anisha was likely one of them, whether she admitted it or not. Growing up with her had been Ruthveyn’s salvation, perhaps, for it had forced him to learn to read and understand people as ordinary human beings did. And just now, he could see chagrin and unhappiness in her face.
“Is Luc in trouble again?” he pressed. “You’d best fess up, old thing.”
Her eyes fell to the Turkish carpet, and she shook her head. “No, it’s just that I had another message from Dr. von Althausen,” she confessed. “The man is going to bedevil me until I run back to Calcutta to get away from him.”
“Anisha.” He flashed an encouraging smile. “You might just consider…”
Her eyes flashed. “But I am not a Guardian, Raju.”
“No, because you are a woman,” he conceded. “People such as you are the very reason the Guardians exist.”
“I do not want your protection,” she bit out. “Or Rance’s or Curran’s! And I don’t want to spend one minute in that drafty old cellar of his being poked or electrified or whatever it is he does. Besides, I don’t even have the Gift. The wisdom of Jyotish guides me. I have studied hard to hone my skills. Do not demean them.”
Ruthveyn picked up his empty glass and began to turn it round to reflect the firelight. “So you think all you do is read stars and palms, hmm?” he mused, watching the cut crystal spark with light. “You are a lot like Lazonby, Nish. Always trying to deny the obvious. Von Althausen can learn from you, and help you hone your abilities.”
“One does not hone one’s executioner’s blade for him!” she hotly replied, coming halfway out of her chair. “I just want to study the stars, Raju. They are not subject to interpretation.”
“Actually, my dear, they are,” he answered. “They just don’t look that way to you.”
“But you will not work with von Althausen,” she challenged. “Why should I?”
Slowly, Ruthveyn exhaled. She was perfectly correct. Ruthveyn was devoted to the Guardians and their greater purpose, yes. But unlike some, he had no wish to strengthen or even to understand his abilities. He wanted them to go away—and would literally have sold his soul to the devil to make it happen.
But he could not. His soul had been sold long ago, for the visions had plagued him since his earliest memory. As a child, he had been called freakish. Unnatural. No one save his mother could hold him, or even hold his gaze beyond a passing glance. Not until Anisha had come along. Even his father, in whose blood the Gift ran strong, had thought him beyond strange.
There had been a reason Ruthveyn’s mother had remained unmarried until the age of thirty, Ruthveyn’s father had belatedly learned. She had been a rishika— a mystic of such power her own people had feared her. Her wealthy family had thought it a coup to marry their beautiful princess to a titled Englishman, and to ally themselves politically with England. But the union had produced a potent mixing of the blood, and Ruthveyn—the freakish, introspective, unloving child—had been the result.
It had taken all of his willpower and all of his courage to learn to hide what he was behind a façade of unwavering formality and distance. Only in Hindustan, land of distance and formality, could he have succeeded in
the guise of a diplomat. But his father’s ruthlessness and his mother’s grace had combined to stand him in good stead. He had survived.
And now he wanted his sister to do what he was unwilling to do?
Ruthveyn set his empty glass down with a heavy clunk. “Fair enough, Anisha,” he said. “I will tell von Althausen you will not be coming. I will tell him to stop asking.”
“Dhanyavaad, Raju.” Her hands relaxed on the chair arms.
He looked at her appraisingly. “And you will consider giving Grace a chance?” he asked. “You will at least try, I hope, to be her friend? If not for me, then perhaps for dear old Rance?”
Her eyes flashed for an instant, then Anisha relented. “Very well, brother,” she conceded. “As usual, you know just the right words to strike your bargain—but first, you will do something for me.”
He did not like the resolve in her tone. “Go on.”
She settled back into her chair. “You will tell me everything,” she said. “Everything you suspect—and everything you’ve seen—regarding Mademoiselle Gauthier’s involvement in this murder business.”
“Now that,” he said quietly, picking up his empty glass, “is going to require another brandy.”
