by Patty Bryant
And then Savitri gasped, “No!” and pulled her hand free.
Alexander stared at her in shock, then floundered to his feet. “What?”
“Penelope! Somehow we’ve completely forgotten her – there isn’t time for this – hurry up, Alexander!” She ran off in the same direction Penelope had taken, also taking the door beside the bar.
Alexander remained where he was, more confused than anything else. A few muffled snickers penetrated his bewildered consciousness, and he stirred himself enough to direct a glare over his shoulder.
One laborer tugged at the brim of his cap. “Go after her, Y’r Grace. I had to ask my Hettie three times before she agreed to accompany me to the altar, but now we’re as snug a pair of lovebirds as you ever did see.”
Alexander hurried after Savitri toward the door, striving to look as though he did so of his own accord. He would have chased her, of course; Clermont the Cold needed no dockhand’s advice on how to pursue a woman. He just wished it didn’t look so damned awkward.
His long legs let him cover the distance much more quickly than Savitri, who was hampered by her skirts and the heavy borrowed cloak which she had to hold up to prevent the hem from dragging on the dirty floor. The door she and Penelope had gone through led to a hallway and he caught her a few feet before the narrow staircase that proved to be at its other end. He grabbed Savitri’s shoulder and pushed her gently but firmly against the wall. She made no resistance other than to say, “But, Penelope – !”
Alexander planted his palms against the wall, one on either side of her shoulders to box her in. “Forget about that bloody brat for one minute, won’t you? If she’s caused this much trouble, she can survive on her own for a little while longer. Answer me.”
Savitri silently stared at him for what seemed like a very long time. The hallway was even darker than the main room had been, and her eyes looked like deep pits, ones that he could lose himself in for the rest of eternity. Slowly she raised one hand and curved it around the back of his neck, then drew him down to her. Their mouths met, and the kiss was the one spot of heat and light in all of cloud-covered, rain-drenched London. Alexander lingered over her lips, their softness, the way they opened to him, the faint taste of honey that must have been part of her breakfast. To think that it was still before lunch and so much had already happened on today.
And so much was still left to happen. He leaned into Savitri, his hands sliding down the wall to encircle her waist and hold her against him. She pulled at his shoulders, deepening the kiss until he could feel her chest heave against him in a sudden deep draw of air. He kissed his way across her jaw to her ear, where he murmured, “I’ll take that as a yes.”
She shook her head but didn’t pull away. “Oh, I shouldn’t.”
“But you will. You’ve struggled for long enough. You’ve let them treat you like little better than a servant; you’ve followed their rules, you’ve been so very proper. It’s time to show the world who you really are.”
“Yes,” she said, but so quietly that if they’d been an inch further apart he would have missed it.
Alexander kissed her again swiftly, a mere brush of their mouths together. “Say it again. Louder.”
Savitri frowned at him but her eyes danced with wicked amusement. “Yes,” she said clearly.
Another kiss and another demand to repeat herself.
“Yes!” she said again, shouting now, loud enough that she must have been heard out in the main room.
“There you are, Savitri Booth. I knew from the first instant I saw you that you were not made to be a quiet mouse of a governess.”
“You did not,” she said, laughing.
“Romantic declarations are not required to be entirely accurate,” Alexander said, and for all Savitri’s rolled eyes she met his next kiss with equal passion. He could have remained in that ugly hallway with its precious solitude for hours, doing nothing but kissing and touching, reveling in the velvet of her cloak and the coarser, sweeter texture of her hair where it had fallen out of its careful bun.
But it was only a few moments until Savitri pulled away, pushing on his chest when he tried to intimate another kiss. “Alexander, we really must go after Penelope now. I refuse to begin my tenure as duchess by losing your niece.”
CHAPTER TEN
Savitri pounded up the stairs of the tavern, her heart beating hard in her chest. It wasn’t the climb – it was her emotions, swirling so violently in the back of her mind that they seemed like a physical object she might trip on.
Her hot fury at Penelope.
Her tender sympathy for the girl.
The homesickness she had managed to keep suppressed for so long, only to be awakened by this fight.
The tingling of her lips and the pulse between her legs, lingering reminders of Alexander’s rough kiss and her own body’s inconveniently timed desires.
Sweetly swelling happiness at the confirmation of his love. She was not some momentary distraction to him but rather the woman he wanted to make his wife. Every bit of passion and want she had felt for him returned in abundance, transformed from painful longing to joyful devotion and affirmation.
And – she couldn’t deny it – a surge of satisfaction at the thought of a nobody like her, nearly a servant, an Anglo-Indian from Calcutta, ascending to the rank of duchess.
It was enough to knock any proper governess off her balance.
She pushed all these feelings away to focus on her footing on the stairs, knowing without needing to look that Alexander was following right behind her. At the top of the stairs was a gloomy hallway, lit only by a single lantern flickering at the far end. Both walls were lined with unmarked wooden doors; there was no clue to which one belonged to Penelope. Savitri paused to think and in that brief silence she heard the unmistakable sound of a teenage girl sobbing coming from her left. She glanced over her shoulder at Alexander and saw that he had heard it too, brief amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Be nice to her,” Savitri whispered. “You’ve never experienced what she’s going through.”
