by Liz Carlyle
I have a tendency, thought Grace, to fall in love with dark, incomprehensible men.
Could Anisha help her cope with that, she wondered?
But Anisha was tapping the tip of her finger lower on the hand now. “This is Saturn.” Her voice had taken on a soothing, almost singsong quality. “Saturn tells me that you possess good judgment. That you are a woman of judicious restraint in most things.”
“Am I?” Grace laughed. “Well, that is a comfort, I daresay.”
“This,” said Anisha pensively, “now this is your Sun line. It is…merely average.”
“Oh,” said Grace. “What does that symbolize?”
“It is…what is the word? Something more than charm. Your magnetism. How you draw people into your orbit. Adrian’s is much the same, though he can charm when he wishes—which is almost never. And you…well, you have a quiet grace, not a magnetism. You are well named, which is a good omen. Now Rance’s Sun line—oh, it is like a deep groove cleaving apart his hand.”
Grace laughed again. “Why am I not surprised?”
But Anisha’s face had taken on a serious cast. “Your head line tells me you are an optimistic person, and that you know yourself to be capable. All things I would agree with, by the way. And I see here that you have clear thinking. Whatever fears you possess, they are rational. You must never dismiss them outright. I beg you will remember this.”
“Oh, dear,” said Grace. “That sounds dire.”
Anisha did not answer but instead set her hand flat over Grace’s, her fingertips touching Grace’s pulse point. “Grace, you are a woman of strong emotion and energy,” said Anisha quietly. “Now tell me, what specifically would you wish to know?”
“What I would wish?” she murmured. “Why, just the usual, I daresay.”
“Jyotish and the hand together tell us many things,” said Anisha. “Who we are, and who we will be. Who we will love. How we will live, and how we will die. All these things are written. Karma is the summation of our words, thoughts, and deeds. One reaps what one sows, either in this life, or the next. Prarabdha is the karma in this life, and sanchita is past—”
“But I know my past.”
“Sometimes, my dear, we know the past, but we do not see the past.” Anisha’s lilting, musical voice had dropped to a near whisper. “Moreover, sanchita karma is the accumulation of all your actions through all your past lives, not just this one. Now, shall I tell you what I see? And be certain when you answer.”
“Mon Dieu.” Grace swallowed hard. “Anisha, are you trying to alarm me?”
“Only ignorance is alarming,” she replied.
Grace felt suddenly foolish. “Yes, go ahead.”
“Very well.” Anisha flashed a muted smile. “Now, I see that the death of Mr. Holding has brought you much sadness. And guilt. Yes, you feel in some way to blame for his death.”
“Do I?” Grace’s unease returned.
“Yes, I feel it strongly,” she murmured, and Grace had the oddest impression they weren’t really talking about palms or stars any longer. “In your unconscious mind,” Anisha continued, “you feel that but for you, or your actions, this death might not have occurred.”
A heavy warmth was seeping up her arm now, bringing with it a strange and certain clarity. She did feel guilty. All along she had blamed herself. But why?
“Grace,” said Anisha sharply, “what does number thirty-five mean to you?”
“N-Nothing, why?”
Anisha gave a little shake of her head, her eyes still closed. “I cannot say,” she answered. “It is a bad number for you. You must avoid it at all costs.”
“Avoid it?” Grace was beginning to feel oddly lethargic, much as she had the first time Adrian touched her. “As in…roulette, for example? Or some sort of cards? I never gamble.”
Anisha sighed. “I cannot say,” she said again, sounding frustrated. “And the sign of the swan?”
“The swan?” Grace frowned, and tried to think. “Like a public house?”
“Perhaps.” Anisha’s inky eyebrows were almost drawn together now. “Were you born there? Have you ever stayed in such a place? Sailed on a ship so named, perhaps?”
“Non,” said Grace slowly. “And you know, I was born in London—Manchester Square, to be precise.”
“Yes, it must be nothing.” Anisha sounded suddenly awkward. “Very strange. Let us turn to your present and future, and to your propensity for love, health, and happiness.”