Grace settled into Lord Ruthveyn’s vast Mayfair mansion with a measure of unease. The house itself was quietly elegant without the ostentation Grace had grown accustomed to in Belgravia, with touches of Eastern influence in the fabrics and objets d’art that made the house feel welcoming.
The two boys, Teddy and Tom, were filled with devilry, but after three days spent sequestered with them in the schoolroom, Grace did not wholly despair. The little imps were intelligent—almost too much so—and eager to learn so long as the teaching was creative and allowed some outlet for their monkeylike energy.
The children had brought with them from India a huge, raucous parakeet named Milo, and latched slavishly onto Silk and Satin, Ruthveyn’s haughty housecats, both of whom were solid silver and disdained most everyone else’s advances. It took all Grace’s resolve to ban the trio from the schoolroom.
What the boys lacked in formal education, they more than made up for in the areas of applied physics and chemistry; slingshots capable of shattering glass at fifty paces, and an imaginative experiment with homemade glue that left Teddy’s stockings bonded to his shoes. On her third day, Grace caught them under the schoolroom tea table after elevenses shaking a little jar of something that roiled and hissed threateningly, but turned out to be nothing more than baking soda and vinegar, and provided a quick tutorial in exothermic reactions, followed by a long lesson on how to properly clean a soiled carpet—which they did, on hands and knees.
Of Lord Ruthveyn’s sister, Grace was less certain. Lady Anisha Stafford was a quiet, exotic beauty who possessed her brother’s quick black eyes and his proclivity for staring straight through to one’s soul. Though her skin was pale as cream, Anisha’s face possessed a far more foreign cast than did Ruthveyn’s. Or perhaps it was her penchant for floating through the private rooms of the house swathed in ells of brilliantly hued silk, one end thrown over her shoulder, and dripping in opulent embroidery. Once Grace even spotted her sporting a pair of baggy pantaloons and looking for all the world like a princess plucked from some mughal’s harem.
For the most part, however, Lady Anisha was the perfect English hostess, and indeed, she treated Grace like a guest. She was given a bedchamber twice the size of her old room, its walls hung with paisley silk in brilliant shades of gold and green, and green velvet draperies tasseled with gold. The room was adjacent to a modern marvel; a water closet with a delft-tiled fireplace and an iron tub that could occasionally be coaxed to produce hot water from its tap. Grace had never seen the like.
She was also asked to dine with the family each evening—an ensemble that did not include Lord Ruthveyn, save for the first night. It did, however, include Ruthveyn’s brother, an angelically handsome young scoundrel whose existence came as something of a surprise to Grace. As did his hand on her knee one night during the fish course. But a fish fork, Grace had learned during her army days, made for a fine defensive weapon. Lord Lucan Forsythe took his punishment like a man—one sharp grunt, then silence—and the wound, Grace was pleased to see, did not even fester.
And that, she was quite certain, was the end of her troubles with Lord Lucan. The young man was as perceptible—and about as predictable—as ever a rogue could be. Grace set about making a friend of him, and it was easily done.
One afternoon a few days later, Grace went in search of Teddy’s lost grammar book and came upon Lady Anisha stitching in the sunlit conservatory. As they did every afternoon at four, the boys had gone out for a romp with their uncle.
“Pawwwkk!” Milo, the parakeet, swung from his perch. “British prisoner! Let-me-out!”
At the sound, Lady Anisha looked up from her work with a vague smile. “Milo, hush,” she said. “Good afternoon, Mademoiselle Gauthier. Has Luc taken the boys to the park?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Grace straightened up from the palms where Teddy had last been hiding. “I must say, he is most diligent. Not many dashing young blades would have time for their nephews.”
Anisha’s smile turned inward. “Oh, trust me, I have encouraged Luc to make time.”
“Help-help-help!” Milo chortled. “British prisoner! Let-me-out!”
With a wry, exasperated smile, Anisha laid aside her needlework and rose. “All right, you tyrant,” she said, going to the wicker cage. “Will you join us, Mademoiselle Gauthier? I just sent for tea.”
“Of course, thank you.”