Alexander’s expression quickly sobered. “I think that I’m familiar enough with how it feels to be alone in the world – or to believe that you are. But go ahead,” he added, waving her forward, “she seems to listen better to you than to me anyway.”
Savitri easily followed the sound of crying to one of the identical doors and tried the knob. The door opened, and she quietly pushed it just wide enough to allow her to peek inside. The room was minuscule, smaller even than Beth’s had been; a tiny-paned window on the opposite wall gave a view of rain, low clouds, and, in the distance, the wide brown water of the Thames. It let in just enough light for Savitri to see that Penelope had flung herself across the narrow bed which took up most of the space, her face buried in a flat gray pillow and her hands fisted in the thin cotton blanket.
Savitri sat down on the end of the bed and patted the girl’s leg.
Penelope jerked it out of reach. “Go away.” Her voice sounded thick and snotty, and she was barely comprehensible through the pillow’s muffling.
Savitri ignored the order. “Go ahead and cry as much as you want to. Sometimes it’s the only thing that helps.”
Alexander had come to stand on the door’s threshold, but he said nothing though his eyes moved between the two of them.
After a few more sobs, Penelope twisted onto her side to glare at them. Her face was blotchy with red and white patches from crying, and some of her hair had escaped from where she’d pinned it up, straggling down in golden hanks that ruined the illusion of her boy’s clothes. “Don’t pretend to be nice,” she said with a sniffle. “I know that you don’t really care about me. You’re just here to make me go home because otherwise it would make the family look bad. And we can’t have that, can we?”
Savitri sighed. “Normally you’re much better at logic puzzles than this. I’ve seen you solve quite complicated problems without half as much difficultly. Penelope, I k
now it hurts to leave your home. Believe me,” she said with a bitter chuckle, though she felt no amusement at all, “of all people, I know. But no matter how you feel, eventually you must face the truth. You can’t go across the world, a sixteen year old gently-bred girl, on your own. You know you can’t.”
“Then how?” Penelope demanded.
Savitri didn’t answer, and after a moment Penelope filled in the silence on her own.
“I’ll never go back to India, will I?”
Savitri looked down at her own hands folded in her lap, her skin nearly leeched of color by the dim light. Even if she couldn’t see it, she knew how brown those long fingers were. “No,” she said quietly. “I doubt that either of us will.”
She expected Penelope to burst into tears again, but the enormity of the moment impressed itself on the girl; some things were too large, too devastating, to cry about. Savitri looked up and saw Penelope staring back at her, her expression startled. She seemed to have finally recognized that she was not the only one who had been transplanted.
“Why?” Penelope asked – not an accusation or an insult this time, but only a simple question.
“Because you are the daughter of a lord and the niece of a duke and therefore society has certain expectations regarding how you may live your life. Because you are a woman, and you will find that there will always be rules determining what you can do. And yet you should be grateful,” Savitri added. “Because I am neither British nor a member of the gentry but am only employed by them, so there are even more restrictions on what life I am allowed.”
Penelope’s lower lip trembled but she kept her chin up.
“Your position comes with a cost, it’s true.”
Both Savitri and Penelope turned to look at Alexander, who spoke quietly from his place in the doorway. It was the first thing he had said since they entered the room. “But there are certain privileges also. Our family has held a seat in Parliament for centuries, and we are justly proud of our influence on merry old England. Allow me to tell you one thing I have learned from my time in politics.” Alexander paused, letting the tension heighten, then broke out in a grin. “You can’t have everything you want. But, if you are a crafty bargainer, you can get something in exchange for what you agree to give up.”
Penelope frowned. “What does that mean?” She sounded begrudging, but there was a tiny spark of interest in her eyes. Savitri felt hope warm her chest, the possibility that they might yet come out of this situation a little better than they went into it. Alexander met her gaze, and his smile briefly softened into something sweet and secret, meant only for her.
Then he looked back to Penelope and spread his hands. “Make me a deal. You agree to make no more desperate escapes to India. In return, ask me for something – anything – and you shall have it.”
“Anything?” Penelope asked doubtfully.
“Well, not a ticket to India obviously. But anything else.” His voice softened. “I know it’s not what you hoped for, but in life we can only go forwards, not back. You can’t go to India. Find something else to live for.”
Savitri thought Penelope would need time to think, but the girl answered surprisingly quickly, as though she’d just been waiting for someone to ask. “I want a horse,” she said, coming up to her knees and leaning forward in excitement. “And I want to learn to ride. Not like the fashionable ladies do, cantering through Hyde Park so slowly that a baby could out-crawl them and only there in the first place so that everyone can look at their clothes. I want to ride like a man. Like you do. I want to gallop. And race. And jump fences. And…” she floundered, obviously looking for another thing to add to her list. “And to hunt foxes!”
Alexander blinked. “Not what I expected.”