“Why not?” Those sounded far more pleasant, and her arm was growing wonderfully warm and heavy.
“Grace, you are ruled by the plant Mercury,” Anisha said. “You are Mithuna, the pairing of male and female. Your match with Mesha will bring you many challenges and difficulties.”
“Who would have dreamt?” said Grace dryly.
Without opening her eyes, Anisha smiled. “You will bring Mesha into the light with your energy, but you must not push too hard or he will…what is the term?—buck up? Yes. But you can temper his stubbornness and give to him much joy if you are careful. You will help Mesha find his direction and reenergize his wish to learn and grow.”
“But what does that mean?”
“Specifically? That Raju has much to learn about himself.” Her voice took on a lulling, decidedly singsong quality. “He has shut away the half of him that is spiritual and truth-seeking.”
“His Rajputra half, you mean?”
“We hold no claim over spirituality,” she answered. “But yes, perhaps. His life force—his prana—has suffered because he has not nurtured this half of his soul. This neglect, in turn, is the cause of much inner pain.”
“Oui.” Grace murmured, giving in to the relaxation. And Anisha’s explanation actually did make sense, at least in her lethargic state.
Anisha’s words continued to flow around her. “And I warn you, Grace, that though you are very attracted to Mesha,” she went on, “a fire sign can burn badly. Be serious in this relationship or back away. If you choose, however, to go down this path, Mesha will wish to lead the way, and you must let him—or let him think you do.”
Grace laughed, but even to her own ears, the sound seemed far away. “Alors, is that my future?”
“In part.” Anisha’s voice was low and fraught with frustration. “But there is something else. What, though? What is it…”
“What do you mean, something else?” Grace murmured drowsily.
“Something frustrating. Just beyond my reach. Like a sneeze that will not come.”
For a time, Anisha said no more, but merely began to breathe deeply, in that way Adrian sometimes did when they made love with slow, exquisite lassitude. The pressure of her hand against Grace’s seemed unrelenting. Grace still felt as if she were held in thrall in some way she could not quite give words to.
“Damn it all,” Anisha finally uttered, most uncharacteristically. “Grace, give me your other hand.”
Grace opened her eyes and did so. Anisha held both her hands across the table, her head slightly bowed, no longer even pretending to look at Grace’s palm. She held the position quietly, and for so long Grace wondered vaguely if Anisha had fallen asleep.
But after a few quiet moments had passed, the strange lethargy began to drain from Grace, the heat flowing down her left arm, like a river of cleansing warmth flushing all the way through her, only to return to the mother sea.
When the warmth was gone, Anisha lifted her chin, opened her eyes, and spoke. “Someone, Grace, bears you much ill will,” she said, her voice clear as a bell and no longer rhythmic. “You are the tool of another’s vengeance.”
“Mon Dieu!” Grace’s breath seized an instant. “Someone does want me blamed for Mr. Holding’s death.”
“It feels likely,” she said. “It is what Raju has long believed.”
“I think it is why he has gone to Yorkshire.” Grace’s voice went up sharply. “But Anisha, who could hate me that much?”
Anisha shook her head. “This is about envy,” s
he said. “Not hate.”
“But I have nothing to envy,” she stridently protested. “Nothing. Not unless…Mr. Holding had a scorned lover?”
Again, the shake of the head. “I think the envy is not directed at you, but at others,” she said. “I feel, as I said, that you are a tool of vengeance. Sometimes animals symbolize emotions. I think that is what the swan means. Tell me, Grace—think very hard—what does the swan mean to you?”
“The swan again?” Grace felt her eyes widen with horror. “Anisha, th-this doesn’t have anything to do with jyotish now, does it?”
“Never mind that,” said Anisha impatiently. “The swan, Grace. What might it mean?”
“It means nothing, Anisha, I swear it! They are big, white birds with nasty tempers. I know nothing else about them.”
“The evil manifests itself in the sign of the swan, and in the number thirty-five.” Anisha frowned intently. “These are very bad omens, and much associated with the enmity directed toward you, Grace. I beg you will give it careful thought.”