With another loud squawk, the bird sailed onto the back of Anisha’s chair. A little ill at ease, Grace crossed the flagstone floor and took the seat Lady Anisha indicated. She wished she did not feel quite so uncomfortable with Ruthveyn’s sister. So often, Grace found, men were easy to comprehend—as with Ruthveyn and his brother, one knew whom to trust—but women were far less discernible. Not that she distrusted Lady Anisha. She just wasn’t sure of her welcome.
“Milo is beautiful,” she remarked. “And he certainly gets on with the cats.”
“British prisoner!” said Milo, who was indeed magnificent, with apple green plumage and a huge, hooked beak of fuchsia. “Help-help-help!” He toddled behind Anisha and began to nibble at her dangling earrings.
“Silk and Satin were rather taken aback when we first arrived,” Anisha admitted. “My brother treats them like pampered princesses, of course. Milo learned to bow down to them early on.”
Grace’s attention, however, had wandered. “Oh, my, what are you stitching? Is that silk?”
“It is, yes.” Anisha laid the cloth on the tea table and smoothed the wrinkles from the dark blue fabric. “It’s to be a Christmas gift for Adrian.”
“Adrian?”
At her puzzled look, Anisha laughed. “My brother,” she clarified. “Did he not tell you his name?”
Grace considered it. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “He may have done. I…I was rather distraught when I first met him in St. James’s. Did he tell you about it?”
Anisha shook her head. “No, but he told me of your situation,” she said. “I hope you do not mind?”
“Mais non, I am caring for your children! You must know everything about me.” Absently, Grace touched the embroidery. “Oh, but this needlework! Lady Anisha, it is stunning.”
Again, she laughed. Her voice, Grace thought, was like the tinkling of bells, her words tinged with the faintest hint of an accent. “My needlework is a strange muddle of East and West,” Anisha confessed. “Rajput women, you know, pride themselves on their embroidery, especially Zari, with this fine, metallic thread. But my wording—alas, it looks more like a schoolgirl’s sampler.”
“Oh, no one could mistake this for a child’s work.”
“Pretty-pretty,” said Milo, cocking one orange eyeball. “Pretty-pretty.”
Milo was right. Using silver thread, Lady Anisha had stitched onto the d
ark blue silk something that looked like a glimmering night sky, though Grace could identify but one or two groupings of stars. Still, they were precisely done, with a wide decorative border round the whole of it, and in the middle of the sparkling array, a verse.
“These are constellations, aren’t they?” said Grace. “It is a night sky.”
“Yes, as it would have appeared on the night of Adrian’s birth.”
“How remarkable,” Grace murmured. “When was he born?”
“Shortly after midnight, April 19,” said Lady Anisha. “In English, he is Aries, the Ram.”
“As in astrology?” said Grace. “I don’t know much about it.”
Lady Anisha shrugged. “Ah, well, most think it nonsense anyway.”
Grace looked more closely at the lettering. It was a poem, all of it done in the fine, metallic thread, the individual stitches so delicate and tiny she could barely make them out. Lightly, her finger traced the words:
And my good genius truly doth it know:
For what we do presage is not in grosse,
For we be brethren of the rosie cross;
We have the mason-word and second sight,
Things for to come we can foretell aright,
And shall we show what misterie we mean,
In fair acrosticks Carolus Rex is seen.
“What, exactly, is it?” Grace asked.
“A verse from a poem,” she answered. “By Adamson.”
“Yes, The Muses Threnodie!” Grace murmured. “I tried to read it once, but it was beyond me. Thank heaven you needn’t embroider the whole thing.”
Again, Anisha laughed. “That might take the rest of my days.”
Grace crooked her head to better see it. “What does it mean?”
Anisha’s expression faded. “It’s a sort of ode to a departed friend.” She hesitated a heartbeat. “It’s believed they were Rosicrucians—there, you see?—the rosie cross reference. Are you familiar?”
“They were a secret society of mystics, weren’t they?” said Grace musingly. “Or still are, for all I know.”
Lady Anisha flicked a strange glance at her. “Like so many, I believe they have splintered,” she said vaguely.