Penelope's expression of excitement instantly turned to bitter cynicism. "I knew you didn't really mean it," she muttered, sinking back down to the bed. "You're no better than the rest of my family. None of you care about what I want."
Alexander held up a hand. "I didn't say no. I was merely expressing my surprise. Your father never mentioned that you had any interest in riding."
A snort was Penelope's only response, and Savitri had to bite back laughter at the girl's eloquent roll of her eyes.
"Indeed," Alexander said wryly. "I am beginning to get the impression that your parents are not acquainted with the deepest passions of their daughters' hearts. But if a horse and riding lessons are what it takes for you to tolerate living in England, then that is what you shall have.”
“My mother isn’t going to like it,” Penelope warned.
“Leave her to me.”
Penelope bit her lip, her brows lowering as she studied Alexander intently. Savitri could tell that she was tempted by the offer, but wasn’t sure if she could trust him.To her surprise Penelope’s gaze suddenly shifted to her. “Does he mean it?” she asked.
Savitri had no answer ready. It had never occurred to her that Penelope would ask her for advice in this moment. Her first impulse was to say whatever it took to get the girl in the carriage and back home as quickly as possible; she could work out the truth of the matter later. But she knew that if she lied to Penelope now, she’d never have her trust again – and rightly so. She owed her student more than that.
Will Alexander keep his promise to Penelope?, Savitri thought. And inescapably a second question followed close on that one’s heels: Will Alexander keep his promise to me? She had been so certain that he wouldn’t, that it would be beyond foolish to trust anything a rich man said while he was trying to get access to her body. And yet…
And yet he had asked her to marry him and she had said yes. Had that been a mistake?
Savitri felt her gaze drawn away from Penelope and toward Alexander. He watched her, waiting quietly for her response. His expression was patient, accepting – ready to hear whatever she might say and take it seriously. And Savitri knew that she trusted him. She couldn’t have put the reason why into words but on some deep level beyond the strict lessons her life had taught her, she simply believed in Alexander. Her heart, for once, spoke louder than her head.
She turned back to Penelope and nodded. “He means it.”
“All right.” Penelope swung her legs off the side of the bed and came to stand next to Alexander. She looked tiny next to his height and the broadness of his shoulders, her boy’s clothes adding to the illusion to make her seem even younger than her sixteen years. Her gaze was steady and her face determined, though her cheeks were still red from crying. “I’ll take your deal.”
Alexander held out his hand for her to shake. “Let us be clear on the terms. You will cease all attempts to run away, and will willingly – willingly, niece – remain in London or wherever else your parents eventually make their home. In return, I will provide you with a horse of your choosing and the ability to ride it. Are we agreed?”
“You also have to stop my mother from interfering,” Penelope added. Savitri recognized the haggling tactics of someone who had grown up adjacent to Calcutta’s markets – no wise shopper ever assumed an important detail was included.
A tiny smile twitched at the corner of Alexander’s mouth, but he managed to maintain his serious demeanor. “And in addition to the aforesaid, I will placate your mother.” Penelope reached out to take his hand, but he twitched it out of reach just before she could grab hold. “Consider the matter seriously before we shake. I will hold you to your word once you’ve given it. You’re an adult – or close enough,” he added when Penelope crossed her arms in irritation, “and a member of the Ware family. We keep our promises. Your honor depends on you doing the same.”
Penelope huffed impatiently but when Alexander only fixed her with an imperious look, she stood quietly for a time, sunk in thought. Finally she looked up again and nodded. “I understand what I’m agreeing to. I can keep my end of the bargain.” She stuck out her hand. “Let’s make a deal.”
This time Alexander shook and grins blossomed on both their faces. Savitri hadn�
��t thought them similar before – Alexander’s dark hair and craggy features looked little like Penelope’s blonde curls and round cheeks – but now she could clearly see the family resemblance in their matching expressions of excitement and triumph.
“Now that that’s settled,” Alexander said, “let’s see if we can get you home before your parents go into hysterics. If we’re lucky they’ll never know you were gone.”
He turned and opened the door into the hallway, but Savitri pushed it back shut before anyone could leave. “Wait – we’ll need to make a few preparations if we’re going to get back into the house unnoticed.” She turned to Penelope. “Did you sneak out dressed like that?”
Penelope glanced at Alexander and for the first time she seemed embarrassed about her disguise. She shook her head.
“I thought not,” Savitri said. “Do you still have the dress you wore this morning or have you hidden it somewhere else?”
Penelope had it. Savitri and Alexander were banished from the room while she changed and as they waited in the empty hallway, Savitri took advantage of the moment alone to step closer to him. “That was smart, the deal you offered her,” she said quietly. The bustle of the tavern below echoed up through the stairwell but she didn’t want to take the chance of Penelope overhearing their conversation.
“Do you think so? I got the idea from you.” His hands settled on her waist, drawing her even closer. Savitri marveled at the way they seemed to fit together so naturally, so easily, as though it was what their bodies had been designed for. “Though you had to repeat yourself often enough before I could get the concept through my thick skull.”
She shook her head, distracted from the topic by the warmth and scent of him. “I don’t remember saying anything like that.”