Then Anisha released her hands, her mind still obviously turned inward. Grace blinked and straightened up in her chair. To her shock, a galleried silver tray sat at her elbow, the teapot and service laid out upon it.
On impulse, she touched the pot. It was merely warm.
Good Lord.
She looked at Anisha, who appeared wan and pale. “You look tired,” she said. “Shall I pour?”
Anisha bestirred herself to glance at the pot. “Oh. Yes, thank you.”
“Anisha,” she said as she tipped the cup full, “may I ask you a question?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“A moment ago you said others,” she replied, passing the cup across the table. “That envy was directed at others. Whom did you mean?”
Anisha looked at her with that dark, steady stare, putting Grace very much in mind of her elder brother. “There is evil all around you, Grace,” she said quietly. “Raju’s fear is well-founded.”
“But Anisha, mightn’t you be mistaken?” Grace protested. “After all, if I had even a hint of the Gift, you could not read me?”
“I do not read,” said Anisha almost hollowly. “My skills are not those of the Gift. They are…different. But even the Vateis can feel emotion—sometimes even emotion directed in as well as radiated out.”
Grace felt suddenly uneasy. For so long she had allowed herself to discount Adrian’s fears for her safety because it seemed the only way to go on. But in doing so, had she unwittingly brought danger into his home?
“Anisha, could any of this be a threat to you?” she asked. “To the children? Tell me, for God’s sake.”
“The evil is not here.” Anisha spoke as if her life’s blood had drained away. “I can say to you only what I have seen, Grace. Never have I seen such a seemingly pointless thing so clearly. It must mean something.”
Grace just shook her head. “I can think of nothing.”
As if frustrated, Anisha snatched up Teddy’s slate. “Thirty-five,” she said determinedly, “and Swan.” She wrote it out with swift, hard clacks of the chalk, then flipped the board around. “Think, Grace, for God’s sake.”
Grace couldn’t get her breath. Her eyes widened, her hands clutching at the table.
“What?” Anisha demanded.
Grace inhaled raggedly. “Anisha, it’s Thirty-Five Swan Lane,” she whispered. “It’s Crane and Holding. It’s the address of Josiah Crane’s office.”
Anisha’s eyes widened. “Good Lord!” she uttered, letting the slate clatter onto the table. “The disinherited cousin?”
“Yes, yes.” Grace set a hand to her mouth. “Mon Dieu! It’s just as Adrian said—and I refused to believe him! Josiah was deeply in debt. He needed money, and Ethan beggared him by tying up their cash reserves.”
Again, Anisha’s perfect eyebrows snapped together. “But this helps him how?” she asked. “He inherits nothing. This was no killing done out of rage. He planned it. Why?”
The sick feeling in Grace’s stomach swamped her. She remembered again Adrian’s horrific vision of Fenella’s death.
“Mon Dieu!” she whispered again. “I think Josiah Crane means to marry Fenella—or try to. Aunt Abigail says that in England, a woman’s property conveys straight to her husband unless her father sets it aside. And if that should happen, Josiah will own everything.”
“Will she have him?” asked Anisha. “Surely she would not be fool enough?”
Grace shook her head. “No, she won’t have him,” she whispered. “I’m sure of it. But how will he react, Anisha, if she says as much? What then might he do?”
“God only knows,” said Anisha.
“We should send word to Scotland Yard.”
“And tell them what?” said Anisha, her voice unsteady. “That Mad Ruthveyn’s half-caste sister is having visions, too? No, Grace, we’ve no proof. I think we’d best send for Rance. He’ll know what to do about this murderous devil until Raju returns.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it.” Grace shoved back her chair. “Rance will know, won’t he? As to me, Anisha, I think it is time I did what I should have done days ago. Indeed, I am ashamed of myself for being such a coward.”
Anisha’s chin came up. “What are you going to do?”
“I am going to Fenella’s,” she said. “And I am going to convince her of my innocence. Moreover, I will make her see—in some roundabout way—that she must step carefully around Josiah.”
“Can you?”
“I have to try,” Grace whispered. “If he has proposed marriage under the guise of protecting her or taking care of her, or any such nonsense, I shall suggest she delay, but under no condition to refuse him.”
“No, no,” Anisha whispered. “She mustn’t. If he’s mad enough to do murder, her refusal might send him into a rage.”
“And I could not bear another woman hurt under such circumstances,” said Grace, her face crumpling a little. “Not when I could have spoken a few words, perhaps, and stopped it.”
Anisha winced. “You are thinking, are you not, of that poor girl the major killed,” she murmured, reaching for her hand. “But Grace, that was not your fault. Nor is this. Josiah Crane merely used you to take the blame for his deed.”
“Whatever happened, I can think only of Fenella now. I should have done so sooner.” Grace took both Anisha’s hands and squeezed them hard. “You go run Rance to ground. I shall call upon Fenella, and I will not let her turn me away. Wish me luck.”
“I do.” Anisha smiled wanly, then kissed Grace on the cheek. “Good luck.”
CHAPTER 16
Rubies in the Snow
The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the train slowing on the tracks almost drowned out Royden Napier’s hiss of displeasure.
“But this is Boxmoor Station!” he said, frowning up at the Marquess of Ruthveyn and snapping his newspaper shut. “Why the devil get off at Boxmoor?”
Ruthveyn stood, one hand braced on the door of their first-class compartment. “This was a mistake,” he said over the slowing engine. “We have to go back.”
“Back to Euston?” Napier cursed beneath his breath. “You came all the way to Whitehall yesterday to demand I roll out before dawn to accompany you on this utterly essential journey—your words, sir, not mine—and now you want to get off, turn round, and go home again?”
“Only briefly,” said Ruthveyn. “We’ll set off again in the morning.”
“Oh, well pardon me!” Napier rammed the newspaper into his valise. “That’s all perfectly clear now.”
“With Mademoiselle Gauthier,” Ruthveyn added. “We should have brought her to begin with. I wasn’t thinking.”
“And now you are? God save us!” Napier grabbed the back of the seat and hoisted himself against the lug of the slowing carriage. “I’m getting off, all right. But I’ll not be coming back again, Ruthveyn—nor will my valise full of documents. If you wish Lord Bessett’s involvement in this great goose chase of yours, you
can bloody well fetch him down to Whitehall.”
“We should have brought her along,” Ruthveyn repeated, having listened to Napier’s invective with but half an ear. “I shouldn’t have left her alone, Napier. Moreover, she might be of help to Bessett. She might…I don’t know. She should have come, that is all.”
“And how would that look to the rarefied citizens of Belgravia?” Napier demanded. “My haring off to Yorkshire with the prime suspect in tow? Somehow I do not think Sir George’s political headaches would be much mitigated by that.”
The train had stopped, and up and down the line, doors were slamming amidst the porters’ cries. Ruthveyn snatched his own valise from the rack, shoved open the door, and alit, never looking back at Napier.
“Ruthveyn,” he shouted after him. “I bloody well mean it! If you’re going to Yorkshire with me, this is your last chance.”
But the marquess had paced off a straight line to the ticket agent’s window.
“Two please,” he ordered, “on the next train to London.”
The massive white mansion in Belgrave Square looked somehow colder than she remembered it, Grace thought, stepping down onto the pavement. With a few words of thanks, she pressed the fare into the jarvey’s hand.
He squinted down from the box. “D’ye wish me to wait, miss?”
One hand on her hat, Grace cast her eyes up at the gray skies. “Yes, if you don’t mind,” she said. “Just turn down Halkin Street. I might be half an hour.”
“Aye, miss.”
He touched his whip to his hat brim, then the carriage clopped away, leaving Grace alone in the colorless square. Already the trees were losing their foliage, and the grass was fading to a wintry shade of green. Feeling small against all the grandeur, Grace pulled her cloak snug and went up to ring the bell.
She was rewarded by a familiar face. “Trenton!” she cried. “How lovely to see you. Might I come in?”
The old butler looked wary and a little wan, but he smiled all the same. “Mademoiselle,” he replied, finally holding the door wide. “It has been some weeks.”